preferred going a little further west, where the forest stopped short, and the savannas succeeded. There, at the Red River, at the entrance to this region, we see the last of British civilisation. We see farms on the river bank almost adjoining for miles; and a good road stringing them together, so as to make real neighbours of them. Beyond that settlement, everything has hitherto seemed to grow wilder and wilder, till the whole country looked like an unpeopled wilderness.
There was the Saskatchewan River, flowing on for ever without sign of any human being taking an interest in it, except when some roving party of Indians came, hungry and gloomy, to spear fish. When they went away, hiding their canoe in some grassy creek, all was as before, except for the stench of offal on the bank.
From either shore spread the prairies, which were as desolate as a sea without a ship. For weeks together, there was no sound but of the wind, and no movement but of grass and clouds. Then came silently a herd of soft-footed deer; or a thundering throng of heavy buffalo. If unobserved, the creatures fed, and grazed their way gradually to the horizon and beyond it. If discovered and pursued by the Indians, the tumult was tremendous. The most savage of men seemed to be matched with the most savage of beasts; and the uproar was worthy of the occasion. But it was short-lived. There was a gallop across the scene,—the ground shaking with the tread, and the air quivering with the shriek and the bellow, the shout and the roar of the antagonists. The sounds died away, and then their echoes were lost, and then the scene became lifeless as before. The mere presence of observers who could disclose this landscape to us was a prophecy of a change; and those observers were in fact explorers, sent to find a way through the Rocky Mountains to the gold fields of British Columbia beyond.
When they told us, after their return, that there was a mountain pass here, and another there, over which a road might in time be carried, they at the same time disclosed so vast a scene of wilderness lying on this side that the interest of a feasible passage to our Pacific colonies through British territory seemed to belong to a future generation, and to be shared by us only through the imagination of patriotism and poetry. The Red River settlement itself is less than half-way between the mouth of the St. Lawrence and Vancouver Island. It was encouraging to hear that, up to the Rocky Mountains, there were rivers, or lakes, or prairies, nearly all the way; so that we might imagine the line of settlement lengthening till it stretched across, and the number of travellers always increasing till, in some future century, a broad belt of population would make a vast new state for English life to flourish in. Still, for our own time, we could expect to see little there but the full quiet river flowing on, and the Indians fishing, and the grassy plains, with the wild herds roving at will. But already, within a few months, the scene has changed its character; and the change in the prospect is yet more marked.
In the long days of last Midsummer the quiet was gone from some of the stillest spots which had hitherto slept in the noon of the year. The sound of men’s voices and tools scarcely ceased for an hour or two of the short night: for the men were digging gold; and they were impatient to get all they could before others came for a share.
There were half-breeds from the great lakes to the east; and whites, and Indians and half-breeds from Minnesota and Nebraska to the south; and mining adventurers from as far as California, and from England, who had come round by British Columbia. On that side the mountains, rumours had reached them of gold deposits in regions where game and fish were plentiful, and no competitors would interfere with the first searchers. So, last spring, there were parties dropping down from the mountains on the Peace River, which had hitherto seemed the end of the world, and on tracts which none but Indians and hunters had hitherto traversed. There they are now, getting gold, and breaking up the solitude of silence for ever. If we now look, on the map, at the course of the Saskatchewan (as far as known), and the Asineboine, and the Peace River, we may see the awkward half-breeds greedily picking out gold from the mud at the rate of 40l. or 50l. each per week. Where trained diggers have halted, the work goes on much faster; and the river banks are spoiled at a much quicker rate. In May there were not fewer than five hundred of these miners on the rivers which flow east from the Rocky Mountains.
After what we have witnessed in Australia, we know what we may expect to see in our western colonies, in the lifetime of this generation. Already gold has been looked for and found in the very heart of Canada,—even within a few miles of Quebec, and in the district of Ottawa. There is already a thickening of the population wherever any gold has been found; and we may now look upon the familiar scenery of life in those rather inert colonies as a dissolving view. No greater change ever took place in the circumstances of any settlement of men, than may be anticipated for the Hudson’s Bay territories and Canada, now that their soil has begun to yield gold.
Hitherto we have never reckoned the population of Canada as reaching three millions: and it would be difficult to assign any number small enough for the settlers beyond Lake Superior. What will it not now be within a few years, or even months? It is for the interest of all parties—British Columbia, Canada, and England—that there should be a broad and safe highway through British territory from sea to sea; and the road will naturally extend to every point at which gold-diggers are at work. The game will not long suffice for their subsistence, even if their noise and movement do not drive it away. There must be purveyors of food and clothing first, and luxury afterwards:—in other words, commerce must spring up at all the stations. There will be farmers and stock-keepers to supply the food, and merchants to supply everything else to both miners and farmers. Artisans will be sent for at any price; and they will come in throngs. Towns will arise on convenient spots; and an immigration, probably equalling that in Australia, will produce