came miners, whiskey pedlars, the N. W. Mounted Police, and a few ranchers. Windermere was built on a terrace overlooking the lake, for many years the considerable village of the district and a stoppingplace for travel between Golden and Cranbrook. Thirteen miles south at Fairmont was Brewer's, the most comfortable wayside inn of the Upper Columbia Valley which in time came to be called by some who lived in it. the "Happy Valley." Behind Brewers, a hot sulphur spring was and is to this day used gratis by travellers.
The Upper Columbia is literally a "Happy Valley;" rich agriculture along the River, angling in the creeks, shooting in the foothills, mining in the mountain-sides and mountaineering among the glaciers over the summits. Could diversity further go? The only limitation and nuisance to visitors there is the white dust which in summer drought rises from its roads with every puff of wind and every step of man and beast. But dwellers there and lovers of that fascinating country are gaily impervious to its discomfort. Besides, it is absolutely free from microbes. It is rare to die in the "Happy Valley," save from old age or accident. Obviously there is no dust to speak of in the upper parts of the tributary valleys.
Once the railway is completed that unites the Kicking Horse Pass and the Crow's Nest Pass, the country will be settled by an agrarian population. Some 45,000 acres are owned by the Columbia Valley Irrigated Fruit Lands Company which is also a colonizing company selling its lands direct to the settler. This company has expended large sums in irrigation canals and is the first colonizing agency in the upper country of the great River. An International movement is now on foot looking to commercial navigation from its source to the confluence with the Pacific Ocean. Indeed, this was the dream of those who carried on trade between Montana and the Columbia Valley in the latter part of the last century, transportation being by pack-train on land and by canoe or boat on the Kootenay and Columbia Rivers. It is here that the geographical phenomenon occurs of the Kootenay flowing south and parallel to the Columbia flowing north. So close do the two rivers come in one place that a canal scarcely a mile long was once built connecting them, with the object of making a short commercial watercourse across the International Boundary. But for some reason it was shortly abandoned.
There is a trail around the Upper Columbia Lake which is 10 miles long and lies in the midst of park-land characteristic of the valley. But you may ride at random through the trees after leaving the main road. Any knowing reliable pony will carry you over the "benches" to the high margin of Columbia Lake.
Who would not like to read the record of Thompson's emotions when he saw this lake, and knew he had found the source of the River? Did he then realize the length and great turnings of the mighty waterway whose first white companion he was from its fountain-head to its confluence with the ocean? If you read the history of the River and company with it by sun and stars for scarcely one hundred miles, you have strange feelings not unmingled with wonder and melancholy, when you come to its source. Dwellers in the Happy Valley strike their roots deep and love their River and Mountains as they love the flag.
