Front matter (continued 3)

CLIMBING THE FAMOUS "MUIR."

Some of the passengers felt uneasy, fearing another mighty tumble might occur immediately in front of us, and that the mass might shoot outward below water, and might come up beneath, or uncomfortably close to us. The captain, however, stood upon the bridge ready to send his ship rapidly backward should anything look untoward. The engines were kept in gentle motion holding our bow steadily toward the glacier precipice. The captain, by the way, thinks the Takou the most interesting of the approachable glaciers. The ice gathered was of great solidity. It did not break under an ice pick in straight cleavage, but irregularly, showing its peculiar characteristic of being formed, not from water simply freezing, but from snow compacted under irresistible pressure. Two chunks of perhaps each two tons weight lay between decks supplying the entire ship's wants for four or five days. It may have been imagination, but I thought this ice more agreeable for eating than that made by ordinary process. It was more friable and broke and crumbled in the mouth in shorter pieces and not in long spiculae as ordinary ice does.

We passed on our run close to several other huge glaciers, some of them running quite down to the water; among them the "Stephens" which though very large, reaches the sea in a slope and not with a perpendicular precipice. We, however, stopped only at the celebrated "Muir." We lay in front of it from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m.—a half hour in rather dangerous proximity, and then anchored a mile off for passengers to land and climb its banks. The Muir presents a precipice to the head of the inlet nearly 300 feet high and over a mile long. Two years ago it bent outward with a very decided convex front; last year it was nearly straight. Now it is a very open horseshoe. We took soundings when the Queen lay a thousand feet from the front and found under us 720 feet. It possibly shallows considerably close to the wall, say to 400 feet. The glacier is certainly over 200 feet high; this makes, with what is under water, 600 feet. But give it the low estimate of an average across the inlet of 400 feet. It moves steadily downward forty feet a day, and gradually recedes. Thus it will be found that it tumbles into the sea a mass of ice, 40 x 5280 x 400 feet, or of at least 84,000,000 cubic feet a day.

After wandering for several hours over the surface of the glacier, along a sort of granite road way varying in depth from a few inches up to very many feet thick lying upon it; among blocks of granite weighing tons brought down upon the solid frozen river; across narrow crevices, into whose depths we could look a hundred feet down, into pure ice of all tints of blue from the pearl blue of a southern sky to ultramarine and indigo—tints so beautiful that one involuntarily groaned in pleased admiration; along chasms where our iron-pointed alpenstocks were necessary to prevent a slip, which would have sent us down into glacial graves; looking over pinnacles, domes and valleys of ice in confused profusion; over grotesque forms, over which no one person could safely go, but a dozen attached to each other by ropes, with shoes iron-nailed, might with hazard venture. Then up and before us spread the mighty glacier, 25 miles by 30, fed by many smaller ones. Morains of rock lifted above the surface in long even lines running back for miles, showing the edge of each of the frozen rivers, which have united to make the mighty single one.

The theory explaining the medial moraines of glaciers, is that two or more glaciers come down the gorges and upper valleys of the mountain. Each of these gather up broken rock and mountain debris on their two sides. When two such glaciers meet and run into and form one, then the inner lateral moraines unite and are borne along by the enlarged glacier. As it flows these two morains, now become "medial," are apparently pressed upward to and upon the surface. This, however, is probably only apparent, for the ice melting under the summer sun's heat, simply leaves the rock debris on the surface.

The Muir is the result of several upper feeding glaciers. Each two uniting formed from their inner lateral moraines, one medial. Several medial ones are observable on the surface of the great glacier, some of them uniting lower down, when the bed of the icy stream becomes contracted—where the valley becomes narrow. Several medial moraines retain their individual line until the great precipice is reached. The mass of the debris forming a moraine is of comparatively small broken granite; not broken and rounded by glacial action, but simply irregular pieces thrown off from granite precipices high in the mountains by frost forces. Now and then a few rounded pebbles, and small boulders are seen, worn on the under surface of upper glacier streams. Quite a number of very large masses of granite are being borne down by the Muir moraines. One I estimated to weigh several tons. Its cleavage sides and edges were fresh and sharp as if it were just broken from its parent rock.

The medial morains on some of the glaciers seen at a distance, have a singular effect. They can be seen in long apparently parallel lines and seemingly close enough together, to be the walls of a long smooth road. A wag declared that one of them was the road from an Indian village to the little red school house in an upper valley.

After exploring the surface of the glacier, we found that the tide having reached its ebb, we could approach the foot of the ice-precipice. Three of us had approached it somewhat nearly before when the tide was but half out. We walked up the shingly shore through stranded icebergs of all sizes, and hundreds in number. Some were not larger than a barrel, others larger than a railroad car, and of all intermediate sizes. Now we threaded our way through a cordon of huge blocks as clear as crystal, from which we chipped with the spikes of our alpenstocks, chunks delicious to eat. Then we were among others of various tints, colored by the earthy matter caught by them when flowing near to or upon the valley bed. One mass weighing probably a thousand tons was resting upon a point so small as to be a mere pivot. I cut from it a smooth rounded cobble stone for a paper weight, and was glad when my task was finished, for I was somewhat uneasy lest the slight hammering might topple over the bulky mass.

We reached the foot of the glacier. Here the picture was wonderfully fine. The ice-precipice from which so many newly broken bergs had tumbled, was far more beautiful than when seen from several hundred yards away. We looked into grottoes many yards recessed into the frozen cliff. Here in one was every shade of blue; all tints of green were resplendent in another; and then the sun would discolor these shades, and weave them into the sweet tones which paint an opal's cheek. Now an upper member of a newly broken recess under the sun rays sparkled as a million diamonds, and then another looked like a mass of crystalized olive tints. From out of a deep grotto at the base of the cliff flowed a strong river, which had been pent within its icy house, and now reaching the free air bounded and rushed to join the mighty sea.

Since our arrival in the morning the tide had fallen fully twenty feet, taking away considerable support from the hanging mass, so that the fall of icebergs was almost continuous. The thunder while so close to a tumbling mass was terrific and sublime. The inlet was full of bergs, so that the ship in turning out had to pick its way carefully. How exquisitely beautiful they were as they glistened in the sun's rays, displaying their iridescent crystals! As we steamed out of the inlet among a scattered ice floe we thought we had seen all that a grand glacier could present. Imagine our surprise when we had gone about ten miles to find ourselves at the entrance to another inlet which was packed almost solidly with icebergs. With our glasses we could see the huge "Pacific glacier," about thirty miles away, with a precipice of ice 600 to 800 feet high and five miles long. Although it was quite three times as far from us as the "Muir", yet its icy front showed to us higher out of water. The inlet running up to it was literally packed with ice, into which no steamer, unless armored for Arctic seas, would dare to venture.

A passenger lately taken on, who had spent a season prospecting in this immediate neighborhood, assured us that the fall of ice from this glacier was absolutely continuous, and that masses would tumble a half mile long. He had seen one floating three miles long. He admitted he had no means of measuring it, and gave us the result of a rather hasty guess. He said it stranded at each low tide, but would be lifted at each flood and was by degrees broken up sufficiently to get out of the inlet. "Why," said this passenger, "the Muir is a baby by the side of the Pacific. For every iceberg coming from the one five hundred come from the other." The statement was credible, for while just above this inlet the strait had only scattered bergs, below it was almost a pack of ice. The majority of the icebergs, which had fallen from the Muir, were melted away before reaching the mouth of the Pacific inlet. Looking up this, the icebergs seemed almost in solid mass; of all sizes from a few feet broad, to others covering a quarter of an acre; and from a few feet in height up to twenty, thirty and forty. Out side of the inlet and below its mouth, monster masses were all about us, some of them hundreds of feet across and several fully fifty feet above water.

The George W. Elder, which sailed from Tacoma the night we did, reached the Muir while we were there and sailed out with us. We thus had a genuine Arctic picture. The two ships picked their way slowly, less than a mile apart. The Elder was frequently hidden from us entirely by mighty icebergs. For miles we stole our way through the floe, delighted with the novel scene. Two fine ships in this icy sea gave us a realization of the pictures we had seen of the Thetis and her comrade in the frozen pack beyond the Arctic circle. Mighty Crillon, Fairweather, and La Perouse the sources of the great fields of frozen snow around us here pour their icy floods into the sea. The last is 14,000 feet high; the others respectively 15,900 and 15,500. They present the same amount of white above the snow line as does Mount Everest. That is about 12,000 feet on its southern slope. In Alaska the snow line toward the south is reached at 3,000 feet, while in the Himalayas the tree line mounts to 17,000 feet.

When I looked upon these great icebergs which had tumbled from the huge ice-cliffs we had lately seen, and then recalled the fact that they were but snow balls when compared to some which have been sighted in far northern and in southern seas—some which were from two to three miles square and seven to eight hundred feet high above water, and nearly if not quite a mile deep below the water line—when I recalled these facts I was lost in trying to speculate upon the vastness of the glaciers existing in Greenland and in Antarctic continents. Judging from what we know of those about us, we have to suppose there are glaciers in the world two or three aye six or seven miles high above water, sinking miles below the surface, and stretching in awful grandeur their frozen cliffs for many miles along the sea.

The Pacific glacier is from six to eight hundred feet high at its brink, and five miles long, yet among the bergs we saw—and the captain said he had never seen a finer display in the locality—there were none which were a half acre in size and none over sixty feet high. Icebergs are said to have been seen covering an area of from 2,500 to 4,000 acres, and twelve times as high as the highest about us. The glacier from which such monsters fell, was to the "Muir" as Niagara is to a mill dam. Are the mighty snow and ice mountains of the far south growing, or are they melting and breaking away from their moorings? If growing, when will they tumble through the crust of the earth, and send a raging sea over the habitable part of the globe? A guaranteed ticket for a berth in the coming Noah's ark may be a handy thing to have about the house. With one, the possessor could be quite content to let the other fellow do the swimming.

What a grand mind picture is presented to us, when we realize that glaciers once covered the northern half of this continent—glaciers whose sources were about Baffins Bay and within the Arctic circle, and whose feet stretched from the Alleghanies to the Rocky mountains—from Pennsylvania to Colorado! glaciers so vast that they built up moraines over a thousand feet deep! It is these thoughts which show us man's littleness and his vanity in boasting himself fashioned in God's image.

A good clergyman we met in the National Park, in all seriousness expressed a fear that the enormous sky scrapers our people are erecting in Chicago might destroy the equilibrium of the earth, and cause it to oscillate eccentrically upon its axis. A conscientious Chicagoan informed his reverence, that we were building our city of such weight that it would counterbalance the undue growth of ice mountains about the southern pole.

CLIMATE OF THE FROZEN REGION.

We have a pleasant company aboard—several being from Chicago. There is less of stiffness than is generally found on ocean steamers. There is an amusing party of over twenty from the city of brotherly love. They are all nice—very nice, and evidently have made a vow to hold themselves aloof from all others. They sit on deck in rows four deep, and follow the lead of one lady as a sort of bell-wether. When she smiles all laugh; when she feels a cold in her head all sneeze.

Perhaps I should say something further about the climate of our frozen territory. Few things are less understood. The Sitka winters are not unlike those of Norfolk, Va., rarely getting much below freezing. The nights there are very long, as the days are in summer. The sun was hot while we were there, but the shades were delicious. Three blankets were quite comfortable at night. In the straits and inlets the weather is not quite so mild as on the open seashore, but nowhere are there severe winters until the coast mountain range is crossed. There the sun in the summer days is piercing hot and mosquitoes are so thick that they are almost unbearable. There the long winters lock everything up in thick ribbed ice.

We know that nothing can be more delightful than what we found for summer. However, we have been fortunate. The rainfall is great and rains and fogs frequent. We have escaped both. Warm clothing, umbrellas, waterproofs, and water-tight shoes are recommended by those who advise how to go to Alaska. We have needed neither except the shoes when climbing the glacier. We have worn overcoats aboard ship when the wind was against us, for a slight breeze and the wind made by the speed of the ship causes a decided chilliness when on deck. When the ship is lying still we have required no extra clothing.

We expect to reach Nanaimo early to-morrow morning where the ship will coal. I hope we will be in early enough for myself and daughter to catch the little steamer running to Vancouver.

Before closing, however, permit me to give one of the most valuable points in the art of traveling. When you leave home drop its cares entirely and trustfully. Let your friends write nothing about your business unless it be such as they know should hurry you back and for that intended. Look on the bright side of everything before you, and do not complain because you have not the comforts of your home. Profitable travel is often laborious, and like all well applied labor, pays. As a young man I spent two years abroad and heard not a word as to my affairs. Since then I have made three trips to Europe and a long one around the world. Not a word on either of them did I hear of my business. Once a month during a Globe Circuit we received a cablegram telling us of the health of the loved ones at home.

To this policy I have ascribed the happiness and much of the benefits received. People we met in various quarters of the world looked regularly for and got advices on their affairs and were often uneasy and miserable, but were powerless to correct anything going wrong. Passengers on this ship are fretting about letters they expect to get at Victoria. I have heard nothing for a month and expect nothing until I wire home. If one keeps himself hopeful he can adopt as his traveling motto, "No news is good news." Try this and you will confess you owe me a good fee for sound advice.

LETTER VIII.

VANCOUVER. A PICTURESQUE, GROWING CITY. A RUN OVER THE CANADIAN PACIFIC. MAGNIFICENT SCENERY MET WITH FROM THE START. A GLORIOUS RIDE. FRASER RIVER GLUTTED WITH SALMON. A NEVER-TIRING VIEW FROM GLACIER HOUSE, FOUR THOUSAND FEET ABOVE THE SEA. RUGGED, PRECIPITOUS GRANDEUR OF THE SELKIRKS AND ROCKIES. NATURAL BEAUTIES OF BANFF. REFLECTIONS AT THE "SOO."

Canadian Pacific Steamer Alberta, at Sault Ste. Marie, Aug. 23, '90.

Three years ago I wrote quite largely on a trip over the Canadian Pacific Railway, running from east to west. Perhaps by now writing of it beginning at the western terminus, an appearance of plagiarism upon myself may be avoided. It is so grand a road, however, and the magnificence and variety of scenery offered by it to the traveler are so great, that considerable repetition may be permissible, especially as the probabilities are that only a few ever read or now remembers what I said before.

My Alaskan letter was ended at Nanaimo. A sail of three hours on a little steamer owned in New Zealand and lately brought from Bombay brought us to Vancouver. It seemed somewhat singular that we should be voyaging on a short local run in North-west America on a small steamer owned and lately doing service in a land so far away, and that land, too, one which we are prone to regard as our ultima thule, whose inhabitants are but one degree removed from the ragged edge of savagery. The world has so rapidly progressed since many of us studied geography, that we have scarcely been able to keep pace with its strides. We have to pause and think to be able to realize that New Zealand is no longer the land of savages, but is populated by a highly cultivated and energetic people, and abounds in splendid cities.

Before reaching Vancouver we saw high on the rocks the hull of the old steamer "Beaver". It was the first steamer to cross the broad Pacific brought here long ago by the Hudson Bay company from Bombay. It was wrecked only last year, but is already in this humid climate green with moss and ocean weed.

Vancouver has grown marvelously. Five years since its site was covered by a forest of enormous cedars and firs. Three years ago when I visited there, it had only seven or eight hundred population. Now it boasts having about 15,000. It has well graded streets, a few of them paved and several well planked; fine water brought in from a distance; blocks of handsome stone houses and office buildings; commodious and elegant hotels, and many handsome residences. If I be not mistaken I suggested it three years ago as a good place for safe speculation. Had it not been for the long voyage then before me I should have dropped a thousand or two into its lots, and would have been considerably richer by the venture.

High mountains of picturesque contours almost surround the city. It is a sad fact that at this season of the year a dense shroud of smoke usually envelopes the bulk of the uplands. Fortunately a copious rain cleared up the atmosphere just before our arrival. We passed through the town three years ago twice, and afterwards lay at its pier three days, while our ship was getting ready to sail for Japan; and all the while supposed the place was a great forest plain, until the morning of our departure, when a rain washed down the smoke and revealed magnificent mountain scenery close about us.

To one taking the train at Vancouver for the East, fine scenery faces him as he emerges from the station and then continues to greet the eye, varying and growing for the next 600 miles, never once tame, often beautiful or grand and sublime, and frequently terrible. It changes rapidly and as unexpectedly as the pictures presented by a revolving kaleidoscope. Lofty mountains, lifted up in rounded forms of granite, gneiss and other igneous rocks, massive and grand, like mighty boulders welded together, with monster trees in the valley below, and tall and straight ones high above wherever a ledge or a fissure affords their hardy roots chance to take hold, flank the road for the first ninety miles. On the north side of the Frazer River, whose broad white stream is soon reached, and which for the first 90 miles runs from East to West, these mountains arise immediately from the road. Across the river to the south more or less removed, from one to several miles, they show themselves in all their solid grandeur.

Rounded boulder shaped mountains of granite or igneous rocks are to me far more impressive than much taller ones of other formations. One feels that they are solid, and are welded to the central foundations of earth; that they were the offsprings of primal overpowering heat, while the others are made up of tiny particles of disintegrated igneous stone, loosely thrown together by glacial moraines or dropped at ocean's bottom, and after eons of time compressed into hardness. Their walls were uplifted by the pressure from below of belching granite, or were crumbled together by the cramped earth, and their points, pinnacles, and needles were fashioned by rains and slow chemical processes. They are the offspring of other than their own power and are shaped by puny causes acting through untold ages. The rounded granite mountains, however, lifted themselves and rushed forth from the seat of earth's central fires, moved by their own inherent forces.

One feels that mountains of secondary rocks are a mass of tiny things thrown aloft as the creation of other than their own powers. They may tower far above the snow line, and may pierce the vaulted sky with their sharp needles and tooth like pinnacles in the silent regions of eternal ice; but we know that their loftiest horns once lay beneath the ocean's wave, and after being hoisted as an impotent mass, have been cut and fashioned into sharpness by the gnawing tooth of frost. We know that they were borne up upon the breast of boiling, seething primitive rocks, and that they now rest upon the shoulders of granite titans. We know that they are crumbling day by day, and are being borne away upon pigmy streams into ocean depths. They are perishable and are perishing.

But yonder rounded form whose smooth head barely reaches the clouds, has its foundations welded by inconceivably fierce fires; fires kindled when this earth was rounded by the will of God from a formless void—welded to the very base and heart of the globe. It rose upon the crest of a molten sea, rending and tearing away everything its way, and now in adamantine coldness, seems the fit emblem of eternal duration.

One may be terrified by the pinnacled monster, but I am awed by the rounded giant.

The Canadian Pacific road furnishes observation cars through its grand mountain scenery, from a point some sixty miles from Vancouver to and into the plains east of the Rockies or for six hundred miles. This thoughtful provision should be imitated by all railroads traversing fine scenery.

A GRAND CANYON.

About ninety miles from Vancouver the milky Fraser rushes from the canyon which has held it in a close embrace for a hundred miles; from a chasm where the mountains have been split asunder, and now tower two or more thousand feet high, their feet washed in the turbulent stream, their heads cutting the sky in picturesque lines. The mountains along the canyon are all of metamorphic rock, splintered and shivered by too rapid cooling. In the course of some millions of years they have been washed down, so that what were once perpendicular walls have become precipitous heights, with every ledge and projection and all slopes which can hold soil, covered by dark green conifirae, and now and then by light green patches of deciduous shrubbery and small hardwood trees. Down toward the water the rocks are harder, and through it the river cuts its way between walls from fifty to one or more hundred feet high. These walls have defied the flood, and the river bends and winds through narrow fissures fifty to eighty feet wide, along which the white fluid rushes, almost with cascade force. Many of the projecting points and buttresses are grotesque and picturesque in the extreme.

For many miles along the canyon an old government stage road hangs on escarped walls or dips down to the waters. At one point, at a height of a thousand feet, it almost hangs over the gorge, serving now but one purpose, to make lady tourists exclaim upon the cruelty of making even gold seekers so risk themselves as did the passengers of stage coaches a score or so years ago. I said the old road almost hangs over the gorge. In fact it does frequently entirely hang. For it was timbered out so that while one wheel might be over solid rock, the other would be upon wooden sills from which a pebble could be dropped a hundred feet or more below. The stage road cost a vast sum, and is now among the many exhibitions of the destructiveness of capital as it works out new improvements. Every valuable creation of capital wrecks all others whose place it takes. The older ones have performed their tasks, and now become comparatively useless.

A RIVER BLACK WITH FISH.

We had remarkably visible evidences of the strange and irresistible instinct of the salmon to climb steep waters from the sea. For many miles the Fraser runs or rather rushes with great speed. Below every projecting rock there is an eddy more or less large. In these eddies salmon were congregated by the thousands, showing their black backs and fins an inch or two above the surface. These little swirling pools are generally many feet deep, and the finny voyagers must have been piled several deep one on the other. Over one crystal stream running into the river the road passes on a short bridge. In a pool in this creek, say twenty by fifty feet, the fish were so thickly packed that a man could almost have walked dry shod across the stream on salmon backs. In the ascent of the fish they fail often to overcome the rapid current and stop to rest in the eddies. I do not think I exaggerate in saying we saw hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, in a part of our run not exceeding thirty or forty miles. The fish looked small to us, for only a few inches of their backs could be seen. A fellow passenger, however, assured us that such as we saw ran from six to nine pounds. They were the sock-eye salmon, the fattest and best variety for canning. We saw no Indians fishing as there were three years ago. Their stock is already laid in and stored away in caches built upon high posts or up among the branches of spreading trees.

A hundred and eighty thousand fish averaging about eight pounds weight were caught in one day last week at New Westminster. A gentleman of the locality told us that now was but the beginning of the running season, and in three weeks there would be a hundred thousand where there was one now. A scientist was probably not mistaken when he asserted that the water of the world could produce more food for man, acre for acre, than the land. I fear the canneries are causing too many to be killed now.

An uninitiated person would have thought that great sport could be had just now on the Fraser with rod and line. In this, had he made the experiment, he would have been grievously mistaken. The salmon when on the run never rise to the fly or takes any food. They start from the ocean very fat and live on their fat until the spawning season is over, by which time they become so lean as to be scarcely edible. Indeed, the great bulk of them die of injuries suffered on their upward run or of starvation. Thousands are seen floating later in the season down the upper streams, bruised, torn and emaciated. The people out here have the impression that a salmon never feeds again after leaving the sea in its spawning journey, and that none of the vast millions which commence the voyage ever return. They spawn and die. This fish will spawn in a few weeks in the clear brooks and streams high up among the mountains. The eggs lie dormant until the warmth of next years' sun hatches them out. The small fry has then the clear water to commence its life in. It feeds, grows and runs down to the sea thereafter to do and die as its progenitors have been doing since the race began.

Nature's ways are very queer, and it seems to permit more inconceivable things to be done by its creatures beneath the water than upon the land. A fish disporting itself in a limpid stream or gently propelling itself deep down in the transparent sea, appears to be absolutely enjoying existence—to be reveling in his "dolce far niente," and yet it would seem that the whole finny family is spawned to bear the whips and spurs of most cruel fate. From the instant a little fellow emerges from the egg up to his fullest growth, he is always on the ragged edge of some bigger fish's maw. He climbs with intensest labor the rushing stream from the instinct of procreation, and then begins to die from slow inanition—the cruelest of deaths. Experiment has shown that the fish learns nothing by study—everything is from instinct; that he has no sense whatever. Lucky fish: for surely to him ignorance is bliss.

TWO HUNDRED MILES ON A COWCATCHER.

Three years ago I rode along a part of Thompson Canyon and down the whole of Fraser into Vancouver, some 200 miles, on the cowcatcher. It is the most delightful of all railroad running. We are ahead of the train. We seem not to be on wheels, but simply to be gliding along the iron way, propelled by an invisible impulse. There is no jar, no dust nor cinders. Over trestles a hundred feet high of frail and creaking timbers we rush without the least uneasiness or anxiety, for the machine and train being behind us and unseen we do not realize that hundreds of tons are being whirled over the frail bridge-work, and forget that there is anything heavier upon them than our own weight; onward we slide; a turn brings us face to face with a mighty precipice; we are rushing headlong against the rocky barrier when a sudden bend around a jutting point, reveals before us a hole in the rocky mass; into it we are shot—into the dark; a roar is heard behind us as if a thousand demons are after us in full chase; a glimmer of light steals along the iron ribbons before us, and then we burst into the broad day with a new and beautiful scene pictured for our delight; down below us rushes the river through deep fissures between the rocky walls; high above us lift mountains cutting the sky with bands of snow along the upper heights; past Indian hamlets, near which sits a squaw or two and lounges a lazy buck, while their children look at us as we fly along in indolent carelessness. Tunnel after tunnel, about thirty in all, swallow and then throw us forth. Once on the Thompson, the iron ribbons ahead rest one on the ground, the other on timbers projecting over a precipice. Over it we glide. Fifteen hundred feet below runs the silvery stream, so nearly under us that we think we could pitch a penny into it. But so lightly do we skim along that we feel no tremor. Ah! mine was a beautiful ride. It was three years ago, but as I looked at the same road as we passed along it a few days ago, the whole picture came back to me, and I feel sure the memory of it will live with me while I live.

Up the Thompson we came now, and saw some beautiful valley farms early at daybreak, with bright wheat fields, cozy homes, and sleek-looking stock. The mountains above were mighty uplifted long mounds, not rocky, broken nor peaked. Pines were scattered over them as if they were planted in upland parks—isolated trees, just enough to make parks bright, while over the ground was spread a carpet of velvet of a brownish drab. This effect was from the low bunch grass, now dried into hay. This grass is short, but sustains all winter through cattle in oily fat. The Thompson finally came up to a level with us, and was a clear and dignified river, making the meadows green. After a while it broadened into a great lake—the "Shuswap"—along whose pebbly shore, under great sloping mountains, we ran for over a third of a hundred miles. The Shuswap is an irregular sheet with long arms. No where is it much if any over a mile wide. High mountains lift from the water and mount upward in gentle slopes, well wooded. In a few places there are tiny plains at their feet. On these are the wig-wams of the Shuswap tribe of Indians.

Leaving this beautiful sheet we entered a range of mountains lofty and grand, with now and then a shoulder mantled with snow. Three years ago this range was all green with noble trees; now, as far as we could see, the fire fiend has done its work, leaving forests of tall trunks in gray, with a fresh undergrowth beginning to spring. Even yet, however, the Gold Mountains are a noble range.

It would seem we had seen enough of the grand. But wait. We reach a broad flowing river coming from the north. It is white with detritus ground from the eternal ribs of earth by the irresistible march of glaciers. It is our own Columbia, which has been paying her Majesty's American land a short visit before it sweeps with majesty towards the Pacific. We cross this and enter upon a wealth of mountain scenery, which belittles what we have passed through, though we thought it so fine. High to the right lifts a monarch capped with snow. High to our left is a huge pair of twins, the double head of a monster.

Our iron horse pants along a rushing river cutting with foaming torrent through chasms so narrow that the father of our land could have leaped across them in the spring-tide of his manhood. Up, up we climb, twenty-eight hundred feet in less than fifty miles. The river along which we climb is always lashing itself into creamy foam; now in rushing rapids, then in a succession of leaps one after the other, as if in mad frolic; now almost throwing its spray into our faces; then two or three hundred feet down in rocky canyons, and at one place through a notched and jagged cleft in the rock, over two hundred feet deep, and only twenty-five feet wide at the top. This is the Albert Canyon. Mountains tower over us, pile upon pile, thickly tree clad below, but to a larger extent gray with lofty trunks all dead and bare from forest fires. I do not know but these fires have been a friend to the tourist. For his vision is widened.

When I was there three years since, there had been in the Selkirks but few destructive fires. The forests were so dense that we often lost fine bits of view, which are now free to us. We look aloft and see great snow-fields, glimmering through openings between the mountains nearest us. We put our glasses up and catch the green tints in furrowed snow masses which tell us we are looking at glaciers. Up! up! The mountains become higher and the precipices bolder and the torrent at our feet more fierce and foaming. We halt for a moment at Illecillewact, said to be a rich mining camp. Far over us thousands of feet, on the side of the mountain, so steep that it seems to us a sheer precipice, we see what looks like a mere burrow for a wild animal. Men are delving through it in quest of silver ore.

After a while we see what appears to be another railroad coming down the mountain side parallel to ours, and a couple of hundred feet above us. A wise one smiles and tells us it is our own road which here makes a letter "S"—a loop almost doubling upon itself, and a large part of it on winding trestles. The trestles creak and groan beneath us, but we bend around and back upon them, and soon our whistle screams. A quick turn around a spur reveals a frozen stream bending over a lofty mountain brow, like a curtain of white with irregular streaks of pale green, and sending its foot almost down to our level. But bend your head back. Far up over us is Sir Donald piercing the sky; a sharp pointed three-faced rock lifting over 11,500 feet, under whose shadow we will halt at Glacier House, over 4,000 feet above the sea, while the pointed peak above us, all rock, stands about a mile and a half higher and so close that one would think a man on its pinnacle could almost throw a stone to the platform on which stands the pretty hotel.

We stop a day here. I spent three or four days there three years ago and would never pass it without a few hours' pause. Few spots on earth afford a sublimer picture than is seen from Glacier House in the Selkirks. It is a vast auditorium; stage and audience-hall, not a half mile wide, with lofty mountains stretching along either side six or seven miles—all covered by noble trees below and snow sheeted above. Sir Donald cold and rocky, is on one side, glaciered heights on the other.

HEMMED IN BY ROCKY HEIGHTS.

A mighty glacier hangs down like a snowy drop curtain over the rear of the auditorium, while a straight line of mountain heights encloses the stage. This line is jagged and toothed on its crest, with lofty glaciers glistening under the pinnacles. Sitting on the platform in front of the pretty station hotel just before sunset, watching the sunlight climb the rocky heights eastward, while those to the west were sinking into grayness, and then a little later as the daylight dodges into twilight and all becomes first a mellow gray, cold and repellent, except over the snow, which seems to emit a light all its own—sitting thus one sees a picture equaled in few spots of the world.

The entire scene is enclosed by mountains, as in a great oblong pit with corners rounded off, no outlet being apparent. The mountains seem to close in upon the glorious picture. It should be seen just before and after sunset and until the lessening twilight is swallowed up, and then in the morning, when the grayness high above seems crystallized. The very light encircling the peaks seem frozen until a sun ray kisses Sir Donald's peak. The cold rocks then catch a yellow glow and the snows below ere long are tinted with pink. Three years ago I looked at it morning and evening for three or four days, and on this trip one morning and evening.

A short run brings the Eastward bound traveler to Rogers pass, one of the ruggedest ever traversed by railroad. Lofty rocky mountains are all around with cold glaciers hanging near their crests.

The drop down to the eastward from the summit of the Selkirk Mountains to the western edge of the Rockies is all the way grand. We again cross the Columbia, which runs north skirting the Selkirk range, and flows again southward past the point crossed by us two days before and seventy miles back but a hundred and twenty five around. Then for some miles we look upon these two mighty ranges, one on our right and the other on our left. Both are lofty, broken, and pinnacled, and snow clothes many summits of each, yet they are strangely unlike each other—as much so as if belonging to widely distant regions.

As we ran up the Columbia the day grew hot, until at Golden it was absolutely sweltering. We had felt nothing like it for nearly a month. We were glad to quit the Columbia and enter a mighty gorge cooled by the sprays from the Kicking Horse, a wildly rushing river coming down from the summit of the Rockies. Up this foaming torrent, between lofty mountains, along gorges barely wide enough to permit the river to leap between, the road cuts its way in galleries of rocks; through tunnels now on one side of the river, then on the other, and enters and winds high up a broad valley between great mountains stretching north and south. It would seem the climb was ended, but not so. We have to take some fifteen or more miles among the loftiest mountains of the great backbone of the continent, looking up ever at gray rocks piercing the sky 6,000 to 8,000 feet almost sheer over us; looking down into narrow valleys or rather gorges 1,000 and 2,000 feet below us. Almost overwhelmed by nature's grandeur, we climb, while a great engine puffs and groans before us, and another pants and wheezes pushing behind. Even with these two great iron horses, tugging behind and before, we make not much more speed than a rapid pedestrian could walk were he on the level. We are climbing a grade of about 200 feet in the mile.

SILVER LADEN MT. STEPHEN.

But see that line of timbering hugging the face of Mt. Stephen. A prospector from across the mighty gorge saw with his glass a quartz vein on Stephen. By perilous climbing along ledges he visited it, to find a rich ledge of silver ore. Yonder long gallery carved out of the rock's face is for miners to go to the vein to bore into the mountain's heart or wherever the vein leads them. They would tunnel through the fiery walls of Hades if pure free silver were floating on the top of the Devil's soup boiler.

I wonder if those fellows up in yonder gallery ever pause to take in the grandeur of the scenery thrown about them. The mighty Giver of Good heaped up those piles of grandeur and beauty. The preachers intimate that the imp of darkness tempts us poor mortals with gold and silver. Believing as they do in the existence of a personal devil outside of man's nature, they should bow down and beg him to be good natured until their race be safe. They are powerless to hurt him. Luther's bible hit empty air; to abuse the devil only makes one's throat sore, and some people really grow savage in their denunciation of Old Nick. I once met a really good, pious woman who hated bad words, but did not disdain to utter real cuss words when denouncing his Satanic Majesty. The Arab tribe call Satan the nameless one. Some preachers should follow suit. Abusing the devil has been done for countless ages, and to all appearances the old knave has as much power as when he poured sweet poison into Mother Eve's too willing ears. Poor thing! She was not used to apples, and a golden pippin was tempting. In these latter days it takes apples of real gold to win a woman, at least among the "four hundred." But my eye! a shower of such fruit can twine her plump arms about the devil's neck even when blue blazes are pouring from his benzine distilling lungs. But, pshaw! What a disposition a pious man has to preach. I must quit it.

It is hard to determine which affords the grandest scenery, the Selkirks or the Rockies. On a first run on this road probably nine out of ten would say the former, but the second or the third trip would put the latter fully up. They are of as different types as if separated by a continent. Both are broken, notched and peaked, yet they affect the beholder differently. The Selkirks are grand and terrible, the Rockies majestic and gloomy.

The Illiclliwact (Indian for rapid water) and the Kicking Horse, the two rivers which rush from the two ranges westward—the former into the Columbia at Revelstoke, the other into the same river a hundred and odd miles above at Golden—are somewhat different types of torrent rivers. The Kicking Horse on the summit at Hector, springs from a deep, dark, but calm lake a mile above the sea. A mile or so eastward, and a half a dozen feet higher at the actual summit, is a shallow little lake, or rather a system of short, deep morasses. A mild wind from the west would take their waters into the Bow River, which flows into the Saskatchewan, then through Lake Winnipeg and on to Hudson Bay, while a breeze from the East carries a part of their currents into the grand Columbia and then into the mighty Pacific.

How like the fate of men! A shower or a cloud of dust sent a mighty one to pine on a bleak isle in a far-off sea, and made another moderate man the idol of a nation and its chosen Nestor. An invisible line with a name separated the birthplaces of two men, and this simple separation made one of them the leader of a lost cause but the idol of millions, and the other the victorious hero whom history may call the savior of a nation. In our every-day life in modest places, we see the most trivial circumstances, mere straws, turning the fortunes of nearly all whom we have known intimately. It would probably amaze most people to find how small the thing was which sent them to high fortune, or led their feet into paths of mediocrity or on the road to adversity.

A run from nine to ten hours from Glacier, always through grand and majestic scenery and often among terrible and gloomy heights and gorges, brought us to Banff, near the western slope of the Rockies. Shortly after leaving Vancouver, we had mounted the observation car, and continued on one of them except at night, until well into the great plains east of the mountains. This system adds greatly to the pleasure of passing through fine scenery.

PANORAMIC BEAUTIES OF BANFF.

Banff is by many considered the gem of this great road, because of its beautiful location and also because of its warm and hot mineral springs. The Canadian Pacific company has erected here the most elegant and best appointed hotel which can be found in a wild mountainous region probably in the world. Indeed it will compare favorably with the best hostelries in the neighborhood of large cities.

Here in a wild basin of the mighty backbone of the continent, 2,300 miles from Montreal, nearly 1,000 from Winnipeg, and 600 from Vancouver, with no populous or productive lands contiguous, but surrounded by nature's boldest and roughest works, in which are the haunts of wild beasts—here one finds all the elegances and comforts of a city's suburbs; all of the delicacies and luxuries of a city hotel, coupled with the hygiene of a sanitarium, the ozone and bracing atmosphere of a lofty altitude, and the glorious scenery of a mountain fastness. The house is architecturally very fine and all its appointments are first class. It has a French Chef presiding over the kitchen, who sends to the table dishes to satisfy an epicure. The house and grounds are lighted by electricity which adds greatly to the beauty of the place at night. In the drawing rooms, surrounded by costly furniture, one can listen to music from a superb piano, and in the dining saloon can satisfy the most voracious or the most epicurean taste.

One can loiter lazily around the broad piazzas girdling the great hotel, and let vision lose itself among lofty, rocky, grotesque mountains, or sit in graceful Kiosk observatories overlooking a bold river tumbling near by in a furious cascade. One can watch the limpid, green waters of a large mountain stream meeting and unwillingly mingling with those of a milk-white, glacier-fed river, just below the vortex under the cascade. One can wander in pretty pine woods on gentle slopes; can drive or ride along well-graveled roads through the National Park, now along limpid streams, then on winding curves or mounting by zig-zag bold rocky heights; can bathe in porcelain tubs filled by hot mineral waters just from plutonic laboratories far below the mountain's foundations, and then sweat in soft blankets almost as white as snow, or can by a tunnel through lava rocks reach a grotto or cave scooped out by agencies of hot water—a veritable gothic room in the rock, lighted dimly from a small aperture in the apex. Here in this gem of a natatorium one can swim in water above blood heat, five feet deep and twenty-five from rim to rim. When satiated with his warm bath in this glorious pool, he can mount a great stalagmite on one side—a stalagmite resembling a huge mushroom—and a shower of cool water from a natural spring tumbles from above upon him, or he can stand waist deep in the warm embrace of the fluid while the cool sprays fall upon his head and shoulders.

If one prefers an outdoor swim he can splash in a sulphur spring forty feet across, of Nature's fashioning, while bubbling through sands at his feet water heated to 95 degrees rises and lures him to swimming depth. If he prefer a real genuine swim he finds it near the back door of the hotel in a tank a hundred feet long, in fresh cold water with the air barely taken off. In his room he has a soft bed to sleep upon, surrounded by tasty furniture, and eats in a large dining room attended by silent waiters, and provided with fruits, wines and viands fit to satisfy the most fastidious.

Close under the hotel an angler now and then catches a trout of over a pound weight, and in a lake a few miles off in the park is rewarded with speckled fellows of fine size, and with lake trout not infrequently running up to forty pounds. I met at Glacier Mr. E. S. P., of Chicago, with his family going west. He caught a fine lot of fish in Devil's Lake near Banff, one a lake trout weighing thirty-six pounds. There are few mountain resorts offering so many natural attractions as this Rocky Mountain hot spring.

The mountains around are nearly all built of horizontal stratified rocks. Some of them present curious resemblances. One is a mighty palace of several stories—each upper one receding back from the one below. It reminds me much of old oriental palaces visited when we were making our race with the sun. This palace-like appearance is, however, lost upon the majority of tourists, because one end of the mountain presents the likeness of a huge templar warrior reclining in miles of stature. This picture is so grotesque, that the other passes unobserved.

I cannot recall anywhere else in the world, a group of mountains, whose rocks are so distinctly horizontal in their beds, as those in this part of the Rockies. They look as if there had once been a vast upland plateau, which had been partly abraded and washed away, leaving lofty mountains more or less snow covered throughout the year, and many of them always clothed in mantles of white. The wear of countless eons of rains and frosts have made deep valleys and gorges and the beds of beautiful rivers, and rushing torrents, leaving the slopes of the mountains generally not too steep to afford footing for thick forests or for bands and copses of firs and pines. Now and then the mountains are so broken down as to present mighty precipices—clean cut cleavages, as if a single mountain had been split and sundered in two.

NORTHWESTERN PLAINS FRUITFUL.

My friend, the late visitor from Chicago to the Shah of Persia, whom we left, with his daughters, aboard ship at Nanaimo, overtook us at Banff, where we spent two days. He rarely enthuses over scenery and has little love of Nature or its beauties. Switzerland is to him worth one visit, but no more, and Tyrol is a bore. He loves travel, but to travel among the haunts of men and women, not of Nature. Berlin and London are pleasant places, but Paris is his paradise. He had been filled with ennui on the whole Alaskan journey, and had uttered but once an exclamation of pleasure, and that was when we sailed out of Glacier Bay. He then cried out, "Thank heaven our ship is turned homeward." Even he is really somewhat enthusiastic over the beauties of the Canadian road and is charmed by Banff. I suspect, however, all because of getting through quickly. He could enjoy the rush through towering mountains, because he was getting where he could revel in rising stocks.

The plains east of the mountains on this road are beautiful. Great sweeps of land in more or less lifting benches stretch north and south as far as the eye can reach; not bleak or parched or covered with the dead ash color of sage brush, as the same plains are south of our boundary, but fairly green and restful to the eye. We tried to go back in fancy to long ago years, when countless thousands buffalo marched in single file along the trails which they cut down into the hard soil, and which are yet seen crossing our road nearly north and south. We tried to count the deep buffalo wallows, bored by horns and scooped out by hoofs, where the shaggy bulls tossed the dust and sent up clouds which made the air thick for many a mile around. We saw in fancy the heavy maned bulls and heard their bellowings, which won the gaze and admiration of the mild eyed cows. We recalled how these thousands of wallows would be filled by the next rains, and how succeeding herds would bathe in the mud, and then march onward a moving mass of thick mortar. Thousands of these wallows are seen, and for several hundred miles the furrowed trails are rarely out of sight for many miles. They generally run in nearly parallel lines from north to south; now and then deflected to get around an Alkali lake or pool: or where old leaders had scented pure water ahead and bent their way toward it, and all of the mighty hosts following the lead. What countless thousands there must have been! The Indians killed them, but killed them for food or for raiment. The white man came; he who was fashioned in the image of his God; he who claims to be a follower of Him who taught charity to all things and gentleness of spirit—he came in his boasted civilization—born of families whose pedigrees run back a thousand years—and killed and slew in the mere love of killing—killed and slew simply because he could kill and slay. One of the cruelest wars ever waged, was the insane crusade against the bison of the plains. Now these plains will know no more forever their old tenants.

Occasionally troops of horses and herds of cattle are seen, but for nearly a day's ride there are only scattered farms, and they are as yet not prosperous; but in Eastern Assiniboia and in Manitoba farms became more frequent and crops looked well, until finally in the latter province broad fields of fine wheat and oats and farmhouses covered the prairie as far as we could see. The improvement in the prairie land, running some 200 miles on our line, has wonderfully grown since I was there three years ago. The breadth of grain standing or being harvested is great. I am told there will be a yield this year of twenty million bushels. These people boast that their hard-shell wheat is decidedly superior to that of Dakota and Minnesota. It is now very cold and frosts are feared. The wheat is largely out of danger, but oats need some two or more weeks of good weather yet. Root crops seem good on the plains where wheat is not yet a success. The plains are in Assiniboia, the prairies in Manitoba.

At Winnipeg my friends went south. I continued on the rail to Port Arthur. There is not much worth seeing east of Winnipeg. Thin pine land of small trees are seen, generally flat, with rounded rising ground back from the road; all more or less covered with bowlders of granite, many of great size. Lakes and lakelets abound. My daughter remarked that in Yellowstone Park there was a fearful waste of hot water, in Alaska of ice, and here of gray granite. The country back of Port Arthur is said to be rich in mines. I can believe it. Nothing is made in vain, and this county is evidently fit for nothing else except mines. The public rooms of the hotels seem to be frequented by only two classes of men—miners and fishers. Here a knot talked of minerals and claims, there of three or four and six pounders. The Nipigon, near by, is said to be the finest of trout streams. Mr. Higinbotham, of Chicago, and sons left the day before our arrival after having made fine catches. The people seemed much amused at their anxiety to save a pailful. They chartered a steamer to take them and their fry, quickly to Duluth.

PORT ARTHUR AND LAKE SUPERIOR.

Port Arthur has a beautiful site on a gentle slope, with an elevated bench behind for residences. If it were in the States it would be boomed. It is Canada's only port on Lake Superior, and in Thunder Bay has a grand harbor. The weather is so cool, throughout the summer, that evening fires are rarely dispensed with. This should be considered a terminus for the C.P.R.R., at least for all heavy freights and grain. The road has now two or three 1,200,000 bushel capacity elevators, and I am informed intends immediately to build several more. These will enable it to move the grain from Manitoba, and hold it during the winter and until the opening of navigation.

We had intended continuing by rail to Sudbury, north of Lake Huron, but finding that we should pass all the interesting country by night we halted a day and then boarded the Alberta, the Canadian Pacific railroad steamer, a Clyde-built vessel of some 2,000 tonnage, with clean and comfortable rooms, polite officers and servants, and in every way first-class. The break on the great run from ocean to ocean on this longest of the world's trunk lines, by taking steamer between Owen Sound on Georgian Bay and Port Arthur, is a most agreeable one.

It is charming to sail on a good ship on this the mightiest of fresh-water seas, and to lose sight of land while skimming over its dark green depths. We have had a smooth sea and delicious bracing air, and find nothing to complain of and much to commend. Before closing I wish to say something of the remarkable civility of the officers and employes of this great road. The managers evidently know the value of politeness on the part of those who cater to the traveling community, the hardest and most difficult to satisfy of all others. Four out of five of them pack their trunks for a trip and expect to find the comforts of their home while on the go, and find fault at every turn. This Van Horne seems to know, and has so drilled his people, from the highest to the lowest, that courtesy, the cheapest of valuable commodities, is never lacking.

I am finishing this letter while our ship lies in the great lock at the "Soo." We are again under the protection of the Stars and Stripes. The rush of waters of the great "Sault" fills the air with its roar. This was a few moments since deadened by the greater turmoil from some twenty dynamite blasts in the hard rock through which Uncle Sam is cutting for the huge lock, which is to aid the present one in passing to and fro the mighty traffic of our great system of fresh-water seas. The present lock is wholly inadequate, and steamers often wait for five hours for their turn, and that, too, although it admits several vessels at a time. Over beyond the cascade the Dominion is erecting a vast system of locks on its own ground. The near future will need them all.

A PLEA FOR RECIPROCITY.

We look across the foamy river and see a beautiful little town, the "Canadian Soo." Behind it lifts a gently rising land, all clothed in sweet verdure and making an exquisite picture. There, for thousands of miles east and west and extending several hundreds of miles to the north, are a people in every way our kinsmen. We wander among them and feel that we are among friends of our own clan, and yet I cannot take my satchel ashore without submitting it to the inspection of our custom-house officers. How long will this thing last? Why should two people so closely united by every bond except that of so called nationality, submit to this hampering of their kindly relations? When will the bars be thrown down so that the Canuck and the Yankee can trade as brothers and friends? I may not be a statesman, but what little of statecraft I possess, tells me there should be absolute reciprocity between Americans from the Gulf of Mexico to the frozen seas; reciprocity at least for all productions of the respective countries.

I look out of my window; the ship is sinking down between the massive walls of the lock. In a few moments we will be on a level with Lake Huron, and just below the lock we will land in Michigan. So now we bid adieu to the hospitalities of President Van Horne, and will commend his iron highway to all who love nature and its grand works, and who delight in its sublimest displays.

CHAPTER IX.

THE ST. MARY'S RIVER. CHARMING SCENERY. THE LOCALITY FOR SUMMER HOMES. AN EPISODE. MACKINAW. GRAND RAPIDS, A BEAUTIFUL CITY.

At Sault Ste. Marie, we took steamer for Mackinaw. The steamer was comfortable, and the trip a charming one.

The run down the Ste. Marie into Lake Huron, has few equals in sweet, gentle, and at times picturesque scenery. Low lying hills lie on both banks of the river, some of them lifting from the water. Now and then, a promentory or an island point lifts the general quiet tone into something of boldness. These are washed and laved by waters of pallucid purity. The hills, both however, generally lie back from the river on banks with pretty plains under them; here, wide enough for a small field, or garden; there, giving space for a pretty farm. The uplands rise from the small bottoms in easy flowing slopes, green in fresh growth. There are on both slopes occasional farms and small hamlets, affording life and movement to the pretty picture.

When this continent shall become a single nation—one grand Republic; the frozen arms of an Arctic ice-floe enfolding its northern boundary; the warm breath of the Gulf of Mexico reddening the cheek of the orange and covering Magnolia groves with snowy bloom along its southern shores; the mighty Pacific pouring its sonorous swell on its western confines from Behring's sea to the Tropic of Cancer, and the storm breeding Atlantic roaring along its shores, from Lincoln Sea to Key West; when brothers shall clasp hands across the deep waters of the lakes without the espionage of a custom collector, then these low-lying hills and sweet plains at their feet—these pretty islands and rugged promentories, will become the summer homes of the rich of the mighty land, and the green waters will reflect the villas and cottages of the wealthy and the well to do, along the entire river; and the world will know no more beautiful and sweetly rural locality.

I was leaning on the taffrail of our boat, enjoying the sweet prospect—the long reach of Georgian Bay, lying to the east—and some bold points lifting about us, when I heard a gentleman call the attention of a lad by his side, to a rock they could see in the distance through their glasses. [1]

"At the foot of that rock, I caught twenty black bass in an hour," said the gentleman.

A deep groan close by my side caught my ear. I turned to find a gray headed old man, also leaning on the rail, whose glass was turned in the same direction as those of the gentleman and lad. The man of the groan, was evidently seventy odd years old, with a gentle face, but now in deep and painful thought; tears were coursing down his cheeks, and when he lowered his glasses, showed eyes red with weeping. His face looked so wan that I feared he was sick. I spoke to him gently.

He answered me kindly, and then said: "I was watching through my glass a spot in the distance beyond the rock adverted to by the gentleman to that boy, and when he spoke of catching fish at its base, a long ago past was weighing on my mind. His words brought up the groan you heard and not any illness of my own—a past connected with a big rock near the spot I was looking at, and of a tragedy which deeply distressed me, and changed the course of my life."

I very naturally asked: "Are the matters you refer to, such that you cannot speak of them?" I handed him, at the same time, my card. He looked up saying "Ah, yes! I know of you. A few days since I read some letters of yours in the Chicago Tribune, from the National Park. They made me half resolve to go there next year." He asked me if I intended publishing them in book form; that he thought such a book, just now, would be acceptable; that he had preserved my letters for use, should he make the excursion. A man who has published any thing, is as easily captured by a kindly word for his bantling, as ever mother was by praise for her first baby. I told him that my letters, even if enlarged as I might see fit, would hardly make a book of fit size for publication.

The elderly gentlemen landed at Mackinaw with us. After wandering over this pretty old island, visiting its places of interest which well repay a visit—after listening to a few dozen prominent lawyers, judges, merchants and physicians talking through their noses—all of them victims of hay-fever—I was lazily resting on the hotel piazza, awaiting the hour for taking the ferry boat to reach the train for home, when my new made friend of the boat came to me and said: "Mr. Harrison, you say your letters are not enough to make a book of publishing size. I spoke to you of a tragedy, which changed the course of my life. I have at home, but will send it to you, a manuscript, touching that sad affair, which would not be inappropriate in a letter touching a trip from the Soo to Chicago. The manuscript is a plain and faithful story of the events narrated; you can, however, supply fictitious names, and alter certain immaterial points and touch up the whole. I thanked him, and assured him I would probably gladly use his material." He afterward sent to me "The Secret of the Big Rock," which will be found following this letter.

A night's run brought us to Grand Rapids. Its people ought to be proud of it. It is not only a thriving, busy town, growing with great rapidity, but is one of the prettiest cities in America. Its business quarters are fine and wear a metropolitan air, but its residence portion is very pretty. The streets are lined with trees, which grow with such luxuriance park commissioners might envy.

We spent a half day in the charming place and in a few hours reached home, having enjoyed a glorious "outing," which I freely recommend every one who can, to make, and as early as possible. If I had to choose between a trip to Europe of two or three months, and the excursion we have just made, and were compelled to forego one or the other, I would forego the European one.

PART II. THE OLD MAN'S STORY.

CHAPTER I.

THE SECRET OF THE BIG ROCK.

In the spring of 185– I was head bookkeeper and confidential clerk of a Cincinnati firm, having a large trade with the Cotton States. I had an adored wife, and two fine children, who were our pride and our delight. Not ambitious for wealth, I was perfectly satisfied if my endeavors conduced to the prosperity of my employers. My salary was sufficient for our wants. None of us had ever been sick and the family physician was rather a friend than an adviser. The firm was prosperous; my employers, always kind and considerate; my modest home was cheerful, and I believed myself the happiest of men.

Cholera was that year prevalent, and toward the first of June, threatened to become epidemic in our city. My employers hurried with their families to the country, leaving me in full charge of the house. Continuous immunity from sickness, made my wife and myself so confident, that had we been able to strike the sign of the passover on our door posts, we would scarcely have thought the precaution necessary. Even the dread scourge, cholera, had few terrors for us.

Going home one Saturday afternoon, I read on the Bulletin Board of a newspaper office, that the physicians believed Cincinnati had passed the crisis; that no epidemic need be feared. I had a habit, when walking alone, of whistling softly. Near my house a neighbor smiled, as he said, "he was glad to see my mouth in so fine a pucker, for it spoke well of the day." My wife met me at the door, as usual, but told me she felt quite sick; seeing my face become clouded, she assured me it was not much, and laughingly repeated a witty speech of our little girl. Hardly had she finished, when she almost screamed with pain. In twenty-four hours, she was a corpse; and Monday, at noon, I was wifeless and childless.

I did not pray to die, believing that God knew and did what was best for his children; but I would have greeted with a smile the grim monster, had he reached out his hand for me.

In two days I was at my desk, for there were important matters to be attended to. The necessity for work, kept me from falling by the wayside. My mother had taught me, "that man's highest duty is, to do his duty." This saying had been adopted as my motto.

The next week, my employers returned to town, and ordered me to Fort Mackinaw for a couple of months' vacation, presenting me with a thousand dollar check, to cover my expenses. Two months between the Island and the Soo were passed in fishing, with such benefits resulting, that the excursion has been renewed whenever an absolute necessity for a change has been felt.

My employers on my return, seeing the good effects upon me, of the water and the rod, presented me with a nice skiff, telling me to take every Thursday afternoon for a holiday, and to keep them supplied with fish for Friday; at the same time, kindly informing me, that a plate would always be at one or the other of their tables for me to help enjoy my catch.

Being a man of almost machine like habits of regularity, my boat was always seen on the proper afternoon, rain or shine, during the fishing seasons for several years.

It was in '58 that I accidentally threw my line in a deep pool or hole, in the Licking river, a mile or two from the Ohio, and almost immediately struck a fine gaspergou perch, or as the people in Kentucky called it, a "New Light." This fish was first seen in the state, when the forerunners of the present Cambellite, or Christian church, the "New Lights," were creating much enthusiasm in the Kentucky religious world.

The catch was followed by several others, when a terrible splashing was made close to my hook by an out-rigger rowed by a stalwart negro. The Ethiopian scowled upon me as he shot by. In a few moments he returned and caught a crab, letting an oar back water about the same place on his run down stream. The disturbance drove all the fish from the locality; at least I had no more bites.

The two following Thursdays, I tried the same pool, but my darkey was again rowing about the ground, and no fish were to be had.

About a month later, there was a press of business at the store. At the request of our senior to forego my usual holiday, I worked all Thursday afternoon, with the understanding I was to take the next day and bring in my fish for Friday's supper. I started early and rowed some distance up the Licking, to what were considered good fishing grounds. In passing the spot where my sport had been twice disturbed, I saw the outrigger handled by the sable oarsman, while a handsome young man in the stern drew up a fine black bass. The negro again scowled at me.

I reached my ground, and was having but indifferent success, when almost without a ripple the outrigger drew up close to my side.

"What luck?" demanded the gentleman, in a clear, sweetly modulated voice, which made me for a minute forget the colored man's evident ill will.

"Rather poor; nothing to what I was enjoying four weeks ago, before your boat drove all the fish away from the hole where I saw you an hour ago. I have a notion your man had a method in his madness."

The gentleman laughed a laugh so breezy and cheery, that it drew me at once to him.

"Yes, Jim told me of his exploit, and we have come up to invite you back to "our hole" as he calls it."

I could not refuse an offer so cordially extended.

The gentleman as we gently floated down the stream informed me, that Jim had selected "our hole" as one little likely to attract Cincinnati Waltons, and regularly every Friday left in it a fine feed for fish; that Jim was almost amphibious and seemed to know how to draw the finny denizens of the river to whatever spot he selected and at fixed times; that he was surprised to learn I had found fish in the place on Thursday, when there should have been none until Friday; that the sable conjuror was not so much put out, because I had found the spot, as because the fish had lost their reckoning and were a day ahead of time.

"I am supposed to be Jim's boss," he smilingly went on, "but in fact, on the water, am governed by Jim; his rod is one of iron."

At "our hole" we lay to, and in an hour had a fine mess of bass and new lights—as many as we needed.

Felden was the name my new acquaintance gave me as his—"Jack Felden" he said, "and this coon is Jim Madison."

Jim grinned and was the very personification of the free and easy, yet servile southern "body servant."

Mr. Felden said, "I make it a rule, Mr. Jamison, never to kill a single fish I can not consume either myself or through a few friends, to whom I now and then send a mess. The poor things have a right to their pursuit of life, health and happiness, and should not be killed in wanton love of killing. As one of the dominant animals of this earth, I claim the right to take fish for my uses. I enjoy the sport of angling; but when enough are caught the sport ends, and I reel in my line, and silently steal away."

"You are a sportsman of my own kidney," I rejoined, "we have enough."

Jim then emptied a pail of fish feed into the river, saying:

"Dey'll guzzle all dat afore dark, and termorrer dey'll come here and find nuthin', and dey'll go away, but shuah as death and 'ligeon dey'll be back here nex' Friday. Dis niggah skeert em de las' fo' weeks, a Thursdays."

Jim grinned in my face as he said this, and I was forced to commend his prudence, though it had been at my cost.

The following Thursday, I tried the hole, but Jim was right; no fish took my bait; he was seen, however, scudding along in Felden's outrigger. He grinned at me and asked, "how is de hole?"

The following week, to my gratification, I found Mr. Felden on the river. We fished at "our hole" with some success: Jim then fed the fish, while his master informed me that he had concluded to go shares with me. Hereafter, he would meet me on Thursday, so as to enable me to gratify the Catholic appetites of my employers. Thus he would have the pleasure of bettering our acquaintance. He paid me the compliment of saying that he had circled the globe, associating with men in all lands, and felt we ought to be friends.

Our friendship grew into intimacy, before the season was over. He invited me to his den. It was a plain cottage, externally; but within sumptuous; skins of lions, tigers, leopards of every variety of spots, and of other animals covering the floors of hard wood at that time rarely seen. Several of the pelts, he said, were the trophies of his own skill with the rifle. The walls were tapestried with rare draperies, and rugs, all of them valuable souvenirs of Eastern lands. One room was given up to cabinets, in which curios and objects de vertu sparkled in oriental beauty. All was arranged with rare taste. I hinted to my host, that his house was a temptation to the burglar. He went to the door and whistled gently. In rushed two fine dogs; noble specimens of monster mastiffs.

"These are my guardians. Woe to the thief that gets into this house; if he escapes Jim and me, these fellows would tear him into fish bait. Wouldn't you my Mogul?" One of the huge mastiffs sprang up with a growl that startled me.

"Now Akbar! you and Queen salute this gentleman. He is my friend and must be yours."

The two dogs came up to me, smelt all about me, then one of them laid a great paw in my lap, while the other put both feet on my shoulders, yawning mightily in my face showed fangs long enough and strong enough to give the king of the forest no mean battle.

I spent a charming evening with my new friend, and found him one I could gladly call such.

During the following winter, I dined with Jack—I had accepted his request to address him thus familiarly—at least one day in each week. His dinners were at the then unusual hour of seven, a habit acquired as he informed me in India. Jim was butler, and Dinah, his wife was cook. She was an artist of a kind to be found nowhere in the world, outside of old southern plantation halls. The table service was of pure china and cut glass. The menu was never extensive, thereby not conducing to over-indulgence, but everything was perfect of its kind, and cooked absolutely to a "T". A single bottle of wine was always served for us two, either of Rhine or one of the best clarets. My host and I never emptied more than two glasses each. At the end of each meal, Dinah and Jim came in as the table was being cleared off, and drank to our healths in glasses of the same set, and from the same wine used by the master.

Mr. Felden never smoked cigars at table, but we each had a jasmine Turkish pipe and puffed delicious Ladikiyah, received by him from Beyrout in hermetically sealed cans.

One evening when we were lolling back on softest chairs and enjoying to our full the fragrant weed, Jack said to me, "Paul," (this was the first and almost the only time, he thus called me,) "you have told me the sad, sweet story of your life. I propose, if you wish, to give you mine."

"I am very glad of it, and have been hoping you would."

For some minutes he was silent, and his noble face was lighted with what seemed an illumination from within, wholly different from that laid upon it by the mellow glow from the candelabra.

"I am thirty years old; have light auburn and very curly hair." I started, for his hair and beard were dark brown, almost black, and without even a wave. Without noticing my surprise, he continued, "My complexion is florid and my face without a scar."

"My goodness, Jack, you are making sport of me," I cried, for the man before me had a complexion of richest olive, and a terrible scar had been cut across his cheek, as he once laughingly intimated, by a tiger's claw.

"No, I am telling you simple facts. I am the son of a rich planter in ——," he did not name the state; "my father and my uncle owned adjoining estates of great value, and were as proud as they were rich. I was an only child. My uncle had but one, and that a daughter. Our parents inherited their fortunes from my grandfather, and at an early date they determined to unite the family wealth again by a marriage between my cousin Belle and myself. She was a pure blonde, one year my senior, very stately, very cold, and intensely proud. We grew up to consider ourselves as indissolubly betrothed. Belle treated it as calmly as if we had been married for years. This she did as soon as she was out of the school room. She never seemed to doubt the propriety of our engagement. She loved 'Clifton' and 'Brandon'—I will thus call the two plantations—she loved the two estates next to her father. Him she worshipped. These two loves filled her soul, and left no room for any other genuine affection. Yes; she loved herself, our name, our lineage, and her pride."

For awhile he was silent, and his soul seemed to be working in his face; then, with a sigh of pain, he continued:

"I graduated from one of the best colleges in the land at twenty, and at once with a learned tutor, was sent abroad. We traveled in continental Europe for a few months and I was intensely happy. Before the first year had half ran out, we were summoned home. My father was ill, and would probably not live to see me. This was my first great pain, for my mother had died at my birth. We hurried to New York by the first steamer, then by rail and coach we flew southward without having heard a word from home. We were too late; my poor father had been dead nearly a fortnight. I had loved him with intense devotion.

My uncle having died three years before, Belle had been living since then with my father at Clifton. She met me at the door, enveloped in black, and looking the very embodiment of decorous grief. She kissed me on the forehead, and when within told me in a voice as calm as ice of my poor father's last illness, of his death, and of the immensely attended funeral. She opened her writing desk, read letter after letter of condolence, and with a fitting sigh spoke of the gratification we should feel, 'that dear uncle had so many admirers among the best people of the south.' Her well-poised calmness nearly stifled me. Yearning for love and sympathy, all I received from the only relative I had on earth, at least of near degree, were congratulations that my father had found in death the cold esteem of friends.

As soon as I could decently leave the house, I hurried to the negro quarters to see my foster mother, Dinah, and her husband, Jim. There I found loving hearts, and for many minutes was clasped in the arms of her who had nursed me on her bosom through my babyhood. I lay upon a settee, given Dinah by myself as a Christmas present years before, and with my head on the old negress' lap, let her comb the hair over my aching brow. Soothed and rested by the kind, homely sympathy, I lay with closed eyes, when the cabin became redolent of that peculiar odor given out by genuine crepe, and Belle walked in. In calm, cold words she said she was sorry John could not find some one at the house to brush his head.

The next day my cousin handed me a letter, 'the last,' she said 'Uncle had ever written.' It told me where I would find his will; that everything he possessed was left to me, and asked, as a dying request, that I should marry my cousin the day I became twenty-one. He told me how all the love he had borne my mother had been centered upon me; gave me a few words of advice, but said he felt advice unnecessary, as he knew how good his only son was.

When I had finished reading I handed the letter to Belle, saying there was something in it concerning her. I watched her through my fingers and saw that her reading was simply perfunctory; she had evidently read it before. She sighed, came to my seat, put her arms about my neck—called me her dear John, and kissed me on the lips. I felt like one fettered and powerless. My heart was filled with a sort of numbness—despair. Two facts were as clear to me as daylight: that I did not love my cousin, that she did not love me; she was incapable of real passion. I turned to her and said:

'Belle you have read my father's letter, what do you suggest?'

'Why, of course, John, we will be married on the 20th day of February. We have a month to get ready, besides we need not much preparation, for we will at once go to Europe for a year, until the sad events of the past few weeks shall have been obliterated from our minds.'

Good God! she could speculate on the death of grief. I hated her. But I would as soon have thought of exhuming my father's body and scattering it to the four winds of heaven, as to think of not obeying his wishes.

Well, we were married, and at once went abroad. I tried to and did respect my wife. She attracted great attention, for she was superbly beautiful—queenly. But there was never a moment when I felt like pressing her stately form to my breast; never had the slightest inclination to kiss her lips; never once felt I could look into her great blue eyes, and breathe out my life on her bosom.

A marble statue would as quickly have aroused a feeling of passion in my heart. She was cold and did not seem to realize that I was not a model husband, for I was her attentive and watchful companion. She seemed thoroughly satisfied, while my heart was hardening into stone.

In July we visited a flower show in Regent's Park, accompanied by two English ladies, both married, romantic and full of sentiment. In our rounds, we met a lady in company with a gentleman and a little boy. She was about eighteen years old, with dark melting eyes under a perfectly arched brow, and a broad low forehead, over which her black hair was banded in massive silken waves. Her complexion was so deeply brunette as to be almost olive. The blood was rich and flowing in her cheeks, and her lips were two full ripe riven cherries, when she spoke parting over large pearly teeth. Her head was exquisitely poised on shoulders of superb mould, and her form and gait queenly. We were on the opposite side of a wonderful erica admiring its masses of pink flowers. Our eyes met. I stood as if spell bound. I had never before seen a perfect beauty and all of my own chosen type. She was exactly my opposite, I, high florid; she intensely brunette.

The color came into her cheek and mounted to her very hair when she caught my fixed gaze. One of our English friends noticed this. Afterwards in our walks, we met again and again the lady in the brown shawl—for so our friends called her. Whenever we met, my eyes instinctively sought those of the unknown, and always caught her glance in return, and at every such encounter her face crimsoned. This was remarked by our two lady friends and caused them to banter me. They told my wife to be on her guard; that if I were not already married, they would say I had certainly met my fate.

Ah! little did they dream they were speaking truth—that this girl was my fate for weal or for woe! I heard the unknown's voice several times without catching her words. It sank into my very soul. I became absent minded throughout the remainder of the day. Belle joined the ladies in declaring that the "brown shawl" had bewitched me.

Mr. Jamison, I have a very decided theory of true marriage. The Bible is a mass of oriental rubbish! Forgive me, I do not mean to offend. I reverence the bible, but not every word of it. It is made up of ingots of gold covered and almost hidden within masses of sand—grains of truth and Godly wisdom, in bulks of chaff. It is made up of God's wisdom and oriental fable legend and poetry. You reverence the gold, the grains—the sands and the chaff. I wash out the sand, and pick out the gold; winnow away the chaff, and gather up the rich grains.

Nothing to me in the book of Genesis, reveals more deep knowledge of human nature, than the account of the creation of Adam; he was made from the dust of the ground, and his soul was breathed into him by the breath of God. When a man dies, his body returns to the dust, his soul goes back to its maker. God created man! male and female, created he them! They were then good. He afterward separated the female from the male. Each thus became imperfect—each became a part and not a whole. There is a constant yearning in them for reunion. When the true Eve unites with her Adam, they become one, and their union is bliss. When so united, no man shall put them asunder. The union is founded directly on natural and, not on moral or religious laws. The natural laws speak within, and draw irresistibly two hearts to be mated. Whoever obeys the impulse find a Heaven on earth. Others, falsely-mated, may not find absolute misery, but, it is equally certain, true happiness is never theirs. Men and women are made for each other; not one man for one certain woman, but in classes. A man finds his physical mate in one of a certain class. If her moral qualities be not fitted by education, he should wait with a well grounded hope of finding another in the same class, whose bringing up will have better fitted her for him.

Now, the woman in the brown shawl was my mate, that is one of the proper class. I could not get her out of my mind, and my wife's coldness, constantly made me yearn for her. Travel was distasteful to Belle, so that before the fall had set in, we were again at home. I did not love my wife, she did not love me. She was fully satisfied to live with me in the proud dignity given us by our vast estates.

Besides his plantation, negroes and stock, my father had left me largely over a hundred thousand dollars in money and convertible bonds and mortgages. I resolved to turn all of these into cash, and to abandon wife and country. I got all in readiness; executed and left with my lawyers papers conveying every thing else to Belle; went to New York on some pretended business and sailed for Europe, writing home that I would never return. I sought the American colonies and hotels in every country, in a sort of vague hope that I could find the woman in the brown shawl. She was my fate. I was mad with the one idea. I was no libertine, Mr. Jamison. I simply yearned for her, not asking what the result would be should she be found. I drifted into the East and wandered through Russia, Turkey, Greece, Palestine and Egypt. I did not meet her; and could get no tidings of her.