Part 4 (1/2)
Fortunately, in that winter of '62-'63, there was a great deal of work to be done in the mining country, and men were in high demand. The ordinary wage was ten dollars a day, and men who could be trusted, and who were brave enough to pack the gold out to the coast, received twenty and even as high as fifty dollars a day. There is a letter, written by Sir Matthew Begbie, describing how the mountain trails were infested that winter by desperadoes lying in wait for the miners who came staggering over the trail literally weighted down with gold. The miners found what the great banks have always found, that the presence of unused gold is a nuisance and a curse. They had to lug the gold in leather sacks with them to their work, and back with them to their shacks, and they always carried firearms ready for use. There was very little shooting at the mines, but if a bad man 'turned up missing,' no one {89} asked whether he had 'hoofed' it down the trail, or whether he hung as a sign of warning from a pole set horizontally at a proper height between two trees. In a mining camp there is no mercy for the crook. If the trail could have told tales, there would have been many a story of dead men washed up on the bars, of sneak-thieves given thirty-nine lashes and like the scapegoat turned out into the mountain wilds--a rough-and-ready justice administered without judge or jury.
But a woman was as safe on the trail as in her own home--a thing that civilization never understands about a wild mining camp. Mrs Cameron, wife of the famous Cariboo Cameron, lived with her husband on his claim till she died, and many other women lived in the camps with their husbands. When the road opened, there was a rush of hurdy-gurdy girls for dance-halls; but that did not modify the rough chivalry of an unwritten law. These hurdy-gurdy girls, who tiptoed to the concertina, the fiddle, and the hand-organ, were German; and if we may believe the poet of Cariboo, they were something like the Glasgow girls described by Wolfe as 'cold to everything but a bagpipe--I wrong them--there is not one that does not melt away {90} at the sound of money.' Sings the poet of Cariboo:
They danced a' nicht in dresses licht Fra' late until the early, O!
But O, their hearts were hard as flint, Which vexed the laddies sairly, O!
The dollar was their only love, And that they loved fu' dearly, O!
They dinna care a flea for men, Let them court hooe'er sincerely, O!
Cariboo was what the miners call a 'he-camp.' Not unnaturally, the 'she-camps' heard 'the call from Macedonia.' The bishop of Oxford, the bishop of London, the lord mayor of London, and a colonial society in England gathered up some industrious young women as suitable wives for the British Columbia miners. Alack the day, there was no poet to send letters to the outside world on this handling of Cupid's bow and arrow!
The comedy was pushed in the most business-like fas.h.i.+on. Threescore young girls came out under the auspices of the society and the Church, carefully shepherded by a clergyman and a stern matron. They reached Victoria in September of '62 and were housed in the barracks. Miners camped on every inch of ground from which the barracks could be {91} watched; and when the girls pa.s.sed to and from their temporary lodging, their progress was like a royal procession through a silent, gaping, but most respectful lane of whiskered faces. A man looking anything but respect would have been knocked down on the spot. We laugh now!
Victoria did not laugh then. It was all taken very seriously. On the instant, every girl was offered some kind of situation, which she voluntarily and almost immediately exchanged for matrimony. In all, some ninety girls came out under these auspices in '62-'63. The respectable girls fitted in where they belonged. The disreputable also found their own places. And the mining camp began to take on an appearance of domesticity and home.
Matthew Begbie, later, like Douglas, given a t.i.tle for his services to the Empire, had, as we have seen, first come out under direct appointment by the crown; and when parliamentary government was organized in British Columbia his position was confirmed as chief justice. He had less regard for red tape than most chief justices.
Like Douglas, he first maintained law and order and then looked up to see if he had any authority for it. No man ever did more for a mining camp than Sir {92} Matthew Begbie. He stood for the rights of the poorest miner. In private life he was fond of music, art, and literature; but in public life he was autocratic as a czar and sternly righteous as a prophet. He was a vigilance committee in himself through sheer force of personality. Crime did not flourish where Begbie went. Chinaman or Indian could be as sure of justice as the richest miner in Cariboo. From hating and fearing him, the camp came almost to wors.h.i.+p him.
Many are the stories of his circuits. Once a jury persisted in bringing in a verdict of manslaughter in place of murder.
'Prisoner,' thundered Begbie, 'it is not a pleasant duty to me to sentence you _only_ to prison for life. You deserve to be hanged. Had the jury performed their duty, I might have the painful satisfaction of condemning you to death. You, gentlemen of the jury, permit me to say that it would give me great pleasure to sentence you to be hanged each and every one of you, for bringing in a murderer guilty only of manslaughter.'
On another occasion, when an American had 'accidentally' shot an Indian, the coroner rendered a verdict 'worried to death by a dog.'
Begbie ordered another inquest. This {93} time the coroner returned a finding that the Indian 'had been killed by falling over a cliff.'
Begbie on his own authority ordered the American seized and taken down to Victoria. On his way down the prisoner escaped from the constable.
This type of hair-trigger gunmen at once fled the country when Begbie came.
Mr Alexander, one of the Overlanders of '62, tells how 'Begbie's decisions may not have been good law, but they were first-cla.s.s justice.' His 'doctrine was that if a man were killed, some one had to be hanged for it; and the effect was salutary.' A man had been sandbagged in a Victoria saloon and thrown out to die. His companion in the saloon was arrested and tried. The circ.u.mstantial evidence was strong, and the judge so charged the jury. But the jury acquitted the prisoner. Dead silence fell in the court-room. The prisoner's counsel arose and requested the discharge of the man. Begbie whirled: 'Prisoner at the bar, the jury have said you are not guilty. You can go, and I devoutly hope the next man you sandbag will be one of the jury.' On another occasion a man was found stabbed on the Cariboo Road. The man with whom the dead miner had been quarrelling was {94} arrested, tried, and, in spite of strong evidence against him, acquitted. Begbie adjourned the court with the pious wish that the murderer should go out and cut the throats of the jury.
But, in spite of his harsh manner towards the wrong-doer, 'the old man,' as the miners affectionately called him, kept law and order. In the early days gold commissioners not only settled all mining disputes, but acted as judge and jury. Against any decision of the gold commissioners Begbie was the sole appeal, and in all the long years of his administration no decision of his was ever challenged.
The effect of sudden wealth on some of the hungry, ragged horde who infested Cariboo was of a sort to discount fiction. One man took out forty thousand dollars in gold nuggets. A lunatic escaped from a madhouse could not have been more foolish. He came to the best saloon of Barkerville. He called in guests from the highways and byways and treated them to champagne which cost thirty dollars and fifty dollars a bottle. When the rabble could drink no more champagne, he ordered every gla.s.s filled and placed on the bar. With one magnificent drunken gesture of vainglory he swept the gla.s.ses in a clattering crash to the {95} floor. There was still a basket of champagne left. He danced the hurdy-gurdy on that basket till he cut his feet. The champagne was all gone, but he still had some gold nuggets. There was a mirror in the bar-room valued at hundreds of dollars. The miner stood and proudly surveyed his own figure in the gla.s.s. Had he not won his dearest desire and conquered all things in conquering fortune? He gathered his last nuggets and hurled them in handfuls at the mirror, shattering it in countless pieces. Then he went out in the night to sleep under the stars, penniless. He settled down to work for the rest of his life in other men's mines.
The staid Overlanders, who had risked their lives to reach this wild land of desire, who had come from such church-going hamlets as Whitby, such Scottish-Presbyterian centres as Toronto and Montreal, hardly knew whether they were dreaming or living in a country of crazy pixies who delved in mud and water all day and weltered in champagne all night.
The Cariboo poet sang their sentiments in these words:
I ken a body made a strike.
He looked a little lord.
He had a clan o' followers Amang a needy horde.
{96}
Whane'er he'd enter a saloon, You'd see the barkeep smile-- His lords.h.i.+p's humble servant he Wi'out a thought o' guile!
A twalmonth pa.s.sed an' a' is gane, Baith freends and brandy bottle!
An' noo the puir soul's left alane Wi' nocht to weet his throttle!
In Barkerville, which became the centre of Cariboo, saloons and dance-halls grew up overnight. Pianos were packed in on mules at a rate of a dollar a pound from Quesnel. Champagne in pint bottles sold at two ounces of gold. Potatoes retailed at ninety dollars a hundredweight. Nails were cheap at a dollar a pound. Milk was retailed frozen at a dollar a pound. Boots still cost fifty dollars.