CARIBOO AL

worked up to Alexandria, to Quesnel, to Fort
George. Towards spring, when the prospec-
tors had succeeded in packing in more provi-
sions, they began striking back east from the
main river, following creeks to their sources,
and from their sources over the watershed to
the sources of creeks flowing in an opposite
direction. Late in ’59 men reached Quesnel
Lake and Cariboo Lake. Binding saplings
together with withes, the prospectors poled
laboriously round these alpine lagoons, and |
where they found creeks pouring down from |
the upper peaks, they followed these creeks up
to their sources. Pockets of gravel in the
banks of both lakes yielded as much as two
hundred dollars a day. On Horse Fly Creek
up from Quesnel Lake five men washed out
in primitive rockers a hundred ounces of
nuggetsina week. The gold-fever, which had
subsided when all the bars of the Fraser were
occupied, mounted again. Great rumours
began to float out from the up-country. Bank
facings seemed to indicate that the richest pay-
dirt lay at bed-rock. This kind of mining
required sluicing, and long ditches were con-
structed to bring the water to the dry diggings.
By the autumn of ’59 a thousand miners were
at work round Quesnel Lake. By the spring