Mollie Adams Diary of her Journey in the Canadian Rockies, August 16, 1908

[Indian canoes beside the Fraser River], Moore Family Fonds,

 Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies (V439 / PS - 55)

Yellowhead Lake Camp.

Sunday Aug 16

               Heard the coyotes again dimly through my dreams at crack of dawn. We got started at 9.10 AM; the Indians had not left when we passed their camp. They are just the people we needed to meet. One of them knows all the Athabasca and Brazean trails, the other the B.C. ones. The latter said “don’t try to go west of the Cache with horses or you will be sorry” which was a comfort to us, as we could not if we wanted to this trip. The other, who speaks English the best, says there is a trail from the Brazean straight to the upper end of Maligne Lake – a dim trail, hard to find, and you don’t see Brazean Lake from it at all, it les to the N.E of Br. L., mostly above the timber line. He does not know the trail said to come from Maligne L. To Buffalo Prairie. They seem to be prospectors, from the tools they carry –though of course they would not say so. They came in here from the Canoe River by a valley the other side of this lake, and around the head of it – and have been right around it. Geikie, went in from the Ath by the Whirlpool, and it was they who fired the shot we heard near the mouth of the Miette, they saw us an thought we were the John Moberly gang. They shot 5 cariboo somewhere up there. We travelled 5 ½ hrs. The Indians passed us soon, and then we kept catching up to them again for they stopped to pick berries. I ate about a quart of blueberries myself, getting down occasionally and grabbing up a few bushes by the roots. Camped at the Moose River where they had said was the only feed between Yellowhead Lake and the lower end of Moose Lake.

               Our two fellow travellers came to supper with us. W. had invited them last night knowing we should camp at the same place, and we found our ideas about them were all wrong. The younger one who speaks English is a Frenchman, a French Canadian, name Frank Barra. He says he has been out pacing and prospecting around this way for 5 years, sometimes alone, sometimes not. He looks a mere boy, with brown eyes and very white teeth; speaks English with a very strong French accent. He came in from Edmonton and wanted to get an Indian who knew the way to take him to the back of the mts. south of Moose Lake. Was told that Martin Goadim, a half breed, knew the way, but was out hunting, up the Ath; so with another half breed, Pierre, he chased after him. It was then they heard us and fired the shot we heard, thinking we were Moberly and could tell them where Martin was. However, they finally came to where the trail up the Whirlpool forked – fresh tracks on both trails – so they chanced it and by a miracle struck the right one and ran Martin with his wife and kids to earth. Sent the family back with Pierre (and the smoked meat of the five caribou), and went on past it. Geikie and out on Yellowhead Lake where we first saw them. They have to go to the Tete Jaune Cache and around by the McLennan R. To get to the place he wants. W and U were also mistaken about what Martin said of the trails sound and west from T. J. Cache. There is no trail to Barkerville except by going 40 miles down the Fraser by canoe first. But the Shuswap Indians come from Kamloop all the time, they call it 10 days and pretty bad trail with hardly any food.