hat
leads out of the Nicola Valley to the summit, a paradise of beauty
outspreads at your feet; the color is indescribable in words, the
atmosphere thrills you. Youth and the pulse of rioting blood are
yours again, until, as you near the heights, you become strangely
calmed by the voiceless silence of it all--a silence so holy that
it seems the whole world about you is swinging its censer before
an altar in some dim remote cathedral! The choir-voices of the
Tulameen are yet very far away across the summit, but the heights of
the Nicola are the silent prayer that holds the human soul before
the first great chords swell down from the organ-loft. In this
first long climb up miles and miles of trail, even the staccato of
the drivers' long black-snake whip is hushed. He lets his animals
pick their own sure-footed way, but once across the summit he
gathers the reins in his steely fingers, gives a low, quick whistle,
the whiplash curls about the ears of the leaders and the plunge down
the dip of the mountain begins. Every foot of the way is done at
a gallop. The coach rocks and swings as it dashes through a trail
rough-hewn from the heart of the forest; at times the angles are so
abrupt that you cannot see the heads of the leaders as they swing
around the grey crags that almost scrape the tires on the left,
while within a foot of the rim of the trail the right wheels whirl
along the edge of a yawning canyon. The rhythm of the hoof-beats,
the recurrent low whistle and crack of the whiplash, the occasional
rattle of pebbles showering down to the depths, loosened by rioting
wheels, have broken the sacred silence. Yet, above all those nearby
sounds, there seems to be an indistinct murmur, which grows sweeter,
more musical, as you gain the base of the mountains, where it rises
above all harsher notes. It is the voice of the restless Tulameen
as it dances and laughs through the rocky throat of the canyon,
three hundred feet below. Then, following the song, comes a glimpse
of the river itself--white-garmented in the film of its countless
rapids, its showers of waterfalls. It is as beautiful to look at as
to listen to, and it is here, where the trail winds about and above
it for leagues, that the Indians say it caught the spirit of the
maiden that is still interlaced in its loveliness.

It was in one of the terrible battles that raged between the valley
tribes before the white man's footprints were seen along these
trails