CHAPTER X. 



PIONEERING IN KOOTENAY. 

 How KOOTENAY EMERGED FROM ITS WILD STATE. 



UNDENIABLY true as is the trite saying that a country in a state 

 of perfect wildness lacks human interest, it is equally certain that 

 the first stage on the road to settlement, accentuated by that 

 dishevelled go-as-you-please look which is inseparable from it, 

 arouses regrets at the disappearance of the primeval in inanimate 

 as well as animate Nature. A few roving prospectors, birds 

 of flight, tarrying no longer than their scanty " grub outfit " 

 permits, and flitting to more settled regions when the first autumn 

 snowstorms threaten to cut them off entirely ; the first log cabin 

 wherein a white man has passed in dreary solitude the long 

 winter ; more prospectors, more log cabins, followed some months 

 later by an organised miners' camp, with a white woman or two to 

 grace it that is the story of the first opening up of a " new- 

 country " in the Western sense. Having had a small personal 

 share in precisely this evolution in the case of a district which now 

 ranks among the most important in the whole of Western Canada, 

 from that early stage when there was not a single white settler in 

 it, I propose to give a prosy account of my experiences. It 

 may perhaps have some interest for those who know only by 

 hearsay what pioneering means, and who live their lives with a 

 policeman trying their front door every night, and a post-office 

 round the corner. As it is, moreover, the fashion to show no 

 shame when betraying ignorance concerning geography, and to 

 say: "Wasn't taught at school where your 'Far West' commences 

 or where it leaves off," a few geographical details may make it 

 unnecessary to resort to the usual " sufficient for the day is the 

 West thereof " kind of excuse. 



Q 



