152 CAMP-FIRES IN THE CANADIAN ROCKIES 



erly. By walking rapidly I would soon be so far away 

 that it would be too much of a task to return for just 

 one or two old goats. 



My little gulch came down very steeply, in a course 

 that was almost due south. In each direction from its 

 bed there stretched upward, at the comfortable angle of 

 about thirty degrees, a wide, smooth sweep of ridge-side 

 that suggested Dream Mountains. The hand of Nature 

 had smoothed those slopes, and planted them, to afford a 

 soothing and restful contrast with all the mountains sur- 

 rounding them. Think of the horrible rock-pile, a mile 

 farther north, which Charlie and I climbed two days 

 previously, in False Notch. Here there were no stretches 

 of grinning slide-rock, no rock walls, no timber, either 

 down or green, no neck-breakers of any kind. All was 

 balmy peace. To save the face of the slopes from hav- 

 ing an air of desolation, each was planted very evenly 

 with stunted spruces and junipers, set eight feet apart. 

 They grew with wonderful regularity, and so nicely scat- 

 tered that walking was not at all impeded by them. 



I chose the slope of the western hill, because the sun 

 shone full upon it, and went up on a line about a hun- 

 dred feet above the bottom of the little naked gulch. 

 The opposite mountain side was so queer, and so beauti- 

 ful in the nursery-like regularity of its planting, that I 

 frequently sat down to rest and enjoy the sight of it. It 

 looked for all the world like an immense relief-map, 

 such as I have made before now, set with toy evergreens, 

 and tilted up on edge to enable one to look down upon 

 it. I never before saw so odd a picture of mountain 



