the nuggets had to be pursued to
pay-dirt beneath gravel and clay. This meant shafts, tunnels,
hydraulic machinery, stamp-mills. Later, when the pay-dirt showed
signs of merging into quartz, there passed away for ever the day of the
penniless prospector seeking the golden fleece of the hills as his
predecessor, the trapper, had sought the pelt of the little beaver.

All unwittingly, the miner, as well as the {109} trapper, was an
instrument in the hands of destiny, an instrument for shaping empire;
for it was the inrush of miners which gave birth to the colony of
British Columbia. Federation with the Canadian Dominion followed in
1871; the railway and the settler came; and the man with the pick and
his eyes on the 'float' gave place to the man with the plough.

{110}

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The episode of Cariboo is so recent that the bibliography on it is not
very complete. _British Columbia_, by Judge Howay and E. O. S.
Scholefield, provincial librarian, is the last and most accurate word
on the history of that province, though one could wish that the authors
had given more human-document records in the biographical section. In
a very few years there will be no old-timers of the trail left; and,
after all, it is the human document that gives colour and life to
history. It was my privilege to know some of the Overlanders
intimately. One of the companies who rafted down the Fraser came from
the county where I was born; and though they preceded my day, their
terrible experiences were a household word. With others I have poled
the Fraser on those very tempestuous waters that took such toll of life
in '62. Others have been my hosts. I have gone up and down the Arrow
Lakes in a steamer as a guest of the man who came through the worst
experiences of the Overlanders. Chance conversations are shifty guides
on dates and place-names. For these, regarding the Overlanders, I have
relied on Mrs MacNaughton's _Cariboo_.

{111}

Gosnell's _British Columbia Year Book_ and Hubert Howe Bancroft's
_British Columbia_ are very full on this era. Walter Moberly's
pamphlets on the building of the trail and Mr Alexander's casual
addresses are excellent. Old files of the Kamloops _Sentinel_ and the
Victoria _Colonist_ are full of scattered data. Anderson's _Hand Book
of 1858_, Begbie's Report to the London Geographical Society, 1861;
Begg's _British Columbia_; _Fraser's Journal_; Mayne's _British
Columbia_, 1862; Mil