SCIENCE -Supplement. 



FRIDAY, MARCH 12, 1886. 



THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS AS SEEN FROM 



THE CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY. 



The foot-hills of the Canadian Rockies are not 

 like those of the south, — huge piles of sandstones, 

 bristling with ' monuments,' and hirsute with sparse 

 forest. After a few smooth, grassy benches and 

 rounded hills, here come precipitous ranges of 

 real mountains, scarcely less imposing than those 

 of the central mass. Trees among the outer 

 benches are rare. You see some willows, a hem- 

 lock, and the stubbed Pinus albicollis, which is 

 not good as timber. Near Calgary the first of 

 the magnificent Douglas spruces present them- 

 selves, — those gigantic and valuable timber-trees, 

 for which the north-west coast is famous. They 

 are of small size here, and stand in little clumps 

 in the ravines. 



The Rocky Mountains at this point have trended 

 so far westward, that here they are overtaken only 

 in the meridian of Salt Lake. The first line of 

 heights is a rank of bluffs with almost vertical 

 faces, each ledge marked by well-kept snow, which 

 stretches away northward in orderly array. This is 

 the Palliser range. The most prominent point of it 

 is a forward-set peak visible from a wide radius of 

 plains. In shape it is like a pretty tall stump, or 

 the lower half of a lighthouse, and is called the 

 Devil's Head ; but the Indians, with better dis- 

 cernment, say it is the Devil's neck, and have a 

 story about the disappearance of the head it once 

 sustained. Behind the Palliser is the slaty Saw- 

 back range, from beyond which comes the Bow 

 River, through deep cuttings. 



In these foot-hills lives a small Indian tribe, of 

 Dakotan stock, termed Stonies, who are fine-look- 

 ing fellows and good hunters. They came there 

 within a generation or two, and never go out on 

 the plains except in war-raids against the Crees or 

 the half-breeds, to whom they have given much 

 trouble. The Hudson's Bay company set up its 

 southernmost trading-post among them a few 

 years ago, called the Old Bow Fort ; and close by 

 they now live on a reservation, the station for 

 which is Morleyville. 



Though the mountains here seem grand enough, 

 having a sublimity not easily equalled among any 

 of the loftier ranges southward, yet they must be 

 spoken of as ' depressed ' north of the boundary, 

 since the tallest peaks do not much exceed 11,000 



feet above the sea, and none of the passes are 

 over half that. There are several fine passes over 

 the first range, between the parallels of 49° and 

 53°. The southern one is Kootenay, much used 

 formerly by the Indians, then Howse's, then that 

 where the Kananaskas heads, then the one taken 

 by the Canadian Pacific railway up the Bow and 

 across to the valley of the Kicking Horse, and 

 lastly the Yellow-head, or Leather pass under lati- 

 tude 53°. Many of the principal peaks in this range 

 were long ago named Balfour, Forbes, Hooker, 

 and Brown, by the lamented botanist Douglas, 

 after English men of science. 



The breadth of the Rocky Mountain system (six 

 hundred miles) in the middle United States is nar- 

 rowed northward, until in Canada it consists 

 of three compact serrations. The easternmost 

 bounds the plains, and stretches from the sources 

 of the Missouri to those of the Peace and the 

 Yukon. Its eastern face presents a bold front ; 

 but its western flank is more broken up, and , not 

 far from the boundary line, gives source in two 

 ' mother-lakes ' to the mighty Columbia, which 

 thence flows northward in a powerful stream until 

 it has passed the fifty-second parallel, nearly two 

 hundred miles north-west of its starting-point. 

 Then the mountains upon its left break down: and 

 the Columbia, turning sharply around their head, 

 moves straight southward on its course to the sea. 

 Stretching north and south between Kootenay 

 lakes and the great bending of the Columbia, 

 stands the magnificent second range of mountains, 

 — the Selkirks. 



The course of the Columbia after it has turned 

 southward around the head of the Selkirks is beset 

 by lofty walls as before, for west of its banks rises 

 a third chain, called the Gold range, whose farther 

 slopes feed the Fraser and Okinakane. Thus three 

 unexplored, lofty, and glacial ranges of moun- 

 tains, and two first-class river-crossings, opposed 

 themselves to the engineers of this railway when 

 the northern route was abandoned and the present 

 line accepted. 



The profile of the Rockies seen at the eastern 

 entrance is extremely irregufar. There is no 

 stately line of granite domes, nor bristling quartz- 

 ite peaks, nor symmetrical volcanic cones : the 

 sky rests upon a jagged wall, every elevation 

 having some angular and abrupt form quite unlike 

 its neighbor. 



All this grandeur of outline, which gives a 

 tenfold savage aspect, is intensified by the excess 



