298 Sport and Life. 



and sparkling. The drains of mining camps and sluicing operations 

 on their banks have long turned them into muddy, beautiless 

 waterways, not infrequently reeking with the poisonous stench of 

 putrid animal matter, while huge smelting-work chimneys belch 

 forth noxious fumes. Game and fish, if they have not entirely 

 disappeared, have suffered sore decimation, the one in consequence 

 of the good prices obtainable in the camps, the other by fair and 

 foul persecution, in which the deadly dynamite wreaks wholesale 

 destruction in the deep pools once famous for trout of a size hard 

 to be equalled anywhere else in the world. 



All this, not to forget the books the aforesaid ladies have 

 written, has, it is to be feared, removed for good and all the 

 charm of wildness from a lovely country. There are, however, 

 extensive areas in the Selkirks from which one unsuccessful 

 prospector after another has returned ragged and gaunt after his 

 summer's work high up on the mountain, on the fringe of 

 glaciers. There Nature is to-day much as she was at any 

 time, for the exploration of these incredibly rugged mountains 

 is no child's play. It takes men of great tenacity and great 

 bodily vigour to prospect the Selkirks. In the several weeks of 

 the hardest Alpine work Mr. Green had ever undergone, he was 

 unable to reach a point further than seven miles from his starting 

 point (in a straight line), and to cover a mile and a half through 

 the dense underbrush and over fallen trunks of gigantic size, took 

 his party no less than seven hours. 



The difficulties that obstruct exploration arise from a twofold 

 cause, the creative and the destroying agencies of nature. The 

 forest vegetation is very luxurious ; the trees are large, some 

 gigantic, and they grow" very close together, only too generally 

 with thick underbrush surrounding their base. In the underbrush 

 the treacherous " devil's club " a rankly-growing weed, pleasing 

 to the eye, with its bright green wide-spreading leaves and clusters 

 of red berries, but whose thorns, often very difficult to avoid, create 

 most annoying sores is only too often to be found. The dense 

 foliage overhead makes the ground retain much moisture. 



