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 b