ountains 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 Tete
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 h