270 Sport and Life. 



formed little communities at Golden and at Donald, where whiskey 

 saloons and gamblers " rounded up " most effectually the dollars 

 paid out by the railway company to its employees. The first 

 named of these little shanty settlements, now the flourishing little 

 "city" of Golden, was then a somewhat "tough camp," consisting 

 of a dozen or so of log cabins, and resembling in other respects 

 that idyllic Northern Pacific station Sandpoint, though, I must say, 

 that murders were not quite so frequent, for it actually possessed a 

 constable, with a beat the size of Wales with Cornwall thrown in. 



Golden, on the banks of the yet juvenile Columbia, was then 

 commencing to become the starting point for travellers to the 

 Upper Kootenay valley ; a make-shift trail had been cut on the 

 banks of the river, and an enterprising Canadian had actually 

 started a small flat-bottomed steamer, wherewith he hoped to 

 navigate the upper waters of the rivers as far as the mother lake, 

 on the furthermost banks of which lay Canal Flat. When my 

 freight at last arrived, the cars were uncoupled from the train, and 

 I received notice that I must empty them within twenty-four hours. 

 Pleasant outlook ! The station consisted of a single little building 

 in which the agent slept and lived, and as there were no buildings 

 near in which the closely packed goods could be stored, the 

 packing-cases and machinery, the casks and kegs and bales had 

 to be unloaded and stacked alongside of the track in the open. 

 A spell of " wet weather," to use a mild term for a week of rain 

 by the bucket, the absence of all means to shelter the things from 

 the wet, and the presence of sundry suspicious characters about 



importunate attorney began to scold about that freight, he lost his temper, and 

 said, " You go to hell." The indignant lawyer, a pious man by the way, wrote 

 a complaining letter to President Van Home about the delayed freight, and 

 ended it thus: " And this is not all. When' I again brought the matter to the 

 attention of your agent at this place he treated me with rudeness, and told me 

 to go to hell." By return mail a reply came from Montreal, which read as 

 follows : " Dear Sir, I am in receipt of your letter of the i6th inst., in which 

 you inform me that our agent at Portage told you to go to hell. In reply I have 

 to say that you need not go to hell. Yours truly, W. C. VAN HORNE, 

 President." 



