The Mountaineer 9) 
A NEW MOUNTAIN COUNTRY. 
YpwarRD W. HARNDEN. 
The editor of the “Mountaineer” asks me for an account of 
the doings of the Appalachians this past season. I assume, 
modestly, that she refers to the doings of Mr. Gleason and 
myself—in which, until the last moment, Mr. Emerson hoped 
to join. We had talked of climbs in old Mexico or southwest- 
ern Colorado, revisiting the Grand Canyon, ete., and at the last 
moment, like Dooley’s “Happy and riochous flea,” we jumped 
without preparation or ceremony to the headwaters of the 
Columbia, in western Canada. Gleason had a_ little prior 
knowledge of the region, but I had listened cynically to his 
enthusiastic boosting. I return, however, ready to bore the 
Mountaineers and others, myself. So listen to the siren song 
of a new, beautiful, unexplored mountain country, almost at 
your doors, with the finest peaks in western Canada, most of 
them still unclimbed. ‘Dost like the picture?” 
Leaving the main line of the Canadian Pacific at Golden, 
we boarded a flat, light-draft stern-wheel Columbia River boat 
for Athelmer, about ninety miles south and at the head of 
navigation. Much is truly said and written about the beauty 
of the Columbia and its superiority to the Hudson and Rhine 
by people who simply know the river up to The Dalles in Ore- 
gon. Its real, transcendent beauty is near its headwaters. 
From Golden to Athelmer majestic mountains line the banks— 
to the west the Selkirks, to the east the Rockies; and _ the 
sinuous course of the stream—while it sometimes causes the 
stranding of the steamer on a bar or projecting point from 
which it has to be laboriously poled—offers marvelous shifting 
vistas into the unexplored and more highly mountainous and 
elaciered region a little back from the river. You can travel 
by auto or team on the road that threads together the few 
small, scattered hamlets at which the boat occasionally stops 
to unload a plug of tobacco or something equally important ; 
and within a few years, if present plans are carried out, the 
