It would have been harder to leave the Rockies if I had not been bound for the Selkirks, which have this advantage over the Rockies, that they are perhaps less known. That part I was bound for is, indeed, not known at all to tourists, and very little known to anybody. The known part of the range lies round Glacier House, and includes Mount Abbott, the Great Illecillewaet Glacier, Mount Sir Donald, etc., which high places the railway has now made accessible for tourists who can climb. The part I was to see lies to the south-east, at the head of the Columbia Valley, and is at present a hundred miles from the nearest railway station.
First of all I took train to Golden. If you take a map of Canada and follow the trans-continental line westward, you will see that it emerges from the Rockies at Golden. Golden is a little mining town lying in the Columbia Valley, with the Rockies on one side of it and the Selkirks on the other. It was chiefly to see this valley—one of the most fertile in British Columbia, but at present unopened—that I got out at Golden with a friend. An excursion into the Selkirks was to depend upon the time at our disposal. We had been told that near Lake Windermere, at a place called Wilmer, there was a great irrigation scheme in progress, which would shortly result in 60,000 acres of dry belt-land being ready for fruit-farming. This, when the rail from Kamloops to Golden was completed, would make the Columbia Valley as famous for its fruit as the Okanagan. We both wanted to see it. My friend wanted to buy land. The problem was how to get up the valley.
THE DEVIL'S FINGERS. ROCKY MOUNTAINS.
There were, we found, five different ways of doing the eighty miles from Golden to Wilmer.
1. The first was to wait for that day of the week on which the stage-coach ran. It took two days to do the distance, and was very convenient if we did not mind waiting in Golden a few days first. But we were in a hurry.
2. This way was by river-boat—a delightful trip. But there were one or two objections to it. The water of the Columbia was very low at this time of the year, the sand-banks were numerous, and the boat had gone up some days before and nobody knew when it would get down again. We gave up the boat.
3. The third way, which we decided should be ours, was to go up in the only motor which Golden possessed. This would cost fifty dollars, but the journey there would only take about seven hours. When we had decided upon this, we went to the proprietor of the motor and found that the car was already out for an indefinite number of days.
4. This way was to walk the eighty miles—a plan I favoured and tried on the way back, as I shall describe. But my friend could not fancy it. Statelier than myself, he had to carry five more stones with him.