As it is Sunday Dr. Grant holds a short service. Our congregation, gathered from the nearest engineer’s camp, numbers twenty-two. The incident may hereafter be remembered as the first act of public worship in this part of the Columbia Valley. After service we walk to the river, about a mile and a half of a stroll over low ground. We find the quiet stream gently flowing in its north-western course, a strange contrast to the bold broken mountain peaks which form the border of the valley through which it runs. The evening was warm. Some of us took a plunge into the Columbia, a pleasant incident in our trip. The water was of the right temperature, and there was a certain romance in swimming in a stream in the heart of the mountains, in water as calm as the Serpentine, in the centre of a vast solitude without the slightest impress of civilization. In the cool of the evening we walked up the first gravelly terrace in rear of the camp to enjoy the view, ascending some 500 feet. We were repaid for our effort. The huge mountains in our front and the valley stretching away in the magnificence of foliage to the south-east, lit up by the warm colour of sunset, presented a noble landscape. I asked myself if this solitude would be unchanged, or whether civilization in some form of its complex requirements would ever penetrate to this region? What is the nature of the soil, what isothermal lines curve in this direction? Is there anything that can be sown and ripened? Certainly as a grazing country it must be valuable. Beef and mutton may be produced for men and women of other lands. Will the din of the loom and whirl of the spindle yet be heard in this unbroken domain of nature? It cannot be that this immense valley will remain the haunt of a few wild animals. Will the future bring some industrial development: a future which is now dawning upon us. How soon will a busy crowd of workmen take possession of these solitudes, and the steam whistle echo and re-echo where now all is silent? In the ages to come how many trains will run to and fro from sea to sea with millions of passengers. All these thoughts crowd upon me with that peaceful scene before us as the sun sinks behind the serrated Selkirk Mountains, and I do not think that I can ever forget the sight as I then gazed upon it.