There are many days after a westerly gale that it is impossible to get any boat whatever to and from the beach. This had unluckily happened to be one of them. All the way home. Bully Waters was a sadder, wiser, and quieter man. It was peace, perfect peace. Nevertheless, I, for one, had had enough of Bully Waters.
Another thing that helped me make my decision was the fact that on the passage home I had a whole-time does of malaria. This in itself was not so bad, but unfortunately we had a docto r — thorough good scout — who said he believed in allowing patients any amount of latitude to follow their own inclinations. Whether it was because I made a particularly bad patient, I don’t know, but the fact remains that he allowed me to have iced drinks, lie in my pyjamas, and have my boy fan me; take cold baths — in fact, do everything I ought not to have done. The ultimate result of this was my temperature soared to 106.2°. Down the coast, 105° is usually fatal, and on this day in particular, one of the crew passed out at 105°.
I was lying under a punkah, and some of the chaps kept coming down; in fact nearly all the officers, on one pretest or another, came along to say a few words, and sort of give me a pat on the shoulder and say, “Cheerio old boy.” I little thought it was the long cheerio they were wishing me, as, in their opinion, I could not last the night. However, later on, that same night, to their surprise, I showed a slight improvement, and, and some of them put their heads together and decided to take the law in their own hands and see if they could not induce a sweat. Forthwith three or four of them, armed themselves with hot bottles and hot blankets, in which they rolled me like a mummy, using sheer brute force, with the result that they broke the fever on the spot, and I eventually recovered. But it had given me the shaking up that was necessary to make up my mind to give up the West Coast with all its attractions — and they are many.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
TRAIL OF ‘98
What put the Canadian North-West into my head was the fact, that on a previous voyage homeward bound, amongst the passengers we had two splendid fellows named Matchett and Green, who had been prospecting up the interior, from the West Coast of Africa. We became great friends, and first of all they tried to persuade me to chuck the sea, and go out again to Africa with them, which I would have done, except for the rotten malaria and blackwater fevers. “Well, then, would I go out gold prospecting with them to Australia?’ This did not appeal to me either, as there’s no room for any but experts. Placer mining was finished in Australia and anyway I knew nothing about either placer or quartz.
Ultimately we compromised by deciding to go treasure hunting on St. Paul’s — that had a tremendous pull, but although we actually got to the very point of buying a little brig, which we were to turn into a schooner, the scheme, to the sorrow of us all, fell through.
Finally, we agreed to meet the next spring twelvemonth, in Vancouver B.C., and push up into what was then the Great Unknown, and we left it at that.
Up to this time Klondyke had not been heard of, but both Green and Matchett, with the true miner’s instinct, were determined that the British North-West was the coming country for the gold prospector.
At home one day, some weeks after leaving the Niagara, Bully Waters and malaria, I happened on an advertisement of cheap fares to Vancouver. Here, I thought was the very chance, to get out there twelve months ahead of Dick and Matchett, and learn a bit about gold prospecting. Furthermore I should then be able to pull my weight with the others. Five minutes earlier I had no idea of going , but just on the impulse of the moment, I said to myself “I’m off.”
Putting the paper down, I strolled out of the room and with a touch of the dramatic, informed my people that I was going out to the Klondyke. (The rush by this time had started)
Opinions were somewhat varied, but only to the extent of what particular degree of fool I was! However I was sufficiently pig-headed and self confident to ignore the opinions of people, who certainly knew what was good for me far better than I knew myself — at least, so it has sometimes appeared in the light of later days. But on the whole I have never regretted the decision that took me out to the Canadian North-West, nor one single experience with which the days were filled. I certainly did not make a fortune; in fact, not only made nothing but lost all I had. But I had a grand time.
The idea had been to go out and work on the Cariboo Mines, learning what gold was, in order that I might meet Matchett and Green the following spring, and be able to do my bit along with the experts. Man proposes, but the facts of that hard bitten country disposed and bust up all my well laid plans.
In the first place, work on the Cariboo Mines was shut out with Chinamen. This upset my calculations from the start, and, as often happens, the king pin removed, all the rest went wrong. So we had to look for some other hunting ground.
As one got deeper and deeper into the country one learnt that the reports which had been blazoned forth in England, had that element of truth which made them worse than a pack of lies. The object was to get men into the country. They got them in their thousands, and hundreds of thousands, and there they were, left stranded, to settle or find their way out as best they could.
With a kindred spirit (also of the sea), with whom I had made friends on the way out to Canada, we made up our minds to stay east of the mountains and work north to the Slave Lakes. But we were to discover that the bubble of this district had also been burst. One place after another we heard of “finds,” only to learn later that they were purely a figment of the imagination, a mirage, that promptly faded on closer approach. We were not going to be beaten on that account however, and since all places we heard of as likely from a prospector’s point of view became no good, and not worth while, we decided to make for rail head which at that time was Edmonton, and to strike a trail of our own, west-north-west, for the mountains, and then north.
All we lacked was someone with some sense and some knowledge of the North-West. We were to find that out later when experience should have at last overcome our abyssmal (sic) ignorance of the “Trail.”
Gold we found in plenty, but never in paying quantities. It is all float gold east of the mountains, and this we learned through bitter experience.
The generally accepted theory is that the range of the Rocky Mountains rose, throwing the sea back on either side. On the west, into its native ocean, but on the east it was trapped by the land, and results in endless muskegs, swamps and lakes, which infest that part of Canada. We lived in a state of moisture and the only wonder is that we didn’t grow webs to our toes.
Time and again we thought we had struck rich, only to find, on applying the test, that it was worthless. Right down on the banks of the Saskatchewan, in Edmonton, a man could “wash” a dollar and a half a day. The further north, and the richer it gets, but the more the cost of transport. Up on the MacCleod, Athabaska, and Smoky River it pans out at times, almost all a man’s heart could desire, but owing to the configuration of the country, it invariably peters out, and pay dirt in any reasonable quantity is never forthcoming.