6 FRUIT RANCHING. 



fare. It was here that a large band of Crow Indians 

 were surprised and massacred by a larger force of 

 their hereditary enemies, the Blackfeet. 



But though we did not obtain good views of the 

 Rocky Mountains proper, we did see something of 

 the Purcell and Selkirk Ranges, two of the flanking 

 ranges on the west side of the Rockies. At that time, 

 the end of March, the mountains were still draped in 

 snow, or, more strictly speaking, in snow and ice, for 

 the summits of both these ranges are, as a rule, sharp 

 cut and rugged, even in places serrated — or notched 

 like a saw. Glaciers form on them, and remain per- 

 manently, although as a rule the loftier summits 

 during the summer shake off their snowy hoods and 

 bare their brows to the sparkling airs of British 

 Columbia. 



These mountains we saw from Lake Kootenay, 

 which they fence in on east and west. It was on 

 this lake that we travelled the last fifty or sixty miles 

 of our journey before reaching Nelson. It is a long, 

 narrow sheet of water, stretching north and south for 

 eighty miles by some three to five miles wide, and is 

 set deep in a framework of rocky mountains. I could 

 readily have fancied myself transported again to one 

 of the Norwegians fjords. There is in the two 

 regions the same aspect of sternness and adamantine 

 immovability, the same comparative absence of the 

 subduing hand of man, the same sombre draping of 

 dark pine woods, the same sullen sleep of the 

 unfathomable waters at their feet. The general 

 impression, not exactly one of magnificence, owing 

 to the absence of towering altitude in the mountain 

 peaks, is yet that of sublimity, of grandeur, of power. 



