Mr. Ross entered while we were at our early breakfast. The couriers he had sent to the Columbia had been detained by forest fires, but they had at last returned with letters from Major Rogers, at the mouth of the Kicking-Horse River. I learned that the journey to Kamloops through the mountains was not held to be impracticable, but undoubtedly it was marked by difficulties. There was a road which waggons could travel for some distance up the valley of the Bow River. Where the road ceased there was a rough horse-trail as far as the exploring parties had penetrated from the east, some five miles beyond the summit of the Selkirk Range. From that point the ground was perfectly unbroken. We were told that for the remainder of the distance the only way open to us was to go on foot; that the walking, at the least calculation, would occupy ten or twelve days; and that it required about ten Indians to carry supplies. The question of supplies had specially to be considered, as there was no possibility of obtaining them by the way. The country was totally uninhabited. We could depend on no resource but our own commissariat, which should be sufficiently ample to avoid all risk of the chance of starvation. Our means of conveyance would not admit of transportation to the full extent of our requirements for the whole distance to Kamloops. Before leaving Winnipeg this contingency had been anticipated, and definite arrangements, which we thought could scarcely fail, had been made with the Hudson’s Bay Company for supplies, to be sent easterly from Kamloops to the Columbia, opposite Eagle Pass. It was my calculation that we would find our stores without fail at that point on the 10th September. We therefore resolved to attempt to cross the mountains on the trail across the Selkirk Range as it had been described. To place the question of supplies beyond a peradventure, I sent a special telegram to the Chief Commissioner of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which I hoped would make error impossible.[E] It was the morning of the 23rd August. We all wrote some last lines home, and telegraphed some last words to our friends in the east, informing them that we were leaving Calgary to follow the mountain route. Previous to starting I called at the Hudson’s Bay Company’s store to learn all that was there known about the country before us, and to see the establishment itself. We got off about eleven, meeting an unwelcome delay of an hour in crossing Bow River. The ferry was being transferred to a better site, and we had to wait until the final arrangements for stretching the wire rope were completed. Finally it is stretched and secured, and we move onwards.