ON THE CANADIAN PACIFIC.
GLACIER HOUSE,
CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY, July 19, 1892.
We left Vancouver at 2.20 P.M. on the 16th, and made our acquaintance
with this great transcontinental railway. I think it fully as good as
any of those over which I have travelled in recent years. A good
roadbed, fine and comfortable cars, polite attendants, and every thing
supplied to make travelling agreeable. The road runs for many miles on
the banks of the Frazier River. Great mountains tower above, covered
with snow, and there are distant views of glaciers, which would have
been thought immense if we had not seen those in Alaska. We were
detained all day Sunday at a place called Kamloops, a telegram having
been received that a freight train had been derailed eighty miles
eastward. Some of us attended service at a small Methodist Church,
and listened to a good sermon from a young man who had for a
congregation only about twenty persons. Leaving Kamloops on the
evening of the 17th, we arrived here at seven the next morning. This
hotel, which was built and is kept by the railway company, is a fine
one, and guests are made very comfortable by the excellent manager,
Mr. Pearly. The valley through which the road passes does not contain
more than two or three hundred acres, and is surrounded by immense
mountains, one of which, Sir Donald, is a mile and a half high. Small
streams of melted ice and snow come rushing down from the tops of
these mountains, and form a pretty little river, in some places not
more than twenty-five feet wide. Our party took a two-mile walk over a
rough path to a great glacier among the mountains, Mr. Pearly acting
as guide. It was a hard tramp through the woods, and over small
streams, but we all survived it, and in a couple of hours returned to
the hotel, very much fatigued, but well pleased. Near the hotel, the
railway tracks are covered with substantial snow-sheds about a mile
long, made of heavy planks and timber, affording an excellent place
for walking and viewing the surrounding mountains. A party of ladies
and gentlemen went out on these sheds this morning, and spent some
time walking back and forth, viewing the magnificent scenery. The
surrounding mountains appeared colossal in their grandeur. We had a
fine view of them, and of the great glacier, and the valley below. The
scenery all along this railway from Vancouver impresses me as the most
splendid I have ever seen anywhere, with the exception of once, when
we came up from the hot plains of India, crossed the Ganges, and
taking a little narrow-gauge railway, crawled up the mighty Himalayas
to Darjeeling, arriving at sunset. It was a glorious sight, four
mighty ranges of mountains, among them Mount Everest, twenty-nine
thousand feet high. But this is a digression. From our place of
observation on the snow-sheds we were looking down into the valley,
when suddenly Mr. Edwin T. Townsend shouted: "There is a bear," and
all eyes were turned in the direction of the little stream running
through the valley below, about one-third of a mile off. On a small
island in this stream, wandering about, was a big grizzly, as large
as a cow. He was in sight for half an hour, and seemed to be a playful
kind of a beast. He would wade out into the stream, and get something
to eat, probably refuse from the hotel, then go ashore and devour it;
and once he got hold of a good-sized spruce-tree and shook it
violently. Mr. Eden, of Winnipeg, went to the hotel for a gun, and,
accompanied by another gentleman, tried to head off the bear and get a
shot at him, but he disappeared and could not be found.