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Their language and their methods mark the entire cattle business of the plains from the Rio Grande to the Selkirks. Theirs was a great school for frontiersmen, and its graduates gave full account of themselves wherever they went. Among them were bad men, as bad as the worst of any land, and in numbers not capable of compass even in a broad estimate.
IT was due to a mysterious dispensation of Providence and a good deal to Leslie Graeme that I found myself in the heart of the Selkirks for my Christmas eve as the year 1882 was dying. It had been my plan to spend my Christmas far away in Toronto, with such bohemian and boon companions as could be found in that cosmopolitan and kindly city.
So also, as they left the Rockies behind; as they sped along the Columbia between the Rockies to their right and the Selkirks to their left; or as they turned away from the Columbia, and, on the flanks of the Selkirks, began to mount that forest valley which leads to Roger's Pass, he talked freely and well, exerting himself to the utmost.
Bill Sewall and Wilmot Dow were established with their families on the Elkhorn Ranch, which Roosevelt continued to own, although, I believe, like many ranches at that period, it ceased to be a good investment. Sometimes he made a hurried dash to southern Texas, or to the Selkirks, or to Montana in search of new sorts of game.
At last easeful peace may again dream on my shoulder. After this when it comes to "scattering deeds of kindness on the weary way," I shall be the woman who didn't, and who shall say me nay? However, all this flower and fruit piece was but an episode; the event of that journey was the intimate acquaintance we made of the Great Glacier of the Selkirks, and the nice opportunity I had to lose my life.
For the same reason he blamed them for disruption of his sleep. His ears laid back, and he uttered a deep growl. There was no more magnificent creature in all of the breadth of the forest than this, the grizzly of the Selkirks. He was old and savage and wise; but for all his years, in the highest pinnacle of his strength. No man need to glance twice at him to know his glory.
It was one of the decrees of the forest gods that no human being shall ride for five miles through the spruce forests of the Selkirks and fail to glean at least some slight degree of wilderness knowledge. Both Virginia and Lounsbury had been on horseback before.
Mountain glaciers can stay only the brief time during which the ranges continue young and high. As lofty mountains, such as the Selkirks and the Alps, are lowered by frost and glacier ice, the snowfall will decrease, the line of permanent snow will rise, and as the mountain hollows in which snow may gather are worn beneath the snow line, the glaciers must disappear.
The three of us in that winter camp in the Selkirks were talking the slow aimless talk of wearied men. The Soldier, who had seen many campaigns, was riding his hobby of the Civil War and descanting on Lee's tactics in the last Wilderness struggle.
Five hundred miles west is the coast of British Columbia, a region with a different climate, different country, and different problems. It is cut off from the prairies by vast tracts of wild country and uninhabitable ranges. For nearly two hundred miles the train pants through the homeless grandeur of the Rockies and the Selkirks.
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