24 TRANSACTIONS. 1906-7. 



valley, and we were very seldom on the high mountains without 

 seeing them. Goats and bears are also abundant, but must 

 generally be looked for. From the headwaters of this branch 

 of the Skagit to Penticton, a distance of 55 miles the trail runs 

 through ever-varying scenes of beauty, sometimes through the 

 primeval forest, sometimes skirting the edge of a precipice, some- 

 times close to a stream. In many places the road is steep and 

 tiring, but fresh views greet one at every turn, and the botanist 

 visiting that region for the first time will find much to delight 

 and interest him. The Skagit valley is the only known habitat 

 in Canada of Rhododendron Californicum, the very finest of the 

 rhododendrons in my opinion. Growing here in masses to a 

 height of from 8 to 10 feet, its great clusters of bright pink flowers 

 are sometimes as many inches in diameter, and walking among 

 them one might easily imagine himself in one of the great public 

 gardens of London or Paris. South of the trail, near the inter- 

 national boundary, are some of the finest mountains in Canada. 

 Though few of them are more than 9,000 feet high, the general 

 level of the country is little more than 1,000 feet above the sea 

 so that in looking at them one sees between seven and eight 

 thousand feet of mountain. The highest mountains along the 

 C. P. Ry. exceed these in altitude, but their bases are four or five 

 thousand feet above the sea. Great glaciers are found on their 

 northern slopes, and alpine chmbers in search of new mountains 

 to conquer will find them in the Skagit valley. To reach the 

 summit that divides the waters of the Skagit from those of the 

 Similkameen one goes down one branch of the Skagit and up 

 another, the two branches forming a wide V. This summit, where 

 Anderson and those who followed him met with so many diffi- 

 culties, is somewhat less than 6,000 feet above the sea and covered 

 with snow the greater part of the year, the period when it is free 

 varying of course according to the snow-fall of the previous 

 winter. Crossed at any time after spring opens, flowers are seen 

 on every bare spot up to within a few feet of the melting snow. 

 Many of these alpine flowers are exceedingly beautiful and like 

 our own spring flowers the same species are found everywhere. 

 The two most beautiful and conspicuous species are an Anemone 

 and an Erythronium, the latter of the same genus as our local 

 Dog-toothed Violet or Adder's Tongue, but very much larger and 

 commonly with several flowers on each spike. The Anemone, of 

 the sub-genus Pulsatilla, resembles the so-called prairie crocus 



