Walter Moberly, "History of Cariboo Wagon Road"
(Part 1 of 13)

As British Columbia has now taken a very prominent place in the great Canadian nation, and as its various attractive features are drawing to it large numbers of those seeking a pleasant, salubrious and healthy climate, combined with charming and grand scenery, and as its wealth in minerals, timber, fish, etc., affords unlimited business possibilities, for they are almost inexhaustible in extent, unless wastefully and injudiciously destroyed, it will doubtless be interesting to a great many of the people now residing in British Columbia, as well as to the succeeding generations whose destiny it may be to live in, or visit, this country, to have a short history of the great trunk wagon road -- generally know as "The Yale-Cariboo Wagon Road" -- that, during the period embracing the earlier years of the then Crown Colony of British Columbia, was the principal thoroughfare through its interior, and thus opened the country in such a substantial manner that, with the exception of some occasional set-backs that were due principally, I regret to say, to the incompetency of some of those men then controlling public affairs, its progress has been during the half-century of its political existence, such that British Columbians may justly be proud of.

I now propose to give you briefly the history of how the promotion was brought about and how the building of the "Old Cariboo Wagon Road" was effected.

When I had the honor, on the 13th of March, 1907, of addressing the members of the Canadian Club of Vancouver on the subject of "Early Pathfinding in the Mountains of British Columbia, or the Discovery of the Northwest Passage by Land," I gave a general outline of how I became in the years 1855-56-57 the original promoter of Canada's first great Transcontinental Railway -- "The Canadian Pacific Railway" -- and how, for a series of years the active steps I took, by making extensive explorations through the mountains of British Columbia, established beyond doubt that a practicable route for such a railway existed between the magnificent harbor of Burrard Inlet an the extensive prairie region east of the Rocky Mountains.

In the address alluded to I described how I first explored, during the winter of 1858-1859, the route by way of Harrison Lake and the different portages between that lake and via the present town of Lillooet, as far as Pavilion Muontain [sic]. As I found this route was not favorable for the construction of the westerly section of the transcontinental railway, I projected, in the early part of the year 1859 I explored the formidable canyons of the Fraser River between Yale and Lytton, and later in the year, after founding the city of New Westminster, I explored from the head of Howe Sound up the valleys of the Squamish and Jeackamins Rivers, etc.

I may here mention a rather amusing circumstance that happened to me when exploring the great canyon of the Fraser River. On my way down from Boston Bar the first night I reached a camp where a few Chinese were mining. It was situated on a narrow shelf of rock about six feet in width and twenty feet in length. The Chinamen received me kindly and made me some tea and mixed some flour and water and made thin cakes of dough which they cut in strips about an inch in width and boiled. They had no other provisions, but were looking forward to the spring run of salmon which were then on their way up the river. I left my kind friends early the following morning and after a terribly fatiguing journey over hot rocks along the precipitous mountain side I reached Chapman's Bar in the evening. I was very tired and dreadfully thirsty. When I entered a little store which was a log hut about 15x25 feet in size, I spied some Dublin stout porter, with which I at once regaled myself and then had a good meal of slap-jacks, bacon and coffee. I then went into a partly constructed new log building without door, windows or flooring, and seeing a stretcher made out of gunny sacks, etc., I threw myself upon it and at once fell fast asleep, leaving my boots by my bedside. The unusual sound of a pig's grunting awoke me at daylight. This pig continued to make his researches around me until he came close to my bedside, where I lay half asleep. I sprang up to drive him off, but only in time to see him making off with one of my boots. I made chase, but the pig with the boot got away into the woods and I never saw anything of either of them again. The loss of my boot was a serious calamity. I still had about 25 miles to walk over a very rough and rocky trail before reaching Yale. I managed to find the worn out foot of a miner's discarded boot which I appropriated, but as it was much too big, I packed moss and leaves around my foot, and after a day's journey, suffering intolerable agony as the skin was nearly rubbed off my foot, I reached Yale, where I repaired damages.