My dear old friend, Mrs. Moodie, wrote a capital book, called ‘Roughing It in the Bush.’ Assuredly I may, one of these days, write one on roughing it in the Rockies, though the keeper of the caboose, out of respect for my age and infirmities, does all he can to make me comfortable. Already I feel the better for the air. For the first time since I have been in Canada I have felt hungry; for the first time, also, since I have been in Canada I have not had to physic myself with chlorodyne. A month up here in the Rockies would make a young man of me or of anyone else. I must be off before I become as gay as a horse fed on beans. This is, I take it, the real and sufficient reason of the peculiar spirits of the mountaineers, who rather alarmed me with their liveliness at Calgary. Their exuberance is due to air, and air alone. As I sit, a long row of mules files past; a man is riding at the head, the others follow with their burdens packed on their backs. He is a ‘prospector,’ and is on his way to the other side. Already as many as a thousand such have gone the same road this summer. The mountains are full of wealth—in the shape of gold or silver, or coal or slate, or other precious commodities. Hitherto the cost of conveyance has kept people away. The opening of the C.P.R. will remove that inconvenience. They will have a chance now of getting rid of their minerals, when discovered, and of fetching up their stores from the East at less expense. As it is, things are dear enough in Holt City. For instance, if I send or receive a letter, I have to pay the postmaster a few cents in addition to the usual postage-stamp. Calgary I thought bad enough, but up here prices may be quoted as much higher. Yesterday I had a ride over the mountains. It will be long before I take such a ride again. No English coachman would drive such a road for five hundred a year. No English carriage could stand it, nor English horses either. I expected the buggy, as it was called, to be shattered into atoms every minute—it looked so light and frail, and the horses—a handsome pair, the property of Mr. Ross—to be ruined for life; yet we got safely to the front—where the men are hard at work cutting down trees, removing earth, tunnelling, and pushing on the work with all their might; and there, I must say, there are openings for any number of men who like to come out. Last year little was done in the winter, because the contractors believed the climate would be against them. No one before then had wintered in the Rockies, and everyone believed the climate to be much worse than it really is.