[220] The Hot Springs—one of a temperature of 120°, the other of 90° Fahrenheit—issue from natural basins of their own formation, on the side of a cliff just below Upper Columbia Lake.—Ed.
[221] Richard Chandler (1738-1810), an English antiquary, undertook an exploring expedition to Asia Minor and Greece (1765) under the auspices of the English Dilettanti Society. The results were published as Travels in Asia Minor (London, 1775), both sufficiently popular to run through several editions. The author particularly mentions the famous Hot Springs of the ancient Hierapolis, whose site is now known as Kambuk Kalessi, on the Mæander River in Phrygia, and describes their incrustations and stalactites. For the famous geographer Conrad Malte-Brun see our volume xviii, p. 345, note 136.—Ed.
[222] The portage from Kootenai River (Arcs-à-plats) to Upper Columbia Lake is but a mile and a half in length, over a level trail of rich black soil now known as Kootenai Flat. There is little doubt that the upper Columbia once drained this way into the Kootenai River, which now, however, is slightly higher than the source of the Columbia. A canal has been projected across the portage, but it is not yet completed.—Ed.
[223] For the Shushwap see our volume vii, p. 159, note 52.—Ed.
[224] Vermillion River, one of the headstreams of the Kootenai, rises in the great group of the Rockies, near the foot of Mount Biddle, west of Laggan, on the Canadian Pacific Railway, and flows southeasterly until uniting with the Beaverfoot to form the Kootenai. See “Sketch map of the Canadian Rocky Mountains” in James Outram, In the Heart of the Canadian Rockies (New York, 1905).—Ed.
[225] De Smet is not sufficiently precise in his topography to make it certain by which pass he crossed the Rocky Mountain divide. Probably it was that over which Sir George Simpson made his way to the westward in 1841, now known as Simpson Pass (elevation 6,884 feet). It comes out in the neighborhood of Banff on the Canadian Pacific Railway, in the valley of Bow River, a tributary of the South Saskatchewan. See Simpson, Narrative, i, pp. 118-121.—Ed.
[226] The Saskatchewan, with its two great branches, North and South, drains a large portion of the vast plain lying between the Rocky Mountains and the lake region of Manitoba, and enters Lake Winnipeg in latitude 53° 10′, longitude 99° 20′ west. Nelson River enters Hudson Bay near the fifty-seventh parallel of north latitude.—Ed.
[227] Bow River (des Arcs) is the northern branch of the South Saskatchewan. It rises in the Rocky Mountains above Laggan, flowing east and southeast until its junction with Belly River near longitude 111° 30′; these two then form the great South Saskatchewan. The name Rivière des Arcs is thought to have been given from its course, as it was first applied to the entire South Saskatchewan which takes a crescent course. More probably it arose from its frequent curves or “ox-bows,” especially in the upper reaches, above Banff. The earliest explorers of this stream were the French, who under Lieutenant de Niverville, sent out by Legardeur de St. Pierre (1752), erected Fort La Jonquière not far from the modern town of Calgary. David Thompson explored Bow River valley for the North West Company in 1800. The upper Bow is now the route of the Canadian Pacific Railway.—Ed.
[228] The Blackfeet are noted in our volume v, p. 225, note 120, and described in more detail by Maximilian in his Travels, our volume xxiii, pp. 95-122. They range into the northern part of Montana in the United States, but their usual habitat is the great plain of the Saskatchewan in the provinces of Alberta and Assiniboia.—Ed.
[229] For the Assiniboin see our volume ii, p. 168, note 75. The Assiniboin were wandering Indians grouped into many bands under separate chiefs. Early in the nineteenth century those of the woods and foothills of the Rockies became differentiated from the Assiniboin of the Plains, and were usually denominated Stoney Indians. These latter were in two bands, the Thickwood and Mountain Stoney, with dialects differing considerably from the Assiniboin of the Plains. Their characteristics were also different, they being more peaceable and inoffensive than their Eastern relatives. They were very poor, nevertheless were good hunters and energetic workers, many of them acting as guides especially in the explorations connected with the Canadian Pacific Railway surveys. First visited by Wesleyan missionaries as early as 1840, they now are largely members of that denomination. A band of about six hundred live on a reservation on Bow River near Morley, forty miles west of Calgary, not far from the region in which they were encountered by De Smet.—Ed.