British Columbia.--Boundaries again.--Juan de Fuça.--Carver.--
The Shining Mountains.--Jacob Astor.--The monarch of
salmon.--Oregon.--Riding and tying.--Nation Lake.--
The Pacific.
We have been a long time now in that portion of the American continent
which is known as British Columbia, and yet we have said but little of
its early life, or how it came into the limits of a defined colony.
Sometime about that evening when we lay camped (now a long way back)
upon the hill where the grim face of Chimeroo looked blankly out upon
the darkening wilderness, we entered for the first time the territory
which bears the name of British Columbia.
Nature, who, whether she forms a flower or a nation, never makes
a mistake, had drawn on the northern continent of America her own
boundaries. She had put the Rocky Mountains to mark the two great
divisions of East and West America. But the theory of natural
boundaries appears never to have elicited from us much support, and in
the instance now under consideration we seem to have gone not a little
out of our way to evince our disapprobation of Nature’s doings.
It was the business of the Imperial Government a few years ago to
define the boundaries of the new province to which they were giving a
Constitution.
The old North-West Fur Company had rested satisfied with the Rocky
Mountain frontier, but in the new document the Eastern line was defined
as follows: “And to the east, from the boundary of the United States
northwards to the Rocky Mountains, _and the one hundred and twentieth
meridian of West Longitude_.” Unfortunately, although the one hundred
and twentieth meridian is situated for a portion of its course in the
main range of the mountains, it does not lie altogether within them.
The Rocky Mountains do not run north and south, but trend considerably
to the west; and the 120th meridian passes out into the prairie country
of the Peace River. In looking at this strangely unmeaning frontier,
where nature had already given such an excellent “divide,” and one
which had always been adopted by the early geographer, it seems only
rational to suppose that the framers of the new line lay under the
impression that mountain and meridian were in one and the same line.
Nor supposing such to be the case, would it be, by any means, the first
time that such an error had been made by those whose work it was to
frame our Colonial destiny.
Well, let us disregard this rectification of boundary, and look at
British Columbia as Nature had made it.
When, some seventy years ago, the Fur Company determined to push
their trade into the most remote recesses of the unknown territory
lying before them, a few adventurers following this same course which
I have lately taken, found themselves suddenly in a labyrinth of
mountains. These men named the mountain land “New Caledonia,” for
they had been nurtured in far Highland homes, and the grim pine-clad
steeps of this wild region, and the blue lakes lying lapped amid the
mountains, recalled the Loch’s and Ben’s of boyhood’s hours. ’Twas
long before they could make much of this new dominion. Mountains rose
on every side; white giants bald with age, wrapt in cloud, and cloaked
with pines. Cragged and scarped, and towering above valleys filled
with boulders, as though in bygone ages, when the old peaks had been
youngsters they had pelted each other with Titanic stones; which,
falling short, had filled the deep ravines that lay between them.
But if the mountains in their vast irregularity defied the early
explorers, the rivers were even still more perplexing. Mountains have
a right to behave in an irregular kind of way, but rivers are usually
supposed to conduct themselves on more peaceful principles. In New
Caledonia they had apparently forgotten this rule; they played all
manner of tricks. They turned and twisted behind the backs of hills,
and came out just the very way they shouldn’t have come out. They
rose often close to the sea, and then ran directly away from it. They
pierced through mountain ranges in cañons and chasms; and the mountains
threw down stones at them, but that only made them laugh all the
louder, as they raced away from cañon to cañon. Sometimes they grew
wicked, and, turned viciously and bit, and worried the bases of the
hills, and ate trees and rocks and landslips; and then, over all their
feuds and bickerings, came Time at last, as he always does, and threw a
veil over the conflict; a veil of pine-trees.
But in one respect both mountain and river seemed in perfect accord;
they would keep the land to themselves and their child, the wild
Indian; but the white man, the child of civilization, must be kept out.
Nevertheless the white man came in, and he named the rivers after his
own names, though they still laughed him to scorn, and were useless to
his commerce. Gradually this white fur-hunter spread himself through
the land; he passed the Frazer, reached the Columbia, and gained its
mouth; and here a strange rival presented himself. We must go back a
little.
Once upon a time a Greek sailor was cast away on the shore, where the
northmost Mexican coast merged into unknown lands.
He remained for years a wanderer; but when finally fate threw him again
upon Adriatic coasts, he was the narrator of strange stories, and the
projector of far distant enterprises.
North of California’s shore, there was, he said, a large island.
Between this island and the mainland lay a gulf which led to those
other gulfs, which, on the Atlantic verge, Cartier and Hudson had made
known to Europe.
In these days kings and viceroys gladly listened to a wanderer’s story.
The Greek was sent back to the coasts he had discovered, commissioned
to fortify the Straits he called Annian, against English ships seeking
through this outlet the northern passage to Cathay.
Over the rest time has drawn a cloud. It is said that the Greek sailor
failed and died. His story became matter of doubt. More than 300 years
passed away; Cook sought in vain for the strait, and the gulf beyond it.
Another English sailor was more fortunate; and in 1756 a lonely ship
passed between the island and the mainland, and the long, doubtful
channel was named “Juan de Fuça,” after the nickname of the forgotten
Greek.
To fortify the Straits of Annian was deemed the dream of an enthusiast;
yet by a strange coincidence, we see to-day its realization, and the
Island of San Juan, our latest loss, has now upon its shores a hostile
garrison, bent upon closing the Straits of Fuça against the ships of
England.
North of California, and south of British Columbia, there lies a vast
region. Rich in forest, prairie, snow-clad peak, alluvial meadow, hill
pasture, and rolling table-land. It has all that nature can give a
nation; its climate is that of England; its peaks are as lofty as Mont
Blanc; its meadows as rich as the vales of Somerset.
The Spaniard knew it by repute, and named it Oregon, after the river
which we call the Columbia. Oregon was at that time the entire west of
the Rocky Mountains, to the north of California. Oregon had long been a
mystic land, a realm of fable. Carver, the indefatigable, had striven
to reach the great river of the west, whose source lay near that of
the Mississipi. The Indians had told him that where the Mississipi had
its birth in the shining mountains, another vast river also rose, and
flowed west into the shoreless sea. Carver failed to reach the shining
mountains; his dream remained to him. “Probably,” he writes, “in future
ages they (the mountains) may be found to contain more riches in their
bowels than those of Indostan or Malabar, or that are produced on the
golden Gulf of Guinea, nor will I except even the Peruvian mines.”
To-day that dream comes true, and from the caverns of the shining
mountains men draw forth more gold and silver than all these golden
realms enumerated by the baffled Carver ever produced. But the road
which Carver had pointed out was soon to be followed.
In the first years of the new century men penetrated the gorges of the
shining mountain, and reached the great river of the west; but they
hunted for furs, and not for gold; and fur-hunters keep to themselves
the knowledge of their discoveries. Before long the great Republic born
upon the Atlantic shores began to stretch its infant arms towards the
dim Pacific.
In 1792, a Boston ship entered the mouth of the Oregon river.
The charts carried by the vessel showed no river upon the coast-line,
and the captain named the breaker-tossed estuary after his ship “the
Columbia.” He thought he had discovered a new river; in reality, he had
but found again the older known Oregon. It is more than probable, that
this new named river would again have found its ancient designation,
had not an enterprising German now appeared upon the scene. One Jacob
Astor, a vendor of small furs and hats, in New York, turned his eyes to
the west.
He wished to plant upon the Pacific the germs of American fur trade.
The story of his enterprise has been sketched by a cunning hand; but
under the brilliant colouring which a great artist has thrown around
his tale of Astoria, the strong bias of the partisan is too plainly
apparent. Yet it is easy to detect the imperfect argument by which
Washington Irving endeavours to prove the right of the United States to
the disputed territory of Oregon. The question is one of “Who was first
upon the ground?”
Irving claims, that Astor, in 1810, was the first trader who erected a
station on the banks of the Columbia.
But in order to form his fort, Astor had to induce several of the
_employées_ of the North-West Fur Company to desert their service.
And Irving innocently tells us, that when the overland expedition
under Hunt reached the Columbia, they found the Indians well supplied
with European articles, which they had obtained from white traders
already domiciled west of the Rocky Mountains. He records the fact
while he misses its meaning. British fur traders had reached Oregon
long before Jacob Astor had planted his people on the estuary of the
Columbia. Astor’s factory had but a short life. The war of 1813 broke
out. A British ship appeared off the bar of the Columbia River, and the
North-West Company moving down the river became the owners of Astoria.
But with their usual astuteness the Government of the United States
claimed, at the conclusion of the war, the possession of Oregon, on
the ground that it had been theirs prior to the struggle. That it had
not been so, is evident to any person who will carefully inquire into
the history of the discovery of the North-West Coast, and the regions
lying west of the mountains. But no one cares to ask about such things,
and no one cared to do so, even when the question was one of greater
moment than it is at present. So, with the usual supineness which
has let drift from us so many fair realms won by the toil and daring
of forgotten sons, we parted at last with this magnificent region of
Oregon, and signed it over to our voracious cousins.
It was the old story so frequently repeated. The country was useless; a
pine-forest, a wilderness, a hopeless blank upon the face of nature.
To-day, Oregon is to my mind _the fairest State in the American Union_.
There is a story widely told throughout British Columbia, which aptly
illustrates the past policy of Great Britain, in relation to her vast
Wild Lands.
Stories widely told are not necessarily true ones; but this story has
about it the ring of probability.
It is said that once upon a time a certain British nobleman anchored
his ship-of-war in the deep waters of Puget Sound. It was at a time
when discussion was ripe upon the question of disputed ownership in
Oregon, and this ship was sent out for the protection of British
interests on the shores of the North Pacific. She bore an ill-fated
name for British diplomacy. She was called the “America.”
The commander of the “America” was fond of salmon fishing; the waters
of the Oregon were said to be stocked with salmon: the fishing would
be excellent. The mighty “Ekewan,” monarch of salmon, would fall a
victim to flies, long famous on waters of Tweed or Tay. Alas! for the
perverseness of Pacific salmon. No cunningly twisted hackle, no deftly
turned wing of mallard, summer duck, or jungle cock, would tempt the
blue and silver monsters of the Columbia or the Cowlitz Rivers. In
despair, his lordship reeled up his line, took to pieces his rod, and
wrote in disgust to his brother (a prominent statesman of the day)
that the whole country was a huge mistake; that even the salmon in its
waters was a fish of no principle, refusing to bite, to nibble, or to
rise. In fine, that the territory of Oregon, was not worthy of a second
thought. So the story runs. If it be not true, it has its birth in
that too true insularity which would be sublime, if it did not cost us
something like a kingdom every decade of years.
Such has been the past of Oregon. It still retains a few associations
of its former owners. From its mass of forest, from its long-reaching
rivers, and above its ever green prairies, immense spire-shaped single
peaks rise up 14,000 feet above the Pacific level. Far over the blue
waters they greet the sailor’s eye, while yet the lower shore lies deep
sunken beneath the ocean sky-line. They are literally the “shining
mountains” of Carver, and seamen say that at night, far out at sea,
the Pacific waves glow brightly ’neath the reflected lustre of their
eternal snows.
These solitary peaks bear English titles, and early fur-hunter, or
sailor-discoverer, have written their now forgotten names in snow-white
letters upon the blue skies of Oregon.
But perhaps one of these days our cousins will change all that.
Meantime, I have wandered far south from my lofty standpoint on the
snowy ridges of the Bald Mountains in Northern New Caledonia.
Descending with rapid strides the mountain trail, we heard a faint
signal-call from the valley before us. It was from the party sent on
the previous evening, to await our arrival at the spot where Rufus
had left his worn-out horses a week before. A few miles more brought
us within sight of the blue smoke which promised breakfast--a welcome
prospect after six hours forced marching over the steep ridges of the
Bald Mountains.
Two Indians, two miners, two thin horses, and one fat dog now formed
the camp before the fire, at which we rested with feelings of keen
delight. Tom, the “carrier” Indian, and Kalder, my trusty henchman,
had breakfast ready; and beans and bacon, to say nothing of jam and
white bread, were still sufficient novelties to a winter traveller,
long nourished upon the sole luxury of moose pemmican, to make eighteen
miles of mountain exercise a needless prelude to a hearty breakfast.
The meal over we made preparations for our march to the south. In
round numbers I was 300 miles from Quesnelle. Mountain, forest, swamp,
river, and lake, lay between me and that valley where the first vestige
of civilized travel would greet me on the rapid waters of the Frazer
River.
Through all this land of wilderness a narrow trail held its way; now,
under the shadow of lofty pine forest; now, skirting the shores of
lonely lakes; now, climbing the mountain ranges of the Nation River,
where yet the snow lay deep amid those valleys whose waters seek
upon one side the Pacific, upon the other the Arctic Ocean. Between
me and the frontier “city” of Quesnelle lay the Hudson’s Bay Fort of
St. James, on the south-east shore of the lake called Stuart’s. Here
my companion Rufus counted upon obtaining fresh horses; but until we
could reach this half-way house, our own good legs must carry us, for
the steeds now gathered into the camp were as poor and weak as the
fast travel and long fasting of the previous journey could make them.
They were literally but skin and bone, and it was still a matter of
doubt whether they would be able to carry our small stock of food and
blankets, in addition to their own bodies, over the long trail before
us.
Packing our goods upon the backs of the skeleton steeds, we set out
for the south. Before proceeding far a third horse was captured.
He proved to be in better condition than his comrades. A saddle was
therefore placed on his back, and he was handed over to me by Rufus in
order that we should “ride and tie” during the remainder of the day.
In theory this arrangement was admirable; in practice it was painfully
defective. The horse seemed to enter fully into the “tying” part of
it, but the “riding” was altogether another matter. I think nothing
but the direst starvation would have induced that “cayoose” to deviate
in any way from his part of the tying. No amount of stick or whip or
spur would make him a party to the riding. At last he rolled heavily
against a prostrate tree, bruising me not a little by the performance.
He appeared to have serious ideas of fancying himself “tied” when in
this reclining position, and it was no easy matter to disentangle
oneself from his ruins. After this I dissolved partnership with Rufus,
and found that walking was a much less fatiguing, and less hazardous
performance, if a little less exciting.
We held our way through a wild land of hill and vale and swamp for some
fifteen or sixteen miles, and camped on the edge of a little meadow,
where the old grass of the previous year promised the tired horses a
scanty meal. It was but a poor pasturage, and next morning one horse
proved so weak that we left him to his fate, and held on with two
horses towards the Nation River. Between us and this Nation River lay
a steep mountain, still deep in snow. We began its ascent while the
morning was yet young.
Since daylight it had snowed incessantly; and in a dense driving
snow-storm we made the passage of the mountain.
The winter’s snow lay four feet deep upon the trail, and our horses
sunk to their girths at every step. Slowly we plodded on, each horse
stepping in the old footprints of the last journey, and pausing often
to take breath in the toilsome ascent. At length the summit was
reached; but a thick cloud hung over peak and valley. Then the trail
wound slowly downwards, and by noon we reached the shore of a dim lake,
across whose bosom the snow-storm swept as though the time had been
mid-November instead of the end of May.
We passed the outlet of the Nation Lake (a sheet of water some
thirty-five miles in length, lying nearly east and west), and held our
way for some miles along its southern shore. In the evening we had
reached a green meadow, on the banks of a swollen stream.
While Rufus and I were taking the packs off the tired horses,
preparatory to making them swim the stream; a huge grizzly bear came
out upon the opposite bank and looked at us for a moment. The Indians
who were behind saw him approach us, but they were too far from us to
make their voices audible. A tree crossed the stream, and the opposite
bank rose steeply from the water to the level meadow above. Bruin was
not twenty paces from us, but the bank hid him from our view; and when
I became aware of his proximity he had already made up his mind to
retire. Grizzlies are seldom met under such favourable circumstances.
A high bank in front, a level meadow beyond, I long regretted the
chance, lost so unwittingly, and our cheerless bivouac that night in
the driving sleet would have been but little heeded, had my now rusty
double-barrel spoken its mind to our shaggy visitor. But one cannot
always be in luck.
All night long it rained and sleeted and snowed, and daylight broke
upon a white landscape. We got away from camp at four o’clock, and held
on with rapid pace until ten. By this hour we had reached the summit
of the table-land “divide” between the Arctic and Pacific Oceans. It
is almost imperceptible, its only indication being the flow of water
south, instead of north-east. The day had cleared, but a violent storm
swept the forest, crashing many a tall tree prostrate to the earth; and
when we camped for dinner, it was no easy matter to select a spot safe
from the dangers of falling pine-trees.
As I quitted this Arctic water-shed, and stood on the height of land
between the two oceans, memory could not help running back, over the
many scenes which had passed, since on that evening after leaving the
Long Portage, I had first entered the river systems of the North.
Full 1300 miles away lay the camping-place of that evening; and as the
many long hours of varied travel rose up again before me, snow-swept,
toil-laden, full at times of wreck and peril and disaster; it was not
without reason that, turning away from the cold northern landscape, I
saluted with joy the blue pine-tops, through which rolled the broad
rivers of the Pacific.
[Illustration: “THE LOOK-OUT MOUNTAIN.”]