THE UPPER COLUMBIA.
Whittier's familiar couplet might have been written of this mighty river that encompasses the Selkirks and winds the length of its long chain well-nigh 1,400 miles to the sea. Watching its tumultuous yellow waves from the railway train, the traveller may not know that for fully 20 miles from its fountain-head in the Columbia Lake, 100 miles south, its waters are clear as crystal. The Columbia is a famous river in a Province of famous rivers. It is the largest and longest of the great waterways in North America emptying into the Pacific Ocean, half of its sinuous length being in Canada. It drains an area of 298,000 square miles. The tourist who makes the inland voyage, by steamer or canoe, from C4olden at its confluence with the Kicking Horse to Windermere, companies with only a small portion of the old River. Nevertheless, this portion which flows through a rich and lovely valley must once have been many miles wide—as wide as the distance between the Selkirks and the Rockies stretching on either side. For you may watch the [1]River carrying down soil. The grade here is less than a foot to a mile, and its continuous abrupt winding for 40 miles and more south gives the voyager an impression of sailing over a long series of lagoons. In places the valley is 10 miles wide, and its fine white soil is exceedingly rich, requiring only water to produce anything that will grow in the temperate zone.
Although there is an excellent picturesque road that often rises to skirt the foothills, the happiest way of travel to the Windermere is by the River. The passenger boat, Klahowya, leaves Golden, during the summer, at 7 a.m. on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. The summer weather is always clear and sunny, once you are well within the southern reaches of the valley. Then, ever on the west side, the richly wooded ranges of the Selkirks softly fold and unfold; ever on the east, the treeless upper parts of the Rockies take on in strong sunshine, indescribable hues, between crystal and pale sapphire. No definite words, compact of colour, as rose or purple, can give any concrete and accurate idea of their appearance of bright morning of sunlight. Under a sky of deep cerulean blue, the sun seems to touch the rock with the transparency of a faint blue gem. In the afternoon and evening, their colours are definite rose and violet, all their sharp configuration softening as the day wanes, while the recesses of the Selkirks fill with an intense and melancholy blue.
Very few of the peaks are named and those named are not likely submitted to the Geographic Board. Mt. Manitoba, named for his own province by Sir John Schultz, stands up conspicuously in the Rockies; and, in the Selkirks, Mt. Ethelbert, named by Captain Armstrong for the first nun to ascent the River. She died on board the Captain's boat. Ptarmigan, and was buried as Sister Ethelbert. The Government map marks a mountain in the Selkirks about forty miles from Golden by the River, as Jubilee Mountain, probably named in the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.
The valley itself is now lowland, colloquially "riverbottom"' covered with low-growing shrubbery and deciduous trees; and now high "benches" studded with large firs, naturally terraced parks—
- ↑ Note- No river in the world is more worthy the capital.
