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Updated: June 19, 2025
'The walking' as Begbie expressed it 'was all down hill and the road was good, especially for thugs. While there were ten thousand men in Cariboo in the winter of '62 and perhaps twenty thousand in the winter of '63, there were less than five thousand in '71. This does not mean that the camp had collapsed. It had simply changed from a poor man's camp to a camp for a capitalist or a company.
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.
Spy fever was rampant, and such experts as Begbie Lyte were constantly in demand to investigate lights that flickered in any manner that a vivid imagination might possibly take for signalling. At other points practical jokes were played, such as driving a calf at night in the direction of the sentry.
By the 31st of the month the whole Canadian Division had been withdrawn and lay in reserve billets around the outskirts of Bethune. "Home again!" said Begbie Lyte as he watched his servant unrolling his valise in the little field we had left a fortnight before, and the rest of us laughed, for he voiced the thoughts of all.
The possibility of American occupation had become an obsession at Victoria. There were undoubtedly those among the American miners who made wild boasts. Douglas gathered up all his panoply of war and law. Along went Colonel Moody, with a company of his Royal Engineers, Lieutenant Mayne of the Imperial Navy with a hundred bluejackets, and Judge Matthew Begbie, to deal out justice to the offenders.
On another occasion, when an American had 'accidentally' shot an Indian, the coroner rendered a verdict 'worried to death by a dog. Begbie ordered another inquest. This time the coroner returned a finding that the Indian 'had been killed by falling over a cliff. Begbie on his own authority ordered the American seized and taken down to Victoria.
But, in spite of his harsh manner towards the wrong-doer, 'the old man, as the miners affectionately called him, kept law and order. In the early days gold commissioners not only settled all mining disputes, but acted as judge and jury. Against any decision of the gold commissioners Begbie was the sole appeal, and in all the long years of his administration no decision of his was ever challenged.
Begbie Lyte was on the job and became an important unit in our little company. Through him alone would we get news of the outside world for some weeks to come.
It was not long, however, before the formal organization of the new colony took place. Hardly had Douglas returned to Victoria when ships from England arrived bringing his commission as governor of British Columbia. Arrived, also, Matthew Baillie Begbie, 'a Judge in our Colony of British Columbia, and a detachment of Royal Engineers under command of Colonel Moody.
"Let them hum," sad the Colonel; "in the meantime you go to jail, and if you say more you may have your sentence doubled." This was a Daniel come to judgment with a vengeance. To be more modern, it reminds one of Begbie, the great frontier judge on the west coast, who tamed the outlaw miners who tried to start rough-house in the gold-rush days.
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