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On the waters of the Pacific
- Bute Inlet.-Valdes Island.-The Fiords of British Colum bia.—Waddington
Harbor. — Glaciers.—Chilcoten Indians. —Massacre—PartyX.— Salmon.—Arran
Rapids.—Seymour Narrows.—Menzies Bay—Party Y.—The Straits of Georgia.—New
settlements on Vancouver's Island.—Nanaimo.—Coal mines.— Concert.—Mount
Baker.—Pujet Sound.—San Juan Island.—The Olympian Mountains. —Victoria—Esquimalt
Harbor—A Polyglot City.—The last of Terry—The Pacific Ocean—Barclay Sound—
Alberni Inlet.—Sunset on the Pacific—Return to Victoria. —The Past,
Present, and Future.—The Home-stretch.—The great American Desert.
October, 6th.—Before any of
us came on deck this morning, the good Sir James Douglas had steamed out
of Burrard's Inlet, and past the lofty mountains that enclose the deep
fiords of Howe Sound and Jervis Inlet, into the middle of the Straits of
Georgia. Our first sight was of the Island of Texada on our right, and the
bold outline of Vancouver's Island farther away on our left.
After breakfast, divine
service was held in the cabin. On those inland waters of the Pacific that,
folding themselves round rocky mountain and wooded island, looked to us so
lovely, we, who had come four thousand miles from the Atlantic, united our
voices in common prayer with fellow subjects who call these shores of the
vaster Ocean of the West, their home. Again, all found that prostration
before Him, who is our Father, and also King of Nations, not only evokes
the deepest feelings of the human heart, but also purifies them. The tie
of a common nationality, especially if the nation has a great history, is
holy. The aim of our work was to bind our country more firmly together,
and this thought elevated the work; while worshipping together made us
feel more powerfully than any amount of feasting and toasting the
flag—that inhabitants of the same Dominion, subjects of the same
Sovereign, and heirs of the same destinies, must ever be brothers.
Towards mid-day, our course took us out of the
Straits of Georgia, north-easterly up into Bute Inlet, another of those
wonderful fiords of unknown depth that seam this part of the Pacific
coast. The chart makes it 40 fathoms deep, with a mark over the figures
signifying that the naval surveyors had sounded to that depth without
finding bottom. The
object of going up this Inlet, another of the proposed termini for the
Railway, was to enable the Chief to get such a birds-eye view of it as he
had already obtained of the prairie and the mountain country, and at the
same time to meet two parties of the C. P. R. Survey, who had been at work
in this quarter all summer.
On the question of which is the best western
terminus, there are two great parties in British Columbia, one advocating
the mainland, the other Vancouver's Island. On the mainland, New
Westminster, Burrard's Inlet, and other points are proposed. If a harbor
on Vancouver's Island be chosen, then the railway must cross to the shores
of Bute Inlet, and follow the easiest possible route from its head through
the Cascade Mountains. The advocates of the island termini, Victoria,
Esquimalt, and Alberni, always asserted that it was a simple matter to
cross the Straits of Georgia to the mouth of Bute Inlet by Valdes Island,
which on the map does seem to block them up almost completely; then, that
the line could be made along the shore of the Inlet to the mouth of the
Homathco River, and up its course, through the Cascades, to the Chilcoten
plains. Two main routes had therefore to be surveyed : one, from the mouth
of the Fraser River, and up the Thompson ; the other, from Vancouver's
Island across to Bute Inlet, and, up the Homathco to the Upper Fraser,
from whence the line could be carried by the North Thompson valley, if no
direct passage across the Gold-range to the Canoe River, or Tete Jaune
Cache could be found.
A short time after the latter survey was
commenced, the engineers reported that Valdes Island, although represented
on the Charts as one, really consisted of a group of three islands. The
naval surveyors had seen channels piercing into Valdes Island, but had not
followed them up, their business being to lay down the soundings only
along the through channels, and Valdes Island, not having been explored,
had always been considered an unit. The discovery of the true state of the
case complicated the question, and rendered a Hydrographic survey, of four
or five, instead of two "Narrows," necessary. This was work for one party,
the line up Bute Inlet being assigned to another, and up the Homathco
through the Cascades to a third.
On board the Sir James Douglas we had the
member for New Westminster a zealous advocate of Burrard's Inlet, and the
member for Victoria—a true believer in an Island terminus. To a student of
"human nature" it was amusing to notice with what different eyes each
looked at or refused to look at the difficulties of the rival routes. The
former gazed exultingly on the high bluffs and unbroken line of mountains,
that rose sheer from the waters of Bute Inlet. But his sarcasms were
invariably met by a counter reference to the cany6ns of the Fraser and the
Thompson. The Senator from Cariboo acted the part of a free lance, now
backing the one and next moment the other.
There was not one of us who had ever seen
anything like the Inlet we steamed up this afternoon. The inlets which cut
deep into this coast, from the straits of Fuca northward for twelve
degrees of latitude, probably resemble the fiords of Norway, but none of
our party could speak of those from personal observation.
It is a singular fact that, while there is not
a single opening in the coast for seven hundred miles north of San
Francisco, except the bad harbour of Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia
river, the next seven or eight hundred miles should be broken by
innumerable inlets. The case is paralleled on the Atlantic side of North
America. From Florida to Maine there are very few good ports, while north
of Maine, embracing the coast of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, there are
scores. The openings in the ironbound coast of Nova Scotia are not unlike
those on the Pacific side, except that on the Atlantic the indentations do
not cut so deep into the land, and the shores are low.
Up into the very heart of the Cascade range
through a natural passage, which could not have been formed by the Ocean,
for the coast is protected here from its erosions by Vancouver's Island,
we sailed to-day for forty miles, over water almost as deep under our keel
as the snow-capped mountains that hemmed the passage were high above our
heads. The Inlet varies in breadth from one to two-and-a-half miles, and
so deep is it in every part that a ship may sail up and down close enough
to the shore, in most places, for a man to jump to the rocks.
A mist, followed by a drizzling rain, came on
early in the afternoon, and hid the summits of the mountains, but the
gleam of scores of white cataracts could be seen; and, like furrows amid
the dark spruce, the clean sides of the rocks in long straight lines
showed where avalanches had swept every thing before them into the deep
waters below. Half way up the Inlet, we saw a tent on the shore. A whistle
brought it's tenant out to us in a canoe ; and he proved to be a
commissary who had preceded X party a few miles, in order to make
necessary arrangements for their advance. An hour after, we passed camp
X., but, as the mist had thickened and our captain had never been in these
waters before, he steamed on without stopping, for Waddington harbour at
the head of the Inlet. This point he reached after dark, and at once sent
a boat's crew ahead to sound for an anchoring place. After some delay,
between seven and eight P.M., the boatswain held up a lantern in the boat
to indicate where soundings had been found. Steaming up to the light the
anchor was let go in twenty-five fathoms, quarter of a mile from the shore
and from the head of the Inlet.
October 7th.—A magnificent view awaited those
early on deck this morning. Nearly two hours were spent in weighing
anchor, and then the steamer went round the harbour to enable us to see it
on all sides. Rain had fallen steadily through the night, and now that it
had ceased, mist clouds hung about the great masses of rock that on all
sides rose perpendicularly into the region of eternal snow. Here and
there, rifts in the mist, as it was broken by projecting peaks, revealed
mountain sides curtained with glaciers. The only sound which broke the
awful stillness was the muffled thunder of cataracts, multiplied by last
night's rain, gleaming far up among the scanty pines, washing down the
slippery rocks in broad white bands, or leaping from bluff to bluff an
hundred feet at a time, for more than a thousand feet down to the sea. We
were at the head of Bute Inlet. The salt sea water could cut no deeper
into the range that guards the western side of our continent. The
mountains stood firm except where the Homathco cuts its way through, in a
deep gorge, sentinelled on each side by snow-clad warders.
By this water-highway of Bute Inlet, the late
Mr. Waddington had urged the Government of British Columbia to make their
road to Cariboo. On their adopting the Fraser River route, he organized a
private company and began its construction, so convinced was he, that, its
superiority would attract to it the travel between Cariboo and the outside
world, and that a toll on goods earned over it would soon repay the cost
of construction. His project was a steamer from Victoria to the head of
Bute Inlet, and a waggon road thence up the Homathco to Cariboo; the
distance being 175 miles less this way than by the Fraser. After spending
$60,000 on surveys and on trail making, his men were murdered in 1864 by a
tribe of Indians to whom provocation had been given. The Government
secured the arrest of the murderers, and had them hung up at Quesnel
mouth; but, from that day, the Coast and Chilcotin Indians have been
regarded as dangerous and blood-thirsty. The C. P. R. parties, who
travelled the country this year, had no trouble however; and Mr. Smith
reports that the Chilcotins are the manliest and most intelligent Siwashes
in the Province. From
the description that Mr. Smith gave us of the scenery on the Homathco, we
would fain have landed and gone at least a few miles up the river: but
time did not permit. He had worked up from the head of the Inlet through
the Cascades in July last, overcoming by sheer determination not to be
beaten—all difficulties of forest, canyons, torrents, and lazy treacherous
Indians ; getting surveys at great risk of neck and limb, by felling trees
across deep chasms from one to two hundred feet wide, and letting men down
by ropes to the foot of high cliffs. The following extracts from one of
his private letters to the Chief give more vivid pictures than any plate
can, of scenes up the river. Here is what he says of the canyon, 31 miles
from the head of the Inlet, and immediately above the rope ferry used by
Mr. Wad-dington which is shown, as it then existed, in one of the plates.—
"I commenced the survey of the canyon, following the river on the new
trail commenced by Waddington, as far as it went,—| about half a
mile,—when it terminated at an inaccessible bluff on which blasting had
been commenced. The scene here is awfully sublime. The towering rocks,
thousands of feet high; —far above these again the snow-clad peaks,
connected by huge glaciers; and in a deep gorge beneath, a mountain
torrent— whirling, boiling, roaring, and huge boulders always in
motion-muttering, groaning like troubled spirits, and ever and anon
striking on the rocks, making a report like the booming of distant
artillery. But with all this wildness, there is the fresh beauty of
vegetation. Wherever there is a crevice in the rocks large enough to hold
a few inches of soil, trees are growing and wild flowers blooming."
After getting through "the core of the Cascade
range," he came upon "the murderers' camp, where thirteen of Wadding-ton's
men were murdered eight years ago. The spot looks as if it had never
before been visited by man since the massacre The number of tents could be
counted by the cedar bark forming the beds. Strewed around were various
tools,—a blacksmith's anvil, sledge-hammers, crowbars, grindstone, vice,
picks, and half a dozen shovels carefully placed against a tree ready for
the morrow's work; also pieces of clothing, amongst which were at least
one pair of woman's boots—too surely indicating the source of the
trouble." This last clause suggests the origin of more than one "Indian
atrocity." It's a fair question to ask always, "Who struck the first
blow?" So much for the Homathco.
The forenoon was spent by us in coasting down
the northerly side of the Inlet until we came to camp X. After inspecting
their work we proceeded on our way down, Mr. Gamsby, the engineer in
charge of party X. accompanying us. He reported that the Indians, far from
giving any trouble, had been of material assistance in many ways, acting
as servants or messengers, and selling deer, wildfowl, fish etc., at
moderate prices. He pointed out a stream, running into the Inlet on the
east side, at the mouth of which, on a recent visit, he had seen hundreds
of thousands of dead salmon strewn along the shore; while thousands of
crows, kites, vultures, and eagles filled the air. In similar places, such
sights must have been common when white men first came to the country.
These Pacific waters swarm with fish, that struggle up brawling streamlets
to spawn, in spite of rapids, cascades, rocks, and shallows. No wonder
that people, who have only eaten salmon caught inland, say that the
Pacific varieties are inferior. They were good when they entered the
river's mouth; but, when caught a few hundred miles up the Fraser, often
the head is bruised by rocks and falls, and the scales, fins, and even the
tail rubbed or worked off. No wonder that half of them perish by the way,
and that none return to the sea. It is asserted as a fact, every where in
British Columbia, that none of the salmon entering the Fraser river, and
even the smaller streams, ever return to the sea.
We were struck with the beauty of Gamsby's
canoe, and indeed of all the Indians canoes on this coast. Each is a model
of architectural grace, although the lines reminded us of Chinese or
Japaness rather than of British models. The canoes are generally made out
of a single large log. After scooping out the log, they steam it in the
following primitive manner.—Filling it with water, they throw in heated
stones to make the water boil, and at the same time build a bark-fire
round the outside. The wood "gives" several inches, until the central part
of the canoe is made broader at the top, and the requisite curvature given
to its sides. The proper shape is secured by putting in stretchers like a
boat's thwarts: outside and inside are then painted; an ornamental
figure-head set on, and the canoe is complete.
By midday the mouth of Bute Inlet was gained,
but instead of returning in the direction of Burrard's Inlet, we ran
through Arran Rapids in order to pass round the north side of Valdes'
Island. At every turn, the beautiful views which an archipelago affords,
met our eyes. The islands of every possible variety of form, were wooded
from lofty summits to the brink of deep channels. At one time we were in
cross-roads where four different channels opened out, north, south, east,
and west; soon after in a narrow winding strait, or shooting swiftly
through tidal rapids, or in a broad bay where snowy peaks could be seen
behind the green foothills. After passing through Seymour Narrows, where,
if there is to be a continuous line from an Island terminus, the bridge
between Valdes' and Vancouver must be built, we rounded into a beautiful
land-locked harbor, called Menzies Bay, and cast anchor for the night.
Between the Narrows and the Bay, the tents of Y. party were picturesquely
pitched, on an open easy slope, under the shadow of the forest. A whistle
from the steamer brought Mr. Michaud, who is in charge of the party, on
board, and, after dinner, all rowed off to his encampment, the Chief to
inspect plans, the rest to see the camp. As compared with all the others,
Y. party has been in clover from the beginning of their work. They were
near Victoria, had a monthly mail, and could renew their supplies as they
ran out. Their store-house filled with bags of flour, flitches of bacon,
pork, molasses, split peas, beans, pickles, and a keg of beer, suggested
good cheer; while any day, they could buy from the Indians a deer,
weighing from 120 to 160 lbs., for one, or according to circumstances, two
dollars; and salmon, trout, wild-geese, duck, or mallard, for trifling
sums. They had no deer-meat in camp to-day, but they generously presented
us with two wild-geese, each weighing ten or eleven lbs.
October 8th.—Our programme for the day was to
reach Nanaimo Coal Mines as soon as possible, for the steamer's bunkers
needed replenishing, and we all wished to see something of the mines,
which promise to be of more benefit to British Columbia than all the
gold-fields. Accordingly at 4 A.M. the auchor was weighed.
We were now getting into waters familiar to
our captain; for strange as it may appear, not one on board with the
exception of Mr. Smith, had ever been up Bute Inlet or round Valdes Island
before this trip. Nothing shows more clearly the youthful and imperfectly
developed condition of the Province than such a fact. Her representative
men, those most likely to be best acquainted with her resources, know
little beyond their own neighbourhood or the line of their one waggon-road.
Distances re so great, the means of communication so limited, and the
mountainous character of the country renders travelling so difficult, that
the dwellers in the few towns and settlements have hitherto seen but
little of the Province as a whole.
When we appeared on deck about 7 o'clock, the
steamer was running down the Straits of Georgia, over a rippling, sun-lit
sea. The lofty Beaufort range, on our right, rose grandly in the clear
air, every snowy peak distinct from its neighbour, and the blue sky high
above the highest. Victoria, and the twin peaks Albert Edward and
Alexandra, ranging from 6,000 to over 7,000 feet in height, were the most
prominent; but it was the noble serrated range as a whole, more than
separate peaks, that caught the eye. The smaller Islands to the left were
hidden by a fog-bank that gradually lifted. Then stood out, not only islet
after islet in all their varied outline, but also the long line of the
Cascade range behind. Yesterday had been charming from 10 o'clock, when
the sun pierced through the mists; but to-day was "all white." A soft warm
breeze fanned us, and every mile disclosed new features of scenery, to
which snow-clad mountain ranges, wooded plains, and a summer sea enfolding
countless promontories and islands, contributed their different forms of
beauty. The islands are composed of strata of sandstone and conglomerate;
the sandstone at the bottom worn at the water line into caves and hollows;
the conglomerate above forming lofty cliffs, wooded to the summits, and
overhanging winding inlets and straits most tempting to a yachtsman. From
the southern point of Valdes Island down to Nanaimo, a considerable area
of low lying and undulating land extends between the central mountain
range of Vancouver's Island and the Straits of Georgia, well adapted for
farming purposes. At two points, Comox and Nanoose, settlements have been
formed within the last few years, and are prospering; but where there is
one settlement there ought to be twenty, if the island is to raise its own
grain and hay, and to cease sending out of the country all its wealth.
There is little or no immigration to Vancouver's Island, and but little
has been done to induce it, or to smooth the way for those who arrive.
When an immigrant reaches the country, he finds it difficult to obtain
information as to where there is good land to take up; and how is it
possible for him to go out among a sea of mountains to search for a farm?
The island should be thoroughly surveyed according to the simple system
long practised in the United States and lately adopted in Manitoba; the
amount of good land known, divided into sections and subsections, and
numbered; so that, on arriving at Victoria, the immigrant could go into
the Crown Land office, learn what land was pre-empted, and where it would
be expedient for him to settle. There are many obstacles in the way of
immigrants reaching this distant colony, and therefore special efforts are
required to bring them, and to keep them when they come; for, until there
is a large agricultural population, the wealth of the country must
continue to be drained out of it, in order to buy the necessaries of life
and every article of consumption, from Oregon, California, Great Britain,
and elsewhere. We
were sorry at not being able to visit Comox. Our information about it is
therefore second-hand ; but testimony was unanimous concerning the good
quality of the land, the accessibility to markets, and the prosperity of
the settlers, notwithstanding the short time they have been in the
country. By noon we
had left the Beaufort range behind, and Mount Arrowsmith came into view ;
while far ahead on the mainland, and south of the 49th parallel, what
looked a dim white pyramid rising to the skies, or a white cloud resting
upon the horizon, was pointed out to us by the Captain as Mount Baker.
Soon after, we rounded into the northern horn of Nanaimo harbour, called
Departure Bay, and drew alongside the pier where a lately organized
Company is shipping coal from a new seam that has been opened, three miles
back from the point of shipment.
Landing here, and leaving the steamer to coal,
most of us walked by a trail to Nanaimo through the woods, along a channel
that connects Departure Bay with the old mines. The channel, which is an
excellent roadstead is between the mainland of Vancouver and a little
Island called Newcastle, on the inner side of which another excellent coal
mine, within ten feet of navigable water, has just been opened. There are
two seams at Newcastle, averaging three feet each and separated by three
feet of fire clay, which as the miners proceed becomes thinner, the coal
seams becoming thicker. From this convergence it is supposed that the clay
will soon give out, and the two seams of coal unite into one. Near this
Newcastle mine, is a quarry of light colored freestone of excellent
quality, from which the mint at San Fransisco has just been built, and
which is sure to be of immense service and value in the near future. There
is no such freestone quarried on the Pacific coast; and its convenience
for shipping makes it doubly valuable.
At Nanaimo proper, is a population of seven or
eight hundred souls,—all depending on the old or Douglas mine. The manager
informed us that they would probably ship fifty thousand tons this season,
while last year they shipped less than thirty thousand ; and that, next
year, they would be in a position to ship an hundred thousand or more.
They could give employment to fifty or sixty additional men at once, at
wages averaging from two to three dollars a day. A new seam, nine feet
thick, had lately been discovered, below the old one; and we went down the
shaft three hundred feet to see it. The coal was of the same excellent
quality as that of the old mine, which is the best for gas or steam
purposes on the Pacific coast. But the miners had come upon "a fault" in
the seam, caused by the dislocation of the strata, immediately above and
below, intruding a tough conglomerate rock that they were now cutting away
in the hope of its soon giving out. The coal measures which these few
seams now worked represent, extend over the whole eastern coast of
Vancouver Island, and like those on the east of the Rocky Mountains are
cretaceous or of tertiary age. They are considered as valuable as if they
were carboniferous and are certain to be fully developed before long.
It is provoking to know, however, that the
agricultural settlements in the neighborhood, which, though small, are the
most extensive on the island, are not able to supply the present
population of Nanaimo with food; and that no steps are taken to bring in
new settlers, though there is abundance of good land all round. If this
state of things continues, even though the mining population of
Vancouver's Island increase ten fold in as many years, most of the wealth
will be sent out of the country, as was the gold of Cariboo, and the
country in the end be as poor as ever.
Nanaimo does not look like a coal mining
place. The houses are much above the average of miners' residences in
Britain or in Nova Scotia. Scattered about, often in picturesque
situations, with gardens, and not in long, mean, soot-covered rows, as if
laid out with the idea that men who see nothing of beauty underground
cannot be expected to appreciate it above. The view from the town, of the
Cascades range, on the other side of the Straits is almost equal to the
view of the long semi-circular line of the Alps from Milan. At sunset,
when warmed with the roseate light, or, a little later, when a deep soft
blue has displaced the couleur de rose, the beauty is almost inconsistent
with the ash heaps and tenements of a mining village. Though not a
believer in the "God made the country; man made the town" sentiment, the
contrast irresistibly suggests the words.
In the evening a concert was held on behalf of
the Episcopal Church of the place, and all our party went to see 'the
beauty and fashion, the bone and sinew' of Nanaimo. The hall, which holds
about two hundred was well filled, and the entertainment consisted of
music, vocal and instrumental, and magic lantern views. The prologue by
the Rector, the songs, the dresses of the ladies, reminded us of a world
left behind three months ago. We had got back to civilization. The Ontario
papers that reviled the constituency that returned Sir F. Hincks, should
send reporters to Nanaimo; for only men who have been accustomed to
describe such assemblages could do justice to the beauty of the women, the
intelligence of the men, the musical taste of the Rector and the choir. If
an impartial report concerning the Nanaimo concert were given, no further
doubt would be entertained in the East, of the Vancouver districts' right
to have a Cabinet Minister for their representative.
October, 9th.—Another day of glorious weather;
such weather as Vancouver's Island has, almost without interruption, from
March till October or November; warm enough for enjoyment and cool enough
for exercise. Our course was down the Gulf of Georgia to Victoria; past
the agricultural districts of Cowichan and Saanich on the Vancouver side,
and the various islands that line the mainland on our left. Mount Baker
was the great feature in the landscape all day. We could hardly help
feeling envious that the United States instead of ourselves possessed so
glorious a landmark; especially as it still bears the name of the British
Naval Officer in Capt. Vancouver's ship who first saw it, and is in the
country that was formally taken possession of, for the British Crown in
1792, and that had been, up to 1846, held by a British Company. Indeed, it
is difficult even to conceive of any plausible excuse that the United
States could have brought forward, in claiming the country round Puget's
Sound. They knew its value, and the British Premier, not only did not, but
his brother had assured him that the whole country wasn't worth talking
about, much less the risk of war; for "the salmon wouldn't take a fly."
On the fourth of April 1792, the birthday of
King George III, after whom he had named the Straits of Georgia, Captain
Vancouver took formal possession of all the waters of Puget Sound, and of
the coast north and south along which he had sailed, for His Majesty,
whose commission he carried. All the prominent capes, points, harbours,
straits, mountains, bear to this day, the names of his lieutenants or
friends, just as he named them on his great voyage. He changed nothing. As
the old Portuguese navigator, Juan de Fuca, had discovered the Straits of
Fuca, his name was honorably preserved, and as Vancouver met a Spanish
Squadron that had been sent out to give up Nootka and other Spanish claims
on the coast to Great Britain, he adopted the names that the Dons had
given to any channels or islands, such as Valdez, Texada, Straits of
Melas-pina, etc. Puget Sound, he named from his second lieutenant; Mount
Baker, from his third; Cape Mudge, from the first; Mount Rainier, from
Rear Admiral Rainier; Capes Grey and Atkinson, Burrard, Jervis, and Bute
Inlets, Fort Discovery, Johnstone's Channel, and a hundred others were all
alike named by him ; and if Britain had no right to those south of the
49th parallel, she had no right to those farther north.
Still more astonishing: in 1846 when Britain
yielded the Columbia River and the whole Pacific side of the continent up
to the 49th parallel, not a single citizen of the United States had
settled to the north of the Columbia. Swarms from the Western States had
flocked into Oregon in the ten preceding years of joint occupation, and so
the Government at Washington might plead the will of the settlers against
the Imperial rights of Britain; but that plea could have carried them, at
the farthest, only to Astoria. If Oregon had to be ceded, the Columbia
River should have been the boundary.
It may be said that all this is a reviving of
dead issues, out of place and useless now. But the history of the past
throws light on the present, and is a beacon for the future. Had the San
Juan difficulty been viewed, not merely in the light of the literal
wording of the Treaty of 1846, but in the light of all the facts, the
decision of the Emperor of Germany must have been different.
Before noon we entered the Haro Strait that
separates San Juan (pronounced here "San Wan") from Vancouver's Island.
Between the northern part of the Haro Channel and Vancouver's Island, are
several islets and two narrow channels, that ships going to Victoria may
take. South of these, there is nothing between San Juan and the southern
extremity of Vancouver, but the Haro Strait, six or seven miles wide. It
is therefore evident that while San Juan would be useless to Britain for
military purposes, its possession by the United States is a menace to us;
for it commands the entrance to British waters, British shores, a British
river, and a British Province. There is a hill on San Juan about a
thousand feet high, a battery on which would command the whole Strait.
There are many conjectures here as to the
effect of the Emperor's judgment, should it be adverse, some think his
decision would throw a heavy sword into the scale against New Westminster
or Burrard's Inlet as a terminus for the Canadian Pacific Railway. The
sail down the Straits of Haro was all that a pleasure party on board a
steam yacht could have desired. On the mainland, the long line of the
Cascades or Coast range broken by the Delta of the Fraser extended to the
south,—though dwarfed into comparative insignificance by the mighty mass
of Mount Baker, rising up in the midst. Farther south, the line swept
round the deep gulf of Puget Sound, then north-westerly and away as far
west as the entrance of the Straits of Fuca, under the name of the
Olympian range. When under the lee of San Juan the snowy pyramid of Mount
Baker looked out on us over the Island, while far to the south, in the
back ground of the Olympian range, the dim form of Mount Rainier was seen
lifting itself up in the sky. Rounding the southern point of Vancouver's
Island, we came to the spit of land that is cut into by the harbour of
Victoria and four miles further west by the much superior harbour of
Esquimalt. We steamed first into Victoria to get letters and telegrams,
and proceeded immediately thereafter to Esquimalt, returning at 4 P.M.,
some of us by land, over a good macadamized road, and some in the Sir
James Douglas. The
harbour of Victoria has a narrow entrance, is small, inconveniently
shaped, and accommodates only vessels of eighteen feet draught of water ;
but as Esquimalt is near enough to serve as an additional harbour,
Vicioria does not suffer. Esquimalt harbour is a gem; not very large, but
the anchorage is excellent, and it has all the other requisites of a
first-class harbour; and In "the Royal Roads" outside, along the coast as
far as Race Rocks, any number of slips can ride safely. In Esquimalt, one
U. S. and four British men-of-war lay, two of the latter having been just
paid off. We were astonished to find that the British Government had not
constructed a dock at Esquimalt, and that now it is not even the
headquarters of the Pacific squadron, the foreign port of Valparaiso
having been selected instead. Esquimalt is our own, our interests are
along the coast, coal is near, China and Japan only fifteen days distant,
and the Admiral could be in daily communication when necessary with the
Home authorities. The only reasons assigned on the other side are that
British Commercial interests in South America are paramount, and that
sailors desert at Esquimalt and get off easily to the States. The same
reasons ought to be conclusive against Halifax as the head-quarters of the
North American squadron, and in favour of adopting Rio or some other South
American port in its stead.
The terms of confederation with the Dominion
included a guarantee of the interest on £100,000 stg. for ten years from
the completion of the work, for a first-class Graving Dock at Esquimalt,
and the Provincial Government has accordingly taken steps to commence its
construction. On our
return to Victoria in the afternoon, one of the first persons we met in
the street was Terry. Having no further need of his services, we had
parted with him last week at New Westminster. He had gone on to Victoria
direct and had monopolized the lionizing intended for the whole party; had
been interviewed about our marvellous north-west passage by land, with
results as given in the newspapers, that spoke quite as much for Terry's
imagination as for his memory. He had conjured up a Canyon on the Canoe
River twenty miles long, where no Canyon is or ever had been; had
described us as galloping down the Yellow Head Pass till arrested by the
sight of quartz boulders gleaming with gold, and rocks so rich that Brown
and Beaupré had deserted to go back and mine; and, with many another fact
or fancy equally readable, made the hearts of reporters glad. "Drinks" had
probably been the reward, and the consequences to Terry proved serious.
For on the first day after being paid in full at the office in Victoria
for his long trip, he had been plundered of every dollar. He was now
looking round for work; and before we left Victoria, hired as general
servant on board a ship going north. Thus disappeared Terry into
space-Should any one in future wish to engage him, we hereby certify him
as a good servant, a good tailor, a good cobbler, and indeed anything but
a good cook, the post which, unfortunately for us, he filled. In his own
words, "he never liked being boss; but could be understrapper to any any
one," and, such a man is a treasure in America.
A walk through the streets of Victoria showed
the little capital to be a small polyglot copy of the world. Its
population is less than 5,000; but almost every nationality is
represented. Greek fishermen, Kanaka sailors, Jewish and Scotch merchants,
Chinese washerwomen or rather washermen, French, German and Yankee
restaurant-keepers, English and Canadian officeholders and butchers, negro
waiters and sweeps, Australian farmers and other varieties of the race,
rub against each other, and apparently in the most friendly way. The
sign-boards tell their own tale: "Own Shing, washing and ironing"; "Sam
Hang," ditto; "Kwong Tai & Co., cigar store"; "Magasin Francais";
"Teutonic Hall, lager beer"; "Scotch House"; "Adelphic" and "San
Francisco" saloons; "Oriental" and "New England" restaurants; "What Cheer
Market," and "Play me off at tenpins," are all found within gunshot,
interspersed with more common-place signs.
The senior member for the city had invited
several gentlemen to dine with us at the Colonial Hotel at 5 o'clock. A
better dinner could not be served in Montreal. We were only sorry that we
had to leave at 7, to go on board the Sir James Douglas, and proceed to
Alberni Channel, one of the proposed termini on the west coast of
Vancouver's Island. But time was precious, as the San Francisco steamer
was expected to be in every hour. Parting with Mr. Smith, and adding the
second member for Victoria to our number, we went down to our little
steamer and started on this, our last expedition, at 7.30 P.M.
October 10th.—The distance between Victoria
and the Pacific by the Straits of Fuca is sixty miles. The Sir James
Douglas made that by midnight, and then turned north for the spacious
Archipelago of Barclay's Sound, from the head of which Alberni Canal, or
to use the modern word Channel, a deep narrow fiord like those on the main
land, cuts its way up into the interior of Vancouver's Island. Barclay
Sound has three entrances, separated from each other by groups of islets
and rocks, and as the nearest is the best for ships from the south, the
Captain intended to run up by it into Alberni. The weather during the
night was so favourable that he over-ran his distance, and never having
been in the sound before, he waited for daylight to compare the coast with
the charts. Those who came early on deck had thus an opportunity of seeing
the Pacific breaking on the iron shores of Vancouver. Away behind us the
great ocean stretched unbroken to Japan and China, sleeping
peacefully—under the morning light that was shining over the mountains to
the east—with no motion save a slow voluptuous roll of long billows that
seemed gentle enough to be stayed by a child's hand. But to know their
strength, even in a calm, turn and look where these Fame billows meet the
headlands. Over the first they break with a heavy roar; and then, as if
amazed to be resisted, they gather up their forces and rush with a long
wild leap, like white-maned war-horses charging, among the inner breakers,
to meet the fate that a gallant ship would meet if it mistook the entrance
to the sound. When a gale is blowing from the west, the surf must be
tremendous, for there is nothing to break the roll of the Pacific for
2,000 miles; but the entrances into the sound are wide, and one or two
lighthouses would obviate all risk. The most prominent mark about the
southern entrance at present is Ship Island probably so called from a
number of bare trees on it like the masts of a ship. Beyond the coast line
a bold range of serrated mountains runs along the centre of the island,
like a backbone, north and south, into the heart of which Alberni Channel
pierces. Passing up the sound, several canoes with from two to
half-a-dozen Indians in each hailed us with friendly shouts. They are
squat in shape, dirtier, more savage, with a more decided cross-eye than
the Indians on the main land. In all probability this side of America was
peopled from Asia, and not necessarily round by Behring's Straits and the
Aleutian Islands. Even in this century Japanese junks, dismasted in a
typhoon or otherwise disabled, after drifting for months about the North
Pacific have stranded on the American continent or been encountered by
whaling ships, and the survivors of the crews rescued, in those cases
where all had not perished of hunger.
There are two or three trading posts and
several Indian villages on Barclay Sound. The traders come to the posts in
schooners at certain seasons of the year, and trade for peltries,
seal-oil, and fish. The scenery along the sound and up the channel
resembles Bute Inlet, except that the hills do not rise so sheer and high
from the water and the wood is better. There are also larger extents of
open alluvial ground at the mouths of streams that run into the sea, and
along the valleys between the hills that they drain. At the head of
Alberni, is the Sumass, a river of considerable size that drains large
lakes in the interior and is said to be bordered by extensive tracts of
fertile soil. At its mouth is enough good land for several farms, but
there are no settlers. An English Company formerly worked saw-mills at
this point, from which in 1862 over eight million feet of lumber were
exported. The working of the mills has been abandoned, as the speculation
did not pay, and the premises are now going to ruin. A walk round showed
us one reason at least of the failure. Too much money had been sunk in
house, orchard, outhouses, and other "fixtures" and improvements that
yielded no return. No sane man would have started on such a scale with his
own money. It was a sorry spectacle to see so many good buildings doorless
and windowless, falling into decay or broken up by the Siwashes for wood
to burn. In a country whose lumbering interests require development it is
too bad that capitalists should be deterred by such an example.
Alberni harbour offers such decided advantages
as a terminus that it may prove a formidable rival even to Esquimalt.
After a bathe in the harbour, the water being
wonderfully warm for the time of year, we steamed out into the Ocean
again, and got back in time to see a glorious sunset on the Pacific. The
twilight continued for an hour after; a band of carmine that shaded into
orange and, higher up, into mauve, lingering so long over the horizon that
we ceased to look at it, and only when turning into our berths, noticed
that it had given way to the universal deep blue of the night sky. The sea
was smooth and the night calm and beautiful as the preceding; and in
consequence we were at the wharf in Victoria harbour between four and five
A. M., to the astonishment of the citizens who had not expected us back
till the afternoon or next day.
October, 11th to 14th.—It had been assumed
that the Prince Alfred steamer would leave Victoria for San Francisco on
the twelfth; but her day was changed to the fourteenth as she had to go to
Nanaimo to coal. We had thus three days to spend in Victoria instead of
one, and so great was the hospitality of the people that three months
might have been spent enjoyably. Various as are the nationalities and
religions represented in Victoria ; the people are wonderfully fused in
one, and there is a general spirit of mutual toleration, kindness, and
active good will that makes it a pleasant town to live in. Like the whole
colony it is a poor man's paradise. Everyone seems to have plenty of
money; and every kind of labour receives enormous prices. There is no
copper currency and the smallest silver piece is what is called 'a bit';
the ten cent and the English sixpence though of different values being
alike called 'bits,' and given to children or put in church-door plates
(there are no beggars) as cents or coppers are in all other countries.
This absence of small coins has much to do with the general cost of living
and the indifference to small profits characteristic of all classes here.
The merest trifle costs 'a bit'; and though there are 25 and 50 cent
pieces in currency, yet, if anything is worth more than a bit, with a
lofty indifference to the intermediate coins, the price is generally made
a dollar. Emigrants on landing and men with fixed incomes are the chief
sufferers from this state of things ; for as mechanics, labourers, and
servants are paid accordingly, they like it, and speak with intensest
scorn of the unfortunates who would devide 'a bit' because they perhaps
think it too much to give for a paper of pins or an apple. "John" who
comes across the Pacific to make money and then return to the flowery land
doesn't heed their scorn; and so, most of it was reserved before
Confederation for canny Canadians who received the flattering appellation
of North American Chinamen.. The Californians being as well supplied with
gold and as lavish with it as the Victorians themselves.
All this was very well in the halcyon days of
the young Province, when gold-dust was accounted as nothing; when miners
who had been six months in Cariboo would come down to the capital and call
for all the champagne in an hotel to wash their feet; eat £10 notes as
pills, or as a sandwich with a slice of pork, or light their pipes with
them; and when town lots commanded higher prices for the moment than in
Frisco. But the tide turned; the gold flowed out of the country to buy the
champagne, and more necessary articles, instead of being spread abroad
among resident farmers, or manufacturers; Cariboo yielded less abundant
harvests; and the inflated prosperity of Victoria collapsed. Lots that had
been bought at from $10,000 to $25,000 have been sold since, it is said,
for $500; the 15,000 people who lived around the city in tents have taken
flight, like wild geese to more Southern climates; and the then reputed
millionaires are now content with a modest business. The virus however is
still in the blood of the Victorians. They half expect that the good old
times, when every man got rich without effort on his part, will come
again; that something will turn up; new mines, or the railway being now
the chief objects of reliance, to make business brisk. This delusion which
belongs to the gambling rather than the true trading spirit retards the
growth of the city: for it makes men hold on to house and business lots,
or demand sums for them far beyond their real value. A mere rumour last
winter that Esquimart was to be the terminus of the railway, at once sent
up real estate in its neighbourhood four or five fold. The balloon has
been accustomed to gas, and is easily inflated again. Great part of the
four miles between Esquimalt and Victoria is owned by a company called
"the Puget Sound." This land is held at prices too high for settlers or
gardeners to buy and improve, and thus it is that the suburbs do not
present the cultivated appearance that might have been expected from the
soil and fine climate. High prices for land and for everything else in and
around the town, and extreme difficulty of obtaining information about
good land elsewhere; what condition of affairs could be more discouraging
for emigrants or intending settlers?
An infusion of new blood is required. At
present the classes that ought to come are servant girls, labourers,
mechanics, miners, farm-servants and such like, for these would get
remunerative employment at once; and, gradually, land would be taken up,
and money diffused in so many hands that there would be a healthy flow
instead of the present comparative stagnation and universal waiting for
"better times." In
looking at Victoria and the surrounding coast the situation is so
commanding that it is difficult to avoid speculating a little as to its
probable future. The Island is at the end of the west and the beginning of
the east. Behind it, over the mountains, stretch the virgin plains of our
North-west extending to the Great Lakes. Fronting it, are the most ancient
civilizations and the densest masses of humanity on the surface of the
globe. With such a position, the harbours, minerals, fish, and timber of
this colony all become important. If the "golden gate" be one passage-way
between the old world and the new, the straits of Fuca and its harbours,
the channels of Vancouver's Island and the inlets of the mainland are
many. To our railway terminus will converge the products of Australia and
Polynesia as well as of China and Japan; and all that the busy millions of
Great Britain need can be sent to them across their own territory,
independently of the changing phases of the eastern question. Neither the
Suez Canal nor the Euphrates Valley can ever belong to England. But let
there be a line of communication from the Pacific to the St. Lawrence
through a succession of loyal Provinces bound up with the Empire by
ever-multiplying and tightening links, and the future of the Fatherland
and of the Great Empire of which she will then be only the Chief part is
secured. With such a consummation in view, should not he be considered an
enemy to the Common-weal who would dissever the western or American
portion of so great an Empire from its foundation, from its capital and
centre, simply because a belt of Ocean intervenes; a belt too that is
becoming less of an obstacle every year. For in a few years we shall have
a Railway with but one break from the Pacific coast to the extreme
easterly side of Newfoundland, and from thence daily steamers will cross
the Atlantic in a hundred hours. Canada will be as near London then as
Scotland and Ireland were forty years ago. It will then be easier to make
the journey from Victoria to London than it was to make it from the North
of Scotland at the beginning of the century. These results, however
marvelous, will be due to steam alone. How much nearer to the core of the
Empire may not Canada be considered with the means of instantaneous
telegraphic communications extended to every part of the Dominion?
But it would be unworthy of our past to think
in this connection only of material progress and national consolidation
and security. Loftier have ever been the aims of our forefathers. It is
not enough for us to allow Chinamen to come to our shores merely that,
while living, they may do our rough work cheaply, repelled the while from
us by systematic injustice and insult, and that when dead a Company may
clear money by carrying their bodies back to their own land. A nation to
be great must have great thoughts; must be inspired with lofty ideals ;
must have men and women willing to work and wait and war 'for an idea.' To
be a light to the dark places of the earth ; to rule inferior races
mercifully and justly; to infuse into them a higher life; to give them
'the good news' that makes men blessed and free, believing that as the
race is one, reason one, and conscience one, there is one Gospel for and
unto all; nothing less than this was the thought—deeply felt if sometimes
inarticulately expressed—of our great ancestors in the brave days of Old.
And it is ours' also. By the possession of British Columbia and
Vancouver's Island we look across into the very eyes of four hundred
millions of heathen, a people eager to learn, acute to investigate, and
whom the struggle for existence in thronged centres has made tolerant,
patient, and hardy. Can we do nothing but trade with them?
October 14th.—To-day we left Esquimalt by the
"Prince Alfred" on "the home stretch," friends on the wharf giving us
kindly parting cheers. A delightful voyage of four days down the coast
brought us to San Francisco; a wonderful city 'for its age,' though not
equal to Melbourne, the only other city in the world it ought to be
compared with. Doubtless it is a fine thing to escape frost and snow; but
some people would endure all the snow-storms of Quebec or Winnipeg rather
than one sand-storm in Frisco.
On Saturday morning Oct. 19th we breakfasted
at the Lick House, San Francisco. On Saturday the 26th we breakfasted at
home in Ottawa. And
how does the country crossed by the Union and Central Pacific Railways
compare with our own north-west, has been asked us since our return?
Comparisons are odious and therefore the answer shall be as brief as
possible. The Pacific slope excepted, for there is nothing in British
Columbia to compare with the fertile valleys of California, everything is
so completely in our favour that there is really no comparison except the
old racing one of "Eclipse first and the rest nowhere." California itself,
though its yield of wheat in favourable years is marvellous, is not a
country to rear a healthy and hardy race. There is no summer or autumn
rain-fall; the air is without its due proportion of moisture; and the lack
of moisture is supplied by dust. The people look enervated, weary, and
used up. In the course of a generation or two, unless a constant infusion
of fresh blood renews their strength, the influences of climate must tell
disastrously not only on their physique but on their whole spirit and
life. Are Anglo-Saxons secure from falling into the same sleepy and
unprogressive state, that the energetic Spaniards, who first settled the
country, soon sank into?
But when we leave California and travel from
twelve to fifteen hundred miles, through Utah, Nevada, Wyoming, and
Eastern Nebraska, the contrast with our North-west is startling. Certainly
population has been attracted to various points over this vast region. The
Mormons with infinite toil and patience, have made the deserts of Utah
bring forth food for man and beast, but they are deserts notwithstanding
and yield nothing unless carefully irrigated; and the mean houses of logs
or adobé—as sun dried clay bricks are called,—and the unintelligent
careworn countenances of the people do not testify very eloquently in
favour of Utah. The State of Nevada is rich in minerals, especially in
silver; and the railway has been the means of developing these to a great
extent, while the export of the bullion supplies to the railway a
considerable local trafic. Along the Humboldt, and in side valleys, large
herds of stock are fed ; and in parts of Wyoming, and Eastern Nebraska
also, stock raising is carried on with profit. But what a country to live
in ! Every where it has a uniform dry, dusty, or what an Australian writer
would call "God-forsaken" look. For more than a thousand miles not a tree
or shrub except sage-brush or grease-wood, relieves the desolation. And
yet this is the country that guide books describe as if it were the garden
of the Lord, and to which they summon the millions of Europe. As we sat in
the railway train and read the description of the land we were passing
through; read of boundless tracts of the finest pasturage in the world ;
of free soil on which anything and everything could be raised, of slopes
that would yet be clad with vines and bear the rarest fruits; and then
looked out of the window and saw limitless stretches of desert or
semi-desert, high, arid, alkaline plateaus, dotted scantily with miserable
sage-brush, hundreds of miles without a blade of grass, a soil composed of
disintegrated lava and hard clay, or disintegrated granite or sandstone,
or a conglomerate of the two, we could hardly believe our eyes. The
American desert is a great reality. It is utterly unfit for the growth of
cereals or to support in any way a farming population, because of its
elevation, its lack of rain, and the miserable quality, or to speak more
correctly, the absence, of soil. The enterprise that ran "the pony
express," that constructed telegraphs and a line of Railway across such a
country is wonderful; but not half so wonderful as the faith that sees in
such a desert an earthly paradise, or the assurance that publishes its
visions of what ought to be, for pictures of what is, or the courage that
volunteers the sacrifice of any number of foreigners to prove the
sincerity of its faith.
In a word, after reaching the summit of the
first range of mountains, from the Pacific, the railway in the United
States has to cross more than a thousand miles of desert or semi-desert.
According to the evidence of our senses, whatever guide-books may say to
the contrary, we discovered on "the home stretch" that the great west of
the United States, practically ceases with the valley of the Missouri and
of its tributary the Platte. |
