The Canadian Pacific has for years led in exploiting the scenic wonders of Canada. It carries tourists over the mountains in summer in open observation cars, and adds to their comfort by using oil-burning locomotives on its passenger trains. It has a half dozen resorts in the Rockies where one may enjoy all the comforts of a modern city hotel or the rugged pleasures of a wilderness camp. It has established a colony of Swiss mountaineers brought from the Alps to act as guides for mountain climbers. It has cut new trails through the country and has sent out geologists to map the unexplored territory. Even the names of scores of peaks and valleys originated with the Canadian Pacific. Mount Sir Donald, one of the mightiest of the Selkirks, was so called in honour of Lord Strathcona, who was a power behind the building of the railway, and who drove the final spike uniting the east and west sections of the transcontinental line. Mount Stephen was named after the first president, and Mount Shaughnessy after a later one. The Van Horne Glacier in the Selkirks and the Van Horne Range have the same name as the famous builder of the Canadian Pacific, and Mount Hector was named after the intrepid explorer who discovered the Kicking Horse Pass. Indeed, that railway has become so great a booster of the Dominion’s natural show places that it has even been given credit for supplementing nature in the matter of scenery. The story is told of a woman who had just had her first view of the mighty crystal mass of the Illecillewaet Glacier towering thousands of feet above the railway. She stared in open-eyed and incredulous wonder. Then she exclaimed: “It ain’t real! The Canadian Pacific put it there for advertising!” CHAPTER XXIX THROUGH BRITISH COLUMBIA TO THE COAST British Columbia is the third largest province of the Dominion of Canada. It has an area as great as that of France, Italy, Belgium, and Holland combined. It extends from the United States boundary to Yukon Territory and Alaska, and, except for the northeastern section, it is all plateaus and mountains and valleys. The interior table-lands have an average elevation of three thousand feet. They contain some good farms and dairies, but the chief wealth of the province is in its forests, fisheries, and mines. I have crossed this great territory often on my way westward, and have at times gone southward from Golden into the Kootenay country. This is far below the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Another line of the Canadian Pacific crosses the region from the Crow’s Nest Pass.