88 Canadian Record of Science. 
called a ‘‘cloud burst,’ when the rain will fall in a deluge 
upon some limited space. It may truly besaid of a region like 
this, that it never rains but it pours. This steady dryness of 
climate, coupled with its small altitude, makes the Kam- 
loops and Okinagan districts a most excellent retreat for 
persons with pulmonary maladies, and many men are living 
there in health, who, would not have survived within years of 
this time had they remained in eastern Canada. Here, where 
the thermometer rises occasionally to 110° in mid-summer, 
and the breeze is like the breath from the door ofa furnace, the 
boastful natives have much to say of the refreshing effect 
of the cool nights. So they do on the coast, where the very 
airissometimes greasy with warm steam and your strength 
dissolves asina Turkish bath. But that claim is a matter of 
course! If there is one thing in this delusive world more 
certain than another, it is that every son of Adam will teil 
his friends (and most of all his enemies!) that where he 
lives the nights are cool and there are no mosquitoes. 
But to resume: The winds thut have swept ungenerously 
over the Kamloops downs are compelled to yield their bur- 
dens of moisture to the mountains on this side of the great 
Thompson River basin. Here the Gold Range, stretching 
north and south for 200 miles along the western bank of the 
Columbia, rears its ancient peaks into the sky and interrupts 
the westerly gales. Striking this cold barrier, the air is 
suddenly condensed and drops its rain. One would think, 
after seeing the downpour upon the Cascades that little 
would be left in the clouds for any region beyond; yet the 
Gold Range is as damp as the Cascade, and its fountains 
nourish the great group of the Shushwap and Okinagan lakes, 
and keep alive many rivers of the first class. 
But the Gold Range is only the westernmost of three huge 
mountain-ranks, which together form the great Cordillera of 
Canada, a belt of snowy mountains 250 miles in width. It 
is fifty miles across the Gold Range from Great Shuswap 
Lake to the Columbia river: It is sixty miles across the 
Selkirks from the Columbia on the west to the same river 
on the east of the range; and it is 125 miles from that river 
