One can loiter lazily around the broad piazzas girdling the great hotel, and let vision lose itself among lofty, rocky, grotesque mountains, or sit in graceful Kiosk observatories overlooking a bold river tumbling near by in a furious cascade. One can watch the limpid, green waters of a large mountain stream meeting and unwillingly mingling with those of a milk-white, glacier-fed river, just below the vortex under the cascade. One can wander in pretty pine woods on gentle slopes; can drive or ride along well-graveled roads through the National Park, now along limpid streams, then on winding curves or mounting by zig-zag bold rocky heights; can bathe in porcelain tubs filled by hot mineral waters just from plutonic laboratories far below the mountain's foundations, and then sweat in soft blankets almost as white as snow, or can by a tunnel through lava rocks reach a grotto or cave scooped out by agencies of hot water—a veritable gothic room in the rock, lighted dimly from a small aperture in the apex. Here in this gem of a natatorium one can swim in water above blood heat, five feet deep and twenty-five from rim to rim. When satiated with his warm bath in this glorious pool, he can mount a great stalagmite on one side—a stalagmite resembling a huge mushroom—and a shower of cool water from a natural spring tumbles from above upon him, or he can stand waist deep in the warm embrace of the fluid while the cool sprays fall upon his head and shoulders.
If one prefers an outdoor swim he can splash in a sulphur spring forty feet across, of Nature's fashioning, while bubbling through sands at his feet water heated to 95 degrees rises and lures him to swimming depth. If he prefer a real genuine swim he finds it near the back door of the hotel in a tank a hundred feet long, in fresh cold water with the air barely taken off. In his room he has a soft bed to sleep upon, surrounded by tasty furniture, and eats in a large dining room attended by silent waiters, and provided with fruits, wines and viands fit to satisfy the most fastidious.
Close under the hotel an angler now and then catches a trout of over a pound weight, and in a lake a few miles off in the park is rewarded with speckled fellows of fine size, and with lake trout not infrequently running up to forty pounds. I met at Glacier Mr. E. S. P., of Chicago, with his family going west. He caught a fine lot of fish in Devil's Lake near Banff, one a lake trout weighing thirty-six pounds. There are few mountain resorts offering so many natural attractions as this Rocky Mountain hot spring.
The mountains around are nearly all built of horizontal stratified rocks. Some of them present curious resemblances. One is a mighty palace of several stories—each upper one receding back from the one below. It reminds me much of old oriental palaces visited when we were making our race with the sun. This palace-like appearance is, however, lost upon the majority of tourists, because one end of the mountain presents the likeness of a huge templar warrior reclining in miles of stature. This picture is so grotesque, that the other passes unobserved.
I cannot recall anywhere else in the world, a group of mountains, whose rocks are so distinctly horizontal in their beds, as those in this part of the Rockies. They look as if there had once been a vast upland plateau, which had been partly abraded and washed away, leaving lofty mountains more or less snow covered throughout the year, and many of them always clothed in mantles of white. The wear of countless eons of rains and frosts have made deep valleys and gorges and the beds of beautiful rivers, and rushing torrents, leaving the slopes of the mountains generally not too steep to afford footing for thick forests or for bands and copses of firs and pines. Now and then the mountains are so broken down as to present mighty precipices—clean cut cleavages, as if a single mountain had been split and sundered in two.
NORTHWESTERN PLAINS FRUITFUL.
My friend, the late visitor from Chicago to the Shah of Persia, whom we left, with his daughters, aboard ship at Nanaimo, overtook us at Banff, where we spent two days. He rarely enthuses over scenery and has little love of Nature or its beauties. Switzerland is to him worth one visit, but no more, and Tyrol is a bore. He loves travel, but to travel among the haunts of men and women, not of Nature. Berlin and London are pleasant places, but Paris is his paradise. He had been filled with ennui on the whole Alaskan journey, and had uttered but once an exclamation of pleasure, and that was when we sailed out of Glacier Bay. He then cried out, "Thank heaven our ship is turned homeward." Even he is really somewhat enthusiastic over the beauties of the Canadian road and is charmed by Banff. I suspect, however, all because of getting through quickly. He could enjoy the rush through towering mountains, because he was getting where he could revel in rising stocks.
The plains east of the mountains on this road are beautiful. Great sweeps of land in more or less lifting benches stretch north and south as far as the eye can reach; not bleak or parched or covered with the dead ash color of sage brush, as the same plains are south of our boundary, but fairly green and restful to the eye. We tried to go back in fancy to long ago years, when countless thousands buffalo marched in single file along the trails which they cut down into the hard soil, and which are yet seen crossing our road nearly north and south. We tried to count the deep buffalo wallows, bored by horns and scooped out by hoofs, where the shaggy bulls tossed the dust and sent up clouds which made the air thick for many a mile around. We saw in fancy the heavy maned bulls and heard their bellowings, which won the gaze and admiration of the mild eyed cows. We recalled how these thousands of wallows would be filled by the next rains, and how succeeding herds would bathe in the mud, and then march onward a moving mass of thick mortar. Thousands of these wallows are seen, and for several hundred miles the furrowed trails are rarely out of sight for many miles. They generally run in nearly parallel lines from north to south; now and then deflected to get around an Alkali lake or pool: or where old leaders had scented pure water ahead and bent their way toward it, and all of the mighty hosts following the lead. What countless thousands there must have been! The Indians killed them, but killed them for food or for raiment. The white man came; he who was fashioned in the image of his God; he who claims to be a follower of Him who taught charity to all things and gentleness of spirit—he came in his boasted civilization—born of families whose pedigrees run back a thousand years—and killed and slew in the mere love of killing—killed and slew simply because he could kill and slay. One of the cruelest wars ever waged, was the insane crusade against the bison of the plains. Now these plains will know no more forever their old tenants.
Occasionally troops of horses and herds of cattle are seen, but for nearly a day's ride there are only scattered farms, and they are as yet not prosperous; but in Eastern Assiniboia and in Manitoba farms became more frequent and crops looked well, until finally in the latter province broad fields of fine wheat and oats and farmhouses covered the prairie as far as we could see. The improvement in the prairie land, running some 200 miles on our line, has wonderfully grown since I was there three years ago. The breadth of grain standing or being harvested is great. I am told there will be a yield this year of twenty million bushels. These people boast that their hard-shell wheat is decidedly superior to that of Dakota and Minnesota. It is now very cold and frosts are feared. The wheat is largely out of danger, but oats need some two or more weeks of good weather yet. Root crops seem good on the plains where wheat is not yet a success. The plains are in Assiniboia, the prairies in Manitoba.
At Winnipeg my friends went south. I continued on the rail to Port Arthur. There is not much worth seeing east of Winnipeg. Thin pine land of small trees are seen, generally flat, with rounded rising ground back from the road; all more or less covered with bowlders of granite, many of great size. Lakes and lakelets abound. My daughter remarked that in Yellowstone Park there was a fearful waste of hot water, in Alaska of ice, and here of gray granite. The country back of Port Arthur is said to be rich in mines. I can believe it. Nothing is made in vain, and this county is evidently fit for nothing else except mines. The public rooms of the hotels seem to be frequented by only two classes of men—miners and fishers. Here a knot talked of minerals and claims, there of three or four and six pounders. The Nipigon, near by, is said to be the finest of trout streams. Mr. Higinbotham, of Chicago, and sons left the day before our arrival after having made fine catches. The people seemed much amused at their anxiety to save a pailful. They chartered a steamer to take them and their fry, quickly to Duluth.