or back? This was far above the benches of
wash-gravel. Going up one of the nameless peaks, they stepped out on a
ledge and viewed the white, silent mountain-world. Marmots stabbed the
lonely solitude with echoing whistle. Wind came up from the valley in
the sibilant sigh of a sea. It was doubtful if even Indians had ever
hunted this ground. The game was so tame, it did not know enough to be
afraid. The men {43} could see another creek shining in the sunrise on
the other side of the ridge. It seemed to go down to a valley benched
by gravel flanks. They began wandering down that creek and testing the
gravel. Before they had gone far their eyes shone like the wet pebbles
in their hands. The gravel was pitted with little yellow stones.
Where rain and spring-wash had swept off the gravel to naked rock,
little nuggets lay exposed. The men began washing the gravel. The
first pan gave an ounce; the second pan gave nuggets to the weight of a
quarter of a pound. The excited prospectors forgot time. Dark was
falling. They slept under their blankets and awoke at daybreak below
twelve inches of snow.

They were out of provisions. Somebody had to go back down to Cariboo
Lake for food. Each man staked out a claim. And, while two built a
log cabin, the other two set off over the hills for food. There was
some sort of a log store down at Cariboo Lake. The one thing these
prospectors were determined on was secrecy till they could get their
claims registered. Bands of nondescript men hung round the
provision-store of Cariboo Lake awaiting a breath to fan their flaming
hopes of fortune. What let the secret out at the store is not {44}
known. Perhaps too great an air of secrecy. Perhaps too strenuous
denials. Perhaps the payment of provisions in nuggets. But when these
two packed back over the hills on snowshoes, they were trailed.
Followers came in with a whoop behind them on Antler Creek. Claims
were staked faster than they could be recorded. The same claims were
staked over and over, the corner of one overlapping another. When the
gold commissioner came hurriedly across the country in March, he found
the MacDonald-Rose party living in a cabin and the rest of the camp
holding down their claims by living in holes which they had dug in the
ground.

This was the spring of '61; and Antler Creek proved only the beginning
of the rush to Cariboo. Over the divide in mad stampede rushed the
gold-seekers northward