"They are busy building railways on
The map's deserted spot,
Or staking out an empire in
The land that God forgot."
Doers of deeds are these men and the world has salted them with curious and stern experiences. To my way of thinking, Dinny Hogan, boss contractor, with his blue eyes that are the blue of steel, is a bigger man than the First Lord of the Admiralty and his work is of more permanent value to the Empire. It was only the other day that Dinny made an arch of "coyotes"—that is to say, of round holes—in one of the mountains, and into them he packed fifty carloads of gunpowder. The reader may find it difficult to follow this idea, but no doubt he could if he saw where Dinny removed the mountain in one shot. This would seem to be a kind of big game shooting which has all others vanquished into nothingness. This is a wonderful trail through the mountains—the pass called the Yellowhead—a level ribbon of land along which the steels are laid for most of the way. But in some places, a road has been blasted out just to show how the mountains can be beaten. These lords of earth and sky, when called upon, must bow their unwilling necks to the yoke of steel. And no proper-spirited person can stand in this pass without feeling the challenge of the hills and without an immutable desire to conquer them. This I take it is the spirit of the buccaneer.
The highest mountain in these Rockies is Robson, called Yu-hai-has-kun by the Indians, meaning thereby a high, winding road. The Alpine Club of Canada intend, one of these times, to erect a châlet at Mount Robson so that they may attempt to scale it often. Three men succeeded in making the ascent this very summer. They were roped together for thirty hours, and when they had come down again, their faces were seen to be cut and greatly marred. These men spoke fine and glorious things concerning the hilltop, and of how they looked down upon five hundred other peaks, but, in strait and narrow minds like ours, these climbs may be accounted only as strange follies. I have talked to Clausen Otto about these things, for he has been a guide hereabout these ten years or more, and is a notable man of affairs. He said I was only a terribly lame dog in front of a terribly high stile, and then, fearing that his comment was truthful rather than polite, Otto proceeded to salve my feelings by explaining how the desire to climb glaciers was an ill-regulated one, and that what the Bible said about sucking honey out of a rock was "plumb foolishness."
Once, he was climbing with a hunter of goats when a bear came swiftly over the glacier-clad peak of the mountain. They were greatly puzzled to know why the bear had climbed so high, and why it dashed across the summit. Surely there was something remarkable on the other side of the peak. After climbing several hours they made the ascent and looked over. "What do you think we saw?" asked Otto.
"Give it up," said I.
"I wish we had too," said Otto; "there was nothing on the far side but another glacier."
Perhaps, the literary critics will help me decide if Otto meant this for the parable of the climber or whether he was only singularly adept in the art of suggestion.
You do not see Mount Robson till you have passed by. Our train stops to let us look aright, but cloud curtains obscure the turrets of this great temple of stone. Like a sorrowful Caryatid it stands erect under the burden of the sky. But, after awhile, the veil is rent asunder and a tingling flood of light spills itself on the snow in blurs of garnet and blue and gold which scintillate and blend like the colours of a shell: Of a surety, the North has the alchemy that transmutes base metals into gold.
What else may one see at Robson in this dream of summer Canada? Come near till I whisper! You may see white horses—and roan—and chariots of fire, but not every one can. This is one of the mountain's secrets.
And if you listen you may hear what the hills talk about, but you must listen. One mountain who is not so solemn as you might imagine wishes to deny that he is of the earth, earthy.