Canadian Rocky Mountains. 295 



The contrast in respect to form is very marked, as 

 between the Kocky Mountains and the Purcell and Selkirk 

 Eanges west of the Columbia-Kootanie Valley, along the 

 eastern side of which the outer range of the Eock}^ Moun- 

 tain system forms an almost continuous wall of bare and 

 shattered, though not very lofty, limestone peaks — a char- 

 acter which the opposite ranges only begin to assume 

 toward their axis, rising at first from the valley in long 

 and rounded slopes thickly covered with forest. 



The Columbia-Kootanie Yalley has already been referred 

 to as an orographic feature of the first importance. Its 

 general features are those of a strike-valley cut out along 

 the outcropping edges of the massive eastward-dipping 

 limestone formation. Its width, however, is much greater 

 than that of other similarly situated valleys of the region, 

 averaging about five miles in the length of 185 miles 

 between the forty-ninth parallel and mouth of the Kicking 

 Horse Eiver. Circumstances, which need not here be 

 detailed, tend to show that the river which excavated 

 this valley originally flowed southward, throughout its 

 whole length, that during the glacial period it became 

 deeply filled with moraine matter and terraced drift, and 

 that subsequently a southward-flowing river again occupied 

 it. At a still later period, however, partly as an effect of 

 the blocking of the valley by debris brought down by the 

 Kootanie at the point at which that river enters it, but 

 probably also in part as a consequence of a relative decrease 

 in elevation to the north, the present remarkable water- 

 parting was formed. The Columbia now rises in two large 

 lakes in this great valley, and flows northward with a com- 

 paratively sluggish current, while the Kootanie — already a 

 large river — enters the valley at right angles, at a short 

 distance from the head of the upper lake, from which it is 

 separated by a narrow neck of gravelly terrace-flat, and flows 

 rapidly southward. 



On Wild Horse Creek, a tributary of the Kootanie, placer 

 gold mining has been carried on for about twenty years and 

 the camp is still a moderately productive one. Other streams 

 tributary to the Columbia-Kootanie Yalley are known to 



