particular tree, called there the bull-pine--it is the pine of Lake
Superior and the East--grows to great size all over the province. It is
a common thing to find the trunks of these trees measuring four feet in
diameter, or nearly thirteen feet in circumference. It is not especially
valuable for timber, because it is too sappy. It is short-lived when
exposed to the weather, and is therefore not in demand for railroad
work; but for the ordinary uses to which builders put timber it answers
very well.
[Illustration: THE POTLATCH]
There is a maple which attains great size at the coast, and which, when
dressed, closely resembles bird's-eye-maple. It is called locally the
vine-maple. The trees are found with a diameter of two-and-a-half to
three feet, but the trunks seldom rise above forty or fifty feet. The
wood is crooked. It runs very badly. This, of course, is what gives it
the beautiful grain it possesses, and which must, sooner or later,
find a ready market for it. There is plenty of hemlock in the province,
but it is nothing like so large as that which is found in the East, and
its bark is not so thick. Its size renders it serviceable for nothing
larger than railway ties, and the trees grow in such inaccessible
places, half-way up the mountains, that it is for the most part
unprofitable to handle it. The red cedars--the wood of which is consumed
in the manufacture of pencils and cigar-boxes--are also small. On the
other hand, the white cedar reaches enormous sizes, up to fifteen feet
of thickness at the base, very often. It is not at all extraordinary to
find these cedars reaching 200 feet above the ground, and one was cut at
Port Moody, in clearing the way for the railroad, that had a length of
310 feet. When fire rages in the provincial forests, the wood of these
trees is what is consumed, and usually the trunks, hollow and empty,
stand grimly in their places after the fire would otherwise have been
forgotten. These great tubes are often of such dimensions that men put
windows and doors in them and use them for dwellings. In the valleys are
immense numbers of poplars of the common and cottonwood species, white
birch, alder, willow, and yew trees, but they are not estimated in the
forest wealth of the province, because of the expense that marketing
them would entail.
This fact concerning the small timber indicates at once the primitive
character of the country, and the vast wealth it possesses in what might
be called heroic timber--that is, sufficiently valuable to force its way
to market even from out that unopened wilderness. It was the opinion of
the engineer to whom I have referred that timber land which does not
attract the second glance of a prospector in British Columbia would be
considered of the first importance in Maine and New Brunswick. To put it
in another way, river-side timber land which in those countries would
fetch fifty dollars the acre solely for its wood, in British Columbia
would not be taken up. In time it may be cut, undoubtedly it must be,
when new railroads alter its value, and therefore it is impossible even
roughly to estimate the value of the provincial forests.
A great business is carried on in the shipment of ninety-foot and
one-hundred-foot Douglas fir sticks to the great car-building works of
our country and Canada. They are used in the massive bottom frames of
palace cars. The only limit that has yet been reached in this industry
is not in the size of the logs, but in the capacities of the saw-mills,
and in the possibilities of transportation by rail, for these logs
require three cars to support their length. Except for the valleys, the
whole vast country is enormously rich in this timber, the mountains
(excepting the Rockies) being clothed with it from their bases to their
tops. Vancouver Island is a heavily and valuably timbered country. It
bears the same trees as the main-land, except that it has the oak-tree,
and does not possess the tamarack. The Vancouver Island oaks do not
exceed two or two-and-a-half feet in diameter. The Douglas fir (our
Oregon pine) grows to tremendous proportions, especially on the north
end of the island. In the old offices of the Canadian Pacific Railway at
Vancouver are panels of this wood that are thirteen feet across,
showing that they came from a tree whose trunk was forty feet in
circumference. Tens of thousands of these firs are from eight to ten
feet in diameter at the bottom.
Other trees of the province are the great silver-fir, the wood of which
is not very valuable; Englemann's spruce, which is very like white
spruce, and is very abundant; balsam-spruce, often exceeding two feet in
diameter; the yellow or pitch pine; white pine; yellow cypress;
crab-apple, occurring as a small tree or shrub; western birch, common in
the Columbia region; paper or canoe birch, found sparingly on Vancouver
Island and on the lower Fraser, but in abundance and of large size in
the Peace River and upper Fraser regions; dogwood, arbutus, and several
minor trees. Among the shrubs which grow in abundance in various
districts or all over the province are the following: hazel, red elder,
willow, barberry, wild red cherry, blackberry, yellow plum,
choke-cherry, raspberry, gooseberry, bearberry, currant, and snowberry,
mooseberry, bilberry, cranberry, whortleberry, mulberry, and blueberry.
I would have liked to write at length concerning the enterprising cities
of the province, but, after all, they may be trusted to make themselves
known. It is the region behind them which most interests mankind, and
the Government has begun, none too promptly, a series of expeditions for
exploiting it. As for the cities, the chief among them and the capital,
Victoria, has an estimated population of 22,000. Its business district
wears a prosperous, solid, and attractive appearance, and its detached
dwellings--all of frame, and of the distinctive type which marks the
houses of the California towns--are surrounded by gardens. It has a
beautiful but inadequate harbor; yet in a few years it will have spread
to Esquimault, now less than two miles distant. This is now the seat of
a British admiralty station, and has a splendid haven, whose water is of
a depth of from six to eight fathoms. At Esquimault are government
offices, churches, schools, hotels, stores, a naval "canteen," and a
dry-dock 450 feet long, 26 feet deep, and 65 feet wide at its entrance.
The electric street railroad of Victoria was extended to Esquimault in
the autumn of 1890. Of the climate of Victoria Lord Lorne said, "It is
softer and more constant than that of the south of England."
Vancouver, the principal city of the main-land, is slightly smaller than
Victoria, but did not begin to displace the forest until 1886. After
that every house except one was destroyed by fire. To-day it boasts a
hotel comparable in most important respects with any in Canada, many
noble business buildings of brick or stone, good schools, fine churches,
a really great area of streets built up with dwellings, and a notable
system of wharves, warehouses, etc. The Canadian Pacific Railway
terminates here, and so does the line of steamers for China and Japan.
The city is picturesquely and healthfully situated on an arm of Burrard
Inlet, has gas, water, electric lights, and shows no sign of halting its
hitherto rapid growth. Of New Westminster, Nanaimo, Yale, and the still
smaller towns, there is not opportunity here for more than naming.
In the original settlements in that territory a peculiar institution
occasioned gala times for the red men now and then. This was the
"potlatch," a thing to us so foreign, even in the impulse of which it is
begotten, that we have no word or phrase to give its meaning. It is a
feast and merrymaking at the expense of some man who has earned or saved
what he deems considerable wealth, and who desires to distribute every
iota of it at once in edibles and drinkables among the people of his
tribe or village. He does this because he aspires to a chieftainship, or
merely for the credit of a "potlatch"--a high distinction. Indians have
been known to throw away such a sum of money that their "potlatch" has
been given in a huge shed built for the feast, that hundreds have been
both fed and made drunk, and that blankets and ornaments have been
distributed in addition to the feast.
The custom has a new significance now. It is the white man who is to
enjoy a greater than all previous potlatches in that region. The
treasure has been garnered during the ages by time or nature or
whatsoever you may call the host, and the province itself is offered as
the feast.
IX
DAN DUNN'S OUTFIT
At Revelstoke, 380 miles from the Pacific Ocean, in British Columbia, a
small white steamboat, built on the spot, and exposing a single great
paddle-wheel at her stern, was waiting to make another of her still few
trips through a wilderness that, but for her presence, would be as
completely primitive as almost any in North America. Her route lay down
the Columbia River a distance of about one hundred and thirty miles to a
point called Sproat's Landing, where some rapids interrupt navigation.
The main load upon the steamer's deck was of steel rails for a railroad
that was building into a new mining region in what is called the
Kootenay District, just north of our Washington and Idaho. The sister
range to the Rockies, called the Selkirks, was to be crossed by the new
highway, which would then connect the valley of the Columbia with the
Kootenay River. There was a temptation beyond the mere chance to join
the first throng that pushed open a gateway and began the breaking of a
trail in a brand-new country. There was to be witnessed the propulsion
of civilization beyond old confines by steam-power, and this required
railroad building in the Rockies, where that science finds its most
formidable problems. And around and through all that was being done
pressed a new population, made up of many of the elements that produced
our old-time border life, and gave birth to some of the most picturesque
and exciting chapters in American History.
It should be understood that here in the very heart of British Columbia
only the watercourses have been travelled, and there was neither a
settlement nor a house along the Columbia in that great reach of its
valley between our border and the Canadian Pacific Railway, except at
the landing at which this boat stopped.
Over all the varying scene, as the boat ploughed along, hung a mighty
silence; for almost the only life on the deep wooded sides of the
mountains was that of stealthy game. At only two points were any human
beings lodged, and these were wood-choppers who supplied the fuel for
the steamer--a Chinaman in one place, and two or three white men farther
on. In this part of its magnificent valley the Columbia broadens in two
long loops, called the Arrow Lakes, each more than two miles wide and
twenty to thirty miles in length. Their prodigious towering walls are
densely wooded, and in places are snow-capped in midsummer. The forest
growth is primeval, and its own luxuriance crowds it beyond the edge of
the grand stream in the fretwork of fallen trunks and bushes, whose
roots are bedded in the soft mass of centuries of forest debris.
Early in the journey the clerk of the steamer told me that wild animals
were frequently seen crossing the river ahead of the vessel; bear, he
said, and deer and elk and porcupine. When I left him to go to my
state-room and dress for the rough journey ahead of me, he came to my
door, calling in excited tones for me to come out on the deck. "There's
a big bear ahead!" he cried, and as he spoke I saw the black head of the
animal cleaving the quiet water close to the nearer shore. Presently
Bruin's feet touched the bottom, and he bounded into the bush and
disappeared.
The scenery was superb all the day, but at sundown nature began to revel
in a series of the most splendid and spectacular effects. For an hour a
haze had clothed the more distant mountains as with a transparent veil,
rendering the view dream-like and soft beyond description. But as the
sun sank to the summit of the uplifted horizon it began to lavish the
most intense colors upon all the objects in view. The snowy peaks turned
to gaudy prisms as of crystal, the wooded summits became impurpled, the
nearer hills turned a deep green, and the tranquil lake assumed a bright
pea-color. Above all else, the sky was gorgeous. Around its western edge
it took on a rose-red blush that blended at the zenith with a deep blue,
in which were floating little clouds of amber and of flame-lit pearl.
A moonless night soon closed around the boat, and in the morning we were
at Sproat's Landing, a place two months old. The village consisted of a
tiny cluster of frame-houses and tents perched on the edge of the steep
bank of the Columbia. One building was the office and storehouse of the
projected railroad, two others were general trading stores, one was the
hotel, and the other habitations were mainly tents.
I firmly believe there never was a hotel like the hostlery there. In a
general way its design was an adaptation of the plan of a hen-coop.
Possibly a box made of gridirons suggests more clearly the principle of
its construction. It was two stories high, and contained about a baker's
dozen of rooms, the main one being the bar-room, of course. After the
framework had been finished, there was perhaps half enough "slab" lumber
to sheathe the outside of the house, and this had been made to serve for
exterior and interior walls, and the floors and ceilings besides. The
consequence was that a flock of gigantic canaries might have been kept
in it with propriety, but as a place of abode for human beings it
compared closely with the Brooklyn Bridge.
[Illustration: AN INDIAN CANOE ON THE COLUMBIA]
They have in our West many very frail hotels that the people call
"telephone houses," because a tenant can hear in every room whatever is
spoken in any part of the building; but in this house one could stand
in any room and see into all the others. A clergyman and his wife
stopped in it on the night before I arrived, and the good woman stayed
up until nearly daylight, pinning papers on the walls and laying them on
the floor until she covered a corner in which to prepare for bed.
I hired a room and stored my traps in it, but I slept in one of the
engineers' tents, and met with a very comical adventure. The tent
contained two cots, and a bench on which the engineer, who occupied one
of the beds, had heaped his clothing. Supposing him to be asleep, I
undressed quietly, blew out the candle, and popped into my bed. As I did
so one pair of its legs broke down, and it naturally occurred to me, at
almost the same instant, that the bench was of about the proper height
to raise the fallen end of the cot to the right level.
"Broke down, eh?" said my companion--a man, by-the-way, whose face I
have never yet seen.
"Yes," I replied. "Can I put your clothing on the floor and make use of
that bench?"
"Aye, that you can."
So out of bed I leaped, put his apparel in a heap on the floor, and ran
the bench under my bed. It proved to be a neat substitute for the broken
legs, and I was quickly under the covers again and ready for sleep.
The engineer's voice roused me.
"That's what I call the beauty of a head-piece," he said. Presently he
repeated the remark.
"Are you speaking to me?" I asked.
"Yes; I'm saying that's what I call the beauty of a head-piece. It's
wonderful; and many's the day and night I'll think of it, if I live.
What do I mean? Why, I mean that that is what makes you Americans such a
great people--it's the beauty of having head-pieces on your shoulders.
It's so easy to think quick if you've got something to think with. Here
you are, and your bed breaks down. What would I do? Probably nothing.
I'd think what a beastly scrape it was, and I'd keep on thinking till I
went to sleep. What do you do? Why, as quick as a flash you says,
'Hello, here's a go!' 'May I have the bench?' says you. 'Yes,' says I.
Out of bed you go, and you clap the bench under the bed, and there you
are, as right as a trivet. That's the beauty of a head-piece, and that's
what makes America the wonderful country she is."
Never was a more sincere compliment paid to my country, and I am glad I
obtained it so easily.
There was a barber pole in front of the house, set up by a "prospector"
who had run out of funds (and everything else except hope), and who,
like all his kind, had stopped to "make a few dollars" wherewith to
outfit again and continue his search for gold. He noted the local need
of a barber, and instantly became one by purchasing a razor on credit,
and painting a pole while waiting for custom. He was a jocular fellow--a
born New Yorker, by-the-way.
"Don't shave me close," said I.
"Close?" he repeated. "You'll be the luckiest victim I've slashed yet if
I get off any of your beard at all. How's the razor?"
"All right."
"Oh no, it ain't," said he; "you're setting your nerves to stand it,
so's not to be called a tender-foot. I'm no barber. I expected to 'tend
bar when I bumped up agin this place. If you could see the blood
streaming down your face you'd faint."
In spite of his self-depreciation, he performed as artistic and painless
an operation as I ever sat through.
While I was being shaved the loungers in the barber-shop entered into a
conversation that revealed, as nothing else could have disclosed it, the
deadly monotony of life in that little town. A hen cackled out-of-doors,
and the loungers fell to questioning one another as to which hen had
laid an egg.
"It must be the black one," said the barber.
"Yet it don't exactly sound like old blacky's cackle," said a more
deliberate and careful speaker.
"'Pears to me 's though it might be the speckled un," ventured a third.
"She ain't never laid no eggs," said the barber.
"Could it be the bantam?" another inquired.
Thus they discussed with earnestness this most interesting event of the
morning, until a young man darted into the room with his eyes lighted by
excitement.
"Say, Bill," said he, almost breathlessly, "that's the speckled hen
a-cackling, by thunder! She's laid an egg, I guess."
[Illustration: "YOU'RE SETTING YOUR NERVES TO STAND IT"]
In Sproat's Landing we saw the nucleus of a railroad terminal point. The
queer hotel was but little more peculiar than many of the people who
gathered on the single street on pay-day to spend their hard-earned
money upon a great deal of illicit whiskey and a few rude necessaries
from the limited stock on sale in the stores. There never had been any
grave disorder there, yet the floating population was as motley a
collection of the riffraff of the border as one could well imagine, and
there was only one policeman to enforce the law in a territory the size
of Rhode Island. He was quite as remarkable in his way as any other
development of that embryotic civilization. His name was Jack Kirkup,
and all who knew him spoke of him as being physically the most superb
example of manhood in the Dominion. Six feet and three inches in height,
with the chest, neck, and limbs of a giant, his three hundred pounds of
weight were so exactly his complement as to give him the symmetry of an
Apollo. He was good-looking, with the beauty of a round-faced,
good-natured boy, and his thick hair fell in a cluster of ringlets over
his forehead and upon his neck. No knight of Arthur's circle can have
been more picturesque a figure in the forest than this "Jack." He was as
neat as a dandy. He wore high boots and corduroy knickerbockers, a
flannel shirt and a sack-coat, and rode his big bay horse with the ease
and grace of a Skobeleff. He smoked like a fire of green brush, but had
never tasted liquor in his life. In a dozen years he had slept more
frequently in the open air, upon pebble beds or in trenches in the snow,
than upon ordinary bedding, and he exhibited, in his graceful movements,
his sparkling eyes and ruddy cheeks, his massive frame and his
imperturbable good-nature, a degree of health and vigor that would seem
insolent to the average New Yorker. Now that the railroad was building,
he kept ever on the trail, along what was called "the right of
way"--going from camp to camp to "jump" whiskey peddlers and gamblers
and to quell disorder--except on pay-day, once a month, when he stayed
at Sproat's Landing.
[Illustration: JACK KIRKUP, THE MOUNTAIN SHERIFF]
The echoes of his fearless behavior and lively adventures rang in every
gathering. The general tenor of the stories was to the effect that he
usually gave one warning to evil-doers, and if they did not heed that he
"cleaned them out." He carried a revolver, but never had used it. Even
when the most notorious gambler on our border had crossed over into
"Jack's" bailiwick the policeman depended upon his fists. He had met the
gambler and had "advised" him to take the cars next day. The gambler, in
reply, had suggested that both would get along more quietly if each
minded his own affairs, whereupon Kirkup had said, "You hear me: take
the cars out of here to-morrow." The little community (it was Donald, B.
C., a very rough place at the time) held its breathing for twenty-four
hours, and at the approach of train-time was on tiptoe with strained
anxiety. At twenty minutes before the hour the policeman, amiable and
easy-going as ever in appearance, began a tour of the houses. It was in
a tavern that he found the gambler.
"You must take the train," said he.
"You can't make me," replied the gambler.
There were no more words. In two minutes the giant was carrying the limp
body of the ruffian to a wagon, in which he drove him to the jail. There
he washed the blood off the gambler's face and tidied his collar and
scarf. From there the couple walked to the cars, where they parted
amicably.
"I had to be a little rough," said Kirkup to the loungers at the
station, "because he was armed like a pin-cushion, and I didn't want to
have to kill him."
We made the journey from Sproat's Landing to the Kootenay River upon a
sorry quartet of pack-horses that were at other times employed to carry
provisions and material to the construction camps. They were of the kind
of horses known all over the West as "cayuses." The word is the name of
a once notable tribe of Indians in what is now the State of Washington.
To these Indians is credited the introduction of this small and peculiar
breed of horses, but many persons in the West think the horses get the
nickname because of a humorous fancy begotten of their wildness, and
suggesting that they are only part horses and part coyotes. But all the
wildness and the characteristic "bucking" had long since been "packed"
out of these poor creatures, and they needed the whip frequently to urge
them upon a slow progress. Kirkup was going his rounds, and accompanied
us on our journey of less than twenty miles to the Kootenay River. On
the way one saw every stage in the construction of a railway. The
process of development was reversed as we travelled, because the work
had been pushed well along where we started, and was but at its
commencement where we ended our trip. At the landing half a mile or more
of the railroad had been completed, even to the addition of a locomotive
and two gondola cars. Beyond the little strip of rails was a long reach
of graded road-bed, and so the progress of the work dwindled, until at
last there was little more than the trail-cutters' path to mark what had
been determined as the "right of way."