Part 2 (1/2)
For some time to come, the great line of route to the new El Dorado will likely be by water from the different settlements along the coast of the Pacific. Steam communication has long been established between Panama and San Francisco, and a line of vessels is now regularly plying between the latter port and Vancouver's Island, from whence easy access is had to the diggings, by means of small steamers. The steamers at present running on the coast make the voyage from Panama to Vancouver's Island in fourteen or fifteen days. The following statistics of fares and freights are supplied by the _Times'_ correspondent:--
”The rates of pa.s.sage at present from San Francisco to New York are-- Steerage, 150 dollars; second cabin, 250 dollars; first cabin, 300 dollars per berth for each pa.s.senger. An entire state-room is the price of two pa.s.sengers--600 dollars. From New York to San Francisco the fares are the same. San Francisco to Panama, sometimes the same as to New York, and sometimes one-third less. Freight on specie, 1 per cent, to New York; and three quarters per cent to Panama with a slight discount to s.h.i.+ppers of large amounts. Freight on merchandise from Panama, 2 dollars 10 cents per foot. The quant.i.ty of freight is considerable in French silks, cloths, and light goods, but the bulk is in Havannah cigars, nearly all the supply for this market coming _via_ Panama. The fares up by the steamers from San Francisco to Victoria are--Steerage, 30 dollars; cabin, 60 dollars.”
This route, besides being at present the most direct and expeditious, presents another great advantage. Pa.s.sing along the coast of California, it gives pa.s.sengers an opportunity of either settling there, or continuing their journey to British Columbia. That this is no unimportant advantage, will be at once conceded when it is borne in mind that it is not the gold-producing country on the Fraser River alone that offers strong inducements to emigrants.
In a letter published on 4th August, the _Times'_ correspondent remarks:--”In a few weeks, with a continuance of the present drain upon our mining, mechanical, and labouring population generally, as good a field for labour of every kind will again be open in California as there was from 1849 to 1851, when the country became flooded with immigrants.
In fact, the openings now being made in the mines and in labour of all sorts, and the rise of wages in consequence of the exodus hence, offer greater inducements to emigrants than existed in the first years of our organisation. Then there was little besides mining that a man could turn his hand to. Now the gradual development of the resources of the country has opened many avenues for labour of various kinds, and mining claims, which pay well, and in which a competency would be realised in a moderate s.p.a.ce of time, are abandoned because they do not produce gold in bushels, as their owners hope to find the new mines to yield.” And in another letter, the same authority says:--”The excitement in the interior is universal. I was up the country this week, and returned only last night; so that I had an opportunity of judging for myself.
From every point of the compa.s.s squads of miners were to be seen making for San Francisco to s.h.i.+p themselves off; and I heard of arrangements having been completed for driving stock overland to meet the demands of the new population congregating in the Puget Sound country. One man had purchased a drove of mules, and another had speculated in 200 Californian horses, to supply the demand for `packing.' These two `ventures' were to proceed overland in two days hence. The speculator in horses had been at Fraser River, and returned convinced of the judiciousness of his `spec.' He spoke of the overland trip with enthusiasm; plenty of game and of gra.s.s, a fine climate, and no molestation from Indians. As a natural result of all this emigration, business in the interior is becoming much deranged. The operations of the country merchants are checked; rents and the value of property in the interior towns are diminis.h.i.+ng. Some of the merchants are `liquidating,' and some have already moved their business to San Francisco, to take advantage of the business which must spring up between that port and the north-west. All the movements made in consequence of the new gold discovery have tended to benefit San Francisco, and she will, no doubt, continue to derive great advantages from the change. The increase of business will bring an increase of immigration to the city, for there is every reason to believe, judging from past experience, that a considerable proportion of the emigration from Europe, the Atlantic States, and Australia, will rest here; that the city will increase rapidly, and that an advance in the value of property must ensue in consequence. The fact is, that there is now in California so extensive an a.s.sociation of capital and labour engaged in mining successfully, that, happen what may in other countries, the `yield' here most continue to be very great. Companies of men who have large amounts of money invested in mining of a variety of sorts, such as `tunnelling,' `sluicing,' and `quartz crus.h.i.+ng,' on a large scale, are not going to abandon well-developed properties which produce profitable returns. We have no fear of having to suffer any inconvenience from a scarcity of gold in California in consequence of the removal from the country of so many miners. I make these statements for the information of parties abroad engaged in business with this country.”
The following is the journal of a traveller who lately proceeded on this route:--
”Left San Francisco on Thursday, the 24th of June, at 4 and a half p.m., and arrived in Esquimault Harbour, near Victoria, on the following Tuesday, at six in the morning--distance, 800 miles. The steamer was so crowded with gold-hunters, speculators, merchants, tradesmen, and adventurers of all sorts, that exercise even on the quarterdeck could only be coaxed by the general forbearance and good-humour of the crowd.
Before starting there were stories to the prejudice of the steamer, the Oregon, belonging to the Pacific Mail Company, rife enough to damp the courage of the timid; but she behaved well, and beat another boat that had five hours' start of her. The fact is we had a model captain, a well-educated, gentlemanly man, formerly a lieutenant in the United States navy, whose intelligence, vigour, and conduct inspired full confidence in all. With Captain Patterson I would have gone to sea in a tub. Whatever may be the sins of the company as monopolists of the carrying trade on this coast, justice must award them the merit of having selected a staff of commanders who atone for many shortcomings.
”The voyage from San Francisco to Vancouver's Island, which in a steamer is made all the way within sight of the coast, is one of the most agreeable when the voyager is favoured with fine weather. I know none other so picturesque out of the Mediterranean. The navigation is so simple that a schoolboy could sail a steamer, for a series of eighteen headlands, which jut out into the ocean all along the coasts of California, Oregon, and Was.h.i.+ngton Territory, served as landmarks to direct the mariner in his course. All he has to do is to steer from one to another; from Point Reyes outside the Golden Gate to Point Arena, the next in succession, and so on till he comes to Cape Flattery, upon rounding which he enters the Straits of Fuca, towards the end of his voyage.
”The northern portion of the coast of California and the whole length of the coasts of Oregon and Was.h.i.+ngton are thickly wooded. In fact, this vast stretch of country is one continuous pine forest. From the sh.o.r.e, where the trees dip into the sea, back to the verge of the distant horizon, over hills, down valleys, across ravines, and on and around the sides and tops of mountains, it is one great waving panorama of forest scenery. Timber--enough to supply the wants of the world for ages, one would think. Yet the broken character of the country relieves the scene from monotony, and it fully realises the idea of the grand and the beautiful combined. One spot in particular made an impression upon me which I wish I had the power to convey by words. Between Cape Mendocina and Humboldt Bay, on the northern limits of California, a grand collection of hills and mountains of every variety of size, shape, and form occurs. This grand group recedes in a gentle sweep from the coast far inland, where it terminates in a high conical mountain, overtopping the entire ma.s.s of pinnacles which cl.u.s.ter around it. The whole is well clothed with trees of that feathery and graceful foliage peculiar to the spruce and larch, and interspersed with huge round clumps of evergreens, with alternations of long glades and great open patches of lawn covered with rich gra.s.s of that bright emerald green peculiar to California.
This woodland scene, viewed of an early morning, sparkling with dew-drops under the rising sun which slowly lifted the veil of mist hanging over it, surpa.s.sed in beauty anything I have seen on this continent. Here everything in nature is on a grand scale. All her works are magnificent to a degree unknown in Europe. A trip to these regions will pay the migratory Englishman in search of novelty to his heart's content, and I will bear the blame if he is not well pleased with his journey. California alone should satisfy a traveller of moderate desires. Here he will find combined the beauty and loveliness of English landscape with the bolder and grander features of the scenery of the Western continent--a combination, perhaps, unequalled in any other country. On this, the northern coast, the bold and the picturesque predominate over the tamer park-like scenery of the interior valleys, which so nearly resemble the `fine old places' of England.”
Another route, which it is proposed to open on the other side of the country, from Minnesota to the Fraser River gold mines, would appear to be very feasible. From Saint Anthony the Mississippi is navigable for large steamers as far as the Sauk Rapids. Thence to Breckenridge, at the head of the navigation of the Red River of the North, is a distance of 125 miles. This part of the journey must be made overland; but already this district is being fast occupied by settlers, and a good road may easily be constructed. At Breckenridge a settlement has also been established. Here commences the fertile valley of the Red River, and from this point, as appears from Captain Pope's survey, the river, which runs due north, is navigable for steamers all the way to its mouth, at the southern extremity of Lake Winnepeg. It begins with four feet of water, and gradually deepens to fifteen feet Lake Winnepeg, which is long, narrow, and deep, receives near its northern end the Saskatchewan, flowing from the west, and having its sources in the Rocky Mountains. The river, and the country on its banks, have recently attracted attention as well fitted for colonisation. Taking the climate of the eastern portion of the continent, and of the region round Hudson's Bay, as a standard, it was long supposed that all the interior of North America, beyond the 48th or 49th degree of north lat.i.tude, was too cold to produce grain crops; and unfit, therefore, for the habitation of civilised men. Recent investigations, however, have fully established the curious and very important fact, that west of the western end of Lake Superior, at about the 100th degree of west longitude, a remarkable change begins to take place in the climate; to such an extent, that as we proceed westward the limit of vegetable growth, and of the production of grain, is extended far to the north, so as to include the whole valley of the Saskatchewan, which is represented as in other respects well fitted for settlement. The Saskatchewan is a river larger and longer than the Red River of the North; and, according to Governor Simpson, of the Hudson's Bay Company's Service, in his notes on its exploration, it is navigable by its northern branch, with only one rapid to obstruct navigation, for seven hundred miles in a direct line to the foot of the Rocky Mountains. How serious an obstruction this may be does not clearly appear. It can hardly be a perpendicular fall, since, according to Governor Simpson, canoes and flat-boats pa.s.s over it in safety. From the head of navigation it is only about two hundred miles across the Rocky Mountains, of which the elevation here is much less than in Oregon and California, to the Thompson and Fraser Rivers.
The distance from Breckenridge to the mouth of the Red River is estimated at 450 miles. Thence through lake Winnepeg to the mouth of Saskatchewan is 200 miles. Allowing for windings, the navigation by that river may be set down at 1000 miles. Add 125 miles of land carriage at one end of the route, and 200 at the other, making in the whole a distance of about 2000 miles, from the starting point on the Mississippi.
So fully impressed are some enterprising people of Minnesota with the practicability and advantage of this route, that measures have been already taken for building a steamer at Breckenridge, designed to navigate the waters of the Red River, Lake Winnepeg, and Saskatchewan, and to be ready for that purpose by the opening of next spring.
Meantime as the greater part of the route is within the territories of the Hudson's Bay Company, steps have been taken to open a communication with the Governor of that Company, and with other persons likely to a.s.sist in putting a line of steamers on these waters.
At present various measures are being taken by the Canadians to shorten this last route, and apparently with much success. They are making arrangements for pa.s.sing around the headwaters of Lake Superior, and thus saving the detour in Minnesota. In a very short time it is said that an easy and inexpensive means of communication will be formed between Canada and the gold-fields; but, for the present, the Panama route is _decidedly_ the preferable one for British emigrants.
CHAPTER FOUR.
DESCRIPTION OF COASTS, HARBOURS, ETCETERA.
The Pacific coast extends from Panama westward and northward, without any remarkable irregularity in its outline, to the tropic of Cancer, almost immediately under which is the entrance of the great Gulf of California, separating the Peninsula of California from the main continent on the east. From the southern extremity of this peninsula the coast runs generally north-westward to Mount Saint Elias, a lofty volcanic peak, rising from the sh.o.r.e of the ocean under the 60th parallel, beyond which the continent stretches far westward, between the Pacific on the south, and the Arctic Sea on the north, to its termination at Cape Prince of Wales, in Behring's Straits, the pa.s.sage separating America from Asia. The part of the coast south of the 49th degree of lat.i.tude (the American boundary) presents few indentations, and the islands in its vicinity are neither numerous nor large. North of the 49th degree, on the contrary, the mainland is everywhere penetrated by inlets and bays; and near it are thousands of islands, many of them extensive, lying singly or in groups, separated from each other and from the continent by narrow channels.
From the mouth of the Columbia forty-five miles of unbroken coast reaches Whidbey's Bay, called by the Americans Bulfinches Harbour, and not unfrequently Gray's Bay, which, with an entrance of scarce two miles and a-half, spreads seven miles long and nine broad, forming two deep bays like the Columbia. Here there is secure anchorage behind Point Hanson to the south and Point Brown to the north, but the capacity of the bay is lessened to one-third of its size by the sand banks which encroach on it in every direction. Like the Columbia, its mouth is obstructed by a bar which has not more than four fathoms water, and as it stretches some three miles to seaward, with breakers on each side, extending the whole way to the sh.o.r.e, the difficulty of entrance is increased. It lies nearly east and west, and receives from the east the waters of the river Chikelis, having its rise at the base of the mountains, which, stretching from Mount Olympus in the north, divide the coast from Puget's Sound. From Whidbey's Bay to Cape Flattery, about eighty miles, but two streams, and those unimportant, break the iron wall of the coast, which rising gradually into lofty mountains is crowned in h.o.a.ry grandeur by the snow-clad peaks of Mount Olympus. Cape Flattery, called also Cape Cla.s.set, is a conspicuous promontory in lat.i.tude 48 degrees 27 minutes; beyond it, distant one mile, lies Tatouches Island, a large flat rock, with perpendicular sides, producing a few trees, surrounded by rocky islets: it is one mile in length, joined to the sh.o.r.e by a reef of rocks, and a mile further, leaving a clear pa.s.sage between them, is a reef named Ducan's Rock. Here commences, in lat.i.tude 48 degrees 30 minutes, that mighty arm of the sea, which has been justly named from its first discoverer, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and which Captain Cook pa.s.sed without perceiving. The entrance of this strait is about ten miles in width, and varies from that to twenty with the indentations of its sh.o.r.es, of which the northern, stretching to the north-west and south-east across the entrance, gives an appearance of continuity to its line on the Pacific.
Running in a south-easterly direction for upwards of one hundred miles, its further progress is suddenly stopped by a range of snow-clad mountain, at the base of which, spreading abroad its mighty arms to the north and south, it gives to the continent the appearance of a vast archipelago.
Of the Straits of Fuca and surrounding sh.o.r.es, the latest and fullest information we possess is that contained in the letter of the _Times'_ special correspondent, published on 27th August. He says:--
”We have now rounded Cape Flattery, and are in the Straits of Fuca, running up between two sh.o.r.es of great beauty. On the left is the long-looked-for Island of Vancouver, an irregular aggregation of hills, shewing a sharp angular outline as they become visible in the early dawn, covered with the eternal pines, saving only occasional sunny patches of open greensward, very pretty and picturesque, but the hills not lofty enough to be very striking. The entire island, property speaking, is a forest. On the right we have a long ma.s.sive chain of lofty mountains covered with snow, called the Olympian range--very grand, quite Alpine in aspect. This is the peninsula, composed of a series of mountains running for many miles in one unbroken line, which divides the Straits of Fuca from Puget Sound. It belongs to America, in the territory of Was.h.i.+ngton, is uninhabited, and, like its opposite neighbour, has a covering of pines far up towards the summit. The tops of these mountains are seldom free from snow. The height is unknown, perhaps 15,000 feet. We ran up through this scenery early in the morning, biting cold, for about forty miles to Esquimault Harbour--_the_ harbour--which confers upon Vancouver's Island its pre-eminence.
”From the information of old miners, who pointed out some of the localities on the northern coast of California, and indicated the position of places in Oregon in which they had dug for gold, I had a strong corroboration of an opinion which I stated in one of my late letters--that the Fraser River diggings were a continuation of the great goldfield of California. The same miners had a theory that these northern mines would be richer than any yet discovered, because the more northern portions of California are richer than the central and southern portions.
”The harbour of Esquimault is a circular bay, or rather a basin, hollowed by nature out of the solids rock. We slid in through the narrow entrance between two low, rocky promontories and found ourselves suddenly transported from the open sea and its heavy roll and swell into a Highland lake, placid as the face of a mirror, in the recesses of a pine forest. The transition was startling. From the peculiar shape of the bay and the deep indentations its various coves make into the sh.o.r.e, one sees but a small portion of the harbour at a glance from the point we brought up at. We therefore thought it ridiculously small after our expectations had been so highly wrought in San Francisco.
”The whole scenery is of the Highland character. The rocky sh.o.r.es, the pine trees running down to the edge of the lake, their dark foliage trembling over the glittering surface which reflected them, the surrounding hills, and the death-like silence. I was both delighted and disappointed--delighted with the richness of the scenery, but disappointed at the smallness of the harbour. Can this little loch, imprisoned within natural ramparts of rocks, buried in the solitude of a forest, be the place which I hoped would become so famous, the great destiny of which has been prognosticated by statesmen and publicists, and the possession of which is bitterly envied us by neighbouring nations; this the place where England is to centre a naval force hitherto unknown in the Pacific, whence her fleets are to issue for the protection of her increasing interests in the Western world; this the seaport of the Singapore of the Pacific; the modern Tyre into which the riches of the East are to flow and be distributed to the Western nations; the terminus of railway communication which is to connect the Atlantic with the Pacific?
”Victoria is distant from Esquimault, by land, about three miles round by sea, double the distance. The intervening ground is an irregular promontory, having the waters of the Straits of Fuca on the south, the Bay of Victoria on the east, and the Victoria arm encircling: it on the north. The promontory contains three farms, reclaimed from the forest of pines, oaks, alders, willows, and evergreens. The soil is good, and produces fair crops of the ordinary cereals, oats, barley, and wheat, and good gra.s.s, turnips, and potatoes.