Other Overlanders followed these first pioneers 'the plains across.' And we have seen that some of those who had crossed the prairie with the first party had fallen behind. These stragglers did not reach Yellowhead Pass till the first week of September. They were entirely out of food; but they had matches, and each box of fifty bought a huge salmon from the Shuswaps. Some of the men pushed ahead, built a raft, and launched it on the Fraser. The raft ripped on a rock in midstream and stuck there at an angle of forty-five degrees. Money, tools, food, and clothing slithered into the tow of the rapids, while the men clung in desperation to the upper railing of the wreck. One man let go and dropped into the water. Swimming and drifting and rolling over and over, he gained the shore, and hurried back to the pass with word of the accident. Friends, accompanied by Indians, came in canoes to the rescue, and, by means of ropes, every man was brought off the wrecked raft alive. But the party now stood in a more desperate predicament than ever, for lack of food and {84} clothing. The Shuswaps saved the whites from starvation. They took the white men to a pool in the Fraser, where salmon, exhausted from the long run up the river, could be speared or clubbed by the boat-load. And while some of the men chopped down trees to build dugout canoes, others speared, cleaned, and dried the salmon. Night and day they worked, and forgot sleep in their desperate haste. At length they launched their craft on the Fraser. On the way down the dangerous canyon they saw the wrecked canoes of those who had gone before. The tenth day after leaving Yellowhead Pass they reached Fort George. Their story has been told by Mrs MacNaughton, whose husband was of the party. They arrived at Fort George mostly barefoot, coatless, and trousers and shirts in tatters. Their hair and beards were long and unkempt. It is supposed that they must have lost the salmon in some of the rapids, or else the supply was insufficient; for they were so weak from hunger that they had to be carried into the fort. They arrived at Quesnel a month after the first Overlanders, when the snow was too deep in the mountains for prospecting or mining. The majority of this party also took work on the government road. {85}