Fortunately, in that winter of '62-'63, there was a great deal of work to be done in the mining country, and men were in high demand. The ordinary wage was ten dollars a day, and men who could be trusted, and who were brave enough to pack the gold out to the coast, received twenty and even as high as fifty dollars a day. There is a letter, written by Sir Matthew Begbie, describing how the mountain trails were infested that winter by desperadoes lying in wait for the miners who came staggering over the trail literally weighted down with gold. The miners found what the great banks have always found, that the presence of unused gold is a nuisance and a curse. They had to lug the gold in leather sacks with them to their work, and back with them to their shacks, and they always carried firearms ready for use. There was very little shooting at the mines, but if a bad man 'turned up missing,' no one {89} asked whether he had 'hoofed' it down the trail, or whether he hung as a sign of warning from a pole set horizontally at a proper height between two trees. In a mining camp there is no mercy for the crook. If the trail could have told tales, there would have been many a story of dead men washed up on the bars, of sneak-thieves given thirty-nine lashes and like the scapegoat turned out into the mountain wilds--a rough-and-ready justice administered without judge or jury. But a woman was as safe on the trail as in her own home--a thing that civilization never understands about a wild mining camp. Mrs Cameron, wife of the famous Cariboo Cameron, lived with her husband on his claim till she died, and many other women lived in the camps with their husbands. When the road opened, there was a rush of hurdy-gurdy girls for dance-halls; but that did not modify the rough chivalry of an unwritten law. These hurdy-gurdy girls, who tiptoed to the concertina, the fiddle, and the hand-organ, were German; and if we may believe the poet of Cariboo, they were something like the Glasgow girls described by Wolfe as 'cold to everything but a bagpipe--I wrong them--there is not one that does not melt away {90} at the sound of money.' Sings the poet of Cariboo: They danced a' nicht in dresses licht Fra' late until the early, O! But O, their hearts were hard as flint, Which vexed the laddies sairly, O! The dollar was their only love, And that they loved fu' dearly, O! They dinna care a flea for men, Let them court hooe'er sincerely, O!