THE ‘ ARGONAUTS’ 5

thaw reveals a prospector’s shack smashed by
a snowslide under which lie two dead ‘ pard-
ners.’ Then, by and by, when everybody has
forgotten about it, a shaggy man comes out
of the wilds with a leather bag; the bag goes
to the mint; and the world goes mad.

Victoria went to sleep again. When men
drifted in to trade dust and nuggets for picks
and flour, the fur-traders smiled, and rightly
surmised that the California diggings were
playing out.

Though Vancouver Island was nominally
a crown colony, it was still, with New Cale-
donia, practically a fief of the Hudson’s Bay
Company. James Douglas was governor. He
was assisted in the administration by a council
of three, nominated by himseli—John Tod,
James Cooper, and Roderick Finlayson. In
1856 a colonial legislature was elected and met |
at Victoria in August for the first time.1 But, |

1 This was the first Legislative Assembly to meet west of Upper |
Canada in what is now the Canadian Dominion. It consisted |
of seven members, as follows: J. D. Pemberton, James Yates, |
E. E. Langford, J. S. Helmcken, Thomas J. Skinner, John |
Muir, and J. F. Kennedy. Langford, however, retired almost |
immediately after the election and J. W. M‘Kay was elected in
his stead. The portraits of five of the members are preserved in
the group which appears as the frontispiece to this volume. The
photograph was probably taken at a later period; at any rate,
two of the members, Muir and Kennedy, are missing.