CARIBOO 4'7

been builtisamystery. Some arrived by pack-
train, some by canoe, but the majority afoot.

Governor Douglas could not regulate prices
here, and they jumped to war level. Flour was
three hundred dollars a barrel. Dried apples
brought two dollars and fifty cents a pound ;
and for lack of fruit many miners died from
scurvy. Where gold-seekers tramped six hun-
dred miles over a rocky trail, it is not surprising
that boots commanded fifty dollars a pair.
Of the disappointed, countless numbers filled
unknown graves, and thousands tramped their
way out starving and begging a meal from the
procession of incomers.

The places of the gold deposits were freakish
and unaccountable. Sometimes the best dig-
gings were a mother lode at the head of a
creek. Sometimes they were found fifty feet
under clay at the foot of a creek where the
dashing waters swerved round some rocky
point into ariver. Old miners now retired at
Yale and Hope say that the most ignorant
prospector could guess the place of the gold
as well as the geologist. Billy Barker, after
whom Barkerville was named, struck it rich
by going fifty feet below the surface down the
canyon. Cariboo Cameron, the luckiest of
all the miners and not originally a prospector,