Introduction

Writing history is a serious undertaking, and not to be thought of without long preparation and minute and scrupulous investigation. If a person qualified for the task should devote ten or fifteen years exclusively to it he might produce a work that would deserve to stand for the West as Parkman stands for the East. What follows, therefore, does not partake of the dignity of history. It is merely an outline of events and conditions prominent in the past of British Columbia from the very outset. Lack of time, if there were no other considerations, would have prevented me from going so deeply, and in detail, into the circumstances connected with the history of the province as would have been desirable for the purpose and otherwise have been possible. As it is, with the assistance of friends, I have been enabled to present to the reader a certain chain of facts which have never before been presented in the same connected form. These have been grouped so as to leave a more distinct impression of their order .and importance. There is not much that is new to the student, except, perhaps, the arrangement. Regarding a country about which so much has been written in a desultory way, it is difficult to more than collate and summarize, without, as I have intimated, delving for years among the original sources of our information. Hubert Howe Bancroft's History of British Columbia, though characterized by many imperfections, performed a splendid service, and indicated by innumerable references much that will be exceedingly useful for the real historian when he appears upon the scene. With a wealth of original material at his disposal, however, his own use and treatment of it were not historical in that sense in which the great Bancroft excelled. The late Alexander Begg, with his conspicuous industry, compiled a history of this province that is valuable in many respects, but obviously lacking in workmanship, analytical skill and insight.

To avoid comparisons, I make no pretensions to have done more than is set out in the foregoing, and that, I am aware, imperfectly. It is simply a narrative, or succession of narratives, that a journalist familiar with an outline of the events described, might have contributed to a magazine in order to convey a general impression of the past, and prepare the reader for a keener appreciation of a more pretentious work with the details faithfully and artistically filled in.

R. E. GOSNELL,

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