Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 03.djvu/588

BRITISH COLUMBIA. geography of this region. The Rocky Mountains, along the eastern border of the province, continue northwestward until they fade out in the hills about Dease Lake. In the southern part of the province. where they are crossed by the transcontinental railroad, they, with their subordinate ranges, are about 150 miles wide, and consist of lines and groups of upturned Carboniferous and Devonian strata, presenting vast cliff faces toward the northeast, and thinly wooded slopes toward the southeast. They are broken by cross-valleys, giving exit to streams to flow cast as the sources of the North and South Saskatchewan, Athabasca, and Peace rivers, and to the west as tributaries of the Fraser and the Columbia; geologically they may be regarded as the equivalent of the foothills that border the front of the Rocky Mountains farther south. These mountains rise from an area of depression, the general level of the plains about their base being not above 3000 feet, and consequently their heights above the sea do not often exceed 10,000 feet (Leroy, Goodsir, and Victoria, and Dawson and Sir Donald among the Selkirks. are among the loftiest summits in the south, 10,000 to 11,000 feet in height);but farther north, near latitude 53°, a much greater elevation is attained, a group of peaks lying near the headwaters of the Saskatchewan rising seemingly to 13,000 and 14,000 feet, Mounts Brown and Hooker are near this region, but their elevations are much less than they were at one time supposed to be. The passes are correspondingly low, those used by the railroads or for wagon-roads varying from 0200 to 5500 feet at their summits. West of these mountains, and divided from them by a line of distant though narrow gorges, occupied by Kootenay Lake and by the bead-streams, successively northward, of the Columbia. Canoe, and Fraser rivers, there rises the Columbia or Gold Range, which is composed of Archtean rocks and represents the geological backbone of the cordillera. A part of it, or closely bound in with it, south of the 52d parallel is the magnificent glacier-crowned Selkirk Range, around which the Columbia makes its way in a loop of continuous canons, and west of which it flows southward, through the long and narrow Arrowhead Lake, into the United States. The small and comparatively open region at the southern end of the Selkirk Range, in the central depression of which lie Kootenay Lake and the tortuous Kootenay River, is 'the Kootenay country,' which during the last decade of the Nineteenth Century became prominent and populous as a mining and stock-raising region. West of the Columbia gorges lies the comparatively low, rounded, and forested Gold Range proper, which is traceable north to the 54th parallel, where the head-stream of the Fraser forms a loop about its terminus, just as the Columbia does about the Selkirks. It is in the Selkirks that is situated the group of great glaciers, so easily acwssible and constantly visited by tourists from the Canadian Pacific Railway (which crosses the range through Roger's Pass, 4300 feet), among a cluster of summits—Sir Donald, Mount Bonney, etc.—exceeding 10,000 feet in altitude and perpetually covered with snow and ice. The Gold Range takes its name from being the place where profitable gold-mines were first found in the interior.

West of this system there lies a plateau valley about 100 miles broad, continued from the United States northward 700 miles through British Columbia. Its northern portion holds the Parsnip and Kindlay rivers, which, meeting on the 56th parallel. form the Peace River and break through to the east. South of a dividing east and west line of hills, on the 54th parallel, the waters gather in the large Fraser and Thompson rivers. These flow south through deep cuts in the Carboniferous and later surface rocks, and having united, cut their way to the Pacific, near the international boundary, in a series of remarkable canons, followed by the transcontinental railway. This interior plateau. whose valleys have a general level of about 1200 feet above the sea. is deeply cut by its many streams, diversified by hills, and contains many lakes confined in elongated valleys, of which the largest are Babine and Stewart lakes, in the far north; Quesnel Lake, in the centre; the Sicamous lakes, near the Canadian Pacific Railway; and the long and important Okanagan Lake, in the south.

The mountains which lie between this interior valley region and the Pacific Coast are locally known as the Cascades, because they seem continuous with the Cascade Mountains of Oregon; but they are an immense local uplift, some 100 miles in width, reaching from the Fraser Delta, which river in reality passes around their southern end rather than across the uplift, northward to the break in the coast marked by Chatham Sound, the Skeena River, Portland Canal, etc. They consist of a huge mass of Paleozoic rocks, which have been so compressed, broken, and heated by intrusions of granite and other vicissitudes as to be largely converted into crystalline rocks and greatly displaced;so much so as to be turned completely upside down over large areas. Hence the scenery is extremely rugged and picturesque. The parallel range on Vancouver Island, though similarly ancient, seems to have been less violently disturbed in its elevation. Little exploration has been made of these ranges, whose crowded peaks rise 8000 to 10,000 feet above the sea. and are loaded with snowfields and glaciers. Their seaward side is deeply indented by long, narrow inlets (fine harbors), which make the coast closely resemble that of Norway. Some of these inlets penetrate the mountains for many miles as Howe Sound, Jervis and Bruce inlets, the latter connected with the large interior Chilco Lake. Dean Inlet and Douglas Channel wind inland for more than 50 miles each, and the Strait of Georgia and Queen Charlotte Sound are only similar arms of the sea, meeting behind Vancouver Island in the narrow water passage of Johnstone Strait.

The climate of British Columbia exhibits various constant phases, due to topography and situation. It is, as a whole, far warmer than that of the eastern coast at a similar latitude, as will be recognized by reminding the reader that between 49° and 60° on the Atlantic Coast lie the ice-bound and desolate regions of Labrador. This warmth is due to the fact that the prevailing winds come steadily from the west, and reach the land warm with their passage over the vast breadth of the Pacific, whose waters on this coast have a temperature of 52° F. (about the same as on the Irish Coast), or 20 degrees warmer than those