CHRONICLES OF. THE CARIBOO 25

ies es comes the question of the date of this momentous discovery:

search I can find no record of the day of the week or month.

While both ‘Dunlevey. ‘and Moffitt must have mentioned this im-
portant date in relating their stories so many. times, such is the reck-
lessness of youth, who takes no stock of time, that such unimportant
things to him as dates are completely obliterated from memory, while
the very words of the racounteur, on more exciting parts of the story,
remain as clearly as if spoken but yesterday.

Imagine, then, the writer’s agreeable surprise to find that, in re-
calling those words to set them down in this record the coveted date
in question has automatically set itself down on Nature’s own page
of Time. And in characters unmistakeable and irrefutable: The char-
acters of Natural Facts!

Oh, don’t imagine we can call on Nature to deduce the date to the
minute for us; for, Nature, herself is never absolutely exact. But she
will, in her own way, give us the date close enough for all practical
purposes.

This is how: Baptiste would kill only does to feed the whitemen,
for fear they wouldn’t want to eat the meat of bucks when they saw
they carried tumors in their insides, filled with a matter-like white or
grey substance, quite odorless and really wholesome but very ill-look-
ing to white people. This is really horn material and disappears of it-
self as the horns grow out. These tumors are at their worst stage in
June. |

Likewise he wouldn’t kill bear because neither the flesh or hide
are any good in June or July.

The herbs and shrubs he gathered fer greens as well as the roots
in pine woods are only gocd the first half of June.

Pine sap is only fit the first half of June.

The mosquitoes were in their vanguard run of the the big variety
indicating June. ; leg

The second run of the smaller though equally vicious species be-
gin in the latter half of June.

There is no mention of horseflys. They begin the latter half of
June. | :

No mention of berries. There are none in June. : ¥

Last and most forceful. The river was at its peak of high water
which in those days, when the forests were still intact thanks to In-
dian husbandry, meant just after the middle of June.

Deducing from these natural facts any experienced woodsman
would say that the Dunlevy party arrived on the Horsefly just after
the middle of June. If we said the sixteenth we would not be more
than a day or two out either way.

Now here is a marvel of exact time record pertaining to this
story: Twelve hours after the Dunlevey party arrived on the Horsefly
another party following them joined their camp.

Among those in this second party were: Hans Helgesen, one time
M. L. A.; George Black, founder of Hastings; Joe Devlin, died in Vic-

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