120 FIFTY YEARS IN WESTERN CANADA

He did this, starting on May 6, 1902, for his annual tour through the villages of Natléh (Fraser Lake), Stony Creek and Fort George, in all of which he gave the customary spring mission, or retreat. He then made for Victoria, where he embarked for Wrangell, on the island of the same name in Alaska.

An incident here took place which is perhaps worth relating. It may be called the story of a photograph, and goes back to the year 1898, that of the Klondike rush.

The Ashcroft’? Journal had been vaunting the old telegraph’ trail as the poor man’s route to the new gold fields, and, as a consequence, that practically aban- doned path, which is quite straight but for that same reason made up of ups and downs, soon became enlivened with a steady flow of humanity in search of the precious metal. Most of those new Argonauts were now cursing the day when they had read that paper or been told of that trail, which was, indeed, they claimed, the poor man’s route, that is, the one which made a rich man poor."*

Father Morice was one Friday afternoon riding back from Fort George, when, in a prairie just south of Stony Creek, he fell upon a party of Klondikers camped in the shape of a little village for the night's rest.

He was on the point of passing by when two tall young ladies—yes, real ladies in a crowd of prospective

12 The southern terminus of the famous Cariboo wagon road since the advent of the C.P.R. It was previously at Yale.

18 Built to practically join America to Europe, as far as communica- tions go, before the laying of the Atlantic cable.

14 One of the prospective miners who used it lost his mind through the difficulties of the way, another suicided for a similar cause, a third got lost and was devoured by a grizzly, etc. Most of them, instead of following the trail up to Dawson, left it asa rule, as soon as a conven- ient river, such as the Skeena, the Naas or the Stickine, afforded them the means of reaching the sea, and returned home, ruined.