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THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



TAKAKKAW FALLS. 

 A View from the Lookout. 



But if you will come with me, I will 

 show you yet fairer scenes. We leave 

 the finely equipped Mount Stephen 

 House at Field, and take the well-kept 

 wagon road around the foot of Mount 

 Burgess. Seven miles of splendid road 

 lying between columns of lodge-pole 

 pines, flaunting their green tops against 

 a bright blue sky ! Oh where are skies 

 so blue or where is sunlight so daz- 

 zling as in these fair highlands? Forty 

 two hundred feet above sea-level our 

 map tells us ! Only forty two hundred 

 feet below heaven we feel ! 



Ahead the snow peaks, in brilliant 

 color contrast to the dark green pines, 

 thrust themselves into the sky and ^we 

 look behind us only to find the scene 

 duplicated. "Pines, pines and the 

 shadows of pines as far as the eye can 

 see," and we still follow the mountain 

 road. Here it twists and turns and we 

 come abruptly to a swift-flowing river. 

 We bend to drink and find it icy cold, 

 the overflow from a great snow-fed 

 lake. Another mile and we come upon 

 Emerald Lake, an irridescent, scintil- 

 lating expanse of water, mirroring four 

 great snow peaks that rise from its 

 depths. Here at our right is Mount 

 Burgess, graceful, ethereal, in every 

 lineament, with a tiny chalet nestled at 

 its base, the one touch of man in all 

 this luxury of wildness. At the head 

 of the lake is coffin-shaped Wapta, the 

 home of the mountain goat and the 

 grave of any one less sure footed but 

 daring enough to try its almost impas- 

 sible cliffs. Wapta, the River moun- 

 tain, the Stonies named it and to its 

 perpetual snows the Yoho and the 

 Emerald Rivers owe a mighty debt. 

 No wonder the Indians deified the 

 mountains and the Sun Wapta, the 

 great whirl-pool of the Yoho, which 

 gave them leave to angle in its finny 

 depths. What a songful, tuneful land. 

 and only the white man has dared to 

 give these abodes of mountain nymphs 

 the harsh sounding titles of civilized 

 men, so ill befitting them. Here on the 

 other side of the Yoho portal is Mount 

 Michael looking off into the white 

 north to the region of great glaciers, 

 and here at our left, Emerald Peak, a 

 gray-green pyramid of granite, reflect- 



