A CAÑON ON THE ILLICILLIWAET.
“This glacier,” the official remarks, “is only one of several overflows from a mer de glace occupying a plateau on the summit, scores and perhaps hundreds of square miles in extent. It is continually crowded over the edge through breaks in the rim of cliffs, and thus room is made for the new deposits of snow annually heaped upon its frigid wastes.”
For several hours we scrambled about the edges of the ice. On its right is a huge moraine, which we climbed for a few hundred feet and thence ventured out upon the glacier itself, but could go only a few steps, for we had no spiked shoes, alpenstocks, ropes, or other appliances for safety. Greater in size than any of the Swiss glaciers, its exploration needs at least equal precautions. On one side a cave in the ice remains to mark the former exit of some now diverted stream; and when we entered it we found ourselves in an azure grotto, where the very air was saturated with blue and we expected to be turned into petrifactions of sapphire.
All the morning there rests upon the ice-slope the huge triangular shadow of Sir Donald—a superb pyramidal pile of cliffs, shooting its slender apex far above all its royal mates—Ross, Dawson, Carroll, The Hermit, and Cheops—and cleaving clouds that have swept unhindered over their heads. It is imperial in its grandeur and separation from the rest, and nowhere shows more magnificently than when we look back from a point far down the pass, and can see how royally this richly colored, elegantly poised spire soars exceedingly sharp and lofty above the group of lesser mountains—themselves monarchs of the range—grouped sublimely about it. These were the pictures we saw as, refreshed by a night’s slumber in the balsamic air of the spruce-clothed mountains, we renewed our journey next morning, and from the foot of Ross Peak gazed back with amazement at the tortuous descent our train had made around the loops and trestles that had “eased” us down from Roger’s Pass and Glacier Station to the bank of the Illicilliwaet.
This river, fed by unmeasured stores of snow and ice kept in a circle of heaven-piercing peaks, rushes away down a series of densely wooded and rocky gorges. With much ingenuity the railway follows it to the Columbia, which has made a long detour around the northern end of the Selkirks since we last saw it. Here is Revelstoke, a railway headquarters, the limit of steamboat navigation, and the supplying centre of many mines. Behind it are lifted the western outliers of the Selkirks; before it, beyond the Columbia, is the Gold Range, some of whose glacier-studded peaks constitute a grand view.
The Gold Range is easily crossed. Eight miles beyond the Columbia bridge, we have risen into Eagle Pass, which is only 1,900 feet above the sea, and are gliding past lake after lake nestling between magnificent headlands. Trees 200 feet tall fill the pass and encircle the lakes in a close and continuous forest, and wherever a ledge or bit of easy slope allows soil to cling, the rocky crag-sides are clothed with luxuriant foliage. It is the White Mountains, or the Blue Ridge, doubled and trebled in scale. Each of these deep, still lakes is filled with fish, and along the Eagle River, which leads us westward out of the pass through a darkly shaded ravine, are many camps of sleepy Indians fishing for salmon.
As evening approaches we escape from the hills and run along a connected series of long, narrow and very deep bodies of water, penetrating between hills and ridges covered with unbroken forest. This polypus-like lake is called the Great Shushwap, and is as large as Cayuga, Seneca, and all the other lakes in Western New York would be were they connected by navigable straits. Fed by several strong rivers, it forms the reservoir which guarantees a steady supply to Thompson River, by whose side our train will run all night.
“These lakes are wonderful places for sport,” says the official. “Salmon and several other fish are numerous, and every kind of game abounds. It is an almost untouched field, too, although facilities for getting over an immense region of wild country, by steamboat, sloop or canoe, are exceedingly good.”
“What are we missing in the night?” asked Miss Vassar, as darkness blotted out the landscape and the cheery lamps were lighted for the last of so many jolly evenings together in this overland voyage.