yo PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



magnificent portiou of the whole C.P.R., where the train in three quarters of an 

 hour running time with a fall of 27 per cent, loses all the height it had gained fi-om 

 the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Slowly it glides down the steep slope, incessant 

 is the grinding of the brakes. Only with difficulty has room been found for the 

 road on the steep rocky walls which descend to the foaming and rushing Kicking 

 Horse River. It pierces through them in tunnels and leaps from one side to the 

 other on lofty bridges. The deeper it descends, the higher rise the mountains \ 

 at Field our next stop we have the beautifully formed pyramid of Mount Stephen 

 (3,188 m.) rising almost 2,000 meters close above us. 



The stratification of these highest portions of the Canadian Rockies is 

 comparatively simple. Enormous Cambrian strata appear to lie almost as 

 they were deposited. In consequence they recall to some extent the Ampezzaner 

 Dolomites, the names often indicating their regular architectui-al structure : 

 thus we have a Castle and a Cathedral mountain. They offer difficult prob- 

 lems to the climber ; in the neighborhood of Laggan the first accidents of 

 Canadian mountaineering have happened. Further west near the Columbia 

 river the mountains become more irregular in their build. The fall of the 

 strata becomes more precipitous and is almost- exclusively eastern. At the same 

 time Silurian deposits appear, hemmed in by the Cambrian ones. According 

 to this the structure of the Rockies taken as a whole is about as follows : 

 Younger palaeozoic strata, Devono-carboniferous in the east and Silurian in the 

 west, dip on both sides towards the middle of the mountains. There we find 

 the oldest palaeozoic rocks prevailing in more or less irregularly disposed undula- 

 tions. But this holds good only for the Rocky mountains in Canada. When I 

 crossed them afterwards on the Great Northern Railway, south of the Canadian 

 boundary, I found only strata inclining to the east. The whole zone of the chain 

 as at Banff is lacking at the Maria Pass. In the valley of the Kicking Horse River 

 we descend from Field at first rather rapidly, and from the many windings of the 

 road we enjoy various splendid views of the proud glacier bearing peaks of the 

 Rockies. Then we enter a narrow gorge whose walls rise threateningly several 

 hundred meters above us. The road winds so that we can occasionally see the 

 whole train from our car window. Nowhere any inhabited places, the stations 

 are only watchmen's houses. Then all at once another picture. We come out of 

 the narrow gorge into the valley of the Columbia river, lying only 770 meters 

 above sea level. It is broad and wide, along its sloj^es stretch broad terraces like 

 the Mittelgebirge in the valleys of the Inn and the Adige, a heavy forest covers its 

 floor which the river traverses in many windings. One has the impression of hav- 

 ing reached an important boundary line in the mountains. As a matter of fact 

 one has on the east the Rockies formed exclusively of palaeozoic strata, and on the 

 west rise the various chains which Dawson calls the Gold Ranges. They conceal 

 the rich gold deposits of southern British Columbia, especially the Kootenay 

 district, only recently opened up, in which the town of Rossland arose in the 

 shortest time on record, as Avell as the older Cariboo district. Also the Klondyke 

 of the north, which was opened up last summer and electrified all America, seems 

 to belong to this zone. There appear in it, alongside very old sediments perhaps 

 belonging to a pre-Cambrian age, also archaean rocks. Our line of demarcation 

 may be followed morphologically for a long distance. From Donald, where we 

 are first convinced of its significance, we can follow it on the map for 700 kilo- 

 meters in a northwest direction, as a great longitudinal valley to which the Upper 

 Fraser and the Peace Riyer belong, and in a southeast direction to the Upper 

 Kootenay and then into the valley of the Flat Head River for another 600 kilo- 

 meters at least. This is a magnificent parallel to the great valley-gorge which 

 separates the northern Alps from the Central Alps, and the resemblance holds good 

 also as to scenery. 



If the journey through the Rockies reminded me often of the Alps, now of the 

 Alps in North Tyrol, now of the Kofel of the Dolomites, the rest of the journey 

 through the first of the Gold Ranges, the Selkirks, reminded me often of the 

 Brenner road. The railway passes through a narrow defile, such as seems to 

 characterize the openings of the tributary valleys of the Columbia River, into the 

 Beaver valley. Then it runs along the slope of the now widening valley, strikes 

 into a neighbouring ravine and after an ascent of 540 meters, distributed over thirty- 



