THE PROSPECTOR on

miners for pans to wash their gold, that one
desperate fellow went to a log shack called
a grocery store, and after paying a dollar for
the privilege of using a grindstone, bought
an empty butter vat at the pound price oi
butter—twelve dollars for an empty butter
tub! Half a dollar was the smallest coin used,
and clothing was so scarce that when a China-
man’s pig chewed up Walter Moberly’s boots
while the surveyor lay asleep in his shack,
Mr Moberly had to foot it twenty-five miles
before he could find another pair of boots.
Saloons occupied every second shack at Yale
and Hope; revolvers were in all belts and
each man was his own sheriff; yet there was
little lawlessness.

With claims filed on all gold-bearing bars,
what were the ten thousand men to do camped
for fiity miles beyond Yale? Those who had
no provisions and could not induce any store-
keeper to grubstake them for a winter’s pro-
specting, quit the country in disgust ; and the
price of land dropped in the boom towns of
the Fraser as swiftly as it had been ballooned
up. Prospecting during the winter in a
country of heavy snowfall did not seem a sane
project. And yet the eternal question urged
the miners on: from what mother lode are

C.T. B