Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/340

274 time, and listen to their gay song, mingling with the plash of oars:

The way of approach for the Eastern tourist to a journey down the Columbia is by the Canadian Pacific Railway, a magnificent road in a gallery of masterpieces. Wonders begin before he reaches the western watershed. He will see Banff, with its hot springs, its immense hotel, its Bow River and Falls and Valley. He will see the gem of the Canadian Rockies, one of the gems of the earth, Lake Louise. Imagine a glistening wall of purest white, Mts. Lefroy and Victoria, with a vast glacier descending from them, great bastions of variously tinted rock closing on either side as a frame of the snowy picture, and in front a lake, small indeed, but of perfect form, a mirror in which the snowy wall, the glacier, the rocky ramparts, find a duplication as distinct as themselves.

A few miles farther west, and the traveller will find himself at one of the most significant of all places, the Continental Divide. Eastward the water flows into the Bow, thence into the Saskatchewan, and ultimately into the Atlantic. Westward the springs find their way to the branches of the Wapta, thence to the Columbia and the Pacific. The long westward ascent which we have followed all the way from Winnipeg ends at last. The track becomes level. We are at the summit. Looking southward we can see descending the steep slope, a clear mountain stream, which is parted into two branches by a little wall of stone. One branch goes east to the Atlantic, the other west to the Pacific.