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To find this possibly incalculable wealth in the densely wooded wilderness is a continually increasing surprise. The Porcupine district, as well as the Cobalt region, is reached by the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway, a line of two hundred miles in length, built by the Province of Ontario, and furnishing connection between the Transcontinental line from Quebec to Winnipeg, north of the lakes, and the cities in the southern portion of the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The construction of this connecting line led to the discovery of Lake Timagami , and about thirty miles north of the lake the first indication of silver was accidently found by a workman who hurled his hammer at a scampering rabbit and hit a rock instead, chipping off a layer that disclosed a vein of almost pure silver. This initiated the famous La Rose mine, taking its name from the man who made this fortunate throw of his hammer, and within the succeeding four years this immediate region was capitalised at some five hundred millions. While the Cobalt silver mines, then, owe their discovery to this employee on the line, the engineers prospecting for the grade of the Grand Trunk Pacific accidentally uncovered vast coal-fields in Alberta.

This Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway connects the Grand Trunk System at North Bay with the Canadian Government lines at Cochrane. The opening up of all this country has not only resulted in the exploiting of these famous mines, but has brought to knowledge the existence of the largest tract of pulpwood in the world. The belt of these forests extends from Ontario to Quebec and westward to the prairies of Manitoba, a thousand miles of almost unbroken woodland.

The hydraulic mechanism used in prospecting for ore is one of the marvels of inventive genius. One man can operate the powerful lever that turns on a torrent of water against trees, huge stumps, vast rocks, and sends them rolling down the hillside. All obstruction, indeed, the very hill itself, is washed down. The twentieth century will always stand out as a remarkable era for the invention of mechanism to harness and utilise power hitherto undreamt of for practical application. These inventions are securing the increasing spiritual liberation of man. When he is enabled to harness the powers of the ether; to send the lightning on his errands; to bridle a force that no man ever saw or touched; when he can cause the waves of the ether to serve his chariot wheels, he has indeed transformed the world in which he finds himself.

There are rumours of a recent invention made by Mr. Asa Thurston Heydon in the Yukon that may largely revolutionise the mining industry. It was in the middle 'eighties that Mr. Heydon began studying the primitive divining-rod, the use of which he was inclined to believe was based upon some germs of scientific truth. He thought it possible that some natural law lay hidden in the garments of superstition. For thirty years he experimented and observed. This research has led him to what he believes is a series of discoveries, one of which is his invention called the clairoscope, which is the diviner for substances that are in the earth. Fitted with one or another substance attached, it turns to that which corresponds with the given thing attached. He calls the instrument the clairoscope and the result obtained the clairum. The clairum, Mr. Heydon explains, is the counterpart of the spectrum. The latter is limited to the luminous, the former to the non-luminous, rays. The spectrum exemplifies one pole of the spherical organisation of energy, and the clairum exemplifies the opposite pole. Mr. Heydon's researches are based on his conviction that everything, organic and inorganic, from electrons to the mighty universe itself, is surrounded by a sphere; that these spheres blend and combine "in accordance with the laws of force-centres," but that in all combinations "they retain their identity as do rays of light." This interesting speculator holds that the non-luminous rays are constant, changing only from attraction to repulsion, and that they are the radii of the spheres. He believes that the distinctive energy that operates the clairoscope is a higher dynamic energy; nothing less, indeed, than that vital force which is characteristic of all life. "A name must be found," he says, "for this vital force which is rhythmically circulating throughout the universe, forming the pulse of existence. The dream of the alchemist is founded in the nature of things," continues Mr. Heydon, "and will be realised when mankind shall have discovered the simple process of polarising and depolarising electrons at will. This will induce the polarisation of the correlated material sphere, and an electron of the desired element will awaken from its slumbers."

To what degree Mr. Heydon's theories will bear the test of his future investigations it is impossible to conjecture; but it is already true that the clairoscope is being used to some extent to locate minerals and has proved useful.

To descend into a mine, down to a three hundred and fifty feet level, and see the strange panorama of life that is before one's eyes, is a novel experience. Into the cage steps the little party, and the downward journey begins. All is dark save for the lamps of the miners, affixed to their caps, and the lights that are swung give a fitful and weird illumination. Through the narrow aisles on every level push-carts are passing, and the visitor must pack himself into as little space as possible as he stands against the wall to let the traffic pass by. Everything is dripping; one walks in mud and water, and sees the glisten of the wet walls. The air is cold and damp. It seems inconceivable that men can work under such conditions, yet the visitor is assured by some of the workmen themselves that they prefer this labour to any of the employments open to them on the surface of the earth. This subterranean world incites curiosity, interest, and still the onlooker is not sorry when he finds himself again in the air and sunlight above.

On the hills about Cobalt are perched attractive cottages and bungalows, and the quiet, pleasantly social little town bears no trace of the traditional atmosphere of the mining-camp of that peculiar order that has been most vividly derived from the pictures in the novels of Bret Harte.

WINNIPEG AND EDMONTON

The traveller whose imagination had vaguely pictured Winnipeg as a fur-trading station somewhere toward the North Pole would be aroused from such reveries by the spectacle of this brilliant and cosmopolitan centre, with its beautiful architecture, its broad boulevards, the magnificent Fort Garry Hotel on the site of the ancient fort, and the civic centre in the Free Exposition building, where specimens of all the great products of the Canadian West are displayed. Winnipeg, which in 1870 had a population of two hundred and fifteen people, in 1917 records its quarter of a million. It grows at such a rate that it is unsafe to prophesy to what degree these figures may be increased in the immediate future. A representative of Baedeker, who had been sent to the United States to prepare a volume on its western regions, complained to a fellow-voyager on the ocean steamer, when returning to his own country, that it was mathematically impossible to cope with the Far West with any accuracy. "Why, I prepare the exact population of a town--Seattle, for instance--and before I can get my report into print the population has doubled." This was naturally a tangible grievance, and one which was extremely difficult for the statistician to meet. Possibly the same baffling problem of accuracy confronts him who would record the population of Winnipeg.

From the tower of the Fort Garry Hotel there is revealed a scene hardly to be compared with any other on the continent. The spectator can see broad boulevards, many of which are a hundred and thirty-two feet in width; an electric railway, operating hundreds of cars, whose service is said to be the most perfect of that of any city in the States or in Canada; streets paved with asphalt and macadam; extensive parks, where equipages not less fine than those of Hyde Park or the Bois de Boulogne, are seen rolling along the smooth, winding roads; churches, numbering nearly two hundred; the University of Manitoba; the art school; and the unexcelled beauty of miles of residential regions, laid out in those graceful curves and crescents so familiar in the West End of London--all these are indicated in this great centre of commercial, industrial, and social life.

To those who had thought of Winnipeg as being remote, if not inaccessible, it is rather surprising to find that this metropolis of Western Canada is but twenty-seven hours from Chicago and but forty-five hours from Washington. At the time of the Chicago Exposition of 1893, one of the most popular routes between Boston and that city was through the Hoosac tunnel, on which the passenger boarded his train in Boston at seven P.M., and arrived in Chicago at seven the second morning after--a journey of thirty-six hours, which no one at that time regarded as being too long. Nor does it require the memory of that traditional being, the "oldest inhabitant," to recall that when the Pennsylvania Railroad succeeded in reducing the time between New York and Chicago to twenty-five hours, it was then held to be much more of a marvel than is now the eighteen-hours' journey of the Twentieth-Century Flyer. Winnipeg is forty-eight hours from Montreal, fifty-three from Quebec, and only forty-five from New York. No city on the western continent is more splendidly equipped than Winnipeg for business enterprises, great conventions, and large convocations of all orders. Besides the spacious and superb Fort Garry Hotel, she has more than fifty other guest-houses and one of the largest departmental stores on the continent; she has parks covering more than five hundred acres; she has more than twenty banks; and in a single year these banks did a business of almost one billion seven hundred million dollars. All the grain business of the Canadian West centres in Winnipeg. In the magnificent Union Station of white marble, costing some two millions of dollars, there are twenty-seven railway tracks, long distance and local, all of which radiate from the city. The Winnipeg River offers unmeasured facilities for power, a total of sixty thousand horse-power being already developed, which is sold to manufacturers and other consumers at the cost of production. There are over four hundred successful factory plants in operation, employing twenty thousand factory workers. Thus told in bald statistics alone, the story of Winnipeg is singularly impressive; but these facts and figures are but the mere skeleton of the story of Winnipeg. In this northern metropolis the polarity of life in general is changed.

A signal aim in this city is the culture of beauty. In the laying out of streets and avenues the question of vista and the composition, so to speak, of the landscape has received unfailing consideration. All the country about is finely wooded, and with its rolling declivities offers cool and shaded nooks and spaces for summer outings. Here and there are lofty elms, and occasional wooded areas of many acres in extent. These are a surprise to the traveller whose conceptions of this region have been those of a bare and more or less desolate prairie land. The nature of the soil of the neighbourhood is a factor of determining importance. The clay belt begins at Cochrane, the junction of the Transcontinental line with the Ontario Government Railway, and it extends for three hundred miles to the west, affording a tract with plentiful water and with every productive condition. The provision of population for this clay belt is now a foremost question in Canada and engages the attention of both the Province of Ontario and of the Transcontinental Railway. The generation that cleared the bush lands has almost passed away, and the present settlers have different ideas of pioneer life. One age does not repeat itself. The continual invention of machinery that liberates human life has its dominating influence, and all signs of the times point to new methods of entering on new settlements. The British settlers who arrive are not accustomed to the clearing of timber-lands, yet this clay belt has probably resources to sustain a population of from one to two million people, and the climate is no more severe than that of Quebec or of northern Maine. The transformation of this region of wilderness into a well-populated country would provide a much-needed link between Eastern and Western Canada. The distances, as we have seen, between Winnipeg and other of the great centres both in the Dominion and in the United States are by no means appalling; and with the splendid railway facilities now provided by the new Trans-continental route between Winnipeg, Toronto, and Montreal, by way of Cochrane, Cobalt, and North Bay, across New Ontario, and through the Highlands of the same Province, a route that only opened on July 13, 1915, this region is abounding in attractions for the new settler.

There are two sources of revenue which are of unmeasured value; one is that of pulpwood which can be advantageously disposed of, and the other that of employment in constructing government roads. Another inducement will be that of the "ready-made farm." This scheme has been utilised to some extent in Alberta and in New Brunswick as an inducement to colonists. Thousands of these farms, on which buildings have been erected and a small area placed under cultivation, with stock and farming implements furnished, have been placed at the disposal of settlers, each for a small cash payment, and with the conditions of subsequent payments made most liberal and lenient. In Ontario the scheme has not yet been worked out in detail; but the government of the Province is favourable toward adopting a similar system, building a house and barn and clearing ten acres on a farm of a hundred and sixty acres, as well as advancing a limited sum of money for the purchase of stock. The Ontario government also propose arrangements for assisting the farmer in marketing his pulpwood.

Winnipeg, since 1899, has owned and operated its own water system, which is the hydro-electric power plant. The architecture is largely of a permanent nature, the designs following the latest developments of taste, skill, and efficient construction. Much of it compares favourably with the best architecture of New York or Washington. The blocks of handsome residences; the architectural taste of the public buildings; and the constant series of lawns, with their flowers and plants, leafy shrubs and luxuriant trees, make the city one of exceeding beauty and attractiveness. Churches, schools , theatres, and lecture halls abound; the libraries are particularly enlightened and helpful and their growth and extension are only comparable with the library developments of St. Paul and Minneapolis, of Los Angeles and other young cities of the most advanced degrees of progress. "The world of books is still the world," wrote Mrs. Browning; and the community that renews its resources from the best that has been thought and said in the world, as it is conserved in literature, will be that which is the more efficient in all that makes for human advancement. Familiarity with the best literature has the most potent of influences for good taste, good manners, high ideals of conduct, mutual courtesy, and self-respect.

Canada cannot afford to ignore Matthew Arnold's wise warning not to mistake material achievement for civilisation. In its true and full significance, civilisation means "the humanisation of man in society; his making progress there towards his true and full humanity. We hear a nation called highly civilised," Mr. Arnold proceeds to say, "by reason of its industry, commerce, and wealth, or by reason of its liberty or equality, or by reason of its numerous churches, schools, libraries, and newspapers. But there is something in human nature, some instinct of growth, some law of perfection, which rebels against this narrow account of the matter. Do not tell me, says human nature, of the magnitude of your industry and commerce; of the beneficence of your institutions, your freedom, your equality; of the great and growing number of your churches and schools, libraries and newspapers; tell me also if your civilisation--which is the grand name you give to all this development--tell me if your civilisation is interesting."

Carlyle, as Matthew Arnold reminds us, once wrote to a younger brother who thought of emigrating to the United States: "Could you banish yourself from all that is interesting to your mind, forget the history, the glorious institutions, the noble principles of old Scotland--that you might eat a better dinner, perhaps?"

Obviously, a new country cannot offer archives of long centuries of history, nor ruined castles, nor an assortment of myth and tradition. These may and do have their part in that atmosphere of interest which is the nurture of the intellectual powers; but the Future is no less stimulating than the Past; prophecy is not less alluring than history. The art of life itself is the finest of all the fine arts and to the seeing eye may invest a city with as much fascination as is to be derived from the galleries of the Louvre or of the Vatican. The spiritual life of all the ages is preserved in libraries, and the youngest of cities may well be heir to the records of this life. "No matter how poor I am," said William Ellery Channing; "no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling--if the sacred virtues will enter and take up their abode under my roof; if Milton will sing of Paradise; and Shakespeare open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart; if Franklin will enrich me with his practical wisdom--I shall not pine for intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live."

It is not only noble art and beautiful architecture combined with historic and social traditions that appeal to all that is best in life. What could more readily appeal to the imagination than that visible expression of faith in the future of the Great Dominion, the completion of a new great transcontinental line making possible direct transit across Canada from ocean to ocean? What could more appeal to the imagination than the marvellous invention of the wireless control of moving trains as has been already described in a previous chapter?

What can, indeed, be a feature of greater interest than the practical creation of a new world; the power of man conquering and transforming the domain of Nature? Do not Romance and Poetry spring up here anew? Science and the Muses have a subtle basis of understanding. James Russell Lowell has interpreted this mutual comprehension in the lines:

"He who first stretched his nerves of subtle wire Over the land and through the sea-depths still, Thought only of the flame-winged messenger As a dull drudge that should encircle earth With sordid messages of Trade, and tame Blithe Ariel to a bagman. But the Muse Not long will be defrauded. From her foe Her misused wand she snatches; at a touch The Age of Wonder is renewed again, And to our disenchanted deity restores The Shoes of Swiftness that gave odds to Thought; The Cloak that makes invisible; and with these I glide an airy fire from shore to shore."

Winnipeg has an interesting centre in the Industrial Bureau and permanent Exposition and Public Service Building, located in the leading business street and contributing in many ways to the swiftest means of unfolding industrial opportunities and to the most liberal development of the city. Both the Dominion and the Province of Manitoba, beside all the railways centering in Winnipeg and thirty western Boards of Trade, have installed attractive and extensive exhibits of the natural resources, so extensive, indeed, as to be practically complete in their revelation to the visitor of every variety and quality of the country. The manufacturing interests of the city are represented by eighty-five practical exhibits of articles "made in Winnipeg." There is also a museum with a large collection of mounted birds and wild animals of Canada; and there are historic relics and curios; as well as collections of economic minerals and other exhibits of various interest. Winnipeg has also, in this building, the first Civic Art Gallery in Canada, and it is wisely made free to all. In connection with the Gallery is an Art School where painting and drawing are taught. In this Public Service centre is a Convention Hall that will seat four thousand people and a smaller lecture or banquet hall seating about four hundred. There are also other accommodations for meetings, large or small gatherings, as may be, that are so numerous in business, social, industrial, or educational activities. Over seven hundred meetings were held in this building within the first ten months after it was opened. Adjoining Convention Hall is the Central Farmers' Market, where citizens conveniently find the produce of farm, market, or garden. The Industrial Bureau, which has its quarters in this building, is a thoroughly representative one, incorporated under Provincial Government Charter, with a directorate elected from appointed representatives of twenty-nine public bodies of the city, grouping together the best talent, administrative, professional, educational, and industrial, which could be brought together for the work of public service. The Bureau organisation is non-partisan, non-sectarian, and has no axe to grind other than that which concerns the benefit of the whole community. It is the Civic Bureau of Information for citizens, visitors, and outside inquirers.

From the windows and balconies of the Fort Garry Hotel the view is magnificent--St. Boniface, with its splendid cathedral group, Assiniboine Park, and the Legislative Buildings, with two rivers winding away into the vast spaces of the prairie--all make up a panorama never to be forgotten. The interior of this alluring house is singularly charming to the eye. The furnishings are rich and yet have that air of simplicity that appeals to the artistic sense--grey marble floors with soft rugs and the main dining-room all in cream and gold. The foyer and loggia connecting the banquet and ball rooms suggest the ancient cloister with their vaulted ceilings and the mediaeval lanterns for electric lights. The caf? has marble wainscoting, suggestive of some old baronial castle, while in the grillroom there is oak panelling that would delight old England. There are three hundred rooms, two hundred and thirty-five of which have private baths while the others have easy access to bathrooms. What a contrast of living is thus revealed between the fastidious and luxurious life of the twentieth century and that of the primitive days of a hundred years ago when the old Fort Garry occupied the site of this hotel!

For fully fifty miles west of Winnipeg extends a belt of land some 300 miles in width, provided with good water found at reasonable depths, which is the marvel of the world for grain raising. This Red River Valley is the great wheat-producing region of the continent, and the journey of nearly eight hundred miles from Winnipeg to Edmonton reveals vast fields of golden grain, while along the route the colossal elevators loom up in the level expanse like some colossal fortifications.

Winnipeg has been from the first a predestined centre of commerce. It is the metropolis of the transcontinental lines and is the one supreme gateway through which all travellers and all traffic from ocean to ocean must pass. No other city on the western continent has such an absolute monopoly of all transit from the east to the west, or the reverse.

Edmonton, the capital of Alberta, most attractive in its beauty of locality, stands on the bold bluffs of the Saskatchewan. The railway bridge spanning this gulf is one of the finest on the continent, with its imposing piers of hewn stone, over a hundred feet in height, with trusses of steel. Two bridges at the level of the river provide for other traffic, with the novel arrangement that heavy vehicles are lifted and lowered from the surface of the bluff to the river by means of colossal elevators. The elevator is a municipal institution, and municipal ownership is the general rule in Edmonton, the city owning and operating the trolley lines, the electric light plant, the water-works, and the telephone system. Edmonton would be the earthly paradise of the disciples of Henry George, for it is a single-tax town. The University of Alberta with its splendid campus of three hundred and fifty acres, fronts the impressive capitol, of cream-hued sandstone, which stands on the Edmonton side of the river.

The capitol is four stories in height, with classic portico and a dome surmounted by a tall lantern, while the building is rendered still more beautiful by its artistic approach; wide terraced steps, with balustrades, ornamented with heavy bronze lamps, the effect of which, when lighted at night, is not without reminiscences of Paris. The Hotel Macdonald has a charming situation on the high bank of the river, within a few minutes' walk of the centre of the town. The traveller enters by the spacious court and covered loggia, passing thence into the great rotunda, with its floor of pink Levantine marble and its ceiling of solid oak. Adjoining this is a lounge, opening on a terrace 50 feet wide, overlooking the river, and the palm-room , as well as a beautiful dining-room, a caf?, and other public rooms. As one walks through all this magnificence in the place so recently occupied by Indians, hunters, and trappers of the frontier trading posts, he begins to realise something of that almost incredible rapidity of growth and development that characterises the great North-West.

"The work of 'Janey Canuck' has the optimism of the true lyric; the song of the open road. The refrain of the windswept spaces was never set to a better tune.... It is not style that matters in the work of 'Janey Canuck' any more than it matters in the work of Walt Whitman--a kindred philosopher. She comes scattering seeds of gladness in our mist, and lo! our gloom is gone like a black cloud that breaks before the April sun. She is the philosopher of gladness and content and common sense, a philosophy as durable as Bergsonism."

Mrs. Murphy has been honoured by King George by the decoration that entitles her to be known as a "Lady of Grace," an appropriate title, indeed, for so gracious a lady.

Edmonton is the gateway to the Yellowhead Pass; and the beauty of its location, the charming nature of its people, and the vastness of the territory of which it is naturally the centre, all conspire to incite dream and prophecy of the future of this young city of University ideals and marked intellectual and literary quality.

ON THE GRAND TRUNK PACIFIC

One of the most enchanting pleasure trips that can be enjoyed on the North American continent is that from Winnipeg to Prince Rupert through regions of scenic glory

"Where all wonder tales come true";

where one journeys to the accompaniment of a bewildering series of surprises that open vistas of new interests and enjoyments never dreamed of before. It is one of the signal charms of a journey through regions of majestic beauty and of scenic enchantment that it is not over even when it is past. Such a trip is a treasure laid up in life for future enjoyment without limit.

It is only some five hours from Edmonton before one begins to enter on this wonderland of romance. It is so new that the world of travel has not yet realised the marvel and glory of this trip. When it is stated that even the first surveying for this transcontinental line began only in 1910, it will be readily seen that in this region is opened up an absolutely new part of the world to general travel. The anomaly of traversing these primeval wilds in a train so luxuriously appointed as are the limiteds on the Grand Trunk Pacific appeals to the comprehension of man's conquest over nature. To travel in the comfort of these commodious coaches, equipped with a richly-furnished drawing-room, an admirable dining-car, an observation car with a spacious balcony platform at the rear and fitted with writing-desks, stationery in abundance, books, magazines, and newspapers, is to enjoy a journey on a flying hotel.

"Here is a train worth while!" wrote Sir Arthur Conan Doyle after the conclusion of the extensive trip that he and Lady Conan Doyle enjoyed over the Dominion: "it is the latest word in comfort, in luxury, in safety, in speed. The dining-car is never taken off. The observation car is a pleasant club. The road is as smooth as polished marble, with heavy rails well ballasted, no smoke or cinders.... It has the highest maintenance of track and rolling stock.... It runs on a marvellous line, destined to a mighty future."

The entrance to the Wonderland begins, as was said, some five hours from Edmonton. The best plan is to leave this thriving young capital of Alberta by a late evening train, and waken in the morning to find one's self in a region where the peaks to the south of the Yellowhead Pass begin to appear on the horizon. He who understands the romance of railroad travel will raise the heavy blind of the windows of his lower berth or his drawing-room, so as not to miss the strange panorama of the night. Indeed, if we compare the romance of a night on shipboard with that of a night on a flying railroad train, the latter is incomparably the greater. The first requisite is an added relay of pillows--all that one wants, and all that one does not want, so to speak--pillows on which to prop one's self up to the proper angle of altitude that he may lie at ease and watch that marvellous moving panorama of forest and glade, of starlit sky, or of the hills flooded with moonlight; with flitting gleams of shining silver as the train glides past lakes, or along the course of a winding river. It is the realm of f?ery, where nothing is but what is not. Is there a moon? There are a dozen moons! There is one in the south, but a moment later it appears in the far east--no well-regulated moon would career about in the heavens in so erratic a manner, therefore there must be another; and when, at the next glimpse, it again appears at some different point of the compass, one's conviction that the earth must have as many moons as Jupiter is reinforced. The vast forest solitudes are all strange; to waken suddenly and find one's self flying through these unreal regions is an experience never to be forgotten. It is an experience entirely lost save to one who unveils his windows to the mystic scenes rather than sleep in the darkness of drawn blinds. The elusive fascination possible to the nights on a railway train is a chapter of life in itself. It recalls to one the dictum of Socrates that all exact inquiry into such matters as the movements and nature of the sun and the moon should be excluded from too close investigation!

From Winnipeg the traveller speeds over fields of emerald or fields of gold, according to the season; the harvest time is a world of gold and resplendence; and ere the grain ripens it forms an infinite expanse of tender green. The economist would see in these far-reaching fields of growing grain a theme for his statistics and practical deductions as to their contribution to the world's wealth; but the eye of the pleasure-traveller regards them solely in the light of aesthetic effect. Wheat or oats, grass or anything else, it is all one to him as long as the colour scheme enchants his eye. As he approaches the mountain region the scene is etherealised. Away on the horizon are illuminated points, but whether on earth, or in the heavens, who can tell? One begins to enter into the atmosphere that pervades mountain solitudes. It eludes all analysis, but it is the most potent of impressions. The gateway to the mountains prefigures itself as the portal to some trackless spaces not of earth. The peaks shine with a celestial light. Snow-capped, catching the morning sunshine in dazzling splendour, they rise as a very wall beyond which mortal may not pass. Is the wall as impenetrable as it seems? How can a railway train dash itself through the palisades of bewildering mountain peaks, clustered in their shining splendour? And what world lies beyond?

The grandeur grows more impressive. And as among the problems of life, so among mountains, there is usually a way out. In this case it is the Yellowhead Pass. In the preliminary survey and construction of the railroad this Pass was chosen by the skilled engineers who at once recognised its striking characteristics, for it permitted the railway to take its line across the Rocky Mountains at the lowest altitude of any transcontinental line on the continent. The swiftly flowing waters of the Athabasca River mirror the towering peaks above. The Pass grows wider; again, there is a narrower curve as it deftly penetrates its way between the vast heights. The tourist has of course betaken himself to the outside platform of the observation car. Here is a spacious balcony, with projecting roof to shield from sun or wind; a space ample for some sixteen seats, which offers a moving picture that reveals the handiwork of Nature as distinct from that of Art. Here the traveller sits, with all the majesty of the mountain contours about and above him.

This Yellowhead Pass had been, for some generations, the great natural highway of the fur trade. The Hudson Bay post was established here as early as in 1800, and the name of a yellow-haired trader, known to the Indians as "T?te Jaunne" , led to the present name of this historic spot. One cannot but dwell a little on the Yellowhead Pass itself, as one of the special features of the trip; not merely a passage-way to traverse, but as a region rich in novel points of beauty, never twice the same, but varying with every atmospheric change and from every new angle of vision. Traverse the Yellowhead Pass by day in the brilliant sunlight; or on one of the marvellous moonlit nights, when every peak rises in silver sheens; when the stars look down as if they were great globes of light near at hand, and the walls of sheer rock are so softened under the mystic light as to be no more mere rocky precipices, but the field of the weird dances of the Brocken. Gnomes and sprites emerge from some unseen caverns; the cliffs tower into the sky and bring the stars down to earth, so as to make them seem as accessible as electric lights. There are projecting balconies far above where perhaps the Spirits of the Solitudes congregate.

The eastern approach to the Yellowhead Pass is guarded by the Boule Roche and the Roche ? Perdrix Mountains, these marking, also, the entrance to Jasper Park. The fabled Valley of the Cashmere is hardly less familiar to the great tide of summer travel than is this Yellowhead region. In a preceding chapter the pleasure resources of Jasper Park were somewhat suggested, and Mount Robson Park will doubtless also become one of the great favourites of the world. The great natural reserve of Jasper Park comprising 4400 square miles is one that for all time will be preserved in its absolute integrity. No spoliation will be permitted. It is not only a national but a continental pleasure-ground for all time. Mountain-climbers will find here the fullest scope for their prowess. More and more will the Mountaineering enthusiasts of Britain be allured to Canada instead of to Switzerland--a part of the great Empire, calling with a thousand voices to every trueborn Briton. To many visitors the best use they have for a mountain peak is to look at it rather than to ascend it. Why tramp about when the eye registers all its supreme splendour and the tourist may luxuriate in the shaded portico outside his camp and revel in the changeful panorama of colour and beauty? Or he may stroll in fertile valleys, brilliant with flowers; he may ride, or drive, along good trails with new enchantments meeting him at every turn.

Two beautiful lakes, Pyramid and Patricia, are in the very shadow of Pyramid Mountain, only four miles from Jasper station. At this station are the Park superintendent and his staff, who are ever ready with help and information and who effectually banish from the mind of the tourist any fear of strangeness or solitude. While hunting is not permitted in Jasper Park, the angler may, if he likes, fish all day in the clear lakes. They are well stocked with trout. The complete ban upon hunting or any use of firearms is a great safeguard to the wanderer through woods and valleys, making accidents of this nature impossible. Maligne Ca?on and Maligne Lake have been already discussed in the chapter already alluded to on summer resorts, but no description could convey any idea of the spectacular beauty of the excursion leading past Lakes Edith and Beauvert, through dense forests of spruce and cottonwood, with the walls of the ca?on rising 300 feet in height on either side. Here is a trip of thirty-five miles from the ca?on to Maligne Lake, that sheet of pure, emerald water--an excursion amid such magnificence of beauty as to defy adequate description.

Jasper Park is now enriched by the presence of an imperishable monument that will endure throughout the ages; one to which thousands of travellers, in the years to come, will make their pilgrimage as to a shrine. It is a memorial that not only lends its glory to the Dominion, but to the entire continent as well; for not unaccompanied by faithful hearts from her great sister nation across the border shall Canadians seek this mystic altar to which every wind wafts aromatic fire. For it is a shrine consecrate to all that is noblest in womanhood, all that is most heroic and divine in our common humanity. The Dominion, the States, are at one in their reverent appreciation of the greatness of simple fidelity to duty. He who keeps faith with his ideals is the true hero. It is he who enters into the fellowship of the mystery. He may go down to death in apparent darkness and defeat; he rises in eternal glory. For to be spiritually-minded is life and peace, even the life eternal.

It is fitting that Edith Cavell, who gave her life for her country; who died the death of the martyr rather than betray her trust, should be commemorated with a memorial whose monumental grandeur exceeds that of any Egyptian king or Assyrian monarch of remote antiquity.

A marvel of glory is this mountain peak now christened Mount Edith Cavell. It rises in solitary majesty out of this morning-world, lifting its head into the faint, transparent azure of ethereal spaces, while its base is rooted amid the rocky fastnesses of the great range. The naming of Mount Edith Cavell is the tribute of the Dominion to one great-souled woman, and thus to all that makes for the greatness of womanhood. On its precipitous slopes may be read by all who have the inner vision the scroll of human fate.

The peak is calculated to enchain the eye by its towering height and faultless symmetry. Did Nature herself design and fashion it for its strange destiny? Was it indeed reserved for its present consecration? Who may know? Life is a chain of sequences divinely ordered. It lieth not with man to direct his steps.

"The shuttle of the Unseen powers Works out a pattern not as ours."

In the matter of naming new places in Canada the Geographic Board is the governing body. It was at their meeting in Ottawa in March 1916 that the decision was made that this peak should immortalise the name of Edith Cavell. The suggestion had previously been made that the name of Mount Robson should be changed to that of Mount Cavell, but this would have been so inevitably confusing all over the world that it was thought wiser to select a peak hitherto unnamed. To Dr. E. Deville, the Surveyor-General, the Geographic Board therefore made this announcement much to the gratification of that well-known official. Thus is a woman's life of simple faithfulness to duty lifted into immortal resplendence. What a monitor suggesting unfaltering devotion to great issues will Mount Edith Cavell remain to the throngs of passengers on this Grand Trunk Pacific line, who will watch for its appearance on the horizon, and gaze, with steadfast view, until it fades in the far distance. For several miles can it be seen, and what traveller will gaze on this height without feeling it to be one of the spellbinders of the Dominion? or without finding himself involuntarily recalling those wonderful lines of Emerson?

Brul? Lake, in Jasper Park, is an expansion of the Athabasca River, and the railroad line follows the east bank of the lake. Canada would be the paradise of Undine, the water sprite of La Motte Fouqu?'s famous story, for rivers broaden into lakes, and lakes connect themselves by a chain of rivers, until the continuous possibilities for inland navigation appeal to the geologist as a problem of the ages to be solved. Many theories are evolved; even as they are in Arizona, as to the origin of that apparently impenetrable mystery, the petrified forest.

At the station of Miette Hot Springs another excursion may beckon to some travellers in that up the valley of Fiddle Creek, which flows into the Athabasca River. There are a number of basins encrusted with yellow from the sulphur that abounds in the water, which has strong medicinal properties, and which ranges from a hundred and eleven to a hundred and twenty-seven degrees in temperature.

Then, too, there are the Punch Bowl Falls, reached by an attractive trail from the station known as Pocahontas. Jasper Park extends to the boundary line which marks the division between Alberta and British Columbia; and crossing this boundary the traveller finds himself in another of Canada's gigantic reserves, that of Mount Robson Park, with Mount Robson itself as the centre dominating the entire region. The train stops at Mount Robson station, and one seems to enter a new world in this near approach to that king and monarch of the Canadian Rockies, the peak of Mount Robson towering upwards for 13,068 feet in the clear air. Of his first view of this peak Lawrence J. Burpee, F.R.G.S., writes:

"... Almost without warning it came. We rounded the western end of the Rainbow Mountains and looked up the valley of the Grand Fork. 'My God!' some one whispered. Rising at the head of the valley and towering far above all the surrounding peaks we saw a vast cone, so perfectly proportioned that one's first impression was rather one of wonderful symmetry and beauty than of actual height. Then we began to realise the stupendous majesty of the mountain...."

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