Path Finding in the Kootenay Country, &c. 303 



breech clout and an old goatskin of his own to carry, will, with a 

 6olb. pack on his back, walk and climb away from an average 

 mountaineer; while, unburdened with ought but his own outfit 

 of ounce weight and his rifle, I will back a Kootenay to beat 

 by miles in a long day's climb the best white mountaineer that 

 Switzerland or Tyrol ever turned out. The services of the Lower 

 Kootenays were even then not always easy to be obtained ; but 

 direct application to their chief (St. Pierre), with a little present 

 of tobacco to that personage, worked generally very well, though 

 I remember one or two expeditions had to be given up by me at 

 the last moment owing to the sudden refusal of my native com- 

 panions to start. A dollar a day (4^.) and food satisfied them ; 

 but if game is the sole object, I would advise a stipulated price 

 per head killed by the sportsman, and no day wage. The 

 Kootenays, like all Indians, are great gamblers, but as they 

 invariably try conclusions with the wily Kalispels and Spokanes, 

 hailing from more civilisation-haunted localities, who visit them 

 bent on regular gambling raids, they are generally fleeced. 

 Many a time have I seen the results of a winter's trapping or a 

 summer's hunting gambled away in one night. They are fast 

 losing their artless simplicity ; indeed, as I cannot speak by 

 personal experience of the last few years, they may now, for all 

 I know, be altogether useless for hard exploration work. In my 

 time I invariably found them faithful, honest, and (for Indians) 

 unusually clean, the way that my camp soap used to vanish being 

 quite unique in my Western experience, though I must in explana- 

 tion mention that it was perhaps more in consequence of the 

 novelty of that article than for any other reason. 



If the ascent of the higher peaks in the Selkirks be the object 

 of the traveller, difficulties of a different and more riskful sort will 

 have to be combatted. None, or, at least, very few of the higher 

 mountains can be ascended without traversing snowfields or 

 glaciers, where great caution will become necessary, for, what with 

 BergschrundS) overhanging ice and snow cornices those perhaps 

 most dangerous pitfalls of all the traveller should have mature 



