W. S. Caine, A Trip Round the World in 1887–8 (London: G. Routledge & Sons, 1888), pp. 92–118

On Monday, September 19th, we were roused from our beds at 4 o’clock A.M., as the westward bound daily train passed through Banff at five o’clock. At the station we met with the only instance of neglect of duty on the perfectly-ordered Canadian Pacific Railway. The station-master did not condescend to leave his warm bed to see the train off, and we had to carry our luggage ourselves from the omnibus to the luggage car, and let them go on unchecked to Field, our next stopping place. It was a cold, sleety morning, and the magnificent scenery through which we passed was not seen to the best advantage, as the tops of the mountains were enveloped in snow clouds. At seven we passed a station called Silver City. Three or four years ago there was a “boom” in silver mines in the Rocky Mountains; a good deal of exploration went on, and a considerable wooden village was built. But there was no “silver,” and now there is no “city.” Its glory has departed, and only the empty and deserted log-houses remain to tell of its butterfly existence. Shortly after, Mount Lefroy, a commanding snowy peak 11,658 feet above sea-level, comes into view, and presently the birthplace of the noble Bow River is discerned in a small glacier wedged in between Mount Hector and Goat Mountain, both over 10,000 feet. Then the highest point of the railway is reached, 5,300 feet above the sea, at the summit lake, marshy and shallow, from which trickles a stream at each end, one of which travels 2,000 miles to the Atlantic, and the other 1,500 to the Pacific Ocean. We now bid good-bye to the beautiful Bow River, which has been our genial companion for so many pleasant days, and under the shadow of Mount Stephen, the monarch of the Rocky Mountains, said to be over 12,000 feet, and named after the president of the Canadian Pacific Railway, we enter Kicking Horse Pass. This pass received its ridiculous name from an incident connected with some obstreperous horse ridden by one of the surveyors of the line, which will stick to it for ever. A magnificent view meets the gaze. A huge valley, filled from side to side with magnificent pines and cedars, their dark green intensified by the red-brown of huge areas burnt up by forest fires, in which the enormous trunks stand up like black masts 200 feet high, and 10 or 12 feet thick, 267 is flanked by peak and pinnacle, the Kicking Horse River meandering through the bottom like a silver ribbon. The train, with two powerful engines reversed, and every brake screwed to its tightest, slides down a gradient of 1,250 feet in less than 10 miles. The road is cut out of the sides of great cliffs, hundreds of feet above the roaring torrent, and every now and then we crawl over a trestle bridge two or three hundred feet above some gorge torn out of the mountain side by a rushing torrent. At nine o’clock we draw up at Field Station, a lonely post in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, where the Canadian Pacific Railway Company have built a comfortable little hotel, at which we decide to stay for 24 hours. It was a great comfort to know, as we came down this terrible descent, that we were travelling on rails made from good honest Cumberland Hæmatite. I have noted, with interest, but without surprise, that the word “Barrow” always appeared on the rails which the Canadian Pacific Railway have laid down in dangerous places, or where there is specially heavy wear and tear.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.