Page:Canadian Alpine Journal I, 1.djvu/46

Rh climb from rock to rock, grasping roots and branches, scrambling up almost perpendicular ascents, swinging ourselves occasionally like experienced acrobats and feeling like the clown in the pantomime. At some places the loads have to be unpacked and the men draw each other up by clinched hands from one ledge to another. We pass cautiously along a steep slope where a false step is certain disaster; creep under a cascade over a point of precipitous rock to comparatively safe ground beyond. So the story goes from day to day. Finally, after many vicissitudes, we reach the junction of the Illecillewaet and the Columbia, and the worst part of our journey to Kamloops is over.

These memories which I have recalled and briefly dwelt upon in the foregoing pages seem to culminate in an occurrence which may be regarded as an epoch in Canadian mountaineering. I allude to the passage of the first railway train through the solitudes of the mountains, along the precise route wearily travelled step by step less than three years before, up the Bow river, through the Kicking-Horse valley, and over the Selkirks by Rogers pass.

The railway had been opened for traffic between Montreal and Winnipeg for some time, when, on the evening of October 27th, 1885, the regular Winnipeg train leaving Montreal had attached to it a private car containing three directors of the Canadian Pacific railway, Lord Strathcona, Sir William C. Van Horne, and the late Mr. George H. Harris. A fourth director (the writer) joined at Ottawa. A delay of two days took place at Winnipeg. Finally the party left on November 2nd. for the far west. Beyond Winnipeg the train became "special." It was the first Transcontinental train crossing Canadian soil. It reached the western crossing of the Columbia in fifty-six hours