Page:Canadian Alpine Journal I, 1.djvu/59

38, quartzites, slates, shales and conglomerates. They have been carved, by the processes of erosion and weathering, into many and varied styles of architecture, rising in such a profusion of fantastic towers, minarets, spires and obelisks as to delight the eye of the most exacting seeker after the picturesque. In these limestone rocks, of the Silurian and Devonian series, are seen fossil sea-worms and shells, and other relics of the low order of life in a by-gone age. They are found even at the very summits of some of the peaks, at an altitude of 10,000 feet above the level of the sea—their former home. At the other places, beds containing fossilized species, closely allied to the trilobite, are to be found. One of these, on the slopes of Mt. Stephen, at an altitude of 7000 feet, has become famous.

In this range, the valleys are wide, owing to the susceptibility of the rock formations to the erosive power of ice and water. Their sides, clad with bronze-green pine and dark blue spruce, sweep upward to open parklands, dotted with golden larch; then, to sunny alplands, where the ground is soft with a carpet of pink heath and white heather and where other alpine flowers of rare beauty and brilliance grow. Hidden in the recesses of these forests and high aloft, surrounded by snow, ice and rock-falls, are lakes of magic hues, like quaint jewels in rare old settings; turquoise green, in Hector, Bow and Emerald lakes; turquoise blue in Peyto lake; transparent emerald in Yoho lake; bright cerulean blue in McArthur and Turquoise lakes; royal blue in Lake Louise; even brilliant yellow may occasionally be seen. It is a land of leaping waterfalls and rushing torrents, of fierce sunlight and black shadow, of rosy alpen-glow and purple twilight, a land of enchantment, where extremes meet; for it is but a step from grim, gaunt and cruel rocks to sunny alps, brilliant with the bloom of rare, exquisite flowers, and