4 THE CARIBOO TRAIL

There were, however, signs of what was to

follow. The chief trader at the little fur-post
of Yale reported that when he rinsed sand
round in his camp frying-pan, fine flakes and
scales of yellow could be seen at the bottom.!
But gold in such minute particles would not
satisfy the men who were hunting nuggets.
It required treatment by quicksilver. Though
Maclean, the chief factor at Kamloops, kept
all the specks and flakes brought to his post
as samples from 1852 to 1856, he had less
than would fill a half-pint bottle. If a half-
pint is counted as a half-pound and the gold
at the company’s price of eleven dollars an
ounce, it will be seen why four years of such
discoveries did not set Victoria on fire.

It has been so with every discovery of gold
in the history of the world. The silent,
shaggy, ragged first scouts of the gold stam-
pede wander houseless for years from hill to
hill, from gully to guily, up rivers,.up stream
beds, up dry watercourses, seeking the source
of those yellow specks seen far down the moun-
tains near the sea. Precipice, rapids, avalanche,
winter storm, take their toll of dead. Corpses
are washed down in the spring floods; or the

1 The same, of course, may be done to-day, with a like result,
at many places along the Fraser and even on the Saskatchewan,