Vancouver Island and British Columbia. Their history, resources, and prospects. de [CANADA -- BRITISH COLUMBIA]. MacFIE, Matthew - 1865.

London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, 1865. 8vo. 8.5 x 5.25 in. xxi, [3], 574 pp. Woodcut=engraved frontisp., 7 woodcut engraved illusts., 2 large folding hand-coloured maps. Early 20th-century half-calf over tan cloth, marbled endpapers, raised bands on spine, gilt & green morocco spine-label, t.e.g. (very minor edgewear, slight bumping to couple corners), still VG copy, from Bochner Collection. First edition of this combination immigration guide, and travel account written by the a Congregationalist minister who witnessed the impact of the 1858 British Columbia gold strike. Between March and June, 1858, steamships packed with prospectors, miners, gamblers, thieves, and con men poured into Victoria Harbor at better than 5000 a month. Entire California mining communities picked up and moved to the Island, where the gold fever met the serious commercial and mining restrictions imposed by the Hudson’s Bay Company which still held a monopoly on interior trade in the interior. MacFie has included sections on the farming opportunities, trade opportunities, lumber trade, extensive sections on gold mining, and mining methods and the Native Americans in this contemporary account. See; Thorner & Frohn Nielsen, A Few Acres of Snow: Documents in Pre-Confederation Canadian History, Chapter 13, “A Great Humbug”: British Columbia’s Gold Rushes, pp. 240-251.