from San Francisco, with 450 passengers on board, the
chief part of whom are gold miners for the "Couteau" country.

Nearly 400 of those men were landed at this place, and have since left
in boats and canoes for Fraser River.

I ascertained from inquiries on the subject that those men are all well
provided with mining tools, and that there was no dearth of capital or
intelligence among them. About sixty British subjects, with an equal
number of native born Americans, the rest being chiefly Germans, with a
smaller proportion of Frenchmen and Italians, composed this body of
adventurers.

They are represented as being, with some exceptions, a specimen of the
worst of the population of San Francisco; the very dregs, in fact, of
society. Their conduct while here would have led me to form a very
different conclusion; as our little town, though crowded to excess with
this sudden influx of people, and though there was a temporary scarcity
of food, and dearth of house accommodation, the police few in number,
and many temptations to excess in the way of drink, yet quiet and order
prevailed, and there was not a single committal for rioting,
drunkenness, or other offences during their stay here.

The merchants and other business classes of Victoria are rejoicing in
the advent of so large a body of the people in the colony, and are
strongly in favour of making this port a stopping point between San
Francisco and the gold mines, converting the latter, as it were, into a
feeder and dependency of this colony.

Victoria would thus become a depot and centre of trade for the gold
districts, and the natural consequence would be an immediate increase in
the wealth and population of the colony.

To effect that object it will be requisite to facilitate by every
possible means the transport of passengers and goods to the furthest
navigable point on Fraser River; and the obvious means of accomplishing
that end is to employ light steamers in plying between, and connecting
this port (Victoria) with the Falls of Fraser River, distant 130 miles
from the discharge of that river, into the Gulf of Georgia; those falls
being generally believed to be at the commencement of the remunerative
gold diggings, and from thence the miners would readily make their, way
on foot, or, after the summer freshets, by the river into the interior
of the country.

By that means also the whole trade of the gold regions would pass
through Fraser River and be ret