ost
impressive scenery in Canada. The gradient climbs resolutely to the
great lift of petrified earth above Kicking Horse Pass, so that the
train seemed to be steaming across the sky.

A little east of the Pass is a slight monument called "the Great
Divide." Here Alberta meets British Columbia, and here a stream
springs from the mountains to divide itself east and west, one fork
joining stream after stream, until as a great river it empties into
Hudson Bay; the other, turning west and leaping down the ledges of
valleys, makes for the Pacific.

Beyond "the Great Divide" the titanic Kicking Horse Pass opens out. It
falls by gigantic levels for 1,300 feet to the dim, spruce-misted
valleys that lie darkly at the foot of the giant mountains. It is not
a straight canyon, but a series of deeper valleys opening out of deep
valleys round the shoulders of the grim slopes. Down this tortuous
corridor the railway creeps lower, level by level, going with the
physical caution of a man descending a dangerous slope.

The line feels for its best footholds on the sides of walls that drop
sheer away, and tower sheer above. We could look over the side down
abrupt precipices, and see through the dense rain of the day the mighty
drop to where the Kicking Horse River, after leaping over rocky ramps
and flowing through level pools, ran in a score of channels on the wide
shingly floor of the Pass.

Beneath us as we descended we could see the track twisting and looping,
as it sought by tunnelling to conquer the exacting gradient. The
planning of the line is, in its own way, as wonderful as the natural
marvel of the Pass. One is filled with awe at the vision, the genius
and the tenacity of those great railway men who had seen a way over
this grim mountain barrier, had schemed their line and had mastered
nature.

At Yoho Station that clings like a limpet near the top of this soaring
barrier, the Prince took to horse, and rode down trails that wind along
the mountainside through thickets of trees to Field at the foot of the
drop. The rain was driving up the throat of the valley before a strong
wind, and it was not a good day for riding, even in woolly chaps such
as he wore, but he set out at a gallop, and enjoyed the exercise and
the scenery, which is barbaric and tremendous, though here and there it
was etherealized by sudden gleams of sunlight playing on the wet
foliage of the mountain-side and turning the wet masses into rainbows.