On Canada's Frontier Part 9

You will find that seven in ten among the more intelligent British Columbians conclude these Indians to be of j.a.panese origin. The j.a.panese current is neighborly to the province, and it has drifted j.a.panese junks to these sh.o.r.es. When the first traders visited the neighborhood of the mouth of the Columbia they found beeswax in the sand near the vestiges of a wreck, and it is said that one wreck of a junk was met with, and 12,000 pounds of this wax was found on her. Whalers are said to have frequently encountered wrecked and drifting junks in the eastern Pacific, and a local legend has it that in 1834 remnants of a junk with three j.a.panese and a cargo of pottery were found on the coast south of Cape Flattery. Nothing less than all this should excuse even a rudderless ethnologist for so cruel a reflection upon the j.a.panese, for these Indians are so far from pretty that all who see them agree with Captain Butler, the traveller, who wrote that "if they are of the Mongolian type, the sooner the Mongolians change their type the better."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TSCHUMMUM, OR TOOL USED IN MAKING CANOES]

The coast Indians are splendid sailors, and their dugouts do not always come off second best in racing with the boats of white men. With a primitive yet ingeniously made tool, like an adze, in the construction of which a blade is tied fast to a bent handle of bone, these natives laboriously pick out the heart of a great cedar log, and shape its outer sides into the form of a boat. When the log is properly hollowed, they fill it with water, and then drop in stones which they have heated in a fire. Thus they steam the boat so that they may spread the sides and fit in the crossbars which keep it strong and preserve its shape. These dugouts are sometimes sixty feet long, and are used for whaling and long voyages in rough seas. They are capable of carrying tons of the salmon or oolachan or herring, of which these people, who live as their fathers did, catch sufficient in a few days for their maintenance throughout a whole year. One gets an idea of the swarms of fish that infest those waters by the knowledge that before nets were used the herring and the oolachan, or candle-fish were swept into these boats by an implement formed by studding a ten-foot pole with spikes or nails. This was swept among the fish in the water, and the boats were speedily filled with the creatures that were impaled upon the spikes. Salmon, sea-otter, otter, beaver, marten, bear, and deer (or caribou or moose) were and still are the chief resources of most of the Indians. Once they sold the fish and the peltry to the Hudson Bay Company, and ate what parts or surplus they did not sell. Now they work in the canneries or fish for them in summer, and hunt, trap, or loaf the rest of the time. However, while they still fish and sell furs, and while some are yet as their fathers were, nearly all the coast Indians are semi-civilized. They have at least the white man's clothes and hymns and vices. They have churches; they live in houses; they work in canneries. What little there was that was picturesque about them has vanished only a few degrees faster than their own extinction as a pure race, and they are now a lot of longsh.o.r.emen.

What Mr. Duncan did for them in Metlakahtla--especially in housing the families separately--has not been arrived at even in the reservation at Victoria, where one may still see one of the huge, low, shed-like houses they prefer, ornamented with totem poles, and arranged for eight families, and consequently for a laxity of morals for which no one can hold the white man responsible.

They are a tractable people, and take as kindly to the rudiments of civilization, to work, and to co-operation with the whites as the plains Indian does to tea, tobacco, and whiskey. They are physically but not mentally inferior to the plainsman. They carve bowls and spoons of stone and bone, and their heraldic totem poles are cleverly shapen, however grotesque they may be. They still make them, but they oftener carve little ones for white people, just as they make more silver bracelets for sale than for wear. They are clever at weaving rushes and cedar bark into mats, baskets, floor-cloths, and cargo covers. In a word, they were more p.r.o.ne to work at the outset than most Indians, so that the present longsh.o.r.e career of most of them is not greatly to be wondered at.

To anyone who threads the vast silent forests of the interior, or journeys upon the trafficless waterways, or, gun in hand, explores the mountains for game, the infrequency with which Indians are met becomes impressive. The province seems almost unpeopled. The reason is that the majority of the Indians were ever on the coast, where the water yielded food at all times and in plenty. The natives of the interior were not well fed or prosperous when the first white men found them, and since then small-pox, measles, vice, and starvation have thinned them terribly. Their graveyards are a feature of the scenery which all travellers in the province remember. From the railroad they may be seen along the Fraser, each grave apparently having a shed built over it, and a cross rising from the earth beneath the shed. They had various burial customs, but a majority buried their dead in this way, with queerly-carved or painted sticks above them, where the cross now testifies to the work at the "missions." Some Indians marked a man's burial-place with his canoe and his gun; some still box their dead and leave the boxes on top of the earth, while others bury the boxes. Among the southern tribes a man's horse was often killed, and its skin decked the man's grave; while in the far north it was the custom among the Stickeens to slaughter the personal attendants of a chief when he died.

The Indians along the Skeena River cremated their dead, and sometimes hung the ashes in boxes to the family totem pole. The Hydahs, the fierce natives of certain of the islands, have given up cremation, but they used to believe that if they did not burn a man's body their enemies would make charms from it. Polygamy flourished on the coast, and monogamy in the interior, but the contrast was due to the difference in the worldly wealth of the Indians. Wives had to be bought and fed, and the woodsmen could only afford one apiece.

To return to their canoes, which most distinguish them. When a dugout is hollowed and steamed, a prow and stern are added of separate wood. The prow is always a work of art, and greatly beautifies the boat. It is in form like the breast, neck, and bill of a bird, but the head is intended to represent that of a savage animal, and is so painted. A mouth is cut into it, ears are carved on it, and eyes are painted on the sides; bands of gay paint are put upon the neck, and the whole exterior of the boat is then painted red or black, with an ornamental line of another color along the edge or gunwale. The sailors sit upon the bottom of the boat, and propel it with paddles. Upon the water these swift vessels, with their fierce heads uplifted before their long, slender bodies, appear like great serpents or nondescript marine monsters, yet they are pretty and graceful withal. While still holding aloof from the ethnologists'

contention, I yet may add that a bookseller in Victoria came into the possession of a packet of photographs taken by an amateur traveller in the interior of China, and on my first visit to the province, nearly four years ago, I found, in looking through these views, several Chinese boats which were strangely and remarkably like the dugouts of the provincial Indians. They were too small in the pictures for it to be possible to decide whether they were built up or dug out, but in general they were of the same external appearance, and each one bore the upraised animal-head prow, shaped and painted like those I could see one block away from the bookseller's shop in Victoria. But such are not the canoes used by the Indians of the interior. From the Kootenay near our border to the Ca.s.siar in the far north, a cigar-shaped canoe seems to be the general native vehicle. These are sometimes made of a sort of scroll of bark, and sometimes they are dugouts made of cotton-wood logs.

They are narrower than either the cedar dugouts of the coast or the birch-bark canoes of our Indians, but they are roomy, and fit for the most dangerous and deft work in threading the rapids which everywhere cut up the navigation of the streams of the province into separated reaches. The Rev. Dr. Gordon, in his notes upon a journey in this province, likens these canoes to horse-troughs, but those I saw in the Kootenay country were of the shape of those cigars that are pointed at both ends.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FIRST OF THE SALMON RUN, FRASER RIVER]

Whether these canoes are like any in Tartary or China or j.a.pan, I do not know. My only quest for special information of that character proved disappointing. One man in a city of British Columbia is said to have studied such matters more deeply and to more purpose than all the others, but those who referred me to him cautioned me that he was eccentric.

"You don't know where these Indians came from, eh?" the _savant_ replied to my first question. "Do you know how oyster-sh.e.l.ls got on top of the Rocky Mountains? You don't, eh? Well, I know a woman who went to a dentist's yesterday to have eighteen teeth pulled. Do you know why women prefer artificial teeth to those which G.o.d has given them? You don't, eh? Why, man, you don't know anything."

While we were--or he was--conversing, a laboring-man who carried a sickle came to the open door, and was asked what he wanted.

"I wish to cut your thistles, sir," said he.

"Thistles?" said the _savant_, disturbed at the interruption. "---- the thistles! We are talking about Indians."

Nevertheless, when the laborer had gone, he had left the subject of thistles uppermost in the _savant's_ mind, and the conversation took so erratic a turn that it might well have been introduced hap-hazard into _Tristram Shandy_.

"About thistles," said the _savant_, laying a gentle hand upon my knee.

"Do you know that they are the Scotchmen's totems? Many years ago a Scotchman, sundered from his native land, must needs set up his totem, a thistle, here in this country; and now, sir, the thistle is such a curse that I am haled up twice a year and fined for having them in my yard."

But nearly enough has been here said of the native population. Though the Indians boast dozens of tribal names, and almost every island on the coast and village in the interior seems the home of a separate tribe, they will be found much alike--dirty, greasy, sore-eyed, short-legged, and with their unkempt hair cut squarely off, as if a pot had been upturned over it to guide the operation. The British Columbians do not bother about their tribal divisions, but use the old traders' Chinook terms, and call every male a "siwash" and every woman a "klootchman."

Since the highest Canadian authority upon the subject predicts that the northern half of the Cordilleran ranges will admit of as high a metalliferous development as that of the southern half in our Pacific States, it is important to review what has been done in mining, and what is thought of the future of that industry in the province. It may almost be said that the history of gold-mining there is the history of British Columbia. Victoria, the capital, was a Hudson Bay post established in 1843, and Vancouver, Queen Charlotte's, and the other islands, as well as the main-land, were of interest to only a few white men as parts of a great fur-trading field with a small Indian population. The first nugget of gold was found at what is now called Gold Harbor, on the west coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands, by an Indian woman, in 1851. A part of it, weighing four or five ounces, was taken by the Indians to Fort Simpson and sold. The Hudson Bay Company, which has done a little in every line of business in its day, sent a brigantine to the spot, and found a quartz vein traceable eighty feet, and yielding a high percentage of gold. Blasting was begun, and the vessel was loaded with ore; but she was lost on the return voyage. An American vessel, ash.o.r.e at Esquimault, near Victoria, was purchased, renamed the _Recovery_, and sent to Gold Harbor with thirty miners, who worked the vein until the vessel was loaded and sent to England. News of the mine travelled, and in another year a small fleet of vessels came up from San Francisco; but the supply was seen to be very limited, and after $20,000 in all had been taken out, the field was abandoned.

In 1855 gold was found by a Hudson Bay Company's employe at Fort Colville, now in Washington State, near the boundary. Some Thompson River (B. C.) Indians who went to Walla Walla spread a report there that gold, like that discovered at Colville, was to be found in the valley of the Thompson. A party of Canadians and half-breeds went to the region referred to, and found placers nine miles above the mouth of the river. By 1858 the news and the authentication of it stirred the miners of California, and an astonishing invasion of the virgin province began.

It is said that in the spring of 1858 more than twenty thousand persons reached Victoria from San Francis...o...b.. sea, distending the little fur-trading post of a few hundred inhabitants into what would even now be called a considerable city; a city of canvas, however. Simultaneously a third as many miners made their way to the new province on land. But the land was covered with mountains and dense forests, the only route to its interior for them was the violent, almost boiling, Fraser River, and there was nothing on which the lives of this horde of men could be sustained. By the end of the year out of nearly thirty thousand adventurers only a tenth part remained. Those who did stay worked the river bars of the lower Fraser until in five months they had shipped from Victoria more than half a million dollars' worth of gold. From a historical point of view it is a peculiar coincidence that in 1859, when the attention of the world was thus first attracted to this new country, the charter of the Hudson Bay Company expired, and the territory pa.s.sed from its control to become like any other crown colony.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INDIAN SALMON-FISHING IN THE THRASHER]

In 1860 the gold-miners, seeking the source of the "flour" gold they found in such abundance in the bed of the river, pursued their search into the heart and almost the centre of that forbidding and unbroken territory. The Quesnel River became the seat of their operations. Two years later came another extraordinary immigration. This was not surprising, for 1500 miners had in one year (1861) taken out $2,000,000 in gold-dust from certain creeks in what is called the Cariboo District, and one can imagine (if one does not remember) what fabulous tales were based upon this fact. The second stampede was of persons from all over the world, but chiefly from England, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

After that there were new "finds" almost every year, and the miners worked gradually northward until, about 1874, they had travelled through the province, in at one end and out at the other, and were working the tributaries of the Yukon River in the north, beyond the 60th parallel.

Mr. Dawson estimates that the total yield of gold between 1858 and 1888 was $54,108,804; the average number of miners employed each year was 2775, and the average earnings per man per year were $622.

In his report, published by order of Parliament, Mr. Dawson says that while gold is so generally distributed over the province that scarcely a stream of any importance fails to show at least "colors" of the metal, the princ.i.p.al discoveries clearly indicate that the most important mining districts are in the systems of mountains and high plateaus lying to the south-west of the Rocky Mountains and parallel in direction with them.

This mountain system next to and south-west of the Rockies is called, for convenience, the Gold Range, but it comprises a complex belt "of several more or less distinct and partly overlapping ranges"--the Purcell, Selkirk, and Columbia ranges in the south, and in the north the Cariboo, Omenica, and Ca.s.siar ranges. "This series or system const.i.tutes the most important metalliferous belt of the province. The richest gold fields are closely related to it, and discoveries of metalliferous lodes are reported in abundance from all parts of it which have been explored. The deposits already made known are very varied in character, including highly argentiferous galenas and other silver ores and auriferous quartz veins." This same authority a.s.serts that the Gold Range is continued by the Cabinet, Coeur d'Alene, and Bitter Root mountains in our country. While there is no single well-developed gold field as in California, the extent of territory of a character to occasion a hopeful search for gold is greater in the province than in California. The average man of business to whom visitors speak of the mining prospects of the province is apt to declare that all that has been lacking is the discovery of one grand mine and the enlistment of capital (from the United States, they generally say) to work it. Mr.

Dawson speaks to the same point, and incidentally accounts for the r.e.t.a.r.ded development in his statement that one noteworthy difference between practically the entire area of the province and that of the Pacific States has been occasioned by the spread and movement of ice over the province during the glacial period. This produced changes in the distribution of surface materials and directions of drainage, concealed beneath "drifts" the indications to which prospectors farther south are used to trust, and by other means obscured the outcrops of veins which would otherwise be well marked. The dense woods, the broken navigation of the rivers, in detached reaches, the distance from the coast of the richest districts, and the cost of labor supplies and machinery--all these are additional and weighty reasons for the slowness of development. But this was true of the past and is not of the present, at least so far as southern British Columbia is concerned. Railroads are reaching up into it from our country and down from the transcontinental Canadian Railway, and capital, both Canadian and American, is rapidly swelling an already heavy investment in many new and promising mines.

Here it is silver-mining that is achieving importance.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GOING TO THE POTLATCH--BIG CANOE, NORTH-WEST COAST]

Other ores are found in the province. The iron which has been located or worked is princ.i.p.ally on the islands--Queen Charlotte, Vancouver, Texada, and the Walker group. Most of the ores are magnet.i.tes, and that which alone has been worked--on Texada Island--is of excellent quality.

The output of copper from the province is likely soon to become considerable. Ma.s.ses of it have been found from time to time in various parts of the province--in the Vancouver series of islands, on the main-land coast, and in the interior. Its constant and rich a.s.sociation with silver shows lead to be abundant in the country, but it needs the development of transport facilities to give it value. Platinum is more likely to attain importance as a product in this than in any other part of North America. On the coast the granites are of such quality and occur in such abundance as to lead to the belief that their quarrying will one day be an important source of income, and there are marbles, sandstones, and ornamental stones of which the same may be said.

One of the most valuable products of the province is coal, the essential in which our Pacific coast States are the poorest. The white man's attention was first attracted to this coal in 1835 by some Indians who brought lumps of it from Vancouver Island to the Hudson Bay post on the main-land, at Milbank Sound. The _Beaver_, the first steamship that stirred the waters of the Pacific, reached the province in 1836, and used coal that was found in outcroppings on the island beach. Thirteen years later the great trading company brought out a Scotch coal-miner to look into the character and extent of the coal find, and he was followed by other miners and the necessary apparatus for prosecuting the inquiry.

In the mean time the present chief source of supply at Nanaimo, seventy miles from Victoria and about opposite Vancouver, was discovered, and in 1852 mining was begun in earnest. From the very outset the chief market for the coal was found to be San Francisco.

The original mines are now owned by the Vancouver Coal-mining and Land Company. Near them are the Wellington Mines, which began to be worked in 1871. Both have continued in active operation from their foundation, and with a constantly and rapidly growing output. A third source of supply has very recently been established with local and American capital in what is called the Comox District, back of Baynes Sound, farther north than Nanaimo, on the eastern side of Vancouver Island. These new works are called the Union Mines, and, if the predictions of my informants prove true, will produce an output equal to that of the older Nanaimo collieries combined. In 1884 the coal shipped from Nanaimo amounted to 1000 tons for every day of the year, and in 1889 the total shipment had reached 500,000 tons. As to the character of the coal, I quote again from Mr. Dawson's report on the minerals of British Columbia, published by the Dominion Government:

"Rocks of cretaceous age are developed over a considerable area in British Columbia, often in very great thickness, and fuels occur in them in important quant.i.ty in at least two distinct stages, of which the lower and older includes the coal measures of the Queen Charlotte Islands and those of Quatsino Sound on Vancouver Island, with those of Crow Nest Pa.s.s in the Rocky Mountains; the upper, the coal measures of Nanaimo and Comox, and probably also those of Suquash and other localities. The lower rocks hold both anthracite and bituminous coal in the Queen Charlotte Islands, but elsewhere contain bituminous coal only. The upper have so far been found to yield bituminous coal only. The fuels of the tertiary rocks are, generally speaking, lignites, but include also various fuels intermediate between these and true coals, which in a few places become true bituminous coals."

It is thought to be more than likely that the Comox District may prove far more productive than the Nanaimo region. It is estimated that productive measures underlie at least 300 square miles in the Comox District, exclusive of what may extend beyond the sh.o.r.e. The Nanaimo area is estimated at 200 square miles, and the product is no better than, if it equals, that of the Comox District.

Specimens of good coal have been found on the main-land in the region of the upper Skeena River, on the British Columbia water-shed of the Rockies near Crow Nest Pa.s.s, and in the country adjacent to the Peace River in the eastern part of the province. Anthracite which compares favorably with that of Pennsylvania has been found at Cowgitz, Queen Charlotte Islands. In 1871 a mining company began work upon this coal, but abandoned it, owing to difficulties that were encountered. It is now believed that these miners did not prove the product to be of an unprofitable character, and that farther exploration is fully justified by what is known of the field. Of inferior forms of coal there is every indication of an abundance on the main-land of the province. "The tertiary or Laramie coal measures of Puget Sound and Bellingham Bay" (in the United States) "are continuous north of the international boundary, and must underlie nearly 18,000 square miles of the low country about the estuary of the Fraser and in the lower part of its valley." It is quite possible, since the better coals of Nanaimo and Comox are in demand in the San Francisco market, even at their high price and with the duty added, that these lignite fields may be worked for local consumption.

Already the value of the fish caught in the British Columbian waters is estimated at $5,000,000 a year, and yet the industry is rather at its birth than in its infancy. All the waters in and near the province fairly swarm with fish. The rivers teem with them, the straits and fiords and gulfs abound with them, the ocean beyond is freighted with an incalculable weight of living food, which must soon be distributed among the homes of the civilized world. The princ.i.p.al varieties of fish are the salmon, cod, shad, white-fish, ba.s.s, flounder, skate, sole, halibut, sturgeon, oolachan, herring, trout, haddock, smelts, anchovies, dog-fish, perch, sardines, oysters, crayfish shrimps, crabs, and mussels. Of other denizens of the water, the whale, sea-otter, and seal prove rich prey for those who search for them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SALMON CACHE]

The main salmon rivers are the Fraser, Skeena, and Na.s.se rivers, but the fish also swarm in the inlets into which smaller streams empty. The Nimkish, on Vancouver Island, is also a salmon stream. Setting aside the stories of water so thick with salmon that a man might walk upon their backs, as well as that tale of the stage-coach which was upset by salmon banking themselves against it when it was crossing a fording-place, there still exist absolutely trustworthy accounts of swarms which at their height cause the largest rivers to seem alive with these fish. In such cases the ripple of their back fins frets the entire surface of the stream. I have seen photographs that show the fish in incredible numbers, side by side, like logs in a raft, and I have the word of a responsible man for the statement that he has gotten all the salmon needed for a small camp, day after day, by walking to the edge of a river and jerking the fish out with a common poker.

There are about sixteen canneries on the Fraser, six on the Skeena, three on the Na.s.se, and three scattered in other waters--River Inlet and Alert Bay. The total canning in 1889 was 414,294 cases, each of 48 one-pound tins. The fish are sold to Europe, Australia, and eastern Canada. The American market takes the Columbia River Salmon. Around $1,000,000 is invested in the vessels, nets, trawls, canneries, oil-factories, and freezing and salting stations used in this industry in British Columbia, and about 5500 men are employed. "There is no difficulty in catching the fish," says a local historian, "for in some streams they are so crowded that they can readily be picked out of the water by hand." However, gill-nets are found to be preferable, and the fish are caught in these, which are stretched across the streams, and handled by men in flat-bottomed boats. The fish are loaded into scows and transported to the canneries, usually frame structures built upon piles close to the sh.o.r.es of the rivers. In the canneries the tins are made, and, as a rule, saw-mills near by produce the wood for the manufacture of the packing-cases. The fish are cleaned, rid of their heads and tails, and then chopped up and loaded into the tins by Chinamen and Indian women. The tins are then boiled, soldered, tested, packed, and shipped away. The industry is rapidly extending, and fresh salmon are now being shipped, frozen, to the markets of eastern America and England. My figures for 1889 (obtained from the Victoria _Times_) are in all likelihood under the mark for the season of 1890. The coast is made ragged by inlets, and into nearly every one a watercourse empties. All the larger streams are the haven of salmon in the sp.a.w.ning season, and in time the princ.i.p.al ones will be the bases of canning operations.

The Dominion Government has founded a salmon hatchery on the Fraser, above New Westminster. It is under the supervision of Thomas Mowat, Inspector of Fisheries, and millions of small fry are now annually turned into the great river. Whether the unexampled run of 1889 was in any part due to this process cannot be said, but certainly the salmon are not diminishing in numbers. It was feared that the refuse from the canneries would injure the "runs" of live fish, but it is now believed that there is a profit to be derived from treating the refuse for oil and guano, so that it is more likely to be saved than thrown back into the streams in the near future.

The oolachan, or candle-fish, is a valuable product of these waters, chiefly of the Fraser and Na.s.se rivers. They are said to be delicious when fresh, smoked, or salted, and I have it on the authority of the little pamphlet "British Columbia," handed me by a government official, that "their oil is considered superior to cod-liver oil, or any other fish-oil known." It is said that this oil is whitish, and of the consistency of thin lard. It is used as food by the natives, and is an article of barter between the coast Indians and the tribes of the interior. There is so much of it in a candle-fish of ordinary size that when one of them is dried, it will burn like a candle. It is the custom of the natives on the coast to catch the fish in immense numbers in purse-nets. They then boil them in iron-bottomed bins, straining the product in willow baskets, and running the oil into cedar boxes holding fifteen gallons each. The Na.s.se River candle-fish are the best. They begin running in March, and continue to come by the million for a period of several weeks.

Codfish are supposed to be very plentiful, and to frequent extensive banks at sea, but these shoals have not been explored or charted by the Government, and private enterprise will not attempt the work. Similar banks off the Alaska coast are already the resorts of California fishermen, who drive a prosperous trade in salting large catches there.

The skil, or black cod, formerly known as the "coal-fish," is a splendid deep-water product. These cod weigh from eight to twenty pounds, and used to be caught by the Indians with hook and line. Already white men are driving the Indians out by superior methods. Trawls of 300 hooks are used, and the fish are found to be plentiful, especially off the west coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands. The fish is described as superior to the cod of Newfoundland in both oil and meat. The general market is not yet accustomed to it, but such a ready sale is found for what are caught that the number of vessels engaged in this fishing increases year by year. It is evident that the catch of skil will soon be an important source of revenue to the province.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN IDEAL OF THE COAST]

Herring are said to be plentiful, but no fleet is yet fitted out for them. Halibut are numerous and common. They are often of very great size. Sturgeon are found in the Fraser, whither they chase the salmon.

One weighing 1400 pounds was exhibited in Victoria a few years ago, and those that weigh more than half as much are not unfrequently captured.

The following is a report of the yield and value of the fisheries of the province for 1889:

+--------------------------+------------+-----------------+ | Kind of Fish. | Quant.i.ty. | Value. | | | | | +--------------------------+------------+-----------------+ | | | | | Salmon in cans lbs. | 20,122,128 | $2,414,655 36 | | " fresh lbs. | 2,187,000 | 218,700 00 | | " salted bbls. | 3,749 | 37,460 00 | | " smoked lbs. | 12,900 | 2,580 00 | | Sturgeon, fresh | 318,600 | 15,930 00 | | Halibut, " | 605,050 | 30,152 50 | | Herring, " | 190,000 | 9,500 00 | | " smoked | 33,000 | 3,300 00 | | Oolachans, " | 82,500 | 8,250 00 | | " fresh | 6,700 | 1,340 00 | | " salted bbls. | 380 | 3,800 00 | | Trout, fresh lbs. | 14,025 | 1,402 50 | | Fish, a.s.sorted | 322,725 | 16,136 25 | | Smelts, fresh | 52,100 | 3,126 00 | | Rock cod | 39,250 | 1,962 50 | | Skil, salted bbls. | 1,560 | 18,720 00 | | Fooshqua, fresh | 268,350 | 13,417 50 | | Fur seal-skins No. | 33,570 | 335,700 00 | | Hair " " | 7,000 | 5,250 00 | | Sea-otter skins " | 115 | 11,500 00 | | Fish oil gals. | 141,420 | 70,710 00 | | Oysters sacks | 3,000 | 5,250 00 | | Clams " | 3,500 | 6,125 00 | | Mussels " | 250 | 500 00 | | Crabs No. | 175,000 | 5,250 00 | | Abelones boxes | 100 | 500 00 | | Isingla.s.s lbs. | 5,000 | 1,750 00 | +--------------------------+------------+ | | Estimated fish consumed in province | 100,000 00 | | Shrimps, prawns, etc. | 5,000 00 | | Estimated consumption by Indians-- | | | Salmon | 2,732,500 00 | | Halibut | 190,000 00 | | Sturgeon and other fish | 260,000 00 | | Fish oils | 75,000 00 | +---------------------------------------+-----------------+ | Approximate yield | $6,605,467 61 | +---------------------------------------+-----------------+

When it is considered that this is the showing of one of the newest communities on the continent, numbering only the population of what we would call a small city, suffering for want of capital and nearly all that capital brings with it, there is no longer occasion for surprise at the provincial boast that they possess far more extensive and richer fishing-fields than any on the Atlantic coast. Time and enterprise will surely test this a.s.sertion, but it is already evident that there is a vast revenue to be wrested from those waters.

I have not spoken of the sealing, which yielded $236,000 in 1887, and may yet be decided to be exclusively an American and not a British Columbian source of profit. Nor have I touched upon the extraction of oil from herrings and from dog-fish and whales, all of which are small channels of revenue.

I enjoyed the good-fortune to talk at length with a civil engineer of high repute who has explored the greater part of southern British Columbia--at least in so far as its main valleys, waterways, trails, and mountain pa.s.ses are concerned. Having learned not to place too high a value upon the printed matter put forth in praise of any new country, I was especially pleased to obtain this man's practical impressions concerning the store and quality and kinds of timber the province contains. He said, not to use his own words, that timber is found all the way back from the coast to the Rockies, but it is in its most plentiful and majestic forms on the west slope of those mountains and on the west slope of the Coast Range. The very largest trees are between the Coast Range and the coast. The country between the Rocky Mountains and the Coast Range is dry by comparison with the parts where the timber thrives best, and, naturally, the forests are inferior. Between the Rockies and the Kootenay River cedar and tamaracks reach six and eight feet in diameter, and attain a height of 200 feet not infrequently.

There are two or three kinds of fir and some pines (though not very many) in this region. There is very little leaf-wood, and no hard-wood.

Maples are found, to be sure, but they are rather more like bushes than trees to the British Columbian mind. As one moves westward the same timber prevails, but it grows shorter and smaller until the low coast country is reached. There, as has been said, the giant forests occur again. This coast region is largely a flat country, but there are not many miles of it.