ON BIRD MOUNTAIN 67 



Sheep Mountain, we saw, about thirty miles away, a 

 long line of lofty snow-clad peaks, much higher than 

 any of the intervening summits. They marked the crest 

 of the great Continental Divide, and the boundary be- 

 tween British Columbia and Alberta. Our distance from 

 the United States boundary was about seventy miles. 

 South-eastward, and very near at hand, rose the sharp 

 cone of Phillips Peak, the culmination and hub of every- 

 thing in the region round about. From its precipitous 

 sides spring at least five small mountain-chains, which 

 radiate like the spokes of a wheel. Mr. Phillips's fine 

 photograph of his namesake renders a feeble word- 

 description quite unnecessary. 



Although the northern and western faces of the upper 

 five hundred feet of the peak are so appallingly steep 

 that only a mountain goat could scale them, we found 

 later on that the southern face is apparently accessible. 

 I longed to stand on that summit, and with two months 

 in the mountains I would gladly have made the attempt 

 to do so; but as matters stood, the many interesting things 

 zoological that lay before us quite crowded out the idea 

 of a well-considered attempt to make the climb during 

 that trip. On his next visit Mr. Phillips will undoubt- 

 edly write his name on the top of his peak. 



The moral uplift, and the corresponding ego depres- 

 sion, of such a mountain-cyclorama as circles around the 

 summit of Bird Mountain cannot adequately be por- 

 trayed by me in words. I never before felt quite so 

 puny or so wholly insignificant as then. I have' seen 

 other mountains in plenty, but nowhere else have I felt 



