Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/360

286 is a magnificent mountain stream, and from the railroad, high on the mountain side, the traveller can at many points look down hundreds of feet upon the river. Though the Selkirks are not quite so high as the main chain of the Rockies, they are even grander. The snowfall is materially greater in the Selkirks, and the glaciers are vast in extent. It is said that the snowfall at Glacier averages thirty-five feet during the winter, and that it lies from four to eight feet deep from October to April. There are thirty immense snowsheds on this section of the railroad.

Glacier is the great resort in the Selkirks. This splendid resort has attractions in some respects superior to those of Banff, Lake Louise, or Field. It is in the very heart of the Selkirks. The Great Glacier is only a mile and a half distant, a glacier which is said to cover an area of two hundred square miles; more than all the glaciers of Switzerland combined. From the watch tower at Glacier, this mass of ice, twisted and contorted, with all the colours of the rainbow playing upon it, is one of those visions of elemental force which only great mountains reveal. Like all the glaciers of the Northern Hemisphere, this is receding at a rapid rate. A record on the rock indicates the point to which the ice attained in July, 1887, and the ice is now over seven hundred feet distant from that point.

The Asulkan Glacier is a more beautiful sight, as viewed from Abbott rampart, than the Great Glacier. Every traveller should climb the trail to Abbott in order to get that sight. And with it he will view the twin peaks of Castor and Pollux yet farther south, while to the north the splendid peaks of Cheops,