ler, the _Enterprise_. But, when they arrived
at Hope, the whole affair looked like semi-comic vaudeville. Yale,
too, was as quiet as a church prayer-meeting; and Colonel Moody
preached a sermon on Sunday to a congregation of forty in the
court-house--the first church service ever held on the mainland of
British Columbia.

[Illustration: Sir Matthew Baillie Begbie. From a portrait by
Savannah.]

{39}

The trouble had happened in this way. Christmas Day had been
celebrated hilariously. At Yale a miner of Hill's Bar, some miles down
the river, had beaten up a negro. The Yale magistrate had issued a
warrant for the miner's arrest--poor magistrate, he had found little to
do since his appointment in September! The miner, now sobered, fled
back to his bar. The warrant was sent after him to the local peace
officer for execution, but this officer had already issued a warrant
for the arrest of the negro at Yale; so there it stood--each fighter
making complaint against the other and the two magistrates in lordly
contempt of each other! The man who tried to arrest the negro was
insolent and was jailed by the Yale magistrate. Ned M'Gowan, the
Californian down on the bar, then came up to Yale with a posse of
twenty men to arrest the magistrate for arresting the man who had been
sent to arrest the negro. Bursting with rage, the astonished dignitary
at Yale was bundled into a canoe. He was fined fifty dollars for
contempt of court.

It was at this stage of the comedy of errors that Moody, Begbie, and
Mayne came on the scene. At first M'Gowan showed truculence and
assailed Moody; but when he saw the {40} force of engineers and
bluejackets and saw the big gun hoisted ashore, he apologized, paid his
fine for the assault, and invited the officers to a champagne dinner on
Hill's Bar. Both sides to the quarrel cooled down and the riots ended.
The army stayed only to see the miners wash the gold and then put back
to Victoria. The miners had learned that an English judge and a field
force could be put on the ground in a week. September had settled
disorder among the Indians. January settled disorder among the whites.

In the wild remote regions of the up-country there was much 'claim
jumping.' A man lost his claim if he stopped mining for seventy-two
hours, and when the place of registration was far from the find,
'pardners' camped on the spot in dugouts or in lean-tos of logs and
moss along the river-bank. There wer