We arrived at Yale about four o’clock in the afternoon, and immediately ordered the best dinner they could give us at the Colonial Hotel. The house was kept by a Frenchman, who excelled himself on this occasion, and provided a meal which to us, who had not eaten anything deserving the name of a dinner for at least eighteen months, appeared perfection. The champagne, however, and sundry drinks with fraternising miners, caused us to wake with most tremendous headaches next morning. Some of the visitors to the bar amused us greatly. One tall Yankee, considerably intoxicated, was possessed with the idea that he was Lord Nelson, and associating the great admiral in some way with cucumbers, ate several in succession, to prove his identity. The little town of Yale is merely a single row of houses facing the river, which, having just escaped through the Cañons, here sweeps to the west, a broad and noble river. The town is built on a small flat, backed on the north by lofty hills, and looking down the widening valley to the south, where the receding mountains still tower up grand and high. The situation is exceedingly picturesque, and the clean, white, wooden buildings were as gay with flags as any Yankee could desire. Gold may be obtained in the street of Yale, and a couple of Indians were working with a “rocker” opposite the Hotel when we were there. The next morning we bade good-bye to our kind friend, Mr. McKay, and embarked on the steamer _Reliance_ for New Westminster. The river expands rapidly below Yale, flowing between low, richly-wooded banks. On the way we passed Hope and Langley, old stations of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The site of the former is the most beautiful in British Columbia--a wooded level shut in by an amphitheatre of lofty mountains--Yale upon a grander scale. Before the discovery of the Cariboo mines, it was a place of considerable importance, but has now “caved in,” and become desolate. Soon after dark, we saw the lights of New Westminster before us, and in the course of half-an-hour were comfortably established at the Colonial Hotel. The city of New Westminster, the capital of British Columbia, stands in a commanding position, on ground gradually rising from the river, which is here three-quarters of a mile broad. The town has been beautifully laid out by Col. Moody, R.E., the late Commissioner of Lands and Works, and several streets of good wooden houses already exist.