IN THE VALLEY OF ELK RIVER n 



much like a flying dragon, carved in stone, but little like 

 an owl. 



At Fernie any person (with money) can buy almost 

 anything in the outfit line, from a trout-hook to an auto- 

 mobile. The hotels are excellent, and the men of our 

 kind are courteous and hospitable. There are goats on the 

 mountains within ten miles of the town, available for 

 those who have no time to go farther. 



We took an east-bound train, ran on north up the 

 Elk River about fourteen miles, then left the Elk Valley 

 and turned abruptly eastward. After four miles more, 

 up Michel Creek, through a timbered valley as level 

 as a dancing-floor and not much wider, we reached the 

 town of Michel, our last stop by rail. Michel is a 

 French name, and in conformity with the one invari- 

 able rule in French pronunciation never pronounce a 

 French word as it is spelled, it is pronounced Me-shell'. 

 The town is a mile and a quarter long by five hundred 

 feet wide; and along the sides, no suburbs need apply, 

 because there is no room for them. Immediately beyond 

 the outermost houses the mountains rise up and up, steep 

 as a house-roof, and very high. To-day the bare slide- 

 ways that already lead down the northern slope give 

 grim warning of what can happen hereafter. The town 

 is strung along the bottom of a V-shaped trough in the 

 mountains, and every spring we will dread to hear of 

 its partial burial under a million tons of snow, ice, tree- 

 trunks and slide-rock. It reminds one of the fatalistic 

 Italian peasant villages on the slopes of Vesuvius. 



All Michel is painted Indian-red. The Crow's Nest 



