Boats, river-hands, and Indians could
be hired at ridiculously low prices, and travelling and bartering paid;
wages for Indians being about a shilling per day, and all found; the
same for river-hands. Captains and boatswains to pilot the boat through
the rapids up and down for sixty-four cents a day. To-day you have got
to pay sixty-four to eighty cents per day for Indians and river-hands.
Captains and boatswains, $2 the former, and $1:50 the latter per day,
and then you often cannot get them. Boat-hire used to be $8 to $10 for a
big boat for three to four months; to-day $5, $6, and $7 per day, and
all through the rapid development of the gold industry. As you can
calculate twenty-five days' river travel to get within reach of the
Savannah lands, you can reckon what the expenses must be, and then again
about five to seven days coming down the river, and a couple of days to
lay over. Then you must count two trips like this, one to bring you up,
and one to bring you down three months after, when you return with your
collection. Besides this, you run the risk of losing your boat in the
rapids either way, which happens not very unfrequently either going or
coming; and we have not only to record the loss of several boats with
goods, etc., every month, but generally to record the loss of life; only
two cases happening last month, in one case seven, in the other twelve
men losing their lives.
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