Among the many who took the trail for American Creek-then the center of attraction-were Barney Cooper and Frank Roundy, two old time miners who had settled down at Nass Harbour.

They were old men but the lure of mineral wealth was too strong to resist, and in Roundy’s boat they started for the head of the Portland Canal, where they arrived in due course after the loss of considerable time, owing to arguments as to the right way to sail a boat. Some days later they arrived, footsore and weary, at the Mountain Boy camp, and another argument took place as to the site to pitch the tent, which was finally erected in a hollow that, unknown to them, was in the line of flood waters from a glacier above, when banked ice broke away. This occurred in the night and flooded the tent. The sleepers in the Mountain Boy camp, a short distance away, were awakened by Barney yelling, “Get up Roundy: Get up and swim for your life, or the first thing you know, we will be out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.”

Mosquito Creek, near the forks of the Bear River, was so named by a party of the Burgess expedition that camped there, in the neighborhood of a slough that formed the breeding ground for particular large and ferocious winged pests, from whose attacks they fled to a more open location of the river bar. When the camp was shifted, one of the men returned to get something that had been left behind and was quite awhile getting back to the new camp, owing, he said, to having been chased by a grizzly. He had the reputation of being something of a romancer, and the joker of the party told him, “No, it wasn’t a grizzly that chases you at all; it was just one of them big mosquitoes.”