o
the way to go; for slope means valley; and in valleys are streams; and
in the stream is the 'float,' which is to the prospector the one
shining signal to be followed. Timber-line is passed till the forests
below look like dank banks of moss. Cloud-line is passed till the
clouds lie underneath in grey lakes and pools. A 'fool hen' or
mountain grouse comes out and bobbles her head at the passing
packtrain. A whistling marmot pops up from the rocks and pierces the
stillness. Redwings and waxbills pick crumbs from every camp meal; and
occasionally a bald-headed eagle utters a lonely raucous cry from
solitary perch of dead branch or high rock.

[Illustration: In the Rocky Mountains. From a photograph.]

Naturally enough, the pack-train unconsciously follows the game-trail
of deer and goat and cougar and bear across the slope to the
watering-places where springs gush out from the rocks. One has only to
look close enough {29} to see the little cleft footprint of the deer
round these springs. To the miners, penetrating the wilds north of the
Fraser, the caribou proved a godsend during that lean first winter.
The miners spelled it 'cariboo,' and thus gave the great gold area its
name.

The population of Yale that winter consisted of some eight hundred
people, housed in tents and log shacks roofed with canvas. Between
Yale and Hope remained two thousand miners during the winter. Meals
cost a dollar, served on tin plates to diners standing in long rows
waiting turn at the counter. The regular menu at all meals was bacon,
salmon, bread, and coffee. Of butter there was little; of milk, none.
Wherever a sand-bar gave signs of mineral, it was tested with the
primitive frying-pan. If the pan showed a deposit, the miner rigged up
a rocker--a contraption resembling a cradle with rockers below, about
four feet from end to end, two feet across, and two deep. The sides
converged to bottom. At the head was a perforated sheet-iron bottom
like a housewife's colander. Into this box the gravel was shovelled by
one miner. The man's 'pardner' poured in water and rocked the
cradle--cradled the sand. The water ran through the perforated bottom
to a second {30} floor of quicksilver or copperplate or woolly blanket
which caught the gold. On a larger scale, when streams were directed
through wooden boxes, the gold was sluiced; on a still larger scale,
the process was hydraulic mining, though the same in principle. In
fact, in