Ranchmen are already driving herds in here, which settlers will in time drive out. The country will not be improved, however, until it is drained, above the boundary line, by a canal from the Kootenai River to the Upper Columbia Lake, a distance of little over a mile, a scheme in which an English syndicate is interested. There is at present an annual overflow in the bottom-lands below the boundary, which it is believed will be relieved by the canal in British Columbia. Mineral discoveries are being sought for in this region, and to some extent found, in galena and floatcoal.
The route to this new wilderness is via the Northern Pacific Railroad to Kootenai Station, on Lake Pend d'Oreille, thence by toll-road to Kootenai River, eighty miles, and by boats of a quaint fashion the remaining distance, or as far as the explorer pleases to go,—for there is a good depth of water for over two hundred miles up into British Columbia, where no doubt it will soon be the fashion to go for a summer's outing.
At Hauser Junction on the Northern Pacific, which is just east of the Idaho line, a branch road runs south to Post Falls on the Spokane River, which is the outlet of Cceur d'Alene Lake, and thence to Coeur d'Alene City at the head of the lake. This beautifully-located place, with Fort Sherman, is much resorted to by travellers and residents. On its southern shore is about to be erected a club-house, where the mining men resident in Cceur d'Alene mining district may spend their Sundays. Is this suggestive of Cape May or Long Branch? It is the same thing with a difference. It is nineteenth-century luxury in the midst of the exciting race for wealth in a virgin world. There is a mountain opposite Post Falls which the Indians regard as having a benign influence upon the lives of those lovers who seek its influence at the time of their marriage. It is haunted by a spirit which answers to the Greek god Hymen. Here are held the wedding festivities of the Cceur d'Alenes who truly desire love and unity.
The scenery of these lumbering and mining regions is on a grand scale. It educates the eye of the most commonplace beholder, as it also broadens his knowledge of natural science by illustration and his views of the authorship of the great book of creation by inference. The men found in wilderness places
