5

years is by G. M. Dawson! and is perhaps the most comprehensive that
has been published. “It is now difficult to ascertain under what precise
circumstances the first discovery of gold placers on the mainland of British
Columbia occurred. Little attention was at first given to accounts of the
finding of small quantities of gold, and at a later date, when gold mining
sprung into importance, numerous stories respecting its discovery were
invented or exhumed. One statement is to the effect that the Hudson’s
Bay agent at Kamloops had bought gold from the Indians as early as
1852, but if correct, the amount purchased must have been very small.
In 1855, a servant of the same company discovered gold near Fort Col-
ville, a short distance south of the International Boundary, and moderately
rich diggings began to be worked in that vicinity. It seems certain that
the epoch-making discovery of gold in British Columbia was the direct
result of the Colville excitement. Indians from Thompson river, visiting a
woman of their tribe who was married to a French Canadian at Walla-
Walla, spread the report that gold, like that found at Colville, occurred
also in their country, and in the summer or autumn of 1857 four or five
Canadians and half-breeds crossed over to Thompson river, and succeeded
in finding workable placers at Nicoamen, on that river, 9 miles above its
mouth. On the return of these prospectors the news of the discovery of
gold spread rapidly. It is also probable that their arrival on the Thompson
caused the Indians to take an interest in gold mining, for we read in a
despatch of Governor Sir James Douglas, that from October 6, 1857, to
the end of that year, 300 ounces of gold had passed through the hands of
the Hudson’s Bay Company, this amount being all, so far as known to
Douglas, which had been obtained. Douglas speaks of the region, includ-
ing the lower Thompson from which the gold came, as the ‘Couteau
country.’

“Nearly ten years previously, in 1849, gold had been discovered in
California, and that country was swarming with a cosmopolitan population
of gold-seekers; thus when the discovery of gold in the north became
known and authenticated, by the exhibition of the gold itself, an extra-
ordinary migration followed. Between March and June, 1858, from
20,000 to 23,000 persons arrived by sea from San Francisco in Victoria,
and converted that place (first founded by the Hudson’s Bay Company
in 1843) from a quiet village of two or three hundred inhabitants, into a
city of tents. At the same time, many miners (estimated by some at
eight thousand in number) reached British Columbia by overland routes
from the south. A large proportion of those who arrived at Victoria never
got as far as the mouth of Fraser river, their objective point, and so great
were the natural difficulties and the resulting disappointment experienced,
that all except about three thousand of this promiscuous migration returned
to California before the following January. The inland country was en-
tirely without routes of communication, by nature a singularly difficult
one, and unprovided with means for the support of a large population.
Meanwhile, by the more fortunate and energetic the development of its
wealth had been fairly inaugurated. The auriferous river-bars in the
vicinity of Hope and Yale on the lower Fraser, being the most accessible,

( 1 Mineral Wealth of British Columbia’’; Geol. Surv., Canada, Ann. Rept., vol. III (pt. II), pt. R, pp. 18-21
1889).