light gradually rise
above the eastern horizon. The walled peaks cut off the skyline in
mid-heaven. The stars pale. Trees and crags are mirrored in the lake
so clearly that one can barely tell which is real and which is
reflection. Then the water-lines shorten and the rocks emerge from the
belts and wisps of mist; and all the sunset colours of the night before
repeat themselves across the changing scene. As you look, the clouds
lift. The cook shouts 'breakfast!' And it is another day.

Such was the trail and the life of the prospector who beat his way by
pack-train and canoe up the canyons of the Fraser to learn whence came
the wash of gold flake and nugget which he found in the sand-bars below.

{33}

CHAPTER III

CARIBOO

Indian unrest was probably first among the causes which led the miners
to organize themselves into leagues for protection. The Indians of the
Fraser were no more friendly to newcomers now than they had been in the
days of Alexander Mackenzie and Simon Fraser.[1] They now professed
great alarm for their fishing-grounds. Men on the gold-bars were
jostled and hustled, and pegs marking limits were pulled up. A danger
lay in the rows of saloons along the water-front--the well-known danger
of liquor to the Indian. So the miners at Yale formed a vigilance
committee and established self-made laws. The saloons should be
abolished, they decreed. Sale of liquor to any person whomsoever was
forbidden. All liquor, wherever found, was ordered spilled. Any one
selling liquor to an Indian should be seized and whipped thirty-nine
lashes on the {34} bare back. A standing committee of twelve was
appointed to enforce the law till the regular government should be
organized.

It was July '58 when the miners on the river-bars formed their
committee. And they formed it none too soon, for the Indians were on
the war-path in Washington and the unrest had spread to New Caledonia.
Young M'Loughlin, son of the famous John M'Loughlin of Oregon, coming
up the Columbia overland from Okanagan to Kamloops with a hundred and
sixty men, four hundred pack-horses and a drove of oxen, had three men
sniped off by Indians in ambush and many cattle stolen. At Big Canyon
on the Fraser two Frenchmen were found murdered. When word came of
this murder the vigilance committee of Yale formed a rifle company of
forty, which in August started up to the forks at Lytton. At Spuzzum
there was a fight. Indians barred