CHAPTER I
In the Heart of the Canadian Rockies
Extent of Navigation on the River—Attractions of a Canoe Journey—The Canadian Pacific Railroad—Banff and Lake Louise—Summit of the Rockies—The Continental Divide and its Western Descent—Field and the Wapta River—Golden and the Upper Columbia—Peculiar Interlocking of the Columbia and the Kootenai, and Professor Dawson's Explanation of this—Views of the Selkirks and the Rockies—Some Steamboat Men and their Tales—Captain Armstrong's Adventures on the Kootenai—The Picture Rocks—Lake Windermere—The Location of the Old Thompson Fort—Baptiste Morigeau and his Stories of Pioneer Days—The War between the Shuswaps and the Okanogans—Down the River from Golden—Rapids and Navigation—By the Canadian Pacific through the Selkirks—Glacier and the Illecillewaet—Revelstoke and the River again—Wise Management of the Canadian Government and the Railroad.
A JOURNEY upon the River may best begin with its source and end with the ocean. It is about fourteen hundred miles by the windings of the stream from its origin in the upper Columbia Lake to the Pacific. It descends twenty-five hundred feet in that distance. It is therefore swift in many places. Yet it would be possible to descend almost the entire length of the River in a small boat. Nor can one imagine a more fascinating journey, especially if he could conjure back the shades of the great voyageurs of seventy years ago, as Monique and Charlefoux, famous in Dr. McLoughlin's time
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