5. At the season when the miners flocked into Columbia the water in the rivers was at its highest, and the sand-bars in which they hoped to find gold were hidden deep beneath its surface. The rivers themselves flowed through gloomy gorges, along which not even a mule could make its way. All provisions had to be carried on men's backs, and before a mule-track could be cut the miners were reduced to a diet of wild berries. Hundreds of miles had to be traversed before the rich Cariboo district was reached, where nuggets could be picked up in an old river-bed. News of this "find" brought men into the country so much faster than flour that all were reduced to the verge of starvation. The same thing has occurred in our own day, still further north, in the district of Klondyke. 6. Gold is a powerful magnet. It is one of the best colonizing agents known. What hardships will not men face to fill their pockets with gold! Wherever gold is to be picked up, there thousands of adventurers soon gather, and if the country is suitable for a colony thousands of settlers remain. Thus British Columbia owes its position as a colony, in the first place, to the gold-nuggets sown in the sands of its river-beds. 7. Attached to British Columbia is the island of Vancouver, and here also a discovery was made, which has much enhanced its value and attracted colonists. A settlement had already been made at Victoria on its southern shores, when, one day, came some Indians from the northern part of the island, and entering a smithy were surprised to find a fire of coals. When told that the fuel had been brought thousands of miles across the sea, they were much amused, as there was any quantity, they said, of the same sort of "black stone" on that very island. And so it proved. At the present time, indeed, the output amounts to one million tons a year. 8. Canada now extended over a region nearly the size of Europe, embracing besides the old provinces in the east, British Columbia in the far west, Manitoba in the centre, and the unsettled lands of the great "North-West." The next thing was to knit together the various provinces and out of them to make one great nation. This was made possible by the Confederation Act of 1867. By this Act the _Dominion of Canada_ came into being, with a constitution, settling the terms on which the different provinces could unite. In less than seven years all the Canadian provinces, except Newfoundland, consented to join. Thus a new nation was born on the great American continent.