Page:The Selkirk mountains (1912).djvu/25

Rh Continent from Toronto for the purpose of putting on canvass aboriginal scenes of the various tribes of Indians, of the buffalo, and such human marks of pioneers as the forts of the great Fur Trading Companies. lie brought back to Toronto some 300 rough sketches. Some of his finished pictures are now in tlie Parliament T5uiUlings of Ottawa and of Toronto, some are in private collections; but all or nearly all of the original sketches are in the possession of the artist's son, who lives in a small town in Manitoba. Their historical value is considerable and any Western Province would do well to secure them. Kane lost his eyesight and his painting was stopped.

Other early explorers might be mentioned, but these belong especially to the great days of adventure and heroic transit, now picturesquely placed by the perspective of the years. In the "Selkirk Range" Mr. Wheeler gives us a touch of their glamour, and yet a glamour not theirs but ours: "Often have the recesses of these mountain fastnesses echoed to the stirring strains of a French-Canadian camp song; and the camp-fire, flickering among the dark shadows of the pines, has lighted up the bronzed and strikingly characteristic features of bourgeois voyageur and redskin, men who lived hand in hand with nature, to whom the trackless forest was an open book and the surging rapids an everyday pastime."

Later History: Modern discovery and Exploration began in the Selkirks in 1865, under Mr. Walter Moberly, an eminent engineer who came to Vancouver Island in 1858 by way of Cape Horn, his ulterior purpose being to search for the shortest low-level route through the Rocky Mountain system. A man of vision, he saw the day when the mountains would no longer separate east and west in Canada, when men would ride to and fro on a trans-continental railway. Mr. Moberly's career is part and parcel of the history of the great railway's advent, and in itself is a record of historic importance. The reader is recommended to a scarce little book of thrilling interest entitled "The Rocks and Rivers of British Columbia," published in London (1885) containing an account of his pathfinding north and south by flood and precipice and jungle in savage wildernesses.

Mr. Moberly discovered Eagle Pass, explored the Illecillewaet to its forks, crossed the Selkirks for the first time by a pass north of Rogers Pass, examined the route around the Big Bend, and made many explorations of value both to the C.P.R. Company and to the British Columbia Government. Only for the refusal of the Indians owing to the advancing season to proceed beyond the junction up the south fork of the Illecillewaet (he chose the name meaning "rapid river") Mr. Moberly had discovered Rogers Pass. This achievement, as everybody knows, came to Major Rogers. It is interesting to learn that Paul Kane was the begetter of Mr. Moberly's inspiration and determination to explore the western mountains. The artist gave him long and minute descriptions of his tour, literally a grand tour, and showed him all his sketches; and there was born the purpose, carried out under many and heavy difficulties.

The Railway—Discovery of Rogers Pass (1881). The key which unlocked the door to tourist travel in the Selkirks was the discovery of Rogers' Pass by Major Rogers, engineer in charge of the mountain division of the Canadian Pacific Railway from 1880 to 1885. His