New Westminster, B.C. 20 Jul 1883 Marcus Smith Letter
Lot 80 in our auction Saturday 27th August 2022
New Westminster B.C
July 20th 1883
My dear Nannie
I had a letter from you last week just as I was going aboard the boat to go out on the line – from your accounts and the newspapers you seem to have had a miserable spring cold and wet and lately most disastrous floods – we have on the contrary had a most remarkable season Summer (not spring) really commenced on the 1st of March and except a few showers in April the weather has been very fine ever since for a month past rather hot and dusty and the crops are suffering from want of rain – when it does come we shall probably have a deluge for months – I have been only a few days in the office this year but working hard on the line I could hardly hold out at first – but now it has done me good and I am getting stronger – It is reported here that Schreiber was to leave Ottawa on the 10th for B Columbia, and he will most likely arrive within a few days – I hope you got passes from him over the Inter Colonial before he left, and that you and the youngsters may be at the sea side before you receive this — Tom is hard at work and I think I have at last money to get him a head of it he manages the instruments well enough but is always behind in the business part of his work
Twice when I was there for a week he had no meat in his camp – had sent for it and then moved his camp – without giving the butcher the address of his new camp – so the meat went to the old place miles away and was lost or rotted –next he writes for supplies by the boat which gets into New Westminster late Friday and leaves next morning at 7 a.m two hours before purveyor got his letter. Then he was sending a man every other day to the steamboat landing and post office 3 or 4 miles off across the River – when his work was behind and he had not a man to spare. I made him stop all this and think and look over his supplies a few days before he wanted more and only get them once a week – I have just come across a letter of Stovel’s to you from which it appears he had ordered a suit of clothes to be sent by me – they receiving his letter after I had left though he had all winter to think of it. To send these here by express costs $15 to $90 – – and he has no right to order anything in Canada but get what he wants here and pay for them himself — Love to all
Yours ever
M. Smith Transcribed as written
