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KLATSASSAN.

come we can see them approaching, and we can shoot
them from the trees before they even know that we are
here. If every Indian does his duty, in my opinion the
land will soon be purged of these wretches.”

Leaving Klatsassan and his men in their eyrie at
Puntzeen, enjoying the fruits of their deeds of butchery,
and glorying in the vain dream of exterminating the
colonists, we must now follow the steps taken by the
Government to apprehend and bring them to justice.

Vv.
GOVERNMENT EXPEDITIONS IN PURSUIT OF
THE CRIMINALS.

Tae Governor of British Columbia, which was then an
independent English colony, the great scheme of Canadian
Confederation not having as yet seen the light, was the
late Mr. Frederick Seymour, C.B. As soon as news of
the outrages described above reached New Westminster,
then the seat of Government, it was determined that
prompt means should be used to bring the offenders to
justice and restore security to the colony.» Whether
the means used were the wisest, the most practical,
may be questioned; when I mention that two expe-
ditions were sent out, that only one accomplished any
thing, that all it did accomplish was to take half a
dozen prisoners, and that these modest results were
obtained more by stratagem than any thing else, readers:
may be amused at the Brodignagian preparations and the
Liliputian achievements. They may be inclined to ask
whether the thing might not have been done better in a
simplerway. However this maybe, itis well known, that if
an idea gets into an Englishman’s head how a thing must
be done, he will do it, even in a cumbrous, ponderous,
and expensive way, if that be the idea of doing it that
he gets into hishead. Witness the Abyssinian war, where
an enterprise which might safely have been entrusted to
fifty enterprising adyenturers was undertaken at an
immense cost and labour: where the bow of Ulysses was
indeed taken to shoot the pigeon; and the might of
England put forth to deliver a few prisoners from the
stronghold of a semi-savage chieftain with no army or
defences worthy of the name.

Similarly it was thought that the best way to catch
the Chilcoaten murderers was to send after them two
costly expeditions, which, entering the country at different
points, should search for the Indian through the impene-
trable forest, and scour the endless tracts of an unknown
country, in quest of a biped very swift of foot, nowise
capturable either by force or fleetness.

One expedition, under the leadership of the late Mr.
Brew, police-magistrate of the colony, was to enter the
country from the sea-coast at Bentinck Sound, by the
way that Macdonald’s hapless train had taken.

The other was to start from the Fraser River and
pursue a course Ww. and s.w. This expedition we pro-
pose to follow, guided by information derived from no
second-hand source. Its history will furnish some inte-
resting notices of colonial and Indian life.

Early in June, Mr. Cox, stipendiary magistrate and
gold commissioner of Quesnelmouth, a flourishing little
town on the Upper Fraser, and the principal depot for the
mines of Cariboo (situated about sixty miles distant in a
N.w. direction), received instructions to get together a
party of volunteers, and go after Klatsassan and his
accomplices. No man could have been better selected

Pumper

183

for the command of such an expedition. Together with
great experience of frontier life, he possessed much know-
ledge of Indian character. Personally endowed with @

rare combination of affability and firmness, he was :
peculiarly well fitted to command the body of strong |

willed and undisciplined miners and backwoodsmen who
consented to place themselves under his authority. A

man of infinite humour, his very presence made men |

smile with honest delight, not only from the genial mirth
which twinkled in his eye, but in anticipation of the fun

which they knew was ready to break from his lips. |

More than any man I ever knew, he possessed the power

of noting and appropriating the ludicrous phenomena, |
whereof this grave world is full, and pouring them forth |
deliciously on all who came about him, by look and tone |

and smile, as well as in what he actually said. Such a

quality would, of course, make him very popular with his |

men, and indeed it went far to keep them good-humoured

and obedient amid the difficulties and hardships of the |

expedition.

The instructions Mr. Cox received were to enter the |

Chileoaten territory at Alexandria, and travel on until he

should meet Mr. Brew’s party coming from the coast. |
He was directed to use every possible means to catch and |
He was to avoid coming into |
collision with the Indians, who were to be made to under- |
stand that the object of the Government was not to make |
war on them, but simply and solely to apprehend ané |

bring in the murderers.

punish the offenders.

Mr. Cox assembled his men, to the number of fifty, at |
They consisted chiefly of miners and gold-
A few others there were, whe |

Alexandria.
seekers, out of all nations.
belonged to the estate of gentlemen. Emeriti officers of

the army and navy, who had stumbled upon a colony |

little suited to them. Attracted by the Government

grants of land by which a grateful country rewarded their |
services, they had found the boon a questionable one. |
For it necessitated their settling amid the solitudes of an |
immense country, where, with flour sometimes from a |
shilling to a dollar a pound, and labour from 17. to 22. a |
day, they had to toil like common labourers at clearing _
the forest, and making themselves some rude kind of home, |

for years before they could look for any returns. The

recompense would be great, no doubt, when it came, but |

meanwhile the work was almost more than any man
could endure, excepting those accustomed to hard manual

labour from their youth. Chances were, long before the ©

harvest of their hopes, they would break down or starve,
and selling out at much loss, leave the fruit of their
arduous toil for other hands to gather. A hard let
surely, almost unbearable. The humblest day-labourer
in old England had bread cheaper and worked far less to
earn it, while they went grinding on in this far-off land, all
uncheered and solitary, save forthe rough companionship.ef
aservant, a Cariboo digger, probably, for whom our captain
or lieutenant must often cook his dinner, and with whom
—fate more cruel still for him, accustomed as he is to the
refinements of the mess-room of the 200th, or the highly
intellectual conversation of the gun-room of H.M.8.
Donnerwetter—he must sit down to eatit. One is always
sorry to find people out of their proper sphere; and to see the
education and experience gained in one profession thrown
away, and anotherassumed whichis wholly newand untried,
is doubly unsatisfactory. Why does not the British officer
remain in the army or navy, and give his mind to the

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