Rockies

“ Soon we were on a high plateau, all the world rolling below us. Soft brown hills led out to faint blue mountains outlined on the horizon. With a thrill we realized we were viewing the beginnings of the Rockies. For the first time in my life, I felt I had all the room I wanted. We basked in the hot sun, expanding physically and spiritually in the immensity of the uncrowded landscape. The air in this high altitude was bracing, but not cold. From time to time we passed prosperous flocks of sheep, spotted with lively black goats. ”

“ And it was always the wild horse and the buffalo and the Sioux and the mountains—I dreamed of nothing else. Now, so many times, I meet strangers that come into the mountains—foreigners often—and I can never listen to their rhapsodies, or even read their books about the Rockies, without a jealousy that they are talking without leave of something that's mine. What can the Rockies mean to them? Surely, if an American boy has a heritage it is the Rockies. ”

“ These birds, the ptarmigan and the ouzel, along with the willow thrush, who sings out his melody amid the shadows of the pines, who puts his woods into song,—these birds of the mountains are with me when memory takes me back a solitary visitor to the lonely places of the Rockies.
The birds of the Rockies, as well as the bigger folk who live there, have ways of their own which distinguish them from their kind in the East. They sing with more enthusiasm, but with the same subtle tone that everywhere tells that all is right with the world, and makes all to the manner born glad to be alive. ”

“ It is an admirable way of viewing scenery. But a day of being perpetually drawn backwards at a great pace through some of the grandest mountains in the world has a queer effect. Like life, it leaves you with a dizzy irritation. For, as in life, you never see the glories till they are past, and then they vanish with incredible rapidity. And if you crane to see the dwindling further peaks, you miss the new splendours.
The day I went through most of the Rockies was, by some standards, a bad one for the view. ”

“ The climate of the Rockies, year in, year out, is the most stimulating on earth. Its summer breezes fill the lungs with wine. Its autumns are incomparable, a golden glow in which valley and hill bask lazily. Its winters are warm with sunshine and cold with the crisp crackle of frost. ”

“ For nearly two hundred miles the train pants through the homeless grandeur of the Rockies and the Selkirks. Four or five hotels, a few huts or tents, and a rare mining-camp—that is all the habitation in many thousands of square miles. Little even of that is visible from the train. That is one of the chief differences between the effect of the Rockies and that of the Alps. There, you are always in sight of a civilisation which has nestled for ages at the feet of those high places. They stand, enrobed with worship, and grander by contrast with the lives of men. ”

“ There is beauty here, at length, for the first time in Canada, the real beauty that is always too sudden for mortal eyes, and brings pain with its comfort. The Rockies have a remoter, yet a kindlier, beauty than the Alps. Their rock is of a browner colour, and such rugged peaks and crowns as do not attain snow continually suggest gigantic castellations, or the ramparts of Titans. Eastward, the foothills are few and low, and the mountains stand superbly. ”

“ Perhaps its heights are not so majestic as those of the Rockies; there may be no glaciers on its slopes nor crests of eternal glistening white on its peaks, but there is an unparalleled wealth of natural beauty in the blue and purple pine forests of its less aspiring heights and the myriad glistening streams and rivers that find their source in the thickly-wooded foothills clustering around its borders. ”

“ The panorama is sublime, as fine as anything in Switzerland, and of a beauty worthy of a journey—a long journey—to behold. In Canada, the Rockies come so slowly upon you that they seem almost insignificant compared with their repute. But here, one realizes in fullest sense the dignity of this stupendous backbone of the continent. And the pellucid atmosphere of the mile-high altitude, gives renewed and re-enforced vision to the eye. ”

“ In many places the Rockies rise more than three thousand feet above the heights where live the highest struggling trees at timber-line, but these steep alpine slopes are not bare. The rocks are tinted with lichens. In places are miles of grassy slopes and miniature meadows, covered with coarse sedges and bright tender flowers. ”

“ To my mind the Rockies are more grandly picturesque. The sides of the Alps are cultivated and covered with vines, dotted with pasture and cattle nearly up to the timber-line. The Rockies are still as nature left them, more stern and desolate, awe-inspiring and effective. The Alps do not look like the Rockies, except in height and steepness. The [121] foliage of the trees is not the same, and the Alps have a tamer appearance than the American range. A town in the Rockies is out of harmony with the scenery. A village in the Alps adds to the beauty. ”

“ Behind were the long stretches of the great plains, and still beyond the civilization of the continent, the hope of the Christian world; while before was the wilderness in all its wildness, reaching to the Pacific.
The Rockies towered about them, glittering in the sunshine! The craggy peaks of the Wind River mountains loomed up in the north, with the Coast Range visible, like floating clouds in the far west. The luxurious grass, the towering pines, and flowers that perfumed the air, made the spot beautiful, while the history of the event is a fit theme for a grand national epic or painting. ”

“ Up among the foot-hills of the Rockies, far from the villages that have sprung up in the western country, nestling beneath the shadow of the everlasting hills, a tiny cottage shanty stands. The way to it from the main trail is hidden behind the overlapping spurs of hill which rise in undulating lines from the plains to the bewildering passes of the mountain range. The sun alone seems to have found its way to it, and shining down in a benediction of beauty brings its picturesque outline into bold relief against the background of sun-kissed cloud and sheltered mountain tops. ”

“ A giant race is taming tumultuous rivers, and forcing their waters through flumes and tunnels into mighty reservoirs on the mountainsides and in the valleys. No indolent, unaspiring, uninventive, docile people could survive in the Rockies. ”

“ There is almost endless variety in the avi-faunal life of the Rockies. Some species breed far above timber-line in the thickets that invade the open valleys, or clamber far up the steep mountain sides. Others ascend still higher, building their nests on the bald summits of the loftiest peaks at an altitude of fourteen thousand feet and more, living all summer long in an atmosphere that is as rare as it is refreshing and pure. ”

“ Ten o’clock found us going down the western slope of the Rockies in the twilight. Daylight comes at two o’clock in the morning. All along the track over the mountains are stationed track walkers, who live in little shacks. Before every train which passes over the road each walker goes over his section to see that all is well.
All the Indians east of the Rockies located the Happy Hunting Ground west of the mountains and those west of the divide thought it was on the eastern side, and that every red man’s soul would be carried over on a cob-web float. ”

“ It is certainly the most superb mountain of the Rockies. On its "swelling shoulder" is seen a shining green glacier, "which is slowly pressing forward and over a vertical cliff of great height." The cyclopean masses of rock are richly veined in red and purple. As the train humbly creeps round the base, the summit is entirely lost to us. Opposite are the swelling mountains of the Van Horne range; they touch the muddy, shingly bed of a river. ”

“ The warm "Chinook" winds from the Pacific coast, coming through the mountain passes, temper the cold, making the balmy atmosphere favoring grass and animals alike. The Pacific route follows the Bow River Valley into the heart of the mountains, with magnificent snow-covered peaks all about, their saw-like edges, gaunt crags and almost denuded surfaces justifying their name of the Rockies. ”

“ At one end the lake is fed by a vast glacier, and its milky tumbling stream; and the glacier climbs to snowfields of one of the highest and loveliest peaks in the Rockies, which keeps perpetual guard over the scene. To this place you go up three or four miles from the railway. There is the hotel at one end of the lake, facing the glacier; else no sign of humanity. From the windows you may watch the water and the peaks all day, and never see the same view twice. In the lake, ever-changing, is Beauty herself, as nearly visible to mortal eyes as she may ever be. ”

“ The Rockies stand like naked giants with knotted muscles ever ready to grapple with storms that smite their rugged sides, rejoicing, like strong men, at the ease with which they break the strength of their adversary, and hurl the whirlwind, like a helpless zephyr, into the mighty chasms at their feet. The Alps are like a procession of kings, bejeweled and berobed for coronation day. To see the Alps is to have a holiday and have one’s soul thrilled with boyhood’s wonderment and praise. ”

“ For the moment those mountains stand upon the horizon as the symbol of the only part of North America east of the Rockies which the French pioneers did not possess before others by the trails of their feet or the paths of their boats. ”

“ Molly and Aurora, with Jim as escort, were close behind.
“This is one of the most beautiful spots I have ever seen,” said Molly. “The picturesque grandeur of the Rockies is missing, to be sure, but there is something fascinating about these low, quiet mountains. It makes one feel as if one could stay here forever and ever.” ”

“ This wonderful range, which also goes by the name of the Appalachians, has, in my opinion, no rival in the American Rockies as regards the loveliness of its scenery and the infinite variations of colour of its slopes. "The best scenery in the world, sir," an American would say, and he would not be so very far wrong either. ”

“ The finest view I ever had of the Rockies was from a mountain in the Selkirks, at a height of over ten thousand feet, and over a hundred miles from the nearest railway. There I forgot to make comparisons, which after all are somewhat useless. It is easy to say that the Alps are softer and more pictorial—showing that deep blue sky above their snows, which is rarely if ever to be seen in the Rockies. The Canadian skies are too lofty and distant ever to seem to be resting even on the topmost snowfields. The Himalayas again have giants unparalleled. ”

“ Most people, I suppose, come upon the Rockies first from the east, and they seem tremendous if only for the reason that one has come upon them after days spent in those plains which, even while they rise, rise imperceptibly. But tremendous as they seem from the east, they must be far more so from the north, and far more beautiful from the west. On the east the mountains have less height than on the north. Their timber is poor by comparison with the trees that grow further west; their valleys have little of the luxuriance of the Pacific valleys. ”

“ I had years before looked with longing eyes from the train as we caught fleeting glimpses of distant snow-peaks and deep glacier-cut valleys, and when the call came to me in Oregon to penetrate the mysteries of the Rockies I eagerly accepted. ”

“ The display of mountain scenery along the Canadian Pacific line in passing through the Rockies is the finest in North America, coming largely from two causes, each contributing to the grandeur and impressiveness of the view. The width of the Rocky Mountain ranges in Alberta and British Columbia is not much over three hundred miles, while in the United States they are scattered and spread over a thousand miles of space with intervening tameness. ”

“ The oldest mountains in this part of the world are nearer the coast. They are worn down and rounded now; for as soon as a mountain is raised it begins to wear away, split by frost, falling in landslides, and washed down by rain. Even when the giant lizards browsed and played and fought in the jungle, there were no Rockies yet.
The giant lizards came, and passed away. The earth still shrank, and threw up more wrinkles,—the Rocky Mountains at last rising out of the sea. ”

“ Unkempt, unhurried, dreaming, confiding, trustful, superstitious, they wander the length of the Rockies, seeking the materialization of their golden visions. They are seekers, far more concerned with finding gold than with digging it out. ”

“ Before leaving Rockwood the train-men are observed to examine critically the wheels, trucks and couplings of our cars, and we know that something unusual ahead suggests the precaution.
Moving slowly through a deeply shaded cutting, a sharp outward curve is rounded, and what a vision greets our astonished eyes! The most magnificent of all the cañons of the Rockies! The mountain presents a red granite front, perpendicular for nearly a thousand feet, and midway between top and bottom has been chiseled from the solid rock a long balcony or shelf, just wide enough for the track. ”

“ When we start again the mountains continue to increase in grandeur, [74] though I think that Baroness Macdonald's rhapsodies quoted in the Annotated Time Table, exaggerate the beauty of this part of the Rockies. It is curious to notice the remarkable difference between the two ranges we are passing through. Those to the left are fantastically broken into varied shapes and forms penetrated by crevasses, full of deep blue and purple-red shadows. Whilst the range to the right is formed of grey and white hoary-headed peaks, and look brilliantly cold and white, in the strong sunlight. ”