Now, also, the Americans are beginning to find out that there is much good cattle range in this north land. The American cattle men are coming up with their herds, even with their Mexican cowboys.
No blizzards here, such as freeze and destroy in Montana. No lack of water here the year round. No drouths like those of Texas. Nor is the still, quiet, steady cold of these plains more fatal, not as much so, as the more variable temperatures of the States. Not much snow over these northern plains, rarely more than a foot. The buffalo grass may be always reached through it. The mercury rarely more than fifty below zero, and so dry is the air and so still that no one minds that temperature.
So we have it, that this entire rich wheat-yielding land of the far, far north, that the bulk of these grazing lands, tempered as the winter is by the warm Pacific climate, which here climbs over the rather low barrier of the Rockies, are falling into alert American hands. Even the storekeepers, they tell me, would rather trade with the American – he buys more freely, buys higher-priced machinery and goods; he is better pay in the end. “The Englishman brings out money, but after the first year or two it is gone.” “The American brings some and then keeps making more.” So my Canadian drummer friend tells me, and he gathers his information from the storekeepers in all these northwest towns with whom he deals. “Some even tell me,” he said, “that if it wouldn’t make any disturbance, why they would do better if all this country was part of the States.” So the American is popular here, and he is growing rich, richer than the Canadian and Englishman, and in course of time, I take it, he will even yet the more completely dominate the land. It is strange how the American spirit seems to have an energy and force that tells everywhere, in Canada as well as in Mexico. The information I give you here comes to me from the intelligent fellow-travelers I have chanced to meet, and, I take it, is probably a fair statement.
We are some 4,500 feet above the sea, and the highest summits near us rise to about 10,000 or 11,000 feet. There is none of the somber blackness of the Norwegian rocks, nor the greenness of the Swiss slopes, while the contour of the summits and ridges is much like that of the volcanic, serrated summits of the mountains I saw in Mexico.
THIRD LETTER
BANFF TO VANCOUVER ACROSS THE ROCKIES AND SELKIRKS
Our day crossing the Rockies was delightful. We left Banff about 2 P. M., following up the valley of the Silver Bow River to its very head. A deep valley, shut in on either hand by gigantic granite mountains, rising to 10,000 and 12,000 feet, their lower slopes covered with small fir, aspen, birch, then a sparse grass, and lichens, and then rising up into the clouds and eternal snows. Snow fields everywhere, and many glaciers quite unexplored and unnamed. The rise was so easy, however, that we were surprised when we actually attained the summit of the divide, where a mountain stream forks and sends its waters, part to Hudson’s Bay, part to the Pacific. But the descent toward the west was precipitous. Since leaving Winnipeg, two days and nights across plains and prairie, and a night and day up the valley of the Silver Bow River, we had steadily risen, but so gradually that we were almost unconscious of the ascending grade, but now we were to come down the 5,000 feet from the height of land and reach the Pacific in little more than a single day. Not so sheer a ride as down the Dal of the Laera River in Norway, 3,000 feet in three hours behind the ponies, but yet so steep that the iron horse crept at a snail’s pace, holding back the heavy train almost painfully, and descending into gorges and cañons and shadowy valleys until one’s hair nearly stood on end. How on earth they ever manage to pull and push the long passenger and short freight trains up these grades for the east-bound traffic, is a matter of amazement; that is, shove them up and make the business pay.
At once, so soon as the divide was crossed, the influence of the warm, moist air of the Pacific was apparent. No longer the bare, bleak, naked masses of granite, no longer the puny firs and dwarf aspen and birches, but instead, the entire vast slopes of these gigantic mountain masses were covered with a dense forest. The tall Douglas firs stood almost trunk to trunk, so close together that the distant slopes looked as though covered with gigantic coverlets of green fur. The trees seemed all about of one height and size. And the slopes were green right up to the snow field’s very edge. Our way wound down the profound cañon of the Kicking Horse River, sometimes sheer precipices below and also above us, the road blasted out of the granite sides, then we swept out into the beautiful Wapta Valley, green as emerald, the white snow waters of the river – not white foam, but a muddy white like the snow-fed waters of the streams of Switzerland – roaring and plunging, and spreading out into placid pools. At last we emerged through a gorge and came into the great wide, verdant valley of the British Columbia, from which the province takes its name. A river, even there on its upper reaches, as wide as the Ohio, but wild and turbulent, and muddy white from the melting snows. Behind us the towering granite masses of the Rocky Mountains – a name whose meaning I never comprehended before – their peaks lost in clouds, their flanks and summits buried in verdure. The valley of the Columbia is wide and fertile. Many villages and farms and saw-mills already prospering along it. Here and there were indications of a developing mine upon the mountain slopes. We followed the great river until we passed through a narrow gorge where the Selkirk Mountain range jams its rock masses hard against the western flanks of the Rockies and the river thrusts itself between, to begin its long journey southward through Washington and Oregon to the Pacific; and then turning up a wild creek called Six Mile, we began again to climb the second and last mountain chain before we should reach the sea. These grades are very heavy. Too heavy, I should say, for a railroad built for business and traffic and not subsidized by a government, as in practical effect the Canadian Pacific is. The pass at the divide is almost as high as that at the source of the Silver Bow, and much more impeded in winter with snowfalls and avalanches, which require many miles of snow-sheds to save the road.
We dined about 8 P. M., in a fine large hotel owned by the railroad company at a station called “Glacier,” for it is right at the foot of one of the most gigantic glaciers of the Selkirks, and many tourists tarry here to see it and climb upon it; Swiss guides being provided by the railway company for these adventures. And then we came down again, all night and half the next day, following the valley of the Fraser River until it debouched into level tidal reaches a few miles from Puget Sound.
The Fraser River is a magnificent stream; as great as the Columbia, as wild as New River of West Virginia. We stood upon the platform of the rear car and snapped the kodak at the flying gorges, tempestuous rapids and cascades. All along, wherever the water grew angry and spume spun, were Indians fishing for salmon, sometimes standing alert, intent, spear in hand poised and ready, or, more often, watching their nets or drawing them in. And every rocky point held its poles for drying the fish, belonging to some individual Indian or tribe, safe from trespass or molestation by immemorial usage. The sands of the river are said to also have been recently discovered to hide many grains of gold, and we saw in several places Chinamen industriously panning by the water-side. Near Vancouver we passed several extensive salmon canneries, and their catch this year is said to be unusually large.
As we came nearer to the sea the air grew warmer, the vegetation more luxuriant, the flowers more prolific, and the Douglas fir more lofty and imposing. A single shaft, with sparse, ill-feathered limbs, down-bent and twisted, these marvelous trees lift their ungainly trunks above every other living thing about. The flowers, too, would have delighted you. Zinnias as tall as dahlias, dahlias as tall as hollyhocks, nasturtiums growing like grape vines, roses as big as peonies, geraniums and heliotropes small trees. Great was the delight of our trainload of Australians. They had never seen such luxuriance of foliage, such wealth of flowers, except under the care of a gardener and incessant laying on of water. We came across with a car full of these our antipodean kin. Most have been “home,” to England, and had come across to Canada to avoid the frightful heats of the voyage by Suez and the Red Sea. And they marveled at the vigor and the activity of both Canada and the States. Some had lingered at the fine hotels up in the mountains now maintained by the Canadian Pacific Railroad. All were sorry to go back to the heats of the Australian continent.
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