256 Sport and Life. 



Kootenay country being then as uninhabited as was the British 

 portion. But I must not forget to mention a very interesting old 

 character who lived Indian fashion in a miserable hovel close 

 to where the 4Qth Par. (there forming the boundary line) crosses 

 the Lower Kootenay river at right angles. This was old Dave 

 MacLoughlin, only surviving son of the famous Dr. MacLoughlin, 

 once absolute monarch of a realm much larger than Germany or 

 France, extending from California up to Alaska, and comprising part 

 of both. This remarkable man was, in days anterior to the treaty of 

 Washington, the supreme ruler of the Hudson's Bay Company's 

 territory on the Pacific Slope. Old Dr. MacLoughlin, like all of 

 the Company's officers who took unto themselves wives, had, in 

 the early days of his career, married a native woman, by whom 

 he had two sons and a daughter. The eldest son, who was 

 addicted to drink, was killed in a drunken brawl while in command 

 of Fort Stikeen in 1842. The second, David, a boy of a more 

 genial and adaptable character, was sent in the thirties to Europe 

 to be educated, and even when I knew him as a very old man 

 who had long relapsed into the dirt and savagery of Indian life, 

 one soon discovered that he had received the education of a 

 gentleman, was versed in three or four languages, and had seen 

 the world. An old cone-shaped hat, adorned with a few glass 

 beads, and as dilapidated and dirty as any the naked Indians 

 wore, covered his long matted hair, and it was this hat which 

 gave him his name, by which he was known among all the 

 Indians in the country, i.e., Kiskayooka, or " very old hat." 



When I first saw him I had no idea who he really was, and was 

 -also unaware that he disliked being spoken of by his nickname. 

 My reception, therefore, when I landed near his hovel, and asked 

 whether he was " Kiskayooka," was not as cordial as it would have 

 been had I been aware of this singular old man's history. At the 

 same time, there was so much of the inbred gentleman about him, 

 that his invitation to enter the miserable hut, which was bare of all 

 furniture except one old stool, and which even had no glass in the 

 one window oiled paper taking its place was tendered with the 



