Separate

I am aware that my communications have not been very
satisfactory of late and I am now venturing to write to Your
Grace in the Confidential manner in which I was invited to do so
by Your Grace's predecessor in office.

2. It would be difficult to imagine a post more hard to fill
than that I now occupy. A "rush" of Miners from California and
Australia took place some years ago. American Steam boat
proprietors encouraged it in every way, and I learn that as many
as three thousand immigrants landed in the Colony in one day.
Town lots in Victoria and New Westminster became objects of
large speculation and high bidding. At present they are being
sold for taxes; and where on the Fraser 12,000 or 13,000 white
men washed up Gold, a solitary Chinaman working his "rocker"
represents the population for the mile of river. The whole
strength of the Colony now is concentrated on William's Creek
Cariboo where a mile and a half of the richest diggings, I am
told, ever found, keep a population of about two thousand
miners. They form the main support of the Country and there is
no doubt that from their brilliant winnings they pay the greater
part of the Customs and Road Toll receipts.

3. Sir James Douglas seeing thousands of people arriving
sometimes in one day, formed naturally a very sanguine expectation
as to the future of the Colony. He requested Lord Lytton to
send out a Government Staff for a population which would in a
few months reach 100,000. The prospective increase at that
rate would soon lead to the creation of a most important
dependency of the Crown. So Lord Lytton, and the Government of
the day, announced as a new feature in English colonization, the
growth of a Colony which would from its earliest infancy be self
supporting.

4. Troops were sent out to be paid for by the Colonists.
Extravagance locally prevailed. Rival roads were made to the
Upper Country at an Expense of some £300,000, and this self
supporting Country soon found itself dependent upon Loans raised
in London for the support of its institutions. The day of
reckoning had to come. The tide of immigration reached its
height and the stream of population rushed down again towards
the Sea and then Southward.

5. But for a white population of now probably less than ten
thousand had been established the Government required for the
expected one hundred thousand, and the Executive became like
many of our Mining population in the position of a Gambler who
has staked his almost vital interests simply upon his
luck. Of course a fresh Loan had to be resorted to and the
financial difficulty was postponed.

6. Yet British Columbia was not left to fight its own battle
untrammelled. England would do but little to assist it, but it
had a neighbour who lived entirely at its expense. Victoria was
made a free port. Vancouver Island paid no Customs duties and
thus the trade of the really producing part of the now united
Colony became centred in another and not very friendly Colony
which was placed across the means of access to the great gold
fields above. A labouring man who lived on the island paid no
taxes. If he ventured on the mainland, there was not an article
he consumed or used which was not heavily taxed to meet the
expenses of an alien Government.

7. But the Free port had not the attractions to retain a large
permanent population, and the annual passage of the Cascade
Mountains proved too severe a trial for most of the miners who
remained in the Country. Those that stayed, were faithful to
their industry even during the winter. The high tide of
immigration expected never reached the Colony, and the ebb
proved much stronger than anticipated. Towns became deserted.
They were "played out." They
"caved" they "went in" according to Miners phraseology and
became deserted. But the Government for the immediate one
hundred thousand and the prospective five hundred thousand was
maintained by London Loans and on my assumption of office, I
found myself with two Magistrates on my hands, for instance, for
the town of Douglas which now that they have been withdrawn,
numbers, as I write, three white inhabitants. The salaries of
these Magistrates were about £600 a piece. Hope is "played
out." Lytton languishes. Princeton contains one occupied
house. But Barkerville in Cariboo has made considerable
progress. Yale flourishes. New Westminster has not retrograded
since I have known it. But Victoria the largest of our towns
has lost all confidence in herself. Things are dull and depressed.

8. The great difficulty British Columbia has to contend with is
its neighbourhood to California, and also, of course its
distance from the Mother Country and I may add its own belief in
the uncertainty of its political future. Men complain of
starving in New Westminster. I have offered to repair the roads
at 4s/2d
a day. I cannot find one man to accept the work; No one will
even work in a garden under 6s/3d
a day. Yet food is extra abundant. Large salmon are sometimes
sold in New Westminster at 12 to the dollar (4s/2d).
At Lytton, higher up the Fraser, 16 can occasionally be
procured for the money. Sturgeon can be procured in any amount
and have hardly a market price. I have with another person in
an hour and a half, without any exertion, caught 350 pounds
weight of delicious fish. The Country is covered in the summer
with berries. Firewood can be had for the taking. Water is
abundant everywhere. Yet people go. They will not stay. The
same "rush" which brought them in is taking them out. The wages
I pay in a very modest Establishment are exorbitant. My own
Cook having died I am employing a Chinaman. I pay him £120 a
year and find him in everything even to a servant to attend on
him. The Groom's wages were the same. The Butler's are; and
footmen under English contracts think it very hard that they
should have less pay than a Chinaman. My late coachman received
£240 a year. The quantity of Gold found in the Colony has
turned peoples' heads. The man who finds that he has not got
the means of providing a sufficient number of "drinks" at 6d
or 1s/- a glass and cannot have his game of billiards thinks he
is deprived of his natural rights; He immediately pronounces the
Colony to be ruined and leaves it by the first opportunity for
San Francisco. Probably in less than six months he petitions
Her Majesty's Consul for the means of returning to British Columbia.

9. My great grievance with the Colony is this determination of
people to leave it. Let them set themselves in opposition to
the Government. That is fair in an unprospering Colony. But
the opposition shewn by selling off furniture and nailing up
doors & windows and leaving the Colony, is one, I confess, to
which I cannot be indifferent.

10. I have spoken in my despatches mentioned in the margin

*

of the error committed in establishing competing roads to
Cariboo. One made at an expense of £105,000 of borrowed money,
is practically useless. It is dead. We cannot allow it to fall
out of repair, yet no one travels over it. The wayside houses are
all abandoned. Large and powerful steamers in a perfect state
of repair on each of the many lakes are now not worth their
paint. The trail to the Rocky Mountains at the Kootenay is
useless. The road made in 1866 to the Big Bend of the Columbia
has no traffic and a fine Country opened throughout on a scale
of magnificence far beyond its requirements languishes from the
absence of a population whose every want it could supply.

11. I hardly know what remedy to suggest. If immigration from
England was established, it is probable that most of the late
arrivals would be attracted to California. Indeed I can
scarcely say that in now writing to Your Grace I have any other
object than furnishing as much information as I can respecting
the state of the Colony.