Beas. ET

ay AR RAO pasha
ep iy Sy AO RAE IE:

a ee

46 THE CARIBOO TRAIL

and Klondike half a century later. The New
England States, Canada, the Maritime Pro-
vinces, the British Isles—all were set agog by
the reports of the new gold-camps where it was
only necessary to dig to find nuggets. By way
of Panama, by way of San Francisco, by way of
Spokane, by way of Victoria, by way of Winni-
peg and Edmonton came the gold-seekers, in-
different alike to perils of sea and perils of
mountain. Men whohad neverseen a mountain
thought airily that they could climb a water-
shed ina day’s walk. Men who did not know
a canoe from a row-boat essayed to run the
maddest rapids in America. People without
provisions started blindlyfrom Winnipeg across
the width of half a continent. Inthe mad rush
were clerks who had never seen ‘float,’ English
school-teachers whose only knowledge of gold
was that it was yellow, and dance-hall girls with
very little possession of anything on earth but
recklessness and slippers; and the recklessness
and the slippers danced them into Cariboo,
while many a solemn wight went to his death in
rockslide or rapids. By the opening of ’62 six
thousand miners were in Cariboo, and Barker-
ville had become the centralcamp. How these
people ever gained access to the centre of the
wilderness before the famous Cariboo Road had