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COLEMAN'S M^ BROWN & THE SOURCES C IN THE ROCKY 1893 Scale 1:500,000 or 8 S 6 » =^ 117 Pu.iiuihf'ii hj £Ar Tio^aZ &*oyr/)pkicugh ever- I for 7 or itorm the Jun-wapta ble burnt 3 that roll iss, which id descent feet on a the river f ravelled Jams near nels with H burden of pebbles and rock flour, through which they must seek new outlets. Across the valley from our mountain a huge dome-shaped mass of snow, rising much above our level and brooded over by heavy clouds, sent long glacier tongues down into the valley between black precipices. The higher points in ^.he group evidently rose several thousand feet above the one on which we stood. We estimated the highest peaks at 13,000 feet, or perhaps a little more. Dr. Hector gives a similar estimate for the highest summits near Ilowse pass, 10 or 15 miles to the Kouth-west. We may have been looking at opposite sides of the same mountains. The Sun-W)ipta (Stony name) is a large and rapid river, fordable with difficulty at most points, a tributary of the Athabasca not shown on the maps. We followed it down-stream from the mouth of Jonas creek, passing a tremendous rook-slide, where a cubic mile of quartzite has slipped from a mountain on the right shore, damming the river so us to form rapids, and hurling blocks many cubic yards in bulk half Ji mile up the opposite slope. This event took place not very long ago, for the yellow scar on the mountain has not yet turned grey with lichen growth. rive miles below Jonas creek we passed the mouth of Poboktan creek, and pushed our way over trails so encumbered with fallen timber as to require much chopping, till the mouth of the Sunwapta was reached. There is a line waterfall at this point, and a still finer one a few miles farther down on the Athabasca. The united stream, 100 yards wide and quite unfordable, plunges 60 or 70 feet into a very narrow canon, so narrow that some daring man has flung a few tree- trunks across as a bridge. It is on the whole the grandest falls we saw in the Rockies, though not more beautiful than some in the caiion of the Brazeau. At last the trail suddenly became well blazed and beaten, unlike ■previous portions, which cannot have been travelled for several years. We came upon stretches of prairie delightful to behold after weeks of forest. One evening the half bark, half laugh of coyotes drifted up from a distance, delighting the heart of Sibbald, our packer, who is a true plainsman, and declared that it was a decent country where there were coyotes. After long days of battle with burnt woods, whose charred trunks and branches smear and smudge hands and face and clothing, after night camps pitched between shadeless black trees on a soil of sand and ashes, ihere is an endless charm in camping on a meadow of soft green grasH, beside a brook shaded by clumps of willow. Following the trail through the woods, we missed the mouth of AVhirlpool river, for which we were aiming, and, reaching the Miette a few miles farther down, took it for the river we were in search of. A 58 MOUNT BROWN AND THE SOURCES OF THE ATHABASCA. day or two later, the diflference in latitude, the wrong direction of the valley, and the finding of railway survey pegs convinced us that we had entered the Yellowhead pass (Tete Jaune), where a survey was made a number of years ago for a projected route of the Canadian Pacific Railway. A trading post, Henry House, is placed opposite the mouth of the Miette on the maps ; but, as we could find no trace of it, probably it has been destroyed and the site overgrown with bushes. The law of the map-maker is apparently that of the consistent Calvinist, *' once in grace always in grace." Marks on the trail showed that a party having horses much larger than ours had gone over it a few days before we arrived. Retracing our steps, we ferried once more across the Athabasca, and followed the impetuous, sea-green Whirlpool river to its source. Once a much-travelled thoroughfare of the Hudson Bay Company and rail- way explorers, the Athabasca pass has now fallen into disuse. Portions of the trail have been swept away by the river, and many other parts we found impassable without hard chopping. The valley is interesting. At one point a glacier comparable to that of the ]ihone sends its blue ice front almost to the level of the river at 4400 feet, and supplies a third of its water. Other large glaciers provide the rest of the flood farther up the valley, until at the watershed the Whirlpool dwindles into an insignificant rivulet rising in a pretty little tarn, the Committee's Punchbowl, which masquerades on many maps as a lake 8 or 10 miles long.* A rill trickles southward from the other end of the " bowl," which thus divides its snow-fed waters between the Arctic and Pacific oceans at points thousands of miles apart. Moberly gives the elevation of the Punchbowl as 6025 feet, but our observations made it only 5710 feet. iMount Brown greatly disappointed us. The only summit correspond- ing to its position on the maps, just west or north-west of the Punch- bowl, was climbed by Mr. Stewart and my brother, and turned out to be little, if any, more than 9000 feet high. They found no difficulty in the ascent, except a mile of steep snowfield, until just beneath the summit, where a cornice of snow proved unscaleable. Readings of an aneroid and of a boiling-point thermometer, when compared with readings at camp, give a height of 3o40 feet above the pass, or 8950 feet above the sea; and they estimate the thickness of the snow cornice covering the crest at less than 100 feet. From the top no higher mountains were to be seen west of the pass, so that there is no doubt the right mountain was climbed. Mouut Brown must descend, then, * AUx. Eoss iu 'The Fur-IIuntcis of the Fur West,' 1855, vol. ii. j). 188, etc., gives a correct aeeuiint of tlio puss, which he crossed in winter. MOUNT BROWN AND THE SOURCES OF THE ATHABASCA. r>(v. btion of the I US that we survey was Canadian J)uth of the Jprobably it (The law of pt, " once in ^rty having before we abasca, and irce. Once y and rail- Portions other parts iparable to 3vel of the )ther large intil at the ulet rising lasquerades southward -fed waters Is of miles ■ o feef, but orrespond- he Punch- ned out to flSculty in neath the ngs of an ired with 8950 feet w cornice lo higher no doubt nd, then, ». 188, etc., from the position long accorded to it, of being the highest summit in North America between Mexico and Alaska. It has no right to be mentioned in connection with Mount St. Elias in Alaska, nor Orizaba in Mexico, much less with the recently discovered Mount Logan, just east of the Alaskan frontier in the Canadian north-west territory.* The case of Mount Hooker we found less easy to settle. The point nearest its position, as given on the map, is only about 8000 feet high according to aneroid readings taken by Mr. Stewart and my brother ; but a handsome glacier-covered mountain, just east of the Punchbowl, probably reaches 11,000 feet, and there are summits a few miles to the south-east that may reach 12,000 or 13,000 feet, though lack of time pre- vented their ascent. The Punchbowl, reflecting gloomy mountain flanks and snowfielde, suggested no ideas of conviviality. The little meadow beside it, sur- rounded by stunted spruce groves, was enlivened with some flowers. ^Earmots sounded their alarm whistle from behind every rock when any sound, like the chopping of wood, disturbed them. A cinnamon bear walked calmly down into the patch of meadow, surveyed us a moment, and turned courteously into the woods so as not to disturb our privacy. Caribou left their large hoof-prints on the rivei- flats not far away, and mountain sheep and goats doubtless watched us from afar ; but the general effect of the surroundings was lifeless and austere. On our return journey we made a detour lo vitit Fortress lake, dis- coveied the summer before, and named from a prominent mountain on its shores. We retraced our steps down the whirlpool, turned up the Athabasca, crossing the Sun-wapta near its mouth, and forded the eastern branch of the Athabasca where the river forks. We followed up the western smaller fork, and named it Chaba river, in honour of Job Beaver, an enterprising Stony whose lodge-poles we found in the valley. The name is doubly appropriate, since beavers, though now apparently ex- tinct in the region, were once numerous, as shown by their extensive dams. There are so many Beaver creeks or rivers in north-western Canada that we chose the Stony word, Chaba or Chahba. Fortress lake, which is 8 miles long by 1 or 2 wide, has waters of pale turquoise blue, fed by a few glacier torrents, and reflects the bare purplish cliffs, the flanks clothed with splendid unburnt ever- green forest, and the glacier-covered summits of some of the finest mountains to be found in the Rockies. The lake has a curious sub- terranean outlet into a tributary of the Chaba river, but sends most of its water into Wood river, an important afflaent of the Columbia ; so that, like the Committee's Punchbowl, it sends its waters to the Pacific * 111 tho Am. GeoL, Jan. 1891, Mount St. Eliixs iv given a lieight of 18,01.) feet, Orizaba tliat of IS.aiaH Avt. In the number lor April, 1894, Mount Logan is rtpre- .sentcd as 19,514 feet high, far Hurpassing any other point of North America. 60 MOUNT BROWN AND THE SOURCES OF THE ATHABASCA. as well as the Arctic oceans. The lake stands 4330 feet above the sea, ani forms the summit of a pass 1400 feet lower than the Athabasca pass 10 or 12 miles to the west, 950 feet lower than the Kicking Horse pass followed by the Canadian Taoific Railway, and 010 feet higher than the Yellowhead pass. The valley of Fortress lake, belonging as it does to the British Columbian side of the Rockies, shows a richer vegetation than other valleys we had visited. White and black spruce grow to an immense height. A trunk stranded on the shore was 60 feet long, nearly 2 feet thick at the smaller end, and had not yet branched. A few pines grow along the shore, and aspens, balsam poplars, and willows grow on the plain at the head of the lake. The giant cedar and the prickly " devil's club," characteristic growths of British Columbia, occur very sparingly. White winter-green and half a dozen other berry-bearing plants thrive in marshy places of the valley, while the rhododendron and the three Rocky Mountain heathers cover wide stretches of the mountain sides. Avalanche tracks, from which the big trees have been .swept, grow up with gooseberries, currants, and raspberries, and make favourite haunts of the bears. Our return route was practically the same as the one followed in coming out, though the Saskatchewan was now fordable, saving us a detour at the Kootenay plains. Apparently no Indians crossed the great river that summer, since we found no traces of them, and but one white man beside ourselves, a prospector named McGavan, whom we ferried over on our way out. The mountains through which we travelled may be said to have no human inhabitants, though a few families of Stonies hunt the sheep there now and then. To sum up the topography of the Rockies between the Saskatchewan and the Athabasca in a few sentences, we may describe the eastern side of the Rockies as consisting of a series of more or less steeply tilted blocks facing north-east in precipitous escarpments, and having gentler slopes following the dip of the strata toward the Pacific. They rise to a height of 8000 or 9000 feet toward the east, and 20OO or 3000 feet higher toward the watershed. They are evidently the result of tremendous reversed faults, like those described by McConnell from Bow pass.* Somewhat rarely these faults are replaced by sharp folds, e.g. Sentinel mount in the Kootenay plains. Eighty parallel ridges result from these faults along the Brazeau, but the number varies in other parts. Running north-west and south-east between these parallel ranges we find a somewhat regular series of longitudinal valleys, generally occupied by creeks tributary to the main rivers, while the latter have cut for themselves larger, less regular, transverse valleys approximately at right angles to the others. ♦ ' Geol. Sur. Cam.,' 1886, vol. ii. D. i 3CA. •ove the sea, 3 Athabasoa eking Horse feet higher the British L than other an immense ig, nearly 2 A few pines ws grow on the prickly , occur very rrj'-bearing Lododendron ches of the s have been I, and make followed in « THE WEsYLAND alps, NEW ZEALAND. 61 aving us rossed a the n, and but van, whom which we »ugh a few At the watershed, on the other hand, we find groups of less regularly disposed mountains, sometimes consisting of nearly horizontal strata and of oathedral shape, rising in their highest summits perhaps above 13,000 feet. The rivers and lakes of this portion of the mountains have not the regularity of direction found in the eastern ranges. The rocks of the region, so far as can be determined from fossils collected in 1892 and '93, are of Devonian age, and consist of limestonesy shales, and slates, underlaid by thick beds of quartzitic sandstones and conglomerates. The time of elevation is post-Cretacious, since Laramie rocks occur in somo of the valleys, as near Brazeau lake, and Cretaceous- rocks may be observed tilted into foothills near the Brazeau gap. Distances were determined by pedometer or dead reckoning, checked by frequent latitude observations ; heights by means of three aneroids and a boiling-point apparatus, the height of the Athabasca at the mouth of the Miette, which was determined years ago in railway survej's, servino- as a check. The readings were compared with sea-level barometer readings for the region, kindly supplied by Mr. Stupart, of the Meteorological Service of Canada. It is believed that the heights determined are not more than 100 or 200 feet astray. The accompanying carefully executed map is the work of Mr. Stewart. , ikatchewan astern side eply tilted ing gentler hey rise to ■ 3000 feet result of in ell from harp folds, liel ridges * varies in !se parallel il valleys, while the se valleys