forest and stream and white alpine landscape among the southern tributaries of the Columbia. This valley, too, has had its scenes of prospecting and mining and is rich in minerals; but all mining activities have ceased, awaiting the branch railway for the transportation of ore. One desperate scene is now impressed upon a mountain side where a large tract of the dark, softly even, luxuriant forest is blasted from the upper tree-line to the rocky margin of the beautiful little river below; where every serried trunk stands summit behind summit black and naked and dead. It marks the rage of a disap- pointed prospector whose only regret was that the fire stopped and that he "had not burnt the whole valley to" (these are words with which the mountain-pilgrim has no concern). When civilization advances sufficiently, we shall electrocute such criminals. This is the only blight on that richly beautiful alpine valley, a valley that Wordsworth, and Coleridge and Shelley and all the poets of mountain-landscape had rejoiced to see; and seeing, had rendered into song.
There is a good driving-road for 30 miles to Earl Grey's camp whence a saddle-trail leads across Earl Grey Pass (7,500 feet) to Hamil Creek and down towards the Kootenay Valley. At the head of Toby Creek Valley the visitor is in a truly alpine country. Toby Glacier itself is worthy the Selkirks as the accompanying illustrations show.
Mr. E. W. Harnden, to whose courtesy the illustrations are owing, compares the view from Earl Grey Pass to the "Monte Rosa- Lyksamm-Breithorn view from the Corner Grat, and of the Jungfrau group from the Scheidegg. To the east is the broad expanse of the Toby Glacier, to the south-east the towering peaks from which the glacier sweeps, and to the south one of the noblest mountains bear- ing some of the most beautiful and pure glaciers that I have ever seen." And this strategic place for mountaineering is, we are to note, very comfortable of access. Scarcely any of the mountains are named. Two minor peaks overlooking His Excellency's camp were named by Earl Grey "The Pharaohs" from a fancied resemblance. Toby Glacier is one of a number of the larger glaciers in the vicinity, and the immediate mountains unmeasured and imnamed are lofty ice-clad peaks estimated tentatively to be over 11,000 feet of altitude. The seracs of Toby Glacier here illustrated show its im- portance as an ice-river.
Toby Creek has two important tributaries: .Spring Creek, and Little North Fork which in turn has its own tributary, Delphine Creek.
Spring Creek: Following the road up Toby Creek, at the 12-mile post is a clearing with a cluster of frame cottages and log cabins called Pinehurst, just where Spring Creek empties into Toby Creek. The buildings, once occupied by persons connected with Paradise Mine and now vacant, would comfortably shelter a number of families seeking holidays and health. The dark evergreen forest is all about, yet there is ample open space and breadth of sky and a view of the high glaciers beyond; the wild torrent is just below and across the canyon the wooded mountain rises steeply. The only blemish on this lovely wilderness is the burnt tract described under Toby Creek.
