themselves with making wing-dams, turning streams from their natural courses, and scraping about the mud and gravel of the exposed beds for the pure, free gold, picking up nuggets at sight and capturing the “dust” with quicksilver, others, looking for bigger game, climbed the high mountains, tore the moss from their sides to expose the rock, and pounced upon every piece of “float” which would indicate the possible existence of a “mother lode” somewhere near at hand or higher up.

The Too Sure Man of this story was one of the latter.  He had found a piece of “float rock” with a shining speck in it near where the nigger’s cabin now stands on Cayuse Creek in the vicinity of Lillooet, and he traced it to the very spot where it had dropped from the mountain above.  There he discovered a ledge several feet wide full of shining specks, and he traced it with his eyes right to the bed of the creek.

“All mine!  All mine!” he shouted.

Now, he was a poor man, and he had a family—­which made him poorer; but the sight of this precious piece of “float” with the gold sticking out of it, and the possession of this enormous ledge of gold-bearing quartz made him a millionaire in an instant.  Here was a whole mountain “lousy” with gold, all his!  Why, Solomon or Vanderbilt would be so small in the puddle that he would splash mud on them with his superior tread in the sweet “very soon.”

Now, the B.C. law prevented him from staking off the entire Lillooet district for himself, so he took in a friend (who luckily died before the crash came), and they appropriated as large a portion each of the district as the Government at that time would allow.  Both of those men had good, steady, paying jobs at the time of the discovery, but the next day they threw down their tools—­work was too cheap for them.  The only thing that prevented them from buying an automobile right away on the instalment plan was the fact that the auto had not yet been invented.  However, they had to do something to elevate themselves from the common, so they became extravagant in their domestic curriculum.  Having no money, the stores had to “carry them.”  And then they had their assessment work to do on the mine to enable them to hold the claim.  They hired men to do this and gave them promissory notes payable by the claim at an indefinite period.  When a man ceases work and begins to live on his “rainy day” money, or on the storekeeper, it does not take very long before he accumulates a burden greater than he can carry.  When he begins to totter he tries to pass some of the load over to others, and it is usually the storekeepers who are willing to assist him to the limit if his assets are in good retrospect.  And what could be a greater security than a whole mountain full of gold?  So the storekeepers assumed a large portion of the Too Sure Man’s burden.  And their loads became heavier and heavier.  One day a company came along, attracted by the noise that