Panning for Gold

Faces of the Gold Rush

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Thompson River First Nations

DEAR SIR,-We arrived here this afternoon, having luckily had a few hours' tolerably fine weather and a much more pleasant passage up than we expected. There appear to he fewer persons from Fort Hope to Fort Yale than in January last and the river seems lower. This evening, however, it froze sharp as soon as the sun set and is now snowing heavily. There was some cake ice near six inches thick in the eddy off Strawberry Island. Great quantities of miners have gone up the river-many English; none stopping here, scarcely.(78)

Captn. Whannell we found just the same as usual: calmer, I think, since Mr. Hicks's departure, wch I was not aware of until my arrival here. Mr. Nicol and myself have mattresses in his parlour; there appears to be scarcely another spare sleeping-place in the town. There seems much uncertainty as to the town lots here, and I really think that the plan adopted as between Queenborough arid Langley wod. give more satisfaction than what is now the state of affairs (79)-viz., declare all that has been done of none effect, relay the whole place, and put it up to auction, allowing to bidders the whole of their advances to Govt. and, say, 2/3 of their outlay: or, better, give every purchaser in the new town all his advances to Government and the right to take away and dispose in any manner of any building or improvements wch he may have made on the present sites. The town is not laid out at all, except with parallel rulers and a water-line. The leases are, every one of them I believe, invalidated by the unauthorized erasures of the two terms originally contained in them-viz., payment of rent to be in advance and power of resumption in the Govt. And if this general confiscation be not made, it seems probable that a far larger amount in £. s. d. will be shortly expended in law costs besides the time wch will be lost to the Colony if the town be long delayed.

Nobody would be really injured by this: for in 6 months the place will be much more improved than sufficiently to compensate for the loss.

Mr. Coe(80) was extremely anxious before I left Fort Hope that I shod. authorize his cutting some trees for his mill wch he expects to have in working order in 20 days. He shewed me a letter from Dr. Tuzo(81) and written by Your Excellency's order, in wch he certainly is justified in assuming that he is to have the mill. There are thousands of trees close by; he proposes at present to take some-he spoke of 20 or 30 out of several hundreds immediately behind his mill upon what appears to he rough somewhat steeply rising ground, (I explained to him that a good many of these trees, but I certainly think that one-tenth of them wod, probably be sufficient, wod, be retained by way of ornament.) Ultimately he proposes to take the trees by means of a shoot, from high up among the rocks, where they can be of no earthly value to any body else. It wod. be of great importance to the town to get lumber on this spot at 50 dollars per 1,000. They were paying $90 for it here last winter and $80 now I am informed, and have had to pay $100 at Fort Hope.

Capt. Whannell desires me to mention to you that he is exceedingly anxious to be removed. I fancy he means by that promoted. He say that he wrote to Col. Moody the letter of resignation wch he mentioned to him; I write a few words to the Col. at Queenboro on the point. He also (Capt. Wl.) says that he wrote to Your Excellency through Col. Moody submitting that the fine of $25 indicted by Perrier(82) ought to he remitted by the Crown: wch appears certainly proper, as it never ought to have been indicted. Perrier, having received it, is bound to a/c for it to the treasury: but the treasury may at once I wod. submit, order it to be repaid to Captn. W. Perrier was willing when I was last here to repay it; but I must point out that, having been received by him for the Crown, he must pay it to the Crown officers, who might deal with it as thought just. He repaid the costs while I was here. W. says that he has received no answer to his application to Your Excellancy.

We are to have a sermon to-morrow from one of the Wesleyan ministers, who is, I believe, going higher up the river also. I don't know where he lodges and he does not seem to care, but though quite a boy in looks everybody seems to think he gives a very good sermon. He preaches at Fort Yale in the morning, Emory Bar in the middle of the day, and Fort Yale in the evening: paddling himself, as Saint Peter used to do. (83)

The snow is by no means clear at Lytton; according to all reports, there is still too much for any surveying to be done. I wish that I had had sufficient confidence, in the Irish sense, to ask you to appoint Mr. Nicol and myself commissioners to settle land disputes up here. Both at Fort Hope amd at Fort Yale there are matters, but here especially, wch, I submit really ought to be settled one way or the other; and any settlement almost is better than none at all. Hicks has left things in a hopeless state up here. A few of his doings: He has received applications from his friends for leases so early as the 15th Octr., the first public intimations having been given on the 19th Octr. He granted to one ditch company 500 inches of water on Hill's Bar, and then to another compy. (in which he was a partner) all the water from the same brook beyond 200 inches. Notwithstanding his denial of recording ditch claims, I find page after page of them, I submit that the most proper means of satisfying town leases whose claims have been jumped wod be by portions of his acre,(84) as far as it will go. His ditch claim, wch I thought might be valuable, he has sold.

Another Indian was up today charged with murder of a "Boston man"(85) last summer. But it appeared pretty clear that the accuser, also an Indian, had got up the charge out of jealousy; and the case was dismissed. He was from a tribe above the Big Canyon and the only interpreter we could trust was Martin, a carrier Indian, Mr. Nicol's servant, who seems a first-rate fellow. I gave him a warning in French, wch Martin interpreted in about 10 minutes of a very eloquent harangue in such gutturals as I never heard, and as seemed really very dangerous for his back teeth; the poor wretch who had tried to run for it at first, seemed quieted and impressed, and thankful to get off.

Sunday night. The mail has been hourly expected all day, but has not arrived, and this mail, wch, by the bye, is said to be slow and irregular, closes to-night --did in fact close last night.

Your obedient servant,
MATT. B. BEGBIE.

Footnotes:
(78) "The migration of miners to the upper districts of Fraser's River continues unabated; 800 boats, carrying on an average five white men each, had passed Port Yale previously to the 24th of March, and a greater number of men are reported to have gone towards the same quarter by land, having packed their provisions either on mules or on men's backs to the various diggings, giving tbus a collective number of about 3,000 men." See letter, Douglas to Lytton. April 12, 1859, in B.C. Papers, Part III., P. 4.
(79) This was the result of the carelessness (or worse) of Mr. Hicks, the late Assistant (Commissioner of Crown Lands at Yale. See Judge Begbie's earlier letter of February 3, 1859, ante, p. 88.
(80) John Coe, who with his associates, H. White and D. Patterson, had on November 5, 1858, been granted by Mr. Hicks the right to erect a sawmlll on "the creek at about half a mile above Hope" and to use the water-power of that creek, and to "cut, fall, and use the standing timber adjacent to Hope or such land as shall be selected for the purpose by said commissioner."
(81) Probably H. A. Tuzo, of the Hudson's Bay Company in Victoria.
(82) The fine for "contempt of Court," one of the incident's that led up to the "Ned McGowan War."
(83) The Rev. Ebenezer Robson, later Rev. Dr. Robson. The first Methodist ministers in British Columbia were himself, the Rev. E. White, the Rev. Arthur Browning, and the Rev. Dr. Evans. They arrived in Victoria in February, 1859.
(84) See on this subject Mr. Hick's claim to this land in his letter of May 18, 1859, ante, p.19. He does not seem to have obtained it.
(85) Meaning in the Chinook jargon, an American.

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