It was in the autumn of the year '60 that Doc Keithley, John Rose, Sandy MacDonald, and George Weaver set out from Keithley Creek, which flows into Cariboo Lake, to explore the cup-like valley amid the great peaks which seemed to feed this lake. They toiled up the creek five miles, then followed signs up a dry ravine seven miles farther. Reaching the divide at last, they came on an open park-like ridge, bounded north and east by lofty shining peaks. Deer and caribou tracks were everywhere. It was now that the region became known as Cariboo. They camped on the ridge, cooked supper, and slept under the stars. Should they go on, or back? This was far above the benches of wash-gravel. Going up one of the nameless peaks, they stepped out on a ledge and viewed the white, silent mountain-world. Marmots stabbed the lonely solitude with echoing whistle. Wind came up from the valley in the sibilant sigh of a sea. It was doubtful if even Indians had ever hunted this ground. The game was so tame, it did not know enough to be afraid. The men {43} could see another creek shining in the sunrise on the other side of the ridge. It seemed to go down to a valley benched by gravel flanks. They began wandering down that creek and testing the gravel. Before they had gone far their eyes shone like the wet pebbles in their hands. The gravel was pitted with little yellow stones. Where rain and spring-wash had swept off the gravel to naked rock, little nuggets lay exposed. The men began washing the gravel. The first pan gave an ounce; the second pan gave nuggets to the weight of a quarter of a pound. The excited prospectors forgot time. Dark was falling. They slept under their blankets and awoke at daybreak below twelve inches of snow. They were out of provisions. Somebody had to go back down to Cariboo Lake for food. Each man staked out a claim. And, while two built a log cabin, the other two set off over the hills for food. There was some sort of a log store down at Cariboo Lake. The one thing these prospectors were determined on was secrecy till they could get their claims registered. Bands of nondescript men hung round the provision-store of Cariboo Lake awaiting a breath to fan their flaming hopes of fortune. What let the secret out at the store is not {44} known. Perhaps too great an air of secrecy. Perhaps too strenuous denials. Perhaps the payment of provisions in nuggets. But when these two packed back over the hills on snowshoes, they were trailed. Followers came in with a whoop behind them on Antler Creek. Claims were staked faster than they could be recorded. The same claims were staked over and over, the corner of one overlapping another. When the gold commissioner came hurriedly across the country in March, he found the MacDonald-Rose party living in a cabin and the rest of the camp holding down their claims by living in holes which they had dug in the ground.