THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 



train, as the procession is constantly changing. They 

 do not grow on you as a fixture at close quarters. 

 When you have admired and had your fill of the savage 

 rock-work above the high timber line for two or three 

 days, you will probably have had enough. Practically 

 everything else, hill, valley, mountain-side, is smothered 

 in a monotonous mantle of sombre evergreen hung 

 upon miles and miles of stiff, straight poles. To me 

 this type of woodland, above all in so aggressive and 

 all-pervading a form, is simply repellent. 



Just look carefully, dear reader, at any of those 

 magnificent, large scale photographs of the Rockies, 

 which are exhibited in the windows of steamship com- 

 panies and elsewhere in every city. Examine them 

 closely and you will see what I mean. Beyond the 

 waters to which their frame of pinewood give a 

 singular monotony, there are only two ingredients, 

 bare rock and evergreen foliage, unless after a fall 

 of snow. There is not a shadow of human interest, 

 past or present, attaching to this great waste of rock 

 and pine, and you soon tire of it, unless, maybe, you 

 are after game or unsophisticated trout. For this 

 very reason the photographs of these scenes are extra- 

 ordinarily realistic even to those who know them well. 

 There is nothing subtle and comparatively little colour 

 in the hard originals to conceal. To visitors from the 

 prairies or Eastern Canada who have never seen any 

 other mountains and live themselves in a new country, 

 and do not know what you and I, dear reader, denizens 

 of an ancient land, mean by ' atmosphere,' these scenes 

 are of course very wonderful and satisfying no doubt 

 in every respect. But the language of eulogy, in 



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