Westward with the Prince of Wales

by W. Douglas Newton

IV

During Saturday, September 20th, the train was yet in the mountains, and the scenery continued to be magnificent. From Field the line works down to the level of the Columbia River, some 1,500 feet lower, through magnificent stretches of mountain panorama, and through breathless gorges like the Palliser, before climbing again steeply to the highest point of the Selkirk Range. Here the train seemed to charge straight at the towering wall of Mount MacDonald, but only because there is a miracle of a tunnel—Connaught Tunnel—which coaxes the line down by easy grades to Rogers Pass, the Illicilliwaet and Albert Canyon. Through all this stretch the scenery is superb. In the gorges and the canyon high mountains force the river and railway together, until the train runs in a semi-darkness between sheer cliffs, with the water foaming and tearing itself forward in pent-up fury between harsh, rocky walls. Sometimes these walls encroach until the water channel is forced between two rocks standing up like doorposts, with not much more than a doorway space between them. Through these gateways the volume of water surges with an indescribable sense of power.

At places, as in the valley of the Beavermouth, east of the Connaught Tunnel, the line climbs hugely upward on the sides of great ranges, and, on precarious ledges, hangs above a gigantic floor, tree-clad and fretted with water channels. The train crept over spidery bridges, spanning waterdrops, and crawled for miles beneath ranges of big timber snowsheds.

The train stopped at the pleasant little mountain town of Golden, where the Prince went "ashore," and there was the ceremony of reception. This was on the program. The next stop was not.

West of the Albert Canyon, at a tiny station called Twin Butte, we passed another train standing in a siding, with a long straggle of men in khaki waiting on the platform and along the track, looking at us as we swept along. Abruptly we ceased to sweep along. The communication cord had been pulled, and we stopped with a jerk.

The Prince had caught sight of the soldiers, and had recognized who they were. He had given orders to pull up, and almost before the brakes had ground home, he was out on the track and among the men, speaking to them and the officers, who were delighted at this unexpected meeting.

The soldiers were English. They were men of the 25th Middlesex, H.A.C. and other regiments, four hundred all told. They had come from Omsk, in Russia, by way of the Pacific, and were being railed from Vancouver to Montreal in order to take ship for home. The men of the Middlesex were those made famous by the sinking of their trooper off the African coast in 1916. Their behaviour then had been so admirable that it will be remembered the King cabled to them, "Well done, Diehards!"

By the isolated railway station and under the lonely mountains so far from their homes, they were drawn up, and the Prince made an informal inspection of the men who had been so long away, and who had travelled the long road from Siberia on their way Blightyward.

The inspection lasted only a few minutes, and the episode, spontaneous as it was characteristic, scarcely broke the run into Revelstoke. But it was the happiest of meetings.

Revelstoke is a small, bright mountain town known, as its inhabitants say, for snow and strawberries. It is their way of explaining that the land in this deep mountain valley is splendidly fertile, and that settlers have only to farm on a small scale in order to make a comfortable living, though in winter it is—well, of the mountains. The fishing there is also extremely good, and we were told almost fabulous tales of boys who on their journey home from school spent a few minutes at the creeks of the Columbia River, and went on their way bearing enough fish to make a dinner for a big family.