THE GREAT DIVIDE
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We are now in the train running toward the great ridge of mountains
which rises like a backbone through the country from north to south,
cutting off the territory of British Columbia from Alberta, though both
are provinces of Canada. The Rockies! What ideas of grizzly bears and
Indians and scalps and trails the name brings up before me! I don't
suppose you have anything like the same feeling about them, because you
weren't brought up on Fenimore Cooper and Ballantyne and all those other
writers who are old-fashioned nowadays. Perhaps you have never even read
_The Wild Man of the West_, or _Nick o' the Woods_? It makes me sorry
for you!
The Clays were good to the last; they brought us up on the little launch
by river to New Westminster, and then we went by electric cable-car to
the mighty town of Vancouver on the Pacific Coast. What a town! Wide
streets, huge buildings, tram-cars, and much bustle and life. But what
struck us most was the splendid playground of Stanley Park which covers
all the ground at the end of the peninsula stretching out into the sea.
This is not an Englishman's idea of a park at all, for we think of the
rather stiff green expanses, with a few trees scattered here and there,
that we are used to at home. Stanley Park is just a bit of primeval
forest with roads running through it. There are immense trees rearing
their crowns on stems twelve feet in diameter. There are thickets and
wild creatures and rich undergrowth. The inhabitants of Vancouver are
lucky indeed, and they have another park on the other side of the town
too. Stanley Park overlooks the harbour, where lie ships of all nations,
from the liners of China and Japan to the tiny tugs of the Cannery
Companies. The amount of trade coming here is immense. The ships carry
cargoes of tea, rice, and silk and oranges, with skins from Siberia, and
take away grain, timber, fish, machinery, cattle, and manufactured
goods. There are some sailing ships, you still see them in this part of
the world, and these are loading masses of timber baulks from the great
pine woods inland. Lumbering and logging are the two great occupations
of the Western Canadian winter, and what you see here is the fruit of
that work. Terribly hard work it is too. Swinging an axe all day among
the great giants of the forest requires knack as well as strength, and
when a man first starts that game he quickly finds he is as weak as a
baby till his muscles get hardened to it. When cut down the trunks are
dragged to any stream, or creek, as they call them here, to be drifted
down to the coast. It is a wonderful sight to see a river about half a
mile wide literally covered with tree trunks wedged against one another
from bank to bank. When the logs get jammed, and have to be released, it
requires a great deal of courage to go right into the middle of the
stream and find the key-log, the one which holds the whole together,
like the keystone of an arch; most exciting work this is, many a man
loses his life or his limbs over it. In Burma, where the teak companies
run their business on the same lines, elephants are taught to do this;
they feel around with their trunks and draw out the right log, and then
make for the banks at full speed, to get out of the way before the whole
mass of tons' weight breaks loose and comes down upon them. But here
there are no elephants; dogs are the beasts of burden, and fine work
they do in teams, drawing laden sleighs over the frozen snow,--but dogs
can't pull out timber when it is jammed. A lumber man has to be a bit of
an engineer too, and learn how to dam up the stream to make enough water
to float his logs; he is a jack of many trades, and generally a fine
fellow too.
If we had come straight on from Victoria in the Empress steamer from
Japan we should have landed at Vancouver. The Empress Line belongs to
the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, which has its terminus there. This
is one of the most miraculous railways in the world. We are on it now.
When first it ran out to the Western end, after surmounting
indescribable difficulties in crossing the mountain country, it stopped
at that little place we passed through when we came to Vancouver from
New Westminster. You remember we saw a deserted town, solitary and
silent, on the inner curve of the bay? It is called Port Moody, and the
name suits it to a T. It has a right to be moody, for when it was known
the railway was going to end here the town sprang up in a week or two,
in the way Canadian towns do; but the very first winter was so terribly
severe that ice was driven up into the bay and blocked it completely,
preventing vessels from getting to the terminus at all, and so the
directors saw they must carry their line on farther round the bay to the
northern point, and here Vancouver arose; but the irony of it was that
no such winter has ever been known again! It only came that once, just
to blot out Port Moody's chances. So the place lies mouldering away,
with the lumber houses falling to pieces and the wharves rotting, and
only a few wooden crosses and headstones on the hill to mark the graves
of those who stayed behind when the others went.
[Illustration: NEGRO ATTENDANT.]
This is a very fine train, the cars are open all the way down, so we can
walk from end to end, the seats face in the direction we are going, and
the backs can be swung over to the other side in the same way as on a
tram-car. I know you have already noticed the very spruce negro
attendants, because I saw you staring at the first one who appeared with
all your eyes! There is an observation car with huge plate-glass windows
at the end of the train, and we will go there to-morrow when we get into
the mountains. I saw that there was a placard saying the negro attendant
will answer _all_ questions! I hope he gets a very high salary!
It was eight o'clock at night before we left Vancouver, and as there is
a capital dining-car on the train, we had better get dinner at once.
But the fun begins when we go to bed. I send you along first and say
I'll turn in after a last smoke, but I have hardly settled down to an
interesting conversation with a man in the smoking-car before I see you
standing beside me looking very troubled. Well, what is it? In a low
whisper you say--
"I can't go to bed there; there's a lady in the same car."
"Never mind! She has her own bunk, I suppose?"
"Yes, but----" a long pause--"she drops her hairpins on to me!"
My laugh makes the man beside us very inquisitive. Never mind, old man!
Pick them up and return them to her in a neat little packet to-morrow,
but whatever you do don't go to sleep with your mouth open!
It certainly is funny. When I join you I find that the lady is in the
upper bunk above that which you and I are going to occupy together. The
curtains hang straight down and it is a very tight fit indeed to wriggle
into my place without pulling open the top part, and a still more
difficult job to get out of my clothes lying in a space like a ship's
berth.
In the morning I take care to get up early and rouse you, and as we
vanish out of the compartment we hear a little giggle, and looking back
I see a long lock of brown hair hanging down over the edge of an upper
bunk. I hope you gave her back her hairpins!
We are surprised that the train is standing still, and want to find out
why. We saunter along to the observation car and breathe the glorious
freshness of the air, chilled by the great white peaks which rise
shining up against a clear sky. Seeing that several of the men
passengers have climbed down on to the track and are wandering along it
we follow, and round the next corner come upon a cattle-train off the
lines and blocking the way. She was just turning on to a siding to wait
for our coming when the disaster occurred, and now she lies helpless,
with twenty cars filled with cattle who are lowing in a disconsolate
questioning way. Just look at the poor beasts, they are packed tighter
than ever we see them in England, simply jammed up against each other
like sardines in a tin. One of them has fallen, and the others bulging
out over the space thus made are trampling on him. A fine-looking
fellow, six feet high, in a blue shirt and cowboy hat, with a red
handkerchief twisted round his throat, comes along with a pole, and
skewering it under the fallen ox very cleverly levers it on to its feet
again, holding it up until it forces its way upward itself. He jabs at
it once or twice to make it move, but not unkindly. He looks a rough
specimen and has a two days' growth of beard, but we go up to him, as I
want to ask questions about the cattle. To our astonishment the moment
he speaks we know him for an educated Englishman. "Oh, they're not badly
looked after," he says; "they've all been out at Kamloops for twelve
hours to get rest and food and water. They were only put on the cars an
hour since."
Looking at him keenly I find something very familiar in his face. "Are
you a Winchester man?" I ask.
"By Jove!" he says, "Mitton!" and simultaneously I cry "Wharton!" and
our hands are locked.
"Got a rough job?" I ask.
He laughs. "It's all in the day's work," he says. "I've done worse
things. It's a man's job, anyhow."
"Are you going to live out here permanently?"
"No; not good enough. I've been knocking about now two years, and unless
you've got capital you can't make a start; a man can always keep
himself, of course, and you see something of life too, but for a
permanency, no, it's not good enough! I wrote to my people only last
week I'd be turning up next fall to settle down again."
He has to go to help the men who are raising the wheels of the truck on
to the line again with jacks. It has been a queer accident altogether.
The train was running down in the early hours of this morning when a
huge boulder, which had been loosened by the vibration of its passing,
fell with terrific force against this particular car, and knocked it off
the rails; the coupling-pin connecting it with the next one in front
broke, and the engine and first few trucks ran on a little. Luckily the
derailed truck ploughed the ground and stopped within a foot or two of
the awful gulf yawning below, though those following, which had kept on
the track, gave it a shunt forward.
It is not long before all is shipshape again, and we draw slowly past,
waving to Wharton, who stands up in his caboose, or van, a handsome,
healthy figure of a man. He was one of the best short-slips Winchester
ever had. For some time after this we pass waiting trains at every
siding, for all the traffic has been held up by the accident.
For the rest of that day it is difficult to spare thoughts for anything
but the scenery. It is grander than anything I have ever seen in my
life. Very few people in England realise that there is not one but three
ranges of mountains to be crossed from the coast. We are through the
first now and into the Selkirks, and we have to climb right up these and
down again before starting on the heights of the Rockies, which is the
only range most people know by name. The peaks, which rise majestically
round, are often tree-clad far up; we see huge pines, centuries old,
towering out of a tangle of undergrowth that has probably never been
trodden by any human foot, not even those of the Indians. There is a
great deal of dead wood to be seen, and this hangs out in banners of
brown among the sombre green, and here and there are long strips of
brilliant emerald, which stand out like streaks. We apply to the
long-suffering attendant, who tells us that they are the new growth on
some great gash, cut possibly by a fall or landslide in the winter, and
as we go along he shows us some of these bare patches, yet unhealed,
torn by an avalanche of stones and mud and snow.
[Illustration: INDIANS IN MODERN CLOTHES.]
We pass on long trestle bridges over foaming torrents far below, and it
makes us shudder to think what would happen if the train went over. That
man in the smoking-car last night told me a story of what happened to
himself on this line, some twenty years ago, when he was crossing over
the barrier. The train he was in was trying to get up a tremendously
steep incline on a dark and stormy night. The worst of these inclines
are not used now, for the way has been engineered round them. The wheels
were slipping on the greasy rails, and the engine was snorting and
sending up showers of sparks, and inch by inch, foot by foot, the driver
manoeuvred her up, till he reached one of these bridges. There is a
man stationed on duty at each of them. There, notice his hut as we
pass--they have to guard the road and see to the safety of it and signal
to the train if anything happens to the bridge. The driver communicated
with the man on the bridge he had reached, and asked him to wire for an
engine to meet him at the next bridge and help him up. Engines are kept
in certain places ready for an emergency like this; so the wire was sent
and the train struggled on, but when they got to the next bridge there
was no engine. The message had gone through all right, and the man in
charge there had received a reply that the relief engine had started,
and it ought to have arrived by then, but there was no sign of it. The
line is a single one you notice, all the way, except at certain places,
where there are loops to allow trains to pass each other in the same way
as on some tram-lines. After waiting some time the engine-driver steamed
slowly ahead. He climbed on and up, and went very slowly, expecting at
every turn to meet the relief engine, or find it waiting for him, held
up at a bridge. But no, there was no sign of it, and yet every
bridge-keeper gave him the same message--it had been sent out and should
have been here by now. At last he reached the depot itself, but there
was no engine! What had happened to it? It had been dispatched on the
single line, full steam up, into that stormy night, and it had vanished
completely! A search-party was sent out in the morning, and found at one
of the loops a slight fracture in the line; close to it the ground had
been ploughed up, and there, far below, lay a shattered mass of iron
and steel in the narrow valley, with the torrent plunging over it. For
some unexplained reason the engine had left the rails and pitched
straight over the precipice, carrying with her the two men in charge,
who were, of course, killed outright.
Beside the bridges there are tunnels and snow-sheds frequently on this
line. Our puny tunnels in England are nothing to these; a new one which
is just being bored through the Selkirks and fitted with electric light,
is five miles in length! The snow-sheds are very peculiar; they are
built out over the line with sloping roofs, so that when the avalanches
of snow and stones and ice come flying down as the grip of winter
relaxes, they are carried off right over any train that may happen to be
passing, and thunder on into the valley below. For the line is for the
most part laid on a mere shelf hewn out of the rock, with a precipice on
the one side and the towering wall of the mountain on the other. We are
not likely to get avalanches or snow-slides now, but in the spring it is
an extraordinary experience to be in the train and hear the roar and
rattle, as of big guns, followed by a hail of bullets, as tons of stuff
come down, and most of it goes shooting into space, though a good deal
is left on the sheds.
These deep narrow valleys through which the rivers foam are called
canyons, and the narrowest point we pass through is called Hell's Gate.
Here the rigid walls of the cliffs come so near together that you could
easily throw a stone across, and the tossing, foaming water careers
along hundreds of feet below. The marvel is how any engineer could have
made a line here at all. Think of the blasting and of the machinery
which had to be used; how did they ever manage it? For before the track
was cut there was nothing to rest on. The engineers must have rigged up
some sort of scaffolding, I suppose, but it seems incredible. They had
no choice but to do it, for there was no other way to get the line
through, except by these narrow valleys, already occupied by a
tempestuous river. The railway never would have been made at all but for
that grand old man, Lord Strathcona, who died so recently. It was he who
inspired people with his own enthusiasm and indomitable perseverance,
and he at last who had the honour of driving in the spike which joined
up the two ends of the line, that coming up from the Pacific slope, and
that which had run across the plains from the Atlantic, and thus he
bridged the continent. One of the finest peaks in the mountains is
called after him. And the great "park" of 830 square miles, now being
formed on Vancouver Island, is to be called Strathcona Park.
The loops which the line makes are another thing to notice. Far up we
can see another train crawling about on the mountain-side, which seems
impossible! How did it get there? The negro attendant sees us staring,
and grins, showing his set of splendid white teeth, "Soon see him
below," he says, and he is right; in a comparatively short time we have
passed that train at a siding, and afterwards, on looking down, see it
deep below us in the valley. The line makes the ascent in a series of
great loops, and the sides of these, seen from above or below, appear to
be straight lines.
Revelstoke is one of the interesting places we pass; here a branch goes
off to the Kootenay country, where there is splendid land and climate
for fruit-growing alongside the great lakes.
You ought to be beginning to know something about Canada now. First the
salmon-fishing, then the lumbering, next the cattle-export, and now the
fruit-growing. It is a fine and prosperous country.
It is the wrong time of year for the fruit, or we might have made an
excursion to the south to get a look at it, for we could go down the
great lakes, through the Crow's Nest Pass, and back again to the main
line in a loop. But the blossom will all be over, of course; in spring
it is as great a sight as it is in Japan, with the flowers springing out
all along the trunk and branches like the hackles of a cock! Cherries
are one of the chief exports, and then there are peaches, pears, apples,
and plums, with other things such as strawberries and potatoes to fill
in. But many a man's heart must sink when he comes out first from the
old country and sees the wilderness he has to start on, for even if it
is "cleared" there may be stumps of huge trees sticking up all over, and
stones everywhere; it is all much rougher than our neat, tidied-up
country. But then, on the other hand, the land is far cheaper, the soil
is much more fruitful, and consequently the yield greater. After
Revelstoke we pass Glacier, where the line runs round in a kind of
amphitheatre, showing a magnificent range of peaks in solemn grandeur
rising above the fringe of fir trees.
We have come down from the Selkirk range and now rise to the Rockies,
where the track is even steeper and more twisted; here the snowy peaks
lifted into the region of eternal snow are higher, but the scenery is
not so easily seen, as we are more hemmed in by even narrower canyons.
The main interest is in going through Kicking Horse Pass; but here even
the negro attendant fails--he cannot tell us how the name arose! His
spirits droop, but rise again when he comes eagerly to tell us we are
approaching the "Great Divide." We have been running through many
tunnels in and out of the "Cathedral Rocks," and now we reach the
water-shed of the country, where sparkling streams fall away in opposite
directions, one running down to the Pacific, and the other to Hudson's
Bay in the north-west. At last we reach Banff, a well-known place, with
a huge hotel of the most luxurious kind, belonging to the Canadian
Pacific Company. Near Banff is the Canadian National Park, a park
indeed, of 5732 square miles, including mountains and forests! You
simply can't imagine it; it is a great tract of country, preserved in
its natural state, and the haunt of wild things. Here are herds of the
buffalo of the West, the bison, a very different fellow from the
domesticated Eastern buffalo who so rudely chased you and Joyce. The
bison are fine to look at, with their extraordinarily large chests and
heads, out of all proportion to the rest of their bodies. Their great
shaggy fronts and humped shoulders make a peculiar outline. In years
past they were cruelly hunted and killed, but are now protected and
encouraged. Now the Government is doing its best to save the remnant.
The amount of land yet wholly untrodden in the heart of these great
mountains is difficult to realise; even the Indians only pass through
some of it, and no white man's foot has ever touched more than a tithe.
Grizzly bears, cinnamon bears, deer, wild sheep, and goats live still in
these fastnesses, quite undisturbed by the little line that threads
through from sea to sea.
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