Climbs & Explorations in the Canadian Rockies (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 edition. Excerpt: ...the northern bank; but, as he found nothing but dense thickets and swamps, he soon returned. The weather was now very hot and sultry, and that evening swarms of the most voracious mosquitoes we ever encountered drove us nearly crazy. The men said they had occasionally seen them more numerous on the prairie, but that never in their lives had they known them anything like so vicious or venomous. They lost no time in buzzing or fooling around, but went straight to business with their beaks until our hands and faces were one mass of bites. Nets, lotions, and " smudges" were of no avail; all we could do was to sit still and grin and bear it as well as we could. The night was a night of unending torment, for at this lower elevation (about 2500 feet) the insects do not go to sleep after sundown, as in the higher regions of the eastern Rockies. Spencer, wise in his generation, had brought a piece of netting and bade defiance to the mosquitoes, his snores blending harmoniously with their ceaseless buzzing; but for his two tent-fellows it was a case of: Mali culices 1-anaeque palustres Avertunt somnos: as Horace said on his journey with Maecenas to Brundisium. The mosquitoes of Italy, however, are but poor things compared with those of British Columbia, and the sentiments evoked by the latter are the reverse of poetical. Next morning we fled, the mosquito scourge being unanimously voted past endurance, while we saw no chance of making our way along the river bank. The horses were hurriedly packed amid much kicking and bucking, scratching of bites, and strong language directed at the flies, the climate, woods, rivers, and other geographical features of British Columbia. Retracing our steps for about six miles along the trail, we pitched...