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The lake and river steamboats are not always safe to be in, and some of the pilotage and engineering is reckless in the extreme. The captains are too often given to drink overmuch, and when an intoxicated man is at the wheel in a river full of the natural dangers of bars and snags, and those incident on a tremendous current, the situation often becomes exciting. I was once on the Fraser River in a steamer whose boiler was certified to bear 80 lb. of steam and no more. We were coming to a “riffle,” or rapid, where the stream ran very fiercely, with great swirls and waves in it, and the captain sang out to the engineer, “How much steam have you, Jack?” “Eighty,” answered Jack.

“Fire up, fire up!” said the captain, as he jammed the tiller over; “we shall never make the riffle on that.”

The firemen went to work, and threw in more wood, and presently we approached the rapid. The captain leant out of the pilot house.

“Give it her, Jack,” he yelled excitedly.

The answer given by Jack scared me, for I knew quite well what she ought to bear.

“There’s a hundred and twenty on her now!”

“Well, maybe it will do;” and the captain’s head retreated.

On we went, slowly crawling and fighting against the swift stream which tore by us. We got about half-way up, and we gradually stayed in one position, and even went back a trifle. The captain yelled and shouted for more steam yet, and then I retreated as far as I could, and sat on the taffrail, to be as far as possible from the boiler, which I believed would explode every moment. But Jack obeyed orders, and rammed and raked at the fires until the gauge showed 160 lb., and we got over at last. But I confess I did feel nervous.

This happened about ten miles below Yale, and at that very spot the tiller-ropes of the same boat once parted, and they had to let her drift. Fortunately, she hung for a few moments in an eddy behind a big rock until they spliced them again; but it was a close call with everyone on board. A steamer once blew up there, and most of the crew and passengers were killed outright or drowned.

Above Yale the river is not navigable until Savona’s Ferry is reached. That is on the Kamloops Lake, and thence east up the Thompson and the lakes there is navigation to Spallamacheen. Once the owners of the Peerless ran her from Savona down to Cook’s Ferry, just in order to see if it could be done. The down-stream trip was done in three hours, but it took three weeks to get her back again, and then her progress had to be aided with ropes from the shore; so it was not deemed advisable to make the trip regularly.

As for the river in the main Fraser canyon, it is nothing more nor less than a perfect hell of waters; and though Mr Onderdonk, who had the lower British Columbia contract for the Canadian Pacific Railroad, built a boat to run on it, the first time the Skuzzy let go of the bank she ran ashore. She was taken to pieces and rebuilt on the lakes. The railroad people wanted her at first on the lower river, and asked a Mr Moore, who is well known as a daring steamboatman, to take her down. He said he would undertake it, but demanded so high a fee, including a thousand dollars for his wife if he was drowned, that his offer was refused. Yet it was well worth almost any money, for it would have been a very hazardous undertaking–as bad as, or even worse than, the Maid of the Mist going through the rapids below Niagara.