receding to the base of the mountains. (Occasionally a farm slopes to the River's margin, but mostly the cultivated farms lie unseen from the steamer. On a bench 150 feet high that borders the River, is a flagstaff erected by a farmer who first unfurled the Union Jack for the victory of Mafeking. It is one of the River's landmarks.
This part of the great River is now a comparatively idle waterway, but in a few years it will not be so, though its craft will be employed in pleasure rather than in pure commerce. For the speedier railway, soon to connect the Kicking Horse and Crow's Nest Passes, will carry the ore and the cattle and all the merchandise of trade created by a people who will live in comfort or wealth and die in the valley. Though the bottles of heaven are stopped for two months and more in summer, irrigation will make the dry benches and inter vals "rejoice and blossom as the rose." An occasional motor-boat is now seen where fleets of this modern pleasure craft will soon be familiar. And always as hitherto the River will be the happy waterway of the canoeist.
It is from glacial Toby Creek just below the Lake called Windermere that the River receives its first soiling. Windermere is as limped water as flows in Canada, and shallow along its margin making safe and excellent bathing. No one has yet been drowned in its waters.
Canterbury Point on the western shore of the Lake whose name is now changed to Invermere, has been often pointed out as the sight of Thompson's Fort (1807-11), there being wooden ruins attesting some old habitation. But Thompson's Fort called "Kootenae House" was imdoubtedly situated north of Toby Creek near its mouth where it is marked on his remarkable map made two years later. The warehouse, says Thompson's biographer, was built on the low land by the Columbia Pviver and the dwelling house was farther back on the higher terrace. This would settle any controversy. Elsewhere in this book reference has been made to Thompson's associations with the Columbia River and how he happened to paddle south to its source. His biography—now in preparation by Mr. J. B. Tyrrell for the Champlain Society—will be a distinct gain to Canadian History and a longdelayed appreciation of the greatest geographer Canada has ever known.
Thus, before 1807, the history of the Upper Columbia and Kootenay regions belongs to the Indian; and comes down in legends of intertribal wars. A great battle fought centuries ago between the Kootenays and the Blackfeet is recorded in aboriginal hieroglyphics of red pigment on an outstanding rock near the shore of the Columbia Lake, twenty miles south of Thompson's fort. An ancient footpath, the Spirit Trail of the Indians, leads beyond this and kindred pictured rocks, three miles away Near the trail are mounds built up of leaf mould and twigs, altars where to this day, the Indian passing along, lays a tiny branch, his offering to the Great Spirit. And he would be an unwise and unworthy christian who tried to dissuade him from the reverent and truly religious custom.
From 1807 to 1811. the year of Thompson's last visit, the white man lightly touches the history of this country. It reverts to the Indian again until 1864 when Dr. Toby came, and gave his name to the wild canyon whose repute has travelled far. After Dr. Toby
