g CHRONICLES OF THE CARIBOO

dunnage. There they met with an unexpected surprise. The Hudson’s
Bay Co. factor in charge at first declined to sell them the supplies
they needed when they unsuspectingly told him they were going pros-
pecting into the mountains somewhere East of Fort Alexandria. This
was the first time they’d had dealings with the Company, so they
were unprepared fcr its extremely conservative policy and strong
objections to having what it considered its Indian fur domain overrun
with whitemen. So Dunicvey’s persuasive powers came into play at
ence and he nerved himself for the task, which didn’t daunt him at
all, of upsetting—even reversing—this great and ancient Company’s
time-hardened policy of whitemen not wanted in Hudson’s Bay Indian
Territory.

When the factor asked him: “How do you know there is goid in
that country anyway?” Dunlevey caught himself in time and didn’t
betray his friend Tomaah’s confidence and probably hurt him with
his employer, the Company. “But he had been quietly and steadily
studying what the Indian had told him and he remembered about the
clear-water river flowing into the Fraser, so he replied: “We are
miners, so we can read gcld signs and follow them. We have been
prospecting the Fraser River bars all the way up from Yale, and we
find that the gold is getting coarser the higher up we go, and that -
means to us that there must be deposits cf real coarse gold at the
headwaters of these rivers where that river gold comes from.” Which
was all true enough and sound miner’s logic, therefore sound argu-
ment. Then he continued on not so sound ground and more in the
. nature of a randcm shot which he loved: “There have been explorers
up in this country befcre, as douktless you know, and they have re-
ported a clear-water river flowing into the Fraser from the Hast, some
thirty or forty miles abeve your Fort Alexandria. Why, man! they
river means that it is flowing through a gravel country, and gravel
country means gold country to us miners. So we are taking a short-
cut into the mountsains, where that clear-water river heads, and we
hope to find deposits of ccarse gold there.”

Then he essayed a frcntcal attack directly in the face of the Com-
pany’s pet policy: “Oh, I can see what your policy is, sir; you don’t
want a crowd of white miners messing up your Indian fur country.
But, man alive! ycu can’t keep us cut. VW/e’re here now already and
we're going on. You must know there are thousands of miners
swarming up the Fraser River right now, and by Fall they will be
buying supplies from your store at Fort Alexander. Why, man! they
are coming up this Thompson River too. And this is a clear-water
river also. Don’t you see the significance of that?”

He was lucky there; for Sellers and Crow had already been pan-
ning down on the shores of the Thompson and had met what must
have been the vanguard of prospectors on the Thompson. A party
of four who had prospected their way up from the Fraser but had
net found the gold coarse enough to stop and mine it. They said
they suspected there were lakes up:ahead that had trapped the coarse.