5. Chapter 5
At daylight in the morning we entered English Bay, having crossed the strait during the night. The sun climbed up over the snow-mantled mountains into a cloudless sky, and his rays were reflected from the limpid, tranquil surface of the bay:
"Blue, darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,"
as if from the face of a mirror. A few miles to the east, the triple-mouthed Frazer empties its great volume of fresh, cold, glacier-tinted fluid into the briny inland sea, and its delta, level as a floor, stretches back many miles on either side of the river to the foot-hills of the Cascades. Thousands of ducks sat idly and lazily in the water, sunning themselves, pruning their feathers, and eyeing us curiously but fearlessly, as we passed, sometimes within twenty-five or thirty yards of them. A few geese crossed hither and thither, in low, long, dark lines, uttering their familiar honk, honk; but they were more wary than their lesser cousins, and kept well out of range. I asked the purser if there was any rule against shooting on board, and he said no; to go down on the after main deck, and shoot until I was tired. I took my Winchester express from the case, went below and opened on the ducks. They at once found it necessary to get out of the country, and their motion, and that of the vessel combined, caused me to score several close misses, but I finally found the bull's-eye, so to speak, and killed three in rapid succession. Then the mate came down and said:
"We don't allow no one to be firin' off guns on board."
"I have the purser's permission," I said.
"Well," he replied, "the captain's better authority than the purser on this here boat," whereupon he returned to the cabin deck, and so did I. I was not seriously disappointed, however, for I cared little for the duck shooting; I was in quest of larger game, and only wanted to practice a little, to renew acquaintance and familiarity with my weapon. Early in the day we entered Burrard Inlet, a narrow, crooked, and peculiarly shaped arm of the salt water, that winds and threads its way many miles back into the mountains, so narrow in places, that a boy may cast a stone across it, and yet so deep as to be navigable for the largest ocean steamship. The inlet is so narrow and crooked that a stranger, sailing into it for the first time, would pronounce it a great river coming down from the mountains. Through this picturesque body of water our good boat cleft the shadows of the overhanging mountains until nearly noon, when we landed at Vancouver, the terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway. In consequence of this important selection, the place is a busy mart of trade. The clang of saw and hammer, the rattle of wheels, the general din of a building boom, are such as to tire one's nerves in a few hours. Later in the day we reached Port Moody. This town was originally designated as the tide-water terminus of the road, and had its brief era of prosperity and speculation in consequence; but now that the plan has been changed it has been reduced to a mere way station, and has relapsed into the dullest kind of dullness.
From here I staged across the divide to New Westminster, on the Frazer river, the home of Mr. J. C. Hughs, who had invited me there to hunt Rocky Mountain goats with him. I was grieved beyond measure, however, to learn on my arrival that he was dangerously ill, and went at once to his house, but he was unable to see me. He sank rapidly from the date of his first illness, died two days after my arrival, and I therefore found myself in a strange land, with no friend or acquaintance to whom I could go for information or advice.
My first object, therefore, was to find a guide to take me into the mountains, and although I found several pretended sportsmen, I could hear of no one who had ever killed a goat, except poor Hughs, and a Mr. Fannin, who had formerly lived there, but had lately moved away, so of course no one knew where I could get a guide. Several business men, of whom I asked information, inquired at once where I was from, and on learning that I was an American, simply said "I don't know," and were, or at least pretended to be, too busy to talk with me. They seemed to have no use for people from this side of the boundary line, and this same ill-feeling toward my Nation (with a big N) was shown me in other places, and on various occasions, while in the province. I found, however, one gracious exception, in New Westminster, in the person of Mr. C. G. Major, a merchant, who, the moment I made known to him my wish, replied:
"Well, sir, the best guide and the best hunter in British Columbia left here not three minutes ago. He is an Indian who lives on Douglass Lake, and I think I can get him for you. If I can, you are fixed for a good and successful hunt."
This news, and the frank, manly, cordial greeting that came with it, were surprising to me, after the treatment I had been receiving. Mr. Major invited me into his private office, gave me a chair by the fire, and sent out a messenger to look for "Douglass Bill," the Indian of whom he had spoken. This important personage soon came in. Mr. Major told him what I wanted, and it took but a few minutes to make a bargain. He was a solid, well-built Indian, had an intelligent face, spoke fair English, and had the reputation of being, as Mr. Major had said, an excellent hunter. Mr. Major further said he considered Bill one of the most honest, truthful Indians he had ever known, and that I could trust him as implicitly as I could any white man in the country.
This arrangement was made on Saturday night, but Bill said he could not start on the hunt until Wednesday morning, as his mother-in-law had just died, and he must go and help to bury her on Tuesday. The funeral was to take place on the Chilukweyuk river, a tributary of the Frazer, about fifty miles above New Westminster, and it was arranged that I should go up on the steamer, and meet him at the mouth of Harrison river, another tributary stream, on Wednesday morning. We were then to go up the Harrison to the hunting grounds. I was delighted at the prospect of a successful hunt, with so good a guide, and cheerfully consented to wait the necessary three days for the red man to perform the last sad rites of his tribe over the remains of the departed kloochman, but I was doomed to disappointment.
A VIEW ON THE FRAZER