We dragged out some of the guns in Fort Garry, upon which Riel had relied so much, and with them fired a Royal Salute when the Union Jack was run up the flagstaff. From it had hung for months before the rebel flag that had been worked by the nuns of the convent attached to Bishop Taché's cathedral, and presented by them to Riel. 49. ENTERING THE ROCKIES IN 1872. =Source.=--_Ocean to Ocean_, 1873: the diary kept by the Rev. George M. Grant, Secretary to the Expedition through Canada of Sandford Fleming, Engineer-in-Chief of the Canadian Pacific and Inter-colonial Railways. September 11th. Away this morning at 6.15 a.m., and halted at 1 p.m., after crossing the Rivière de Violon or Fiddle river, when fairly inside the first range. It was a grand morning for mountain scenery. For the first three hours the trail continued at some distance east from the valley of the Athabasca, among wooded hills, now ascending, now descending, but on the whole with an upward slope, across creeks where the ground was invariably boggy, over fallen timber, where infinite patience was required on the part of horse and man. Suddenly it opened out on a lakelet, and right in front a semi-circle of five glorious mountains appeared.... For half a mile down from their summits, no tree, shrub, or plant covered the nakedness of the three that the old trappers had thought worthy of names, and a clothing of vegetation would have marred their massive grandeur. The first three were so near and towered up so bold that their full forms, even to the long shadows on them, were reflected clearly in the lakelet, next to the rushes and spruce of its own shores.... The road now descended rapidly from the summit of the wooded hill that we had so slowly gained, to the valley of the Athabasca. As it wound from point to point among the tall dark green spruces, and over rose bushes and vetches, the soft blue of the mountains gleamed through everywhere; and, when the woods parted, the mighty column of Roche à Perdrix towered above our heads, scuds of clouds kissing its snowy summit.... We were entering the magnificent Jasper portals of the Rocky Mountains by a quiet path winding between groves of trees and rich lawns like an English gentleman's park. ... Soon the Rivière de Violon was heard brawling round the base of Roche à Perdrix and rushing on like a true mountain torrent to the Athabasca. We stopped to drink to the Queen out of its clear ice-cold waters, and halted for dinner in a grove on the other side of it, thoroughly excited and awed by the grand forms that had begirt our path for the last three hours. We could now sympathise with the daft enthusiast, who returned home after years of absence, and when asked what he had as an equivalent for so much lost time--answered only "I have seen the Rocky Mountains." ...