Camp-Fires in the Canadian Rockies (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II IN THE VALLEY OF ELK RIVER Femie and Michel?Mr. Crahan and his Hotel?Return of Professor H. F. Osborn and his Family?The Members of our Outfit?The First Wild Animal?Jack Pine Timber?Sheep Mountain?"My Mountain," for a Month?A Marten Trap?Fool-Hens. We are constitutionally opposed to long delays in journeys to hunting-grounds, either on the rails or on paper; but in the valley of Elk River we found so much of interest it is impossible to ignore this gateway to our garden of the gods. I have already said that a spur of the Great Northern Railway reaches Fernie, the Phoenix City of the great soft-coal mining district, which incendiaries seem determined to wipe off the earth by fire, but which refuses to stay burned down. It is on the Crow's Nest branch of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which breaks through the main range of the Rockies at Crow's Nest Pass about one hundred and twenty miles south of Banff and the main line. At Fernie you feel that you have fully arrived in British Columbia, for on all sides lofty mountains loom up and frown down in rock-ribbed majesty. One peak of commanding presence, north of the town, is about to be christened Owl's Head; but the name is not satisfactorily apt. The top of the peak looksmuch like a flying dragon, carved in stone, but little like an owl. At Fernie any person (with money) can buy almost anything in the outfit line, from a trout-hook to an automobile. The hotels are excellent, and the men of our kind are courteous and hospitable. There are goats on the mountains within ten miles of the town, available for those who have no time to go farther. We took an east-bound train, ran on north up the Elk River about fourteen miles, then left the Elk Valley and turned abruptly eastward. After four miles more, up Michel ...