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 i