How Kootenay Emerged from its Wild State. 235 



consisted of level alluvial bottoms lying on both sides of the 

 river. Of their high value as agricultural land there could be 

 no doubt, provided the overflow (lasting about six or eight 

 weeks), to which they were subject every summer when the 

 river rose in consequence of melting snow in the main Rockies, 

 could be stopped. Ainsworth's agents had also recognised the 

 value of this tract, which practically embraced every acre of good 

 agricultural land in the whole of the vast district. When the 

 British Columbia Legislature assembled in Victoria for the 

 session of 1882-3, a private Bill, granting the Ainsworth party 

 not only these lands, but also others amounting to about 750,000 

 acres, had, when I appeared on the scene, already been read in the 

 House, and would certainly have passed, for the Ainsworths had 

 many friends in the province who desired to see American capital 

 enter this hitherto entirely unexploited country. The principal 

 reason why the Ainsworth party failed to get their concession 

 in the form they wanted was that at this juncture my offer, which 

 was backed by influential letters, came before the provincial 

 Government of British Columbia. The Ainsworths wanted a free 

 grant of these 750,000 acres, which practically took in the whole 

 country round Kootenay lake, which has since turned out an im- 

 mensely rich silver bearing district, in return for building a short 

 narrow gauge railway twenty odd miles in length to connect 

 Kootenay lake with the Columbia river, along the outlet of the lake 

 where that waterway is unnavigable. My offer, on the other hand, 

 was to reclaim the 48,000 acres that were subject to overflow, and 

 pay one dollar an acre for it within 10 years. 



It is easy to be wise after the event, but there is no doubt that 

 it would have been far wiser for both of us to have bought outright 

 the land we wanted, which we could then have done at the rate of 

 one dollar an acre, instead of bothering about concessions, which, as 

 my subsequent experience showed, are always dangerously subject 

 to the unexpected. In 1882 British Columbia was still so little 

 known, and land there of so little value, that one could buy every 

 acre of the unoccupied Crown land, which practically meant 



