“I helped set that,” said he, “and, believe me, it meant some work. Well, do you see the figures on it? Three, seven, two, o—that’s how high we are above the level of the sea, and this is the lowest of all the mountain passes. It is a little over three thousand five hundred miles between the Atlantic and the Pacific on this railway line, and this is the highest point on the whole line. Believe me, my young friends, you are at rather an interesting place right here—so interesting that if you don’t mind we’ll forget the short day’s travel for the last few days and make our day’s camp right here.”
Nothing loath, the entire party assisted in hunting out a suitable camping-spot not far from the actual summit where grass and water were to be found and a fairly good place for the tents.
John was much excited with his first attempt at map-making; and all the boys, impressed by the interesting nature of the place in which they were encamped, plied the leader of the party with many questions.
“I was thinking,” said Rob, “that the Yellowhead Pass was one of the earliest ones found, but 1826 is not so very early, is it?”
“Not so very,” said Uncle Dick. “I told you how this pass came to be discovered. Well, as a matter of fact, none of these routes across the mountains were so useful after the big fur companies had established posts on the Pacific coast. This pass was used more than the Peace River Pass. The traders used to bring a good deal of buckskin through here, and sometimes this was called the Leather Pass.
“Now you boys are going down the Columbia River on the latter part of your journey. You heard Swift say he came up the Columbia. Well, that was part of the old highway between the two oceans. In 1814 a canoe brigade started up the Columbia from the Pacific coast. Gabriel Franchere was along, and he made a journal about the trip. So we know that as early as May 16 in 1814 they had got to the Athabasca River. He mentions the Roche Miette, which we dodged by fording the river, and he himself forded in order to escape climbing it. He speaks of the Rocky Mountain House, but that was the same as Jasper House. You must remember, however, he did not cross here, but went down the Athabasca south of that big mountain you see over yonder, Mt. Geikie.
“Sir George Simpson and a party of traders came up the Columbia in 1826, but they also crossed the Athabasca Pass. They named a little lake in there the Committee’s Punch Bowl, and it has that name to this day. They stopped at Henry House, and at Jasper House, lower down at Brule Lake. The first record of which I know of a crossing made here where we are was by George McDougall in 1827. He mentions the Tête Jaune Cache as being ‘freshly discovered.’ I presume it was found a year before.
“A great many men crossed the Athabasca Pass, but not so many took the Yellowhead route. Even as late as 1839 the traders preferred the Athabasca Pass to this one. Father de Smet took that route in 1846. I shouldn’t wonder if the mountain called Pyramid Mountain was the one originally called De Smet Mountain.
“There was an artist by the name of Paul Kane that crossed west by the Athabasca Pass in 1846. In those days the Yellowhead Pass was little used. It came into most prominence after the Cariboo Diggings discoveries of gold. Parties came out going east as early as 1860 from the gold-mines. About that time Sir James Hector was examining all this country, and he named a lot of it, too. More than a hundred and fifty miners went west through this pass in ’62 bound for the Cariboo Diggings. They didn’t stop to name anything, you may be sure, for they were in a hurry to get to the gold; but in 1863 Viscount Milton and Dr. Cheadle went across here and wrote a book about it which is very useful even yet. They named a lot of mountains. I don’t know who named that wonderful peak Mount Robson, but it was named after Premier Robson of British Columbia in 1865.
“Nobody knows much about this country, for the early travelers did not make many maps or journals. But about 1872 they began to explore this country with a view to railway explorations, and from that time on it has been better known and more visited, although really very few persons have ever been right where we are sitting now.”