Page:Canadian Alpine Journal I, 1.djvu/37

22 Kamloops. About midway we came into possession of the head of the "headless Indian," well known to every reader of the "North-West Passage by Land." In 1863 Dr. Cheadle and his companion, Lord Milton, in the silent forest saw in a sitting posture at the foot of a tree a headless skeleton clothed in the leathern garments of an Indian. In vain they looked for the head, but all trace of it eluded their diligent search. When we reached the spot, nine years afterwards, the skeleton had been found by some of my staff precisely as described by Milton and Cheadle. After a careful search in all directions, the head was likewise discovered, about a hundred and fifty yards away from the body. While the mystery of its separation from the trunk will probably always remain a mystery, the history of the skull since its discovery in 1872 is easily told. It found its way to Ottawa along with the old sword bayonet unearthed in the Jaspar valley on the other side of the Yellow Head pass, but unlike the sword bayonet it soon came to an untimely end. The long-missing cranium of the headless Indian was accidentally cremated on January i6th, 1874, when the offices of the Canadian Pacific Railway Survey, at the Capital, were unfortunately consumed by fire.

My first visit to the Kicking Horse pass was in 1883, when on a special examination at the instance of Lord Mountstephen, then president of the Canadian Pacific railway. I was in London when I received his telegram from Canada. It hastened my return, and it likewise led subsequently to the publication in book form of the journal of a summer tour between Old and New Westminster. It may not be without interest to look back at the record of a generation ago, along the identical route by which the railway has since conveyed, in ease and comfort, hundreds of thousands,