A more spirited dance is done by braves holding weapons stiffly, and following each other in file round the circle, now bending knees, or bodies, now standing upright. As they pass round and dip they loose little snapping yelps. All the time their faces remain as impassive as things graven. The dancing was followed by racing. Boys mounted bareback the springy little horses, and with their legs twisted into rope-girths--with reins, the only harness--went round the track at express speed. Young women, riding astride, their dresses tied about their knees, also raced, showing horsemanship even superior to the boys. The riding was extremely fine, and the little horses bunch and move with an elastic and hurtling movement that is thrilling. The ceremony had made the bravest of spectacles. The Indian colour and romance of the scene, set in a deep cup rimmed by steep, grim mountains, the sides and icecaps of which the bright sunlight threw up into an almost unreal actuality, gave it a rare and entrancing quality. And not the least of its picturesque attractions were the papooses in bead and fringed leather, who grubbed about in the earth with stoic calm. They looked almost too toylike to be true. They looked as though their right place was in a scheme of decoration on a wall or a mantel-shelf. As one lady said of them: "They're just the sort of things I want to take home as souvenirs." II Banff is an exquisite and ideal holiday place, and I can appreciate the impulse that sends many Americans as well as Canadians to enjoy its beauties in the summer. It is a valley ringed by an amphitheatre of mountains, up the harsh slopes of which spruce forests climb desperately until beaten by the height and rock on the scarps beneath crests which are often snow-capped. Through this broad valley, and winding round slopes into other valleys, run streams of that poignant blueness which only glacial silt and superb mountain skies can Impart. The houses and hotels in this Switzerland of Canada are charming, but the Banff Springs Hotel, where the Prince stayed, is genius. It is perched up on a spur in the valley, so that in that immense ring of heights it seems to float insubstantially above the clouds of trees, like the palace of some genii. For not only was its site admirably chosen, but the whole scheme of the building fits the atmosphere of the place. And it is as comfortable as it is beautiful. It faces across its red-tiled, white-balustered terraces and vivid lawns, a sharp river valley that strolls winding amid the mountains. And just as this river turns before it, it tumbles down a rock slide in a vast mass of foam, so that even when one cannot see its beauty at night, its roar can be heard in the wonderful silence of the valley. On the terrace of the hotel are two bathing-pools fed from the sulphur springs of Banff, and here Canadians seem to bathe all day until dance-time--and even slip back for a moonlight bath between dancing and bed.