The following is an extract from a letter dated Vic toria, Vancouver's Island, August 22, which appears in the Hamilton (Canada West) Daily Spectator. — To the pi esent date no new diggings have been found, and you may imagine what a sell ther3 has been to thousands who came from England, Canada, California, and even Australia and New Zealand. There is gold, no doubt, in Cariboo, but from the high price of pro visions in the mines («ay averaging $1£ per ft.) it is impossible to prospect the country properly. Your readers can hardly imagine the severity of such a country, where it rains almost all day and free7es all night, and the risk a man runs of getting starved, or at least invalided, when he lives theie woiking and walking six months. Before my return here, a great crowd had come back from Cariboo, and since my arrival they are returning on an average of 100 daity, in an awful condition, almost naked, and gaunt with liunger. On my own return the scattered cimvd, before, behind, and aiound me, reminded me of Xen option's account of the retreat of tlio ten thousand Greek*, only every man was hastening away as fast as he could from the last two dollar feed, and anxiously inquiring how. far it was to the next house to be reached before dnrk. was caused by a light pocket and a good Appetite, and time was an important matter, as a journey on foot takes fourteen days good walking to this place. It was laughable to see many of my com panions in misfortune, how they were dressed. Most of them had a gunny bag tied on each foot, not having shoes, which are rather a luxury to a poor man in the upper country, have used up what was brought along in fording creeks and wading marshes searching for gold ; the rest of the dress was made up of all kinds of things, but principally old flour bags. There is no employment in the mines this year, and as many were almost starving some took jobs of carrying one hundred pounds on their backs from the village at the forks of the Quesnelle xiver to Antler Creek, mules not being able to go over the trail. 