But Job could not answer so much as one question, and he said, "Behold I am vile; what shall I answer Thee? I will lay my hand upon my mouth."
This Job, it would appear, was no ordinary sort of man, and one who was very wise.
And ever since, mankind has puzzled itself with these riddles, even as you and I are puzzled. Sometimes we do not so much as believe in the great Lord, who is thought to have made this world, and we say, "Aha!" and other scornful words that are wicked exceedingly. But, up in the hills, we comprehend God without so much as an effort. He is natural here. These scenes of sublimity break in on our life's dead level and show us depth within ourselves unsounded before. Impulses which have been informulate, and aspirations which the years have strangled are brought to life and sentience. "Blessed be the hills," say I, and you must reply, "Amen and Amen."
This road twists upward easily, but, in one place, they have made it into stone stairways, with each tread many feet wide so that the horses can find firm footing. This stairway looks to be a hundred feet in height. All the horses must go one way round the mountain, and not turn backwards, for there is no room to pass on the trail. Every little while, you stop to look at the savage rock forms which surround you, or at their colours. It was no stinting brush that laid them on. Opal and wine-red, purple and ochre, splash the rocks with living hues of wonderful beauty. It is a pity we have not more lavish words for these transfiguration scenes of Nature. It is foolish to try and explain them with our worn-out ones. Every traveller realizes this. For my part, in the mountains, I always feel like that Eton boy of fourteen, who was at the Battle of Waterloo. His first letter home was to this effect: "Dear Mamma: Cousin Tom and I are all right. I never saw anything like it in my life."
There are few birds hereabout. I have only seen a robin and a hawk. The hawk hovered above as if undecided what to do and then fell as if he had been dropped from a plummet. This bird has an instinct for the straight line that might shame even a Dominion land surveyor. This and the fact that the hawk has been known to eat mosquitoes, are his only claims to our attention or respect. All the world knows him for a predaceous bird, and that his heart is a fierce furnace.
A nice-seeming man who is working on the road tells me there are many kinds of animals in the Banff Park, but that they are all preserved. In the corral there are eighty buffaloes. The corral consists of two thousand acres. The white-tailed deer are so tame they come up to the village. There are wolverines, too, and these animals are of so covetous a nature they will steal even a frying pan. The Indians call them carcajous, which means "the gluttons."
This man says he was formerly a fur-pup, by which expression he means a trapper. He left the trap-line because his partner was always objecting to bacon for dinner. Huh! Huh! to hear him complain, one might almost think the Lord grew bacon for consumption at breakfast only.
Riding up the hill through the green trees, I feel as if I were in the opening paragraph of a story, and an half expecting at each bend of the road to meet a knight in armour with a retinue of servants. As he fails to appear I talk to Swallow, my mare, and she twitches her ears as though she understands. Indeed, there is little doubt but that she does.
"Let us stay awhile here," say I, "and look at this gay young squirrel. He is enlarging his burrow as if he intended finishing it in five minutes. He is no hireling squirrel. What say you, Swallow?"
If a mare can laugh, this one does, but maybe it is only her way of coughing.