206 Sport and Life. 



expansions of the great river are called, under the two just 

 erected Canadian Pacific railway bridges that span the turbulent, 

 but wonderfully picturesque Upper Columbia, at the west and at 

 the east crossing (the river making a great bend 200 miles long in 

 the interval), past flourishing little mining towns, here stemming a 

 current no craft of man's design can ever venture to face, there 

 rushing through whirlpools that knock into splinters the great 

 monumental trunks of giant white pines, or breasting the stream as it 

 rushes at lightning speed through formidable canons where a vast 

 river seems as if set up sideways, the surface of the water being convex 

 and some 4ft. to 5ft. higher in the centre than where it touches the 

 smooth walls of the imprisoning rocks. Past all these dangers and 

 perils rush the salmon, impelled by an all-powerful instinct to 

 ascend the swirling stream till further ascent becomes impossible, 

 and the cradle of the great river has been finally reached after a 

 perilous 1300 miles long journey, in which a sheer altitude of about 

 3oooft. has been attained. Few spots are of such captivating 

 and ichthyological interest as the source of the Columbia; for here, 

 in the shallow and limpid waters of the new-born stream is, or 

 rather was, offered a rare opportunity to watch the process of 

 spawning peculiar to the several species of salmon, and also a 

 wonderful abundance of material wherewith to settle some of the 

 most vexed points in the history of the king of fishes. Forty 

 years ago the number of fish who reached these beds was so great 

 that the receding waters (the freshets from melting snows cause a 

 considerable rise) would leave millions of dead salmon strewn 

 along the banks, emitting a stench that could be smelt miles off, 

 and which never failed to attract great numbers of bears. To 

 count fifty of these animals within an hour's paddle was, 

 in those days, so the Indians say, an ordinary event, a 

 circumstance that appears to be confirmed by the fact that the 

 nearest Hudson Bay Post that drew its supplies of this pelt 

 exclusively from this region ordinarily baled from 800 to 1000 

 bear skins every year, and this at a time when these Indians had 

 but few firearms, and necessarily made walking pincushions of 



