A journey upon the River may best begin with its source and end with the ocean. It is about fourteen hundred miles by the windings of the stream from its origin in the upper Columbia Lake to the Pacific. It descends twenty-five hundred feet in that distance. It is therefore swift in many places. Yet it would be possible to descend almost the entire length of the River in a small boat. Nor can one imagine a more fascinating journey, especially if he could conjure back the shades of the great voyageurs of seventy years ago, as Monique and Charlefoux, famous in Dr. McLoughlin’s time, and listen to their gay song, mingling with the plash of oars:
Rouli, roulant, ma boule roulant,
En roulant, ma boule roulant.
The way of approach for the Eastern tourist to a journey down the Columbia is by the Canadian Pacific Railway, a magnificent road in a gallery of masterpieces. Wonders begin before he reaches the western watershed. He will see Banff, with its hot springs, its immense hotel, its Bow River and Falls and Valley. He will see the gem of the Canadian Rockies, one of the gems of the earth, Lake Louise. Imagine a glistening wall of purest white, Mts. Lefroy and Victoria, with a vast glacier descending from them, great bastions of variously tinted rock closing on either side as a frame of the snowy picture, and in front a lake, small indeed, but of perfect form, a mirror in which the snowy wall, the glacier, the rocky ramparts, find a duplication as distinct as themselves.
A few miles farther west, and the traveller will find himself at one of the most significant of all places, the Continental Divide. Eastward the water flows into the Bow, thence into the Saskatchewan, and ultimately into the Atlantic. Westward the springs find their way to the branches of the Wapta, thence to the Columbia and the Pacific. The long westward ascent which we have followed all the way from Winnipeg ends at last. The track becomes level. We are at the summit. Looking southward we can see descending the steep slope, a clear mountain stream, which is parted into two branches by a little wall of stone. One branch goes east to the Atlantic, the other west to the Pacific.
It must have been of some such place, though farther north, that Holmes was imagining when he wrote:
Yon stream, whose sources run
Turned by a pebble’s edge,
Is Athabasca, rolling toward the sun,
Through the cleft mountain-ledge.
The slender rill had strayed
But for the slanting stone,
To evening’s ocean, with the tangled braid
Of foam-flecked Oregon.
At the parting of the streams, a pretty rustic framework has been erected, bearing the words, “The Continental Divide.”
We are now on the Columbia’s waters. We are also in the heart of the Canadian Rockies, and in the midst of a perfect sea of mountains. It has been said that British Columbia is “fifty or sixty Switzerlands rolled into one.” Here are five distinct ridges, up and down, and through and around which, the Columbia and its affluents chase each other in a dizzy dance.
The descent of the west side of the Divide is appallingly steep. From Stephen to Field is a drop of one thousand two hundred and fifty-seven feet in ten miles. In that distance are several places which reach two hundred and thirty-six feet to the mile. Most explicit directions are given to engineers in respect to handling trains on this grade. A speed of only six miles an hour is allowed, and frequent stops and tests of air-brakes and signals are required. By reason of the exceeding care, no serious accident has ever occurred. In ascending three locomotives are required for an ordinary train.
There are several splendid resorts on the line of the Canadian railroad. Banff and Lake Louise are the resorts on the east side of the Divide. The first one west of that point is Field. There, as at all the other resorts, the hotels are managed by the Canadian Pacific Railroad Company. They are conducted with great skill and elegance, and may well be regarded as a tribute to the business ability and artistic taste of the managers.