Part 21

It was Goethe, I believe, who spoke somewhere of the pleasure of arriving at a place famed for its beauty, in the darkness of night, thus reserving for the morning hours, when our senses are refreshed by sleep, the first impressions of the scenery. Passengers who have not “read up” on the subject, would little imagine, as the midnight coach takes them to the Canadian Pacific Railway Hotel, as it is called, that they are in some of the finest mountain valleys in the world, and that the hotel itself is as picturesquely perched on top of a hill as any castle on the Rhine. But no castle on the Rhine boasts a view comparable to that which is spread before them in the morning. The best place to enjoy it is in the open rotunda built behind the hotel, just over the precipice. Far below, the clear and rapid Bow River winds along in graceful curves, forming on the left a series of turbulent cascades terminating in a fall which is visible from the rotunda, though of course at this distance less effective than from the river-bank. Below the falls the river hastens on in the direction of the Peechee Mountain, which forms the boundary wall of the valley east of the hotel and, with the wide ridge on the right, is the most interesting sight in the whole Park. This ridge seldom presents the same appearance on successive days, and hardly two photographs of it are alike, owing to the fact that the melting snow, after a storm, constantly stripes and mottles it in different patterns. Though the ridge, which is several thousand feet wide, seems to be absolutely perpendicular, the snow still clings to it and paints it white, except in one section, near the summit, where a black, snowless streak runs across horizontally, dividing the snow-wall into two sections.

To the right of the hotel are some sharp-pointed peaks inclining over each other, somewhat like the Three Brothers in the Yosemite Valley, “playing leapfrog”; and to the left is the massive Cascade Mountain. The most important excursions for those whose time is limited to a day, are a trip by boat up the Bow River, as far as Vermilion Lake, in the morning, and a drive to Devil’s Head Lake in the afternoon.

The Bow River excursion, which is made on a little steam-launch whenever a party is ready for it, has only one drawback,—the ugly, bristling corpses of charred pines on both sides of the river, the effects of a recent most deplorable forest fire. Arrangements have been made with lumbermen for the removal of these charred trunks, but it will take years to finish the job, as there are thousands of them. Fortunately there is already a new undergrowth, and in a few years the vigorous young trees will have covered up the stumps. In many places, however, the green trees have been spared, and in these sections matchless views of the surrounding mountains may be obtained through the loveliest green foregrounds. Winding about as it does, the Bow River shows all the mountains included in the Park, and many others, with endless changes of the point of view and grouping. Among the most imposing peaks two will be specially impressed on the memory,—Mt. Edith, a sharp, bare, rocky formation, apparently inaccessible, and the extremely interesting Copper Mountain, shaped like a heart, whose two sides, as seen from the upper Bow River, are surprisingly symmetrical. In the centre is a rocky projection of a regular shape.

There are a few shallow places where one can see logs and dead trees lying at the bottom; but generally the small river is wonderfully deep, so that it seems more like the arm of a lake than a mountain stream. Below the falls, however, it becomes too shallow and turbulent for navigation, and this suggests the theory that the cascades and falls were caused by a landslide, or rather a rockslide, which blocked up the river and deepened the part above this obstruction.

The water of the Bow River comes direct from the Rocky Mountain glaciers and springs, and is, therefore, as clear as a crystal, and if you want a delicious drink, you need only dip your cup into the water and help yourself. What a boon such a copious mountain stream, free from the faintest suspicion of microbes, would be near a large city! There are fish in this water, as a matter of course, and wild ducks can be seen swimming about on it every day, from the hotel rotunda. The part of the river below the falls is also well worth a visit. The Spray River, almost as wide as the Bow, and even more turbulent, enters the Bow just below the falls; and for those who are fond of listening to the music and the babble of brooks, a finer spot than this could not be found. Below the bridge, over the Spray, is a mountain side rapidly crumbling away, and here a stone avalanche may be heard and seen every five minutes. All around are groups and groves of straight, slender mountain poplars, with smooth, pale olive bark and golden autumn leaves. There is something fresh and delightfully healthy in the appearance of these young mountain trees, suggestive of trout bred in icy brooks. It is impossible to walk a hundred steps without being arrested by the really thrilling beauty of these tree-groups,—the blackish green pines encircling the poplars and birches, whose leaves are resplendent in the deepest dyes, representing their transition from fresh, light green, through a dozen shades of greenish yellow, till a deep golden yellow is attained as the climax. While the leaves are mostly yellow, the numerous kinds of berries—bunchberries, mountain-ash, sweet-brier, etc.—are red, and one of the most exquisite bits of color is contributed by the scarlet leaves of the wild gooseberry. The berries of the sweet-brier are much larger than in Oregon, though the bushes are only a foot in height, while in Oregon they are eight to ten, and with their thousands of roses or berries form a most lovely sight.

Forest symphonies like these are also to be seen in abundance on the way to Lake Minnewonka, better known as Devil’s Head Lake. An excellent carriage road has been constructed by the government, the distance being nine miles. For the most part the road runs along the foot of precipitous palisade-like mountains, in measuring which the famous Hudson River palisades might be used as a yard-stick, or standard of measure. These mountain sides are beautifully striped and mottled with snow, in a manner that seems to be peculiar to this region, and is repeated on a still grander scale on the steep cañon walls which form the sides of Lake Minnewonka. Before reaching the lake, a most imposing range of the Rockies—a wild jumble of snow-peaks—is seen on the right, beyond the river. Altogether, this drive to the lake is one of the finest in the world, and the lake itself forms a fitting climax. It is a curiosity among mountain lakes, being fourteen miles long and only one to two miles wide, both its sides being steep and beautifully formed mountains. It might in fact be described as a cañon filled with a lake—as the Yosemite Valley is supposed to have been at one time. Its average depth is only forty feet, but owing to its peculiar oblong shape and its vertical sides, it is greatly subject to mountain “draughts,” which are likely, without a moment’s notice, to assume the form of wild and sudden squalls. In the morning the surface of the lake forms a perfect mirror of the surrounding peaks, and at certain hours and states of the wind it is tinted with the most exquisite shades of green, blue, purple, and violet. In this surface iridescence it resembles Lake Tahoe; but in another respect there is a remarkable difference between these two lakes; for although Tahoe has an altitude of almost two thousand feet above Minnewonka, and is also surrounded by snow-mountains, its waters never freeze, even though the snow on its shores be ten feet high; while the Canadian lake does freeze to a depth of two to four feet in February, and then forms an admirable surface for ice-boats and for skating. The lake is full of large trout which are still quite abundant, as they were not fished for till about four years ago.

The government is so proud of this lake that it has appointed a keeper to prevent it from being stolen. He keeps an inn on the end nearest to Banff, and he says that so far the best catch made by a tourist in one day was eighteen trout, weighing seventy-eight pounds. The Vanderbilt party, in 1889, caught one weighing twenty-eight pounds, and in 1888 the keeper said that he and the cook caught one weighing fifty-three pounds, which was probably served _cum grano salis_. (Please remember that I am merely repeating what was told to me.) The incident will probably recall to the reader the story of the heathen whose budding faith was nipped when a missionary told him the story of Jonah and the whale. “When it comes to fish stories,” he remarked subsequently to a friend, “no one can be trusted.” I must add, however, in justice to the keeper, that a fifty-three-pound mountain trout, abstractly considered, is not impossible. Very large hooks are used to pull these lake trout in, and though they cannot be young, their firm pink flesh is of delicious flavor and not at all toughened by age. The keeper sneered at those tourists who come from the Canadian Pacific Railroad Hotel, and fish from noon to five o’clock,—a time when no self-respecting trout will bite,—and then go away growling that there are no fish in the lake. He also said that there was at present no road around the lake, except an Indian trail, but that a road was projected, as was the placing of a small steamboat on the lake.

Besides the drive to this lake (which passes through the village of Banff, about a mile from the hotel), there are other excellent roads in several directions, notably those to the Lower and the Middle and Upper Sulphur Springs. The Canadian National Park bases its claim to the attention of the travelling public on the curative properties of its sulphur springs quite as much as on its scenic attractions. On approaching the Lower Springs, the fumes bring back memories of Yellowstone Park, as do the curious, gray, brittle stones and the aspect of the soil. Bathers can have their choice of a subterranean plunge in a dimly lighted grotto or cave, which might have been the abode of a mountain nymph, or in an open pool, framed in by the bath-house on one side, and on the other by rocks, from which the plunge may be made. The temperature of the grotto is 80°; of the open pool, 92°. In the latter the hot water bubbles up from a hole in the bottom, and the boys dive down, put an arm into it, and bring up a handful of very coarse-grained quicksand. Hours can be agreeably spent here, and the sulphur odor is not unpleasantly noticeable; but after the bath one smells for hours like a walking parlor-match. In front of the bath-house is a fountain, the water in which is so strongly impregnated that soap cannot be used in washing in it: yet the ice which forms on it in winter is pure from all mineral matter. Animals are fond of this water. I saw a dog drink it (in Oregon I saw a dog drinking sea-water, for that matter), and the keeper of the bath-house says that the cows and horses often come up from the valley to drink it, although there is abundant pure water below.

The Middle and Upper Sulphur Springs are farther up the same mountain—appropriately named Sulphur Mountain. The carriage road, three and one-half miles long, passes through a dense jungle of young pines, no thicker than birches, crowded like Chinese in a tenement house, and therefore looking lugubrious and unhealthy. Most of these will have to be smothered in the struggle for existence, before the strongest ones can get breathing-room enough to develop into full-grown trees. The silence of a mountain forest reigns here, rendered audible by the faint, distant babble of the Bow and Spray rivers. We pass by the road which leads off to the Middle Springs, and soon reach the Upper Springs, around which half-a-dozen bath-houses are grouped, whose favorite sign-board, or trade-mark, is a pair of crutches suspended from a tree, with this notice attached: “I came here with these, and left without them.” A few yards above these huts the water can be seen gushing out of the mountain side in a strong current, and so hot that one can hardly hold his hand in it—110 to 116°. These baths are supposed to be good for rheumatism and skin and blood diseases. I met an old miner here who has hunted gold on four continents, and who entertained me with stories of his adventures in Alaska, and how he “blew up” Mr. Muir for making such a fuss over Glacier Bay, where the glaciers were mere pygmies compared with some that he had come across on his prospecting tours in the interior. He had offered to guide Mr. Muir to these, but the professor seemed to be afraid of the hardships and perils, and refused to go; whereat our miner was still so indignant that he threatened that if he had more skill in using the pen, he would write to the Eastern papers and expose him as a fraud. He said that he was going back to Alaska as soon as cured, because he believes there is untold wealth in that country, and added that if any “literary feller” from New York wanted to accompany him, he would guarantee him material for a book that would make Eastern people’s hair curl.

From the Upper Springs the hotel can be reached by means of a short-cut footpath through the dense woods, following the flume which carries the sulphur water down to the hotel. It is used, of course, only for special bathing purposes; but all the water seems here, as in the Yellowstone Park, to be impregnated with traces of sulphur: for if you wash with soap and leave the water in the basin over night, curds will be found in it in the morning; and in the men’s wash-room there are yellow streaks in the marble basins, where the water runs into them. Sulphur water is supposed to be good for the stomach, but I have on several occasions found it to be just the opposite.

The Central Pacific Railroad Hotel has electric lights in every room, and is well managed, and its terms reasonable. For those who have to study economy, there are smaller inns and a sanitarium not far from the hotel, with a few stores and a row of tents.

Summing up on the Canadian National Park, we may say that it has not so many natural wonders as the Yellowstone Park,—no geysers, steam-holes, gold-bottomed rivulets, paint-pots, nor anything to place beside the Yellowstone Cañon and Falls. But the Minnewonka Lake may fairly challenge comparison with the Yellowstone Lake, and the mountain scenery is grander in the Canadian Park, and the snow and glaciers are nearer, though not so near as at the Glacier House, where the air is in consequence cooler and more bracing in summer than even at Banff. As the Canadian Park is only twenty-six miles long and ten wide, while the Yellowstone Park is about sixty-two by fifty-four miles, the former can be seen in much less time than it takes to do justice to the latter.

When we get ready to leave Banff we have to take the midnight train, so there is no chance to say good by to the mountains. But we have seen so much of them since leaving Vancouver, that we have felt almost tempted to cry out to Nature, “Hold, enough—less would be more!” Now we get ample opportunity to ruminate in peace over our crowded impressions. When we get up we are on the prairie; we go to bed in the prairie, after traversing a territory larger than a European kingdom; again we rise on the prairie, and again go to bed on it; and not till Lake Superior is approached does the scenery once more become interesting. There is little local traffic west of Winnipeg, towns being few and far between. A dining-car is attached to the train, and on the following day is replaced by another. The train makes a bee-line for Winnipeg, as there are no more “loops” to climb mountain sides on, no more puffing engines pulling in front and pushing behind, no more noisy bridges and trestle-works to cross. We are moving along at the rate of half a thousand miles a day, yet the view is always the same, varied only by the sight of buffalo tracks,—the autographs of departed herds,—a few coyotes, and some begging squaws with their pappooses at the stations—only this and nothing more, except the prairie itself, on which it is said a rider who sets out on a day’s journey can see before starting the place where he will be in the evening. The train stops a few hours at Winnipeg, where some of the passengers use this first opportunity to branch off to the United States; then on we speed again over the prairie. There is an occasional stretch of dark, ploughed soil in the distance, which causes you to look twice to make sure that it is not the ocean; and when finally the train suddenly plunges into a tunnel, you are almost as much startled, after all this prairie monotony, as if an Atlantic steamer on the way to Liverpool took you through a tunnel; in fact, you are at first disposed to fancy that this tunnel had been artificially created by the engineers as a practical joke on the passengers. It is only a prelude, however, to the Lake Shore scenery, which, with the wild rocks and cliffs on one side, and an occasional glimpse of the lake on the other, forms one of the most fascinating fifty miles of the whole road. Instead of going along this north shore of Lake Superior in a wide curve, passengers have the option of taking the steamer from Port Arthur to Sault Ste. Marie, and thence rejoining the transcontinental road.

As a general thing, it is no doubt wiser to take the Canadian Pacific Railway westward than eastward, as the scenic climax is on the western side. However, it is quite possible to avoid the feeling of anticlimax on going east, if we conclude the trip with the Thousand Islands and the Rapids of the St. Lawrence, together with Montreal; or with Niagara Falls and the Hudson River. The Pacific slope no doubt is scenically far more attractive than the Atlantic; still, there are some things in the East which even California would be proud to add to her attractions.

XVII.

THROUGH YELLOWSTONE PARK

AN INDEPENDENT JOURNEY ON HORSEBACK—GEYSERS AND PAINT-POTS—WAITING FOR AN ERUPTION—YELLOWSTONE CAÑON AND FALLS—THE LAKE AND ITS TROUT—A TENT HOTEL—MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS.

Like all the other transcontinental railroads, the Northern Pacific has its grandest scenery on the western half of its course. On the eastern section, between Livingston and St. Paul, the train traverses monotonous prairies, suggestive of the ocean, but less exhilarating, on account of the dust, and less uncertain and exciting, and with only a few prairie dogs, herds of cattle, grain-fields, and ugly little villages to vary the view from the car windows. But on its western section there is the magnificent scenery of the Cascade Division, with Mt. Tacoma, or, for those starting east from Portland, the romantic Columbia River route. As both of these have been described at length in preceding chapters, we can here pass at once to what is the climax of the Northern Pacific route—the Yellowstone Park, although reference must be made in passing to the rare beauty of Lake Pend D’Oreille, the shores of which the train skirts for hours. At Livingston the tourist leaves his comfortable Pullman and takes the branch road, which in a few hours lands him at Cinnabar, where stages have to be taken, as no railway is allowed within the limits of the Yellowstone Park.

This little branch railroad reminded me of some of the so-called “passenger trains” in Southern Europe. For slowness it would certainly get the first prize at a national exhibition of time-tables. “Gentlemen,” I once heard a conductor exclaim, as he entered the waiting-room of a railway station in Southern Germany,—“Meine Herren, hurry up with your beer; it is time to start.” But local color varies. On the Yellowstone Road the train was stopped for ten minutes in one place to leave a box of merchandise in the middle of a field, and to dispose of a bucketful of buttermilk which a nut-brown maiden had brought there for the trainmen and passengers; and shortly afterwards the train was again stopped, apparently because the engineer had espied a couple of prairie-chickens on the hill-side. He pursued them with his revolver, bagged one of them, and after that the train stubbornly proceeded to its destination, notwithstanding the polite request of one of the passengers to the conductor to stop until he had caught a string of trout in the adjacent Yellowstone River. A week later, when I returned over the same road, the train stopped for a quarter of an hour at one place while the conductor, engineer, and brakeman amused themselves with a game of base-ball.

The gateway through which the train enters the fertile Paradise Valley and the National Park is bounded east and west by lofty mountains, on which, however, only a few specks of snow remained in the first week of August. Indeed, throughout the Park I saw much less snow than the guide-book had led me to expect; but for this an uncommonly warm summer may have been responsible. Yet even without snowy summits the Yellowstone mountains are picturesque, and must appear sublime to those who have never been in Switzerland. In ruggedness and grotesqueness of outline they are unrivalled, and the colors are often unique, the rocks being sometimes so white that they present the appearance of slightly discolored snow, such as is seen in the lower portions of glaciers; and this partly atones for the absence of real snow.

After a dusty stage ride, lasting several hours, and very much uphill, the passengers are landed at the Mammoth Springs Hotel, where a fair supper and good beds await them. Although this hotel is conveniently located near the foot of the remarkable many-storied, snow-white terrace-mound, built by the calcareous deposits of the hot springs, and adorned with the most brilliant colors, its site is nevertheless badly chosen; for there is no view from either the front or back windows, or from the piazza; whereas, if the building had been erected only a few hundred yards to the front, visitors might have enjoyed an extensive and delightful mountain view on all sides. This error is possibly responsible, to a large extent, for the fact that fewer visitors than had been expected make this large hotel their home for a week or two. With the exception of that at the Upper Geyser Basin, all the Yellowstone Park hotels are placed in like manner, though in each case a picturesque situation might have been found within a short distance. Perhaps the builders calculated that visitors, after their wearisome stage ride of forty or fifty miles and a subsequent brief inspection of the geysers, would hardly look upon the hotels as anything else than a place for providing them with meals and beds.