Page:Canadian Alpine Journal I, 1.djvu/31

18 All got over safely, though there was some danger on account of the strength of the current. . . . A ride of two miles took us to Jasper's, where we arrived exactly fifteen days after leaving Edmonton, two of them days of rest and a third lost by the obstruction of the Athabaska. It is hardly fair to speak of it as lost, however, for there was no point at which the delay of a day was so acceptable. The mountains of the Jasper valley would have repaid us for a week's detention.

Jasper House itself is one of the best possible places for seeing to advantage the mountains up and down the valley. It is situated in a pretty glade that slopes gently to the Athabaska, sufficiently large and open to command a view in every direction. There is a wonderful combination of beauty about these mountains. Great masses of boldly defined bare rock are united to all the beauty that variety of form, color, and vegetation give. A noble river with many tributaries, each defining a distinct range, and a beautiful lake ten miles long, embosomed three thousand three hundred feet above the sea, among mountains twice as high, offer innumerable scenes, seldom to be found within the same compass, for the artist to depict and for every traveller to delight in.

Valad informed us that the winter in this quarter is wonderfully mild, considering the height and latitude; that the Athabaska seldom if ever freezes here, and that wild ducks remain all the year instead of migrating south, as birds further east invariably do. The lake freezes, but there is so little snow that travellers prefer fording the river to trusting to the glare ice.

September 13th. The rain that had been brewing all yesterday came down last night in torrents. One awakened to find the boots at his head full of water; the feet of another, the head of a third, the shoulders of a fourth, were in pools according to the form of the ground, or the precautions that each had taken before