THE ‘ARGONAUTS ” 13

I don’t apprehend any danger from the Indians at
present, but there will be hell to pay after a while.
There is a pack-trail from Hope, but it cannot be
travelled till the snow is off the mountains.

The prices of provisions are as follows: flour
thirty-five dollars per hundred-weight, pork a dollar
a pound, beans fifty cents a pound, and other things
in proportion. Every party that starts from the
Sound should have their own supplies to last them
three or four months, and they should bring the
largest size chinook canoes, as small ones are very
liable to swamp in the rapids. Each canoe should
be provided with thirty fathoms of strong line for
towing over swift water, and every man well armed.
The Indians here can beat anything alive stealing.
They will soon be able to steal a man’s food after he
has eaten it.

Within two miles of Yale eighty Indians
and thirty white men were working the gold-
bars; and log boarding-houses and saloons
sprang up along the river-bank as if by magic.
Naturally, the last comers of ’58 were too late
to get a place on the gold-bars, and they went
back to the coast in disgust, calling the gold
stampede ‘ the Fraser River humbug.’ Never-
theless, men were washing, sluicing, rocking,
and digging gold as far as Lillooet. Often the
day’s yield ran as high as eight hundred dollars
aman; and the higher up the treasure-seekers