Page:Canadian Alpine Journal I, 1.djvu/93

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Just beyond the Gap lies Banff, the capital of the Canadian National Park, a park unexcelled in all the world for grandeur and diversified beauty of mountain scenery. The main street of Banff runs south to Sulphur mountain, modest, kindly and pine-clad, and north to Cascade, sheer, rocky and bare, its great base thrust into the pine forest, its head into the clouds. Day after day the Cascade gazed in steadfast calm upon the changing scenes of the valley below. The old grey face rudely scarred from its age-long conflict with the elements, looked down in silent challenge upon the pigmy ephemeral dwellers of the village at its feet. There was something overpoweringly majestic in the utter immobility of that ten thousand feet of ancient age-old rock; something almost irritating in its calm challenge to all else than its mighty self.

It was this calm challenge, too calm for contempt, that moved the Professor to utter himself somewhat impatiently one day, flinging the gauntlet, so to speak, into that stony, immovable face: "We'll stand on your head some day, old man." And so we did, and after the following manner.

We were the Professor, by virtue of his being pedagogue to the town, slight, wiry, with delicate taste for humor; the Lady from Montreal, who, slight as she was and dainty, had conquered Mt. Blanc not long before; the Lady from Winnipeg, literary in taste, artistic in temperament, invincible of spirit; the Man from California, strong, solid and steady; the Lady