Page:Canadian Alpine Journal I, 1.djvu/32

Rh turning in. The clouds were lifting, however, and promised a fine day, and nobody cared for a little wetting; but everybody cared very much, when the Chief announced that the flour bag was getting so light that it might be necessary to allowance the bread rations. That struck home, though there was abundance of pemmican and tea. By 6.45 a.m. we were on the march again, to go deeper into the mountains. The trail led along Lake Jasper, and was so good that we made the west end of the lake, which is ten miles long, in two hours.

After dinner the march was resumed for seven miles up the valley. On the east side a succession of peaks resembling each other with the exception of one—"Roche à Bonhomme"—hemmed us in; while on the west, with lines of stratification parallel to lines on the east side, the solid rampart at the base of the Pyramid rose so steep and high, that the snowy summit behind could not be seen. The valley still averaged from two to five miles wide, though horizontal distances are so dwarfed by the towering altitude of the naked massive rocks on both sides, that it seemed to be scarcely one-fourth of that width. What a singularly easy opening into the mountains, formed by some great convulsion that had cleft them asunder, crushed and piled them up on each side like cakes of ice, much in the same way as may be seen in winter on the St. Lawrence or any of our rivers, on a comparatively microscopic scale, in ice-shoves! The Athabaska, finding so plain a course, had taken it, gradually shaped and finished the valley, strewn the bas-fonds, which cross-torrents from the hills have seamed and broken up. It looks as if Nature had united all her forces to make this the great natural highway into the heart of the Rocky mountains.

Sept. 14th. The trail this morning led along the Athabaska for seven miles, to where the Myette runs into it, opposite the old "Henry House." The highest