the peace. Then he
went on to Yale. At Yale he considered the price of provisions too
high, and by arbitrarily reducing the price at the company's stores, he
broke the ring of the petty dealers. This won him the friendship of
the miners. Within a week he had allayed all irritation between white
man and Indian. In a quarrel over a claim a {37} white man had been
murdered on one of the bars. Douglas appointed magistrates to try the
case. The trial was of course illegal, for colonial government had not
been formally inaugurated in New Caledonia or British Columbia, as it
was soon to be known, and Douglas's authority as governor did not
extend beyond Vancouver Island. But so, for that matter, were illegal
all his actions on this journey; yet by an odd inconsistency of fact
against law, they restored peace and order on the river.

[Illustration: A group of Thompson River Indians. From a photograph by
Maynard.]

It was not long, however, before the formal organization of the new
colony took place. Hardly had Douglas returned to Victoria when ships
from England arrived bringing his commission as governor of British
Columbia. Arrived, also, Matthew Baillie Begbie, 'a Judge in our
Colony of British Columbia,' and a detachment of Royal Engineers under
command of Colonel Moody. At Fort Langley, on November 19, 1858, the
colony of British Columbia was proclaimed under the laws of England.

Then, in January, just as Douglas and the officers of his government
had again settled down comfortably at Victoria, came word of more riots
at Yale, led by a notorious desperado {38} and deposed judge of
California named Ned M'Gowan. The possibility of American occupation
had become an obsession at Victoria. There were undoubtedly those
among the American miners who made wild boasts. Douglas gathered up
all his panoply of war and law. Along went Colonel Moody, with a
company of his Royal Engineers, Lieutenant Mayne of the Imperial Navy
with a hundred bluejackets, and Judge Matthew Begbie, to deal out
justice to the offenders. Douglas remembered the cry 'fifty-four forty
or fight,' and he remembered what had happened to his chief,
M'Loughlin, in Oregon when the American settlers there had set up
vigilance committees. He would take no chances. The party carried
along a small cannon. Lieutenant Mayne could not take his cruiser the
_Plumper_ higher than Langley; and there the forces were transferred to
Tom Wright's stern-whee