A Tramp's Notebook Part 5

That is another of the poor prospector's stock cries; but as a general rule capitalists are wary, and don't invest in such "wild cat"

speculations.

Next morning Mr Patterson proposed that I should go along with him and he would make my fortune. "What at?" said I. "Quartz mining?" "Not this time," was his answer; "it's placer" (alluvial). I was not in the least particular then what I did if I could only get good wages, so I wanted to know what he proposed giving me. "Bed-rock wages," said he. Now that means good money if a strike is made, and nothing if it is not. So I shook my head, and he turned away, leaving me to wallow in the mire of contemptible security. I can hardly doubt that he will be one day found dead in the mountains, and that his Eldorado will be but oblivion.

Just as I was about to leave British Columbia for Was.h.i.+ngton Territory there were very good reports of the new Similkameen diggings, and for the first and only time in my life I was very nearly taking the gold fever. But though I saw much of the gold that had been taken out of the creek, I managed to restrain myself, and was glad of it afterwards, when I learned from a friend of mine in town that very few had made anything out of it, and that most had returned to New Westminster penniless and in rags.

Railroads and modern progress are nowadays civilising the country to a great extent, though I am by no means sure that civilisation is a good thing in itself. However, manners are much better than they used to be in the old times, and it might be hard now to find an instance of ignorance parallel to one which my friend Mr H. told me. It appears that a dinner was to be given in the earlier days to some great official from England, and an English lady, who knew how such things should be done, was appointed manager. She determined that everything should be in good style, and ordered even such extravagant and unknown luxuries as napkins and finger-gla.s.ses. Among those who sat at the well-appointed table were miners, cattle-men, and so on, and one of them on sitting down took up his finger-bowl, and saying, "By golly, I'm thirsty," emptied it at a draught. Then, to add horror on horror, he trumpeted loudly in his napkin and put it in his breast pocket.

The progress of civilisation, however, destroys the Indians and their virtues. One Indian woman, who was married to a friend of mine--and a remarkably intelligent woman she was--one day remarked to me that before white men came into the country the women of her tribe (she was a Ptsean) were good and modest but that now that was all gone. It is true enough. This same woman was remarkable among the general run of her cla.s.s, and spoke very good English, being capable of making a joke too.

A half-bred Indian, working for her husband, one day spoke contemptuously of his mother's tribe, and Mrs ----, being a full-blooded Indian, did not like it. She asked him if he was an American, and, after overwhelming him with sarcasm, turned him out of doors.

As a matter of fact, most of the Indians are demoralised, especially those who live in or near the towns, and they live in a state of degradation and perpetual debauchery. Though it is a legal offence to supply them with liquor, they nevertheless manage to get drunk at all times and seasons. When they work they are not to be relied on to continue at it steadily, and when drunk they are only too often dangerous. Their type of face is often very low, and I never saw but one handsome man among the half-breeds, though the women, especially the Hydahs, are pa.s.sable in looks. This man was a pilot, and a good one, on the lakes; but he was perpetually being discharged for drunkenness.

The lake and river steamboats are not always safe to be in, and some of the pilotage and engineering is reckless in the extreme. The captains are too often given to drink overmuch, and when an intoxicated man is at the wheel in a river full of the natural dangers of bars and snags, and those incident on a tremendous current, the situation often becomes exciting. I was once on the Fraser River in a steamer whose boiler was certified to bear 80 lb. of steam and no more. We were coming to a "riffle," or rapid, where the stream ran very fiercely, with great swirls and waves in it, and the captain sang out to the engineer, "How much steam have you, Jack?" "Eighty," answered Jack.

"Fire up, fire up!" said the captain, as he jammed the tiller over; "we shall never make the riffle on that."

The firemen went to work, and threw in more wood, and presently we approached the rapid. The captain leant out of the pilot house.

"Give it her, Jack," he yelled excitedly.

The answer given by Jack scared me, for I knew quite well what she ought to bear.

"There's a hundred and twenty on her now!"

"Well, maybe it will do;" and the captain's head retreated.

On we went, slowly crawling and fighting against the swift stream which tore by us. We got about half-way up, and we gradually stayed in one position, and even went back a trifle. The captain yelled and shouted for more steam yet, and then I retreated as far as I could, and sat on the taffrail, to be as far as possible from the boiler, which I believed would explode every moment. But Jack obeyed orders, and rammed and raked at the fires until the gauge showed 160 lb., and we got over at last.

But I confess I did feel nervous.

This happened about ten miles below Yale, and at that very spot the tiller-ropes of the same boat once parted, and they had to let her drift. Fortunately, she hung for a few moments in an eddy behind a big rock until they spliced them again; but it was a close call with everyone on board. A steamer once blew up there, and most of the crew and pa.s.sengers were killed outright or drowned.

Above Yale the river is not navigable until Savona's Ferry is reached.

That is on the Kamloops Lake, and thence east up the Thompson and the lakes there is navigation to Spallamacheen. Once the owners of the _Peerless_ ran her from Savona down to Cook's Ferry, just in order to see if it could be done. The down-stream trip was done in three hours, but it took three weeks to get her back again, and then her progress had to be aided with ropes from the sh.o.r.e; so it was not deemed advisable to make the trip regularly.

As for the river in the main Fraser canyon, it is nothing more nor less than a perfect h.e.l.l of waters; and though Mr Onderdonk, who had the lower British Columbia contract for the Canadian Pacific Railroad, built a boat to run on it, the first time the _Skuzzy_ let go of the bank she ran ash.o.r.e. She was taken to pieces and rebuilt on the lakes. The railroad people wanted her at first on the lower river, and asked a Mr Moore, who is well known as a daring steamboatman, to take her down. He said he would undertake it, but demanded so high a fee, including a thousand dollars for his wife if he was drowned, that his offer was refused. Yet it was well worth almost any money, for it would have been a very hazardous undertaking--as bad as, or even worse than, the _Maid of the Mist_ going through the rapids below Niagara.

A TALK WITH KRUGER

It was a warm day in the end of September 1898 when I put my foot in Pretoria. There was an air of la.s.situde about the town. President Steyn, of the Orange Free State, had been and gone, and the triumphal arch still cried "Wilkom" across Church Square. The two Boer States had ratified their secret understanding, and many Boers looked on the arch as a prophecy of victory. Perhaps by now those who were accustomed to meet in the Raadsaal close by are not so sure that heaven-enlightened wisdom brought about the compact. As for myself, I thought little enough of the matter then, for Pretoria seemed curiously familiar to me, though I had never been there, and had never so much as seen a photograph of it until I saw one in Johannesburg. For some time I could not understand why it seemed familiar. It is true that it had some resemblance to a tenth-rate American town in which the Australian gum-trees had been acclimatised, as they have been in some malarious spots in California.

And in places I seemed to recall Americanised Honolulu. Yet it was not this which made me feel I knew Pretoria. It was something in the aspect of the people, something in the air of the men, combined doubtless with topographical reminiscence. And when I came to my hotel and had settled down, I began to see why I knew it. The whole atmosphere of the city reeked of the very beginnings of finance. It was the haunt of the concession-monger; of the lobbyist; of the men who wanted something.

These I had seen before in some American State capitals; the anxious face of the concession-hunter had a family likeness to the man of Lombard Street: the obsession of the gold-seeker was visible on every other face I looked at.

In the hotels they sat in rows: some were silent, some talked anxiously, some were in spirits and spoke with cheerfulness. It pleased my solitary fancy to label them. These had got their concessions, they were going away; these still hoped strongly, and were going to-morrow and to-morrow; these still held on, and were going later; these again had ceased to hope, but still stayed as a sickened miner will hang round a played-out claim. They were all gamblers, and his Honour the President was the Professional Gambler who kept the House, who dealt the cards, and too often (as they thought) "raked in the pot," or took his heavy commission. And I had nothing to ask for; all I wanted was to see the tables if I could, and have a talk with him who kept them.

The President is an accessible man. He does not hide behind his dignity: he affects a patriarchal simplicity, and is ever ready to receive his own people or the stranger within his gates. His unaffected affectation is to be a simpleton of character: he tells all alike that he is a simple old man, and expects everyone to chuckle at the transparent absurdity of the notion. Was it possible, then, for me to see him and have a talk with him? I was told to apply to a well-known Pretorian journalist. As I was also a journalist of sorts, and not wholly unknown, it was highly probable he would a.s.sist me in my desire not to leave Pretoria without seeing the Father of his people. But my informant added: "The President will say nothing--he can say nothing in very few words. If you want him to talk, say 'Rhodes.'" I thanked my new hotel acquaintance and and said I would say "Rhodes" if it seemed necessary.

And next afternoon I walked down Church Street with the journalist W---- and came to the President's house. We had an appointment, and after waiting half-an-hour in the _stoep_ with four or five typical and silent Boers, Mr Kruger came out in company with a notorious Pretorian financier, for whom I suppose the poor President, who is hardly worth more than a million or so, had taken one of his simple-hearted fancies.

And then I was introduced to his Honour, and we sat down opposite to each other. By the President's side, and on his right hand, sat W----, who was to interpret my barbarous English into the elegant _taal_.

If few of our caricaturists have done Mr Kruger justice, they have seldom been entirely unjust. He is heavy and ungainly, and though his face is strong it is utterly uncultivated. He wears dark spectacles, and smokes a long pipe, and uses a great spittoon, and in using it does not always attain that accuracy of marksmans.h.i.+p supposed to be characteristic of the Boer. His whiskers are untrimmed, his hands are not quite clean; his clothes were probably never intended to fit him.

And yet, in spite of everything, he has some of that dignity which comes from strength and a long habit of getting his own way. But the dignity is not the dignity of the statesman, it is that dignity which is sometimes seen under the _blouse_ of an old French peasant who still remains the head of the family though his hands are past work. I felt face to face with the past as I sat opposite him. So might I have felt had I sat in the kraal of Moshesh or Lobengula or the great Msiligazi.

Though the city about me was a modern city, and though quick-firers crowned its heights, here before me was something that was pa.s.sing away.

But I considered my audience, and told the President and his listening Boers that I was glad to meet a man who had stood up against the British Empire without fear. And he replied, as he puffed at his pipe, that he had doubtless only done so because he was a simpleton. And the Boers chuckled at their President's favourite joke. He added that if he had been a wise man of forethought he would probably have never done it. And so far perhaps he was right. All rulers of any strength have to rely rather on instinct than on the wisdom of the intellect.

Then we talked about Johannesburg, and the President puffed smoke against the capitalists, and led me to infer that he considered them a very scandalous lot, against whom he was struggling in the interests of the shareholders. I disclaimed any sympathy with capitalists, and declared that I was theoretically a Socialist. The President grunted, but when I added that he might, so far as I cared, act the Nero and cut off all the financial heads at one blow, he and his countrymen laughed at a conceit which evidently appealed to them. But his Honour relapsed again into a grunt when I inquired what he considered must be the upshot of the agitation. On pressing him, he replied that he was not a prophet.

I tried to draw him on the loyalty of the Cape Dutch by saying that they had even more reason to be loyal than the English, seeing that if England were ousted from the Continent the Germans would come in; but he evaded the question at issue by a.s.serting that if the Cape Dutch intrigued against the Queen he would neither aid nor countenance them.

Then, as the conversation seemed in danger of languis.h.i.+ng, I did what I had been told to do and mentioned Rhodes.

It was odd to observe the instant change in the President's demeanour.

He lost his stolidity, and became voluble and emphatic. Rhodes was evidently his sore point; and he abused him with fervour and with emphasis. All trouble in this wicked world was due to Rhodes; if Rhodes had not been born, or had had the grace to die very early, South Africa would have been little less than a Paradise. Rhodes was a bad man, whose chief aim was to drag the English flag in the dirt. Rhodes was Apollyon and a financier, and the foul fiend himself. And as the old man worked himself into a spluttering rage, he emphasised every point in his declamation by a furious slap, not on his own knee, but on the knee of the journalist who was interpreting for me. Every time that heavy hand came down I saw poor W---- wince; he was shaken to his foundations. But he endured the punishment like a martyr, and said nothing. I dropped ice into the President's boiling mind by asking him if he thought it would remove danger from the situation if Mr Rhodes and Mr Chamberlain were effectually muzzled by the Imperial Government. His peasant-like caution instantly returned; he smoked steadily for a minute, and then declared he would say nothing on that point. It was not necessary; he had showed, without the shadow of a doubt, that he was an old man who was, in a sense, insane on one point. Rhodes was his fixed pathological idea. This Tenterden steeple was the cause of the revolutionary Goodwin Sands.

As a last question about the Cape Dutch, I asked if, when he declared he would not aid them against the Queen, he would act against them; he replied denying in general terms the right to revolt. I said, "But the right of revolution is the final safeguard of liberty"; and his Honour did nothing but grunt. From his point of view he could neither deny nor affirm this safely, and so our interview came to an end.

TROUT FIs.h.i.+NG IN BRITISH COLUMBIA AND CALIFORNIA

At that time I acknowledge that trout-fis.h.i.+ng as a real art I knew nothing of; whipping English waters had been almost entirely denied me, and with the exception of a week on a river near Oswestry, and a day in Cornwall, I had never thrown a fly over a pool where a trout might reasonably be supposed to exist. But in British Columbia I used to catch them in quant.i.ties and with an ease unknown to Englishmen. I am told (by an expert) that using a gra.s.shopper as a bait is no better than poaching, and that I might as well take to the nefarious "white line,"

or _Cocculus indicus_. That may be so according to the deeper ethics of the sport, but I am inclined to think many men would have no desire to fish at all after going through the preliminary task of filling a small tin can with those lively insects.

Owing to the fact that I was working for my living on a ranch at Cherry Creek, I had no chance of fis.h.i.+ng on week-days, but on Sundays, after breakfast, I used to take my primitive willow rod from the roof, where it had been for six days, see that the ten or twelve feet of string was as sound at least as my frayed yard of gut, examine my hook, and then start hunting gra.s.shoppers. That meant a deal of violent exercise, especially if the wind was blowing, for they fly down it or are driven down it with sufficient velocity to make a man run. Moreover, near the ranche they were mostly of a very surprising alertness, owing, doubtless, to the fact that the fowls, in their eagerness to support Darwin's theory of natural selection, soon picked up the slow and lazy ones. But after an hour's hard work I usually got some fifty or so, and that would last for a whole day, or at anyrate for a whole afternoon.

Then I went to the creek, fis.h.i.+ng up it and down it with a democratic disregard of authority.

Cherry Creek was only a small stream; here and there it rattled over rocks, and stayed in a deep pool. Now and again it ran as fast as the water in a narrow flume; and then the banks grew canyon-like for fifty yards. But for almost the whole of its length it went through dense brush, so dense in parts that it defied anyone but a bear to get through it. But when I did reach a secluded pool and manage to thrust my rod out over the water and slowly unwind my bait, I was almost always rewarded by a lively mountain trout as long as my hand, for they never ran over six inches. The gra.s.shopper was absolutely deadly; no fish seemed able to resist it, and sometimes in ten minutes I took six, or even ten, out of a pool as big as an ordinary dining-room table. The fact of the matter is that the greatest difficulty lay in getting to the water. When I fished up stream into the narrow gorge through which the creek ran, I often walked four or five miles before I got the small tin bucket, which was my creel, half full; yet I knew that if I could have really fished five hundred yards of it I might have gone home with a full catch.

But it was not so much the fis.h.i.+ng as the strange solitude, the thick, lonely brush, that made such excursions pleasant. Every now and again I came to a spur of the mountains, and climbed up into the open and lay among the red barked bull-pines. If I went a little higher I could catch sight of the dun-coloured hills which ran down, as I knew, to the waters of Kamloops Lake, only five miles distant. If I felt hungry, I could easily light a fire and broil the trout; with a bit of bread, carried in my pocket, and a draught from a spring or the creek itself, I made a hearty meal. And all day long I saw no human being. Every now and again I might come across a half-wild bullock or a wilder horse, or see the track of a wolf, but that was all, save the song of the birds, the wind among the trees, and the ceaseless murmurs of the creek. In the evening I made my way back in time to give the cook what I had caught.

In California I used to fish in the small creek running at the back of Los Guilucos Ranch, Sonoma County, and, though the trout were by no means so plentiful there as in British Columbia, I often caught two or three dozen in the afternoon. But there I had to use worms, and they seemed far less attractive than the soft, sweet body of the gra.s.shopper.

Yet once I caught a very large fish for that part of the country. He was evidently a fish with a history, as I caught him in a big tank sunk in the earth, which supplied the ranch, and was itself supplied by a long flume. As I went home past this tank one day I carelessly dropped the bait in, and it was instantly seized by a trout I knew to be larger than I had yet hooked. But, though he was big, he had very little chance. The smooth sides of the tank afforded him no hole to rush for, and, after a short struggle, I hauled him out. My only fear was that my rotten line would part, for he weighed almost a pound, and I was accustomed to fish of less than seven ounces.

I often wondered in British Columbia why so few people fished. In some of the creeks running into the Fraser River, near Yale, I have seen splendid trout of two or three pounds; there would be a dozen in sight at once very often. They always seemed in good condition, too, which was more than could be said for the salmon, for those were half of them very white with the fungus, as one could easily see on the Kamloops or Shushwap Lakes from the bows of the steamer if the water was smooth.

Perhaps the reason there are no trout-fishers out there is that those who care sufficiently for any kind of sport find it more to their taste to hunt deer, bear or cariboo. When these have disappeared, as they must, seeing the ruthless manner in which they are slaughtered, many may be glad to take to the milder and less ferocious trout. The country certainly affords very good fis.h.i.+ng, and the spring and summer climate is perfect. If it were only a little nearer they might be properly educated, until they were far too wary to fall into the simple traps laid for them by a man who fished with a piece of string and carried a bucket for a creel. It may have been my brutal ignorance of tying flies, but when I tried them with what I could furbish up, they seemed to resent the thing as an insult. So there seems some hope of their being capable of instruction.

ROUND THE WORLD IN HASTE

When I went to New York in the spring I meant going on farther whether I could or not. Australia and home again was in my mind, and in New York slang I swore there should be "blood on the face of the moon" if I did not get through inside of four months. Now this is not record time by any means, and it is not difficult to do it in much less, provided one spends enough money; but I was at that time in no position to sling dollars about, and, besides, I wanted some of the English rust knocked off me. Living in England ends in making a man poor of resource. I hardly know an ordinary Londoner who would not s.h.i.+ver at the notion of being "dead broke" in any foreign city, to say nothing of one on the other side of the world; and though it is not a pleasant experience it has some charms and many uses. It wakes a man up, shows him the real world again, and makes him know his own value once more. So I started for New York in rather a devil-may-care spirit, without the slightest chance of doing the business in comfort. And my misfortunes began at once in that city.

To save time and money I went in the first quick vessel that crossed--the _Lucania_; and I went second-cla.s.s. It was an experience to run twenty-two knots an hour; but it has made me greedy since. I want to do any future journeys in a torpedo-boat. As to the second-cla.s.s crowd, they were, as they always are on board Western ocean boats, a set of hogs. The difference between first and second-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers is one of knowing when and where to spit, to put no fine point on it. I was glad when we reached New York on that account.