THE PROSPECTOR 19

braced across the canoes. These travellers
naturally did not attempt Fraser Canyon.

Before Christmas of ’59 prospectors had
spread into Lillooet and up the river as high as
Chilcotin, Soda Creek, Alexandria, Cotton-
wood Canyon, Quesnel, and Fort George. It
was safer to ascend such wild streams than to
run with the current, though countless canoes
and their occupants were never heard of after
leaving Yale. Where the turbid yellow flood
began to rise and ‘collect ’—a boatman’s
phrase—the men would scramble ashore, and,
by means of a long tump-line tied—not to the
prow, which would send her sidling—to the
middie of the first thwart, would tow their
crait slowly up-stream. I have passed up
and down Fraser Canyon too often to count
the times, and have canoed one wild rapid
twice, but never without wondering how those
first gold-seekers managed the ascent in that
winter of ’59.

There was no Cariboo Road then. There
was only the narrow footpath of the trapper
and the fisherman close down to the water ;
and when the rocks broke off in sheer preci-
pice, an unsteady bridge of poles and willows
spanned the abyss. A ‘ Jacob’s ladder’ a
hundred feet above a roaring whirlpool without