History of the Northern Interior
of British Columbia.

INTRODUCTION.
The Country and Its Aborigines.

EW CALEDONIA, the country to which we wish
N to introduce the kind reader, was the nucleus out
of which the present province of British Columbia
was evolved. Authors disagree as to its boundaries. Thus,
while Alexander Begg, to whom we owe a “ History of the
North-West,” assigns to that district rather too modest
dimensions when he states" that it extended only from 52°
to 55° latitude north—thereby excluding part of the Chil-
cotin region—his namesake, Alexander Begg, the author
of the latest “ History of British Columbia,” sins the other
way by stretching its southern limits as far as Colville, in
the present State of Washington. Although it included at
one time Kamloops and the adjoining territory, it might
suffice for the ethnographer to call it simply the region
peopled by the Western Déné Indians; but as this state-
ment would not probably add much to the knowledge of
most readers, we will describe it as that immense tract of
land lying between the Coast Range and the Rocky Moun-
tains, from 51°30’ to 57° of latitude north.
This region is mostly mountainous, especially in the

I. ** History of the North-West,” p. 158.
2. ** History of British Columbia,” p. 12.
A I