[Illustration: MOUNT EDITH. _A. Knechtel_] [Illustration: TOWERS OF MOUNT BABEL. (_Consolation Valley_) _A. O. Wheeler_] V INCOMPARABLE LAKE LOUISE Thirty-five miles west of Banff on the Canadian Pacific Railway, and still in the Rocky Mountains Park, is the village of Laggan. You may make the journey by train or motor, in either case enjoying a succession of magnificent views of mountain peaks on either side, culminating in the majestic Mount Temple. From Laggan a tramway or a somewhat dusty ride or drive of two or three miles up the mountain side brings you to the Chalet, on the shores of Lake Louise; but if you are wise you will take the woodland trail and walk. The trail winds up through the woods, cool and fragrant, with wildflowers about you on every side, charming glimpses of forest glades and mountain torrents, and far above the æolian music of the breeze in the tree tops. The trail ends at the Chalet, a rambling, picturesque, and thoroughly comfortable hotel, crowded with tourists from the ends of the earth. Your thoughts are not, however, of hotel or tourists as you look beyond the trees, and get your first vivid impression of what is probably the most perfect bit of scenery in the known world. A lake of the deepest and most exquisite colouring, ever changing, defying analysis, mirroring in its wonderful depths the sombre forests and cliffs that rise from its shores on either side, the gleaming white glacier and tremendous, snow-crowned peaks that fill the background of the picture, and the blue sky and fleecy cloud overhead. Year after year you may revisit Lake Louise, and wander about its shores through all kinds of weather; you will never exhaust the variety of its charms. It changes from day to day, from hour to hour, from moment to moment. It responds instantly to every subtle change of cloud, wind or atmosphere; it has one glory of the sunrise and another of sunset; it offers you one picture under the brilliant noonday sun, another under heavy clouds, another through driving mists, or rain, or snow; but always incomparably beautiful, and always indescribable. Let us see how it has appealed to different men, who have visited it at different times and under varied conditions. As long ago as 1888 William Spotswood Green, of the British Alpine Club, climbed up to the shores of Lake Louise on his way back from a season's mountain-climbing in the Selkirks. "I was," he says, "quite unprepared for the full beauty of the scene. Nothing of the kind could possibly surpass it. I was somewhat reminded of the Oeschinen See in Switzerland, but Lake Louise is about twice as long, the forests surrounding it are far richer, and the grouping of the mountains is simply perfection." "Lake Louise," says Walter Dwight Wilcox, "is a realisation of the perfect beauty of nature beyond the power of imagination."