(0 U 
 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE 
 
 FISKE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
 THE BEQUEST OF 
 
 WILLARD FISKE 
 
 LIBRARIAN OF THE UNIVERSITY 1868-188S 
 1905 
 
Cornell University Library 
 F 1088M68 R66 
 
 Blazing the trail through the Rockies t 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 028 904 907 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028904907 
 
BLAZING THE TRAIL 
 
 THROUGH 
 
 THE ROCKIES 
 
 THE STORY OF 
 
 WALTER MOBERLY 
 
 AND HIS SHARE IN THE 
 MAKING OF 
 
 VANCOUVER 
 
 A 
 
 BY 
 
 NOEL ROBINSON 
 
 AND 
 
 THE OLD MAN HIMSELF 
 
 News-Advertiser 
 Printers and Bookbinders 
 
 I I I.I I, f I 
 
9^0 5^ A 
 
FORE^A^ORD 
 
 "I have been very much interested in Moberly's recollections with 
 reference to events nearly all of which I pwretty well know by heart. I 
 am so glad to see that he has given you, for publication, an account of his 
 long and varied experiences in British Columbia, experiences which have 
 been of great value to the province." In these generous terms of apprecia- 
 tion of Mr. Walter Moberly's services to this province, the Hon. Edgar 
 Dewdney wrote me two months ago, at the time that the veteran explorer's 
 reminiscences were appearing Sunday by Sunday. Mr. Dewdney, who 
 has himself rendered great services, not only to this province, but to the 
 Dominion at large, as trail-maker, explorer and administrator, knew Mr. 
 Moberly intimately as a comrade in the early, strenuous days of which 
 this story treats. Appreciation from such a source is, therefore, of much 
 value. I quote this extract as most representative of the many letters of 
 appreciation of Mr. Moberly's services to the province — some of which do 
 not hesitate to point out that those services do not seem to have been 
 appreciated by the province — that I have received during the publication of 
 his story. 
 
 I hope, later, to publish in book form the stories of adventure and 
 achievement of Mr. Dewdney himself, Mr. Henry J. Cambie and other 
 pioneers of the province, whose reminiscences I have had the pleasure of 
 recording in the columns of "The News- Advertiser," for such reminis- 
 cences, like those of Mr. Moberly, are part of the history of British Colum- 
 bia and — in the case particularly of Mr. Dewdney — of the Dominion. 
 In the meantime, I have to express my sincere thanks to Mr. Cambie for 
 his generosity in allowing me to place at the end of Mr. Moberly's story 
 two chapters taken from his own reminiscences in order that the 
 present little book may be a complete record, not only of the explora- 
 tions and surveys that preceded the building of the Canadian Pacific Rail- 
 way through this province, but of the actual building of that railway, lii 
 connection with which Mr. Cambie played ithe most prominent part, being, 
 in charge of the tremendous work of driving the steel through the rugged 
 canyons of the Fraser. I would like also to thank "The News- Advertiser" 
 for i>ermission to republish these stories; the S. J. Clarke Publishing Com- 
 pany for kindly lending me a number of the "cuts" used by them in their 
 recently published history of British Columbia; the Art, Historical and 
 Scientific Society of Vancouver for permission to. use extracts from Mr. 
 Moberly's lectures, published by the Society in a praiseworthy endeavor 
 to show public recognition of his work; and Mr. J. Francis Bursill, an 
 old-timer from the Old Land, well known here under his journalistic name 
 of "Felix Penne," for much kindly assistance in "getting out" this modest 
 but "strange, eventful history." 
 
 — N. R. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 Mr. Moberly Commences Explorations 7 
 
 Founding of New Westminster 19 
 
 Exploring Burrard Inlet 23 
 
 Discovery of Eagle Pass 27 
 
 Building the Cariboo Road 35 
 
 Indian Legends — A Glimpse in Passing 55 
 
 Hon. Walter Moberly Met Brigham Young 63 
 
 Making Railway History 69 
 
 Five and Fifty Years Ago 93 
 
 Building an Historic Railway 101 
 
 Memories of Old Vancouver Ill 
 
 Forty-three Illustrations 
 
"w"^ 
 
 '»->: 
 
 
 This photograph of Walter Moberly was taken In July, 1871, l';"";«'"»*«ly 
 after British Columbia had come into Confederation, and just before Mr. 
 Moberly organized his surveying parties for the surveys which preceded the 
 building of the Canadian Pacific Railway through the Province. 
 
We detachments steady throwing, 
 
 Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep, 
 Conquering, holding, daring, venturing, as we go the unknown ways. 
 
 Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 
 
 We primeval forests felling. 
 
 We the rivers stemming, vexing we and piercing deep the mines within; 
 We the surface broad surveying, and the virgin soil upheaving. 
 
 Pioneers! O pioneers I 
 
 —Walt Whitman. 
 
 N all literature there is no more splendidly picturesque and 
 romantic life story and none more brilliantly told than that of 
 the great biiilder of our Indian Empire, Warren Hastings, 
 recorded in imperishable English by Lord Macaulay. There 
 are two superbly depicted scenes described in that essay, the 
 famous impeachment scene in the Hall of William Rufus and 
 that scene, so near the end of Heistings* remeirkable career, 
 when the ancient Empire-builder, emerging from the retirement 
 of his beautiful country seat in Worcestershire, appeared once more before 
 the Bar of the House, a white-haired nonogenarian, and was there paid a 
 never-to-be-forgotten tribute by the members of the Mother of Parliaments. 
 The wonderful old man, bowed beneath the weight of nearly a century of 
 years, but still mentally alert, seemed to many of those to whom his remark- 
 able life-story had been familiar in their youth to have appeared almost as 
 from the grave, and they paid him that tribute of esteem that the Anglo- 
 Saxon is always glad to pay to a life of conspicuous endeavor and high 
 achievement — even though that life may have been in eclipse at times, as 
 was the case with Warren Hastings. 
 
 FROM WARREN HASTINGS TO WALTER MOBERLY. 
 
 It may seem, at first blush, a far cry from Warren Hastings to Walter 
 Moberly, die subject of this story, and, as Mr. Moberly would himself 
 admit, it may seem also a case of placing the greater and lesser on the same 
 plane, for the British race has produced few men combining the statesman- 
 ship, the conspicuous ability and astonishing energy of a Warren Hastings, 
 but it has produced, to its honor, many indomitable explorers of the Mac- 
 kenzie,' Eraser, Dewdney, Moberly, Cambie type — to name a few out- 
 standing names in British Columbia's roll of. explorers. Yet one day, quite 
 recently, the two men to whom reference has been made were associated in 
 my mind for a particular reason. During the week a case, in which the 
 Dominion and Provincial Governments figured, which had, as its main 
 issue, the question whether English Bay may be considered as a harbor or 
 not, loomed large in the newspapers. In the course of that case many a 
 notable British Columbian pioneer — and particularly pioneers of the sea — 
 gave evidence, some of these old-timers, such as a former skipper of the 
 historic Beaver, Captain George Marchant, still hail and hearty, being 
 men who had not figured in the public view for a long time. 
 
FROM Britain's parliament to Vancouver's courthouse. 
 
 Mr. Walter Moberly was one of these and it was when his still firmly 
 knit but spare and slightly bowed figure, with its venerable head and face, 
 suggesting the pale, intellectual type of man rather than the man of action 
 and the wilds, appeared in the witness box that the analogy I have sug- 
 gested flashed through my mind. His likeness to the late Lord Strathcona, 
 as an old man, is worthy a passing reference. And, as Mr. Moberly pro- 
 ceeded to tell of that day, more than half a century ago, when Com- 
 mander Richards in H. M. S. Plumper (that warship the by-no-means 
 impressive name of which has been rendered permanent in the designation 
 of Plumper's Pass between Vancouver and Victoria) found him with 
 Lieutenant Burnaby and his men digging for coal near the site of what is 
 now Coal Harbor, the period of which he spoke seemed as remote to us 
 present day Vancouverites as that period of storm and stress, of bloodshed 
 and diplomacy, and juggling with native kings and princesses and their 
 kingdoms, which marked the administration in India of Warren Hastings, 
 must have seemed to those men of another generation who stood to receive 
 him when he appeared for the last time in Parliament. Warren Hastings 
 was full of years and honors and living at his country seat. Mr. Moberly, 
 who has been the recipient of a few minor honors, is full of years, but a 
 comparatively poor man, yet he, as the most notable of our pioneer path- 
 finders, has, with other pioneer path-finders, rendered to British Columbia 
 services which, in proportion, are as valuable to the Province as those of 
 his greater compatriot were to India and, through India, to the Empire. 
 
 MR. MOBERLY HONORED. 
 
 It was inevitable that Mr. Walter Moberly should find a place in 
 this series of stories. His name has been given to several places in British 
 Columbia, including a depot on the C. P. R. and a school in South Van- 
 couver, and his explorations are among the earliest and most valuable made 
 in the province. A photograph of him, framed and enlarged, has recently 
 been hung in the Walter Moberly School, the Conservative Club and the 
 Vancouver Museum. Opinions do not diffeir as to the part he has played 
 in the development of the province, and the fact that he has had the honor 
 of addressing, among other public bodies, the Vancouver Canadian Club 
 and the Art and Historical Society upon his explorations, is a tribute to 
 the estimation in which his services are held by his fellow citizens of Van- 
 couver, a city the site of which he advocated from the outset as the ter- 
 minus of the Canadian Pacific Railway, a railway with the .inception and 
 construction of which his name and the names of Cambie, Dewdney and 
 others whose lives have been dealt with in the course of these stories, will 
 always be inseparably associated. 
 
 NOTABLE TRIO. 
 
 Incidentally I may mention that, of the large family of Moberly 
 brothers, there are still two living, besides Mr. Walter Moberly, both at 
 very advanced ages but a little younger than their Vancouver brother, one, 
 Mr. Harry Moberly, who retired from the service of the Hudson's Bay 
 Company after a strenuous life in the wilds, during a brief portion of 
 which time he traded in opposition to that famous company, and after 
 whom Moberly Lake, near Fort St. John, is named, now living in retire- 
 
ment up north; and the other, Mr. Frank Moberly, who has also been a 
 great out-of-door man and who is at present hving north of Lake Huron. 
 In 1871, when the C. P. R. started in, Frank Moberly had charge of 
 the exploratory service of that company from Winnipeg to the Kootenay 
 Plains. 
 
 Born in 1832 — five years before Queen Victoria came to the throne 
 — at Steeple Ashton in Oxfordshire, England, Walter Moberly is the sop 
 of a retired post-captain in the British Navy and of a Polish lady. His 
 father fought in many battles in the Napoleonic wars, including that off 
 Cape St. Vincent and at Borodino. He is the nephew of an ecclesiastic 
 well known in his day, headtaaster of Winchester when the family said 
 good-bye to England and, later, still better known as Bishop Moberly of 
 Salisbury. As Walter was only two years of age when his father and 
 mother emigrated to Canada, he has no recollections of England, though, 
 curiously enough, his pure English accent would suggest that he had recently 
 emigrated from the Old Country. His first definite memories are of his 
 school life at Barrie, on Lake Simcoe, w'here his father bought a nice little 
 place. It was here that he first met and became well acquainted with the 
 future Baroness Macdonald, then a girl and subsequently destined to marry 
 Canada's most famous premier. Sir John A. Macdonald. Much might 
 be written about his early explorations in the Huron country (of which 
 little was known at that time), but his life has been so crammed full with 
 interesting happenings in this province that most of this early part will have 
 to be omitted, with the exception of a reference or two. After studying 
 his profession of civil engineer in Toronto and spending some time with a 
 well known Toronto firm of engineers, Messrs. Cumberland and Storm — 
 Mr. Cumberland was chief engineer on what used to be known as the 
 Ontario, Simcoe and Union Railroad, afterwards the Northern Railway, 
 the first railroad in Upper Canada — ^he engaged in many strenuous and 
 exciting explorations. 
 
 SIR SANDFORD FLEMING'S PICTURES. 
 
 During part of this time he was one of the assistants to Sir Sandford 
 Fleming, a very notable engineer, who is still living in Winnipeg. Mr. 
 Moberly recalled one curious memory with reference to Sir Sandford. 
 "He was a very clever sketcher," he observed, "and could sketch and 
 paint in colors, and yet he could not tell one color from another. Often 
 he has asked me the color of this or that, and when he knew the color he 
 would make a beautiful picture." In the year 1854 Mr. Moberly secured 
 many hundre«ls of square miles of white pine that he had discovered, and 
 he spent a large proportion of the years 1855-57 exploring through the 
 country north of Lakes Huron and Superior between Lake Simcoe and 
 the Michipicoten River, which discharges its waters into Lake Superior. 
 Upon his return to Toronto at the end of the year 1857 he learned that 
 the Imperial Government had sent out an expedition under the command 
 of Captain Palliser to explore British territory between Lake Superior and 
 the Pacific Coast, and at the same time he heard that rich deposits of gold 
 had been discovered in the valley of the Fraser River in British Columbia. 
 He decided to come out to British Columbia, and, v^ath a letter of intro- 
 duction from Sir George Simpson to Sir James Douglas, who was then at 
 the head of the Hudson's Bay Company west of the Rocky Mountains, 
 he made preparations for the change. 
 
EARLY EXPEDITION WEST OF HURON: GREAT INDIAN GATHERING. 
 
 Just one iretrospective glimpse before accompanying Mr. Moberly to 
 the founding of New Westminster. It has reference to his early expe- 
 riences in the country west of Lake Huron. "Until the early fifties of the 
 nineteenth century very little was known of the country west of the Huron," 
 he observed, "and it was generally supposed to be rugged, cold, inhospi- 
 table, more suitable for Indians and wild animals than for civilized settle- 
 ment and commercial development. It was in the year I 850, when I was 
 emerging from boyhood, that I met in Barrie an Englishman from K^t, 
 and we arranged to undertake a trip from Barrie to Sault Ste. Marie for 
 the purpose of exploring the north shore of Lake Huron and also for shoot- 
 ing and fishing and to be present at the village of Manitowaning, on the 
 Great Manitoulin Island, in order to witness the annual distribution of the 
 presemts that the government in those days gave to the Indians who then 
 inhabited the country around Lakes Huron and Superior. 
 
 "We purchased a small bark canoe which we transported by the old 
 military road from Barrie to the Willow River, down which we paddled 
 to the Nottawasaga River, thence down it to Lake Huron, then coasting 
 along the shore of Lake Huron to Penetanguishene, where we outfitted. 
 After a delightful trip, during which we saw a great deal of the country 
 bordering the north shore of Lake Huron, we went to see the distribution 
 of the presents to the Indians. There were several thousand Indians con- 
 gregated, many of them very fine looking men. War dances were innumer- 
 able, and canoe races, in which upwards of 400 canoes took part, were 
 organized. We visited the Wallace copper mine on the Whitefish River 
 and also the Bruce mines. We then returned to tjie site of an old saw 
 mill about five miles from the village of Manitowaning, where raspberries 
 grew in profusion and where wild pigeons were numerous. Having shot a 
 great many of these birds, we embarked on the old steamer Gore and pro- 
 ceeded to Sturgeon Bay and thence in our canoe to the Coldwater River, 
 where we put the canoe on a wagon and transported it to Orillia, then, 
 launching it on Lake Couchiching, we paddled back to Barrie. It was 
 during this trip that I noticed the large forests of white pine that grew 
 throughout much of that country." 
 
 SLAVE TRADE IN RIO. 
 
 Matters were quiet owing to the Crimean War, when — largely owing 
 to the advice of Mr. Gzowski, a widely known engineer in the east at that 
 time and father of Mr. Gzowski, a well known contractor* of the Van- 
 couver of today — -Mr. Moberly decided to go west. Spending one last 
 day at Niagara Falls, he departed for New York and embarked upon 
 what was to prove an adventurous and strenuous career. He sailed for 
 Rio de Janerio. Even at this length of time, when the tides of over fifty 
 years have ebbed and flowed between, Walter Moberly retains the most 
 vivid impressions of the splendid harbor of Rio and the varied and pic- 
 turesque scenes which the city had to show at that time, impressions which 
 one is tempted to set down here were it not that there is so much of interest 
 to pack into a comparatively limited space before this story closes. Suffice 
 it to say that Rio at that time was full of negro slaves, for the slave trade 
 was at its most lucrative stage. One slaver, a skipper, informed young 
 Moberly that he had cleared $600,000 as the result of a single voyage 
 bringing slaves from Africa. 
 
 10 
 
"These negroes were as black as ebony, and he informed me that a 
 negro in good condition would fetch from $2,000 to $3,000," Mr. 
 Moberly explained. As far as he could judge during the few weeks he 
 si>ent at Rio, these slaves were, in the main, fairly well treated and pretty 
 jolly, though he came across some sad exceptions. 
 
 Through the stormy Straits of Magellan and so to Panama sailed the 
 good ship in which our explorer was bound, and at Panama it was found 
 that the steamship company operating the said ship had "gone bust." It 
 was quite a question as to whether they would be able to complete the 
 voyage, but the captain and the first mate decided to take the vessel to San 
 Francisco. The passengers, however, lost their passage to Victoria. Even- 
 tually, Mr. Moberly managed to get passage on another vessel to Esquimalt 
 and so, late in the year 1858 — the same year that Colonel Moody and 
 the Royal Engineers landed in the province from England — he set foot 
 on British Columbian soil. 
 
 CAPTAIN COOK. 
 Like Captain Vancouver, Captain Cook was one "of the first that ever burst 
 into that silent sea" of the Pacific. He just missed discovering the Straits of 
 Juan de Fuca owing to a storm. The "silent sea" about Vancouver would have 
 remained in solitude had not such men as Cook and Vancouver been followed 
 by men like iVIoberiy and Gamble. 
 
 WELCOMED BY GOVERNOR DOUGLAS. 
 
 Upon presenting Sir George Simpson's letter to Sir James Douglas, 
 Mr. Moberly was accorded a very hearty welcome by the notable Hudson's 
 Bay magnate. "He not only received me kindly, but he offered me a post 
 under the government," Mr. Moberly explained. "I dechned it, however. 
 as it would have interfered with the objects I had in view. He gave me 
 a letter that would insure me a welcome and assistance at any of the Hud- 
 son's Bay forts I might visit. Until the day of his death I always found 
 Sir James Douglas a kind and invaluable friend, and I never experienced 
 anything but courtesy and assistance from the Hudson's Bay factors and 
 those under them. At that time also I met Chief Justice Begbie, Com- 
 mander Richards and Donald Eraser, W. A. G. Young and others." 
 
 COMMENCES B. C. EXPLORATIONS. 
 
 Let it not be forgotten that Mr. Moberly made all his early explora- 
 tions in B. C. quite apart from the government and entirely at his own 
 
 II 
 
expense. It is true that he was fond of exploratory work, but this fact 
 does not detract from the debt of gratitude which the province owes to the 
 man who, upon his arrival, spent all that he had saved in seeking to make 
 known the unknown. It was, however, to be an outstanding feature of this 
 explorer's life that, partly, it would seem, through a certain something lack- 
 ing in his make-up from a business standpoint, and partly from the disin- 
 terestedness natural to him, he never emerged on the right side financially 
 from any of the big undertakings he tackled, despite the fact that he carried 
 them through successfully. 
 
 "I thought I might meet Captain Palliser in Victoria and learn from 
 him the result of his explorations through the Rockies and British Colum- 
 bia," he observed, "but on my arrival Governor Douglas informed me that 
 Captain Palliser's party would not reach Victoria until the following 
 autumn. I left Victoria after a few days' stay, and sailed for Fort Langley 
 in the Hudson's Bay Company's steamer Otter, and arrived the same day 
 at the old Fort Langley, where I received a hearty welcome from the Chief 
 Factor, William Yale, and other officers of the company who were then 
 stationed or visiting at that important fort. 
 
 GLOOMY PROPHECIES. 
 
 "My explorations for a Canadian transcontinental railway through 
 the mountains of British Columbia may be fairly said to have commenced 
 on the day that I reached Fort Langley in the year 1858, but, allowing for 
 those I had previously made north of Lakes Huron and Superior, the explor- 
 ations for such a railway really commenced fifteen or sixteen years before 
 British Columbia was confederated with the provinces east of the Rocky 
 Mountains. The winter, cold, dreary and comfortless, had now set in, 
 with snow and rain. A large number of miners who had been mining in 
 the neighbbrhood of Forts Hope and Yale, and on the Lillooet River, were 
 living in shacks about half a mile below Fort Langley, and they spoke 
 gloomily of the portion of the country I proposed to explore, dilating upon 
 its difficulties and its extreme ruggedness and referring to a war between 
 the miners and the Indians which they said was going on in the canyons of 
 the Fraser, and in the course of which they said that a number of Indians 
 had been shot. 
 
 CAPTAIN TOM WRIGHT MARINER AND PHILANTHROPIST. 
 
 "There was a small, stern-wheeler steamer called the Enterprise, 
 owned and commanded by a most genial and kind hearted American — ■ 
 Captain Tom Wright — going up the Fraser to Fort Yale, so I proceeded 
 up the river in her. The Enterprise was the pioneer steamer to navigate 
 the Fraser River to Fort Yale. Innumerable old pioneers of the Fraser 
 River experienced much kindness from Captain Wright — and it is a pleasure 
 to pay a tribute to him here — when they were starving and without means, 
 for he not only gave them free passages in these circumstances, but also fed 
 them when on his steamer, and he had such a pleasant way with him that 
 he made them feel that they were not under an obligation to him but that 
 they were conferring a favor upon him by travelling on his steEuner. He 
 was a most amusing character and would keep the passengers in roars of 
 laughter by spinning yams and telling amusing anecdotes. 
 
A PIONEER S BOOK. 
 
 Apropos of Mr. Moberly's reference to Captain Tom Wright and 
 the pioneer steamer to navigate the Fraser River, I make no apology for 
 introducing here a few paragraphs dealing in a most interesting and enter- 
 taining way with the early navigation of the Fraseir. These are culled from 
 a remarkably interesting book entitled "Four Years in British Columbia 
 and Vancouver Island," the author being Commander R. C. Mayne, R.N., 
 F.R.G.S.. sometime officer on H. M. S. Hecate under Commander 
 Richards. The volume was published more than fifty years ago and there 
 are only a few copies now extant, among these being copies in the Van- 
 couver and Victoria Public Libraries and in the possession of Mr. C. E. 
 Tisdall, M.P.P., of Vancouver, and Mir. John Tolmie, of Victoria, two 
 old-timers. It is capitally and attractively written and full of valuable 
 information, both popular and scientific, with reference to the mainland of 
 British Columbia and Vancouver Island, its people and characteristic 
 features. The author, who was clearly a man of keen observation, saw 
 every side of life here in those early days and himself went on many explor- 
 
 A model of the historic Beaver, the first steamship to piough the waters of 
 the Pacific. She came out from England 'round the Horn and under sail, and 
 was soon known from end to end of the B. C. coastline. This model is In the 
 Museum at Victoria. 
 
 ing expeditions, living with the Indians and enduring the usual hardshifw 
 of pioneer life. Incidentally he brought to the writing of the book a good 
 education and a broad outlook upran life. In reading its pages in the light 
 of the events and discoveries of the past half century it is very interesting 
 to compare the actual development in certain places and in certain directions 
 with the prophecies here and there indulged in by Commander Mayne. 
 Often these prophecies have become accomplished facts in so striking a 
 
 13 
 
manner that the author, were he still alive, would in many instances have 
 the satisfaction of saying, "There, I told you so." 
 
 I have laid special emphasis upon the value of this book because it 
 seems to me that it is well worth re-publication. Certainly it is the most 
 interesting and attractive of the books written upon British Columbia. It 
 will be seen in a moment that Commander Mayne (with whom Mr. 
 Moberly was well acquainted and of whom he- speaks highly) ascended' 
 the Fraser on the same boat, the Enterprise, and under the same captain, 
 Tom Wright. 
 
 STERN-WHEELER AND "UMATILLA SNAG." 
 
 The following extract is, as will appear, in lighter vein, but, none the 
 less, it gives a very vivid idea of the troubles with which the navigator of 
 the turbulent Fraser had to contend in the early days: 
 
 "Some fifteen miles from Westminster, Langley is .reached. Here 
 steamers from Victoria are stopped by the shallowness of the river, and 
 their cargoes, human and material, transferred to the stem-wheel steamers, 
 boats and canoes which, from this point, do battle with the swift, uncertain 
 stream. Stern-wheel steamers are peculiarly American. They are pro- 
 pelled by a large wheel protruding beyond the stern, the rudders — for 
 there are generally two or three — being placed between it and the vessel's 
 stern. TTiey are admirably adapted to pass between snags and close to 
 bluffs, where a side wheel would be knocked away, and are affixed to flat- 
 bottomed vessels drawing no more than 1 8 to 24 inches of water. 
 
 "There is something very exciting in travelling in these steamers. 
 Struggling up the liver against the stream the greatest risk comes from 
 the overcharged boilers giving way. But tearing down the current at some 
 12 or 14 knots an hour, bumping over shoals, striking against snags and 
 shooting rapids is far more animated work. One snag, known as the 
 Umatilla Snag, because a steamer of that name first struck it, lies in a very 
 narrow and rapid bend of the Fraser. Upon one occasion, when I was 
 going up the river in the Enterprise, no less than three times after we had 
 struggled past that snag the strong current caught and swung us broadside 
 on across the stream; and it was only by running the vessel's bow into 
 the muddy bank, without a moment's hesitation, and holding her there by 
 the nose, as it were, until she recovered breath to make another effort, that 
 we escaped impalement. 
 
 AN EXCITING STRUGGLE. 
 
 "There was something very exciting in this struggle between the forces 
 of steam and water. Each time, as we hung by the bank, the engineer 
 might be heard below stoking his fires and getting up as much steam as the 
 boilers could — or might not — bear for the next effort. The wheel-house 
 in these vessels is situated forward, so that there is almost direct communi- 
 cation between it and the engine room. By the helm stands the captain, 
 Tom Wright. 'Ho, Frank!' he hails down the tube; 'how much steam 
 have you?' Frank replies that he has so many pounds. 'Guess, you must 
 give her ten pounds more or we shan't get past that infernal snag,' is the 
 skipper's rejoinder, and then more stoking is heard below and the unpleasant 
 sensation comes over the listener that the boilers are just below his feet and 
 that, if anything should happen, his fate, at any rate, is sealed. Presently 
 Frank's voice is heard again: 'All ready, Cap'n; can't give her any 
 
 14 
 
more.' The skipper loses no time. 'Stand by, then,' is his response. Then, 
 to the men forward, who have made the rope fast to some stump on the 
 bank to keep the boat from dropping off: 'Let go,' and she falls off for 
 the second or third time. Her bow cants out a little. 'Ting, ting, ting,' 
 goes the engine room bell — the signal for full speed ahead. For a time 
 the lightly built vessel trembles. We watch the trees on the bank closely 
 to see if she moves ahead. Presently she drops a little; then the stream 
 catches her on one bow. 'Stand by with the trip-pole,' is heard, and she 
 springs round. 'Trip,' is shouted from the wheel-house. Into the swift, 
 shallow water the heavy pole plunges and perhaps she is brought up by it 
 and run into the bank again, or, if the bottom is hard and rocky or the 
 water deeper than was thought, away she flies down the river until she is 
 brought up against the bank or across a snag. 
 
 MENDING WITH TARRED BLANKETS. 
 
 "The perseverance of the skippers in overcoming these difficulties is 
 really remarkable. Upon one occasion I remember that, after making 
 four unsuccessful attempts to steam past the Umatilla Snag, all the men 
 had to be landed in order to drag her past the dangerous spot. Further up 
 it was found necessary to again resort to the same tedious process, and the 
 united strength of the crew and passengers with difficulty got her over the 
 few hundred yards in the space of two hours, Frank below in the engine 
 room cramming on all the steam he could to help us. Nor is the com- 
 posure with which the captain meets and remedies an accident less remark- 
 able. A~ supply of tarred blankets is always kept handy for service and, 
 if a hole is stove in the steamer's bottom, the captain cooly runs her ashore 
 on the nearest convenient shoal, jams as many blankets into the crevice as 
 seem necessary, nails down a few boards over them, and composedly con- 
 tinues his voyage. He is often reduced to very serious straits. I was 
 assured by a passenger aboard the Enterprise to Hope, in 1 859, that he 
 saw the contents of a cask of bacon turned onto the fires when additional 
 steam to pass a troublesome rapid was necessary." 
 
 THROUGH ICY RAPIDS TO FORT DOUGLAS. 
 
 To continue Mr. Moberly's story: "When we left the steamer at 
 the mouth of the Harrison River, rain and snow were falling heavily, so 
 we pulled the goods the steamer had left on the bank into a near-by large 
 Indian house, called in those days a 'rancheree,' and we also found shelter 
 in it, but the smoke and stench were very disagreeable. Having on my 
 way up from Fort Langley arranged with a merchant who had a general 
 store at Fort Douglas to take charge of a canoe of his loaded with goods 
 and liquors, I hastily collected a crew and late in the afternoon we started 
 up the Harrison River. At the rapids we had to get out into the icy water 
 and pull the canoe up, and at dark we reached a large Indian house in 
 which dwelt many Indian families. We stayed there overnight and thawed 
 our clothes and half-frozen bodies. A few more miserable days, buffetted 
 by strong head winds accompanied with heavy snow storms when travelling 
 Lake Harrison saw us in Fort Douglas, which was a small village com- 
 posed of rough shacks and a few better buildings for stores and liquor 
 saloons. The place was crammed with miners, packers and others. I hired 
 an Indian to pack my blankets across the twenty-nine-mile portage to Lil- 
 
 15 
 
looet Lake, and next morning started along a narrow trail through deep 
 snow that penetrated a dense green fir forest. 
 
 AS FAR AS PAVILION MOUNTAIN. 
 
 "Difficulties and hardships crowded upon one another, but, after many 
 days spent tramping through the snow, and without a blanket to sleep in, 
 for I had thrown away my blankets the day before I had left Fort Douglas, 
 as packing them through the snow delayed me very much, I managed to 
 penetrate as far as Pavilion Mountain, some distance above the present 
 town of Lillooet. I tried mining near 'The Fountain,' but it was not a 
 success and, there not being any provisions obtainable, I was starved out 
 and so retraced my way back to Fort Langley. This exploration convinced 
 
 Sir James Douglas, the first Governor of Vancouver Island and for many years 
 head of the Hudson's Bay Company on the Pacific Coast. 
 
 me that this route was not favorable for the construction of the eastern 
 section of a transcontinental railway. I had, however, ascertained that 
 there were no great difficulties to be overcome in the construction of wagon 
 roads across the portage between Fort Douglas and what is now the tovwi 
 of Lillooet and thence up the valley of the Fraser River to Pavilion 
 Mountain. 
 
 SEVERAL EXPLORATIONS. 
 
 "I stayed for a few days at Fort Langley and then Captain Tom 
 Wright and I started in a canoe to explore up the Pitt River and lake to 
 see if we could find a better way into the interior than that by the Harrison 
 River and lake. A short exploration in this direction convinced us of the 
 impracticability of this route. After this expedition I returned to Victoria 
 and gave Governor Douglas an account of my explorations. He decided 
 to improve the Harrison rapids in the way I suggested and also to construct 
 wagon iroads across the portage, etc., that I had examined between Fort 
 Douglas and Pavilion Mountain. I then proceeded to make an exploration 
 through the canyons of the Fraser River between Yale and Lytton, which 
 presented great natural difficulties, but in both direction and grades I found 
 that a good line could be obtained for either a wagon road or a railway, 
 though the work of construction in either case would be very costly." 
 
 16 
 
It was upon returning to Victoria after this expedition that Mr. 
 Moberly met Colonel Moody (after whom Port Moody was hamed, com- 
 mander of the Royal Engineers who were sent out by the statesman-novelist. 
 Lord Lytton, an outstanding figure in early B. C. history) at Governor 
 Douglas's and arranged to accompany him up the Fraser for the purpose 
 of founding New Westminster. This incident — quite an historic one in 
 the history of British Columbia — Mr. Moberly told me with much interest- 
 ing detail, as also the story of his explorations in Burrard Inlet and vicinity, 
 the visit of Commander Richards and the naming of Coal Harbor. 
 
 30E 
 
 17 
 
FOUNDING NEW WESTMINSTER. 
 
 *HERE has for many years been a friendly argument between 
 Mr. Walter Moberly and Mr. J. W. Armstrong, the well- 
 known New Westminster pioneer, as to which of the twain 
 was the first white settler on the site of the Royal City. Both 
 claim that distinction. I wonder if each has sufficient faith in 
 the goddess of chance to emulate the two farmers, about 
 whom Judge Bole told me, who, at Mr. Buchanan Sword's 
 house at Matsqui, many years ago, and after the hearing of 
 their dispute had proceeded until the luncheon hour, enjoyed lunch and then 
 agreed to decide the ownership of certain cows by tossing up. 
 
 WALTER MOBERLY MEETS COL. MOODY. 
 
 Mr. Moberly visited Governor Douglas at Victoria to report the 
 result of his expedition, for, although he had declined to enter the service 
 of the government, he had promised to report the result of his explorations 
 whenever he returned to the capital. "I was in Mr. Douglas' waiting room 
 and prepared to tell the head of the Hudson's Bay Company here what 
 impressions I had gathered. While waiting I chatted with a gentleman 
 who had also come to see Mr. Douglas. I did not know who he was and 
 we did not mention names. While we were talking, the late Chief Justice 
 Begbie came out of the Governor's office. I had met him at a dinner 
 party. We shook hands and then Sir Matthew introduced me to the gentle- 
 man I had been in conversation with as Colonel Moody — Colonel Richard 
 Clement Moody, to give him his full name. Upon hearing my name the 
 Colonel at once said: 'I was hoping that we should meet some time, Mr. 
 Moberly; I heard that you were in the province. I knew your uncle. 
 Bishop Moberly, well in England." 
 
 "you are just THE MAN I WANT." 
 
 TTiis was the begiiming of much pleasant intercourse between the two. 
 TTie Colonel invited young Moberly' to go and see him the next day. 
 "Having given my report to the Governor later thalt day I went with my 
 blankets to an old frame building — ^very much of a bam — somewhere near 
 where the Bank of British Columbia now stands. I slept there that night 
 in a sort of loft. Next day I was going down to the Colonial Restaurant, 
 where diere happened to be a very fine French cook and jolly good fellow 
 — the restaurant was afterwards named the D^ryard Hotels — when I met 
 Colonel and Mrs. Moody and their two children, and they invited me to 
 dinner. They were living in a frame building pretty near the comer of 
 Yates and Douglas streets. As soon as we had finished dinner. Colonel 
 Moody said: 'Do you understand frame buildings, how to draw plans 
 and put the buildings up?' I replied in the affirmative, and he said: 'Then 
 you are just the man I want.' He then told me that he had decided to 
 
 19 
 
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change the site of the future capital from Derby to Queensborough (after- 
 wards called New Westminster). 'Be ready.' said the Colonel, 'to start 
 tomorrow morning in the Beaver and we will go up the Fraser to Derby, 
 where Captain Grant and his men are, and there we will arrange every- 
 thing." 
 
 BEAVER PASSES NEW CAPITAL; A CURIOUS PROCESSION. 
 
 When, late the next day. the historic little steamer passed the site of 
 what is now the Royal City — "and there was nothing but forest, not even 
 a shack there then," interpolated Mr. Moberly — they were on deck, and 
 Colonel Moody waved his hand towards it and said: "There is our future 
 capital." ''One night I stopped at Langley and then, a supply of pro- 
 visions and implements having been got together, in addition to a tent and 
 
 The Mint, New Westminster, 1862. 
 
 a few other necessaries, next day we entered a rather leaky boat and were 
 quickly towed down stream by the steamer and left by her on the site of 
 the future capital." So Mr. Moberly described the first landing there — 
 he, at any rate, has not the least doubt that it was the first landing and 
 that there was not the slightest sign of any building, however rough, for 
 miles either way, as it was part of his duty to explore the site. "The fol- 
 lowing day," he explained, "I walked all the way up to a little stream 
 called Brunette. I tried to get along the beach, but found that it was 
 imi>ossible, so went through the woods. A few days later — the news of 
 
the proposed change having become common property — men were floating 
 down the Fraser in boats and canoes, on rafts, and, indeed, in any mortal 
 craft they could lay hands on or make roughly and quickly to take them 
 to the site of the new capital. Upon that site there were some of the 
 biggest forest trees I have seen, and it was clear that there was lots of 
 strenuous work before us." 
 
 "alphabet" macdonald: a mighty stump. 
 
 In response to a question as to whether he helped to survey the site 
 of the new city, Mr. Moberly replied in the negative, explaining that the 
 surveyors among the Royal Engineers — of whom, by the way, Mr. George 
 Turner, whose story has already figured in this series, was one — ^were 
 responsible for this work. His work, he said, consisted in the planning, 
 and, with eissistance, the erection of the first dwellings and offices. He 
 spoke of one D. F. G. Macdonald^ — ^better known at the time as "Alphabet 
 Macdonald" — the son of a notable Scotch preacher in his day and one 
 who had known Colonel Moody in Scotland. "He was a great card," 
 laughed Mr. Moberly, "and a great fellow to yarn and drink whisky. 
 Cochrane was another Scotchman of quite a different type. I was building 
 a little cottage for Mac and got in a supply of whisky and we had some 
 very entertaining evenings. I was in charge of the building of the houses, 
 of the treasury and customs houses, and of clearing off the timber. I remem- 
 ber well there was one stump where the customs house had to go. It bulged 
 tremendously big at the bottom. There were several Canadians who told 
 me they were accustomed to such work and who -startled me by saying they 
 would get the stump out for $30. They made a great effort, but finally, 
 when they found that they were not making $1 a day, they agreed to take 
 the same wages as I was paying my men. It cost $80 to get that stump 
 out." 
 
 I asked Mr. Moberly where that great stump and customs house 
 stood. He thought for a moment, then drew his hand over his eyes with 
 a deprecatory gesture and said, a little sadly: "So many of the old land- 
 marks by which I have been able to recall places have gone from New 
 Westminster that I cannot be sure, but I think it must have been very near 
 where Holbrook & Fisher's store used to be." 
 
 noE 
 
 22 
 
EXPLORING BURRARD INLET. 
 
 1 N August, 1 859, Mr. Moberly recalls the making of a trail from 
 the Camp- — as the first settlement at New Westminster was 
 Y^^ called for quite a while — to Port Moody. "It was a distance 
 of nine or ten miles, and there was absolutely nothing there at 
 the time," he remarked. "There was no white man on Bur- 
 rard Inlet. About that tjme Lieutenant Burnaby — after whom 
 Bumaby is named — Colonel Moody's private secretary, had an idea 
 that there might be coal on the Inlet. I thought even then 
 that the shores of the Inlet would one day afford a valuable site 
 for a railway and its terminus. We took some men with us and embcurked 
 in a canoe at New Westminster. We landed first at what is now known 
 as Point Grey, and near where the Country Club is situated. Next day 
 we explored False Creek, which, at that time, was, like Burraurd Inlet, 
 bush right down to the water's edge. The day following we paddled 
 
 Captain George Vancouver, the first wliite man to proceed up Burrard Iniet. 
 
 round into the Inlet itself and camped somewhere near the foot of what is 
 now Bute street. The following day we proceeded to what is now Coal 
 Harbor, and set our men to work with picks and shovels digging to see if 
 they could come upon traces of coal. Meanwhile Burnaby and I explored 
 right up to Port Moody, up the North Arm and Indian River, and also 
 up Howe Sound." 
 
 23 
 
Figure to yourself, all of you who have enjoyed so many glorious 
 expeditions by canoe and launch and steamer upon the beautiful waters and 
 amidst the grand and impressive scenery of the places just mentioned, these 
 two explorers in their little canoe paddling mile after mile through scenes 
 now familiar to all of us, but, up till that time, gazed upon by hardly a 
 white man^ — several of them never seen before except by an Indian — since 
 the days when Captain Vancouver and his intrepid men came up Burrard 
 Inlet. 
 
 H. M. S. PLUMPER ARRIVES IN INLET. 
 
 It was while the party was delving for coal that was not there that, 
 to their surprise. Commander George M. Richards, with H. M. S. Plumper, 
 steamed through the First Narrows and, passing Brockton Point, hove into 
 sight. The arrival of the little warship, Mr. Moberly explained, was the 
 result of a misunderstanding. Some white men had been murdered on the 
 Fraser, and Captain Louard, of the Royal Engineers, had captured on 
 Sea Island the Indians responsible for the crime. These Indians thought 
 they were going to be strung up at once. Now, the Indians belonged to 
 the Squamish tribe, the headquarters of which tribe were situated not far 
 from where the exploring party had encamped, and the Squamish were in 
 a rather indignant frame of mind. However, there was no serious danger. 
 Happening to meet an Indian and his squaw in a canoe, Mr. Moberly, 
 learning that they were for the Fraser River, bethought him of a message 
 that he wanted to send to the "Skookum Tyee" (as the Indians called 
 Captain Spalding, the stipendiary magistrate at Westminster) and in the 
 course of the brief letter let fall an observation about the attitude of the 
 Squamish Indians, which observation, combined with the fact that he antici- 
 pated some trouble as the result of the capture of the Indian murderers, led 
 Captain Louard to think that the party on Burrard Inlet was in much 
 danger. So a revenue boat was sent to Nanaimo to tell Commander 
 Richards that he was wanted in Burrard Inlet at once. Hence the arrival 
 of the Plumper. 
 
 CAMP-FIRE PARTY: COAL HARBOR NAMED. 
 
 "However, the presence of the bluejackets enabled us to spend a jolly 
 night," observed Mr. Moberly. "They landed, as we had done, at the 
 foot of what is now Bute street, and later brought a keg ashore. Then 
 we lit a roaring fire of logs as night came on, and our party and the English 
 sailors spent one of the jolliest nights I remember. Many rollicking old 
 sea songs were sung and many a rousing chorus echoed through the forest 
 and many a toast was drunk." There! that is a litde vignette which it is 
 worth while remembering now that, more than half a century afterwards, 
 the face of nature has been so completely changed by man at that par- 
 ticular spot — the foot of Bute street— and now, too, that nature has taken 
 to her bosom all but one of the festive party that foregathered round that 
 camp fire. Before he left next day, Commander Richards named Coal 
 Harbor. While this name recalls an interesting bit of local history — and 
 for that reason, perhaps, it would be a pity to change it — it must be 
 admitted that, as the name of a pretty lagoon — incidentally immortalized 
 by Pauline Johnson — it is the reverse of pretty and might with advantage 
 be changed. 
 
 24 
 
COAL HARBOR AS NANAIMO's COMPETITOR. 
 
 In Commander Mayne's book, to which reference has been made, we 
 find that the gallant officer, in the course of a description of Vancouver and 
 its environment, went a little astray in his remarks upon the coal-producing 
 possibilities of Coal Harbor. 
 
 The southernmost, and, as yet, the most important of the inlets of the 
 Pacific Coast, was named by Vancouver "Burrard," after a friend in the 
 Royal Navy. This inlet differs from most of the others in possessing sev- 
 eral good anchorages. It is divided into three distinct harbors, which are 
 separated from each other by narrows, through which the tide rushes with 
 such velocity as to render them impassable by any but powerful steamers. 
 
 Burrard Inlet. First dry-point etching made in Vancouver (Noel Bursill). 
 
 except at slack water or with the tide. The entrance to Burrard Inlet lies 
 fourteen miles from the sandheads of the Fraser River. English Bay is 
 the anchorage immediately inside the entrance on the south side, and is of 
 considerable importance to vessels entering at night or when the tide is 
 running out through the narrows, affording them safe anchorage where they 
 can wait comfortably until the morning or turn of tide, instead of drifting 
 about the place. 
 
 "Two miles inside the First Narrows is Coal Harbor, where coal has 
 been found in considerable quantities and of good quality, although the 
 
 25 
 
demand is not yet sufficient to induce speculators to work it in opposition 
 to the already established mines at Nanaimo." 
 
 Perhaps it is a little unfair to quote one of the very few paragraphs 
 in the book where Commander Mayne was in error. Although he was no 
 doubt in Burrard Inlet himself more than once, that paragraph must have 
 been penned later and after someone had been "drawing the long bow a 
 little about the "considerable quantities" and "good quality" of the valuable 
 mineral which was to help Coal Harbor to rival Nanaimo in this natural 
 production. Fortunately for Vancouver — and one expresses the sentiment 
 without any mental reservation — coal has not been discovered on the site 
 of the future Pacific metropolis — or, if it has, the quantities have been so 
 infinitesimal as to make them unworthy of consideration. Had Messrs. 
 Moberly and Burnaby been successful in their experiment in Coal Harbor 
 fifty odd years ago, they might have become millionaires, though the chances 
 are that, in Mr. Moberly 's case, anyway, the spirit of wanderlust, of explor- 
 ation, would have prevented him from making a success of anything else. 
 
 noE 
 
 26 
 
DISCOVERY OF EAGLE PASS. 
 
 |ES, I feel a strong inclination to open this third chapter of his 
 story with the grizzly bear adventure that befell Mr. Moberly 
 high up in the mountains above the Illecillewaet— musical name 
 when you have once caught on to the swing of its pronouncia- 
 tion. No — on second thoughts, that shall be left for a column 
 or two later. It was quite by accident that this incident 
 found its wa:y into our chat and, as a matter of fact, Mr. 
 Moberly was just referring to it in passing as one of the to-be- 
 expected events of such an exploring trip — "somewhere near there we 
 killed a grizzly" — and was passing on to another point in the expedition 
 when I pulled him up with: "You might tell me about that grizzly, Mr. 
 Moberly," and then he did so. 
 
 That is the only thing I have against this veteran explorer. He is 
 quite ready to describe his explorations and their eifects, but, unless pressed, 
 he does not refer to adventures by the way, which — to use a newspaper 
 colloquialism — aire often the jam of the story from the average reader's 
 standpoint. TTie only thing to do is to look out for a passing reference, 
 and then, metaphorically speaking, level a revolver at the explorer's head, 
 and insist that he delivers up that incident at once. Though an entirely 
 different type of man, Mr. Moberly reminds me, in one respect, of Mr. 
 Cambie, an equally well-known brother explorer — h? is very particular as 
 to topographical detail. It is true that he does hot go so far as Mr. 
 Cambie insisted upon doing whenever a question of distance arose, namely, 
 measuring out with a rule on a map the exact distance that he covered from 
 a certain place to a certain place and its relation to other places, in order 
 that there might be no exaggeration, but he has insisted more than once 
 upon drawing a map of a certain part of the country of which he has been 
 speaking, in order that I should have a very lucid idea of the lay of the land, 
 and be able the more clearly to explain it. He introduces into these sketches 
 every little creek that he traversed, or bluff that he scaled — ^if it bears 
 upon the matter in hand — and writes its name in a very small, clear 
 hand, a surprisingly clear hand when one remembers that he is over eighty 
 years of age and that he has lived the strenuous life in a greater degree 
 than most men. 
 
 LITTLE SKETCH MAPS. 
 
 Such a little sketch map as I have indicated lies before me as I write, 
 and it tells me at a glance — what I propose telling to you, in his words as 
 far as possible, in a moment — the story of the discovery of Eagle Pass. 
 This discovery was the most important made by Mr. Moberly during all 
 his explorations in British Columbia more than half a century ago, and its 
 value to the Canadian Pacific Railway is a matter of Canadian railway 
 history. Through this pass, today, those wonderful iron horses rush almost 
 daily, awakening with their booming sirens echoes from mountain and ravine 
 
 27 
 
that had from time immemorial given back no echo save the cry of some 
 wild animal or bird, or the dull reverberations of a storm. In order to 
 tell this Eagle Pass story, it is necessary to skip several years from the 
 Burrard Inlet explorations just described, and, as those years included such 
 undertakings as the building of the famous Yale-Cariboo road, the driving 
 of the Dewdney trail and other matters, we shall retrace our steps later. 
 
 ROUTE OF THE EXPLORATION: MT. MOODY. 
 
 It was in June, 1865, that Mr. Moberly, who had sat for a session 
 in the Provincial Legislature as member for Cariboo West, having resigned 
 his seat upon his appointment as Assistant Surveyor-General, resumed his 
 explorations, and, six weeks after leaving New Westminster, discovered 
 Eagle Pass. He left New Westminster with Mr. Albert Perry, one of 
 his assistants, and accompanied also by two Indians, one of them, Victor, 
 an interior Indian of whom he si>eaks very highly and who accompanied 
 him upon other expeditions. This was his first exploration of British Colum- 
 bia east of Kamloops. The party proceeded to Yale, thence to Kamloops, 
 then by the South Thompson River, Little and Great Shuswap and Mara 
 lakes and, after ascending the Eagle River a few miles, went to Seymour 
 at the head of the North Arm of Great Shuswap Lake, and crossed thence 
 over the Gold Range to the Columbia River, arriving on its banks at a 
 point formerly known as Kerby's Landing, about two miles below the 
 Dalles de Mort (Death Rapids). 
 
 EAGLE PASS SIGHTED. 
 
 Quickly constructing a log canoe, they ran down the Columbia River 
 to Galena Bay, at the north end of the Upper Arrow Lake, then followed 
 the Columbia to Skokulei Creek (Salmon's Rest), which falls into the 
 Columbia River just north of the east end of Eagle Pass. Proceeding in 
 a westerly direction over the Gold Range, Mr. Moberly climbed a high 
 mountain — ^which he named Mt. Moody, after Col. Moody, afterwards 
 Major-General, of the Royal Engineers — north of TThree Valley and other 
 neighboring small lakes, from the top of which he had a magnificent view 
 of most of the valley of the Eagle River and Shuswap Lake. It was 
 from the top of this mountain that he first saw the pass that he felt con- 
 fident would prove of great importance in later development, and he deter- 
 mined that the name of his friend Colonel Moody should be associated 
 with an important landmark near. The name of the pass itself is asso- 
 ciated with one of the circumstances that actually led to its discovery. 
 But of that more in a moment. 
 
 FRAGILE CANOES AND THEIR MENDING. 
 
 We will retrace our steps for a few minutes. The brief summary of 
 this exploration has only occupied two paragraphs, but, as a matter of fact, 
 the journey was full of incidents, most of which vsrill have to be omitted 
 here as there is so much to follow. Part of the journey was made by 
 boat, part by canoe and part on foot, packing. Mr. Moberly had been 
 speaking of a canoe accident and this led to the question as to the type of 
 canoes the party used. "We travelled in two canoes made of spruce bark," 
 he explained. "The Indians were expert at making these and they were 
 very light, not weighing, at the outside, when empty, more than one hundred 
 
 28 
 
Earliest picture extant of Government Street, Victoria, with 
 Hudson's Bay fori. Indians In canoe. 
 
pounds, and easily portaged by one man. They were so lightly made that 
 it was necessary to strew the bottom with cedar bark in case one's foot 
 should accidentally go through. Of course this lightness had its disad- 
 vantages and holes were of frequent occurrence. When we landed we 
 almost invariably stepped into the water in order that the canoe should not 
 hit with any force against the rocks. However, this type of canoe was 
 very easily made and very quickly repaired. We always carried gum, 
 collected from a tree, and, as this was brittle, mixed some bacon grease 
 with it. This, and some rag to paste over the hole, constituted our simple 
 mending outfit." 
 
 WHERE DID RHODODENDRONS COME FROM .^ 
 
 Mr. Moberly recalled that the travelling on the Gold Range was first 
 rate and through beautiful wooded country, the ground covered at that 
 time of the year with a thick, soft grass which, he observed, was something 
 like fur, and. sprinkled everywhere at that season with flowers. This men- 
 tion of flowers recalled another memory — though not of that expedition — 
 when, somewhere not very far from Hope, he and a companion once lit 
 upon a splendid clump of rhododendron bushes growing in a sheltered spot. 
 "How those came there was a mystery to us," he observed, laughing, "as 
 the rhododendron is not, as far as I know, a v^rild flower. My friend sug- 
 gested that, perhaps, an eagle had captured a barndoor fowl that had been 
 eating the seeds of the rhododendron and, carrying it off, made a meal of 
 it at that particular spot, which was many miles away from any habitation. 
 Anyway, it is astonishing how seeds of domestic plants get carried for 
 thousands of miles sometimes." 
 
 IN DEATH NOT DIVIDED. 
 
 This mention of an eagle recalled another memory of an eagle, which 
 has nothing to do with the particular exploration under consideration, but 
 which, as the king of birds is closely associated with the pass that bears 
 its name, may be introduced here. "I remember one day, not far from the 
 Columbia, seeing a bald-headed eagle floating about very high up," 
 observed Mr. Moberly, "and then suddenly it swooped down ihto the bush 
 so rapidly that I hardly saw it go, almost like an arrow, and it rose into 
 the air with a rabbit in its claws. About the same time I came across a 
 very curious case in which another bald-headed eagle figured. This, too, 
 was on the Columbia. We were on the river in a canoe when we saw an 
 eagle floating down the stream, apparently dead. We made for it, out of 
 curiosity, and found that it had its claws buried in a big salmon. In some 
 way one claw had become entangled in the backbone. Both salmon and 
 eagle were dead and had begun to decompose. They had been responsible 
 for the death of each other and were floating round and round in an 
 eddy." 
 
 "the committee's PUNCH BOWL." 
 
 Since writing the paragraph about those rhododendrons it has occurred ; 
 to me that Mr. Moberly fixed their location near the Committee's Punch 
 Bowl. The location does not seriously matter, but the Committee's Punch 
 Bowl is worth a passing reference. "Devil's Punch Bowls" are fairly 
 common, but how did this place get the singular name of the Committee's 
 Punch Bowl? was a natural question. "It used to be a great camping 
 
 30 
 
ground of the Northwesters," was Mr. Moberly's reply, "and it was there 
 that they brought the horses over. I remember that there were dozens of 
 trees there blazed with the names of various traders — some of them very 
 well known — and the date of their going through. It lies between Mt. 
 Brown and Mt. Hooker going up from the Boat Encampment where the 
 boats used to go to meet the horses. The boats used to go up the Columbia 
 from Fort Colville to the Boat Encampment and there take aboard the 
 horses that had been brought over from the prairie country. At this Com- 
 mittee's Punch Bowl there was a sort of pond about a quarter of an acre 
 in extent. The water of that pond looked very dark. The Northwesters 
 used to be in the habit of carrying with them a good supply of rum, amd 
 at this particular spot they would indulge in some pretty deep draughts — 
 hence the name." 
 
 "it was the eagles." 
 
 Returning to the discovery of the Eagle Pass, I asked Mr. Moberly 
 what it was that gave him the impression that there might be an opening 
 through the mountains there, as the natural conformation of the country 
 does not suggest such a pass. "It was the eagles," he replied. "I watched 
 them as they flew up the Columbia and I saw them make a big bend off. 
 I knew that eagles always follow along a stream or make for an opening 
 in the mountains, and I just followed the direction they took, with the 
 result that I discovered and, I think, very appropriately named Eagle 
 Pass." 
 
 From the top of Mt. Moody, Mr. Moberly not only saw Eagle Pass 
 but he saw also the valley of the Illecillewaet (Rapid Water) River extend- 
 ing far into the Selkirk Range in the direction in which he wished to obtain 
 a practicable route into the valley of the Columbia River in the vicinity of 
 the western ends of the Howse and Kicking Horse Passes through the 
 Rocky Mountains. He descended the western side of this steep mountain 
 and reached the bottom of the Eagle River Valley, near Craigellachie, 
 where Lord Strathcona (then Sir Donald A. Smith) about. twenty years 
 later drove the last spike to complete the Canadian Pacific Railway — am 
 incident which will be described later by Mr. Cambie. 
 
 "this is the route for the overland railway." 
 
 At this point Mr. Moberly blazed a tree and wrote upon it with 
 chalk, red or blue — he forgets which — these words: "This is the route 
 for the Overland Railway." He returned by the Eagle Pass into the 
 Columbia Valley at the Big Eddy and posted a notice reserving all the 
 land in that immediate neighborhood for the Crown. He had thus passed 
 back and forth through this vital opening in the mountains, provided, as 
 though by a far-seeing providence, for the express purpose of letting through 
 the bands of steel that were to guide so many thousands of trains with their 
 human and commercial freight safely to this great western terminus. 
 
 It was now the fall and getting chilly, but Mr. Moberly, Mr. Perry 
 and the Indians proceeded to force their way up the valley of the Illecille- 
 waet River, heavy rain falling during much of the time. They followed 
 the North Fork to its source, where high mountains blocked the way, and 
 intended to cross the Selkirks from the headwaters of the southeasterly 
 branch — now known as Rogers Pass — but as the winter was close at hand 
 
 31 
 
and the Indians could not be induced to proceed, Mr. Moberly was com- 
 pelled to give up further explorations that year. Thus he left only about 
 thirty miles of the whole line unexplored from the coast to the west end of 
 Howse Pass. All this had been accomplished in less than five months. 
 
 EXCITING RIVER EPISODE. 
 
 During the latter part of their expedition and while in the valley of 
 the Illecillewaet, the party came across very many bear tracks and fre- 
 quently saw black bear. "But they always used to make away and it 
 was not easy to get them," observed the explorer. "However, I shot and 
 captured one in the Columbia River under rather curious circumstances," 
 he added with a laugh. "We had pulled the canoe ashore and were getting 
 lunch on a bar when one of the Indians called that there was a deer making 
 across the river some distance down. My rifle was not loaded at the 
 moment and I had nothing but my revolver. One of the Indians and 
 myself boarded the canoe and pushed off into the stream at once in pursuit. 
 As we approached the animal in the water we saw that it was a black 
 bear. The current was swift and we saw that there might be difficulty in 
 getting our quarry, but we were seriously short of provisions and this fresh 
 meat would be a god-send if we could get it. We drew level and the 
 bear turned and snapped savagely at the canoe several times and tried to 
 jab the bow with his paw. I leaned forward and, placing my revolver as 
 near as I could behind his ear, fired and killed the animal. But the cur- 
 rent was swift and it looked as if, after all, we should lose him. The 
 Indian steadied the canoe as much as he could and I leaned over, risking 
 the possibility of overturning, and managed to grab the bear by his hind 
 leg before he was swept away from us. We came across a great pile of 
 drift and were rushed round it, but I hung on for all I was worth, realizing 
 that I had hold of quite a number of good meals. Finally we drifted upon 
 a bar and there we cut up, dried and smoked our capture. We dried him 
 in the sun, smoked him black and got out the bear's grease." 
 
 THE GRIZZLY BEAR ADVENTURE. 
 
 "And now for that grizzly incident, Mr. Moberly," I suggested, 
 "and then you shall be released from this inquisition for a while." "We 
 were high up above the valley of the Illecillewaet when we killed him, 
 somewhere near the snow line," replied the veteran. "He was a splendid 
 silver-tip grizzly." (Mr. Moberly 's eyes brightened at the Tecollection 
 and, as he related the incident, it was clear that he lived it over again, that, 
 in fact, he had almost forgotten, for the moment, where he was and found 
 himself in memory once again up that mountain side above the Illecillewaet 
 Valley.) "We sighted him early one morning away up a stream that was 
 coming from a glacier, and we sneaked up under cover of the chapparele." 
 (I queried the meaning of that word, which the narrator had used once or 
 twice before, and he said that he first heard it used among the Tierra-del- 
 Fuegans and it meant low brush.) "The moment he smelt us he started 
 up the mountain side. We jumped out of cover and climbed a little four- 
 teen or fifteen-foot bluff, and Perry fired and hit the grizzly. At once he 
 turned, enraged, and rushed down the mountain upon us. I have shot 
 many bears of all kinds and have seen many shot, but none of these bear 
 incidents stands out in my memory like this one, the grizzly looked such a 
 
 32 
 
magnificent sight as he approached and quickly raised himself, fully twelve 
 feet high, upon his hind legs, furious. Seen under those circumstances a 
 grizzly is almost an awe-inspiring spectacle. Another shot broke his back 
 and paralyzed his hind legs, but, even then, as he lay on the ground, he 
 showed fight. I went near him and, one after another, fired all the bullets 
 from my heavy military revolver — one which I had when I vvas in what 
 were known as Denison's Dragoons in Toronto— against his head, but not 
 one entered that tough skull — they all glanced off. 
 
 MOUNTING THE HEAD: AN ORIGINAL CEREMONY. 
 
 "When the grizzly was dead, I discussed the possibility of taking 
 the head and skin with us and preserving them, but the Indians were very 
 opposed to this, saying that we should have no luck hunting if we did, and 
 I realized also that it would be by no means an easy task, as the country 
 was rough and trailless and the winter was approaching. So, regretfully, 
 I gave up the idea. Thereupon the Indians tore pieces of red flannel from 
 their shirts and decorated the head, having first cut it from the body. Then 
 Victor climbed a fairly stout spruce tree, some fifty or sixty feet in height, 
 cut the extreme top off, descended for the head and, with much difficulty, 
 fixed= it upon the top. He then cut all the branches off as he descended 
 and scooped the bark off to prevent the raccoons getting at the head." 
 
 "over fifty years ago." 
 
 It was with difficulty that Mr. Moberly was persuaded to tell this 
 incident in any detail — like Mr. Dewdney and others of these early path- 
 finders and hunters — and like some who are path-finders and hunters tod^y 
 — he has taken the adventurous side of life in the wilds very much as a 
 matter of course — he leaves the tall stories to the amateur hunters and 
 anglers. I am glad, however, to have been able to record this one. To 
 those of you who have read these lines and have been "mighty hunters 
 before the Lord" yourselves, it will constitute a vivid mental picture and 
 even with those of us who know parts of the wilds chiefly by reason of 
 what one may term amateur hunting expeditions — in contradistinction to 
 hunting expeditions where a man is largely dependent upon his gun for his 
 next meal — it should make the blood course faster. 
 
 "I wonder if that spruce tree with the grizzly's head atop still stands," 
 soliloquized the old explorer, more to himself than to me, as he rose to go. 
 "It is probable that no one has been there since. But you say it was an 
 exposed spot," I hazarded. "Yes, yes," he agreed, smiling a trifle sadly, 
 "and that was over fifty years ago." 
 
 30C 
 
 33 
 
BUILDING THE CARIBOO ROAD. 
 
 I HE CARIBOO ROAD ! There is a magic, a thrill of adven- 
 ture in the name, a suggestion of — well, of the caribou them- 
 selves. And it is good, indeed, to know that these fine wild 
 animals are still by no means rare in the country through which 
 the present road passes, and also that much of that wonderful 
 old road itself is still useable. Only the other day a pioneer here, who 
 was up there last fall, was telling me that he sighted a caribou on the 
 road then. The meeting was brief, my friend was unarmed, and the 
 caribou, which, curiously enough, did not seem particularly startled, 
 disappeared very quickly. 
 
 THE CARIBOO ROAD ! The epic of the building of the Cana- 
 dian Pacific Railway through the defiles and canyons of this wild province 
 has yet to be written, though Pauline Johnson in her "Prairie Greyhounds" 
 has sung with a rhythm and a happiness of expression (which seems some- 
 how to suggest the swing eind the power that mark their progress) of those 
 wonderful trains that are the counterpart on land of those "swift shuttles 
 of an Empire.'s loom that weave us shore to shore" on sea. 
 
 EPIC OF THE CARIBOO ROAD. 
 
 There is another epic, too, that will have to be written — the epic of 
 the Cariboo Road. And though the epic of the building through of the 
 bands of steel that conftect ocean with ocean will be full of the atmosphere 
 of wonder and work — and weariness, too, sometimes — that poem which 
 shall tell of the making of the first great highway through the wilds of 
 British Columbia, of the greatest piece of road-building that Canada has 
 ever seen, of one of the most able pieces of road-building through some of 
 its fastnesses that the world has seen, yes, of the forging of the Cariboo 
 Road, will be even more instinct vnth romance and the gospel of the strenu- 
 ous life, for the making of that road marked what was really — though much 
 had been done before — the vital begiimings of the development of this 
 province. 
 
 WHAT THE MAORIS THOUGHT. 
 
 The conquest of any new country may be read in the history of its 
 roads. That sentiment has probably found expression before. Such con- 
 quest may have been warlike or peaceful, but the roads that went with it 
 are the sign manual that it has been thorough. I read in one of G. A. 
 Henty's books the other day that the Marois of New Zealand — among 
 the most intelligent of the native races still surviving — ^with the advent of 
 the first settlers to their country became partially educated and learned that 
 the Romans had conquered the various wild parts of their colonial Empire 
 largely by means of the splendid roads they drove through those countries 
 as they conquered them. The Maoris, failing to realize the inevitability of 
 the British conquest of New Zealand, dimly realized that this road conquest 
 
 35 
 
was a vital part of the settling up of the country and opposed it for all they 
 were worth — opposed such road building so strongly, indeed, that the 
 shedding of much blood marked certain stages of the, in the main, peaceful 
 conquest of New Zealand. The conquest of British Columbia has been 
 peaceful, but nature has placed obstacles in the way, the removal of which 
 in order to make access comparitively easy, has cost millions of dollars 
 and untold labor — aye, and many lives, also. 
 
 GREAT ACHIEVEMENT SMALL POPULATION. 
 
 THE CARIBOO ROAD ! It is a theme upon which any writer 
 with even an apology for an imagination could rhapsodise for a long time. 
 What morals could be drawn from it, too. It is impossible for those who 
 do not know the wild and rugged country through which the road passes 
 to realize the stupendous nature of the task which the builders set themselves, 
 or for those who have not known the road itself in years that are past or 
 have not studied the road of today with an eye to what it owes to that first 
 road to realize the labor and the skill that went to its making. But those 
 men who actually built that wonderful road did not rhapsodise about it — 
 they made it. They made it at a cost of about $ 1 ,000,000. And it was 
 nearly 500 miles in length from Yale to Barkerville. And you could 
 have placed the whole population of the province of that day in the New 
 Westminster of today. The population was well under 35,000. 
 
 Just pause for a moment and think of the pluck of Sir James Douglas, 
 Colonel Moody of the Royal Engineers — let it not be forgotten that the 
 sappers and miners of that splendid body to whom B. C. owes so much 
 built the first eight miles of that road — and the other men associated with 
 the inception and building of the road. 
 
 THE OLD BRIGADE. 
 
 The expense alone, 'when it is remembered that the population of the 
 province was small, was a tremendous item and much of the money had 
 to be borrowed. But the work was done and quite a piercentage of it has 
 lasted to this day, half a century afterwards. There were few who made 
 much money out of the undertaking and one at least, Mr. Moberly, finished 
 "broke" and with heavy liabilities. There are a few men associated with 
 much money out of the undertaking and one at least, Mr. Moberly, who 
 the building of that Cariboo Road still living and of these Mr. Walter 
 Moberly is the most notable. He is a veteran of over four-score, white- 
 haired and — well, not feeling so young as he once did. It is not easy for us 
 young fellows to picture him to ourselves as he looked in his prime, but he 
 must have been, like Mr. Cambie and Mr. Dewdney and Mr. John 
 McLennan and a few others of the stalwart old brigade, a stalwart man 
 and a man of his hands as well as of his head. Let us, then, take off our 
 hats to the Men of the Old Brigade. 
 
 PROJECTING THE ROAD. 
 
 Here is the story, in Mr. Moberly's own words, of the building of 
 this historic road: 
 
 "It was in the years 1 860-61 that the existence of a very extensive and 
 extremely rich auriferous portion of the Crown Colony was discovered to be 
 situated in the part of it now generally known as the Cariboo section of the 
 
 36 
 
country, and I decided, for the time being, to defer my further explorations 
 for a transcontinental railway and devote myself to the undertaking of con- 
 structing a great arterial highway through the ceiitral portion of the colony, 
 that would open up and develop its resources in the most effective and 
 substantial manner. 
 
 "My various explorations heretofore made, through the different sections 
 of the colony I had visited, had convinced me that the best route to adopt 
 for the great wagon road I projected was by the valleys of the Fraser and 
 Thomson rivers, although the formidable canyons along the valleys of those 
 rivers presented natural obstructions that, for a country having a very small 
 revenue, were most uninviting and app>eared to be almost insurmountable. 
 From careful observations I also felt confident that the great mineral region 
 of the country would be in the belt immediately west of the Rocky Moun- 
 tains. I was also satisfied that it was by the valleys of the Fraser and 
 Thomson rivers that the mountain section of Canada's first and greatest 
 transcontinental railway should reach the coast. 
 
 SIR JAMES CONSIDERED DIFFICULTIES TOO FORMIDABLE. 
 
 "Ever since the arrival of the corps of Royal Engineers, under the 
 command of the late Major-General Richard Clement Moody, sent out by 
 the Imp>erial_ Government in the year 1858 to maintain law and order, and 
 to generally supervise and control all such measures and works needed to 
 establish the colony on a firm and lasting beisis. I had been on the most 
 intimate terms with Colonel Moody. I had fully explained to him my 
 views regarding the construction of a Canadian transcontinental railway, 
 and also my belief that the great wagon road to develop the colony should 
 be built through the canyons of the Fraser River, etc. I also had many 
 conversations with the late Sir James Douglas, who was the first governor 
 of the mainland of British Columbia, but Sir James considered the physical 
 difficulties presented by the canyons of the Eraser and Thompson rivers of 
 too formidable a nature, and for that reason he had caused to be under- 
 taken the construction of a wagon road over the different portages between 
 Lake Harrison and the present town of Lillooet, on the Fraser River. This 
 route was a broken land and water one that necessitated much handling of 
 the freight passing over it, and was not at all likely to be able to accom- 
 modate and meet the coming needs and prospective commercial demands 
 of the country. 
 
 "The rich discoveries of gold in Cariboo afforded me the opportunity 
 of pushing forward my project of building the great arterial highway by 
 the valleys of the Fraser and Thompson rivers. I saw Colonel Moody and 
 we proceeded together to make a careful examination of the canyons, and 
 before we parted he was convinced as myself that it was the route to adopt 
 for the highway. We arranged to meet the following winter in Victoria 
 and press our views on Governor Douglas. 
 
 GOLD EXCITEMENT OTHER PLANS FOR WAGON RQADS. 
 
 "The discoveries of gold induced prominent citizens of Victoria to 
 combine in the endeavor to get roads constructed from the heads of Bute 
 Inlet and Bentinck Arm direct to Quesnelle mouth, in order to draw the 
 trade of the Cariboo districts away from the Fraser River route and centre 
 it in Victoria. TTiese projects I opposed and then commenced the long 
 struggle between the people of Victoria and those of the mainland to capture 
 the trade of the Cariboo districts. 
 
 38 
 
Old view of Victoria overlool<ing harbor. 
 
 "When I arrived in Victoria in the early part of the year 1 862, I found 
 that Colonel Moody had preceded me, and that all the people of that city 
 were much excited about the gold fields of Cariboo, and the projected roads 
 from Bute Inlet and Bentinck Arm, and that Governor Douglas was greatly 
 in favor of subsidizing a wagon road, projected by the late Mr. Alfred 
 Waddington, from the head of Bute Inlet to Quesnelle mouth, and that the 
 Governor was also about to grant a charter to Mr. Gustavus Blinn Wright 
 to construct a toll road, assisted by a subsidy from the government, from 
 Lillooet to Fort Alexandra, from where Mr. Wright proposed to continue 
 the connection on to Quesnelle mouth by means of a sternwheel steamer he 
 was about to build for that purpose. 
 
 THE GOVERNOR CONVINCED. 
 
 "My project for building the Yale-Cariboo wagon road looked very 
 unpromising. I saw both Mr. Waddington and Mr. Green, the latter 
 
 Oid view of Victoria showing James Bay — since filled In. 
 39 
 
gentleman being at the head of the project of getting a road from Bentinck 
 Arm, whilst Mr. Waddington, as before mentioned, was at the head of the 
 Bute Inlet project. I proposed to them that they should abandon their 
 projects, and all of us cobmine and get a charter for a toll road to be 
 constructed over the Yale-Cariboo route. They were too sanguine of their 
 prospects to entertain my proposition, and, as they considered my proposed 
 undertaking of getting a wagon road built through the canyons of the 
 Fraser River, etc., impracticable, they declined my proposition. 
 
 "After Colonel Moody and myself had had several interviews with 
 Governor Douglas we managed to convince him that the Yale-Cariboo 
 route was the best to adopt for the general development of the country, and 
 that it was imperative that its construction should be undertaken at once. 
 
 OPPENHEIMER, MOBERLY AND LEWIS. 
 
 "At this time I met Mr. Charles Oppenheimer, who was at that time 
 at the head of the great mercantile firm of Oppenheimer Bros., having their 
 
 Sir Joseph William Trutch (afterwards first Governor of British Columbia) 
 was in charge of the construction of the Cariboo Road from Chapman's Bar to 
 Boston Bar. 
 
 establishments at Yale and Lytton, where they carried on a very large and 
 lucrative business. Mr. Oppenheimer and a friend of his, Mr. T. B. Lewis, 
 proposed to join with me in obtaining a charter for the building of this 
 wagon road, provided we could obtain the right to collect very remunerative 
 tolls for a series of years and a large money subsidy from the governemnt 
 to assist in defraying the cost of its construction. 
 
 "We, therefore, entered into an agreement for that purpose under the 
 firm name of Oppenheimer, Moberly & Lewis, and Mr. Oppenheimer 
 withdrew from his firm in order to devote his whole attention to the work 
 we proposed to undertake, and shortly afterwards, on the Governor's grant- 
 ing us the charter, which empowered us to collect very remunerative tolls 
 and also to be paid a large cash subsidy as the work of construction pro- 
 gressed, we proceeded to the mainland to commence the work. Governor 
 Douglas at that time fully expected to obtain a large loan from the Imperial 
 Government, for which he had applied. 
 
 40 
 
PLAN OF CAMPAIGN NOTABLE PIONEERS. 
 
 "The manner in which the different sections of this road were to be 
 constructed was as follows: 
 
 Captain G. M. Grant, with a force of sappers and miners, together 
 with a large force of civilian labor, was to construct the section extending 
 from Yale to Chapman's Bar. 
 
 The late Sir Joseph Wm. Trutch was, by contract, to construct the 
 section from Chapman's Bar to Boston Bar. 
 
 The late Mr. Thomas Spence was to construct the section from Boston 
 Bar to Lytton. 
 
 The firm of Oppenheimer, Moberly & Lewis was to construct the 
 section from Lytton until the road formed a junction with the wagon road 
 to be built by Mr. G. B. Wright from Lytton to Fort Alexandria. 
 
 ADVANCED MONEY, FOOD AND CLOTHES. 
 
 "My department in this undertaking was to locate the road and super- 
 vise its construction. Mr. Lewis was to keep the books and accounts, and 
 Mr. Oppenheimer was to look after the purchasing and forwarding of the 
 supplies Jind the finances. When we arrived at Yale a large number of 
 men seeking employment on our work could not get beyond that point, as 
 they were without money, food, clothing and boots, and as they had to 
 walk from Yale to Lytton along the pack trail we were obliged to make 
 them advances of all those articles. I had already paid the fares of a large 
 number of men from New Westminster to Yale, which cost me between 
 $2,000 and $3,000. Mr. Oppenheimer had arranged before he left 
 Victoria to have large qucintities of supplies and tools forwarded to Yale, 
 and I also sent a quantity of the same things that I had on hand to the same 
 place. 
 
 FIFTY-FIVE CENTS A POUND TO CONVEY SUPPLIES. 
 
 "We now began to experience our first difficulties, as the pack itrail 
 between Yale and Lytton was only partially completed, which necessitated 
 all freight between those places being conveyed partly by water through 
 the dangerous canyons and partly by pack trains, which caused very heavy 
 transportation charges and losses of supplies. Some idea may be formed 
 of the cost of transportation in those days when, in many instances, it cost 
 as much as fifty-five cents a pound to convey our supplies from Yale to 
 Lytton. There were not enough boats on the river to meet the demands 
 for transportation, and the number of pack animals was altogether inade- 
 quate, as the greater number of those engaged in packing were employed 
 in the very lucrative business of conveying freight through to Cariboo, and, 
 therefore, did not find it so profitable to convey it for us over a compara- 
 tively short distance to our vyorks. We had to employ large numbers of 
 Indians to pack supplies on their backs and the high prices they charged 
 enriched them. When Mr. Lewis and myself travelled from Yale to 
 Lytton we were compelled to walk, as we were unable to get saddle animals. 
 TTiis journey we accomplished in two days, but owing to the extremely rough 
 trail, our feet were blistered and very sore. 
 
 FIRST EMPLOYMENT OF CHINESE. 
 
 "At Lytton I made my headquarters in the courj house, which Captain 
 H. M. Ball, who was the gold commissioner, sheriff, etc., of the district, 
 
 41 
 
very kindly placed at my disposal. I now established my first road camp 
 a short distance out of Lytton, and as the men arrived I set them at work. 
 A few days afterwards I established another camp at Nicomin, a small 
 stream about twelve miles above Cook's ferry, which was a short distance 
 below where Spence's bridge was afterwards built. 
 
 By this time the work was going on at a great rate, but as I could not 
 get a sufficient number of white men I was obliged to let a contract for the 
 construction of the road from a "slide" a short distance above Nicomin to 
 Cook's ferry to a body of Chinese, with the exceptoin of that portion around 
 a rock bluff below Cook's ferry. 
 
 A CONTEMPTABLE PROCEEDING. 
 
 "I had now been at work some time, and by the terms of our charter 
 there was a large amount of money overdue and but a very small sum had 
 
 Portion of Cariboo Road, giving fine idea of the system of cribbing. 
 
 been paid by the government, which hampered me very much in carrying 
 on the work in the most efficient manner, and necessarily caused heavy and 
 unlooked for expenses being incurred. By borrowing considerable sums of 
 money on my personal credit I managed to keep the work going on, and, at 
 the end of the third month after the charter was signed, paid all the men 
 their wages in full. As soon as I had paid these wages, a very large number 
 of the men, entirely disregarding the terms of their contract with me to work 
 for the whole season, and nearly all of them indebted for clothes and other 
 necessities I had furnished them with when they were in a destitute condition, 
 left the work, and I lost the value of what I had advanced them. 
 
 42 
 
"This contemptible proceeding on the part of these men, which was 
 brought about by the reports of fabulously rich deposits of gold having been 
 discovered on Antler and other creeks in Cariboo, reduced the force of 
 men needed to ensure the prosecution of the work in accordance with our 
 contract with the government, and compelled me to employ, much against 
 my wishes, a large force of Chinese laborers. It will thus be seen that 
 the bad faith and unscrupulous conduct of the white laborers was the cause 
 of the employment of Chinese labor in constructing the Cariboo wagon road. 
 All the other contractors on this road experienced the same treatment from 
 their white laborers that befell me. 
 
 THE CHINESE AND THE PIGS. 
 
 "I found all the Chinese employed worked most industriously and 
 faithfully and gave no trouble. I may here mention an amusing incident 
 that occurred in connection with these Chinese. One day when I was on 
 my way from Cook's ferry to Lytton I stopp>ed at the large Chinese ceunp, 
 when they told me they were anxious to celebrate some festival, and asked 
 me to try and get them some live pigs when I was in Lytton. I found that 
 the only pigs that had been brought so far into the interior were two small 
 animals owned by a man who was mining on the oftposite side of the 
 Fraser River. He asked an exorbitant price — ^if I remember correctly it 
 was $200 each — ^so I did not buy them, and on my return to the Chinese 
 camp told them the reason why. They were bound to have the pigs at any 
 cost. I gave them an order to get the pigs, and as I was so pleased with 
 the way they did their work, at the same time I gave them an order to get, 
 at my expense, two kegs of the fiery whisky they drink, which cost me as 
 much as the pigs cost them. 
 
 "On the day they had the celebration I went to their camp and was 
 at once surrounded by the Chinamen, who provided me with a meal in which 
 roast pork was the principal dish, which I enjoyed, but, on the other hand, 
 I had to take many drinks of the abominable whisky which, in tin cups, 
 they held all around and pressed upon me, and would take no refusal. 
 
 MR. MOBERLY BUYS OUT MR. LEWIS. 
 
 "Time passed on and unpaid for work continued to be done, when at 
 last Mr. Oppenheimer returned. He had succeeded in getting a consid- 
 erable sum of money from the government, but nothing like what should 
 have been paid. Mr. Lewis got discouraged and disgusted, and was of 
 the opinion that we could not depend upon the government, and wished to 
 stop die works. I, therefore, bought out Mr. Lewis's interest in the charter. 
 It was arranged between Mr. Oppenheimer and myself that he should at 
 once return to Victoria and endeavor to get some more money from the 
 government, and that I should put matters in as satisfactory a shape as 
 possible with the money he had brought, and then be guided by circum- 
 stances as to my future proceedings. 
 
 AN EXPLORATION. 
 
 "I had now got large camps of men at Nicomen, and at a point between 
 that place and Cook's ferry, another established a few miles above Cook's 
 ferry, and one near Ashcroft Creek, and as it was imperative that it should 
 be decided where the Yale-Cariboo road should be located in order to 
 
 43 
 
form a junction with the wagon road then in course of construction from 
 Lillooet over Pavilion Mountain, I took a splendid horse I had, a blanket 
 and what provisions I could cram into my saddle bags, and started alone 
 to explore through Maiden Creek Valley to where the town of Clinton 
 is now built, and also the valley of the Bonaparte River to the Second 
 Crossing, which was so named because the old pack trail to Cariboo, over the 
 Loon Lake Mountain, crossed the Bonaparte River the second time at 
 that point 
 
 "I proceeded from Clinton by way of a small stream that falls into the 
 Bonaparte, and thence passing along the foot of Casde Mountain, which 
 was so named from its resemblance to a vast feudal castle of the Middle 
 Ages, I finally reached the Second Crossing of the Bonaparte, where I fully 
 expected to recruit for a day at the wayside house that in the early days had 
 been built there. 
 
 SUPPER OF ONIONS AND MISERABLE NIGHT. 
 
 "The weather for the last few days during my journey had been very 
 rainy, the mosquitoes and horse flies in swarms, and sleeping, or rather 
 trying to sleep, on the wet* ground, made matters exceedingly unpleasant, 
 and as I had only my horse for a companion I felt very lonely. My pro- 
 visions were all gone and as I was very hungry I was anticipating how much^ 
 I would enjoy a good meal of bacon and beans and some hot coffee, and, 
 possibly, bread. I was woefully disappointed, for when I arrived at the 
 Second Crossing I found that the house and other buildings had been burned 
 down and the place was completely deserted. Finding a few half-grown 
 onions in what had been a garden, I devoured them, and then, building a 
 good fire, I dozed • through a miserable night, , very much pestered by 
 mosquitoes and drenched with rain. 
 
 "A short examination of the topographical features of the surrounding 
 coimtry convinced me that the better route to adopt for the wagon road 
 would be the valley of Maiden Creek, and that the junction of the Yale- 
 Cariboo wagon road with the road being built from Lillooet over the 
 Pavilion Mountain should be where it is, at Clinton. 
 
 "hello, MOBERLY, IS THAT YOU?" 
 
 "Having accomplished the object of my explorations I decided to 
 return by the trail over the Loon Lake Mountain, as I had learned from 
 different packers that there was an abundance of good grass around Loon 
 Lake, which is situated on a plateau near the top of the mountain. I, there- 
 fore, ascended the steep mountain by an execrable trail through the woods, 
 and, as the heavy rains had made the trail a ditch, full of stones and boul- 
 ders, and the flies being indefatigable in their persecutions, travelling up this 
 mountain was most unpleasant. After weary hours I at last emerged out 
 of the forest, and came on a prairie covered with green grass, when, just 
 as I was about to unsaddle my horse to let him have a good feed, I espied 
 a column of smoke at the far end of the prairie, and soon made out a large 
 train of pack animals and packers that were encamped there. I instantly 
 remounted and cantered joyfully for the fire, and, on approaching it, was 
 hailed by a well-known voice with the words: "Hello, Moberly, is that 
 you?" to which I answered: "Yes, Mac, have you got anything to .eat in 
 your camp?" The answer came back at once, "Yes, and plenty to drink, 
 
 45 
 
too; come on, old man, and regale yourself. What the devil brings you 
 here?" My friend was the late Captain Allan Macdonald. He was the 
 son of one of the former prominent officers of the Hon. Hudson's Bay Com- 
 pany, and was born at Fort Colville. 
 
 CAPTAIN ALLAN MACDONALD. 
 
 "I had a very sumptuous meal of the staple food of the country — bacon 
 and beans — and an unlimited supply of the grand old creamy Hudson's 
 
 View along the Cariboo Road. 
 
 Bay rum. I had made Mr. Macdonald's acquaintance on the steamer 
 Panama, in 1 858, when I was on my way from San Francisco to Victoria. 
 The next time I met Captain Macdonald was many years afterwards, when 
 he was stationed at Fort Osborne, in Winnipeg, with the military force 
 under the command of the late Colonel Osborne Smith, eind the last time 
 I saw him was some years ago, when on his way back to the Narrows of 
 Lake Manitoba, where, as Indian agent of that district, he resided. 
 
 "I remained over the day at this place, and, as the afternoon was fine, 
 we found that the small stream which flows out of Loon Lake abounded 
 with brook trout, so we improvised a sort of drag net out of an old horse 
 blanket and managed to catch a plentiful supply of large trout, upon which 
 we feasted. 
 
 46 
 
"The following day I resumed my journey along the trail, which has a 
 very steep descent, on the southwesterly side of the mountain, to the First 
 Crossing of the Bonaparte River. At this point there was a small log hut 
 very extensively known through the colony at that period at 'Scotty's,' the 
 owner of it being a rather quaint Orkneyman, who kept a few cows and 
 was supiK>sed to furnish meals to travellers. I here met one of my packers, 
 whom I had instructed to be at this point in order that I could tell him where 
 I proposed to establish another large camp of workmen to push forward the 
 construction of the road along the valley of the Bonaparte, etc. 
 
 REMARKABLE AND EXPENSIVE MEAL. 
 
 "Being very hungry I requested 'Scotty' to provide us with a meal, 
 whereupon he produced a frying-pan full of stale flap-jacks and a can of 
 milk. Each flap-jack was about three inches in diameter and half an inch 
 in thickness. Having demolished as many of the unsavory cakes as were 
 necessary to appease our hunger, and drunk several cups of milk, I asked 
 "Scotty" what I had to pay, when" he demanded fifty cents for each cake 
 and fifty cents for each cup of milk. This exorbitant charge so enraged 
 my packer, who teJked in such forcible language to "Scotty," that I had 
 great difficulty in preventing a personal encounter between them. We left 
 this miserable hut as soon as possible, my packer vowing that he would get 
 even with "Scotty" some day. 
 
 LEGEND TOLD BY THE GOVERNOR. 
 
 "In one of Sir James Douglas' trip in the interior of the colony I 
 had the pleasure of accompanying him, when he told me of the origin of' 
 some of the names of different places in the colony, and the following is the 
 Indian legend he related regarding Maiden Creek, through the valley of 
 which I had decided the wagon road should go: 
 
 "At some time in the misty past there lived at the mouth of Maiden 
 Creek a very beautiful Indian girl, who had a lover living at Cache Creek, 
 to whom she was engaged to be married. The lover proved false and mh» 
 ried another woman, which so distracted the poor girl that she died of a 
 broken heart, 2m.d was buried near the mouth of Maiden Creek, and out of 
 her breasts grew the two rounded hillocks that are to be seen at that place 
 and which resemble a woman's breasts." 
 
 A DREAD SCOURGE. 
 
 "It was in the year 1 862 that the smallpox swept away great numbers 
 of the Coast Indians and had been, during the summer, gradually extending 
 its ravages into the interior of the colony. A few days before I left my 
 camp at Nicomin to make the long exploratory trip before mentioned, as I 
 was standing at my tent, which was on the opjKisite side of that little stream 
 to where the large camp of my employees was situated, and who were just 
 on the point of sitting down to supper, I noticed an Indian leading a horse on 
 which another Indian was seated, who had a veil over his face. Afte' 
 crossing the stream they were evidently intending to camp about fifty fee; 
 from my tent. I walked over to the Indians, and, being suspicious that 
 something was wrong, lifted the veil from the face of the Indian wearing it 
 and saw that the poor fellow was badly smitten with the smallpox. I 
 
 47 
 
instantly told them that they could not stay there in the vicinity of my men 
 and that they must return to Lytton where the government had a doctor 
 appointed to vaccinate the Indians. They told me they were without money 
 and had not any food, so I went to my store tent and filled a large sack 
 with provisions, which I gave them, together with a letter to the doctor t» 
 have them properly attended to, and then compelled them to go. When I 
 was on my way to Bonaparte River I learnt from the man in charge of 
 Cook's ferry that these two Indians, instead of returning to Lytton, had 
 come to his house and gone on to the mouth of the Nicola Rievr, at which 
 place there was an Indian village, from which I had procured a number of 
 Indians with their little horses to pack supplies between the camps above 
 Cook's ferry. 
 
 "These Indians camped in a little bay on the Thompson River, about 
 a mile below my largest camp. On my way down from Ashcroft Creek to 
 this C£unp, which I did not reach until some hours after dark, I heard the 
 dismal wailing of Indian women on the mountain side above the trail I rode 
 along, which was a certain indication of death having visited their com- 
 munity. On arriving at the Camp I learnt that none of the Indians from 
 the little bay had been up for several days, and it was supptosed the small- 
 pox had reached their encampment. 
 
 PUTREFYING BODIES OF INDIANS A CAMP OF DEATH. 
 
 "The next day I proceeded on my way to Nicomen, and, as I rode 
 along the mountain side, I saw several Indian horses grazing on the "bunch 
 grass" that then grew in profusion in the valley of the Thompson River, 
 and in the little bay below me the tents of the Indians, but I saw no signs 
 of human life about the tents. I therefore dismounted and went to the 
 tents, where I discovered the horrible sight of the putrefying bodies of the 
 Indians, some in the tents and others among the rocks that lined the river 
 bank, through which they had evidently tried to drag themselves to the 
 river to assuage their burning thirst, or to plunge into the river. All the 
 Indians in that encampment had been dead several days. 
 
 "I now proceeded to the ferry and went to the Indian village at the 
 mouth of the Nicola River, where the same melancholy and disgusting sight 
 was met that a few hours before I had seen at the little bay on the Thomp- 
 son River, for all the Indians were dead. I hurried on to my camp at 
 Nicomin, fearing that the smallpox had broken out among my men, but 
 was greatly relieved to find that such was not the case. 
 
 MEN CLAMOROUS FOR WAGES. 
 
 "During my absence very good progress had been made in the work 
 of construction, but, as I received no news from either Victoria or New 
 Westminster, and as my men were getting clamorous for their wages, I 
 demanded certificates from the government official who was in charge of the 
 supervision of the work, which he decUned to give, and, on my pressing 
 him for them to enable me to draw the money now overdue, and telling 
 him that if he would not grant them, I should be compelled to stop the 
 works, he showed me a written order he had received from headquarters 
 instructing him on no account to grant certificates until further orders. 
 
 48 
 
"This peculiar order appeared to me to be tantamount to an effort on 
 the part of the government to force me into such a position that the govern- 
 ment could claim that the charter was forfeited, and enable them to take 
 immediate possession of the road. I afterwards found out that it was owing 
 to the Imperial Government refusing to grant the loan to the colony that 
 Governor Douglas had applied for, and the government had not any money 
 to pay the amounts that any certificates it granted would call for. 
 
 "Cariboo Cameron," a noted character of the Cariboo gold excitennent days. 
 He strucl< it rich, but subsequentiy iost ail his money in the east and came back 
 to British Columbia in his old age, a poor man. His wife was one of the few 
 white women at the gold diggings, and when she died he made a remarkable 
 journey out of the Cariboo, dragging her body on a sleigh. Mr. Cambie has a 
 dramatic memory of Cameron, of how once when travelling on a steamer on 
 Shuswap Lake, the language becoming profane and the company rowdy, Cam- 
 eron opened his cabin door and fell on his knees praying in the doorway, 
 whereupon "Father Pat," of Kootenay fame, held a religious service. 
 
 "I now felt certain that there was something seriously wrong at the seat 
 of government about financial matters. I therefore started on horseback for 
 Yale, leaving Lytton in the afternoon and arriving the following morning 
 at Yale, where I only stopped long enough to hire a canoe and six Indians 
 to convey me to New Westminster, where I arrived at 8 o'clock the fol- 
 lowing morning. As soon as Colonel Moody's office opened I sought an 
 interview with him, when I learnt that Governor Douglas wcis at his house 
 and that I would have to see him, as Colonel Moody declared he was not 
 in any way responsible for the non-payment of the different sums of money 
 as they became due, or for the order with which the government superin- 
 tendent over my work had been furnished, instructing him not to grant me 
 any certificate. 
 
 49 
 
$6,000 ON ACCOUNT MEN DESPERATELY HUNGRY. 
 
 "I saw Governor Douglas and made a new arrangement, by which the 
 sum of fifty thousand dollars was to be paid to me in a few days. This 
 money he could get from the Bank of British Columbia, which was then 
 commencing business in British Columbia. I also made arrangements for 
 future payments, and then, knowing how important it was that I should be 
 back at my works eis soon as possible, I got the Governor to let me have 
 on account a few thousand dollars then in the treasury at New Westminster 
 and in the coUectorate at Yale, amounting in all to six thousand dollars, 
 and, having very unfortunately left a general instead of a specific power-of- 
 attomey with the Attorney-General to sign for me for the balance of the 
 fifty thousand dollars, I left by steamer to return to the road camps. 
 
 "When I reached Yale I was surprised to meet a large number of my 
 men who had engaged to work the whole season, and others who had only 
 engaged by the month. They had heard of my,^oing down from Lytton in 
 a great hurry, and some irresponsible creature liad circulated a report that 
 I had left the country. My return astonished these men. They were 
 desperately hungry, so I took them to a restaurant and ordered a good meal 
 and told them to meet me after breakfast at the office of the gold com- 
 missioner. On their arrival I paid off all those who had worked the full 
 time for which they had engaged, and after well rating those who had left 
 the work before the term for which they had engaged expired, by which 
 kction on their part they had forfeited all wages coming to them, I paid 
 them half their wages and obtained employment for them for the rest of 
 the season with Captain Grant, who, with the Royal Engineers and a body 
 of civilian laborers, was then constructing the first section of the wagon 
 road between Yale and Chapman's Bar. 
 
 SHERIFF INSTRUCTED TO ARREST MR. MOBERLY. 
 
 "TTie next day I proceeded on my way to the road camps, which, after 
 my arrival, I reorganized and then returned to Lytton, as I expected that 
 the $44,000 agreed to be forwarded to me by express would have arrived. 
 I reached Lytton on a Saturday evening and found that the mail and 
 express had not arrived, but I received a letter from a friend, sent by special 
 messenger, to inform me the government would not send me the money, and 
 that the day after his messenger arrived at Lytton a capias would reach that 
 town by mail instructing Captain Ball, the sheriff, to arrest me for the 
 amount of an account due for some supplies furnished by a party in 
 Victoria, and that a writ had been obtained owing to a notice emanating 
 from the Attorney-General that the charter, out of which I could easily have 
 cleared $100,000 if the government had acted in good faith, had been 
 forfeited as the work was not going on properly. 
 
 attorney-general's BREACH OF FAITH. 
 
 "The letter I received from my friend also informed me that Captain 
 Grant had been instructed to proceed to Lytton regarding the steps to be 
 taken by the government about my works. TTie unfortunate general power- 
 of-attorney I had given the Attorney-General, by a breach of faith on his 
 part, placed it in his power to act as he did, and that f>ower-of-attorney was 
 used by him for a very different purpose to that intended when I gave it 
 to him. 
 
 50 
 
"This unscrupulous act on the part of the government I afterwards 
 found out was owing to the refusal of the Imperial Government to grant a 
 large loan to the colony, upon which Governor Douglas relied for building 
 the Yale-Cariboo road and the extension of the Harrison-Lillooet road 
 northerly from Lillooet, and as I was the one to whom the largest amount 
 would have to be paid, it was decided to sacrifice me and carry the other 
 
 Scene on the Old Cariboo Road. 
 
 contractors through, esi}ecially as the government would gain a large and 
 very expensive portion of the constructed road I had built without paying 
 anything for it, which was a very convenient and profitable thing for them, 
 but it WEis a disgraceful and dishonest transaction on their part. 
 
 A DRAMATIC BREAKFAST. 
 
 "The day when the capias would arrive in Lytton would be a Sunday. 
 I, therefore, knew it could not be served upon me until the following morn- 
 ing. On Sunday morning I had breakfast with Captain Ball, the sheriff, 
 and as we sat at that meal his mail arrived and I saw him open a letter, 
 which, I felt convinced, contained the ominous document, but he said 
 nothing, iior did I. 
 
 "I was now thoroughly disgusted with the bad faith I had met with 
 from the government, and die duplicity of the Attorney-General, and felt 
 certain I could not struggle any longer against such adverse circumstances; 
 but, as I knew what vast importance it was to the colony to get this road 
 
 51 
 
completed as soon as possible, I decided to take a course that would 
 prevent, the stoppage of the work and let my personal interest be sacrificed 
 and the general interests of the country be protected, particularly as I had 
 been the principal cause of leading Governor Douglas to undertake this 
 great work which had placed him in a very serious dilemma. 
 
 MR. MOBERLY MAKES BIG SACRIFICE. 
 
 "The following morning I went down to breakfast with the sheriff, 
 when he served me with the writ, and was rather surprised when I read the 
 letter I had received the previous Saturday by private express, advising me 
 about the capias. He said: "Why did you not get on your horse and cross 
 the southern boundary into the United States?' My answer to him was: 
 "That I had been the promoter of the Yale-Cariboo wagon road and I 
 intended to stick to it until it was an accomplished work, no matter what 
 obstacles had to be overcome." .1'' 
 
 "I was now hourly expecting the arrival of Captain Grant, whom I 
 knew would be sent up by the government to act in the matter, and immedi- 
 ately on his arrival I borrowed a few hundred dollars from a friend and 
 paid the amount off for which I had been arrested, and called upon Captain, 
 Grant, when we discussed the whole matter over in the most friendly 
 manner, and I gave him in writing my relinquishment of all my charter 
 rights, and also the surrender of all supplies, tents, tools, etc., on the works 
 (which had cost me upwards of $6,000), for the benefit of the government, 
 and simply requested him to do his utmost to have the wages of all my men 
 paid and also the sub-contracts I had let, a course to which he cordially 
 assented and he afterwards compelled the government, much against their 
 intention, to have this arrangement faithfully carried out. 
 
 A RUINED MAN. 
 
 "Captain Grant and myself now proceeded to my different road camps, 
 of which I put him in full possession, and when everything was out of my 
 hands Captain Grant proposed that he should appoint me to carry on the 
 works for the government for the rest of the season. This proposition I was 
 glad to accept, for I had not a dollar left, and then Captain Grant told the 
 men that from that time they would be paid their wages by the government 
 and that I was in full charge of the works, and, furthermore, that he would 
 do his utmost to get their back wages paid, but he could not absolutely 
 promise more, as that matter rested with Governor Douglas. Those wages 
 were ultimately paid in full ; they amounted to about $ I 9,000. 
 
 "When this business was closed up at the end of the year, the country 
 had gained a large and most expensive portion of the Cariboo wagon, road 
 built, which cost them nothing, but it left me a ruined man, with heavy 
 personal liabilities, which took all the money I could make during eight 
 subsequent years to finally pay off. 
 
 "As soon as Mr. Charles Oppenheimer heard of my arrest he left the 
 country to avoid a similar fate and did not return for some years. He had 
 to settle all the then outstanding liabilities of our old firm before he came 
 back, which cost him a large sum of money. 
 
 52 
 
"The following year, 1 863, a Mr. William Hood, from Santa Clara, 
 California, undertook the contract to complete the unfinished portion of. the 
 road between the big rock bluff above Cook's ferry and Clinton, and he 
 employed me to superintend the work for him. 
 
 "This same year Captain Grant, Mr. Trutch and Mr. Spence finished 
 the section of the road between Yale and Lytton, and Mr. Spence built the 
 suspension bridge across the Fraser River, which afterwards bore his nemie. 
 
 British Columbia's first Legisiative Assembly, 1864. IVIr. Moberiy is seen 
 third from the right. Those present, reading from left, are Henry Holbroolt, 
 Charles Brew, C. W. Frantcs, George A. Wail<em, H. IVl. Bail, Peter O'Reilly, 
 J. A. R. Homer, W. O. Hamley, A. N. Birch, Walter Moberiy, H. P. P. Crease. 
 
 LOCATING OTHER WAGON ROADS. 
 
 "In 1864 I was employed by the Colonial Government as theii 
 engineer to go to Cariboo and locate the northerly portion of the wagon 
 road from Fort Alexandria (to which latter point Mr. G. B. Wright had 
 built the road the previous year) to Richfield, and to look after its con- 
 struction between Quesnelle moudi and Cottonwood River, which was then 
 built by Mr. G. B. Wright. I constructed a temporary sleigh road from 
 Fort Alexandria to Quesnelle mouth, and another from Cottonwood River 
 to Richfield via Lightning Creek. I also located a line for a wagon road 
 
 53 
 
from Cottonwood River via Willow River as far as Richfield, and I super- 
 vised the construction of a branch road into the valley of the Horse Fly 
 River, then known as "Captain Mitchell's Road." I also explored a line 
 for a proposed branch wagon road into the valley of William's Lake. 
 
 ELECTED TO REPRESENT CARIBOO IN THE LEGISLATURE. 
 
 "At the end of the year I 864, having been requested by the people of 
 Cariboo to represent them in the Legislative Council about to meet at New 
 Westminster, I resigned my position as government engineer and was duly 
 elected to represent the above-mentioned constituency. 
 
 "On the I 3th of March, 1 907, I had the honor of addressing the 
 Canadian Club of Vancouver on the subject of "Early Pathfinding in the 
 Mountains of British Columbia, or The Discovery of the Northwest by 
 Land." In that address I related how I managed, during the session above- 
 mentioned, to get the money granted that enabled me to complete by the 
 end of the year 1865, discoveries that, in coimection with extensive explora- 
 tions I made from the year 1855 between Lake Simcoe and those made of 
 the extensive central portion of Canada by the expedition under the com- 
 mand of Captain Palletier, insured a practicable route for a great Canadian 
 transcontinental, terminating in the City of Vancouver, and as I have now 
 given you a brief history of the Cariboo wagon road, you will be enabled 
 to form an idea of the great difiiculties that had to be overcome to bring 
 about the development and present prosperous condition of British Columbia. 
 
 30C 
 
 54 
 
INDIAN LEGENDS— A GLIMPSE IN PASSING. 
 
 ^^R. WALTER MOBERLY has developed in an unusual 
 degree the sense of historical accuracy. In conversation with 
 him this is very patent to one who has had a considerable 
 experience of interviewing all sorts and conditions of men — 
 and women. Tliere is a sort of instinct — ^probably bred by 
 experience — which, almost unerringly, tells one when a man is 
 romancing. A man who has played as big a part as Mr Moberly 
 has in the building of a province, and who, in the doing of it, 
 has passed through so many strange and exciting experiences, 
 might be pardoned for a little romancing, though, truth to tell, the actual 
 facts of his career are more romantic than any fiction could be. Yet it is a 
 fact that in the course of the telling of these various chapters of his hfe's 
 story, nearly all the exciting or humorous stories have tumbled out quite 
 accidentally; have, indeed, been just suggested by a word let fall casually. 
 In the main Mr. Moberly has been intent upon telling of the chief events, 
 the explorations, the building of roads and so on, and has had to be tempted 
 into the by-paths of anecdote. 
 
 . AN INTERLUDE. 
 
 We have nearly arrived at a period in his life which suggests an inter- 
 lude — a rather strenuous and varied interlude, it is true, but still an inter- 
 lude — between two notable periods. With the close of his history of the 
 building of the Cariboo Road, and with the telling of the discovery of 
 Eagle Pass, two events which subsequently played so large a part in the 
 development of the province, practically ended the first important period. 
 Shortly afterwards the adventurer bade "good-bye" to British Columbia, 
 and for several years roamed through different States of the Union to the 
 south, playing a part (with other men of the Cariboo mining excitement) in 
 a silver and a gold excitement, visiting Utah, and having several confer- 
 ences wath that notable Morman, Brigham Young, in Salt Lake City, and 
 finally, with the advent of Confederation, being sent for to Ottawa by Sir 
 John A. Macdonald as the only man who knew all about the country 
 through which the C. P- R. would have to be built, in order that he might 
 play an important part in that — for Canada— epoch-making event. 
 
 Before proceeding with the telling of this story in consecutive fashion 
 let me gather up one or two loose ends. 
 
 There is one exciting experience of Mr. Moberly's life that is verbally 
 pretty well known, and it must certainly find a place here, namely, how he 
 nearly lost his life by drowning in the Eraser River in the winter of 1861. 
 I first heard of this adventure from the Hon. Edgar Dewdney (who was 
 living on the site of the recently-established city at the time), but I have 
 heard it several times since from other very old-timers. 
 
 "Well, I was wintering in the township of New Westminster, and staying 
 at what was called the Colonial restaurant — it was the winter of '61 ," Mr. 
 
 55 
 
Moberly observed. "The Fraser River was frozen over as I had never seen 
 it before and have never seen it since. Those survivors of that period wall 
 bear me out in that statement. For quite a time steamers could not get 
 up the river, and they used to come up Burrard Inlet to w^hat is now Port 
 Moody, and then passengers and freight would go across land to New 
 Westminster, and we could drive on the Fraser right up to Langley, but I 
 do not know how much farther, as that was the farthest I went then. The 
 snow was deep, and there was splendid sleighing. It seems to me that the 
 winter climate of this part of B. C. has become much milder than in those 
 days, as I recollect other very heavy winters, though none to compare with 
 the winter of '61. 
 
 A MIRACULOUS ESCAPE. 
 
 "We were having a game of shinny- — they call it hockey now, I think 
 — on the river just above New Westminster. It used to be played a great 
 deal in Ceinada with a ball and a crooked stick. We were playing on 
 skates, because the snow just then was only a very light layer. TTiere was 
 an opening in the ice where the current was particularly strong, and it had 
 been frozen over the night before. The ball was struck down to this place, 
 and I went after it. I was at the thin ice before I realized where I was, 
 and through I went. Somehow, as I fell through, I instinctively took a quick 
 breath. When I came up my head struck against the ice. Curiously 
 enough, I had considered what I would do should I ever go through an ice 
 surface on the Fraser, and I turned and at once swam with all the power of 
 which I was capable against the current. TTie water was ice-cold. I opened 
 my eyes and saw a little glimmer of light ahead of me, and thought that 
 must be the place I had gone through. I took a few strokes with all my 
 might and managed to get to the hole, and saw Henderson, who was purser 
 on the old steamer Moody, looking over. He and others seized me and 
 dragged me out." Mr. Moberly chuckled at the recollection, but he added: 
 "I was too frozen to smile, then, as they rushed me off to the nearest shack 
 where the warmth and a cheinge of clothes soon put me right as rain." 
 
 THAT GRIZZLY ADVENTURE. 
 
 Now for another loose end. Do you remember Mr. Moberly 's 
 grizzly-bear adventure that took place in the mountains above the Illicille- 
 waet Valley.?. If you read it you will remember that, after the grizzly had 
 been killed, Victor and two other Indians who had accompanied Mr. 
 Moberly and Mr. Perry, showed a marked disinclination to attempt — 
 what the explorers first thought of attempting — the taking of the head and 
 skin with them on the trail, and that, finally they decorated the head with 
 red flannel from their shirts, and, Victor ascending a tall tree, placed it 
 firmly upon the top, removing all bark and branches as he descended, in 
 order to preserve it from the depredations of raccoons or other wild climb- 
 ing animals. Mr. Moberly told me that some Indian superstition lay at 
 the back of this action, and, as a result of this information, I visited Mr. 
 Charles Hill-Tout, the well-known anthropologist and farmer at Abbots- 
 ford up the Fraser Valley. He told me that he had read of the incident 
 with interest, and he explained the reason of the strange proceeding. This 
 explanation is such an interesting glimpse into the Indian mind that, coming, 
 as it does, from an authority and one who has lived much with the Indians, 
 I make no apology for introducing it here. 
 
 56 
 
INDIAN REVERENCE FOR THE BEAR. 
 
 "This practice of paying respect to the animals slain by them is a very 
 common one among our Indians," Mr. Hill-Tout explained, "and it applies 
 particularly to the killing of the bear, which was one of the greatest of their 
 mystery anirnals. Every Indian greatly desired a bear as his totem or 
 familiar spirit. The man who possessed a bear as his totem was given 
 power by the bears to hunt and slay these animals readily, but there was 
 always the obligation upon him that he should, having killed a bear, prepare 
 it for food with reverence and consideration. For example, he would have 
 to be very careful with the offal and not leave it for smaller animals to 
 prey upon. This had to be carefully buried, or, preferably, thrown into a 
 
 Charles Hill 
 
 the "Native 
 
 F th& worl^ 
 Races of 
 
 the British Empire" series. 
 
 running stream, and the head must, always be painted with red paint or 
 some substitute. In the case of Mr. Moberly's Indians you will notice that 
 they tore portions from their red flannel shirts. Then they had to place the 
 head either — as in the case of his story — upon the top of a young tree, or 
 upon some big boulder or rock where it would be out of reach of wild 
 animals. No Indian would ever dream of touching or in any way disturb- 
 ing such an object. 
 
 Naturally I questioned Mr. Hill- Tout further upon this interesting 
 practice, and elicited additional information. "In the case of the salmon," 
 he said, "whenever they began to run no Indian was allowed to fish or kill 
 until the first salmon of the season had been reverently brought to the chief 
 of the tribe, who would gather all his tribesmen together and bid his wife 
 cook the fish in a new basket specially made for the purpose. Then he 
 would distribute a small bit to every man of the tribe who was ceremonially 
 
 57 
 
clean, for none who were ceremonially unclean could ever be allowed to 
 touch a bit of that first fish. After that any member of the tribe was free 
 to kill salmon, but it was understood that they were always to return the 
 head and entrails back to the water." 
 
 THE LEGEND OF THE SALMON. 
 
 Questioned as to the reason of this practice of returning the unused 
 parts of the fish to the water, Mr. Hill- Tout observed: "It was to enable 
 the fish to come to life again, and, in this connection, there is a rather beau- 
 tiful little story among the Indians, which tells us how the salmon first came 
 from the ocean to our streams. It seems that long ago there were no salmon 
 m the rivers, and Khals, the culture hero of the Indians of this coast district, 
 determined to go out to the salmon islands in the Pacific and induce the 
 salmon people to visit the rivers and streams and allow themselves to be 
 caught by the Indians as fish. He set sail with his brothers and some 
 priests of the coast tribe, and, after many days' rowing, arrived at the home 
 of the salmon people somewhere in the Pacific. They were people just like 
 the Indians, and the visitors were made welcome. Just when the midday 
 meal was being prepared one of the visitors noticed that two of the young 
 people of the salmon tribe, a youth and a maiden, went down into the 
 water and disappeared. Shortly afterwards two salmon were caught, and 
 when they were being distributed to the visitors, the chief of the salmon 
 people asked them to be very careful to keep all the bones together. After 
 the meal one or two of the young men came round and collected the bones 
 left over, and these were taken and thrown into the sea. Shortly after 
 this the young man and maiden who had entered the water were seen to 
 reappear." 
 
 HAD BEEN EATING THE SALMON PEOPLE. 
 
 "This happened each day and excited the curiosity of one of the 
 visitors, who determined to put his suspicion to the test. Believing this 
 entering of the water and catching of salmon to be intimately connected, he, 
 at the meal next day, hid a pjece of salmon bone under his blanket. Pres- 
 ently, when the young people came up out of the water, it was seen that the 
 youth was holding his blanket up to his jaw. The chief went forward and 
 the youth told him that all the bones could not have been returned to the 
 water because his jaw bone was missing. The chief asked the visitors if 
 they had returned all the bones. A search was made and the missing bone 
 was found thrown a little way beyond the circle, where the visitor had 
 thrown it. The chief threw it into the water, the young man returned into 
 the water and came out whole. By this means the visitors knew that the 
 salmon they had been eating were the salmon people. So Khals asked the 
 chief if he would visit their coast and permit his people to catch them as 
 salmon. This the chief agreed to upon certain conditions, the principal 
 being that they would always throw the offal and bones back into the 
 water." 
 
 A BEAUTIFUL BELIEF. 
 
 "This became a common practice even with animals. The Indians 
 believe that the spirit part of the fish and animals is even more real than 
 the corporeal part. They believe that the destruction of other parts of his 
 carcass besides his flesh, which may be used for food purposes, would make 
 the bear very angry and that he would take his revenge upnjn the Indians 
 
 58 
 
for the indignity placed upon his remains. They believe that, if the animals 
 allow themselves to be killed for food, then it is the duty of those who kill 
 them to treat with reverence what they do not use." Incidentally Mr. Hill- 
 Tout mentioned that each color has its special significance for the Indian, 
 black for war, red for ceremonial, and so on. 
 
 And now to return to Mr. Moberly's story. I happened to mention 
 the building of the Dewdney trail to Wild Horse, and Mr. Moberly recalled 
 that he first met Mr. Dewdney in New Westminster at the very beginning 
 of things and while he was erecting some of the first wooden buildings in 
 the forest clearings. "I remember well how Dewdney and Lee undertook 
 that hay-making expedition on to Sea Island, about which he told you so 
 entertainmgly," Mr. Moberly said, laughing heartily at the recollection. 
 "They were going to cut and collect the wild grass for Col. Moody's horses. 
 I remember that, on our way round to Burrard Inlet upon diat expedition 
 about which I have told you, when Commander Richards named Coal 
 Harbor, Bumaby and I called upon Dewdney and Lee and we all laughed 
 over the fact that they were, in addition to the making of the hay, going 
 to make their fortune out of cranberries. We also called at the big Indian 
 rancheree which was situated on the north shore of the North Arm." 
 
 A RATTLESNAKE STORY. 
 
 Mr. Moberly and Mr. Dewdney were associated in the building of 
 the first portion — about seven miles — of the road from Hope through the 
 canyons, and Captain Grant and his men of the Engineers went on with it. 
 It was intended to carry it on to Princeton in the Similkameen, but the 
 Cariboo excitement broke out and next year all forces were at work upon 
 the Cariboo Road. It was at the beginning of this excitement that Mr. 
 Moberly first met his old friend — ^who is still with us, hale and hearty, 
 despite the fact that he is nearly fourscore years of age — Bob Stevenson, 
 a notable survivor of the Cariboo days, who was among those who first 
 brought out from the interior the news of the discovery of gold. Mention 
 of Bob Stevenson recalled to Mr. Moberly's memory a remarkable rattle- 
 snake story which Mr. Stevenson has made peculiarly his own and which, 
 for that reason, Mr. Moberly would not have printed here. But recollec- 
 tion of that story recalled a rattlesnake incident which happened to Mr. 
 Moberly himself between Osoyoos Lake and Colville. "The girth of my 
 saddle had got loose — I was using one of those Mexican saddles," he 
 explained, "and I dismounted to tighten it. As I was doing this I wondered 
 what the devil was knocking at my leg. I looked down and found that 
 I had stepped on a rattlesnake in such a manner that about a foot of the 
 snake was at liberty and that it was dabbing away at my leather legging — 
 which had saved my life." 
 
 "fixing" old nesquinault. 
 
 Briefly summarizing his explorations immediately following the Eagle 
 Pass exp>edition, Mr. Moberly said: "In '66 I finished the explorations 
 round the bend of the Columbia and build a trail into French Creek and 
 had some improvement work done on the Dewdney trail. I went through 
 to the Kootenays and across to the Columbia, visiting the different Passes, 
 in order to connect with the explorations of Palliser and Hector, who had 
 explored the Howse, Kicking Horse and Crow's Nest Passes, ending their 
 
 59 
 
explorations when they struck the Columbia. I went back to Wilson's 
 Landing, and up to French Creek and crossed over to Shuswap Lake 
 to arrange with the chief of the Indians about the reserves there." 
 
 I think I must give with a little detail Mr. Moberly's story of the 
 primitive way in which the arrangement was made with that particular 
 Indian chief. He laughed heartily as he said: "Judge Cox (who was 
 an Irishman and a great character) had been through before and, as far 
 as I could make out then or afterwards, he had reserved the whole blessed 
 country right through from the mouth of Cache Creek to the Rocky Moun- 
 tains, and the people were driving their cattle in and there was likely to be a 
 lot of trouble because the Indians were collecting toll. I had been commis- 
 sioned to endeavor to come to an arrangement with the Indians. I had a 
 big talk with the Indians (they were the Shuswaps), and gave them a 
 good blow-out, and then I conferred with their chief, old Nesquinault, who 
 was a cunning old beggar. We were camped 200 or 300 feet from the 
 beach, and while the Indians were sitting round the fire at supper I asked 
 Nesquinault to take a little walk with me down the beach. He did so, 
 and I told him, when we sat dowTi, that we wanted the Indian reserve 
 matter settled, and I showed him where the boundary should go. I then 
 took out of my pocket $200, which I had with me in $20 pieces. I put 
 $ 1 00 on each knee. The money shone in the moonlight, and I told him 
 that I would put that in his jjocket the following morning if he would 
 agree. Next morning all was settled. I then told all the Indians that, 
 if they would come to Kamloops, I would make them all presents, and 
 they came. Nesquinault was exceedingly fond of horses and a very good 
 judge of them, so I made him a present of a very fine animal with a 
 Mexican saddle and silver trappings. He no sooner realized that it was 
 his than he was in the saddle." 
 
 MURDER NOT DIPLOMACY. 
 
 Incidentally Mr. Moberly spoke very highly of a young man named 
 Fitzgerald, who was clerk to Judge Cox at the time and who a few years 
 ago earned tragic fame by heroically losing his life while in charge of a 
 handful of the North West Mounted Police, who died from starvation and 
 exposure in the Yukon. It was Fitzgerald who, referring to the capture 
 and hanging at Quesnele of the Indians responsible for the destruction of 
 the Waddington party — the story has already been told many times, and 
 it will be remembered that the Indians were captured through a piece of 
 treachery and a promise that was broken — remarked: "It was a great 
 piece of diplomacy, wasn't it?" to which Mr. Moberly replied: "No; it 
 was treachery and murder." Mr. Moberly holds that the Waddington 
 party of whites brought their fate upon themselves by their treatment of 
 the Indians, and that the subsequent trial and hanging of the Indians was 
 a blot upon all concerned. 
 
 ROW WITH ONE GOVERNOR TRIBUTE TO ANOTHER. 
 
 "After completing the negotiations with Nesquinault I came to West- 
 minster and wanted to get a wagon road built through Eagle Pass and 
 trails into the Kootenay," the explorer observed, "but I found that Gov- 
 ernor Seymour had chartered a steamer to bring in immigrants from Cali- 
 fornia. I told him that he had done the worst thing for the country that 
 he could, as it would result in bringing a big gang of gamblers and other 
 
 60 
 
I- 
 
undesirables into the country. We had something of a row, and he said 
 he would abolish my office of assistant surveyor-general. I said: 'You 
 can do so with pleasure, as I am going to take my passage to California 
 on this steamer that you have been good enough to charter to bring in 
 immigrants.' He asked me not to leave and he would put any engineering 
 work that came along into my hands, but I replied, 'There won't be any 
 engineering if you don't open up the trails.' Anyway, I wanted to go 
 and see what was doing in the States and where, probably, the transcon- 
 tinental roads would go over there. They were just starting the California 
 Central. 
 
 THAT OLD BRASS KNOCKER. 
 
 "It was just about when I left that. Governor Douglas's term being 
 up, Governor Seymour was appointed governor of both Mainland and 
 Vancouver Island. Governor Douglas went to Europe and I did not see 
 him again until '71, when he came back to Victoria. He was then living 
 in the old house — still standing, I believe — next to where Dr. Helmcken 
 is still living." Mr. M(?berly added, in reply to a question, that when he 
 visited the doctor some time ago, he went and looked at the Governor's 
 old house and recognized again the little, old brass knocker which he had 
 raised so many times in the days of long ago. Governor Douglas he recalls 
 as a splendid looking man, very dignified, but very good-hearted and most 
 popular. "I consider that our province today owes more to him than to 
 any man,'^ Mr. Moberly asserted. 
 
 HOC 
 
 62 
 
HOW WALTER MOBERLY MET BRIGHAM YOUNG. 
 
 I ND so it befell that, at the beginning of the year 1 867, after 
 a number of the most strenuous yeais of exploration and road 
 building in all his varied career, Walter Moberly bade "good- 
 bye" to the province of his adoption for what proved to be 
 four years v^randering and excitement in California, Nevada, 
 Utah, Idaho, Oregon and Washington; but, as he steamed 
 away for San Francisco and saw the shores of British Colum- 
 bia fade from view, he was confident that his absence would 
 be a temporary one, for he felt sure that Confederation was only a ques- 
 tion of time and that the transcontinental railway for which he had paved 
 the way by his valuable explorations, and the realization of which was the 
 lode-star of all his earlier and middle life, would then become an affair of 
 practical politics. 
 
 AS GRAIN WAREHOUSER. 
 
 "San Francisco was a busy city even then, nearly fifty years ago," 
 he recalled, "and it was rendered very picturesque by the many clipper 
 ships that were loading or discharging there all the time. As soon as 
 I arrived I decided to take a trip into the interior to Grass Valley in order 
 to visit an old friend, a Cornishman, who was part owner of one of the 
 mines. I did so, and then returned to 'Frisco. In those days a great deal, 
 of grain was shipped in sailing vessels. I came into personal touch with 
 two very decent fellows, a Southerner and a Northerner — ^this was several 
 years after the close of the Civil War — and the three of us agreed to 
 take a pretty big warehouse for the storage of grain in sacks. These two 
 knew the shipping men well and we got the storage of much of their goods 
 and grain, and we used to ship grain as return cargo. I managed the 
 warehouse, and the others saw to the outside business. 
 
 "TTiis continued for some time, but in '69 I gave it up and, it being 
 the time of what was known as the White Pine excitement, I went as far 
 as Elko, just where the road used to branch off to White Pine and up the 
 Owyhee River, with a view to mining. Near there Oppenheimer, who, 
 you remember, had been associated with me in the building of a portion 
 of the Cariboo Road and who went away to California while that was in 
 progress, had bought a ranch. I stopped with him a short time, and it 
 was then that the White Pine excitement broke out, and I, with fifty or 
 sixty others, went up there in the direction of Silver City in Nevada to 
 open a store at a silver mining camp that had sprung up into a little mining 
 city in no time and was named Mountain City. 
 
 MOUNTAIN CITY MINING: OLD CARIBOO MEN. 
 
 "I arrived at the very beginning of the excitement there and, as a 
 civil engineer, was eisked to lay out the city." The way in which Mr. 
 Moberly came to be appointed deputy state surveyor in order that he 
 
 63 
 
could make use of his profession in Mountain City — as a foreigner he was 
 not supposed to practice — and how he got an American friend elected 
 state surveyor in order that the latter might appoint him his deputy and 
 that the two might share the profits, is an interesting story, but there is not 
 space for it just here. "Anyway, both of those high-sounding titles were 
 mostly sound and had not much substance," interjected the explorer, "but 
 our official appointments helped us somewhat financially." 
 
 "Oppenheimer opened the store and, besides laying out the place, 
 I laid out mining camps and pre-emptions. There were some of the old 
 Cariboo mining men there, such men as Bill Hazeltine (of whom Mr. 
 Dewdney told you). Bill Sellers, who used to be on Beaver Lake; Frank 
 Laumeister, who used to be a big merchant in the Cariboo in the early 
 days and one of whose daughters married Jim Bouie, who used to keep 
 the store at Lytton, and others. Well, this Mountain City excitement lasted 
 nearly a year and then 'bust,' because the claims were not really rich. 
 During its existence a fair amount of law and order was maintained. The 
 miners formed a committee and this committee formed districts and passed 
 mining laws, some of them very good ones. There was a good deal of 
 claim jumping, but I do not remember any very serious fracases." After 
 this experience Mr. Moberly returned to San Francisco for a brief spiell 
 and, when the Salt Lake mining excitement broke out, cleared off to that. 
 I4e went with a friend from San Francisco. 
 
 AMONG THE MORMONS. 
 
 "Even then, though in its comparatively early days. Salt Lake City 
 was a fine place," Mr. Moberly recalled, "and the ofjening up of these 
 mines gave it a great impetus. I did not stop there long, but my stay was 
 very interesting and I got to know a number of leading people, as I wanted 
 to find out all that I could about possible railway development. I became 
 acquainted with one of the prophets, as they were called, and he proved 
 a very decent fellow. Indeed I formed a very favorable opinion of the 
 Mormons generally, as practically all I met proved kindly and hospitable. 
 A great many were English, and most of the women were English or 
 Welsh. This particular Mormon was the proprietor of the Salt Lake 
 House, the principal hotel there, and it was he who introduced me to 
 Brigham Young, the head of the Mormons, who I met several times at his 
 house and with whom I had several long conversations. He knew that I was 
 anxious to gain as much information as possible about the railway possi- 
 bilities, and he went out of his way to oblige — which was pretty decent, 
 as I was a complete stranger to him." 
 
 BRIGHAM YOUNG. 
 
 Naturally I asked Mr. Moberly to give me an idea of the impression 
 the famous Mormon made upon him and the style of his residence. "I prob- 
 ably did not see him at his best, as he was sufi^reing from gout at the time," 
 Mr. Moberly replied, "but he made a very decided impression uf>on me. 
 A stoutish, square-built man about 5 feet I inches in height, he did not 
 strike me as in any sense handsome, but he had a firm face and there was 
 something about the man and his conversation which at once suggested 
 intellect. At that time he would be somewhere in the sixties. I remember 
 he said to me a few minutes after we had been introduced, 'I expect you 
 
 64 
 
have heard all sorts of stories about us and our country, most of them 
 exaggerated, and let me tell you at once that you can go through our coun- 
 try just as you like without ^tting into any trouble.' I remember he lived 
 in one of the finest residences in the city, but it did not strike me as being 
 at all luxuriously furnished." Mr. Moberly, speaking of the military fort, 
 recalled with a smile the occasion when the United States sent a consider- 
 able force, including a fine lot of horses and cattle, to invade the territory 
 of the Mormons and how the latter quietly surrounded and captured the 
 lot and sent them home again without killing any of them and unharmed. 
 Incidentally, he mentioned that Brigham Young showed keen interest in 
 British Columbia and asked many questions about the development and 
 form of government in this province. 
 
 MINING IN OPHIR CITY, UTAH. 
 
 And now Mr. Moberly plunged into another mining city, this time 
 in Utah and some forty miles from Salt Lake City. "It was in the Ophir 
 Canyon," he explained, "and was called Ophir City. It was little more 
 than a large mining camp when I got there and took up a considerable 
 number of claims. My friend and I started to sink a shaft two miles 
 below the city, and we used to go for our supplies to a store kept by one 
 of Brigham Young's sons. This son also ran the stage into Salt Lake 
 City." 
 
 One of these days, perhaps, Mr. Moberly will set down on paper or 
 let someone else do so, some of his experiences in and impressions of Moun- 
 tain City and Ophir City and of several other mining excitements that he 
 took part in during his four years of wandering in the States. Some of 
 his adventures he told me, and I should like to record them, for they would 
 make good reading, but they would make this story too long. It will be 
 remembered that our explorer had had instructions to keep Ottawa in 
 touch with his whereabouts, as he was the only man living who had a 
 fairly thorough i>ersonal knowledge of the interior of British Columbia and 
 where the proposed transcontinental railway should be located. It was 
 while he was mining at Ophir City that he received by stage the expected 
 telegram, which had been sent from Ottawa to Salt Lake City, requesting 
 him to go to Ottawa at once to see Sir John A. Macdonald, the premier. 
 
 RODE DAY AND NIGHT TO MEET SIR JOSEPH. 
 
 But just here it will do no harm to retrace a step and record an 
 incident that should have been recorded when Mr. Moberly was telling of 
 his experiences at Mountain City. He was there when he received — by 
 stage also — a telegram from Sir Joseph Trutch from Ottawa. It had 
 come by the Wells-Fargo express from Elko, and asked if Mr. Moberly 
 could meet him at Elko on his way back to British Columbia from Ottawa 
 as he had important news. Sir Joseph had just been to Ottawa as one of 
 a delegation (consisting of himself. Dr. Carrall of Cariboo, afterwards a 
 Senator, and Dr. J. S. Helmcken, still living at a great age m Victoria) 
 sent there to complete the negotiations for Confederation, already under 
 way, and he was now returning. This delegation and its work is, I notice, 
 mentioned in Sir Charles Tupper's recently published "Recollections of 
 Sixty Years in Canada," and Sir Charles also has a reference to Mr. 
 Moberly. 
 
 65 
 
"When I received that telegram at Mountain City I knew that, if 
 I was to see Sir Joseph on his way through — and it was important that 
 I should — I should have to ride the eighty miles between where I was and 
 Elko without more rest than a change of horses. I started at 4 o'clock 
 one afternoon and rode the rest of that day and all that night and well on 
 into the next day and got to Elko pretty tired out an hour before the train 
 arrived. The country was pretty open and, though there were no roads, 
 you could safely ride at a gallop over most of it, and I had one of the 
 best horses m that part of the country. 1 had breakfast with Sir Joseph 
 and Mrs. Trutch, who accompanied him, and then they had to leave. He 
 told me all about the negotiations to date and asked me to be sure and 
 keep in touch with civilization in order that a telegram could reach me. 
 The contract was that they should commence construction of the C. P. R. 
 in two years and finish it in ten years. Those were the terms of Con- 
 federation." 
 
 RECOLLECTION OF LADY MACDONALD's GIRLHOOD. 
 
 Returning to Ophir City. "When I received the telegram telling 
 me to go to Ottawa, I bought a gallon of whiskey and returned to the 
 camp and told the fellows to drink my health. I made them a present of 
 my mining claims, which were not very valuable, anyway, and told Young 
 to get the stage to stop for me in the morning, as I was going to Salt Lake. 
 A week or so later I was in Ottawa. The first person I went to see there 
 was Colonel Bernard, who was a brother of Lady Macdonald and private 
 secretary to Sir John, and while I was talking to him Lady Macdonald 
 came in. I had not seen her since she was a girl." In reply to questions 
 I elicited from Mr. Moberly that he knew the great premier's clever wife 
 well as a girl. "They came from' Jamaica, where her father used to be 
 chief justice," he observed, "and they came to settle in Barrie, where 
 we lived when I was a boy. My mother went to England to visit her 
 sister, and they took our house. My headquarters were at Toronto at 
 the time, but whenever I went to Barrie for a holiday I used to stay with 
 them. And many's the good gallop Baroness Macdonald and I have had 
 together when she was a girl," added the veteran, laughing, and with his 
 eyes lighting up at the recollection. "She was a splendid horsewoman, 
 even as a small girl, eind was always clever and, thougti not beautiful, she 
 was a fine-looking girl and popular." Lady Macdonald at once invited 
 her old friend to lunch at Earnscliffe, as she said Sir John was anxious to 
 see him and they could have a long talk there without being disturbed. 
 
 WHAT MR. MOBERLY TOLD SIR JOHN. 
 
 The two had met before when Sir John was Attorney-General during 
 the old Grand Trunk times. I asked Mr. Moberly for a recollection of 
 their conversation upon this occasion. "I told him that I could show him 
 exactly where to locate the C. P- R. from" the sea coast to the prairies," 
 said Mr. Moberly simply, and he added, with a short laugh, "and I think 
 they realize now that it was an expensive pity that they allowed part of 
 the route that I proposed to be humbugged away from the rest of the line. 
 There is not one inch of the C. P. R. on the proper line from Revelstoke 
 to Rat Portage, and they have paid through the nose for this to the extent 
 of hundreds of thousands of dollars." "I told him," continued the old 
 man, after this passing criticism, "You can commence the construction of 
 
 66 
 
the line six weeks after I get back to British Columbia.' I remember 
 adding: 'Of course I don't know how many millions you have, but it is 
 going to cost you money to get through those canyons.' I told him that 
 I would like to leave at once for B. C. in order that I could land the first 
 party of engineers in the province the day we went into Confederation." 
 "And, by gad, I did it, too, though they wanted me to stay," Mr. Moberly 
 added with a satisfied emphasis. 
 
 "I saw Sir Sandford Fleming before I left. I had known him for 
 many years. I had gathered a few engineers when I left Ottawa, but 
 I told Sir John that I preferred to employ engineers whom I knew out 
 here, and he replied that I might employ just whom I liked. He added: 
 'There is a young man here I would like you to give a job to if you can, 
 but do just as you like.' This young man came to me some months later 
 in Victoria with a letter of introduction, and I engaged him. His name 
 was Martin Benson, and he proved one of my most valued assistants. 
 I returned to Victoria by boat from 'Frisco and arrived in the summer of 
 '71. That was in June, and by July I had my first parties for making 
 the surveys organized. I was now going to take a preliminary survey, as 
 we call it, to be followed by location surveys. 
 
 COMMENCING A GREAT WORK. 
 
 Describing the commencement of this work which was to have such 
 a momentous effect upon the future of the province in which we live, Mr. 
 Moberly said: "I had two parties. I sent one from Hope to get into the 
 Columbia, and the other from Kamloops to get into the Eagle Pass. Mr. 
 D. C. Gillette, an American engineer of much ability whom I had known 
 for a long time, was in charge of the Hope party, and Mr. Edward 
 Mohun, an engineer who had a wide and excellent reputation in B. C, 
 and who, after being connected with the Land and Works Department, is 
 now living retired in Victoria, was in charge of the party which went in 
 from Kamloops. I went up to Hope cuid saw the party off and then to 
 Kamloops and saw the other party off. Mr. Roderick McLennan, an 
 engineer from the Intercolonial Railway, had charge of the North Thomp- 
 son and Yellowhead surveys, and I took charge myself of the Eagle Pass 
 surveys." 
 
 non 
 
 67 
 
MAKING RAILWAY HISTORY. 
 
 )E now enter upon, perhaps, the most important chapter of Mr. 
 Moberly's life story, as it was the most important chapter 
 in the history of the Province of British Columbia, for it 
 marked the first definitely organized and comprehensive steps 
 toward the actual planning of the route of the bands of steel, 
 which were for the first time in the history of this continent 
 to connect the Atlantic with the Pacific. All that had 
 _ — gone before in our explorer's life, strenuous as that 
 
 life had been, was but the introduction to this great work which he had 
 had before him as his goal from the start. Even the building of the his- 
 toric Cariboo Road was but an incident — though a very vigorous and 
 dramatic one — compared with the task which he and those associated with 
 him had before them now that Confederation was an accomplished fact 
 and that the first practical steps in the realization of that great undertaking 
 which was to be known to future generations by the magic letters "C. 
 P. R." were to be taken. 
 
 "let's abuse the c. p. r." 
 
 We have got used, in England, to the saying that it is a farmer's 
 privilege to grumble at the weather. In Canada it is the privilege of the 
 public to grumble at the C. P. R. We abuse that unfortunate company 
 because it had the foresight to secure (when it had the chance) much land 
 en route ; we abuse it in Vancouver because it happens to own much water- 
 front; we abuse it because of the rates it charges, and, I have no doubt, 
 if we could, we should, in some indirect way, make it responsible for all the 
 rain we get during the winter. And in our criticism — sometimes, no doubt, 
 justified — of that company, which (like all others of its kind) has not a 
 soul to be saved nor a body to be kicked, we are often inclined to over- 
 look the stupendous nature of the task tackled in those early days, first by 
 the Dominion Government and then by the late Lord Strathcona and his 
 associates, a task tackled, often, with inadequate resources and under the 
 stress of political agitation; we are inclined to forget that the building of 
 that railway — which, while inevitable, might have been accomplished years 
 later had it not been for the type of men associated with its inception and 
 building — has made possible our present development; yes, and in our 
 desire to disjxjse of corporations and their monopolies, lock, stock and 
 barrel, we are inclined to forget that the land granted to this particular 
 corporation, like the land in Vancouver which has made so many wealthy, 
 was not worth a tithe of its present value when it was granted. However, 
 we must have something to abuse, so far be it from me to attempt to lighten 
 the load which this most wonderful of modern railways and railway organ- 
 izations has to bear. After all, we do occasionally recognize with a cer- 
 tain grudging pride that the C; P. R. is something which no other country 
 in the world has managed to produce. 
 
 69 
 
REMEMBER THE EARLY STRUGGLES. 
 
 But do not let us forget those early days and those tremendous early 
 struggles which saw the preparation for and the building of the Canadian 
 Pacific Railway through the wilds of this mountainous province, struggles 
 to overcome nature which the average tourist, as he is whirled through 
 glorious mountain scenery, only vaguely guesses at. And do not let us 
 forget any of the great pioneers of that work, and particularly (in the 
 preparatory, exploratory and survey work) Walter Moberly and (in the 
 actual surveying and building of the most difficult part of the line through 
 the canyons of the Fraser) Henry J. Cambie. 
 
 Walter Moberly some years ago. 
 
 It will be necessary, in the interests of the historical accuracy of this 
 story, to touch upon a phase of the building of the railway through B. C. 
 which has controversial elements and which, I find, has been touched upon 
 in passing in several publications (books and pamphlets), dealing with 
 different phases of the province's development, the particular point at issue 
 being the abandonment by the powers-that-were at the time of the building 
 of the railway of much of the longer but easier route explored and recom- 
 mended by Mr. Moberly, and the resultant continuous heavy expense and 
 loss of life caused by endless avalanches, snow blockades, etc., through the 
 
 70 
 
Rogers Pass portion of the Selkirks and the present heavy expense involved 
 m the great engineering feat which the C. P. R. has now in progress in 
 the boring of the longest tunnel on the continent, the tunnel beneath Mount 
 Sir Donald in the Selkirks. a work undertaken expressly for the purpose 
 of obviating in future the dangers and expense referred to. 
 
 THE OLD "forty-nine." 
 
 For the present let Mr. Moberly tell his story in his own words. It 
 will be recalled that the explorer had sent out his initial survey parties, 
 one under Mr. Gillette to the Howse Pass, and another, under Mr. Mohun, 
 to Eagle Pass, while Mr. Roderick McLennan was in charge of the sur- 
 veys of a line via the North Thompson and Alfreda Rivers and through 
 the Yellowhead, and Mr. John Trutch was in charge of the surveys between 
 Burrard Inlet and Kamloops. 
 
 "At Kamloops I parted with my survey party under Mr. Mohun 
 and also with Mr. McLennan's party and that of the late Dr. A. R. C. 
 Selwyn, the director of the Geological Survey of Canada, who accom- 
 panied Mr. McLennan to the Yellowhead Pass," continued Mr. Moberly. 
 "I now proceeded with a few horses and three Indians on my way to 
 Howse Pass. I went by the trail via Osoyoos Lake to Colville, where 
 I chartered the old steamer Forty-nine, and loaded her with supplies, which 
 I purchased, and sent up to The Big Eddy, at the east end of the Eagle 
 Pass, where I had instructed Mr. McLennan to winter, and then pro- 
 ceeded on my way via the trail to Wild Horse Creek, the valleys of the 
 Kootenay and Columbia rivers, to Kinbaskit's Landing, where I overtook 
 Mr. Gillette's party. The old Forty-nine was a stern-wheeler, built by 
 Capt. White, of Colville, during the Big Bend excitement in '65 and '66. 
 
 AN ORIGINAL FLOTILLA. 
 
 "I sent a few horses through the woods, along the east bank of the 
 river, to the mouth of the Blueberry River, which has its source near the 
 summit of the Howse Pass, and then embarking my party and supplies on 
 board a flotilla composed of some half-rotten and leaky boats, old log 
 canoes and a few Indian bark canoes, we floated down to a point a short 
 distance south of the mouth of the Blueberry River, where I at once set 
 some men at work to build log huts to winter in, and the survey party 
 running a preliminary survey up the valley of the Blueberry River, and 
 then, taking some horses and three Indians, I started to cross the Rocky 
 Mountains to their easterly foothills, where I expected to meet a party 
 near Mount Murchieson, under the command of my brother Frank, who 
 had charge of the exploratory surveys between Red River and the easterly 
 foothills of the Rocky Mountains. 
 
 "From the summit down the easterly slope of the Rocky Mountains 
 the descent was very gentle, and I anticipated there would not be any 
 difficulty in getting a line easterly by the valley of the Red Deer or Sas- 
 katchewan rivers, but that probably the better line to adopt would be an 
 air line near Mount Murchieson, passing through Winnipeg and reaching 
 the northwest corner of the Lake of the Woods. I now knew that on the 
 whole of my proposed line from Vancouver to Winnipeg the only really 
 difficult point to settle was the descent from the summit of Howse Pass to 
 the Columbia River, as the descent from the summit for three or four miles 
 was very steep. 
 
 71 
 
HEAVY WINTER SETS IN. 
 
 "Everything now indicated a very heavy fall of snow, and as I knew 
 from experience what that meant at such a high elevation as the summit of 
 the Howse Pass is, I retraced my way to the survey party and found that 
 they had the trial line partly up the steep grade, and I caused it to be 
 pushed on with the utmost despatch to the summit, and then commenced 
 to make a trial location down the side of the mountain, but, just as we 
 began this survey, the snow began to fall so heavily that we could not see 
 through it with our instruments, nor could we retain our footing on the 
 steep and slippery side of the mountain, and, as the snow continued to fall 
 all day, I saw that I could not get this all-important portion of the line 
 properly surveyed, and that to remain any longer on the mountain would 
 cause the death of all our animals, I reluctantly ordered the party to pro- 
 ceed to the depot until better weather set in. 
 
 "I remained a few days at the depot waiting for the Columbia River 
 to freeze in order that the ice would be strong enough to travel on, and, 
 having got snowshoes made, and men set at work to build boats that I pro- 
 posed to use in connection with the surveys I intended to make the follow- 
 ing year around the Big Bend, I instructed Mr. Gillette, as soon as the 
 weather permitted, to push forward the survey of the line down from the 
 summit of the Pass to the bank of the Columbia River. (The next sum- 
 mer when I reached the Howse Pass, on my way to the Yellowhead Pass, 
 Mr. Gillette informed me that the result of the surveys he had made satis- 
 fied him that a good line could be obtained through the Howse Pass, and 
 he was of the same opinion as myself, that a great mistake was made by 
 the engineer-in-chief in abandoning that line in favor of the Yellowhead 
 Pass.) 
 
 LONG SNOWSHOE WALK: ESCAPE AVALANCHE. 
 
 "Accompanied by my ever-faithful Indians and the late Hon. Mr. 
 Todd, I started for a long snowshoe walk to New Westminster, and pro- 
 ceeded down the Columbia River to the latitude of Gold River, in order 
 to see if I could get a line through the Selkirks by a high pass between the 
 headwaters of Gold River and those of Gold Creek, or if it would b; 
 possible to connect those valleys by a tunnel. If I could get a line this 
 way it would very materially shorten this distance between Revelstoke and 
 the Howse Pass. 
 
 "After a very fatiguing journey through the Selkirk Mountains by 
 this high pass, in which we were very nearly buried beneath an immense 
 avalanche that came roaring down the steep mountain side when we were 
 near the summit, we reached the almost deserted mining town on French 
 Creek that I had before visited in the year 1 866, when I constructed a 
 trail between it and the Seymour Arm of Lake Shuswap. 
 
 "I here met several old acquaintances, and the following afternoon 
 went on to McCulloch's Creek, which was entirely deserted, and the 
 remains of the few buildings still standing were in a very dilapidated con- 
 dition. Two more days' travel against a strong head wind, which was 
 excessively cold, brought us to Mr. Mohun's winter quarters at The Big 
 Eddy, just before Christmas Day. 
 
 72 
 
REALLY PERRY S PASS. 
 
 "I spent a few days with Mr. Mohun's party waiting for the plan 
 and profile of the line surveyed through the Eagle Pass, which I found 
 showed that a very good location could be obtained, and then having 
 arranged with Mr. Mohun to push forward the survey through the Selkirk 
 Range by the valley of the Illecillewaet River, and the Pass by its south- 
 
 Major Rogers, after whom Rogers' Pass is named. 
 
 easterly fork, which was discovered by my assistant, Mr. Albert Perry, 
 in 1866, and was subsequently very improperly named Rogers Pass (it is 
 a well-known fact among contemporaries, like Mr. Cambie, who were 
 engaged in the building of the C. P. R., that Major Rogers did not see 
 the Pass until many years later and, as a matter of fact, never passed 
 through it before the railway was built) , I resumed my way westerly 
 through the Eagle Pass to the Great Shuswap Lake. 
 
 "The weather had now turned quite warm, which caused the ice on 
 the Eagle River to be unsafe in places, but, as travelling through the thick 
 underbrush, etc., covered with deep, soft snow, was very fatiguing and 
 disagreeable, we preferred risking the way by the ice, and consequently 
 all the party, at different times, experienced the discomfort of one or more 
 cold baths. 
 
 "When we reached the Sicamous Narrows we found there was no 
 ice, and crossed the narrows in a log canoe, and then resumed our way 
 along the south shore of the Salmon Arm. 
 
 73 
 
ADVENTUROUS TRIP: MR. MOBERLY HAS NARROW ESCAPE. 
 
 "I was anxious to examine a gap in the low range of hills between 
 the Salmon Arm and the main or easterly arm of Shuswap Lake that I had 
 noticed when first exploring through that lake in the year 1 865. This gap, 
 now known as Notch Hill, would, if practicable for railway construction, 
 much lessen the distance that a line for a railway would otherwise have to 
 take to reach Shuswap Lake. 
 
 "Directing the members of my party to remain on the shore, while 
 I tried to cross Salmon Arm on the rather rotten ice to see if it was strong 
 enough for them with their packs, which contained all the plans, profiles, 
 field books, etc., connected with the exploratory surveys so far made by 
 me, and the loss of which would have been a serious calamity, I started 
 on my adventurous trip. 
 
 "When about half way across the Arm, I fell through the ice, and, 
 being encumbered with rather heavy clothing, I had a long and hard 
 struggle to save my life. When nearly exhausted and benumbed by the 
 ice-cold water, by spreading niy snowshoes under my body in order to 
 cover as large an area of the rotten ice as possible, and thus prevent its 
 breaking under the weight of my body, I managed at last to scramble out 
 and reach the shore, where my Indians were in a half-frozen and miserable 
 plight. 
 
 BEST LINE FOR RAILWAY. 
 
 "We pursued our way along the south shore and when we were at 
 a point opposite Notch Hill we found the arm clear of ice, and made a 
 raft and crossed to the southerly end of the Notch. The next day we 
 walked through the Notch, when I found it would be the best route for 
 the railway, and in due time reached Cache Creek, from which place there 
 was telegraphic communication with Ottawa, and I sent a telegram to the 
 engineer-in-chief to the effect that a good, practicable route for the Can- 
 adian Pacific Railway was a certainty from Burrard Inlet to the prairies 
 east of the Rocky Mountains, and that the surveys had progressed in a 
 satisfactory manner. 
 
 "I was now perfectly certain, within a possible deviation of a few 
 hundred feet, or a shortening of the line by a tunnel through the Selkirk 
 Mountains, between the valleys of Gold River and Gold Cerek, where 
 the location of the Canadian Pacific Railway should be frpm Vancouver 
 through the mountain region of Canada, for I had examined every part 
 of it myself. The objectionable Pass, now known as Rogers Pass, I had 
 not been through, but formed my opinion about it from Mr. A. Perry's 
 report made to me in 1 866. 
 
 DIFFICULT WORK AHEAD:' WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 
 
 "In due course I reached Victoria, after a long and tedious journey, 
 that had consumed much time, and, as I knew there was a great deal of 
 extremely difficult work, of the very greatest importance for me to do the 
 next season, and for which I had to make various extensive preparatioris 
 that would require my personal supervision in many different places scat- 
 tered throughout an immense territory, where travelling and transportation 
 ~had to be done almost entirely on the backs of animals, I did not go to 
 Ottawa, as it would have been only a useless waste of time. 
 
 74 
 
"The important surveys I proposed making during the year 1872 
 were as follows: 
 
 "I. A careful location survey from the Columbia River through 
 the Howse Pass. 
 
 "2. A trial survey through the Selkirk Range by the valley of the 
 Illecillewaet River and Rogers Pass. 
 
 "3. A trial survey across the Selkirk Range by the valleys of Gold 
 River and Gold Creek, to ascertain what length of tunnelling would be 
 required to connect those valleys. 
 
 "4. A survey from Revelstoke around the bend of the Columbia 
 River to coimect with the survey via Gold River and Gold Creek, and 
 with the survey through Howse Pass. 
 
 "At this time I was so confident where the best line for the Can- 
 adian Pacific Railway ought to be located that I had decided to go on 
 with the location surveys after making the above surveys and getting the 
 approval of the engineer-in-chief, which I never doubted for a moment 
 would be given, and had I been allowed to carry out the above work, 
 which Mr. Gillette's report to me about a line through the Howse Pass 
 fully justified and endorsed, millions of dollars would have been saved to 
 the country, and the Canadian Pacific Railway Company would have had 
 a far better, less expensive and safer line to operate than the present line 
 through the Rogers and Kicking Horse Passes, and been able to make 
 better time over it. 
 
 TRIAL LOCATION THROUGH HOWSE PASS. 
 
 "Soon after I reached Victoria I forwarded my reports, etc., to 
 Ottawa, and requested the engineer-in-chief to allow me to increase my 
 engineering staff. I shortly afterwards received a telegram from the 
 engineer-in-chief informing me that a trial location through the Howse Pass 
 was considered most important. This telegram led me to infer that the 
 line I had taken so many years to explore and discover, and which I was 
 quite confident would be the best to adopt for the proposed Ceuiadian 
 transcontinental railway, would be adopted. 
 
 "I at once let contracts for large quantities of supplies to be for- 
 warded immediately, and delivered to me at Kinbaskit's Landing, on the 
 upper Columbia River, to which point I had instructed the engineer at 
 Howse Pciss to have boats built and sent, to convey the supplies to the 
 various points along the Columbia River where they would be required. 
 
 DRAMATIC TELEGRAM: YELLOWHEAD PASS ADOPTED. 
 
 "I now engaged the additional engineers and men required to carry 
 out the extensive surveys I proposed to make during the summer of the 
 year 1 872, and, having equipped them and closed all business affairs in 
 Victoria, I embarked the party on board a steamer that was to sail for 
 Olympia at 3 o'clock on the following morning, proposing to accompany 
 the party myself. 
 
 "At I I o'clock that night I received a message from Lieutenant- 
 Governor, the late Sir Joseph W. Trutch, requesting me to see him ait 
 once at Government House, and on my arrival there he handed me a tele- 
 gram he had received from the engineer-in-chief, desiring him to inform me 
 
 75 
 
that the Yellowhead Pass had been adopted for the Canadian Pacific 
 Railway and that I was to take charge of and make the survey through 
 it, and convey my survey parties and supplies to it by way of the Atha- 
 basca Pass. 
 
 STAGGERING INSTRUCTIONS. 
 
 "These instructions completely staggered me. I knew that there was 
 not a person living at that time who had such a knowledge of the country, 
 its great possibilities and requirements, as myself, and I could foresee the 
 future inevitable consequences that would follow by locating the Canadian 
 Pacific Railway on a line far distant from the southern boundary of the 
 Dominion, and thus leaving the future trade and commerce of the immense 
 belt of the richest and most important portion of the country, extending 
 from the Pacific Coast to the Red River, and from the 49th parallel of 
 latitude to a great distance north of it, to be tapped and drawn away into 
 United States channels by American railways. It was very disappointing 
 to me after all the years and money I had spent to prevent the possibility 
 of such an eventuality, and at the same time to obtain the best commercial 
 line for the Canadian Pacific Railway. 
 
 "I was now in a very false position, for I had let the contracts for 
 the large quantities of supplies needed for the surveys I proposed, and 
 knew ought to be made, and the supplies were already well on their way 
 when I received the order to abandon the surveys for which they were 
 intended. 
 
 MR. MOBERLY's difficult POSITION. 
 
 "I left Victoria for Portland to meet the contractor who had under- 
 taken to furnish the suppKes at Kinbaskit's Landing, and at Marcus, near 
 Colville, and tried to get out of the contract by offering him a large sum 
 of money. He showed me the contracts he had entered into with the 
 packers who owned the pack animals then transporting the supplies, and 
 also stated that the supplies would be useless to him at Kinbaskit's Landing, 
 which I was well aware would be the case. He, however, agreed to take 
 back the supplies that were to be sent up the Columbia River to the mouth 
 of the Illecillewaet River for the survey of the line through the valley of 
 that river and Rogers Pass, etc. Unfortunately, I was not able to get a 
 quantity of hardware I had agreed to take, and which was then not far 
 from the Columbia Lakes. It was intended to be used in the construction 
 of boats and engineers' houses, etc., that would be needed during the loca- 
 tion and construction of the railway through the district in my charge. 
 
 A CONVINCING REPLY. 
 
 "These supplies were rendered superfluous by the abandonment of 
 my line, and I was censured by the engineer-in-chief and subsequendy by 
 the members of the Royal Commission that was appointed to investigate 
 the expenditures incurred in connection with the exploratory surveys made 
 for the Canadian Pacific Railway. Both the engineer-in-chief and the com- 
 missioners being quite ignorant of the country, etc., where and for what 
 purposes these supplies were to be used, I think a sufficient answer to their 
 fault-finding with me is that when the Canadian Pacific Railway took the 
 railway out of the hands of the government, and got its location from Van- 
 couver to Revelstoke back to my line, and then got entangled in the Rogers 
 
 76 
 
and Kicking Horse Passes, they used during the location and construction, 
 through only a portion of my former district, a very much larger quantity 
 of similar supplies. 
 
 OUTWITTING THE PACKERS. 
 
 "To have these large quantities of supplies available for the surveys 
 through the Yellowhead Pass, and to transport my engineers and men and 
 their outfits from the Columbia to the Athabasca River, it was imperatively 
 necessary that I should obtain possession of the pack animals then convey- 
 ing the supplies to Kinbaskit's Landing before the packers who owned the 
 animals knew of the change that had been made in the surveys by the 
 adoption of the Yellowhead Pass, and of the 'fix' I was in for pack 
 animals to convey the supplies from the Columbia River to the Yellowhead 
 Pass, for there were no other pack animals nor packers available, and if 
 the packers knew how I was then placed they would have either extorted 
 very high transportation charges or have done the same for their animals. 
 
 "I hurried on from Portland to Wallula by steamer, thence via Walla 
 Walla to Colville, where I engaged Captain A. T. Pingston and a party 
 of boat men to navigate the boats I had ordered to be built during the 
 past winter at the depot at Howse Pass, and had instructed Mr. Gillette 
 to have them sent up to Kinbaskit's Landing. I then went on, travelling 
 on horseback, to Wild Horse Creek, the Columbia Lakes, etc., to Kin- 
 baskit's Landing, where I found the boats awaiting me. 
 
 "On my way up I overtook the different trains of pack animals, which 
 I purchased, and engaged all the packers, thereby getting possession of 
 upwards of four hundred pack animals, all in splendid condition, with their 
 rigging complete, and experienced packers to handle them. I thus got out 
 of the serious 'fix' I was in regarding transportation. 
 
 "ocean to ocean." 
 
 "My next and most serious difficulty was to open a pack trail along 
 the right or easterly bank of the Columbia River, where the navigation was 
 too dangerous to convey the supplies in boats. The country through which 
 the trail had to be constructed was rough and heavily timbered, whick 
 made the work of opening it tedious and expensive, and, as the misbehavior 
 of the men obliged me to dismiss them, my working party was very small, 
 and the construction of the trail proceeded with exasperating slowness. 
 
 "When the itrail was opened to Kinbaskit Lake, I was sorry to lose 
 the services of Mr. Gillette. Mr. Ashdown Green took his position as 
 engineer in charge of the party. I now left with three Indians for the 
 Yellowhead Pass, as I expected to meet the engineer-in-chief, who had 
 informed me that he proposed, during the autumn, to journey through the 
 Yellowhead Pass. A description of his journey was written by the Rev. 
 George M. Grant, principal of Queen's University, Kingston, and entitled 
 'Ocean to Ocean.' 
 
 experienced frontiersmen engaged. 
 
 "Previous to my leaving Victoria I had engaged and instructed Mr. 
 William Cameron McCord, an able, trusty and experienced mountaineer, 
 miner and frontiersman, to equip a party of axemen and a pack train, and 
 open a pack trail by the valleys of the North Thompson and Abreda rivers 
 
 77 
 
\j^ |iai^ 1 90 L '^iTipcrialLlmited" Mail Train, Kicking Horse Canyon, B C z'''^*^'! /i 
 
 Imperial Limited. 
 
to and through the Yellowhead Pass, where I promised to meet him as 
 soon as I , could get away from the Columbia River. 
 
 "On leaving Kinbaskit Lake with my Indians, who carried very light 
 packs containing only a pair of blankets each, a little tea, salt and flour, 
 we ascended and crossed over the high mountain spur that rises to a great 
 elevation between the waters of the Columbia and those of the Wood or 
 Portage River, and made in as direct a line as possible for the Athabasca 
 Pass, between Mounts Brown and Hooker. This line of travel we took 
 in order to avoid the long way by the valley of the Columbia to the boat 
 encampment, and thence by the old trail of the Northwest Fur Company 
 of Montreal by the valley of the Wood River to the foot of Mount Brown. 
 
 "The steep ascent of this mountain side from Kinbaskit Lake was 
 extremely toilsome, and we suffered dreadfully for want of water. The 
 exposed, scantily-timbered, rocky face of the mountain, with the sun beat- 
 ing down on us and making the rocks hot, combined with myriads of black 
 flies, rendered this climb trying in the extreme. 
 
 A MEMORABLE SIGHT. 
 
 "When we got high up the mountain, and just before entering a very 
 elevated pass, we had a magnificent view over the northerly portion of the 
 Selkirk Range, and also of the easterly side of the Gold, and the westerly 
 side of the Rocky Mountains, and, as the sun was shining brightly, the 
 sky blue and the atmosphere clear, the iimumerable peeiks and sea of 
 mountains visible, covered with snow and glaciers glittering in places, 
 together with the deep green forests which clothed the lower portions of 
 the mountain ranges, and the Columbia River, like a silver ribbon, wending 
 its way through the deep, narrow gorge far below us, impressed me with 
 what stupendous grandeur primeval Nature is endowed. 
 
 "I have read descriptions of the mountains of British Columbia as 
 given by different 'globe trotters,' who rush through the country at the 
 bottoms of some of the valleys traversed by the railways, which, although 
 affording truly grand and striking scenery, are not to be compared with 
 those that can be obtained from higher altitudes. I would recommend 
 these globe trotters to climb up above the timber line and then expand their 
 gushings in describing the unexplored and more inaccessible places. 
 
 NAUSEATING EXPERIENCE. 
 
 "We camped on the bank of a lovely stream flowing through a park- 
 like valley, or rather opening through the mountain spur, at an elevation 
 above the sea of probably six thousand feet. The following morning we 
 pursued our way for some distance through this valley, and then reached 
 the northerly steep declivity of the mountain, down which we went, follow- 
 ing the dry bed of a watercourse which had been cut by the water from 
 the melting snows during the early part of countless summers. 
 
 "On reaching the bottom of the valley of the Wood River we had 
 to wade for some distance through the stagnant water containing some 
 reddish-brown substance — ^probably decomposed iron ore — of a disagree- 
 able nature, and shortly after reached the Wood River, into which we 
 plunged to free ourselves of as much as possible of the nauseous substance 
 iwhich painted us. We' followed along the south bank of the river for 
 some distance and then constructed a raft and crossed to the north bank, 
 
 79 
 
which we followed until we reached the foot of Mount Brown and found 
 the trail of the old fur traders going up the steep mountain, and then we 
 camped and cooked a porcupine which we found at this place. 
 
 CARIBOU SHOT AND TREE-TOP CACHE BUILT. 
 
 "The next forenoon, when we had nearly gained the summit of the 
 pass, in the vicinity of 'The Committee's Punch Bowl,' we shot two fine 
 caribou. As our footgear was in a sadly dilapidated condition, and our 
 feet very sore, we decided to camp and make moccasins out of the green 
 hides, and dry and smoke the caribou meat to provision us for the rest of 
 the journey, and cache a quantity of the meat on a platform we constructed 
 at the top of three trees, which we stripped of their bark and branches to 
 keep it out of reach of those thieves of the forest — the wolverines — and to 
 supply us with meat on our return journey. 
 
 "We now travelled along the easterly side of Mount Brown, and 
 leaving the Athabasca Pass, crossed a high ridge and then, following a 
 well-beaten Cariboo trail, descended a steep declivity on the north side 
 of the ridge, over a large deposit of perpetual snow, in which we saw some 
 recent tracks of caribou, and arrived in a beautiful valley surrounded with 
 grand and magnificent scenery. Here we camped at a small spring that 
 is the true source of the Eraser River. Shortly after we camped, one of 
 my Indians shot two caribou and I shot one. 
 
 "For some considerable distance next day the travelling was fairly 
 good, but in the afternoon we got into thick timber and the valley became 
 narrow, down which the river, which had rapidly increased in volume, 
 dashed and roared at a great rate through the canyons. 
 
 CAREFUL INDIANS WANTON WHITE MEN. 
 
 "Shortly before we camped we noticed a bush fire, which was, so 
 my Indians informed me, in the neighborhood of Yellowhead Lake, and 
 was a certain indication that white men were in that neighborhood, for the 
 Indian is careful not to burn the forest which the white man so recklessly 
 and wantonly destroys. 
 
 "At the break of day the fire, fanned by a wind from the north, had 
 approached rapidly in our direction, and the valley was filled with smoke. 
 To remain in the thick timber meant being burned to death, so we made a 
 hurried detour by a bare place on the side of an adjoining mountain, which 
 enabled us to get behind the blazing and roaring fire. After travelling some 
 distance along the side of the mountain we descended to the valley to 
 resume our way through the blackened and smouldering remains of what 
 had been, a few hours before, a dense, beautiful green forest. 
 
 HEARD THE BELL-MARE'S BELL. 
 
 "My feet had not recovered from the chafing they got when we were 
 accomplishing the first portion of this journey, and, as we proceeded through 
 the smouldering remains of the forest, they became very sore and painful. 
 In the afternoon we reached a smaller stream than the one we had been 
 following, and which flowed from the eastward, and I knew it must be the 
 Fraser River. We all plunged into it to wash off the ashes and other filth 
 with which we were covered and begrimed, and to relieve our sore and 
 blistered feet. 
 
 60 
 
"Shortly after reaching the bank of the Eraser River, I heard the 
 tinkling of a bell, which I knew must be attached to a mare, known as 
 the bell-mare, that always leads the mule trains, for the mules will always 
 follow the bell-mare when travelling, and when turned out to grass will 
 not stray away from her. 
 
 WHY MR. BROWN BECAME A "MAC." 
 
 "We waded across the Fraser River and met the pack train, which 
 I found was conveying supplies to Mr. McCord's camp of trail-makers, 
 then on the shore of the Yellowhead Lake, a short distance east of us. 
 
 Spence's Bridge — a remarkable structure built across tiie Thompson River by 
 iVir. Spence, and named after him. 
 
 I asked the man who was in charge of the train — the cargadore, as he is 
 designated — ^what his. name was, when he informed me that it was Mac- 
 Brown. I told him that I Had met many different Macs in my life, but it 
 had never been my luck to meet a MacBrown before. He gave me the 
 following explanation of how he had obtained his uncommon name. When 
 Mr. Roderick McLennan, who was the previous year in charge of the 
 exploratory party, was up the North Thompson River and the Yellowhead 
 Pass, he was engaging men, and Mr. Brown, who was an American from 
 the State of Maine, and wished to obtain employment, observed that Mr. 
 
 61 
 
McLennan appeared to have a strong feeling in favor of men who had 
 the prefix of Mac to their names. Mr. Brown thought his chance of obtain- 
 ing employment would be greatly enhanced if he became a Mac, and, 
 therefore, on his applying to Mr. McLennan, he gave his name as Mac- 
 Brown and was employed. 
 
 LINE SURVEYED WEST OF TETE JAUNE CACHE. 
 
 "Taking a riding horse out of the train, I soon reached Mr. McCord's 
 camp and heard that Mr. Mohun had the line surveyed west of the Tete 
 Jaune Cache as far as Moose Lake, and I at once sent a letter to him 
 
 Suspension Bridge. 
 
 requesting him to meet me the following day at McCord's camp. I now 
 found the engineer-in-chief had not yet passed through the Yellowhead 
 Pass on his way to the coast. 
 
 "I remained the following day at Mr. McCord's camp to see Mr. 
 Mohun, and to doctor my feet, and then, taking some of Mr". McCord's 
 horses, I proceeded with my Indians along the much-obstructed trail over 
 the summit and down the valley of the Nuette and Athabasca rivers to 
 meet the engineer-in-chief, and to ascertain where the best place would be 
 
 82 
 
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to build a depot on the banks of the Athabasca River to winter my par- 
 ties in." 
 
 "When I reached a point a few miles west of Jasper House, I came 
 on fresh tracks of men and horses, which convinced me and my Indians 
 that they were those of men from the east, or, as the Indians designated 
 them, Moneasses, a not altogether complimentary term. I at once retraced 
 my way and reached the Snaring River some time after dark, when I camped 
 and sent on my Indian hunter with a note to ascertain if the travellers were 
 those I was seeking. Late in the night the Indian returned and brought 
 me a note from the engineer-in-charge, which gave me the desired informa- 
 tion, and the following forenoon I overtook the party as they were entei-ing 
 the valley of the Nuette River. 
 
 DR. GRANT AND HIS DILAPIDATED PACK TRAIN. 
 
 "The first person I overtook was that estimable gemtleman, the late 
 Dr. George M. Grant, whose writings are extensively known. The doctor 
 was on foot with a long stick in his hand, driving some worn-out and very 
 dilapidated pack-animals. The other members of the party were supposed 
 to be ahead, so I pushed on to overtake them, but, as they had missed the 
 trail, they were in reality behind us. I, however, went on for a few miles, 
 improving the trail as I progressed, and, coming to a meadow where there 
 was good grass for the animals, I awaited the arrival of the party. 
 
 "After lunch I pushed on with my Indians, clearing the trail of fallen 
 timber as I went, and stopped near a point at which we would have to 
 cross the river. The party did not arrive for some time afterwards, and 
 I sent an Indian back to ascertain what had caused their delay. 
 
 "Next morning being Sunday, and the grass being very poor and 
 scanty, I proposed that we should go on to Mr. McCord's camp, where 
 we could find plenty of food for man and beast, and generally be 'in 
 clover.' My suggestion was acted upon, and we reached the camp early 
 in the day and had a good rest and I was enabled to give the engineer-in- 
 chief an account of my proceedings since I left Victoria, and the difficulties 
 I had passed through and was experiencing in getting my parties and sup- 
 plies out from the Columbia River. 
 
 "Fresh pack animals and riding horses and packers were now pro- 
 vided for the whole party, and next morning we all started for Mr. Mohun's 
 camp, which proved to be farther away than I anticipated and consequently 
 I did not reach the camp until some hours after dark, and the rest of the 
 party kept dropping in at different times during the succeeding three or four 
 hours. They were in an excessively bad humor and blamed me fo.r not 
 telling them how far they had to go, when I did not know myself, as they 
 had heard at Mr. McCord's camp as much as I had regarding the trail. 
 
 ANXIETY ABOUT MEN AND ANIMALS. 
 
 "I was now getting very anxious about my men and animals, who 
 were making their way through the rough and inhospitable country between 
 Kinbaskit Lake and the Yellowhead Pass, and explained to the engineer- 
 in-chief the urgent necessity there was for my immediate return to the 
 Coluinbia River to look after them. He expressed himself as being moch 
 dissatisfied that I had not got the survey farther advanced, and appeared 
 to think I should have accomplished what it was impossible to do, and 
 
 84 
 
even said I should not have attempted to take my party and supphes through 
 the Athabasca Pass, which he himself had indicated, when I was ordered 
 to abandon the surveys on the Eagle Pass line and take charge of the sur- 
 veys of the Yellowhead line. 
 
 "I felt so disgusted with the engineer-in-chief for abandoning the line 
 I knew was the right one to adopt, and then at his finding fault with me 
 for not pushing forward the surveys of the Yellowhead line faster when 
 I had done my utmost to carry out his instructions, that I was on the point 
 of leaving the service, which I should have done there and then had I not 
 known the very critical position my men and animals were in on their way 
 by the Athaba'sca Pass,' and how much they relied upon me to see them 
 safely through. 
 
 HUNGRY GRIZZLIES AND HEAVY SNOW. 
 
 "I now returned to Mr. McCord's camp, and the following day 
 reached the Aathabasca River near the site of the old Henry House. The 
 weather had now become very cold and everything indicated a snow- 
 storm. I hurried on through the valleys of the Athabasca and Whirlpool 
 rivers. I met a large herd of caribou and a bear on my way through the 
 valley of the Whirlpool River, and, in the evening of the third day from 
 McCord's camp, reached the place where we had killed the caribou and 
 cached the meat to supply us with meat on our return journey. Grizzly 
 bears had, however, eaten up all the meat, and we had a very meagre 
 supper. 
 
 "Before daylight the snow began to fall heavily, and I pushed on, 
 exi>ecting to meet my party and pack animals at the foot of Mount Brown, 
 but they were not there. Being greatly disapptointed at, to me, the unac- 
 countably slow progress the whole outfit had made since !• left them at 
 Kinbaskit Lake, we travelled all day until we reached a point not far froiH 
 the Boat Encampment, and then endeavored to cross the mountain spur 
 between the Wood and the Gjlumbia rivers, in order to shorten the dis- 
 tance, but, as night came on, and the underbrush was dense and the fallen 
 timber very obstructive, we were compelled to stop in the bush, where our 
 half-famished horses had nothing to eat. Early next morning we heard 
 the sound of a mule bell, and, by returning to and wading down the river, 
 soon heard the sound of chopping, and on a high bank on the south side of 
 the river found that Mr. Green and the survey party he had charge of 
 were at work constructing buildings to winter in, as he had concluded from 
 my long absence that they would have to pass the winter on the Columbia 
 River. 
 
 TOUCH AND GO. 
 
 "I knew now that it was touch and go if we could go through the 
 high Athabasca Pass, but I determined to take the risk, and at once 
 instructed Mr. Green with his survey party and the necessary pack animals 
 to start at once for the Athabasca River, and also order all the packers in 
 charge of the large trains of pack animals and supplies to get everything 
 forwarded over the summit of the Athabasca Pass in order that they 
 could, during the winter, be conveyed by dog-trains along the frozen Whirl- 
 pool and Athabasca rivers to the depot I had instructed Mr. McCord to 
 build about a mile and a half below where, in bygone years, stood the 
 old Henry House. 
 
 85 
 
"With Mr. Green's survey party and my little outfit of Indians, 
 I started back from the Athabasca River, and, as I travelled much faster 
 than he did, I pushed on ahead in order to get back and have the survey 
 of the line from the summit of the Yellowhead Pass made by Mr. Mohun's 
 party before; the snow fell. I arrived where Mr. McCord had commenced 
 the construction of the buildings for the different parties to winter in, late 
 in the night of the third day after leaving Mr. Green's party. I was 
 astonished to learn from him that the survey party under Mr. Mohun had 
 started on their return to Victoria. 
 
 "This was to me at that time incomprehensible, as I had given the 
 engineer in charge of the party definite instructions about the work I wished 
 to have done during the winter, by pushing forward the surveys in that 
 inclement season of the year, and which I had promised the engineer-in- 
 chief that I would have carried out. 
 
 "Next morning at the break of day, with my two Indians and nearly 
 worn-out horses, I started to try and overtake and bring back the party. 
 On my way I met a messenger from the engineer-in-chief, telling me he 
 had changed his mind regarding the surveys of the line through the Yellow- 
 head Pass, and instructing me to bring out my parties and most of the 
 pack animals and report at Kamloops, and place the supplies and some of 
 the pack animals in the hands of a man in whom I had confidence. 
 
 WISE DISOBEDIENCE. 
 
 "These peculiar orders it was simply impossible for me to carry out. 
 The winter had set in with heavy falls of snow in the Athabasca Pass, 
 through which mp men and animals were struggling to reach the Atha- 
 basca Valley, where grass for the animals could be obtained, and when 
 they did reach it they were in a weakened condition. In the valley of 
 the North Thompson and Albreda rivers and the Yellowhead Pass the 
 grasses would all be covered with snow except the lower portion of the 
 valley of the North Thompson River, and had I attempted to carry out 
 the orders sent to me by the engineer-in-chief, I should certainly have lost 
 all my animals and, perhaps, the lives of some of the men, which was a 
 responsibility I would not assume, and, therefore, was compelled to remain 
 in the Yellowhead Pass. 
 
 KEEPING FAITH WITH EMPLOYEES. 
 
 "It is impossible for me to express how much I wished at this time 
 to discontinue my connection with the engineer-in-chief, and I should have 
 done so if I had not thought it would be unfair to all my employees, who 
 had served me so faithfully, and to the Dominion Goverimient. 
 
 "I subsequently learned that it was instructions from the engineer-in- 
 chief to Mr. Mohun after I parted with the former at Moose Lake that 
 caused Mr. Mohun, on reaching the divide in the Yellowhead Peiss, to 
 discontinue his survey and return to Victoria. 
 
 "I kept my party at work until the end of December, when the snow 
 had reached the Fiddle River, and then went into winter quarters at the 
 depot, and had some log huts built at Fiddle River for Mr. McCord's 
 party to winter in. I sent to Edmonton requesting Mr. Richard Hardisty, 
 the chief factor in the Hudson's Bay Company then in charge, to send 
 me dog sleighs to bring the supplies at the headwaters of the Whirlpool 
 
 86 
 
1 
 
River to the depot, all of which was done, and having completed the 
 plotting of our season's work, I sent the plans off to Edmonton with a 
 letter to Mr. Hardisty requesting him to have them forwarded to Ottawa. 
 
 explorer's inaccurate report. 
 
 "As soon as these documents were sent off, I set the trail party at 
 work, continuing the survey of the line in the direction of the latter place, 
 as I was led to believe from a printed report of an explorer sent out in 
 1871 by the engineer-in-chief, which he had given me at Moose Lake 
 the previous autumn, that a 'level sandy plain' extended from the Fiddle 
 River to Lac St. Anne. I soon found that the description given in that 
 report and the nature of the country between the Athabasca and the 
 McLeod rivers were very different, as there was a high ridge — a spur of 
 the Rocky Mountains between those two rivers — that made it difBcult to 
 get into the valley of the McLeod River. As the line had been gradually 
 ascending this ridge, crossing several formidable ravines, I directed the 
 engineer to go on with the survey and get into the valley of the McLeod 
 River as soon as possible, and I would explore the country ahead and to 
 the eastward. 
 
 GOOD NEWS FOR MR. MOBERLY. 
 
 "I found a good line could be obtained by keeping much farther to 
 the eastward, without any trouble, but decided to continue the line we were 
 surveying to Victoria. When the line was within a short distance of the 
 McLeod River, I was a short distance ahead when a half-breed met me 
 and handed me a letter from the engineer-in-chief. It informed me that 
 he had received the package forwarded by Mr. Hardisty, and directed me 
 to discontinue the survey easterly and to return to the coast with my party. 
 It also informed me that Mr. Marcus Smith, C.E., had been appointed 
 to take charge of the exploratory surveys in British Columbia. This was 
 joyful news for me, for I saw the way clear to get out of the distasteful 
 occupation of making useless surveys. 
 
 "Shortly after receiving the above despatches, I received a letter from 
 Mr. Marcus Smith, informing me of his appointment and requesting me to 
 try and find a line feasible for a railway west from the Tete Jaone Cache 
 into the valley of the Horsefly River, or into the basin of the Quesnel 
 Lake. 
 
 "We all started on our return journey, and on our way back, when 
 we got east of Moose Lake, I directed Mr. Green to make a short survey 
 along the south bank of the Fraser, whilst I went up to the head waters 
 of the canyon, and those of the North Thompson River, to see if I could 
 find a pass in the direction Mr. Smith desired. 
 
 THROUGH "black CANYON" TO "BLUE PRAIRIE." 
 
 "Taking my three Indians with me, I proceeded to explore the coun- 
 try at the headwaters of the Cahoe River, and very soon found there was 
 no pass in that direction. I then went to the forks of the Albreda and 
 North Thompson rivers, and up the valley of the latter. I found the 
 country densely timbered and difficult to travel through until we reached 
 a high elevation. I pursued my way until, at a very high elevation, I was 
 surrounded by high-capped peaks and glaciers that presented an impene- 
 trable wall of rock, snow and ice. I returned to the forks of the TTiomp- 
 
 88 
 
son and Albreda rivers, where my Indians found an old log canoe, which 
 they patched up, and we decided to run down the North Thompson River 
 in preference to walking to Kamloops, as we found that Mr. Green and 
 the survey party had preceded us. The Indians were expert canoe men, 
 but knew nothing about ithat river, nor did I, except that the 'Black 
 Canyon' was considered a dangerous place for boats or canoes. We swept 
 down the river in fine style and when we got into the canyon the Indians 
 handled the canoe to perfection. We pursued our way, and soon after 
 dark came to the place where the party were encamped on the 'Blue 
 Prairie.' 
 
 END OF MR. MOBERLY's EXPLORATIONS AND SURVEYS FOR 
 THE C. P. R. 
 
 "Here we left the canoe, and, taking my horses and Indians. I pur- 
 sued my way, in advance of my party, through a lovely valley to the mouth 
 of the North Thompson River, where I met my commissariat officer, Mr. 
 A. G. Hall. I instructed him to hand over all the pack animals, etc., to 
 Mr. Marcus Smith's agent at Kamloops, and bring me duplicate receipts 
 for the same, and to take all further orders from Mr. Smith. Thus ended 
 all my explorations and surveys for the Canadian Pacific Railway through 
 the mountain region of Canada, and these instructions were the last I gave 
 in connection with that great national railway. 
 
 Hudson's bay tribute. 
 
 "As usual for many years, I took up my quarters with my never- 
 failing friends, the officers of the Hon. Hudson's Bay Company, in Fort 
 Kamloops, where I remained a short time. TTie factor provided me with 
 horses and Indians to take me down to Yale, as that was probably the last 
 opportunity the Hudson's Bay Company would have, in British Columbia, 
 of doing me a service and showing their appreciation of my long social 
 intercourse and business transactions with the company since my arrival in 
 British Columbia in the year 1858. 
 
 "On arriving at Victoria I met, and soon formed a very friendly 
 acquaintance with the lite Mr. Marcus Smith, which lasted until his death. 
 We shortly afterwards left Victoria for Ottawa and in due course arrived 
 there. I was, as I fully expected, very coldly received by the engineer- 
 in-chief. He, unnecessarily, caused my detention in Ottawa after the 
 auditor had passed my accounts in a manner satisfactory to me. He caused 
 the accounts to be sent to another auditor to be gone over again, and I had 
 to wait because I could not get my hard-earned pay, and actually had to 
 borrow money to pay for my bt>ard and lodging. 
 
 badly treated at OTTAWA. 
 
 "After several months the engineer-in-chief sent me a cheque for my 
 pay to the time of the completion of the first auditing and would not pay 
 me anything for the time I had to wait for the second auditing, nor would 
 he pay me anything for the expenses I had incurred during the whole time 
 I had been in Ottawa. I protested at this unjust treatment, but without 
 avail. The unjust treatment I received was not in accordance v^dth the 
 written terms of my engagement, made in 1871, and I was defrauded out 
 of a large amount, which the Dominion Government still owes me. 
 
 89 
 
'A' 
 
 ;^,. 
 
MR. MOBERLY S ADVICE AT LAST ADOPTED. 
 
 "I made my headquarters in Winnipeg for the purpose of getting a 
 personal knowledge of the country west from Lake Superior to the Rocky 
 Mountains, which I obtained, and also of the line the engineer-in-chief was 
 trying to have adopted via Selkirk, the Narrows of Lake Manitoba and 
 thence northerly. I did my utmost, in various ways, to get the line adopted 
 back to my line in order that Winnipeg should be on the main line and 
 the valley of the Columbia reached, which would necessitate the line passing 
 through the Eagle Pass and thence to Vancouver. My exertions finally 
 led to the adoption of the present line from Revelstoke to Vancouver, 
 where it terminates at the magnificent harbor of Burrard Inlet and has 
 brought into existence the flourishing and beautiful City of Vamcouver, 
 which is destined to be the finest commercial and most progressive city of 
 the Dominion of Canada, and from which other important railways will 
 radiate — the city part of whose site I pre-empted in 1859 when I had 
 diggings made to try and find coal in 'Coal Harbor.' " 
 
 30I 
 
 91 
 
FIVE AND FIFTY YEARS AGO. 
 
 1?"^^^!^ ORE than half a century ago two comparatively young white 
 Idl^^iil '"^"" accompanied by two Indians, turned the bow of their 
 canoe from Burrard Inlet and up the North Arm. It was a 
 glorious day in the August of 1 859, and, as vista after vista 
 of sparkling water, towering mountain and green forest opened 
 to their view, what time they paddled northward, exclama- 
 tions of pleasure and satisfaction escaped them. It was a big 
 canoe and all four were powerful paddlers, so that the light 
 craft skimmed over the surface of the water at a fine pace and the after- 
 noon saw them bursting upon those beautiful, lagoon-like parts of the Arm 
 which open out near its head. 
 
 They landed near the spot where, more than fifty years later, the pic- 
 turesque Wigwam Inn and its pretty grounds were to lend a comfortable. 
 
 Walter Moberly, present day. 
 
 human touch to their rather rugged environment and suggest to the approach- 
 ing visitor or guest rest and refreshment. Climbing up the bank, the party 
 of four proceeded along the bed of a shallow stream for, perhaps, a quarter 
 of a mile, into a declivity in the mountain, until their progress was arrested 
 by one of the most beautiful bridal falls to be found in this part of the 
 world. The white men stood for some minutes lost in admiration. The 
 Indians (who were Capilanos) had probably seen the falls, which have 
 since become so familiar to many visitors, before. Hale and hearty and 
 in the full flush of early manhood, the two explorers proceeded to climb to 
 
 93 
 
the top of the mountain, a pretty tough scramble, to see if they could find 
 the Chickamen (money) stone. 
 
 THE BRIDAL FALL AND CHICKAMEN STONE. 
 
 Fifty-five years, full of varied and adventurous happenings, rolled 
 between and then, upon a recent Sunday, a wrhite-haired, white-bearded 
 veteran of eighty-five vi^as heartily welcomed at the landing before the 
 Wigwam Inn by genial Mr. Dickens, whose pretty residence nestles 
 near at hand, the only other habitation within a wide radius. Anon, 
 
 the old man stood wdth his host and his friends at the foot of those deli- 
 cately traced falls, the water of. which has been falling, falling, falling 
 without ceasing ever since that first visit, and will be falling, falling long 
 after Mr. Walter Moberly and the youngest of you who may have read 
 the story of his strenuous life have passed to the bourne from which no 
 traveller returns. Lieutenant Bumaby (whose name is perpetuated in a 
 well known municipality near Vancouver) passed to that bourne many 
 years ago. He was the white man who accompanied Mr. Moberly upon 
 that first voyage of discovery up the North Arm at a time when no white 
 man lived nearer than New Westminster, which itself was but a series of 
 clearings and roughly erected wooden buildings. And Mr. Moberly had 
 never revisited the falls until this Sunday to which reference has just been 
 made. It was upon the advice of the Indians that gold was to be found 
 up the mountain at the back of and above those falls, that Moberly and 
 Burnaby spent sometime searching for the Chickamen (which, in Chinook 
 jargon, means money) stone. 
 
 THE END OF THE STORY. 
 
 And so, my friends, we have nearly arrived. at the end of the story 
 of British Columbia's most notable pathfinder. We have arrived at the 
 end, that is, of the public work he was responsible for, the work which led 
 to the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. It is true that he was 
 still only in the forties when he left this province and for many years made 
 Winnipeg — then a city of 8,000 or 9,000 inhabitants and unconnected 
 by railway with the rest of Canada — his home, and that for the next 
 thirty years he lived a very active and interesting and, often, adventurous 
 life, which, some day, may supply material for another series of stories, 
 These particular chapters of that life are, however, concerned almost 
 entirely with the explorations and preparations for the laying of steel which 
 was to link ocean with ocean. But, as the reader who has read so far 
 will probably be interested to know what Mr. Moberly did after leaving 
 the service, I will give a brief summary before concluding. 
 
 94 
 
MR. MOBERLY BUILT WINNIPEG'S FIRST SEWERS. 
 The year that followed his arrival at Winnipeg, Mr. Moberly spent 
 in general exploration work in the country round about, and then, as his 
 next considerable task, he contracted to build the first sewers that Win- 
 nipeg ever had. "Perhaps that sounds a bigger undertaking than it really 
 was," laughed the veteran when telling me about the contract, "for there 
 were not many thousands of people in Winnipeg then." "But," he added 
 with satisfaction, "many of those wooden pipes of white pine and spruce 
 are in use today, and I remember shortly before I left Winnipeg — I think 
 It was in '96 — being shown a section of one which had been taken up, 
 and it was as sound as the day that it was put in." Veteran pioneers who 
 were resident in Winnipeg at the time when this contract was fulfilled have 
 told me of the very fine and conscientious job Mr. Moberly made of it, 
 though, as in the case of most things he has touched, he made very little 
 profit. 
 
 OTHER RAILWAYS. 
 
 He then took the contract to byild a short line of railway along the 
 Grand Rapid. Steamers used to run from Winnipeg to the foot of the 
 Grand Rapid and then the freight was carried over this tramway to the 
 steamers at the other end. At that time several big railways were endeavor- 
 ing to get a charter to come into Winnipeg. The nearest railway approach 
 was hundreds of miles away on the American side at Moorehead on the 
 Red River, and travellers came to Winnipeg from Moorehead on steamers 
 by that river. Moorehead was reached from St. Paul. Mr. Moberly made 
 several visits to Ottawa during these years and spent two winters there. 
 Once when he returned to Winnipeg he did so with the intention of getting 
 a charter through for the Southwestern Railway, a railway that was to 
 run in a southerly direction from Winnipeg. He got it through and the 
 railway was built. Mr. David Young was the secretary, and General 
 Hammond, a Southerner, took charge. Mr. Moberly made the track 
 surveys and then fell out with Young and left the service of the company. 
 Shortly afterwards that well-known railway magnate, Mr. James Hill, took 
 control of the road. 
 
 CHATS WJTH SIR JOHN: "YOU ARE A LOT OF SPECULATORS." 
 
 During his several visits to Ottawa, Mr. Moberly saw a great deal 
 of Sir John A. Macdonald, who was then in Opposition, dining with him 
 nearly every Sunday and discussing railway matters at length. "Perhaps 
 I cannot claim to have suggested to Sir John the idea of taking the build- 
 ing of the railway to and through British Columbia out of the hands of 
 the Dominion Government and forming a company to conduct the under- 
 taking," observed Mr. Moberly, "but I know that frequently in conversa- 
 tion with him I favored the idea and that we often discussed it. I told 
 him that I had no confidence that a government would ever carry it through. 
 Mackenzie was at that time trying to do so in driblets and by the use of 
 water stretches. I have spent hours again and again discussing this matter 
 with Sir John, and I always laid particular stress upon the certainty that 
 British Columbia would go out of Confederation if the railway did not 
 go through." In reply to a question, Mr. Moberly said that he knew 
 Premier Mackenzie well and, while in Ottawa, used to visit at his house 
 and play whist with him. "He was a very quiet man out of politics," 
 
 95 
 
observed the explorer. "I remember he said to me more than once, 
 'Moberly, you seem to be a lot of speculators in B. C I wonder what 
 he would have said if he had lived to see the B. C. of today and its 
 speculation," laughed the explorer. 
 
 AN AMOR DE COSMOS JOKE. 
 
 Mr. Moberly told me of one amusing dinner party at Sir John's 
 Ottawa residence at which he was present and at which a one-time singular 
 parliamentarian and premier of British Columbia figured — Mr. Amor de 
 Cosmos. "This was a dinner given by Sir John in honor of the members 
 from British Columbia," observed Mr. Moberly, "and among the mem- 
 bers present were Mr. Amor de Cosmos and the Hon. Edgar Dewdney — 
 Mr. Dewdney will remember the humor of the situation well, I expect. 
 As you know, Mr. de Cosmos, who was a striking looking man, changed 
 his name from Smith to Amor de Cosmos (or Lover of the World), by 
 which name he was ever afterwards known. TTie story of the change was 
 also known, and at that particular dinner the company included Captain 
 Hamilton, a brother of Lady Dufferin. Mr. de Cosmos had not put in 
 an appearance, and Captain Hamilton, who was interested in the story, 
 was inquiring all about it when de Cosmos came through a door at the 
 captain's back and at the other end of the room and took his seat quietly. 
 
 "Sir John was facing and saw him enter, but Captain Hamilton did 
 not and continued to chat about the change of name with a good deal of 
 hiimor, and to the general discomfiture of all who knew that the subject 
 of the conversation was now at the table." Mr. Moberly laughed heartily 
 at the recollection which this conjured up. "I can see Sir John now," 
 he said, with reminiscent gusto. "He was at the head of the table and 
 Captain Hamilton about two removes down the table, and Mr. de Cosmos 
 only a few removes further down on the same side. It was clearly impos- 
 sible to call the captain's attention to the fact by speech, and the diners 
 on either side the captain had not noticed the new arrival. So Sir John 
 slowly slid down his chair in an apparent effort to pick something up, until 
 his long nose was nearly level with the table, and, reaching under the table 
 past his left hand guest, he gave the captain a kick. TTie latter started, 
 Sir John slowly resumed his position and — Mr. Amor de Cosmos, who 
 must have been perfectly aware of the incident and its cause, never moved 
 a muscle of his face." 
 
 DISCRETION WINS THE DAY. 
 
 It was during these few years of which we have been speaking that 
 Donald A. Smith (later known as Lord Strathcona), then Chief Com- 
 missioner of the Hudson's Bay Company and resident on Silver Heights, 
 Winnipeg, ran for a seat in the Dominion Legislature and, after a very 
 exciting contest, was returned by a majority of nine, his opponent upon 
 that occasion being Governor Morris. Mr. Moberly, who knew the G. 
 O. M. of Canada well personally, and who had shortly before completed 
 the sewer contract to which reference has been made, threw himself into 
 the fight with great enthusiasm. The transcontinental railway was the 
 issue upon which the election was fought, and the North Ward of Win- 
 nipeg turned the day in favor of the future peer. In this ward were resi- 
 dent many of the men who had been working for Mr. Moberly during the 
 
 96 
 
carrying out of the sewer contract, and he spent much time canvassing there 
 for his candidate. This ward polled a solid 35 majority for Donald A. 
 Smith and enabled him to carry the day, though he was defeated the fol- 
 lowing year. There are certain moments when a man is sorely tempted to 
 throw discretion to the winds for the sake of a really good story, and here 
 is just such a moment. I have read over this rather bald paragraph and 
 have been sitting for five minutes wondering whether I should or should 
 not tell the real underlying story of that victory, as Mr. Moberly told it 
 to me. It would make fine reading. But, while not definitely pledging 
 me to secrecy, he does not desire it as there are people still living, etc. — 
 so discretion shall win the day this time. 
 
 BACK TO VANCOUVER. 
 
 Incidentally Mr. Moberly told me of pleasant times spent at Sir 
 Donald's residence at Ottawa, called "Bank Cottage," because it was 
 
 Lord Strathcona, the G 
 
 n h s old age. 
 
 situated near the Bank of Montreal, where open house appears to have 
 been the order of the day. Mr. Moberly acted as architect and con- 
 tractor during the years that followed in Winnipeg, and erected quite a 
 number of buildings there. Then came the Klondyke excitement and he 
 decided to return to his old love, Vancouver, which he did in the late 
 nineties. A dozen years or so earlier the first train had run through to 
 the coast, and for the first time Mr. Moberly now travelled through this 
 province over a railway towards the building of which he had done so 
 much preparatory work. Still keenly interested in railways, he went to 
 work later to get a charter from the Provincial Government for a proposed 
 railway to Alaska, the Vancouver-Northern-Yukon Railway. Through 
 die efforts of himself and others this charter was procured. The line was 
 never built, but the Pacific Great Eastern, which is now being constructed. 
 
 97 
 
is being built in the direction the other line would have gone in. He has 
 been associated with other undertakings, but, from a public standpoint, this 
 is the end of his story. 
 
 A HEARTY TRIBUTE. 
 
 Just here let me make a quotation from a substantial and beautifully 
 printed and illustrated and authoritative volume entitled "The Selkirk 
 Range, British Columbia" (by A. O. Wheeler. F.R.G.S.), which contains 
 many extracts from Mr. Moberly's official reports and which pays more 
 than one tribute to his work. "Mr. Moberly took no further part in great 
 public enterprises. The good work that he did and the prominent part 
 that he took in opening up and giving access to the resources of the interior 
 of British Columbia have never been fully recognized. To realize the 
 difficulties he encountered, the years of toil, hardship and privation he 
 endured, it is necessary to visit the wilderness of mountains, the trackless 
 forests and jungles and the dangerous waterways comprising the territory 
 over which he worked, and, even then, the strides of civilization have been 
 so great of recent years that it is difficult to picture these wilds as they 
 were when they were only inhabited by Indians and by wild beasts and 
 when the influx of the white man was a slow and difficult process." Inci- 
 dentally I may mention that there is chapter and verse for most of the 
 statements with reference to the explorations and surveys made by him in 
 preparation for the building of the railway, this being contained in the old 
 Crown Colony reports and the reports of the surveys for the railway made 
 by Mr. Moberly to Ottawa and published by the C. P. R. 
 
 ORIGIN OF TETE JAUNE CACHE. 
 
 The last camp that Mr. Moberly made when running the last 
 line in the surveys he made for the future C. P R., was at Tete Jaune 
 Cache in the Yellowhead. I asked him to tell me the origin of this curious 
 name. "Yellowhead," he replied, "was ithe nickname of a trappver who, 
 in the early days, was in the service of the North West Company, and 
 his headquarters were at what is now known as Tete Jaune Cache, the 
 French for Yellowhead. There he had the cache where lie cached his 
 beaver skins. It used to be called Leather Pass, for it was a great coun- 
 try for moose and these and other skins were collected at Jasper House, 
 an important trading post in the early days. Then, in the spring, they 
 would float these skins down to Fort Assiniboine." 
 
 B. C.'S LACK OF APPRECIATION: THE OLD TALE. 
 
 And so I might wander on, introducing little tid-bits of interesting old- 
 time information which the veteran has given me during our chats and 
 which I have made notes of and placed aside for use in this last chapter — 
 but one must stop somewhere. In taking leave of the octogenarian explorer 
 I would like (very lightly and without asking his permission, for he is now, 
 as he has been all his life, a man of sturdy indep)endence) to suggest, as 
 the writer of the volume from which I have just quoted also suggests, that 
 the services rendered by Walter Moberly to the Province of British Colum- 
 bia have never been fully realized or recognized. Mr. Moberly himself 
 would be the last person to desire one to touch here upon personal circum- 
 stances, but, when it is recalled that he spent all his own money upon the first 
 
 98 
 
voluntary explorations in this province, that he lost heavily, through no 
 fault of his own, over his Cariboo Road undertaking, which has been of 
 such importance to the province, that he emerged from his C. P. R. explora- 
 tions and surveys a comparatively poor man — all public works of inesti- 
 mable value to British Columbia — and that he is now in very poor circum- 
 stances, though he has admiring friends, some of them prominent in the 
 public life of the city and province, who would not see him want, it reflects 
 but poorly upKjn the generosity of the province which owes him so much, 
 and which has enabled so many infinitely less deserving men to acquire 
 wealth. It is, alas, too familiar a tale in the world's history. 
 
 A NOTE OF TRIUMPH. 
 
 But let the story of the pathfinder's life close upon a different note. 
 For one concluding moment let us shut our eyes and try to visualize what 
 the forging of this greatest railway of the world, in order that it might 
 connect ocean with ocean, has meant to British Columbia; let us picture 
 in our mind's eye the "sea of mountains," of which we have talked so much, 
 untouched by the sophisticated magic of those two parallel bands of steel; 
 let us think of the hardship and courage and, often, of the sacrifice that 
 went to the praparing of the way and the building of the road ; and then 
 let us read this wonderfully expressive poem by the Mohawk poetess, 
 Pauline Johnson, who pitched her tent and sang all her later songs among 
 us, entitled "Prairie Greyhoimds" : 
 
 "C. P. R. 'NO. I,' WESTBOUND." 
 
 "I swing to the sunset lands — 
 The world of prairie, the world of plain. 
 The world of promise and hope and gain. 
 The world of gold and the world of grain. 
 And the world of the willing hand. 
 
 "I carry the brave and bold — 
 The one who works for the nation's bread. 
 The one whose past is a thing that's dead. 
 The one who battles and beats ahead. 
 And the one who goes for gold. 
 
 "I swing to the 'Land to Be,' 
 I am the power that laid its floors, 
 I am the guide to its Western stores, 
 I am the key to its golden doors. 
 That open alone to me. 
 
 "C. P R. 'NO. V EASTBOUND." 
 
 "I swing to the land of morn; 
 The grey old east with its grey old seas. 
 The land of leisure, the land of ease. 
 The land of flowers and fruits and trees. 
 And the place where we were born. 
 
 99 
 
"Freighted with wealth I come; 
 For he who many a moon has spent 
 Far out west on adventure bent. 
 With well-worn pick and folded tent. 
 Is bringing his bullion home. 
 
 "I never will be renowned. 
 As my twin that swings to the western marts, 
 For I am she of the humbler parts. 
 But I am the joy of the waiting hearts; 
 For I am the Homeward-bound." 
 
 30E 
 
 100 
 
BUILDING AN HISTORIC RAILWAY. 
 
 ■ HE life story of Mr. Henry J. Cambie, explorer and railway 
 builder, I have recorded in another place and hope soon to 
 publish, together with other pioneer stories, in book form. 
 But, in order that the tale of the preparations and building 
 of the Canadian Pacific Railway may be completely told, 
 he has kindly allowed me to add here the closing portion of 
 his story. Mr. Cambie is an Irishman — a taste of die brogue 
 „ still clings to him and he cannot lose his Irish sense of humor. 
 
 He is very nearly eighty years of age, and, despite all that he has gone 
 through, he is still, like Mr. Dewdney, fresh-complexioned and hale. Inci- 
 
 Henry J, Cambie, present day. 
 
 dentally he is one of the select band of Vancouver's most highly esteemed 
 citizens and, upon a recent occasion, at the annual banquet of the Van- 
 couver Pioneers' Association, Mr. Cambie, Mr. Moberly and Mr. Abbott, 
 another notable British Columbian to whom the C. P. R. owes much and 
 whose name is commemorated in the city and province in various ways, sat 
 together at the head of the table — a striking white-haired triumvirate. 
 Mr. Cambie, a man who has done things which only a minority of men 
 out here have attempted; who, forty years ago, was exploring through hun- 
 dreds of miles of territory where a white man had never trod; who, by 
 
 101 
 
general consent, is admitted to be the Grand Old Man of railway con- 
 struction work in this province, is almost irritatingly modest — from the 
 interviewer's standpoint, at any rate. "Please make it very clear that, 
 though I explored and surveyed and planned much of the course of the 
 Canadian Pacific Railway through a large portion of this prvoince, the 
 only part that was built under my direct supervision was that running 
 through the canyons of the Fraser," he said. The "only" part! Those 
 of you — that means nearly all of you — -who know those rugged Fraser 
 canyons with their towering masses of rampart-like rock, through which, 
 and cut into which, the metals wind their sinuous way, alternately far 
 above or close beside the turbulent Fraser as it rushes to the Pacific, will 
 realize that this part of the work was the piece de resistance in driving the 
 line through the province. 
 
 Then again, what are you to do with a man who tells you, modestly 
 enough, when talking to you privately and not for publication, a story 
 of daring and determination in connection with planning the line round a 
 certain bluff at Kamloops, a story well worthy of record, and who, when 
 you come to ask him later for further details for publication, refuses them 
 point blank, and, what is more, will not have the incident recorded. And 
 all, forsooth, because he happens to be the principal actor in that drama. 
 It is enough to make an nterviewer who has any respect for himself tear 
 his hair. "I think now it is time that we arrived at the driving of the 
 last spike by Lord Strathcona," observed Mr. Cambie upon quite a num- 
 ber of occasions while I was questioning him for details of the trials and 
 tribulations which the engineers had to endure in the course of those 
 strenuous years of building- — all by hand, be it remembered — the C. P. R. 
 through British Columbia. I put off the arrival at that spike as long 
 as possible. 
 
 SPLENDID STAFF OF ENGINEERS. 
 
 "The Hon. Edgar. Dewdney," Mr. Cambie observed in the course 
 of one of our talks, "had much influence with the Dominion Government 
 and with Lord Dufferin, and this influence showed itself very soon, for 
 immediately after Lord Dufferin had returned to Ottawa, I had a telegram 
 from the premier, Mr. Mackenzie — ^who was also Minister of Railways — 
 to survey the Fraser River route. I think I still have that telegram. I was 
 to survey it from Yellowhead Pass to Port Moody. A start was made 
 that year and the work was completed the following year. Upon this 
 survey we had the finest staff of engineers that ever worked in this country, 
 and I would like to give the names of a few of them: Mr. H. P. Bell, 
 lately connected with the Ottawa Ship Canal; Mr. C. E. Perry, lately 
 of the National Transcontinental Railway to the south of James Bay ; Mr. 
 George H. Keefer, lately resident engineer to the department of public 
 works at New Westminster; Mr. W. T. Jennings, of late years prominent 
 upon many public works in Ontario and elsewhere; Mr. Joseph Hunter, 
 late engineer for Mr. James Dunsmuir, and still with the Canadian Col- 
 lieries; Mr. Brunei and Mr. Gamsby. All these, except Mr. Hunter and 
 myself, have passed away during the last five years. I was, I think, the 
 oldest of the crowd. 
 
 MANY GRIZZLIES. 
 
 "The information gathered by this survey practically decided the 
 Fraser River route as the one to be adopted. The then government of 
 
 102 
 
Canada, however, having come into pov^er in 1878 and established a 
 national policy, was not in a position to proceed with the construction of 
 a transcontinental railway at once. Accordingly, in order to gain further 
 information with regard to the country and possible routes, I was sent 
 to explore the line by the Skeena valley and the Peace and Pine rivers east 
 9f the Rockies. For that purpose I selected Port Simpson as the proper 
 terminus for such a line, and in company with Dr. G. M. Dawson re- 
 presenting the Geological Survey"; Mr. Henry McLeod. an engineer 
 of high standmg who still lives in Ottawa, and Dr. G. M. Gordon, the 
 principal of Queen's University, went in canoes up the Skeena River, 
 then by way of Babene and Stewart Lakes to Fort McLeod, where we 
 patched up an old boat which had been abandoned by the Hudson's 
 Bay Company, and drifted down the Parsnip and Peace to the Rocky 
 
 
 Hon. Ed 
 
 &r, explorer, administrator. 
 
 Mountain Canyon, a distance of about 150 miles. There we met a 
 family of Indians hunting and they helped us to portage round the canyon 
 to the Hudson's Bay post known as Hudson's Hope, where we made 
 a raft and drifted another I 30 miles to Fort Dunvegan. The last part 
 of the trip was in the beginning of August. TTie berries on the southern 
 slopes of the hills were beginning to ripen and the number of bears we 
 saw — grizzlies and others — surpassed anything I had ever known or heard 
 of. Often we would see on the banks of the river three or four bears 
 together. However, we had no time for hunting- and to have gone ashore 
 with a raft would have lost half a day. We did get one or two black 
 bears, but we were not armed to attack grizzlies. 
 
 103 
 
Here .followed an attractive account of Mr. Cambie's interesting 
 and adventurous exploration, but that must be left for another place as 
 this closing chapter is to deal with the actual construction of the great 
 railway through the canyons of the Fraser. 
 
 TRIBUTE TO A GREAT ENGINEER. 
 
 "I should like to pay a tribute first to some of the fine body of 
 engmeers who were associated with me on the work of construction in the 
 same way as I mentioned just now those with me on the surveys — and first 
 and foremost I should mention the chief engineer, Mr. (afterwards Sir 
 Sandford) Fleming, who had directed the surveys for the transcontinental 
 railway from its inception — and was the adviser of the government of 
 Canada in the selection of the route via the Yellow Head Pass. And it 
 might not be amiss here to state some of the salient reasons for so doing. 
 
 "In the first place that is the lowest pass through the Rocky Moun- 
 tains in British Columbia — south of the Peace River. In the second place 
 it is the only one from which the Pacific Ocean can be reached without 
 any adverse grades — that is, descending gradually all the way to the sea, 
 via the Fraser River; or by a line via the Thompson River, with one rise 
 of 300 feet over Albreda Summit — so that it had the best grades. In the 
 third place it was in what was called the fertile belt, all the way from 
 Winnipeg to Edmonton, and the country further to the south was then con- 
 sidered to be barren or nearly so. And in the fourth place it was much 
 farther from the American boundary than the other passes, and there would 
 be less difficulty in borrowing money for its construction as a military road, 
 than had it been near the boundary, as in the cases of the Crow's Nest 
 or Kicking Horse passes. 
 
 "Sir Sandford had taken an interest in my welfare since my boyhood 
 and I cannot say how much I regretted his retirement. He was a states- 
 man among engineers, with a broad outlook, and was even then advocating 
 a Pacific cable from Canada to Australia as a link with which to bind 
 the Empire together. The cable was not laid for twenty years later, but, 
 in the meantime, he kept it continuously before the public. 
 
 NOTABLE GROUP OF ENGINEERS. 
 
 In the early spring of I 380 contracts were awarded to Mr. Andrew 
 Onderdonk for the line from Emory's Bar to Kamloops Lake and, later, 
 from Port Moody to Emory's. Upon some of these sections other people 
 had tendered lower than Mr. Onderdonk, but, with the consent of the 
 government, he took over their , contracts. Im.mediately after the route 
 via the Thompson and Fraser rivers to Port Moody had been finally 
 selected, and the work placed under contract. Sir Seuidford Fleming retired 
 from the position of chief engineer and was succeeded by Mr. Schreiber, 
 who, though over 80 years, is still actively engaged on the line of the 
 G. T. P. and is probably the oldest engineer in Canada still in harness. 
 
 During the construction Mr. Marcus Smith had charge of the work 
 from Port Moody to Emory's Bar, I had charge from Emory's Bar to 
 Boston Bar, Mr. George H. Keefer had charge from Boston Bar to 
 Lytton, Mr. Henry McLeod from Lytton to a point some miles beyond 
 Spence's Bridge and Mr. L. G. Hamlin from that point to Kamloops Lake. 
 Sir Joseph Trutch, who had previously been governor of British Columbia, 
 
 104 
 
came out as government agent and counsel to the engineers in many busi- 
 ness matters. Mr. Marcus Smith died many years ago; Mr. Keefer died 
 during the past year; Mr. Hamlin was frozen to death in the Klondyke, 
 and Sir Joseph Trutch passed away in England a few years ago. Only 
 Mr. McLeod and myself are now living. 
 
 THE JUDGE AND DAVE MCBETH. 
 
 "Mr. Onderdonk, the contractor, was not quite thirty years of age, 
 but very clever, a good organizer, possessed of a great deal of tact and 
 backed by unlimited capital in the shape of Mr. D. O. Mills, a well- 
 known millionaire. He had as his engineer Mr. E. G. Tilton, who, I 
 believe, is at present engineer of a road from Los Angeles to Utah. At 
 the outset we were asked by the government to reduce the cost of the 
 work as much as possible and Mr. White, my principal assistant, who is 
 now chief of the Canadian Northern Pacific, and I, spent many anxious 
 hours trying to do so." (Mr. White, by the way, was one of the 
 veteran guests of honor at the recent Vancouver Pioneers' banquet to which 
 reference has been made.) "No such mountain work had ever been 
 attempted in Canada before, and we were confronted by new problems al- 
 most every day. One of our great troubles was the old wagon road, 
 which ran for miles alongside the railway and which had to be kept open, 
 as it was the only means of access to the upper country and continued 
 so until the railway took its place. As a maitter of fact, if you were to 
 block the railway above Yale even now there would be no other means 
 of access to the interior. The difficulty of keeping this road open can only 
 be appreciated by people who have seen prairie schooners. These usually 
 consisted of two wagons, coupled together and drawn by nine yoke of 
 oxen or teams of mules, the whole well over 100 feet long. It will be 
 gathered what these meant going round curves. I remember upon one 
 occasion near old Spuzzum suspension bridge that a blast had been fired, 
 filling all the road. A fine old fellow named Dave McBeth, who was 
 well known in B. C. and who died in Vancouver only the other day, was 
 foreman. He got the slide partly cleared away, when a coach came along 
 driven by that notable whip, Steve Tingley. Among the loose stuff, a 
 rock, of which Dave was unaware, had been left, and the coach, in 
 which was Judge McCreight — who is still living — upset. The judge was 
 irritated and told Dave, much to the amusement of the other passengers, 
 that if he was ever brought before him he would have no compunction 
 in condemning him to be hanged for his carelessness in allowing such an 
 accident to happen." 
 
 CONVICTED BY HIS SOCKS. 
 
 Mr. Cambie has a habit of pulling up every now and again as he 
 narrates a humorous reminiscence, "not for publication." Of course these 
 are some of the best stories. Here is an ancedote which I rescued. ' It 
 was on May 24, 1 880 — Victoria Day — that we had sports in Yale, and 
 a nephew of mine went to a room where we had our surplus baggage stored 
 to get a pair of running shoes. He found that his valise had disappeared 
 and, upon further search, it was discovered that several other valises had 
 gone— among them a trunk of Mr. McLeod's clothes. Suspicion fell 
 upon the cook of the camp, who had been discharged the day before. 
 So a constable was sent up the road in search of him. The first thing 
 
 105 
 
the constable saw when he had gone some distance was an Indian riding 
 up Jackass Mountain and wearing McLeod's tail coat. The Indian 
 told the constable, in Chinook, that he had just purchased the coat and 
 that it fitted him very well. He was also wearing Mr. McLeod's plug 
 hat, which had been stored away. The thief was caught, brought back 
 to Yale and tried before Judge Crease. Mr. McLeod, while in the witness 
 box, was asked to identify the clothes and, almost with tears in his eyes, 
 called the judge's attention to the prisoner's feet. The prisoner was wear- 
 ing a pair of red silk socks which, Mr. McLeod explained, had taken 
 his wife half a year of evenings to knit for his evening wear. These 
 socks convicted the cook." 
 
 Glimpse of Vancouver harbor and shipping. 
 
 "The same day I met the bishop and Mrs. Sillitoe," added Mr. 
 Cambie, "who had just arrived in British Columbia and were on one 
 of their pioneering trips. In reading Mrs. Sillitoe's recollections in this 
 series of stories, while I was much interested, I could not help regretting 
 that she did not tell you more of her personal adventures, as her experiences 
 would certainly rank ahead of those of most of our pioneer women. I am 
 afraid that her modesty stood in her way. She was very popular wherever 
 she went, whether it was in the city, on the trail or in the mining camp, 
 and she, like her husband, was very musical and had a particularly good 
 voice." 
 
 TRANSPORTATION DIFFICULTIES: HAND WORK. 
 
 And now we come to the actual construction of the line. "Mr. 
 Onderdonk had a lot of very fine superintendents," observed Mr. Cambie, 
 
 106 
 
"who pushed the work along as fast as it was possible to do. Notwith- 
 standing this, the great amount of tunnelling and rock cutting and the 
 difficulty of getting what we wanted into the work caused the progress 
 to be very slow, so that the track was not laid up to the Cisco cantilever 
 bridge until four years had elapsed. Teaming on the wagon road was the 
 only way in which heavy stuff could be brought to the scene of operations in 
 many parts, and, therefore, most of the work which is now done by steam 
 shovels and power drills, had to be done by hand. From Savona to 
 Sicamus the line ran along Kamloops Lake, Thompson River and Shuswap 
 Lakes, so that it could be reached by steamers at almost any point and 
 this part of the work progressed much more rapidly than the other. The 
 rails came by ship to Port Moody and supplied all the line up to Craig- 
 hillachie, and, in fact, we could have got farther if we had had more 
 rails on this Pacific side. The line from Winnipeg westward to Craig- 
 hillachie had all been constructed and the track laid with Winnipeg as 
 the base." (It is worthy of note that only a Scotchman — or possibly 
 an Irishman — can correctly pronounce this jaw-breaking name of Craig — 
 etc. — etc.) "Craighillachie is 340 miles from Port Moody and is in 
 Eagle Pass (sixteen miles from Sicamous). Eagle Pass had been dis- 
 covered by Mr. Walter Moberly when he was trying to locate a road to 
 communicate with the gold mines in eastern Kootenay. At Craighillachie 
 we met the track which had been laid from Winnipeg through to that 
 point and during the construction we really knew very little about what 
 they were doing on that side, because there was no direct mode of com- 
 munication between us. Our letters, if we had written them, would have 
 gone round by San Francisco to St. Paul and then back." 
 
 A STRANGE CROWD. 
 
 I asked Mr. Cambie to give me some idea of the class of labor used 
 on the work during construction, and he replied that, in the main, a much 
 higher type of workman was engaged then than is the case now on such 
 work. "Outside the Chinese there were very few ■ foreigners in the coun- 
 try," he explained, "and most of the men on the construction work were 
 English-speaking, many of them Englishmen. I was often surprised at the 
 great number among them who were well informed men who had drifted 
 through most parts of the world, many of them highly educated. They 
 were good workmen, too. Onderdonk supplied excellent camps and good 
 sleeping quarters and the food in his camps was of really good quality and 
 well served. I often dropped in and had a meal in the camps. The wages 
 were $2 and upwards per day. At the start, however, the labor was 
 not satisfactory. In the spring of 1882 Mr. Oderdonk found that the 
 white labor that he had got from San Francisco — the only source of 
 supply at the moment — consisted for the most part of clerks out of em- 
 ployment, broken-down bartenders and others of that ilk, men who had 
 never handled a shovel before and who often appeared on the scene attired 
 in fashionable garments in a rather tattered state, who might even be seen 
 in the cuttings with patent leather shoes, much the worse for wear and 
 trousers sprung over the foot. 
 
 CHINESE VANGUARD ARRIVES IN B. C. 
 
 "So he determined to import a lot of Chinamen — the first large 
 number of Chinese coolies to be imported into this country at one time — 
 
 107 
 
and he got two ship loads, 1 ,000 men in each. They came in very bad 
 weather and had to be kept below hatches most of the way, so, as soon 
 as they got upon the work and began to take violent exercise, they develop- 
 ed scurvy and were decimated, fully one-tenth of their number dying. 
 Being fatalists, as soon as a man was stricken with scurvy the others would 
 not wait upon him or even give him a drink, and the government agent 
 at Yale had great difficulty in getting them buried when they died. In 
 fact many of their bodies were so lightly covered with a few rocks and a 
 little earth that one became unpleasantly aware of the fact while walking 
 along the line." 
 
 "By the way, it may be interesting to mention that Yale at this time 
 attracted much attention in difFerent parts of Canada. It was a curiosity 
 in the matter of vice flaunting itself before the public along the main 
 streets and I recollect quite a number of articles being written in the papers 
 about this unfortunate feature of Yale life." 
 
 GALAXY OF CONTRACTORS "THE BISHOP." 
 
 Mr. Gambie's own particular section of the construction work by the 
 Government was completed in the early spring of I 884, when he entered the 
 service of the railway company and proceeded to Kamloops to take charge 
 of the work for the company, whose line from the east was then being built 
 from Field westward. He took charge from Savona to Shuswap Lake, 
 and Major Rogers from that point to Craighillachie. On the work con- 
 structed for the company to the east of Savanah many of the superintend- 
 ents and contractors were the same who had been at work on what were 
 called the government sections.. "I should have stated that Mr. Tilton 
 only remained about two years and after he had left Mr. Onderdonk 
 got out Mr. M. J. Haney as manager and superintendent of construc- 
 tion," interpolated Mr. Cambie. "Mr. Haney, who resides in Toron- 
 to, has since become a well-known contractor and very wealthy man. 
 Then we had, a contractors under Mr. Onderdonk, Mr. A. G. Fer- 
 guson, who built a large number of the tunnels, and who, assisted by 
 Mr. Dean, our well-known yachtsman in Vancouver, had the best 
 organized work 1 think I ever saw; Mr. James Leamy, who died 
 about a year ago, and who was for many years timber agent for the 
 Dominion Government with reference to the railway belts in B. C. ; Mr. J. 
 B. Harrison, for years afterwards a member of the City Council of Vic- 
 toria, who died many years ago; Captain Troup, now superintendent of 
 the C. P. R. coast steamships; Mr. Hugh Keefer, who is still with us in 
 the quarry business ; Mr. E. Choate, who framed all the bridges, and Mr. 
 p. MacGilliveray, who erected them and who afterwards became a prom- 
 inent contractor in this province, and also in Ontario, where he died — his 
 family are still with us in Vancouver; Mr. George Monroe, who still lives 
 in the city, and Mr. A. Macdonald, the man who laid the track and bal- 
 lasted it, and who was overtaken by a train and killed a few years ago 
 while crossing a bridge on a velocipede. 
 
 "Major Rogers, whom I spoke of just now as having charge to the 
 east of my work, was an original character. He was a man of wonderful 
 energy, and Rogers Pass, the pass through which the line was afterwards 
 built through the Selkirks, bears his name. His powers of profanity were 
 very great and, in consequence, he went by the cognomen of 'The Bishop.* 
 
 108 
 
PERILOUS PROCEEDINGS: A TRAGIC END. 
 
 In response to some pressure as to the difficulties of laying out the 
 work — apart altogether from the difficulties of construction — Mr. Cambie 
 admitted that these were great. He instanced particularly the Cherry 
 Creek bluffs on Kamloops Lake. "In fact quite a stretch of it was laid 
 out by a very small portion of our engineering staff," he observed, "con- 
 sistmg of two sailors, who sprung ropes from rock to rock or from tree to 
 
 Driving of last spike of Canadian Pacific Railway by Sir Donald Smith 
 (afterwards Lord Strathcona) at Cralgellachle, British Columbia, in 1885. Sir 
 Sandford Fleming and Sir William Van IHorne are seen on the right of Lord 
 Strathcona, and Mr. Cambie, bearded, Is upon his left. 
 
 tree, and a few engineers, who, steadying themselves with these ropes, went 
 along in their bare feet to lay out the work, with a precipice, and then 
 Kamloops Lake of unknown depth, immediately below them. Yes, I was 
 one of those engineers. The only one of our engineering staff who came to 
 grief was Mr. Melchoir Eberts, who was killed close by the old Alexandra 
 suspension bridge, in January, 1881. He was hurrying to get his work 
 in shape in order to go away for a month's leave, and was climbing over 
 a bluff, which was then covered with snow and crusted with ice. The 
 poor fellow slipped, went head first down a steep slope until he struck the 
 grade and brought up against a stump overhanging the Fraser River. 
 When found a little while afterwards he had a large number of wounds 
 about his head, any one of which would have proved fatal." 
 
 109 
 
GRASSHOPPER TRESTLE: GREAT LOSS OF LIFE. 
 
 An example which Mr. Cambie instanced of the difficulties which 
 had to be faced was this one: "We had to increase the curvature beyond 
 anything we had ever seen up to that time on a main line of railway, and, 
 in order to get round the face of some of the bluffs, we had to construct 
 what we called grasshopper trestles, that is trestles with long posts on the 
 outside, standing in steps cut in' the rock, and on the other side a very short 
 post, if any, because very often we had half a roadbed. These things 
 have since been done away with and their places taken by retaining walls." 
 
 Questioned as to loss of life generally during the construction work, 
 Mr. Cambie replied: "There was very heavy loss of life, more especially 
 upon the construction work through the canyons of the praser, where all 
 the work was in rock and where there was great difficulty in getting good 
 cover when shots were fired. A great many men, too, were drowned, but 
 I have no idea how many men lost their lives, though I believe the Pro- 
 vincial Government kept reptorts." 
 
 LORD STRATHCONA DRIVES LAST SPIKE. 
 
 "Early in November, 1885, the track which had been laid from 
 the east met that which had been laid from the west. And there gath- 
 ered at Craigillachie to witness the connection of the track and the com- 
 pletion of the transcontinental railway Sir Donald A. Smith (afterwards 
 Lord Strathcona), vice-president of the railway; Mr. van Home (after- 
 wards Sir William), general manager; Mr. Sandford Fleming (afterwards 
 Sir Sandford) and Mr. Harris of Boston, directors, with Mr. Harry Abbott 
 (aftei-wards general superintendent of the Pacific Division). Mr. James 
 Ross, manager of the construction' of the line through the Rockies and 
 Selkirks, with many of his associates, was also present, but they were 
 strangers to me. Those who had taken part in the construction from the 
 Pacific Coast eastward were represented by Mr. Haney, manager of con- 
 struction for Mr. Onderdonk, with Mr. Marcus Smith, Major Rogers 
 and myself representing fhe engineering staff. 
 
 "Lord Strathcona drove the spike, while Major Rogers, with a bar, 
 held up the tie in which it was driven. The party gathered round to see 
 what was done, and were photographed. A funny incident occurred last 
 year in connection with this picture. The 'Montreal Star' published a print 
 of the group, giving the names of the more prominent members of the party, 
 with a special arrow pointing to my head as that of Lord Mountstephen, 
 the president of the road. They evidently supposed that, as president of 
 the road, he should be there, but he happened at that time to be in England. 
 Immediately after the spike had been driven the directors' train started for 
 Port Moody, and the engine which hauled us was driven by Bob Mee — 
 he died this year — ^who hauled a passenger train either in or out of Van- 
 couver every day for many years." 
 
 ALMOST MIRACULOUS ESCAPE. 
 
 While recording incidents of the construction work, I omitted one 
 incident which savors of the miraculous. "Mr. W. Evans, who ran 
 an engine for Mr. Onderdonk, and who has been for years inspecting 
 engine driver from Vancouver to Revelstoke, was, in the autumn of 1884. 
 going east with a long train. Three or four miles beyond Keefers, and 
 
 no 
 
just opposite Jackass Mountain, he met a slide of rock on the track. The 
 engine ran up on to it, turned partly round and dropp)ed about forty feet 
 into a pile of rock debris — ^with which it slid about 200 feet to the 
 Fraser River. The extraordinary feature of the incident is that no one 
 was seriously hurt, and the engine was quite uninjured — not even a head- 
 light broken — though one could hardly expect a cat to get down there 
 alive. The engine was hauled up and repaired, and started out again in 
 three weeks' time, with Evans again in charge, and a short distance above 
 Ashcroft went through a trestle, when he again escaped unhurt, though 
 two men with him were killed. So far as I know, Evans has not met with 
 an accident since. I have a photograph of the first of these two incidents, 
 showing the engine with its cowcatcher in the river." 
 
 "Sometime in 1 885 the managers of the C. P. R. made arrange- 
 
 North Vancouver today; forest ten years ago. ', 
 
 ments with the local government and with the private owners of lots round 
 Coal "Harbor, in what is now Vancouver, for certain grants of land at 
 this point as an inducement for them to extend their line from Port Moody 
 to this point. At the same time they arranged for a subsidy for a branch 
 line to New Westminster, and in October, 1885, I came down from 
 Kamloops with two survey parties to locate these lines. For a long while 
 Port Moody remained the terminus and the line to Vancouver was a 
 branch line." 
 
 PRINCESS AND SPLENDID TREE. 
 
 Feeling that a few rambling recollections (coming from so reliable a 
 source)' of Vancouver's early days would constitute a fitting termination 
 to this story, I pressed the explorer and railway builder for them. "I will 
 just run off a few memories of Vancouver in my own way, then," he 
 
 III 
 
replied, "and you need not ask me any questions, because, if you do, it 
 will set me off upon so many side tracks of memory, as I recollect incidents 
 humorous and serious, of the old days and old-timers, that we shall cer- 
 tainly not finish this week, and I think a long-suffering public have already 
 had more than enough of my reminiscences. Such memories as I may 
 give you today can only interest old-timers here, as there will be nothing 
 of the exciting or strenuous about them to appeal to a larger public." 
 
 "I found this a very different place from what it had been in 1 874. 
 Quite a little village had sprung up at the corner of Carrall and Water 
 streets. The Sunnyside Hotel at that point was a comfortable establish- 
 
 Meetlng of Vancouver City Council after the great fire wiiicii practically 
 obliterated the city in 1886. 
 
 ment, run by Mr. Harry Hemlow, who is still here. 'Gassy Jack's' old 
 place stood in the middle of Carrall street. The owners of the Hastings 
 Mill had refused to permit him to sell liquor on their property, so he had 
 gone just outside it, the boundary line being the centre of Carrall street. 
 Mr. Joe Manion had an hotel on Water street a few doors from Carrall. 
 There was a good road to Westminster, via Hastings, and also a good 
 road via Mount Pleasant. A syndicate of Victoria gentlemen, with whom 
 was associated Messrs. Oppenheimer Brothers, then of Vale and Victoria, 
 had purchased all the holdings of the Hastings Mill Company, iind was 
 clearing that portion of it between Carrall street and Gore avenue. The 
 timber was slashed, but the trees were lying on the ground, and this made 
 
 112 
 
it very difficult to get about, except actually on the roads. In this clearing 
 one magnificent tree stood on the' bank where the approach to the Grand 
 Trunk Pacific wharf is at the present time. Some of the loggers here had, 
 in 1 882, asked the Princess Louise to see it felled. She could not come 
 at the time and requested them to preserve the tree for her sake. Sir 
 William van Home afterwards gave it into my charge and it was cut 
 down some years afterwards during my absence, as being a menace to the 
 people doing business round that part. The roots had been burned by the 
 fire. Forest trees are never safe when left for any length of time standing 
 by themselves. 
 
 MR. HAMILTON NAMES THE STREETS. 
 
 "By the direction of our managers, in December, '88, I got tenders 
 for clearing a portion of the townsite. TTiey expected me to get it done 
 for a little more than they were in the habit of paying in the east, probably 
 $15 or $20 per acre. They were taken aback very much at the prices 
 asked and did not allow me to proceed with the clearing until Mr. Harry 
 Abbott, who superceded me as far as the company's work was concerned, 
 appeared on the scene. I located the line from Port Moody here and as 
 far west along the shore of English Bay as the western boundary of lot 
 526. That is about half a mile beyond the present terminus of the Kit- 
 silano tram line. Later a special Act of Parliament was passed making 
 Coal Harbor the terminus of the C. P. R. line. The clearing of the 
 townsite was nearly all done by Mr. D. B. Charleson, as superintendent 
 for the C. P. R. 
 
 "Upon arrival here after the driving of the last spike, I found my 
 old friend Mr. R. H. Alexander in charge of Hastings Mill, and also 
 dispensing justice to the unruly. Mr. Jonathan Miller was government 
 agent, constable and gaoler. He was afterwards postmaster of this city 
 for many years. Mr. L. A. Hamilton was here as agent for the C. P- R., 
 and he it was who had the laying out of the townsite and the naming of 
 the streets. He called the first street Abbott, after the general superinten- 
 dent ; the second street. Cambie, after your humble servant; the third 
 street, Hamilton, after himself, and then he had to fall back upon such 
 unimportant persons as lieutenant-governors, members of the legislature, 
 and so on. Homer was named after the member for the district. Richards 
 after the hon. A. N. Richards, who had been lieutenant-governor of the 
 province shortly before; Seymour after the last lieutenant-governor of the 
 mainland before the mainland and Vancouver Island were made one prov- 
 ince. I do not know how Hastings came to be named — that was before 
 my time. Granville street was named after the old Granville townsite. 
 Lord Granville was, I believe, a member of the British Government at 
 the time of the naming. Smythe, Robson and Davie were all premiers of 
 B. C, and Nelson was a lieutenant-governor. 
 
 PROMINENT OLD-TIME OFFICIALS. 
 
 "I also found here at that time looking out for desirable lots, Mr. 
 Innes and Mr. Graveley, who became partners shortly afterwards. Also 
 Dr. Lefevre and Mr. R. G. Tatlow, the latter afterwards finance minister 
 in the McBride administration. Also our genial fellow citizen, Mr. C. 
 Gardner-Johnson. Then there was Mr. A. G. Fergusson, who had done 
 so well with his tunnelling for the main line of the railway that he was 
 
 114 
 
able to put up the first buildings of any pretensions in what is now the City 
 of Vancouver. One of these was a fine building at the south-east corner 
 of Carrall and Powell streets, which W2is burned down in the fire, and 
 "another was a store building at the corner of Cordova and Carrall, known 
 as the Boulder saloon. This was erected after the fire. 
 
 "The prominent officials when the i-oad was opened in 1 886 were 
 Mr. W. P. Salsbury, local treasurer, who is still with us; Mr. D. E. 
 Brown, general freight and passenger agent, and now of Brown & Mac- 
 aulay, and his assistants, Mr. George McL. Brown, now general agent 
 for the C. P. R. in Europe, with offices in London, and Mr. H. Connon; 
 Mr. A. J. Dana, who has been purchasing agent ever since; Mr. L. R. 
 
 J. W. Home's real estate office after the Vancouver fire. 
 
 Johnson, master mechanic; Mr. R. Marpole, who had the general direction 
 of the Pacific Division under Mr. Harry Abbott, and who generally 
 resided in Kamloops, and myself, engineer of the Pacific Division. 
 
 INTO THE WILDS OF GEORGIA STREET. 
 
 "After the line was opened to Vancouver — in May, 1887 — the 
 Bank of B. G. opened an office here with Mr. J. C. Keith as manager 
 and Mr R. G. Harvey, now of Loewen & Harvey, as his assistant. This 
 was Vancouver's pioneer bank. I lived for upwards of a year at Black's 
 
 115 
 
Hotel, Hastings, but in May, 1887, much to the amusement of my friends, 
 I went out into the country and purchased two lots at the corner of Georgia 
 and Thurlow streets. 1 could not, however, induce the city to clear a 
 track so that I could reach that property until near the end of that year 
 when I at once started building and moved out there in 1 888. I had 
 to lay the first sidewalk on Georgia at my own expense, as the city would 
 not do it, and when I got the telephone there the company dunned me for 
 more than a year to pay for the poles from Granville street down to my 
 place, as they told me that no one else in that generation would ever go 
 to live west of Granville street. 
 
 "My first office in town was in a little two-storey building on the 
 east side of Granville street, where the northernmost section of the Hudson's 
 Bay Company's store now stands. This little house belonged .to a con- 
 tractor, Mr. H. A. Bell, and I think I am safe in saying that it was then 
 almost the only house on Granville street south of Hastings. When 
 I looked out of my windows my view was limited to the foundations of 
 the C. P. R. Vancouver Hotel, and to the frame of my own house in 
 the wilds. 
 
 VANCOUVER FIRE RATHER EXAGGERATED. 
 
 "The fire which occurred in 1 886 wiped out all the little town then 
 existing, and it was a very terrible fire, but I think it has been somewhat 
 exaggerated, as there were i then not a dozen buildings of any size in the 
 town. Such as they were, however, they were wiped out. I was in 
 Kamloops with my family at the time. 
 
 "On May 24, 1887, we had horse racing on Granville street, which 
 had just been cleared, and the stumps tJiken out from Georgia to Pacific 
 street. And that reminds me that there was one other house south of 
 Hastings on Granville, a very rude sort of building in which Mr. Charleson 
 boarded the promiscuous gang of men who were clearing the townsite. 
 Downstairs was an eating room, and upstairs at night the men lay like sar- 
 dines round the walls. This building is still standing with a pretentious brick 
 front, and is, I think, the next building to the north of the Cecil Hotel. 
 There are still standing between Davie and Pacific streets a number of 
 wooden houses which were brought bodily from Yale when the C. P- R. 
 Company moved their shops from Yale to Vancouver the first year that 
 they operated to this city, they having previously used the machine shops 
 erected by Mr. Onderdonk for his construction work. TTiese houses were 
 for years — and may be yet — known as Yale Town. 
 
 CAPTAIN bole's CANNON. 
 
 "At the same time that we were building a branch from Port Moody 
 here we were constructing one into New Westminster. Mr. John Hendry 
 was then Mayor of that city, and afforded us every facility in his power, 
 as also did his successor, Mr. Dickinson. Early in 1886, as mayor, 
 Mr. Dickinson turned the first sod of that branch alongside the old build- 
 ing at New Westminster, which had been the first Parliament House of 
 the Province of British Columbia, and was opposite the gate of the peni- 
 tentiary. Upon that occasion Captain Bole — afterwards Judge Bole 
 
 turned out with his company of artillery, and, when the sod was turned, 
 fired a salute. A number of Chinamen had climbed up into an apple 
 tree near the spot in order to look down at the proceedings. Captain 
 
 116 
 
Bole's cannon, by design or by accident, was pointed right at them, and 
 when it was fired, the Chinamen, whether from fright or from some other 
 cause, I don't know, dropped to the ground in a shower, liice apples when 
 a tree is shaken, much to the amusement of the crowd. I have seldom 
 seen anything funnier." 
 
 A NARROW ESCAPE. 
 
 And upon this humorous note I think we will leave Mr. Gamble — 
 for IS he not an Irishman? No, there is just one other note — also humor- 
 
 Open air Concert, English 'bay. Vancouver 
 
 ous. I asked the G. O. M. if he had ever taken part in public life or run 
 for office, and this was his reply: "Once upon a time after I had settled 
 down at Vancouver they decided to put the waterworks under a com- 
 mission, and the members of that commission were to be elected. I was 
 one honored in that way. Being at Montreal at the time of my election, 
 I telegraphed my thanks to one of the newspapers in the form of an adver- 
 tisement. When I returned to Vancouver I found that the by-law had 
 been repealed and that my services were not required. Never had I 
 dreamed of public office, and I felt, after that incident, that a kindly 
 fate had determined that I should escape this toil of the snarer, at any 
 rate, and I have managed to do so ever since." 
 
 So I left the explorer and builder of the great railway through the 
 canyons of the Fraser, laughing heartily. 
 
 30I 
 
 117 
 
^ 
 
 ENGLISH BAY. VANCOUVER