snowfields and glaciers. They are ages older than the eastern or higher range and were once the crest of the chain "rearing their serrated and snow-capped summits above the prehistoric ocean when their neighbours, the Rockies, were as yet unborn beneath its ice-bound bosom." When in the long geologic processes of fires and earthquakes and floods that went to the making of this planet, the giant ages upheaved the enormous chain of mountains which forms the main range, and shifted the continental divide eastward, they "relegated the Selkirks to a subordinate position and left only their older archaean formation to tell the tale." (A. O. Wheeler's "Selkirk Range.") Geology, says Tennyson, is a terrible muse, singing of past aeons when the earth was "manless and forlorn." Yet in rock and soil she tells a wonderful story. In these Selkirks, the witness of mountain and valley and of a mighty encompassing river, is a testimony written on rock and soil and flood in aeonian terms—"Aeonian music measuring out the steps of Time." Persons interested in Geology will find the Selkirks a rare and delightful play-ground for investigation. There is no geological field in the world providing more enchanting scenery, more charming excursions.
The Selkirks occupy the loop made by the Columbia River in the first 600 miles of its course. Rising in Columbia Lake over 100 miles south of the Railway, the river flows north some 300 miles, when, not far from Athabasca Pass, the historical portage of the early fur-traders, it turns again, making the "Big Bend" and, 300 miles south, joins the Kootenay which forms the southern portion of the Eastern boundary and the whole of the southern. Though the extent of the Selkirk Range below the 49th parallel is a matter of doubt, it is generally assumed that either wholly or partially, the Kootenay River defines the southern limit.
The Columbia is one of the longest rivers in the world. After finally leaving the Selkirks, it still flows 800 miles to the ocean. Its relation to the Kootenay is a geographical phenomenon attracting the interest of all visitors to the upper Columbia Valley where both rivers have their sources. The Kootenay rises in a small lake on the western flank of the Rockies some miles south of the source of the Columbia, and the rivers, almost parallel during the first part of their journey, flow in opposite directions. An almost level plain, a mile and a quarter wide, separates them near Columbia Lake. Indeed the two rivers are here joined by a canal, now unused. This strange trick of nature is accounted for by a tilt in the mountain range. Far south in Idaho, the Kootenay makes a curve similar to the Columbia's far northern bend and both rivers meet and mingle near the international boundary at Arrow Lakes. Therefore, the Selkirks are practically a huge inland island of forest, rock, ice and snow.
Origin of Name: The first general map on which the Selkirk Mountains appear was made in the years 1813 and 1814 by David Thompson, for the North-West Fin-Company. It is a map of genuine historical interest. The result of twenty years' surveys and discoveries (from 1792 to 1812); covering an enormous extent of territory embracing fifteen degrees of latitude and forty degrees of longitude (roughly from Lake Superior to the Pacific Ocean and from the headwaters of the Mississippi to the vicinity of Great
