Ten minutes later, Tod is sitting on the stump of a fallen tree, vaccinating the Shushwaps, and Kamloops’ traditions say, indeed, Tod, himself, acknowledged to Bancroft, that when the Indians, who were leaders of the conspiracy, held up their arms to be vaccinated, he took good care to give them a gash that would disable their arms for some weeks. A Scotchman abhors a lie; at least, a straightforward lie that gives no quarter to conscience, but somehow Tod conveyed to those Shushwap warriors the astounding warning, that if they lowered or used their vaccinated arms for some time, it would be absolutely and swiftly fatal. So Tod saved Kamloops, and volumes might be written of the legends lingering about the old fur post. Other chief traders succeeded Tod at Kamloops. McLean, son of the colonist murdered at Seven Oaks, Red River, was at Kamloops in the early fifties when all the world was agog with excitement over the discovery of gold in the Rockies. An Indian was drinking on the banks of the Thompson when he saw what he thought was a shining pebble. The pebble was carried to McLean of Kamloops. It was a gold nugget. It was the beginning of the end of the fur traders’ reign in the mountains. * * * * * From Kamloops, the New Caledonia brigade struck northwesterly on a trail to the Fraser and along the banks of that torrential river up as far as Alexandria, where MacKenzie had headed his canoes back upstream on his trip to the Pacific. Alexandria was now a fur post. Here horses were left to pasture for the year, and the brigade ascended the Fraser in canoes to Fort George and Fort St. James on Stuart Lake, and Fort McLeod on McLeod Lake, and Fraser Fort, and those other northern posts variously known as Babine and Connolly, where the Company had erected permanent quarters. If Kamloops resembled some Spanish redoubt perched on some high sierra amid parched, rolling hills, the Stuart Lake region--New Caledonia proper--was like a replica of the Trossachs on some colossal scale. Lakes with the sheen of emerald lay hidden in the primeval forests reflecting as in a mirror woods, cloud-line, treeless peaks and the domed opal of the upper snows, where the white drifts lie forever and the precipices are criss-crossed by the scar of the avalanche as by some fantastic architect. In area, the region is the size of modern Germany. It was here Simon Fraser, the discoverer, had planted the flag of the fur trader and established posts in the land that reminded him of Scottish Highlands.