CHAPTER VII.

"The mountain-ranges are beneath your feet. . . No trace of man now visible; unless indeed it were he who fashioned that little visible link of highway, here, as would seem, scaling the inaccessible, to unite Province with Province."-CARLYLE.

The railway gangs. The pack-horse again.-Sledging. The valley beyond the snowfield.-Camped on Perley Rock.

THESE mountain railways give employment to a great number of men. About every five miles of the track is under the charge of a special section gang of ten or twelve navvies and their "boss." A snug loghouse is built for their accommodation, and the wives of the married men look after the cooking and washing. The men go to their work, when at all distant, on a truck propelled by a mechanical arrangement worked by pump handles, and the overseers have tricycles which also fit on the rails; two wheels are on one iron and a third small wheel at the end of a slender outrigger rests on the other; the rider sits over the pair of wheels on one rail, and propels himself at

great speed by handles which are worked like rowing a boat. The station agent at "Glacier" had one of these. We used sometimes to take a spin along the track on it, but it came to an untimely end, fortunately when in the owner's charge. He was going up through one of the snow-sheds when he met the train coming down the incline. He had just time to save himself by leaping off, but the tricycle was knocked to bits by the cow-catcher of the locomotive. Besides the section gangs, each trestle-bridge has its special watcher who gets three dollars per day, lives in a little hut by himself, and whose business it is to examine the whole length of the bridge after the passage of each train, to see that no injury has occurred or that it has not caught fire. Along the bridge, on top, are a row of barrels of water which he can use for extinguishing fire. Should however anything serious occur he has a telephone in his hut, by which he may communicate with the section gangs on either side of him. The snow-sheds are also carefully inspected after the passage of every train, and they are usually supplied with a complete system of water-pipes and coils of hose in case of fire. Besides these gangs of men specially connected with the railway company, the contractors for building snow-sheds, cribs, and bastions, or glances as they are called, for protection against avalanches, had their gangs. Some of these men were employed in the dangerous occupation of felling timber on the

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THE RAILWAY GANGS.

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steep mountain sides and shooting the logs downwards. One fine fellow was killed at this work and several were injured while we were in the Selkirks. These men get three or more dollars per day, and their board costs less than a dollar per day, so for steady men there is here a good chance of saving money. These gangs were composed of men of all nationalities, Italians and Swedes seemed however to predominate. Casuals occasionally passed along the track by way of seeking work. They were usually of rascally appearance, and though we were hard up for packers, these unemployed were the last to look to for help.

Since our expedition up Sir Donald I had plotted out our observations; and the conclusion I came to was, that our next exploration must be across the great glacier field, in order to see what the ranges and valleys beyond it were like. This would necessitate our carrying a camp outfit and provisions over the summit ridge, and this without further help would be impossible. The superintendent at Donald kindly gave me permission to take men from the section gang for this purpose, if any were willing to come. Two respectable young men volunteered from the gang near Glacier," and on July 26th we packed our larger Alpine tent with sleeping bags for the four of us and provisions for about a week, into as small a compass as possible, and by mid-day we were all ready to start. The weather during the morning looked threatening, and at noon

thin films of mist drifted across the sky. The peaks looked angry with torn clouds, and a flash of bright lightning, followed by a deafening crash of thunder, formed the prelude to a fierce thunderstorm accompanied by a deluge of rain. It lasted for only an hour; the sky quickly cleared, the sun shone forth, making every spine of the firs sparkle with rubies and emeralds. At 3 P.M. we sent for the pack-horse, and determined to move on to our tent in the woods, near the foot of Sir Donald, for the night. The cayeuse proved more docile than on the former occasion, and we fixed the packs on him with little difficulty and wended our way towards the glacier. Crossing the rivers we commenced the steeper portion of the ascent. Suddenly, as though some unseen terror haunted that particular spot, at the very same place where the disaster had before occurred, the cayeuse was seized with a paroxysm of buck-jumping; the packs flew off, he rolled down through the ferns and rocks, and then, perfectly satisfied with his performance, stood patiently, while we restored our goods to his back. The instruments were this time safe in our knapsacks on our own backs, so the harm done was nil. "Jeff" of course came with us, but as we did not wish for his company across the glacier, on account of his scaring the animals which we hoped to shoot, we insisted on his returning with the cayeuse and Charlie from the cascade, where we took the packs on our shoulders.

VII.]

OVERCROWDING IN THE WEST.

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Now that the way was familiar to us, we carried our loads upwards with less difficulty than formerly, but as the amount of blankets, provisions, ammunition, &c., weighed a good deal, and as our two companions were not capable of carrying heavy loads, like Swiss guides, we had to divide our burthens into two packs each and return over the ground for our second pack when we had carried the first on a few hundred yards. Thus we gained our camp in the forest, and found everything in statu quo.

It was not yet dark, so to save time in the morning we carried upwards a pack each, and deposited these under boulders beyond the forest line. Then we returned to camp and cooked our supper. As all the bushes were dripping wet after the thunderstorm, we had to split some logs to get at the dry inside wood; soon the fire crackled merrily and the smoke put the mosquitoes to flight. This tent (the tent left standing here since our last expedition) being all ready for occupation, we did not open our packs to get at the larger one, but as it was only made to hold three, a party of four filled it almost to bursting. We lay like herrings in a barrel, head and tail, and needed little covering for heat.

In the morning we found it necessary to rearrange our packs, so it was 6 A.M. before we extinguished the fire and proceeded on our upward way. We were not long in reaching our cache beneath the boulders, but