The places of gold deposits were very freakish and
unaccountable. This fact is borne out by the splitting
up of the groups who worked the adjacent creeks—
the Lightning, Horsefly, Williams and Hixon. Many
thousands of dollars worth of the precious metal was
taken out of these creeks, and thus grew the towns
of Quesnel and Barkerville. It is reported that im-
mediately prior to the advent of the “rush” there
were about seven hundred pig-tailed Chinese work-
ing the streams and legend tells us that they found
the largest nugget weighing two pounds pure gold
while washing in the bed of Hixon Creek. By 1865,
however, hydraulic mining was replacing the more
primitive operations of the prospector and the work
was greatly intensified. Many thousands of dollars
have been paid by capitalists for certain “producing”
claims, only to witness after several weeks, a com-
plete barrenness.

As to the prospector, that romantic figure, who for
years has been the trail maker for finance . . . poor,
ragged, roofless and staked by “pardner’’... his has
not been the easy comfortable life, even when he
made a “‘strike,"’ for at heart there was always that
undefinable urge to go on—on to the motherlode from
whence those little flakes of gold had been washed.
Many are the tales of those old stalwarts, poling

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