WINNIPEG TO NELSON. 7 



The mountain girdle is massive, its continuity 

 unbroken ; its features are devoid of softness, of 

 allurement, of winning charm. I do not mean that 

 these Kootenay Mountains and this Kootenay Lake 

 lack attraction. I mean that it is to severe and austere 

 moods of the imagination that they appeal, rather 

 than to soft and tender sensibilities. The poetic 

 eflfect is produced; but it is an effect that is sym- 

 pathetic to the mind of a Crabbe rather than to the 

 mind of a Longfellow, typical of a Browning rather 

 than of a Tennyson. 



The boat by which we travelled from Kootenay 

 Landing, at the south end of Kootenay Lake, to 

 Nelson, near the western extremity of the west arm 

 of the same lake, was a stern-wheeler, shaped like the 

 boats which ply up and down the Mississippi. The 

 " boat " proper is flat-bottomed and very shallow. 

 Above it are constructed three or four oblong, round- 

 ended stories, to contain the general cargo, the 

 passengers' dining-saloon and other apartments, the 

 sleeping berths, and the skipper's steering-box or 

 outlook. These boats, at all events on the inland 

 waters of British Columbia, draw only a very few feet 

 of water at the bow. This is to allow them to push 

 their noses on to the sandy shore when called upon to 

 land or take on board passengers or cargo. The 

 country is not yet old enough to afford landing-stages 

 at every stopping-place. Sometimes, indeed, a 

 landing-place is marked by only a single, solitary 

 house; often by not more than two or three houses at 

 the most. 



And how small, how toy-like, a single house looks 

 when clinging in isolated sovereignty to the foot of 



