If you have courage or resolution to write again direct heretofore to Kamloops and I will try to answer any enquiries you may make.

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Shuswap Ranch April 17/70

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Dear Brother G.

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I was happy to receive a letter from you a few days since and I was still more happy to learn by it that your prospects - financially - were brighter than they where when I last heard from you.

I have not had much loose change about me since I went mining or I would have sent you money to set you on you feet. In July/58 I started up Frasier River to chance my fortune Gold digging. A bad move, I suppose, and a move I should not have made had I had experience previously in the mines. I could have received my $6.00/100 per day where I was for a year or more with far less fatigue but I was induced to leave from accounts given my by friends, men who had visited the Golden stream and washed gold from its banks. In the fall of /59 I had some 11 or 1200 dollars by me. The winters of /60 and /61 I had barely enough to carry me through. In the fall of /62 after paying my debts I had about $100 which I could call my own when at Lillooett I was introduced to a stranger who could command about the same sum which we put together, bought two horses which we packed with provisions and started off to prospect through the Thompson River country, a region at that time almost altogether unexplored by miners. At Kamloops we traded our horses for grub, built a boat, and about the first of Dec started up the South Branch of Thompson River, the North Fork which we had intended to prospect being too much frozen to ascend. From this time until Feb. we spent on the river and lakes above prospecting on the small streams, packing our grub, blankets and mining implements through snow often times to our waists and spreading our beds in the snow where ever the night overtook us and dependent upon our guns and the chance game we fell in with for our meat. In fact enduring all the hardships and exposure to which miners are subject. About the first of Feb. coming to the end of our resources we returned to Kamloops to apply to the H.B.Com. for work being without a dollar. The only work we could get was whip sawing and if you never saw it done I will inform you is done by two men, one of whom stands in a pit whilst the other stands upon a log above which being lined upon the upper and lower sides is sawn into lumber, the saw being drawn up and down and the motive power being the muscle and sinew of the sawyers, and I need not tell you that the labor is somewhat fatiguing. So now we were again forced to go out and make our camp in the wood at the most inclement season of that year, the mercury being almost at the freezing point (the mercury does sometimes freeze in this climate, I have known it to do so several times since I have been in the colony and at one time the thermometer was frozen up once during the twenty four hours for the space of very near or quite a month I suppose). Here we cut logs and rolled them on the snow which was now quite hard, to our pits and made lumber until the snow had disappeared from the valleys, and the rivers were clear of ice when we again ascended, first the North Branch of Thompson River and then crossing over to the South Branch with packs on our backs cutting our way through the thickest of underbrush for our animals to pass for a distance of 40 or 50 miles to visit some streams we had been on the winter previous, the prospects we had then got warranting us, as we supposed, to look for them. 

On this tour we found gold in a number of places but nothing which I thought would pay us for working and the fact that other parties have since visited those same streams and worked upon them to a considerable extent without success has confirmed me in the soundness of my judgment.

Since then I have neither mined nor prospected for gold. In June I returned to Kamloops dead broke again. The factor there however on going away had left orders with his Clerk to employ me should I return and I had a job which lasted me a year at $100 per month when I again went to Carriboo not to mine but rather to work at any chance job which came in my way. In the fall I again returned to Kamloops with the determination to go farming which is called here ranching and which I believe implies raising crops, rearing cattle, horses, etcetera, and everything one can turn to account on a farm.

Several reasons had led me to make this decision. One was the uniform high prices which farm produce of every description and live stock had always borne and another was that I felt that at forty five I was not the man to endure a miner’s life which I would have been ten years earlier. I believe I have never been as strong for a laborer’s task as most miners are and yet I suppose my power of endurance has equalled and perhaps been superior to that of many who surpass me greatly in physical strength. Had I been ten years younger I suppose I should have been a miner still unless a fortunate strike had made me rich.

Most men who follow mining sometime or other make a good raise, but most men who follow mining have no limits to their desires and when they have enough and far more than enough to make them independent for life, are more eager for more and far more reckless than when they had but little or else become unsteady and lose their money with the gamblers or at the saloons and in both cases old age finds them poor and oft times in want, still delving for ore and not always among friends who are willing to render aid.

I was aware that on a ranch I should not gain wealth suddenly but I was also aware that I should be saving something and always have a home unless very unfortunate. In the mines if I was very lucky I might in a year or two make 40 or 50 or 60,000 dollars; sums which I have known other to make in as short a time, and is it not strange? I have known nine our of ten of these men a few years later as poor as ever which is very poor indeed, while only one out of the ten has made good use of his good luck and returned to his friends, civilisation and society to enjoy his money, but I was afraid I should not be lucky mining. I did not expect to get wealth suddenly at ranching yet at that time I hoped in a few years to make a home stake. I have saved some property but have not realised my expectations, have realized constant and hard labor and many privations and been at times rather pinched, without money and without credit. In the spring of /65 I commenced my first lessons in farming in British Columbia with a sum of 11 or 12 dollars which sum very soon vanished and many things were yet wanting. We had to pay 9 and 10 cents per pound for our seed which was yet cheaper than previously it had ever been know to be, yet when our first crop came in we could only sell for five cents whilst ever since three cents has been called a big price.

 

(remainder missing)