104 Bird-Nesting 



innumerable sparkling cascades of icy water come leaping 

 down. 



Descending westerly" from the summit we reach in a few 

 minutes the Glacier House, a delightful hotel situated almost 

 in the face of the great glacier and at the foot of the grandest 

 of all the peaks of the Selkirks — Sir Donald — an acute pyra- 

 mid of naked rock shooting up nearly eight thousand feet 

 above us. 



Near by is Asulkan Mountain, Asulkan meaning in the In- 

 dian tongue " the home of the white goat." Securing a guide 

 here, you can climb the mountains with almost a certain chance 

 of getting goat, big horned sheep and grizzly, brown and black 

 bears. A Toronto artist, three years ago was sketching on this 

 mountain, and while engaged in his work he glanced in front 

 of him, when to his horror he saw a tremendous grizzly bear 

 coming straight towards him along the mountain side, not 

 more than a quarter of a mile off. He at once sprang to his 

 feet, leaving his picture, easel and colours, and ran as fast as he 

 could down to the Glacier House, two miles off, which he 

 reached as pale as a sheet and panting for breath, it was some 

 minutes before he could gasp out " he had seen a grizzly." 

 An hour afterwards he was persuaded to return with three 

 others who took rifles along with them and they went back to 

 the place where he had left his picture, on arriving there the 

 grizzly was nowhere to be seen, but there lay the easel broken 

 into itiatchwood and the picture also destroyed, showing that 

 the grizzly had trampled upon them. 



Resuming our journey, we plunge again for hours through 

 precipitous gorges, deep and dark and again across the Colum- 

 bia river. The river is wider and deeper here, and navigated 

 by steamboats southward for nearly two hundred miles. At 

 Revelstoke, a mining district, are large works for smelting 

 silver ore. 



We are now confronted by the Gold Range, another grand, 

 snow-clad series of mountains. The deep and narrow pass 

 through this range takes us for forty miles or more between 

 parallel lines of almost vertical cliffs, when a sudden flash of 



