FUR TRADE IN COLUMBIA BASIN PRIOR TO 1811 243
nected with the history of the Columbia River; the record of his career written with his own hand is not only of great scientific value, but an inspiration to any earnest student of the history of this Pacific Northwest. He has been described as the greatest land geographer the English race has ever pro- duced.
The Columbia River is estimated to be 1,300 miles in length and Kettle Falls, in the State of Washington, about forty miles below the Canadian boundary, marks very closely the half-way point on the river. It may be said rather broadly, then, that one-half of the river is in British Columbia and one-half in the United States, speaking of the main river and not of its branches. The statesmen who decided the Oregon boundary question did not have this equal division in mind, but nature has furnished this suggestion of their fairness.
As if to purposely render our history romantic the first trading post upon any of the waters of the Columbia River, including its branches, was built almost at the very source of the main river, near the outlet of the chain of small lakes which resolve themselves into the river. Tobey Creek, flowing east- ward from the glaciers of Mt. Nelson, of the Selkirk Range, enters the Columbia River from the west about one mile below the outlet of Lake Windermere, in the political division of British Columbia known as the East Kootenay District. Upon an open gravelly point overlooking Tobey Creek and "a long half mile" (quoting from David Thompson's original survey notes) from the Columbia stood the stockade and build- ings marking the beginning of commerce in the interior of "Old Oregon." The exact site of this house has recently be- come known by the unearthing of the old chimneys of the buildings, as well as by Indian tradition. An earlier location on Canterbury Point, Lake Windermere, at first selected was abandoned before any buildings were completed, because of exposure in procuring water for domestic use (compare with Lyman's History of the Columbia River, Putnam's Sons, 1911, page 282). "Kootenae House" was the name given to this trading post, and it is not to be confounded with the Fort
