It is quite a little lake, shut in for the most part by hills. The hills are wooded at their base, and wooded high up—wooded, indeed, right into the clouds; but higher still they turn to bare walls of rock or snow-strewn peaks, where the snow and the flowers grow side by side. Up among the heights other little lakes lie—the Lakes in the Clouds, they are called—and sometimes they are in the clouds and sometimes not, and they are coloured like thick opals and moonstones, and you can see the tall, slim firs growing at the bottom as if they were real trees and not only reflections. I think it is the colours of these lakes that are so fairy-like. People may say of the Rockies that they never give the contrast of white snow-fields and deep blue sky that is so marked in the Swiss and Italian Alps, but what of that? The colours they do yield are, in truth, far more delicate and varied—perhaps because the Canadian skies are so much loftier and farther away—and, if you do not believe it, go and look at the waters of Lake Louise. They are distilled from peacocks' tails and paved with mother-of-pearl, and into them rush those wild blues that are only mixed in the heart of glaciers.
Across the end of the lake stretches the hotel garden—green turf crossed by one great border of Iceland poppies, golden and orange, fringing the water front. One other plant I should have liked to see growing there—the opal anchusa. Its colour is so exactly the colour of the lake, in sun and in shadow. Still, more colour is hardly needed anywhere round Lake Louise. As I have said, the very snows are gay when you get to them, and pied with flowers, as old English meadows used to be when old English poets used that word, before scientific farming came in and determined that flowers were weeds and killed them. And I had thought of these valleys as black and frowning, full of melancholy noises among the trees, rather than windless and radiant.
The station for Lake Louise is Laggan, and the time to arrive there is in the evening, just before the moon rises. It does not matter if the drive up from the station is accomplished in the dark. The road is wooded and beautiful, but do not wish for the moon till the last bend of it leads you suddenly on to the lake. Then wish for the moon hard. Or, if you want to make sure of it, and the moon (though it seems always magical in its uprising) follows laws like other things and will not rise unless it is due to, make cold calculations some time ahead, and be sure they are right. There never could be anything better worth timing than moonrise on Lake Louise.
If the poppied air that was fabled to pervade certain lovely places in the old world hung about this region, there would be no coming away from it. You would remain gazing drowsily for ever at the lake like the lover on the Greek urn that Keats described. But all around are the mountains which distil an air keen and exhilarating, so that before you know it you are set walking, or riding or climbing—in some way adventuring forth. Some people adventure forth in a carriage, but that is rather too like going out to battle in evening clothes.
Myself, having but two days at my disposal—which I could very well have spent looking across the Iceland poppies at the lake—was urged by the air and a sense of duty to take a long walk the first day and a longish ride the second. For this second expedition I hired a mountain pony and decided to reach the Moraine Lake, which lies at the end of The Valley of the Ten Peaks. It was my first experience of a Rocky Mountain pony, and I will state at once that it was an unfavourable one. There exist, no doubt, a few excellent mountain ponies. I bestrode one or two later in different places. But this first one was so dispiriting that he warped my mind concerning the whole breed. The truth is that mountain ponies, being intended for the average tourist who seems to be not much of a rider, are both bred and trained to go no faster, and exhibit no more spirit than a bath-chair man. Not theirs to trot or canter, even if a smooth stretch of road present itself. Enough if they move steadily up mountain trails and along mountain ledges and down precipitous tracks in a manner designed to make the tourist feel that mules are stumbling creatures by comparison. Enough in one way but not in another, for to emulate a baser creature corrupts the best-bred pony in the world. Ponies have that much of humanity in them. Besides, it is not worth while to breed the best ponies for such work; and, further and anyway, a mountain pony is, so to say, a contradiction in species. A pony as much as a horse is a creature of the plains; place him in the mountains and he becomes something different—scarcely a pony at all. He is then an animal that picks up his feet in a marvellous way, is free from mountain sickness and the faintness that comes from high altitudes, and carries a pack or a person on his back. But he is no longer the friend of man. He is merely the tool of the tourist.
We started downhill—that pony and I—directly after lunch. Words—words—words. I mounted that pony directly after lunch. The road led downhill in the first instance. I tried to start the pony in that direction. That is a truer description of what actually happened. But after I had got his head set towards the Ten Peaks Valley, he slewed it round again. We had not by any means started. 'He is frightened of the hill,' I thought to myself, and redirected his head, encouraging him with words and reins. I had no whip. The owners of these hired mountain ponies seem to think whips unnecessary, and, indeed, they are very little use. I tried one cut from the roadside some five minutes later. We had by that time made about a hundred yards. I beat him also with his own reins and my heels, and we accomplished about a quarter of a mile downhill, going delicately. I said to myself, 'Patience. The descent will soon be over. The road then rises. We shall see a different animal.'
What I saw when we came, by sideways and prolonged efforts, to the first part of the ascent, was that, greatly as that pony hated a down-hill grade, far more did he loathe an uphill one. We mounted it at what seemed to be a mile an hour or less, and I groaned to think that we had eight or nine to accomplish before we got to the lake, and the same in returning. By late afternoon I judged we had made the half distance and were still going weakly. I had cut two or three different sticks by now, and encouraged the pony with different words from those I had used at the start. He woke up once or twice and trotted for a moment. The road was not really steep for most of the way; where it was steep I walked, dragging the pony behind me. He did not seem to mind whether I was on his back or off, provided no motion was required of him. I found it was cooler work to get off and pull him than to propel him from the saddle. Always he stood still for choice.
The road was good—good underfoot and good to observe from. On our left lay a broad valley, and on our right the hills. I should love to have paused voluntarily and absorbed the views, but in point of fact I only paused in passion to cut whips; the pony, meanwhile, grazing. He knew the road to the Moraine Lake better than I did, and he contested every inch of it.
I think I was aware long before the Ten Peaks came into sight that I should not reach the lake that day—or perhaps ever; but I was determined that I would at least see where it lay, though the sun set.
We came within sight of it at last. Before then the Ten Peaks had come into line one by one till there they stood, ten white peaks all in a row. At their base I thought I saw the lake lying, very still and cold among its ice-worn pebbles.