the wonders of its
winding course; a spirit that can never free itself from the canyons,
to rise above the heights and follow its fellows to the Happy Hunting
Grounds, but which is contented to entwine its laughter, its sobs, its
lonely whispers, its still lonelier call for companionship, with the
wild music of the waters that sing forever beneath the western stars.

As your horses plod up and up the almost perpendicular trail that leads
out of the Nicola Valley to the summit, a paradise of beauty outspreads
at your feet; the color is indescribable in words, the atmosphere
thrills you. Youth and the pulse of rioting blood are yours again,
until, as you near the heights, you become strangely calmed by the
voiceless silence of it all, a silence so holy that it seems the whole
world about you is swinging its censer before an altar in some dim
remote cathedral! The choir voices of the Tulameen are yet very far
away across the summit, but the heights of the Nicola are the silent
prayer that holds the human soul before the first great chords swell
down from the organ loft. In this first long climb up miles and miles
of trail, even the staccato of the drivers' long black-snake whip is
hushed. He lets his animals pick their own sure-footed way, but once
across the summit he gathers the reins in his steely fingers, gives a
low, quick whistle, the whiplash curls about the ears of the leaders
and the plunge down the dip of the mountain begins. Every foot of the
way is done at a gallop. The coach rocks and swings as it dashes
through a trail rough-hewn from the heart of the forest; at times the
angles are so abrupt that you cannot see the heads of the leaders as
they swing around the grey crags that almost scrape the tires on the
left, while within a foot of the rim of the trail the right wheels
whirl along the edge of a yawning canyon. The rhythm of the
hoof-beats, the recurrent low whistle and crack of the whiplash, the
occasional rattle of pebbles showering down to the depths, loosened by
rioting wheels, have broken the sacred silence. Yet above all those
nearby sounds there seems to be an indistinct murmur, which grows
sweeter, more musical, as you gain the base of the mountains, where it
rises above all harsher notes. It is the voice of the restless
Tulameen as it dances and laughs through the rocky throat of the
canyon, three hundred feet below. Then, following the song, comes a
glimpse of the river itself--white ga