The Henson Journals

[108]

Monday, July 5th, 1909.

Lake Louise Hotel. Another brilliant day. When after breakfast we came out on to the verandah of the Hotel, the spectacle which met our eyes almost took our breath away. In front the clear bright green water, all round a ring of great mountains, above the gleaming fields of everlasting snow – all made up a scene of unforgettable loveliness. We walked through the pine woods to Lake Agnes, about 1200 feet higher than Lake Louise. The mosquitoes plagued us horribly on the way. But any annoyance was a petty price to pay for such wondrous beauty as we looked on when at length, emerging from the woods, we stood beside the Emerald Lake, and then still higher Lake Agnes. The romantic, the tender, and the sublime are all subtly blended in these incomparable scenes.

We came away in the afternoon to the accompaniment of a violent thunderstorm. An hour & a quarter's travelling brought us to Banff, where we put up in another of the C.P.R's. fine hotels.

After dinner I wrote to Harold.

[109]

Our night's rest was much disturbed by the irritation of mosquito bites, and by fears induced by one insolent creature which had evaded every protection precaution. When at length this pest had been dispatched the morning was drawing on. With facetious cruelty the mosquitoes have arranged their bites artistically. I am stung on my brow & my eye–lid: Ella on the tip of the nose, & on the side of the face. Could attentions be more delicate & considerate? My neck is arranged behind in a long red & varied range of excrescences, precisely like the Rockies on a raised map. My hands are swollen, itching, & shapeless!

The weather was fine but threatening. The threats had got the better of the fineness by lunch time, when another heavy thunder–storm came on.

We went the "Tally–Ho" coach round; up the hills by a boldly constructed road [the "cork–screw" piece where seven sharp turns follow one another without interval is amazing] through the park into the enclosure where the Dominion Government preserves a herd of 94 buffalo. [The beasts are as tame as tame cows, so that the coaches drives into their midst without causing them the faintest excitement. They are as impassive as their old enemies, the Red Indians.] We saw the tepid sulphur pool, where bathing proceeds. Two gross negroes disporting themselves in the water at once [110] destroyed any desire to bathe. We were shown the cave by an eccentric Scotch guide, who explained it as the cone of an extinct geyser. Once it had been gloriously decorated with stalactites, but the railway men who first discovered the cave damaged them, & were but the precursors of a horde of "Goths & Vandals & souvenir fiends" who completed the ruin. We saw a small collection of animals in Banff. Three bears (black, brown & cinnamon), a mountain lion, timber wolves, cayotes, foxes, a lynx, a racoon, two badgers, two eagles, & a few other birds made up the whole. The coachman affirmed that mountain lions are common here, & often seen in the winter.

In the afternoon the rainfall prohibited an excursion. After taking a siesta, we went to the local "exhibitions", and had tea in the village. We visited the animals, and looked at them carefully. Then we walked to the cataract (Bow Falls), and returned to the Hotel. I added five or six more mosquito stings to those which already adorned my neck & hands.

I wrote letters to Lord Hugh Cecil, Radcliffe, Dr Symonds at Montreal, & the Sec: of the Canadian Club, Winnipeg.

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