We have passed the northern part of Idaho and are entering Montana. At Heron, thirty-eight miles from Sand Point, a few drops fall from the cloudy sky, we are told the only rain since spring! We are following Clark’s Fork Valley towards the Rocky Mountains. We come upon open prairie with good soil and bunch grass pasture, with patches of good sized forest trees. The valley varies in width from one to five miles, and is not wanting in natural beauty. It resembles somewhat Bow River, above Calgary; but at Bow River the mountains are higher and bolder in outline than on the Northern Pacific, and at this spot the heights are wooded to the summit and are unmarked by bold, rocky, lofty peaks.
We have rain during the afternoon. If it be acceptable to the arid soil it is equally welcome to the traveller as an accessory to comfort. Hitherto the dust has followed us like a cloud, but the rain dispels it. It is getting dark. My intention had been to stay up to observe, as best I could, the mountain “divide,” but as it was hopeless to look for moonlight I turned in before twelve.
I slept an hour when I again rose. It was still dark and drizzly, but the glare from the engines working their full power up the ascent was reflected by the hanging clouds, and near objects were dimly visible. I was desirous of seeing what I could of the country, for we were approaching the divide of the water flow of the continent; the one turning to the Pacific, the other to the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. As morning advanced the sky became clear and the features of the country visible. A tunnel two-thirds of a mile long, the Mullan tunnel, is in progress through the summit. At present the rails are connected over the mountain by a surface line, four miles in length, with steep grades. The train was drawn up by two engines and we crept up at a slow pace. On reaching the highest point we came to a stand to admit of an examination of the couplings and of the whole machinery of the locomotive and train.
We had now to face the serious work of descent. The heaviest grade is confined to a mile. The inclination, evidently great, was shown by the angle formed by the hanging articles in the Pullman, with the vertical lines of its panels. I extemporized a plummet and line with the silk cord of my glasses, and according to my calculation the gradients we passed over for some distance exceeded two hundred and sixty feet to the mile; in one spot they reached nearly three hundred feet: 5.7 feet to the hundred feet.
We left the temporary line and followed the permanent track, the gradient of which I was told is one hundred and sixteen feet to the mile. In our passage over the summit no mountains were visible. The hills through which we passed were but a few hundred feet higher than the track. We crossed the “divide” by a narrow depression, as far as we can judge, of no great depth. The exact length of the completed Mullan tunnel will be 3,850 feet, its height 5,547 feet above sea level.
We have reached Helena. We are now in the valley of the Missouri. The second summit, between the Missouri and the Yellowstone Rivers, is about one hundred and forty miles distant from the main summit. Before reaching it I take the opportunity to get some sleep.
Seventy miles from Helena we come to Gallatin. At this spot the Missouri may be said to commence. It is fed by three important tributaries, the Jefferson, the Madison and the Gallatin, all rising within the periphery of a semi-circle of mountains visible to the south and east of us.
We passed through the fertile plain of Bozzeman, where we obtained a fine view of the Rocky Mountains, south of us. Their lofty peaks, tipped with snow, are probably eighty miles distant. It could not have been very far from this neighbourhood that the sons of De la Verendrye first looked upon the mountain heights as they ascended a branch of the Missouri. At Bozzeman we prepared for another ascent and pass over a temporary track until the Bozzeman tunnel is completed. It will be 4,500 feet long and 5,572 feet above tide level. There is a marked contrast in the character of the heights at Bozzeman to those of Mullan. The latter are wooded, whereas the former are bare, with only a few small bushes. The Bozzeman tunnel, although only through a spur of the Rocky Mountain chain, is a few yards more elevated than the Mullan tunnel through the main divide. At Livingstone we are in the Yellowstone Valley, eight hundred and eighty miles from Portland. We followed the Yellowstone for three hundred and forty miles. Yellowstone park is sixty miles to the south, and a railway leads to it from this point. We can see the mountains of the National park in the distance, grand, lofty and striking, recalling some portion of the Selkirk range. I saw nothing on the Northern Pacific Railway except this distant view, to equal the mountains on our Canadian line.
We cross the Yellowstone River, about one hundred and fifty feet wide, and which takes its rise in Yellowstone Lake, one hundred miles south of us.
At Livingstone we enter a prairie country which we follow in our journey eastward for twenty degrees of longitude. As we pass over the two water sheds, between five and six thousand feet above the sea, we form the impression that there is abundance of moisture at this elevation. We are now, however in comparatively low ground, and the district generally is evidently dry, if not to some extent rainless. Possibly the mountains intercept the vapour-bearing clouds, or drive them into the higher regions. The maps show that there are spurs of the Rocky Mountains continuing to the north and south of the Yellowstone Valley for a long distance east of the main range, but all of them are too distant from our point of vision or too low to appear above the horizon.