We have been with them in the early morning, when the pale-rose tints, the opalescent blue, the delicate pearl-grey, lay lightly on their rugged summits, and made them seem so near and tender. We have seen them in the heat of noon, looking strong and hard, with black shadows in the crevasses and their great stony veins and muscles standing out in relief in the sunshine. They seem full of manhood, defiant, and self-sufficient. We have watched these same mountains in the glamour of declining days, soften again as the shadows steal up the pine woods, leaving patches of sunlight. One side of the valley is in gloom, whilst the other is bathed in golden light. Their grey peaks stand out as if cut with a sharp-edged knife against the even paleness of the sky. A few fir trees at their summit look like green needle-points, and the trail of pines climbing up the mountain, like soldiers marching in single file trying to scale the fortress heights.
In the centre of the valley, there are two great mountains, and as I write they are becoming wrapped in purple-blue gloom, with sable shadows in their granite sides, and whilst the valley is in darkness, the peaks are still bright with the last gleams of fading daylight. Behind this mountain again, there are three acute peaks, which stand from behind its dark shoulder, and they are rosy-red with an Alpine after-glow.
As we sit out after dinner in the gloaming, the mountains are still dimly visible. They have lost their individuality, and their soft full outlines are limned against the luminous sky. Stars rise from behind them; there is one of intense brightness, and several shooting ones make a bright pathway across the mountains.
There are mountains of every description at Banff. It is this variety that gives such charm to the place. Some are entirely clothed with pines, others partly so, with barren summits. Others again are nothing but rock and granite from base to summit, from earth almost to heaven, and down their sides there are marked deep slides, where the rock and limestone has crumbled into an avalanche of stone and dust. The changes on their unchanging surfaces are the most beautiful. Like human nature, hard on the surface, they have hidden soft and susceptible moods. The pine-clad mountains are sunnier and more pleasing, but it is those of adamantine rock that fascinate you.
They say that no view is perfect without water. The Bow River here gives the poetry of motion, and makes music to echo against the hills. It has the most perfect miniature falls I ever saw. They are pretty, yet not tame; they are noisy, yet not thundering; they murmur and quarrel without producing soul-agonizing sounds. They charm, but do not exercise the dangerous fascination of Niagara. Their water is creamy blue in the sunlight, and cerulean in the shadow of the ravine, down which in bars and trails of foam it rushes, until it throws itself over the fall, in a snow-white cloud, flecking the rocks on the banks with froth.
All the mountains have names—such as the Twin Brothers, the Sentinel, the Devil's head; but these names are meaningless. You know and grow to love each by its own individual characteristic. The hotel in their midst scarcely mars the scene, for it is a picturesque structure perched on a natural platform, built of yellow wood, and with a roof of warm red shingles, and green trellises to cover the foundations. Its situation is so perfect that you scarcely improve your view, or want to drive about the valleys. You may, perhaps, come a little nearer to the mountains, or see their reverse sides. There is one, however, the Twin Brethren, which gains by coming near to it, because you can stand absolutely under a mammoth rampart of granite, shot straight into mid air, horizontally upward. It strikes fear into you as you gaze up to it, and as with these mountains comparison is the only thing which gives you even the remotest idea of their superb size, a great rock, as big as a small hill in itself, broke off some years ago and lies on the ground, amid smaller stones, as we ought to call them, but which are really large rocks. We can trace the exact place where it cracked away from the symmetry of rock, leaving an unseemly cavity and a long moraine of débris. The air is so dry that everything is like tinder. Forest fires are frequent, and we mark their track up the mountain sides and see the smoke of one or two. A few mutilated trees are all that are left of the magnificent primeval forest, and the pines we see are a second and third growth.
Though the mountains stand around so silent and stately, there is a great unrest beneath them. A volcano burns below, which may break forth at any time, for Banff has several hot mineral pools and springs, sure indication that the earth here is only an upper crust, with hell-fire beneath.
The temperature of these springs is 127 degrees Fahrenheit, and there are baths for the outer man, and taps of water for the inner.
Thursday, September 3rd.—A day of blankest disappointment. A cruel change from yesterday. From early morning the mountains have been blurred and blotted out by an impenetrable haze of smoke. The sun, though ready to give us all it did yesterday, has not shone, and has been only a fiery ball suspended in the air. It is caused by a forest fire raging destruction, it may be, many miles from here, but the smoke, from the smouldering, spreads and hangs like a curtain, lasting often for many days. We canoed up the Bow River to the pretty Vermilion Lakes.
Friday, September 4th.—I could not resist a peep out of my window at four o'clock. The outlook was more promising I thought, and went back to bed cheered. We left the hotel at six. Cold despair settled on us all, for the mountains loomed gloomily through a colourless haze. Exceedingly cold and depressed, we huddled into the sheltered corner of the Observation Car, a car for the view, open on all sides. I had heard so much of the magnificent scenery that I had looked forward keenly to this crossing of the Rockies, and it seemed I was to be disappointed. After all, it is only like the disappointments you meet with in life, as, nine times out of ten, the thing most wished for, is a disillusionment when it comes.
Range after range of mountains is unfolding before us. They approach: we pass immediately under them, and they recede, only to give place to others as grand and massive. All are of solid rock, colossal masonry piled up to magnificent proportions, their zeniths crowned with pinnacles and spires, with square and round and pointed towers. In one place you distinctly see the steps leading up to a broken column. The most impressive one is Castle Mountain, though the isolated helmet-shaped peak of Lefroy, 11,200 feet, is the loftiest. This mountain stands in solitary majesty by itself in the valley. There is no ascending or descending range near it. You can see the battlements, with their loop-holes regularly jagged out at the summit of the bastions, and a tower at either end. They are faintly yet clearly discernible. It is truly a Giant's Keep, and I think the finest mountain in the range, though they are all so sublime and grand in this wonderful valley that it is scarcely fair to discriminate. Running concurrently with the track is our dear old friend, the Bow. We have lived continuously with it for three days, and feel quite friendly towards it.
Soon we see the beginning of the glacier range, and feel the awe inspired by those eternal ice-bound regions where winter reigns for ever, and none can live, and where even nature cannot vegetate. The glaciers lie frozen on to their surface, finding foothold in a crevasse or basin, hollowed out probably by their own action. Under one of these glaciers lie the Trinity of Lakes, called the Lonely Lakes of the Rocky Mountains, one beneath the other, with Lake Agnes touched by the glacier. At Laggan we have a heavier engine attached, and extra bolts and brakes screwed on.
We begin the ascent of the Rockies; the crossing of the Great Divide. It is gradual and not nearly such a dramatic incident as the crossing of the Great Divide of the Americans. In fact, the gradients are so gently engineered that, though the engine makes a great noise about it, you scarcely believe you have reached the top, and are looking for something more exciting when you see the wooden arch at the summit, on which is inscribed "The Great Divide." In this case it alludes mockingly to the tiny stream which here divides and flows towards the Atlantic on one side, and the Pacific on the other. There is here a deep green lake, called Summit Lake.
We begin the descent by a succession of perfectly equal curves that incline first to the right and then to the left, bearing us downwards all the time. And now comes what is by far the most memorable scene in the Rockies. It is deeply impressive, and is only too swiftly passed. It is called the Kicking Horse Pass. We must turn for a moment from the sublime to the ridiculous for the origin of this name. When the party of surveyors reached the summit of the pass a white pony kicked off its pack. This gave it the name, which will now always cling to it. We cross the Wapta river on to