Westward with the Prince of WalesNewton, W. Douglas (Wilfrid Douglas)
History
Westward with the Prince of Wales
Newton, W. Douglas (Wilfrid Douglas)
Canada -- Description and travel; Windsor, Edward, Duke of, 1894-1972
The line feels for its best footholds on the sides of walls that drop
sheer away, and tower sheer above. We could look over the side down
abrupt precipices, and see through the dense rain of the day the mighty
drop to where the Kicking Horse River, after leaping over rocky ramps
and flowing through level pools, ran in a score of channels on the wide
shingly floor of the Pass.
Beneath us as we descended we could see the track twisting and looping,
as it sought by tunnelling to conquer the exacting gradient. The
planning of the line is, in its own way, as wonderful as the natural
marvel of the Pass. One is filled with awe at the vision, the genius
and the tenacity of those great railway men who had seen a way over
this grim mountain barrier, had schemed their line and had mastered
nature.
At Yoho Station that clings like a limpet near the top of this soaring
barrier, the Prince took to horse, and rode down trails that wind along
the mountainside through thickets of trees to Field at the foot of the
drop. The rain was driving up the throat of the valley before a strong
wind, and it was not a good day for riding, even in woolly chaps such
as he wore, but he set out at a gallop, and enjoyed the exercise and
the scenery, which is barbaric and tremendous, though here and there it
was etherealized by sudden gleams of sunlight playing on the wet
foliage of the mountain-side and turning the wet masses into rainbows.
During this ride he passed under the stain in a sheer wall of rock that
gives the Pass its name. For some geological reason there is, high up
in a straight mass of white towering cliff, a black outcrop that is
like the silhouette of an Indian on a horse. I could not distinguish
the kick in the horse myself, but I was assured it was there, and
Kicking Horse is thus named.
From Field, a breathing space for trains, about which has grown a small
village possessing one good hotel, the Prince rode up the valleys to
some of the beauty spots, such as Emerald Lake, which lies high in the
sky under the cold glaciers of Mount Burgess. It was a wonderful ride
through the spruce and balsam woods of these high valleys.
IV
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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