nected with the history of the Columbia River; the record of his career written with his own hand is not only of great scientific value, but an inspiration to any earnest student of the history of this Pacific Northwest. He has been described as the greatest land geographer the English race has ever produced.

The Columbia River is estimated to be 1,300 miles in length and Kettle Falls, in the State of Washington, about forty miles below the Canadian boundary, marks very closely the half-way point on the river. It may be said rather broadly, then, that one-half of the river is in British Columbia and one-half in the United States, speaking of the main river and not of its branches. The statesmen who decided the Oregon boundary question did not have this equal division in mind, but nature has furnished this suggestion of their fairness.

As if to purposely render our history romantic the first trading post upon any of the waters of the Columbia River, including its branches, was built almost at the very source of the main river, near the outlet of the chain of small lakes which resolve themselves into the river. Tobey Creek, flowing eastward from the glaciers of Mt. Nelson, of the Selkirk Range, enters the Columbia River from the west about one mile below the outlet of Lake Windermere, in the political division of British Columbia known as the East Kootenay District. Upon an open gravelly point overlooking Tobey Creek and "a long half mile" (quoting from David Thompson's original survey notes) from the Columbia stood the stockade and buildings marking the beginning of commerce in the interior of "Old Oregon." The exact site of this house has recently become known by the unearthing of the old chimneys of the buildings, as well as by Indian tradition. An earlier location on Canterbury Point, Lake Windermere, at first selected was abandoned before any buildings were completed, because of exposure in procuring water for domestic use (compare with Lyman's History of the Columbia River, Putnam's Sons, 1911, page 282). "Kootenae House" was the name given to this trading post, and it is not to be confounded with the Fort

Kootenay of a later date and different location. Nor are we to forget that on the waters of the Fraser River Basin trading posts had been established in the year 1806 by Simon Fraser and his partners.

In this romantic locality David Thompson spent the fall, winter and spring of 1807-8 in company with his clerk, Finan McDonald, and six servants. He put out his thermometer and set down the first record of the weather in interior British Columbia. With other scientific instruments he determined the latitude and longitude of the House and of the lakes. He bestowed the name upon Mt. Nelson (now locally known as Mt. Hammond), which looms up so grandly to the westward of Lake Windermere, and determined its altitude. He found bands of wild horses roaming over the hills and caught some of them; he observed and made record of the habits of the salmon spawning in the river. He gathered in trade one hundred skins of the wild mountain goat, which brought a guinea apiece in the London market. He was besieged for some weeks by a band of Piegan Indians who crossed the Rocky Mountains with instructions to kill him, because the prairie Indians did not wish to have the Kootenaes supplied with firearms, powder and ball. In March, 1808, Mr. James McMillan visited him from Rocky Mt. House, on the Saskatchewan, with dog teams and sleds, bringing more trading goods and carrying back as many packs of furs. His trade was with the Kootenaes of the vicinity, and from as far south as Northwestern Montana, of the United States. In April, 1808, he made an exploring trip down the Kootenay River as far as Kootenay Lake, and in June recrossed the Rocky Mountains with his furs and carried them to Rainy Lake House before again returning to Kootenae House for another winter. The government of British Columbia could well afford to permanently mark the site of Kootenae House in honor of this remarkable trader, astronomer and pathfinder.

At the beginning of the second winter at Kootenae House, Mr. Thompson felt sufficiently acquainted with the country and the Indians to begin to push the trade further to the south.

Site of "Kootenae House" near Lake Windermere, British Columbia

View looking Northeast across Valley of Columbia River

Photo. shows Michel Pete, a full blooded Kootenay Indian, standing among excavated chimney bottoms

The Kootenay River, taking its rise in the main range of the Rocky Mountains, flows southward into the United States in Montana, and in its course passes within a mile and a half of the lake out of which as its real source the waters of the Columbia River flow northward for 200 miles before turning to the south. The divide between Columbia Lake and the Kootenay River is not a ridge or a mountain, but a level flat of gravelly soil not at all heavily timbered, which affords a very easy portage for canoes. Across this portage in November, 1808, went Finan McDonald, Mr. Thompson's clerk, with a load of trading goods, and descended the Kootenay River to a point on the north bank, just above Kootenay Falls, and nearly opposite to the town of Libby, which is the county seat of Lincoln County, Montana, and there set up two leather lodges for himself and his men, and built a log house to protect the goods and furs and spent the winter, being joined later by James McMillan, already mentioned. Here, during the winter of 1808-9, were carried on the first commercial transactions of white men south of the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude, and in that part of the Old Oregon Country which afterward became a part of the United States.

News travels rapidly among the Indians and later events indicate that furs must have been brought to this winter camp from the Saleesh or Flathead country to the southeast, and from the region of Pend d'Oreille Lake to the southwest. About three years later, at a point a few miles further up the Kootenay River, but on the same side (nearly opposite Jennings, Montana), the North-West Company erected a more permanent trading post, known as Fort Kootenay, in opposition to which, in 1812, the Pacific Fur Company built another fort near by. At Fort Kootenay took place the bloodless duel between Nicholas Montour and Francis Pillet "with pocket pistols at six paces; both hits; one in the collar of the coat, and the other in the leg of the trousers. Two of their men acted as seconds, and the tailor speedily healed their wounds." This is the story told by the facile pen of Ross Cox.