first to explore the Valley of the Assiniboine and to visit the Missouri plains north. There was, therefore, poetic destiny in the discovery by his two brave sons, one of them coming into the very foothills.
Exactly half a century later, MacKenzie, the Scotsman, treading down dangers of savage nature and savage men linked together against him, was the first white man to cross the Rocky Mountains, reaching the Pacific Ocean on July 22nd, 1793, at a place on the Coast in the region of Prince Rupert, the modern transmontane terminus of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. Had commerce but consulted the stars, this town would have been called by his name. Poetic justice in nomenclature is due to the great pathfinders; and a city named MacKenzie was his due who made the first overland journey across the Continent from Ocean to Ocean, just as the name MacKenzie River was his who first navigated its waters to the Arctic Sea.
Among others to follow in the interests of the fur-trading companies of that time were Simon Fraser, who discovered the Fraser River in 1809; David Thompson, who discovered Howse Pass; and Ross Cox, who ascended the Columbia in 1817 and crossed the Athabasca Pass. Ten years later came David Douglas, the first explorer in the sole interest of science. He was a botanist and his name is perpetuated in the Douglas fir tree, and not in Mount Douglas that giant north of Laggan that so long defied the hardiest climbers. Douglas reached Athabasca Pass in 1827 and halted to exploit two mountains on either side which he named Mt. Brown and Mt. Hooker and to which he gave the fabulous and long credited altitudes of 16,000 and 17,000 ft. When measured by Professor Coleman in 1892 these high figures were reduced to some 9,000 and 10,000 feet respectively. Between them lies a lakelet[1] about 20 feet in diameter, which Douglas's party judged to be 20 yards across and named the 'Committee's Punch Bowl." And who could expect sober arithmetic over that appellation? The name remains to this day.
The next eminent pathfinder, one of the Fur Traders, came in 1841, travelling with a cavalcale of forty-five horses strength and making speedy and luxurious progress. This was Sir George Simpson, Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, who entered the Rockies through the defile now called Devil's Gap, north of the Gap entered by the C. P. Railway. Piloted by Peechee, a Cree Chief, this imposing company followed an Indian trail through the forest stopping by a large and beautiful lake set in high mountains which Simpson named Peechee. This is our Lake Minnewanka, a favorite haunt of tourists: and Peechee's memory lives in the name of an overlooking mountain. Could we know the exact spot of this historic camp, some memorial of native stone would be a grateful remembrance. Simpson's progress to the Bow River across the Cascade River and up the valley past Cascade Mountain and admiring the stream issuing from its side and falling like a silver ribbon to its foot, is a pretty story. Goat and sheep were clambering about the mountains. They camped on the right bank of the Bow, horses and all crossing on a raft covered with willows. Instead of ascending the Bow valley, Simpson turned south by Healey's Creek, ascending the tributary valley and traversing the Pass which received
- ↑ Professor Coleman's book on "The Canadian Rockies," published since the above was written, gives this lake's length as 200 yards.
