Page:Canadian Alpine Journal I, 1.djvu/14

Rh névés and precipices—the unimaginable visions from the upper heights; it must be obvious that, from the very nature of the sport, to popularize mountaineering is not to vulgarize nor degrade it. The mountains themselves hold the high effort and achievement in fee. The vulgar reach the mountain summits by a way against which the Alpine Club of Canada will set a face of flint. We know what way that is: the way of the monster, Mammon. By virtue of its constitution, the Alpine Club is a national trust for the defence of our mountain solitudes against the intrusion of steam and electricity and all the vandalisms of this luxurious, utilitarian age; for the keeping free from the grind of commerce, the wooded passes and valleys and alplands of the wilderness. It is the people's right to have primitive access to the remote places of safest retreat from the fever and the fret of the market place and the beaten tracts of life. We are devoutly grateful, as we ought to be, that the Canadian Pacific Railway Company has shown itself wise in a national sense, by refusing to follow in the wake of the cog-railways of the Rigi and Pike's peak. Our associate member, Mr. Whyte, the Second Vice-President of the Company, than whom a shrewder man of commerce does not live in Canada, nor one with a clearer vision of the people's good, would deplore any wanton defacement of the wild natural beauty and grandeur of these now secluded fastnesses. If I had space I could give tangible proof of this.

It is the Club's business to support the picturesque and wholly enjoyable transit to the mountain-places by pack-horse and saddle, and to promote the too much neglected exercise of walking. Your true lover of Nature is also a man of the unfamiliar roads and forest trails. It would be a great thing for young Canadians if all the automobiles vanished into space and walking for pleasure became the fashion. As