UP to the time when Jack Danvers, with his two friends, penetrated to the head of the St. Mary’s River and Swift Current, nothing was known of the upper courses of either stream. Men who had been longest in the country had never ascended beyond the Upper St. Mary’s Lake—from its shape called Bow Lake in early times—nor beyond the large lake on Swift Current, which receives the water from the river’s three forks.

What lay beyond these lakes was still unknown. Ancient but long-disused trails ran up the rivers; sometimes so dim, so overgrown with grass and weeds, and so blocked by fallen timber, that it was hard to say whether they were Indian hunting trails, or merely paths worn by the buffalo and the elk, which in bygone days had made their homes among the rocky fastnesses at the heads of these streams. What had made these trails, who had traveled them, was unknown.

There is a wonderful fascination in penetrating a new country, in placing one’s foot where perhaps the foot of civilized man never trod before.

A century ago there were many such places in the United States, fifty years ago there were still not a few, twenty-five years ago there were hardly any, and it is no wonder that Hugh and Jack wished to explore these valleys and the mountains that walled them in.

Within a few years after the discoveries made by Hugh and Jack at the heads of these rivers, other parties, hearing of what they had found, followed the same trails. Soon it became not unusual for one or two hunting parties to camp each year among these mountains. The fame of their beauty and grandeur spread from one person to another and many people visited them.

Among these at length came a party of engineers sent out by the Government to consider the question of diverting the waters of the St. Mary’s River from their natural course to join the Saskatchewan, into a new channel southward across Milk River Ridge, and by a great irrigation project thus to make fertile a vast area of arid country in Northern Montana.

Meanwhile, the Government had purchased from the Blackfoot Indians these rough mountains in which many miners professed to believe great mineral wealth was hidden. The country was thoroughly prospected for precious metals, for copper, and finally, for oil, but nothing was discovered that promised to pay for the working, and the mines and claims were abandoned.

Finally, in the month of February, 1908, Senator Thomas H. Carter, of Montana, introduced in the United States Senate a bill establishing the Glacier National Park, to include territory visited and seen by Hugh and Jack on both slopes of the Rocky Mountains and to-day lying between the International boundary and the Great Northern Railroad on the north and south, and the Blackfoot reservation and one of the forks of the Flat Head River on the east and west.

If the measure shall become law, this most beautiful country, with its wonderful glaciers, its rushing rivers, its broad forests and its abundant game supply, may remain forever as a pleasure resort and playground for the benefit of the whole people of the United States. Valuable as it will be in this respect, its economic worth to the United States will be not less great. It will be a mighty reservoir, from which for ages an unfailing supply of water may be drawn to give drink to those thirsty plains, which need only moisture to yield a generous return to the farmer.