The suit given to the Prince was an exceedingly handsome one of white buckskin, decorated with beads, feathers and fur, and surmounted by a great headdress of feathers rising from a fillet of beads and fur. The Prince put on the headdress at once, and spoke to the Indians as a chief to his braves, telling them of the honour they had done him.
When he had finished, the tom-toms were brought into action again, and a high, thin wail went up from the ring of Indians, and they began almost at once to move round in a dance. Indian dancing is monotonous. It is done to the high, nasal chanting of men gathered round a big drum in the centre of the ring. This drum is beaten stoically by all to give the time.
Some of the dancing is the mere bending of knees and a soft shuffling stamping of moccasined feet. In other dances vividly clad, broad-faced, comely squaws joined in the ring of braves, whose feathers and elk-tooth ornaments swung as they moved, and the whole ring, with a slightly rocking movement, shuffled an inch at a time round the tom-tom men. The motion was very like that of soldiers dressing ranks.
A more spirited dance is done by braves holding weapons stiffly, and following each other in file round the circle, now bending knees, or bodies, now standing upright. As they pass round and dip they loose little snapping yelps. All the time their faces remain as impassive as things graven.
The dancing was followed by racing. Boys mounted bareback the springy little horses, and with their legs twisted into rope-girths—with reins, the only harness—went round the track at express speed. Young women, riding astride, their dresses tied about their knees, also raced, showing horsemanship even superior to the boys. The riding was extremely fine, and the little horses bunch and move with an elastic and hurtling movement that is thrilling.
The ceremony had made the bravest of spectacles. The Indian colour and romance of the scene, set in a deep cup rimmed by steep, grim mountains, the sides and icecaps of which the bright sunlight threw up into an almost unreal actuality, gave it a rare and entrancing quality. And not the least of its picturesque attractions were the papooses in bead and fringed leather, who grubbed about in the earth with stoic calm. They looked almost too toylike to be true. They looked as though their right place was in a scheme of decoration on a wall or a mantel-shelf. As one lady said of them: "They're just the sort of things I want to take home as souvenirs."
II
Banff is an exquisite and ideal holiday place, and I can appreciate the impulse that sends many Americans as well as Canadians to enjoy its beauties in the summer.
It is a valley ringed by an amphitheatre of mountains, up the harsh slopes of which spruce forests climb desperately until beaten by the height and rock on the scarps beneath crests which are often snow-capped. Through this broad valley, and winding round slopes into other valleys, run streams of that poignant blueness which only glacial silt and superb mountain skies can Impart.
The houses and hotels in this Switzerland of Canada are charming, but the Banff Springs Hotel, where the Prince stayed, is genius. It is perched up on a spur in the valley, so that in that immense ring of heights it seems to float insubstantially above the clouds of trees, like the palace of some genii. For not only was its site admirably chosen, but the whole scheme of the building fits the atmosphere of the place. And it is as comfortable as it is beautiful.