|
|

| more distant part of the continent.

| of British Columbia, for the gold mines of Cariboo, which

| scheme—had pressed him to take them.

KLATSASSAN, 109

they ran. ‘The surprise was so complete that resistance
was impossible. And besides, even if there had been
time to use them, weapons there were none; there was
but one rifle and one revolver in the whole camp. For
unhappily, the foreman Brewster had refused arms for
his company when, at Victoria, Mr. Waddington—the
originator and principal manager of this Bute Inlet
No: there was
nothing, he thought, to fear from the Indians. The poor
foreman paid dearly for his too great confidence, or too
great contempt.

The death of Brewster was attended by circumstances
of signal atrocity. While the work of murder was going
on, Chiddeki had stood aloof,—he alone of all the Indians
taking no part in it. When all was over, Klatsassan
came up to him. His countenance, marked by that
singular wildness and ferocity which characterize the
shedders of blood, might well strike terror into the
young Indian as, holding his tomahawk over his head,
he inquired in a voice of thunder why he had not done-
any thing? Chiddeki, however, nothing daunted, replied
that he was standing there to prevent any one éscaping.
Jlatsassan appeared only half satisfied by this reply: he
did not, however, strike the lad, he commanded him to
follow him, and went off accompanied by Chesuss, in
search of Brewster, whose tent was some way farther on.
Having gone some distance, they came within sight of
the tent, and then they concealed themselves in the
brush near the trail by which they expected him to pass.
When he came to within three or four yards of them, one
of them fired, but the gun missed fire. Brewster saw it,
and turning with true Anglo-Saxon coolness to the place
in the brush from which the report came, asked into the
bushes why any body wanted to kill him. To this
Chesuss answered from his ambush, “ We have killed all |
the rest, and we will kill you.” Hearing this, Brewster
ran toa hill close by, and got behind a large rock; the |
ruffians made after him, fired, and wounded him. Then
he sat down quietly, and asked them to put an end to
him at once. Chesuss then shot him dead. The mur-
derers first stripped their victim; and then they cut open
his body, and took out his heart, and—horrible to relate!
—one of them ate part of it. This was Chesuss: probably
he thought he would make himself very brave by eating
a white man’s heart. The other, Klatsassan, declined to
share this infernal repast. Ruffian as he was, he was not
so bad as that. Besides, his ferocious courage needed no
such stimulant.

III.
MACDONALD’S PARTY.

ScarcEeLy had the good people of Victoria got over the
excitement of the news brought by Mr. Whymper of
these wholesale murders, than more intelligence reached
them of fresh crimes committed by the same Indians in a
This time it was a
party of miners and packers who were the victims. They
had started from Bentinck Arm on the north-west coast

they sought to reach by traversing a rough and unknown
country, where as yet there was no road, but at the best
only a trail or bridle-path. The leader, or captain of the
party, was Alexander Macdonald, a well-known packer.

The names of the others were Malcolm Macleod, Peter
Macdougall, Barney Johnson, packers ; the others, Charles
Farquharson, Clifford Higgins, John Grant, and Frederick
Harrison, were gold-diggers, bent on fortune-hunting in
the gold-fields of William’s Creek.

The party had forty-two pack-animals, twenty-eight of
which were laden with provisions for the mines, valued at
about 1000/7. They left New Aberdeen at the head of

Bentinck Arm, on the 17th of May, 1864. For two or three

days they proceeded without adventure. The scenery
was romantic and varied to a wonderful extent. Perhaps
it is hardly to be expected that adventurers in a new
country will care much for the beauties of nature. Their
life is too much a struggle for existence, and the labours
and anxieties of each day are too absorbing. Otherwise,
these travellers would have found much to charm them.
Now they would cross a fine upland plateau, where the
famous bunch-grass of the colony waved in all its
luxuriance of verdure, and whence a glorious panorama
lay at their feet, of vast undulating plains, and silvery
streams, and grand snow-capped mountains closing in the
view. Then descending by a steep and tortuous path—
(alas, in those rough down-hill rushes, for the poor mules,
with their backs torn by the heavy burdens of three or
four hundredweight !)—they would find at the bottom a
delicious valley rich in flowers and shrubs, fragrant
with the cotton-wood, and watered by a cool bright
mountain-stream. Then the long train would wend
upwards, passing round some steep “slide” or mountain-
slip, where, ages ago, the rocky mountain had been rent
asunder, and part of it had slipped away into the valley

| beneath: the remaining rock had gone on crumbling

away, under the influence of summer rains and winter
frosts, until its fragments now flowed round the moun-
tain like a great mantle of sand, dun-coloured, relieved
only by one or two flowers, foxgloves or such like,
dotted over the ample garment. Across this slippery
sand-mantle, the long mule-train, preceded by the jingling
bells of the leader, and stimulated by the shouts and
threats of the drivers, would wend its weary way, and
woe betide the hapless animal who on this elevated and
uncertain trail should slip—its fate to roll and roll adown
the precipitous slope, till dashed to pieces on the rocky
bed of yon river, far below.

Nicootlem is a lake seventy-five miles inland from
Bentinck Arm, where a branch of the Chilecoaten Indians
had their head-quarters. The chief of the Nicootlems.
was Anahim, one of the greatest and most dangerous
of the enemies of the whites, but one who unluckily
never has been brought to justice. Klatsassan, however,
as already stated, was looked upon as chief over all the
Chilcoaten Indians; he had certainly most power and
influence among them. Now Klatsassan had reached
Nicootlem only a day or two before Macdonald’s party.
He had come expressly to look out for Macdonald, and
to stir up the Indians to attack him. His success at

the Homathco, miserable and dastardly as it was, had |

convinced him that the whites were vulnerable, and
confirmed him in the delusion that their expulsion from
the country might be practicable. On his arrival at
Nicootlem, he told Anahim and the rest of the prize
that would so soon be within their reach. Their greed
was easily excited by his account of the endless supplies
of flour and bacon which would attend a successful raid
on Macdonald’s train, and they all agreed to seize the