Judge Begbie. 51

Hope to Fort Yale than in January last and the river seems lower.
This evening, however, it froze sharp as soon as the sun set and is now
snowing heavily. There was some cake ice near six inches thick in the
eddy off Strawberry Island. Great quantities of miners have gone up
the river—many English; none stopping here, scarcely.78

Captn. Whannell we found just the same as usual: calmer, I
think, since Mr. Hicks’s departure, wch I was not aware of until
my arrival here. Mr. Nicol and myself have mattresses in his par-
lour; there appears to be scarcely another spare sleeping-place in the
town. There seems much uncertainty as to the town lots here, and
I really think that the plan adopted as between Queenborough and
Langley wod. give more satisfaction than what is now the state of
affairs’’—viz., declare all that has been done of none effect, relay the
whole place, and put it up to auction, allowing to bidders the whole of
their advances to Govt. and, say, 2 of their outlay: or, better, give
every purchaser in the new town all his advances to Government and
the right to take away and dispose in any manner of any building or
improvements wch he may have made on the present sites. The town
is not laid out at all, except with parallel rulers and a water-line. The
leases are, every one of them I believe, invalidated by the unauthorized
erasures of the two terms originally contained in them—viz., payment
of rent to be in advance and power of resumption in the Govt. And if
this general confiscation be not made, it seems probable that a far larger
amount in £. s. d. will be shortly expended in law costs besides the
time wch will be lost to the Colony if the town be long delayed.

Nobody would be really injured by this: for in 6 months the place
will be much more improved than sufficiently to compensate for the loss.

Mr. Coe* was extremely anxious before I left Fort Hope that I
shod. authorize his cutting some trees for his mill wch he expects
to have in working order in 20 days. He shewed me a letter from
Dr. Tuzo* and written by Your Excellency’s order, in wch he certainly
is justified in assuming that he is to have the mill. There are thousands
of trees close by; he proposes at present to take some—he spoke of 20
or 30 out of several hundreds immediately behind his mill upon what

(78) ‘‘ The migration of miners to the upper districts of Fraser’s River continues unabated ;
300 boats, carrying on an average five white men each, had passed Fort Yale previously to the
24th of March, and a greater number of men are reported to have gone towards the same quarter
by land, haying packed their provisions either on mules or on men’s backs to the various diggings,
giving thus a collective number of about 8,000 men.’’ See letter, Douglas to Lytton, April 12,
1859, in B.C. Papers, Part III., p. 6.

(79) This was the result of the carelessness (or worse) of Mr. Hicks, the late Assistant
Commissioner of Crown Lands at Yale. See Judge Begbie’s earlier letter of February 3, 1859,
ante, p. 38.

(80) John Coe, who with his associates, H. White and D. Patterson, had on November 5,
1858, been granted by Mr. Hicks the right to erect a sawmill on ‘‘ the creek about half a mile
above Hope ’’ and to use the water-power of that creek, and to ‘ cut, fall, and use the standing
timber adjacent to Hope or such land as shall be selected for the purpose by said commissioner.’’

(81) Probably H. A. Tuzo, of the Hudson’s Bay Company in Victoria.