the original fort was burned to the ground
by marauding Beavers, and Guy Hughes,
the factor, murdered with his men. Baptiste
LeFleur and another Frenchman, returning
to the fort from a hunt, were saved from
a similar fate by old Pouce Coupe, chief of
the Pouce Coupe band of Beavers who
crossed the Peace, upbraided the Indians for
their rash act, provided the two surviving
whites with a canoe and saw that they got
safely away.

Moved to its present site, it was threat-
ened again when I was there in 1911, when
Breynot and Aikins, government surveyors,
started cutting base lines through what the

TOCKER’S
CS ECURITY
TORAGE

Moving, Packing, Furniture Storage
Fireproof Constructed

Warehouse, 824 Johnston St.

Victoria

KER & STEPHENSON

LIMITED
Unusual Service in

Real Estate Insurance
Mortgages

1121 Government Street Victoria, B.C.

WILFRED GIBSON

PHOTOGRAPHER
WE SPECIALIZE IN MILITARY PHOTOS

Phone E6221
770 Fort Street near Blanshard
VICTORIA, B. C.

Compliments of

TILLICUM ATHLETIC CLUB

Dominion Charter (Inc. 1924)
e
VICTORIA, B.C.

Furniture Moving Storage

General Delivery

Phone G 7823
BRAY’S TRANSFER

LIMITED
Hauling Contractors

Light and Heavy Trucks for Hire on
Short Notice.

Licensed Limited Freight Carriers to
All Vancouver Island Points.

721 Johnson St. Victoria, B.C.

Page Twelve

Beaver Indians still considered their hunting
grounds. Milling around the post with
loaded Winchesters, Wolf and his preda-
tory tribesmen were all set to shoot up the
surveyors and throw the rest of us “white
dogs” into the Peace. All that saved us
was the fact that I happened to have a bunch
of well-armed Crees—ancestral enemies of
the Beavers-—around, and old Montaignais,
the Beaver chief, fell for a peace talk, ac
companied by a liberal handout of tobacco,
flour, tea and sowbelly which changed red-
skin minds from bloodshed to feasting. But
I spent an uncomfortable night with a bunch
of Cree hunters behind the log walls of the
Revillon trading post, while half a thousand
frenzied Beavers whooped it up till dawn
around their tepees on the flat.

This Revillon post, by the way, was form-
er headquarters for Inspector Constantine
and his red-coated detachment of Royal
North West Mounted Police when they
started in 1905 to slash an overland road
to the goldfields of the Klondyke. Clad in
mooseskin and flour sacks when the 5.8.
Peace River, carrying their supplies, got
caught in fall ice, Constantine's axe-swing-

Syorth West Territories

Ss
SS elson
~
. = — 3
/ /

a
COLUMBIAM Fort St. John
|

Grande Sreiri Cy

Proposed Roads

Alaska Highway
Under Construction

ing Mounties reached Fort Graham in time
for Corporal Clay to prevent a raid on the
Hudson’s Bay post and save factor Fox from
-eing murdered by the Sickannies. Three
years of blood and sweat-drenched labour
and stark achievement in slashing the over-
land road towards Whitehorse was halted
from Victoria. Overnight it became “the
road to nowhere.” When British Columbia
refused to share the cost of pushing the
Mounted Police road beyond the Stikine,
“Black Jack” MacDonnell abandoned the
log-walled barracks at Fort St. John and
returned with surviving pack-horses and a
bunch of ragged, trail-worn Mounties back
to Edmonton.

BLAZING A TRADE ROUTE

My two years’ sojourn on the back of
a shaggy cayuse, or in a horse-drawn cab-
oose, converting the ancient Sickannie war
trail into a frontier sleigh road, happened

when a bunch of enterprising “free traders” |
introduced blitz methods into the fur trade
by making a flanking movement via Fort
St. John and Fort Nelson, sending scow |
loads of trade goods down the Mackenzie
River from the mouth of the Fontas to be
snatched up by hungry redskins while Hud-
son’s Bay steamers were still held up by
July ice at Great Slave Lake. Establishing
headquarters at the log-walled post of Fort
St. John I rounded up a pack-train and
headed north with my half-breed guide, —
George Beatton, thrqugh the Beaver hunting

Office Phone, G 2612

Frank L. Thomson

Thomson Funeral Home

Directors of Funeral Service
Established 1893

1625 Quadra Street Victoria, B.C.

Harte-Andrews Paints
LIMITED
PAINT MANUFACTURERS AND
DECORATORS
WALLPAPERS
ESTIMATES FREE

Factory: 1302 Wharf St. Phone G 5822
Retail Store: 711 View St. Phone G 4713
VICTORIA, B. C.

“There'll Always Be an England”

ARMY and NAVY
VETERANS IN CANADA

Victoria Unit No. 12

1001 Wharf Street Victoria, B. C.

WILLIAMSON & SON LTD.

ARTISTS’ MATERIALS — FRAMING

Everything for the Photographer
°

640 Fort Street VICTORIA, B.C.

W. & J. WILSON
. CLOTHIERS
a)
Telephone Garden 5013

1221 Government St, Victoria

Phone Garden 3232

PALM DAIRIES LTD.
Finest Quality Dairy Products
“The Cream of Them All”
VICTORIA, B.C.

THE SHOULDER STRAP