When the Canadian Pacific threw itself through the tangle of British Columbia mountains to the Pacific coast it followed in most instances the course of the deep river canyons, which offer almost the only possibility for the building of a practical road bed. Where the gorges, cut out of the solid rock by immemorial rivers, are deep and narrow, the railroad track often hugs the shoulder of some great alp which towers up at a sharp angle above it, six, eight, ten thousand feet. As in all such country, there is danger that a great mass of snow and ice or frozen gravel will, in some way, become loosened from the underlying strata and sweep down the steep slope in a resistless avalanche. But up here in the mountain division, at every place where the slightest danger of such a "slide" exists the engineers have built either a deflecting barrier or a massive snow-shed, through which trains may run in safety. It would, of course, be impossible to make any structure strong

enough to resist the direct impact of an avalanche. But the engineers have so cunningly calculated the roofs of these sheds so built them into the natural slope of the mountain side-that almost any weight of rock and snow would pass harmlessly on over into the still deeper gorge below.

The engine driver also-as they call him north of the line-has his important part to play in keeping the mountain. division free of accident and wreck. Before each train, which has come rushing across the flat plains of Alberta, under the power of a single engine, enters the portal of the alpine country, two additional locomotives are added to its equipment. One takes its place in the center of the train and the other at the rear. Climb up into the cab of the front engine and watch the square-jawed, sturdy young pilot as he runs slowly up among the great mountains.

"Climbing up is easy enough," he says. "All it takes is a hot fire and plenty of

runs the train down hill under the air alone. With the delicate hand of a master workman he regulates the pressure on the brakes so that moving slowly down the grade, the train is always quite within his control. Nor, even if, through some unheard of accident the man at the air throttle should suddenly find his air running short or allow, in some other way, the great fabric which he captains to get away from him, would there be the slightest danger to any one concerned. At the bottom of every steep grade in the mountain division there is a switch leading to a track which rapidly ascends the opposite steep slope. A man is always on duty at this switch, which is kept turned on to the up-grade track. Before

at too great speed, he is authorized to send it on to the switch track which climbs up so steeply that no amount of momentum would be sufficient to carry it far. The heaviest run-away train, sweeping down the steepest mountain grade, with no engineer at all on duty, would do no more than to vibrate, harmlessly, like a pendulum, between the steep switch track and the equally steep track opposite, down which it originally came, until its momentum entirely overcome by gravity, it came to a stop at the lowest point.

To the tourist, the huge mountains, towering up two miles above the sea, their heads covered with snow, their shoulders swathed in clouds, are simply