B. C. 1887. A ramble in British Columbia ... With map and ... illustrations, etc

Front matter

B. C. 188 7. iSaUantgne PWW PALLANTVNE, HANSON AND CO. EDINBURGH AND LONDON The Chan Camp, near Hot Springs, Upper Columbia lake. Frontispiece.] r'':'' """ B. C. 1887 A RAMBLE IN BRITISH COLUMBIA BY J. A. LEES and W. J. CLUTTERBUCK AUTHORS OF "THREE IX NORWAY" BSxtf| fflau ant) 75 illustrations from Sfcctcljrs ani iJljotograpijs bg tfjc autfjois LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. AND NEW YORK : 15 EAST i6'*> STREET 1888 Al/ rights reserved " To any person who has all his senses about him a quiet walk along not more than ten or twelve miles of road a day is the most amusing of all travelling. ... If advancing thus slowly after some days we approach any more interesting scenery, every yard of the changeful ground becomes precious and piquant ; and the continual increase of hope and of surrounding beauty affords one of the most exquisite enjoyments possible to the healthy mind ; besides that real knowledge is acquired of whatever it is the object of travelling to learn, and a certain sublimity given to all places, so attained, by the true sense of the spaces of earth that separate them." — Ruskin.

" Reading makes us intelligent and learn about things we would otherwise hear nothing. "It is pleasant to recapitulate stories to persons who probably have not had the opportunity of reading them, and it therefore passes many a dreary hour away and makes many a person renew his happiness by hoping for such a favourable end as some characters as are described in the book." — English as she is taught. CONTENTS. CHAP. PACE

Introduction

I I. THE ATLANTIC J II. THE ST. LAWRENCE 1 6 III. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS 24 IV. PREPARATIONS 33 V. BY STEAMER 42 VI. THE C.P.R 50 VII. THE ROCKIES 63 viii. b. c 68 IX. MOSQUITO CAMP 76 X. CANYON CREEK 91 XL THE COLUMBIA 98 XII. THE SINCLAIR PASS I06 XIII. MUTTON Il8 XIV. THE KOOTENAY I30 XV. THE INDIAN RISING 145 XVI. CHARR l6l XVII. CANOEING 175 XVIII. SKOOKUMCHUCK 1S9 XIX. CRANBROOK 203 XX. LAKE MOOYIE Contents. VIII CHAP. PAGF. XXI. PACKING 225 XXII. ON THE TRAMP ..:.... 238 XXIII. ELK RIVER 254 XXIV. THE SOUTH FORK 266 XXV. BREAD AND HONEY 279 XXVI. BACK AGAIN . . . ... . . 293 XXVII. OPENING OF THE LODGE 302 XXVIII. THE MOOYIE TRAIL 312 XXIX. YANKEE DOODLE 322 XXX. MUD 333 XXXI. THE FLATBOWS 342 XXXII. DICK FRY'S 352 XXXIII. THE N.P.R 362 XXXIV. THE PACIFIC 372 XXXV. EASTWARD HO !

INTRODUCTION.

. WHO. The wise men, we are told, came from the East, a fact which is conspicuously apparent to any traveller in those counties which are reached from Liverpool Street Station. Whither they have gone is another matter not so easily decided, but it seems to be very natural to suppose that they went to the West. Through countless ages the same process has been going on, and still the wiser ones of our own time year by year betake themselves to those regions which, in the words of an eminent divine, are " bounded on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by the Setting Sun, on the north by the Aurora Borealis, and on the south by the Day of Judgment." Thus it came about that the writers, seeing no other chance of commending their wisdom to a too censorious world, determined to try a ramble in the mountains of British Columbia.

But for the benefit of those who may have scanned the pages of Three in Norway (and survived), it must be confessed that a slight change has taken place. John — good luck to him — is married and settled ; the Skipper unmarried but settled — in his determination to remain so ; and Esau married but unsettled, and searching for a place to settle in, in which quest the A Introduction. 2 Skipper volunteered to assist him. A third com panion neither married nor settled was deemed neces sary, and a very suitable one was found in Esau's younger brother, who will be known throughout the following pages as " Cardie," while Esau himself re appears as "Jin*1/' a t'tle which he considers more appropriate to his present domesticated condition. Our only reason for using these names is that as they happen to belong to their reputed owners, it saves us the trouble of inventing others.

Cardie is long, dark, and good-looking : he lives absolutely alone in a log-cabin 10,000 feet above sea level in the Rocky Mountains, accompanied only by a silver (?) mine rejoicing in the appropriate title of the " Micawber." As the silver has not yet " turned up," he was easily persuaded to make one of the part}-. Jim and the Skipper are, we hope, sufficiently well known already. WHY. Our object in exploring this little known country was to test its capabilities as a home for some of the public-school and university young men who, in this overcrowded old England of ours, every year find themselves more de trop. What are they and their wives, the English country girls, to do ? The Girton and Newnham young ladies are of course a sufficiency unto themselves (and even more than that to most other people), but what of the not unimportant majo rity ?

They cannot dig — that handicraft having under the new Slade Professor been eliminated, we believe, from the academic course, — their soul is distinctly unfettered to an office stool ; the Arts, the Proses- Introduction. 3 sions, and the Services are all " Full inside," while in that indefinite article the Stage the " Free List is Entirely Suspended," and even on the Turf the supply of welshers always seems in excess of the demand. Emigration is the one hope left, and from all the information we could obtain in England, the region selected seemed likely to provide the necessary attrac tions for this class of colonists. WHERE. A glance at the map will reveal a curious fact in the physical geography of our only Pacific province. Almost the whole of the south-eastern portion is occupied by three parallel ranges of high mountains — the Rockies on the east, further west the Selkirks, and still further the Gold Range.

It is only in the valleys, which in some parts attain to the dignity of plains between these ranges, that any room can be found for a man to live and plant domestic animals and vegetables, without being in danger of falling off a ledge or slipping into a mountain torrent. Close to the intersection of lat. 50° and long. 116" is the Upper Columbia Lake, the head waters of the mighty river of that name, which flows out of the lake in a northerly direction. It will be seen that another river, the Kootenav. which rises in the Rockies north of this point, almost runs into the same lake, the strip of land which separates them being in fact little more than a mile in width. Having avoided that premature termination to his career, the Kootenay continues his southerly course across the border into Montana and Idaho.

There, apparently not thinking Introduction. 4 so much of Republican institutions as those who have not tried them are apt to do, he takes a sudden turn northwards, and again becomes a British river shortly before flowing in placid grandeur into the great Kootenay Lake. In the meantime the Columbia, repenting of the precipitate behaviour which led her to turn her back on the Kootenay in the giddy days of her youth, has about lat. 52° made an equally sudden turn to the south, and arrived so close to the Kootenay that it is an easy matter for the latter to simply rush into the arms of his long-lost love ; after which they no doubt live happily ever after wards. The result of this coquettish separation and subsequent reunion is that the land on which the Selkirks stand would be an island but for the narrow isthmus close to the Columbia Lake already spoken of.

The guiding principle of our wanderings was the exploration of as much of this river-girt region as could be accomplished during the autumn months. HOW. The reader is now in possession of all the know ledge that we had while on this side of the Atlantic. If with us he will struggle to the Pacific, he will obtain various additional pieces of information, the value of which he is at liberty to estimate for him self. We say at once, however, that the seeker after sporting adventures and nothing else will be dis appointed. Rifles and rods were necessarily taken but their use was almost strictly confined to pro viding food, there being no time in the five months that were spent on the expedition which could be Introduction. 5 devoted to " the chase " pure and simple. Another and more selfish motive (but one which will, we hope, commend itself to many readers') for the absence of much hunting lore is this : — The country abounds with game of various kinds, but except in the winter it is extremely difficult to find places where any sport can be obtained.

We did in our wanderings find out a little about such spots, but knowledge so hardly won is too precious for publication, and — we hope to make use of it ourselves in the near future. Voila tout. We ought to say that nearly all of the birds whose portraits are given are careful pen and ink copies of Audubon's beautiful plates. To him and to the artist who drew them we hereby express our thanks. WHAT. And now all explanations being made, the story of the Three and all that they did, and a great deal that they didn't, and even more also, will be found set forth in the succeeding pages. WHIRROO!

Chapter I. The Atlantic

Things looked very promising for a successful start, when, on Wednesday the 27th of July, this note was received from the Skipper : — " Tuesday. " Dear Jim, — I shall leave here to-morrow for Liver pool, so as to be in good time for the steamer on Friday. Wire if you want me to get anything. — Yours ever, Skipper." Any indication of where "here" might be was carefully omitted, and as the Sardinian with our berths secured was timed to sail on Thursday after noon, this missive was productive of much disquietude. Frantic telegrams were hastily despatched to every address which had ever been known to act as a home for the Skipper during his comet-like visits to the British Isles ; but no answers having come to any of them, it was with a sinking heart that Jim approached the landing stage at Liverpool, about mid-day on Thursday the 28th.

Mournfully he boarded the tender, and at once stumbled over a huge pile of what the Skipper imagines to be absolutely necessary per sonal luggage. And then the recriminations commenced which will by any one who has undertaken a like expedition be understood to have continued (with brief intervals for refreshments) during the next five months. These encounters, by the way, always terminate with the satisfactory and cogent piece of argument, " Oh yes, I know ; but then you're different." However, a mutual desire to reserve our most telling rhetoric for really great emergencies smoothed matters to some extent, and we were driven into an alliance offensive and defensive against the common foe — the dock porter. He, worthy soul, having during your wrangle with the cabman captured and carried off every scrap of your possessions, graciously informs you that the charge for each article transferred is One Shilling.

This he announces with the assured air of one protected in a hazardous calling by a special act of Parliament. Your indebtedness for the porterage of rug, umbrella, sketch-book, fishing-rod, and cigar-case is therefore the same as that for the five huge com mercial sample boxes which two cranes and a lighter are with difficulty swinging on to the tender. Having compounded with this fiend for a sum at which rate we calculate his income to be about ,£2000 a year, and thereby acquired a knowledge of three distinct novelties in the art of blasphemy, we soon stood on the deck of what it is usual to call the good ship Sardinian. It may as well be said at once that in these days of improved transatlantic communication the Allan Line is an anachronism ; but if this word is libellous, we apologise, and substitute one that is not.

For their own sake, as well as in the interests of the mother-country and the great colony between which they form the most important connecting link, the Allan people ought to bestir themselves. Why should they not get their fleet up to the same standard of modern excellence as that of all the great lines steam ing between Great Britain and the United States? It is probably not too much to say that the inferiority of the Canadian service is accountable for a large proportion of the preference which is still shown by emigrants for the Republic as their future home. Happily we have reason to believe that the enterprise which has given Canada her splendid railway is not to stop there, but that we are shortly to see established a line of swift steamers inferior to none on the ocean in point of accommodation, and superior to even the swiftest of the present wonders in point of speed.

We may therefore confidently look forward to seeing at no distant date the journey between Liverpool and Vancouver City, the furthest point by land of the Dominion, performed in absolute ease and comfort in 10^- days. It cannot be too often pointed out that with a fast Atlantic service the saving by this route over all others (the Suez Canal, the Cape, and Cape Horn) to any point east of Singapore is immense. At a low estimate it will be between England and Sydney two days, Brisbane four or five, Hong-kong two, Shanghai a week, and between England and Japan nearly three weeks. And not only is the actual distance to all these places much shortened, but the climate through out is temperate, the land journey is over British territory, and the sea courses are direct and free from the dangers of coasting navigation.

Having had our little grumble at the Allan Line, which, we trust, as the nurses say, will be a warning to them, we admit that the Sardinian is a good, comfortable sea-boat, and makes her thirteen knots or so with considerable regularity. The state-rooms are badly lighted and not remarkable for smartness or convenience ; the attendance on passengers is not good, the supply of stewards being apparently hardly adequate ; but she shines nobly in the commissariat department. While lying at Moville we studied the intricacies of this question, the times of the various meals being a very important — in fact, the only important — matter on shipboard. We elicited from the steward that breakfast was at 8.30, but that most of the passengers took a cup of tea or so and a handful of biscuits or some such trifle in their cabins before turning out ; luncheon, with soup, hot meat, and pudding, &c, at 1 ; dinner at 5 ; tea, w:ith hot buttered toast and jam, at 7 ; "and," he went on with glee at the growing look of horror on our faces, " supper is served hot at 9."

Well did Horace exclaim, " 1 11 i robur et æs triplex circum pectus erat." Surely that man was fashioned like unto a three-hooped oaken barrel who first went to sea. And how did one of us who shall be nameless bear his part in the conflict ? Simply by meanly lying in his berth for two days and taking no food at all, unless half a pint of champagne may fairly be so called. Having thus on the third day got a handicap of ten meals in his favour, he naturally was able to eat twice as much as every one else for the remainder of the voyage, and to traitorously scoff at any one who suggested that feeding-time came round with perhaps unnecessary frequency. Life on the Atlantic is a dull performance, and it is singular to note how very scarce are the amusing episodes, and how very amusing those that occur appear at the time to be.

The passengers, with few exceptions, were uninteresting, but we had a few shining ones revolving among us. The greatest of these was a Cambridge professor of the very highest celebrity, who knew everything and divers other str/jt rout 'itAfait ' Mot; out &'tieu p f ■ L I Then ytu Mitts Its Comt £, Mit gn£ f -V ctfcS* / matters. Before we were two days out he had taken charge of the entire ship from truck to kelson, and from the captain down to the Irish baby, and ver)' well he did it — for a Cambridge man. Then we had among the steerage passengers an irrepressible Frenchman in a blue blouse, who before we were clear of the Mersey invaded the sacred soil of the saloon deck. At him went the third officer, " Parlez vous Francais ? " (with an unimpeachable accent). Frenchman, with the most affable of smiles, " Mais oui, M'sieu."

" Then (" then " is delicious) you mustn't come to this end of the deck." Nor must there be forgotten the dear old bespec tacled and chinabowlpiped German, who seemed to be generally lost in profound meditation, and was never able to find his way to the cabin where he and a friend were lodged. Shortly before Jim became con valescent this worthy Teuton appeared one day in the A Terrible Appariti, m. doorway of our state-room, and after gazing at him in stolid bewilderment for a couple of minutes, remarked, " Ach ! Dot aind't you." We regret to say that the untruthful answer he received was, " No, it ain't ; " but perhaps the trials of sea-sickness are a fair excuse for bad temper. Another individual who became of some importance to us was bringing over to Canada for free distribution samples of Edwards' Dessicated (or Dissipated) Soup.

We are not quite sure what dessicated means, and certainly a large number of packages were dissipated before we arrived, so we do not commit ourselves to either word. We were presented with half a dozen small tins of the stuff, and found it about the best portable soup we have tried. Then there was an exceedingly knowing gentleman of uncertain nationality who informed us in confidence that he was " not exactly of any profession, something between a solicitor and a broker," but who struck us as being much more likely to be between two police men. And we had several members of the Canadian rifle team returning from Wimbledon, good, quiet fellows, with an insatiable appetite for deck quoits and mild poker ; two ladies and several other members of the more selfish sex ; a well-known member of the Canadian Bar ; and some schoolboys going home for the holidays, who, with the last-named Q.C. and a navy man on special service, were the best company on board.

Nothing very exciting occurred. We had the usual fleet of icebergs in and about the Straits of Belleisle ; ver}' beautiful some of them were under a brilliant moon, with their white gleaming snowy slopes and sharp blue pinnacles wherever the bare ice could be seen. The announcement of these caused the whole company to clothe their eyes with telescopes, the naked eye being insufficiently powerful to discern the coldness which is an iceberg's most prominent characteristic. And how the man with the longest telescope lied as to what he could see on the most remote berg ! A few whales and petrels served to break the monotony of the constant dining, and a strong enough breeze sprang up in the Gulf of St. Lawrence to keep our decks awash and make lands men again of some of the passengers, who during the mild weather of the Atlantic had developed into the jackest of jack-tars.

At last came the customary misery without which no North Atlantic voyage would be complete. The enemy had threatened all along the banks of New foundland, now lying in light smoky wreaths all round us, and anon lifting in patches under the gleams of a dazzling sun for a few minutes, only to shut down in greater density for a like period, and then perhaps without any warning or apparent reason to vanish as if by magic. Right in the mouth of the river there swooped down upon us the coldest, densest, drizzling sea-fog that can be imagined, which, with the smoke from our own funnels, made the atmosphere something akin to that enjoyed by travellers on the Underground Railway, and left the decks and every thing on them in the filthiest condition of black slime. Is there a more weird, dispiriting, and God-forsaken sound in the world than the perpetually recurring wail of a great ship's steam-whistle ?

We only know of one, and that is the miserable though half defiant yell of that Ishmaelite the coyote. Fortunately Providence has ordained that where the coyote is there the steam-whistle cannot be, for anything more suggestive of the lamentation of lost souls in Sheol cannot be imagined. And through it all we could only pace the slippery deck and grumble, first at the half-speed and then the stopped engines, and picture to ourselves our friends at home, probably lying on the grass under the green lime-trees, while we who brave the raging seas have to submit to this scene of desola tion and utter loneliness, surrounded by misty im mensity. Occasionally came the evidence of the existence of other mortals in the despairing cry of another steamer in like pitiable plight, and then the fateful rattle, rattle, bang of the cable, and the change from that awful whistle to the still more exasperating ding, ding, ding, ding, ding of the bell, and we were informed that we were anchored for that indefinite period " till the fog clears." ( '6 )

Chapter II. The St

LAWRENCE. Most things have an end, and by noon on the 6th of August we were, with our pilot at the masthead — for the fog only lay for a few feet above the water — slowly steaming with frequent pauses up the mighty river, losing many of our passengers at Rimouski, where the mail tender meets the steamer, and the inter-colonial railway is available for any one to whom a few hours are of importance. The weather kept improving, and soon the wooded southern bank of the St. Lawrence was plainly visible, and the air was laden with the delicious scent of the pine forests, while the eye was charmed and rested after the weary waste of waters by the ever varying and ever harmonious green and grey of the distant hills, and the spotlessly white dwellings of the French Canadian settlers along the shores.

Howbeit, we are told that much enchantment is lent to the view, and that it is more pleasing to every sense to contemplate these inviting-looking cottages from afar than to form a closer acquaintance with them and their inhabitants, human and otherwise. Everything except the forests is whitewashed, and a school of whales which accompanied us about this period seemed to have undergone the same operation, but we can only speak to their appearance, and it is possible that the silvery gleam of their tummies in the water is due to some other cause. Having prepared ourselves for our experiences in America by a strict course of Fennimore Cooper, Mayne Reid, and Mark Twain, we knew all about " buffler bulls," " bars " and " catamounts," " shooting irons " and " pill-pumps," and were carefully on the watch against the well-worn traveller's tales with which the native of foreign parts is wont to delude the unwary.

It was therefore no surprise to us to hear* the pilot enlarging upon a "bar" that he had shot a day or two before, and all the lead that it had taken to do it. We smiled incredulously and dis puted it not, but when he presently announced that he thought the mist had cleared enough for him to shoot the "bar" again, and we perceived nothing but the same wide expanse of river, without so much as a bottle-cork for a " bar" to hide behind, we felt that he was deceiving us. It was only when we saw a couple of leadsmen in the chains, and heard the cry of 7, 6\, 6, 5-ijr, 5i=r, and then suddenly 8, 10, 14, that we realised that the " bar " was the one at the bottom of the river. Life is too short to bother with precautions against those miscreants who deem it entertaining to entrap their fellow mortals.

When we were in the middle of the gulf, and the nearest coast was 200 miles away, a Yankee quietly remarked, " Wal, I guess we are quite close to land now ; it ain't more than three-quarter of a mile away nohow." Personally we took no interest in facts of this nature, so were content to sit and believe, but many excited travellers dashed out of the B smoking room to have a look at the long hoped for continent. They presently came back in the worst of tempers, and said that the charts and other authorities all declared it to be at least 200 miles away, and there was certainly none in sight. Then said the champion seller, " Wal, I didn't say the shore; I guess there's land right under us not three-quarter of a mile away." These ancient impositions ought to be posted up in a conspicuous place on every ship by order of the Board of Trade, and any one practising them should be made to walk the plank.

The last part of the voyage was as charming as the prelude to it was wretched. We left the fog to drearily linger far behind us, and instead we had that rarity in a Canadian summer, a cloud-flecked sky, giving additional beauty to the scene by the shadows which alternated with the most glorious sunshine over the rippling water, rocky islands, and steep fir-clad banks. The whole of the river, after it becomes narrow enough for its shores to be seen, is exceedingly beautiful with its constant succession of lovely islands, which, now when the grass has just been cut in patches, have a most vividly green undergrowth, and the most perfect background of hills looking marvellously blue in the evening light, with here and there a waif of mist still flitting across them. Once by a curious effect of mirage a piece of the river was seen high up the hillside, looking so like a lake that it was difficult to realise the absurdity of a lake tilted on one side sufficiently for us to see its surface from below.

At last we passed on the north bank the splendid falls of Montmorenci, and soon afterwards came into full view of one of the three most grandly situated cities in the world — Quebec. Edinburgh surely de serves a place among them, but who will agree as to the third out of Athens, Constantinople, Genoa, Salz burg, Granada, and a host of others ? By the time that the big ship had made a circle under the frowning Heights of Abraham, and was lying alongside the wharf at Point Levis, night had come on, and the city was outlined from citadel to water's edge with twinkling stars of electric light, reflected and multi plied to our feet by the ripples of the restless river. Here we lay all night, and here again we had cause to be dissatisfied with the Allan management. Just before arriving at Quebec we were told that all luggage would be landed there, and that any one who wished to go on to Montreal would have to watch the landing, and prevent his or her property leaving the ship.

All this might have been arranged with the greatest ease during the last two days when we were doing nothing in the river, or even provided for by a notice to that effect and careful stowing at Liverpool, but nothing of the sort had been attempted. Late at night, by the light of a miserable ship's lantern at each of the two hatches, the work of hoisting the baggage out began, while frantic passengers stood helplessly round and clawed at their belongings, not unfrequently getting a heavy trunk dropped on their toes, and being reviled for it by the slaves of the capstan. One lady who was travelling by herself was natu rally unable to attend to two hatches about thirty vards apart at once, so we volunteered to look out on her behalf. Of course our only chance was to stop everything which bore the least resemblance to her baggage, as hastily described ; the result was that when the last package had been swung on shore, there was to be seen on the deck at each hatch a heterogeneous pile as big as a haystack, which we confidently asserted to be " Miss C.'s portmanteaus," and as luck would have it she did ultimately succeed in unearthing from the depths of this loot all of her trunks save one, a kind of a low one-roomed cottage on wheels, which ladies take about and imagine to be a bonnet-box, or some such necessity of existence.

This we afterwards heard she ultimately recovered at Winnipeg, as it was abundantly addressed, and simply could not be lost. Even the man who lost the big drum would have had no chance with it. We fared about the same, losing in the darkness and confusion one of our most cherished packages, a box full of the best photographic plates, which of course could not be replaced here, though we were lucky enough to get very fair substitutes. This box turned up at Toronto five months afterwards, just in time to give us all the trouble of passing it through the Custom House at Montreal and Liverpool, so naturally we are still annoyed at the Allan people and their want of method. Quebec has been described and re-described ad nauseam. We do not intend to add to its literature but Ichabod may be written on its walls, if, as the apostles of Free Trade teach us, commercial prosperity is the only test of greatness and the only goal for a nation's ambition.