CANAL FLATS TO BEAVERMOUTH
Chester's instructions respecting the two new pictures he wanted us to
work on came through to Roos the day following our return to Windermere.
One of these was to be confined entirely to the Big Bend voyage.
Essaying again my role of "gentleman-cum-sportsman," I was to get off
the train at Beavermouth, meet my boatman, launch the boat and start off
down the river. The various things seen and done _en voyage_ were to
make up the picture.
In the other picture I was to play the part of a young rancher who was
farming his hard-won clearing on the banks of the Columbia near its
source. With the last of his crops in, he is assailed one day with a
great longing to see the ocean. Suddenly it occurs to him that the river
flowing right by his door runs all the way to the sea, and the sight of
a prospector friend, about to push off with a sack of samples for the
smelter many hundreds of miles below, suggests a means of making the
journey. And so the two of them start off down the Columbia. What
happened to them on their way was to be told in the picture. The
introductory scenes of this picture were to be made somewhere in the
vicinity of Windermere, but the thread of the story was to be picked up
below the Arrow Lakes after the Big Bend voyage was over.
Hunting "location" and rainy weather kept us four or five days in
Windermere and vicinity, giving an opportunity we otherwise would have
missed to meet and become acquainted with the always kindly and
hospitable and often highly distinguished people of this beautiful and
interesting community. From the time of David Thompson, the great
astronomer and explorer of the Northwest Company who wintered there in
1810, down to the present Windermere seems always to have attracted the
right sort of people. The predominant class is what one might call the
gentleman-farmer, with the stress perhaps on "gentleman." I mean to say,
that is, that while a number of them have failed of outstanding
achievement as farmers, there was none that I met who would not have
qualified as a gentleman, and in the very best sense of the word.
Sportsmen and lovers of the out-of-doors, there was this fine bond of
fellowship between all of them. Nowhere have I encountered a fresher,
more wholesome social atmosphere than that of this fine community of the
upper Columbia.
That genial and big-hearted old Scot, Randolph Bruce, I recall with
especial affection, as must every one of the many who has known the
hospitality of his great log lodge on a bay of the lake below Invermere.
An Edinburgh engineer, Bruce was one of the builders of the Canadian
Pacific, and as such an associate and intimate of Van Horne,
O'Shaughnessy and the rest of those sturdy pioneers who pushed to
accomplishment the most notable piece of railway construction the world
has ever known. In love with the West by the time the railway was
finished, he built him a home in the most beautiful spot he knew--such
a spot as few even among the Scottish lochs could rival--and associated
himself with various projects for the advancement of the country. At the
present time he is the owner of the Paradise mine, one of the richest
silver-lead properties in British Columbia, and the head of an
enterprise which purposes to bring the Windermere region to its own
among the grandest of the playgrounds of North America.
We made the preliminary scenes for the "farmer" picture at a gem of a
little mountain ranch in a clearing to the west of Lake Windermere.
Shooting through one of his favourite "sylvan frames," Roos picked me up
violently shocking hay at the end of a long narrow field which the
labour of a young Scotch immigrant had reclaimed from the encompassing
forest. (As a matter of fact the hay was already in shocks when we
arrived, and I had to unshock a few shocks so as to shock them up again
before the camera and thus give the impression that this was the last of
my season's crop.) Then I threw up a couple of shocks for him set up at
closer range, with more attention to "technique." (This latter came easy
for me, as I had been pitching hay for a fortnight on my California
ranch earlier in the summer.) Finally I stopped work, leaned on my fork
and gazed into the distance with visioning eyes. (I was supposed to be
thinking of the sea, Roos explained, and in the finished picture there
would be a "cut-in" of breakers at this point.) Then I registered
"impatience" and "restlessness," hardening to "firm resolve." At this
juncture I threw down my fork and strode purposefully out of the right
side of the picture. (The cabin to which I was supposed to be striding
was really on my left, but Roos explained that some sort of a movie
Median law made it imperative always to exit to right.) Then we went
over to make the cabin shots.
[Illustration: OLD HUDSON BAY CART AT BEAVERMOUTH (_above_)]
[Illustration: MY FIRST PUSH-OFF AT THE HEAD OF CANOE NAVIGATION ON THE
COLUMBIA (_below_)]
[Illustration: OPENING SCENE OF THE "FARMER" PICTURE]
[Illustration: OLD STERN WHEELERS AT GOLDEN (_above_)]
[Illustration: A QUIET STRETCH OF THE COLUMBIA NEAR GOLDEN (_below_)]
The owner of the cabin was away at the moment, but his young Scotch
wife--a bonnie bit of a lass who might have been the inspiration for
"Annie Laurie"--was on hand and mightily interested. She asked if I was
Bill Hart, and Roos made the tactical error of guffawing, as though the
idea was absurd. She was a good deal disappointed at that, but still
very ready to help with anything calculated to immortalize her wee home
by emblazoning it on the imperishable celluloid. First I strode into the
cabin, but almost immediately to emerge unfolding a map. Going over to a
convenient stump, I sat down and disposed of a considerable footage of
"intent study." Then we made a close-up of the map--the Pacific
Northwest--with my index finger starting at Windermere and tracing the
course of the Columbia on its long winding way to the sea. That proved
that there was water transit all the way to that previous cut-in of
breakers which my visioning eyes had conjured up just before I threw
down my fork. I stood up and gazed at the nearby river (which was really
Lake Windermere, a mile distant), and presently stiffened to my full
height, registering "discovery." What I was supposed to see was a
prospector tinkering with his boat. As this latter scene could not be
made until we had bought a boat and signed up a "prospector," all that
was left to do here was to shoot me striding away from the cabin on the
way to discuss ways and means with my mythical companion, and then
striding back, getting my roll of blankets and exiting in a final
fade-out. As we had neglected to provide a roll of blankets for this
shot, we had to improvise one from such material as was available. I
forget all that went to make up that fearful and wonderful package; but
it is just as well the precariously-roped bundle didn't resolve into its
component parts until the fade-out was pretty nearly complete.
Roos tried hard to introduce "human interest" and "heart appeal" by
staging a farewell scene with "wife and child," both of which were ready
to hand. I was adamant, however, even when he agreed to compromise by
leaving out the child. He was rather stubborn about it, refusing to
admit the validity of my argument to the effect that a would-be screen
hero who deserted so fair a wife would alienate the sympathies of the
crowd at the outset. Finally it was decided for us. "It's too late noo,"
cooed a wee voice in which I thought I detected both reproach and
relief; "while ye're talkin', yon cooms Jock."
It _was_ too late all right; even Roos was ready to grant that. Jock was
about six-feet-three, and built in proportion. Also a wee bitty dour, I
thought. At least he glowered redly under his bushy brows when he
discovered that I had wrapped up his own and another _nicht-goon_ in my
hastily assembled blanket-roll. If that bothered him, I hate to think
what might have happened had he surprised that farewell scene,
especially as Roos--with his Mack Sennett training and D. W. Griffith
ideals--would have tried to stage it.
Roos was young and inexperienced, and lacking in both finesse and
subtlety. I granted that this wouldn't have cramped his style much in
doing "old home town stuff;" but farther afield it was electric with
dangerous possibilities. Driving back to the hotel I quoted to him what
Kipling's hero in "The Man Who Would Be King" said on the subject,
paraphrasing it slightly so he would understand. "A man has no business
shooting farewell scenes with borrowed brides in foreign parts be he
three times a crowned movie director," was the way I put it.
It was my original intention to start the boating part of my Columbia
trip from Golden, at the head of the Big Bend, the point at which the
calm open reaches of the upper river give way to really swift water. The
decision to make the push-off from Beavermouth, twenty-nine miles
farther down, was come to merely because it was much easier to get the
boat into the water at the latter point. There was little swift-water
boating worthy of the name above Beavermouth. Donald Canyon was about
the only rough water, and even that, I was assured, was not to be
mentioned in the same breath with scores of rapids farther down the
Bend. In the ninety miles between the foot of Lake Windermere and Golden
there were but twenty-five feet of fall, so that the winding river was
hardly more than a series of lagoon-like reaches, with a current of from
one to four miles an hour. Between Columbia Lake--practically the head
of the main channel of the river--and Mud Lake, and between the latter
and the head of Lake Windermere, there was a stream of fairly swift
current, but at this time of year not carrying enough water to permit
the passage of even a canoe without much lining and portaging.
From the practical aspect, therefore, I was quite content with the plan
to start my voyage from Beavermouth. For the sake of sentiment, however,
I _did_ want to make some kind of a push-off from the very highest point
that offered sufficient water to float a boat at the end of September.
This, I was assured in Invermere, would be Canal Flats, just above the
head of Columbia Lake and immediately below the abandoned locks which at
one time made navigation possible between the Kootenay and the Columbia.
Although these crude log-built locks have never been restored since they
were damaged by a great freshet in the nineties, and although the
traffic they passed in the few years of their operation was almost
negligible, it may be of interest to give a brief description of the
remarkable terrain that made their construction possible by the simplest
of engineering work, and to tell how the removal of a few shovelfuls of
earth effected the practical insulation of the whole great range of the
Selkirks.
As a consequence of recent geological study, it has been definitely
established that the divide between the Columbia and Kootenay rivers,
now at Canal Flats, was originally a hundred and fifty miles farther
north, or approximately where Donald Canyon occurs. That is to say, a
great wall of rock at the latter point backed up a long, narrow lake
between the Rockies on the east and the Selkirks on the west. This lake,
unable to find outlet to the north, had risen until its waters were
sufficiently above the lower southern barriers to give it drainage in
that direction. At that time it was doubtless the main source of the
Kootenay River, and its waters did not reach the Columbia until after a
long and devious southerly course into what is now Montana, thence
northward into Kootenay Lake, and finally, by a dizzy westerly plunge,
into a much-extended Arrow Lake. An upheaval which carried away the dyke
at Donald provided a northward drainage for the lake, and the divide was
ultimately established at what is now called Canal Flats. It was a
shifting and precarious division, however, for the Kootenay--which rises
some distance to the northward in the Rockies and is here a sizable
stream--discharged a considerable overflow to the Columbia basin at high
water. It was this latter fact which called attention to the comparative
ease with which navigation could be established between the two rivers
by means of a canal. For an account of how this canal came to be built I
am indebted to E. M. Sandilands, Esq., Mining Recorder for the British
Columbia Government at Wilmer, who has the distinction of being, to use
his own language, "the person who made the Selkirk Mts. an Island by
connecting the Columbia and Kootenay rivers."
Mr. Sandilands, in a recent letter, tells how an ex-big-game hunter by
the name of Baillie-Grohman obtained, in 1886, a concession from the
Provincial Government of British Columbia for 35,000 acres of land along
the Kootenay River. In return for this he was to construct at his own
expense a canal connecting the Columbia and Kootenay. This cut was for
the ostensible purpose of opening up navigation between the two streams,
but as nothing was stipulated in respect of dredging approaches the
obligation of the concessionaire was limited to the construction of the
canal and locks. "For this reason," writes Mr. Sandilands, who was
working on the job at the time, "our 'Grand Canal' was practically
useless. Nevertheless, in 1888, it was opened with due form and pomp,
engineer, contractor and concessionaire paddling up to the lock in a
canoe well laden with the 'good cheer' demanded by such an occasion. I
was driving a team attached to a 'slush-scraper,' and together with a
jovial Irish spirit who rejoiced in the name of Thomas Haggerty, was
ordered by the foreman to scrape out the false dam holding the Kootenay
back from the canal. This we did as long as we dared. Then I was
deputed, with gum-boots and shovel, to dig a hole through what was left
of the false dam, and allow the Kootenay into the canal and the
Columbia. This being done, the fact was wired to the Provincial
Government at Victoria ..., and the promised concession of land was
asked for and granted. I little thought at the time," Mr. Sandilands
concludes, "how distinguished a part I was playing, that I was making
the Selkirk Mountains an 'Island,' a fact which few people realize to
this day."
Later a little dredging was done, so that finally, by dint of much
"capstaning," a shallow-draught stern-wheeler was worked up to and
through the lock and canal, and on down the Kootenay to Jennings,
Montana. It was Captain F. P. Armstrong who performed this remarkable
feat, only to lose the historic little craft later in one of the
treacherous canyons of the Kootenay. His also was the distinction, after
maintaining an intermittent service between the Columbia and Kootenay
for a number of years, of being the captain and owner of the last boat
to make that amazing passage.
We reached Canal Flats at the end of a forty-mile auto-ride from
Invermere. Traces of the old dredged channel were still visible running
up from the head of Columbia Lake and coming to an abrupt end against a
caving wall of logs which must at one time have been a gate of the
inter-river lock. Out of the tangle of maiden hair fern which draped the
rotting logs came a clear trickle of water, seeping through from the
other side of the divide. This was what was popularly called the source
of the Columbia. I could just manage to scoop the river dry with a quick
sweep of my cupped palm.
A hundred yards below the source the old channel opened out into a quiet
currentless pool, and here I found a half-filled Peterboro belonging to
a neighbouring farmer, which I had engaged for the first leg of my
voyage down the Columbia. It leaked rather faster than I could bail, but
even at that it floated as long as there was water to float it. Fifty
yards farther down a broad mudbank blocked the channel all the way
across, and in attempting to drag the old canoe out for the portage, I
pulled it in two amidships. I had made my start from almost
chock-a-block against the source, however. Sentiment was satisfied. I
was now ready for the Bend. Groping my way back to the car through an
almost impenetrable pall of mosquitoes, I rejoined Roos and we returned
to Invermere.
A wire from Blackmore stating that it would still be several days before
his boat was ready for the Bend offered us a chance to make the journey
to Golden by river if we so desired. There was nothing in it on the
boating side, but Roos thought there might be a chance for some
effective scenic shots. I, also, was rather inclined to favour the trip,
for the chance it would give of hardening up my hands and pulling
muscles before tackling the Bend. An unpropitious coincidence in the
matter of an Indian name defeated the plan. Roos and I were trying out
on Lake Windermere a sweet little skiff which Randolph Bruce had kindly
volunteered to let us have for the quiet run down to Golden. "By hard
pulling," I said, "we ought just about to make Spillimacheen at the end
of the first day." "Spill a what?" ejaculated Roos anxiously; "you
didn't say 'machine,' did you?" "Yes; Spillimacheen," I replied. "It's
the name of a river that flows down to the Columbia from the Selkirks."
"Then that settles it for me," he said decisively. "I don't want to
spill my machine. It cost fifteen hundred dollars. I'm not
superstitious; but, just the same, starting out for a place with a name
like that is too much like asking for trouble to suit yours truly." And
so we went down to Golden by train and put in the extra time outfitting
for the Bend.
Golden, superbly situated where the Kicking Horse comes tumbling down to
join the Columbia, is a typical Western mining and lumbering town. Save
for their penchant for dramatizing the perils of the Big Bend, the
people are delightful. It is true that the hospitable spirit of one
Goldenite _did_ get me in rather bad; but perhaps the fault was more
mine than his. Meeting him on the railway platform just as he was about
to leave for Vancouver, he spoke with great enthusiasm of his garden,
and said that he feared some of his fine strawberries might be going to
waste in his absence for lack of some one to eat them. I gulped with
eagerness at that, and then told him bluntly--and truthfully--that I
would willingly steal to get strawberries and cream, provided, of
course, that they couldn't be acquired in some more conventional way. He
hastened to reassure me, saying that it wouldn't be necessary to go
outside the law in this case. "The first chance you get," he said with a
twinkle in his eye, "just slip over and make love to my housekeeper, and
tell her I said to give you your fill of berries and cream, and I have
no doubt she'll provide for you."
If his Vancouver-bound train had not started to pull out just then,
perhaps he would have explained that that accursed "love stuff" formula
was a figure of speech. Or perhaps he felt sure that I would understand
it that way, if not at once, at least when the time came. And I would
have, ordinarily. But my strawberry-and-cream appetite is so
overpowering that, like the lions at feeding time, my finer
psychological instincts are blunted where satiation is in sight. That
was why I blurted out my hospitable friend's directions almost verbatim
when I saw that the door of his home (to which I had rushed at my first
opportunity) had been opened by a female. It was only after I had
spoken that I saw that she was lean, angular, gimlet-eyed, and had
hatred of all malekind indelibly stamped upon her dour visage. She drew
in her breath whistlingly; then controlled herself with an effort. "I
suppose I must give you the berries and cream," she said slowly and
deliberately, the clearly enunciated words falling icily like the drip
from the glacial grottoes at the head of the Columbia; "but the--the
other matter you would find a little difficult."
"Ye-es, ma'am," I quavered shiveringly, "I would. If you'll please send
the strawberries and cream to the hotel I am quite content to have it a
cash transaction."
Considering the way that rapier-thrust punctured me through and through,
I felt that I deserved no little credit for sticking to my guns in the
matter of the strawberries and cream. For the rest, I was floored. The
next time any one tries to send me into the Hesperides after free fruit
I am going to know who is guarding the apples; and I am _not_ going to
approach the delectable garden by the love-path.
I had taken especial pains to warn Roos what he would have to expect
from Golden in the matter of warnings about the Big Bend, but in spite
of all, that garrulous social centre, the town pool-room, did manage to
slip one rather good one over on him before we got away. "How long does
it take to go round the Bend?" he had asked of a circle of trappers and
lumber-jacks who were busily engaged in their favourite winter
indoor-sport of decorating the pool-room stove with a frieze of tobacco
juice. "Figger it fer yerself, sonny," replied a corpulent woodsman
with a bandaged jaw. "If yer gets inter yer boat an' lets it go in that
ten-twent'-thirt' mile current, it's a simpl' problum of 'rithmatick. If
yer ain't dished in a souse-hole, yer _has_ ter make Revelstoke insider
one day. As yer has ter do sum linin' to keep right side up, it's sum
slower. Best time any of us makes it in is two days. But we never rushes
it even like that 'nless we're hurryin' the cor'ner down ter sit on sum
drownded body."
As the whole court had nodded solemn acquiescence to this, and as none
had cracked anything remotely resembling a smile, Roos was considerably
impressed--not to say depressed. (So had I been the first time I heard
that coroner yarn.) Nor did he find great comfort in the hotel
proprietor's really well-meant attempt at reassurance. "Don't let that
story bother you, my boy," the genial McConnell had said; "they _never_
did take the coroner round the Big Bend. Fact is, there _never_ was a
coroner here that had the guts to tackle it!"
We met Blackmore at Beavermouth the afternoon of the twenty-eighth of
September. He reported that his boat had been shipped from Revelstoke by
that morning's way freight, and should arrive the following day. As I
had been unable to engage a boatman in Golden, and as Blackmore had
found only one in Revelstoke to suit him, it was decided to give me an
oar and a pike-pole and make out the best we could without another man.
I had brought provisions for a fortnight with me from Golden, and
Blackmore had tents and canvases. Through the efforts of influential
friends in Golden I had also been able to secure two bottles of prime
Demerara rum. Knowing that I was going to pick up at least one cask of
Scotch on the way, and perhaps two or three, I had not been very keen
about bothering with the rum. But on the assurance that it might well be
two or three days before any whisky was found, and that getting wet in
the Columbia without something to restore the circulation was as good as
suicide, I allowed myself to be persuaded. It was wonderful
stuff--thirty per cent. over-proof; which means that it could be diluted
with four parts of water and still retain enough potency to make an
ordinary man blink if he tried to bolt it. We did find one man--but he
was not ordinary by any means; far from it. I will tell about "Wild
Bill" in the proper place.
There was a wonderful _aurora borealis_ that night--quite the finest
display of the kind I recall ever having seen in either the northern or
southern hemispheres. Blackmore--weather-wise from long
experience--regarded the marvellous display of lambently licking light
streamers with mixed feelings. "Yes, it's a fine show," he said,
following the opalescent glimmer of the fluttering pennants with a
dubious eye; "but I'm afraid we'll have to pay through the nose for it.
It means that in a couple of days more the rain will be streaming down
as fast as those lights are streaming up. Just about the time we get
well into Surprise Rapids there will be about as much water in the air
as in the river. However, it won't matter much," he concluded
philosophically, "for we'll be soaked anyway, whether we're running or
lining, and rain water's ten degrees warmer than river water."