ADVANTAGES OF THE LEATHER PASS. .331 



And lastly, a road could be made down tlie valley of 

 tlie Thompson to Kamloops, from whence the Shush- 

 wap, Okanagan, and Kootanie districts — where dig- 

 gings of the richest kind have lately been discovered — 

 and the road on the Eraser, are easily accessible. 

 From The Cache to within eighty miles of Kamloops 

 the only way lies through a succession of narrow 

 gorges, shut in on each side by lofty and inaccessible 

 mountains. The whole of this is obstructed by 

 growing and fallen timber, generally of the largest 

 size ; but the fact of our success in bringing our 

 horses through without any previous track being cut 

 open, proves sufficiently that there are no serious ob- 

 stacles in the way of an engineer. There are no 

 great ascents or descents, and no bluffs of solid rock 

 occur until the last forty miles, where the country is 

 otherwise open and unobstructed. The flooding of 

 the river by the melted snows from the mountains 

 does not interfere with the passage along the valley, 

 for we traversed it at the season when the waters are 

 at the highest. The most serious difficulty to the 

 adoption of a route by Jasper House would be the 

 want of pasturage for cattle. The patches of open 

 are few on the eastern side, and although larger 

 and more numerous within the mountains, on the 

 western side the forest is unbroken for above a 

 hundred miles. 



Of the passes to the south, all, with the exception 

 of the Vermilion Pass, (^) descend abruptly on the west 



(^) See reports of Captain Palliser's expedition, published in the 

 Journal of the Royal Geographical Society for 1860. 



