ary the
Thompson, which is again made up of the North and South Forks, which
unite at Kamloops, as the main rivers do at Lytton. The whole of the
vast extent of mountainous country drained by these streams is known to
be more or less auriferous. Many places, such as Cariboo, are, or were,
richly so; and there are few spots in that part which will not yield
what miners know as a "colour" of gold--that is, gold just sufficient to
see, even if it is not enough to pay for working by our slight human
methods. I have been in parts of Oregon where one might get "colour" by
pulling up the bunches of grass that grew sparsely on a thin soil which
just covered the rocks. But the united volumes of the Fraser and the two
Thompsons and all their tributaries have been doing an enormous
gold-washing business for a geological period; and all that portion of
British Columbia which lies in their basin may be looked upon as similar
to the bench of gravel which is assaulted by the hydraulic miner. And
just as the miner makes the broken-down gold-bearing stuff run through
his constructed sluices, Nature sends all her gold in a torrent into the
natural sluice which is known as the Fraser Canyon.

This canyon, which is cut through the range of mountains known
erroneously as the Cascades, is about forty miles long, if we count from
Lytton and Yale. In its narrowest part, at Hell Gate, a child may throw
a stone across; and its current is tremendous. So rapidly does it run,
that no boat can venture upon it, and nothing but a salmon can stem its
stream. It is full, too, of whirlpools; and at times the under rush is
so strong that the surface appears stationary. What its depth may be it
is impossible to tell. But one thing is certain, and that is, that in
the cracks and crannies of its rocky bed must be gold in quantities
beyond the dreams of a diseased avarice. But is this not all theory? No,
it is not. At one part of the river, in the upper canyon, there is a
place where the current stayed, and, with a long backward swirl, built
up a bar. If you ask an old British Columbian about Boston Bar, he will,
perhaps, tell stories which may seem to put Sacramento in the shade.
Yet there will be much truth in them, for there was much gold found on
that bar. Again, some years ago, at Black Canyon, on the South Fork of
the Thompson, when that clear blue stream was at a low stage, there was
a great landslip, which for some eighty minutes dammed back the waters