AMONG THE SELKIRKS AND CANADIAN ROCKIES. 



W. C. W. GIEGER. 



1 had often heard of the grandeur of the 

 scenery in the Selkirks and Rockies along 

 the Canadian Pacific Railway, My imagi- 

 nation had painted well, but the reality is 

 far better. 



From Portland, Oregon, North to Ta- 

 coma and Seattle, Washington, and to Mis- 

 sion Junction, British Columbia, there is 

 almost continuous forest. Lumber camps 

 and saw mills appear all along the line of 

 railway; but their inroads in the great 

 pine forests are as yet scarcely perceptible. 

 In some places the logs are shot down the 

 mountain side, and then again the lum- 

 ber is floated down in flumes. In other 

 places the great trees have been cut away 

 for a small space and dragged to the mills, 

 leaving the ground covered with great fal- 

 len trunks that have gone down before the 

 winds. More rarely there is a forest of dead 

 and blackened trees. Fire often runs from 

 the bottom to the top of a tree and then goes 

 out, leaving the charred trunk to frown 

 down for years on the new growth. 



Thick undergrowth, grass and flowers 

 grow close to the track and brush the sides 

 of the coaches, relieving us of the dust that 

 is often so disagreeable in travel. At Hunt- 

 ingdon we glided over the boundary line 

 between Washington and British Columbia, 

 and at Mission Junction I caught the Im- 

 perial Limited for the East. 



There is but one good train each way a 

 day, so it is necessary to take the sleeper. 

 Canadian sleepers are differently arranged 

 from our Pullmans. In the center 4 sec- 

 tions, 2 on either side, are sofas which run 

 lengthwise of the car and have rolls for 

 pillows. At either end of these sections 

 are arches coming out so as to leave the 

 usual width of the aisle. This gives a 

 pretty drawing room in the center of the 

 coach, and when you are tired you can lie 

 down to pleasant dreams. In the rear, back 

 of the lavatory, is the smoking room, which 

 makes a good observation compartment. 

 Back of this again is the vestibuled plat- 

 form where, if it is the rear car, you may 

 sit and view the scenery. They sell you a 

 ticket through to St. Paul, and permit you 

 to stop off wherever you choose, and then 

 give you the best berth available when you 

 resume your journey. 



Soon the Fraser river is reached and we 

 follow its winding course with great tower- 

 ing mountains on either side. To the right 

 and high over all is Mount Cheam, its cone 

 shaped top far above timber line. Hanging 

 to its sides are large snow fields that glitter 

 in the sunshine, and along its flanks hang 



thick clouds, through which the peak pierces 

 the line of the sky. As we advance more 

 snow fields appear. The river runs through 

 a narrow gorge with mountains rising from 

 its edge. Often the cliffs have been cut 

 away to make room for the road bed, and 

 spurs of the mountains have been tunneled. 

 Scarcely is one tunnel passed before an- 

 other is plunged into. The canyon of the 

 river grows deeper until you look far down 

 on a surging, boiling cauldron of waters 

 hedged in by granite walls. Down the 

 mountains come torrents of water from the 

 snow fields above to the river below. 



From the Fraser river the road runs up 

 the canyon of the Illicilliwaet. The climb 

 is hard and the river in almost continuous 

 foam rolls far below, while the mountains 

 rise so far above that at times you can not 

 see their summits from the train. An obser- 

 vation car is run just ahead of the sleeper 

 through the mountains, and you get a fine 

 view from it. Glacier house is 2 miles from 

 the Illicilliwaet glacier at the head of the 

 river. The hotel is a good one though open 

 only a few months in the year. From the 

 hotel there is a good view of the glacier as 

 it rises from the gorge in swell after swell 

 of ice. The glass brings out great crevasses 

 in its surface. The railway company has 

 guides who are skilled glacier and moun- 

 tain climbers from Switzerland. No charge 

 is made for their services, but I suppose 

 everybody pays them, all the same. 



With one of them we started one morning 

 for the ice fields that seemed near but 

 were far away. He could speak little En- 

 glish and I little German, but between the 

 2 languages we managed to talk. We each 

 carried an alpenstock, steel pointed at one 

 end of the handle and with a double headed 

 pick and adz on the other. The guide 

 carried a long rope. From the foot of the 

 glacier the waters were pouring out every- 

 where. Great chasms and fissures extended 

 far back in the ice. Into some of these it 

 is possible to walk a considerable distance 

 on rocks, with the water rolling around the 

 feet and the ice walls rising far above. At 

 the water's edge the ice is a clear, pretty 

 blue, fading into white as you look up the 

 walls. At the foot and sides of the gla- 

 cier the moraine is piled high. 



There the guide tied the rope around his 

 waist and about 10 feet down it wound me 

 in, and at about the same distance further 

 a New York man. We went up over the 

 snow until it was too steep to tread with 

 safety and the surface had grown into ice. 

 The guide cut steps in the ice with his pick 



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