this route.
Within thirty-six hours after leaving Vancouver we traverse three of
the grandest mountain ranges in America,--the Cascades, Selkirks, and
Rockies,--all of them the abode of eternal snow and glaciers, and all of
them traversed through by canons which vie with each other in terrific
grandeur.

[Illustration: MEMORIAL MONUMENT TO SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN, FOUNDER OF
QUEBEC]

Before the Selkirks are reached the train passes the Columbia or Gold
range, through the Eagle Pass, so called because it was discovered by
watching an eagle's flight. Eagle's Pass is a poetic and appropriate
name, and yet I think it would be well to re-name this mountain pass and
call it Mirror Lake Canyon, because that would call the attention of
tourists to what is its most characteristic feature, which may otherwise
be overlooked. There are four lakes and many smaller bodies of water in
this valley, in whose placid surface the finely-sloped mountain ridges
and summits of the pass are reflected with marvellous distinctness, so
that here, as in the Yosemite Mirror Lake, the copy is more lovely than
the original. Some of the mountain-sides reflected in these mirrors are
naked rocks, others are covered with living evergreen trees, and others
still with dead trees. In the mirror these dead forests look hardly less
beautiful than the living ones; but in the original the eye dwells with
more pleasure on the green forests which here, and almost everywhere in
British Columbia, grow with the rank luxuriance of a Ceylon jungle. The
soil under these dense tree-masses, consisting of decayed pine- and
fir-needles, a foot deep, and always moist, makes a paradise for lovely
mosses and ferns. Here, also, is the home of the bear, and one would not
have to walk far in this thicket to encounter a grizzly, black, or
cinnamon bruin.

On emerging from the Mirror Lake Canyon, a great surprise awaits the
passengers. The Columbia River--to which they had fancied they had said
a final farewell when they were ferried across it on the way from
Portland to Tacoma--suddenly comes upon the scene again, as clear and
as picturesque as ever; and even at this immense distance from its mouth
still large enough to require a bridge half a mile long to cross it. A
few hours later the train again crosses the Columbia, at Donald, where
the river has become much smaller than it seems that it should in such a
short distance.

To get an explanation of this circumstance, it is