At daylight in the morning we entered English Bay, having crossed the
strait during the night. The sun climbed up over the snow-mantled
mountains into a cloudless sky, and his rays were reflected from the
limpid, tranquil surface of the bay:
"Blue, darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,"
as if from the face of a mirror. A few miles to the east, the
triple-mouthed Frazer empties its great volume of fresh, cold,
glacier-tinted fluid into the briny inland sea, and its delta, level as
a floor, stretches back many miles on either side of the river to the
foot-hills of the Cascades. Thousands of ducks sat idly and lazily in
the water, sunning themselves, pruning their feathers, and eyeing us
curiously but fearlessly, as we passed, sometimes within twenty-five or
thirty yards of them. A few geese crossed hither and thither, in low,
long, dark lines, uttering their familiar honk, honk; but they were more
wary than their lesser cousins, and kept well out of range. I asked the
purser if there was any rule against shooting on board, and he said no;
to go down on the after main deck, and shoot until I was tired. I took
my Winchester express from the case, went below and opened on the ducks.
They at once found it necessary to get out of the country, and their
motion, and that of the vessel combined, caused me to score several
close misses, but I finally found the bull's-eye, so to speak, and
killed three in rapid succession. Then the mate came down and said:
"We don't allow no one to be firin' off guns on board."
"I have the purser's permission," I said.
"Well," he replied, "the captain's better authority than the purser on
this here boat," whereupon he returned to the cabin deck, and so did I.
I was not seriously disappointed, however, for I cared little for the
duck shooting; I was in quest of larger game, and only wanted to
practice a little, to renew acquaintance and familiarity with my weapon.
Early in the day we entered Burrard Inlet, a narrow, crooked, and
peculiarly shaped arm of the salt water, that winds and threads its way
many miles back into the mountains, so narrow in places, that a boy may
cast a stone across it, and yet so deep as to be navigable for the
largest ocean steamship. The inlet is so narrow and crooked that a
stranger, sailing into it for the first time, would pronounce it a great
river coming down from the mountains. Through this picturesque body of
water our good boat cleft the shadows of the overhanging mountains until
nearly noon, when we landed at Vancouver, the terminus of the Canadian
Pacific Railway. In consequence of this important selection, the place
is a busy mart of trade. The clang of saw and hammer, the rattle of
wheels, the general din of a building boom, are such as to tire one's
nerves in a few hours. Later in the day we reached Port Moody. This town
was originally designated as the tide-water terminus of the road, and
had its brief era of prosperity and speculation in consequence; but now
that the plan has been changed it has been reduced to a mere way
station, and has relapsed into the dullest kind of dullness.
From here I staged across the divide to New Westminster, on the Frazer
river, the home of Mr. J. C. Hughs, who had invited me there to hunt
Rocky Mountain goats with him. I was grieved beyond measure, however, to
learn on my arrival that he was dangerously ill, and went at once to his
house, but he was unable to see me. He sank rapidly from the date of his
first illness, died two days after my arrival, and I therefore found
myself in a strange land, with no friend or acquaintance to whom I could
go for information or advice.
My first object, therefore, was to find a guide to take me into the
mountains, and although I found several pretended sportsmen, I could
hear of no one who had ever killed a goat, except poor Hughs, and a Mr.
Fannin, who had formerly lived there, but had lately moved away, so of
course no one knew where I could get a guide. Several business men, of
whom I asked information, inquired at once where I was from, and on
learning that I was an American, simply said "I don't know," and were,
or at least pretended to be, too busy to talk with me. They seemed to
have no use for people from this side of the boundary line, and this
same ill-feeling toward my Nation (with a big N) was shown me in other
places, and on various occasions, while in the province. I found,
however, one gracious exception, in New Westminster, in the person of
Mr. C. G. Major, a merchant, who, the moment I made known to him my
wish, replied:
"Well, sir, the best guide and the best hunter in British Columbia left
here not three minutes ago. He is an Indian who lives on Douglass Lake,
and I think I can get him for you. If I can, you are fixed for a good
and successful hunt."
This news, and the frank, manly, cordial greeting that came with it,
were surprising to me, after the treatment I had been receiving. Mr.
Major invited me into his private office, gave me a chair by the fire,
and sent out a messenger to look for "Douglass Bill," the Indian of whom
he had spoken. This important personage soon came in. Mr. Major told him
what I wanted, and it took but a few minutes to make a bargain. He was a
solid, well-built Indian, had an intelligent face, spoke fair English,
and had the reputation of being, as Mr. Major had said, an excellent
hunter. Mr. Major further said he considered Bill one of the most
honest, truthful Indians he had ever known, and that I could trust him
as implicitly as I could any white man in the country.
This arrangement was made on Saturday night, but Bill said he could not
start on the hunt until Wednesday morning, as his mother-in-law had just
died, and he must go and help to bury her on Tuesday. The funeral was to
take place on the Chilukweyuk river, a tributary of the Frazer, about
fifty miles above New Westminster, and it was arranged that I should go
up on the steamer, and meet him at the mouth of Harrison river, another
tributary stream, on Wednesday morning. We were then to go up the
Harrison to the hunting grounds. I was delighted at the prospect of a
successful hunt, with so good a guide, and cheerfully consented to wait
the necessary three days for the red man to perform the last sad rites
of his tribe over the remains of the departed _kloochman_, but I was
doomed to disappointment.
[Illustration: A VIEW ON THE FRAZER.]