OUR NEW PROVINCES: BRITISH COLUMBIA, By Lieut. Col. Coffin, Ottawa..... MANITOBA. By Prof. Bryce, Winnipeg. SONNET. By James R. Lowell..... LITTLE DORINN, A Fenian Story. (Continued) By Louisa Murray A WIREPULLER OF KINGS...... THE CAPTAIN OF THE NORTHFLEET. A Poem. By Gerald Massey.... "WHAT IS CULPABLE LUXURY?" By Goldwin Smith, M.A. PAGE 361 372 378 379 395 396 409 410 418 419 437 446 448 453 455 Parties sending advertisements to be inserted in "The Canada Gazette," will hereafter please observe the following rules: Ist. Address "The Canada Gazette, Ottawa, Canada." 2nd. Indicate the number of insertions required. 3rd. Invariably remit the fees for such advertisements, together with the price of one Gazette, as below. Otherwise they will not be inserted. The rates are eight cents for the first insertion, and two cents for each subsequent insertion per line of nine words, each figure counting as one word.. Subscribers will also notice that the subscription, $4 per annum, is invariably payable in advance, and that the "Gazette" will be stopped from them at the end of the period paid for Single numbers will be charged 10 cents each, and when more than one are required by advertisers, must be remitted for likewise. BROWN CHAMBERLIN, Ottawa, April, 1873. Queen's Printer. M' R. LANGEVIN'S Report, as Minister of Public Works, is an exception to the general wearisomeness of blue books. Divested of its externals it rises, as read, in the opinion of the reader. As being the result of five weeks of laborious and well directed enquiry, it is most creditable terse, yet not dry; compendious, replete, suggestive. It comes too, most opportunely, when the popular mind in Canada craves for information on the subject of British Columbia, and it comes ex cathedrȧ. We know that, if we can rely upon anything, we can rely upon this, for the writer has achieved a reputation for truthfulness and discrimination, and from the position he occupies is, therefore, doubly trustworthy. The mission of the Minister of Public Works for the Dominion to British Columbia embraced not only an examination into the state and condition of the public works under the control of his Department, but enquiries, even still more important at this particular time, in relation to the projected Pacific Railway, and the final settlement of its western terminus. Of all questions destined to govern the future of this great Dominion, this last is the most pregnant and the most critical, and it is clear that this great question has been with Mr. Langevin a paramount object. Like the celebrated White Horse in a battlepiece by Wouvermans, view the picture in whatever light you may, above the smoke of the conflict, and amidst the crowd of accessories, that White Horse is ever the most prominent and the most attractive feature. We shall have occasion, by and by, to revert to this leading feature in Mr. Langevin's picture, but among the accessories we may note, first, the agreeable climate of Vancouver Island, which resembles that of England without its humidity; where the summer is dry and warm, the autumn bright and balmy, the winter and spring open, though wet; where, in seasons exceptionally severe, ice forms to the thickness of a penny piece, but where, in compensation, gooseberry buds open in February, early plants burgeon in March, and strawberries bloom in the middle of April. The littoral, both of the Island and of the mainland-British Columbia proper-partakes of these characteristics, but the interior of both is mountainous and highly picturesque, intersected by valleys, deep and fertile, by elevated and extensive | plateaux, where in winter the snow does not impede travelling, and the pasture is such --a species known as bunch grass-that animals thrive well at all seasons. Cattle-horses, beeves, sheep and swine, multiply and fatten, winter and summer, on these nutritious grasses; oxen were seen, six years old, and in good case, which during their bovine existence, had been housed by the vault of Heaven alone; while the farmer who provides against accident by a month's winter forage in advance, is regarded as a precautionary paragon. These conditions of climate operate exuberantly on a soil whereon flourishes, in great abundance, the Douglas pine, rising often to 150 and 175 feet, without knot or branch; and turns out logs which would make the mouth of an Ottawa lumberman water--say 80 feet long by 6 in diameterand yet, by the side of this sylvan giant, and other noble forest trees, common to Canada, do not disdain to grow cabbages, carrots, turnips and potatoes, equal to any in the Dominion; and even at a level of 2,700 feet above the sea, on the plateaux before adverted to, were seen fields of wheat, oats and barley, which, aided by an ingenious system of artificial irrigation, presented the finest possible appearance, proclaiming, as it is prettily put, "in their mute language, that those who believed that Columbia was a land of mountains, unfit for cultivation and destined to prove a source of expense to Confederation, had made a great mistake." Of the flora and the fauna of British Columbia our Minister of Public Works says little. Being the head and the representa tive of the working-men-the class and the order of the day--he may, and he probably does hold, as a practical man, that pommes de terres and cauliflowers are enough of flower and fruit for a reasonable emigrant population; but an appendix tells us, extracted from a pamphlet by Dr. Charles Forbes, surgeon, R. N., that, in the end of March, buttercups were in flower, strawberries in bloom in the middle of April, with lilies, heartsease, jonquils, campaniola and lupins; apple trees in blossom, and roses in bloom by the middle of May. Of the fauna we are informed, in an appendix ascribed to J. D. Pemberton, that game of all sorts abounds. Larger species, the buffalo, is distant and but rarely seen; of bears, the brown and the grizzly, the less seen the better. The elk and the smaller deer tribes are wastefully slaughtered; in their season wild fowl swarm, ducks and geese, grouse, snipe and wild pigeons are ready to the hand of those who have the time and the taste to shoot them. But the hidden riches of this picturesque country far exceed those which meet the eye. In the bowels of the earth, in the waters under the earth, on the rocky shores of the inland seas, in the beds of rivers, nature has been prodigal of gifts. Gold and silver, copper and coal, crop out, geologically, all over the country. Near the town of Hope, on the Frazer River, Mr. Langevin saw specimens of silver of such richness as to justify the construction of extensive works, including a road from Hope to the mine itself, and there is every reason to believe that the silver region extends through the range of mountains in which this mine is situated. Of the copper little is said, | but Governor Douglas, in a report communicated to the Colonial Office, dated August 27, 1852, stated that he had "procured a rich specimen of copper ore found in a distant part of Vancouver Island," and manifestations of the existence of this metal have reproduced themselves since; but when gold claim gave in one day 409 oz.; the total obtained on its area of 80 by 25 feet being $105,000 In 1861 the only mining was surface digging; but in 1862 the mining assumed a new character, and shaft sinking, drifting and tunnelling, were vigorously prosecuted, a system of mining which can be carried on throughout the year." Mr. Happily for the country, the days of surface diggings, of washings and scrapings, of easy gains and wicked waste, have passed away, and have been succeeded by systematic mining and the employment of capital, scientific skill, and steady labour. Langevin speaks cheeringly of the prospects of mines at the extremity of the Cariboo road: "At a depth of from 100 to 150 feet under ground, and with shafts communicating with galleries, each more than 200 feet long, is the Lane & Kurtz' mine,' owned by an American company with a capital of $500,000, which, though stopped for a time by subterranean inundation, is expected yet to reward great sacrifices by a rich harvest of gold." The Columbian Blue Book for 1870 gives the yield of gold for the year from the mines of Cariboo, Silionet, Columbia, Gale and Lytton, at $1,333,745, without counting the quantity of gold carried out of the country in private hands. can be had for the trouble of picking it up, but little of research will be vouchsafed to the inferior metals. The auriferous regions extend over the whole Province, from the United States frontier to the 53rd degree of north latitude. For a width of from one to two hundred miles gold is found, but specially in the beds of the great rivers, the Frazer and the Thomson, the Peace and the Ominica, and in the rivers and creeks flowing into them. The detritus, borne down by freshets, had created banks and bars, which on the subsidence of the water were found to abound with gold. The precious metal was literally to be had for the "picking of it up." The wonder was how it should have remained so long undiscovered, for the Indian, now as keen and as greedy as the white man in his quest for gold, must for ages have passed it by unnoticed. Cornwallis, a miner and geologist who published in 1858, and who accompanied the first rush to the diggings in 1856-7, relates how men, though surfeited with gold, still craved for more, wearied and wasteful, and yet not satisfied; how, in the space of three hours, on a mud-bank in the Frazer, with a geological shovel, (we presume very much of a trowel,) he collected to the value of fifteen dollars worth of gold dust, (p. 189); how men who were realizing from three to The golden shower which immortalized five ounces, or from forty-eight to eighty Danæ gave, at first, but a doubtful reputadollars per man, working for six hours, tion to British Columbia. In either case abandoned the substance before them for less of greed, and far less of guilt, might the shadow in the distance (p. 198); raging have accomplished better things. For a to reach the fountain of supply, the mine mining population will, of itself, never make and the matrix remains undiscovered even a country; the gold which is not squannow. On, on, on, excelsior was the uni- | dered in waste and wassail, is carried out of versal cry, and the results were marvellous. It is stated, in a pamphlet published with the sanction of the Government, in 1864, that in 1860 "the most important creek in Cariboo was Antler, which yielded, at one time, at the lowest $10,000 a day. On one claim $1,000 were taken out of the sluice boxes as the result of a day's work. But Williams' creek eclipsed this-Steel's it. We find by authentic returns, that from 1862 to Sept. 1871, gold to the extent of $16,650,036 has been shipped from British Columbia by banks, registered and known, to which amount should be added at least $5,000,000 carried out of the country by miners themselves. This outflow might be arrested, and utilized in transitu, as suggested by Mr. Langevin, by the re-establish ment of a mint, the machinery for which, of the daring, persevering and scientific men originally imported by the Government of the vrais hommes de genie-who planned Columbia, is carefully preserved. The con- and executed them. structors of our Canadian Pacific Railway will, no doubt, direct it in the direction of our eastern enterprizes, manufactures and products. At the same time we should bear in mind that the gold crop, if it causes no cultivation, has left behind it grand improve ments. We must not forget that it has created roads in British Columbia, opening up the mining districts and developing resources generally, which would be an honour to the engineering skill of any age or country. Commander Mayne, R. N., who wrote in 1859, and who saw these roads "before they were made," describes graphically (p. 107) the inaccessibility of the mountain ranges, forcing the explorer upon trails or tracks found on the accidental ledges of precipices, hundreds of feet above the raging waters of the Frazer and the Thomson rivers. Quoting from the Journal of the Bishop of Columbia, he speaks of the ascent of the Frazer river as "impassable, much of it, for horses and mules, and even for man not without danger. At a height of 2,500 or 3,000 feet our pathway lay along the edge of a perpendicular fall. Sometimes, in the descent, the path was nil, the projections for the foot not an inch; it seemed like the crawling of a fly upon the face of a wall." Time and experience having proved these to be the only practicable lines of route, roads have been constructed through these cañons or ravines, along the faces of precipices, following tracks and trails indicated by the hand of Nature; impending here over gorges hundreds of feet deep, and yet from foam and spray invisible; here hollowed out into the rock itself, there built up upon huge balks and cribs of timber, and hanging, like swallows' nests, over the mad waters below. These roads, 18 feet wide, and substantial, by easy grades penetrate into the interior of the country, and each is an abiding record to the honour But the great promise of the future of British Columbia lies deep seated in its coal measures. Coal has been found, of excellent quality, to lie on Vancouver's Island and on the main. In 1859 coal was obtained outcropping in Coal Harbour of Burrard's Inlet, and was critically used on board of H. M. ship Plumper, with most favourable results. Coal abounds all over the north end of Vancover Island. It has been found of good quality a little way to the northward of Fort Rupert. But the present chief source of supply, the most practical and the most convenient, is Nanaimo. This place is 75 miles north of the capital, Victoria, on the Gulf of Georgia. The harbour is good, and there is no difficulty in making it. The coal is found handy to the ships' side. It is highly bituminous and well suited to the manufacture of gas. For economic purposes it is most valuable, resembling in quality the varieties of coal produced in the central coal fields of England, and it has been remarked at Nanaimo that the deeper the workings have been carried the better the quality becomes. For domestic consumption and for use in factories, it is thought to be equal to that brought from the Welsh mines. It is considered to be better steam coal than that of Newcastle. The English ships of war stationed at Esquimault are all supplied with it. It can be laid down alongside the ship at from $5 to $6 per ton. San Francisco at from $12 to $15 per ton, where English coal costs from $20 to $35On 21st March, 1872, John Trutch, C. E., reported by Sanford Fleming, Engineer in Chief, states, "that at Nicolas Lake there has also been discovered a seam of coal, of superior quality, and six feet in thickness." Between Lake St. Anne and Jasper House Frank Moberly, C. E., and his subordinates confirm former discoveries of "extensive coal seams on the Pembina river, which It is sold at |