Courtesy of Byron Harmon, BanffLOOKING TOWARD THE ENTRANCE OF THE ICE CAVE
Courtesy of Byron Harmon, BanffWHERE THE HANGING GLACIER IS ABOUT TO FALL
Then the packer registered “fresh meat hunger” (“cut-in” of a butcher shop to be made later), immediately after which the guide pointed to the cliffsabove the camp where some wild goats were frisking. By the aid of his long-distance lens, Harmon had shot the goats as they would appear through the binoculars the guide and packers excitedly passed back and forth between them. And now they were going forth to shoot the goats. Or rather they were going forth to “shoot” the goats, for these had already been shot with a rifle. In order to avoid loss of time in packing his cumbersome apparatus about over the cliffs, Harmon had sent out Conrad, his Swiss guide, the previous afternoon, with orders to shoot a goat—as fine a specimen as possible—and leave it in some picturesque spot where a re-shooting could be “shot” with the camera when the clouds lifted. The keen-eyed Tyrolese had experienced little difficulty in bringing down two goats. One of these—a huge “Billy”—he had left at the brink of a cliff a couple of thousand feet above the big glacier, and the other—a half-grown kid—he had brought into camp to cut up for the “meat-guzzling” shots with which guide, packer and canine were to indulge in as a finale. It was a cleverly conceived “nature” picture, one with a distinct “educational” value; or at least it was such when viewed from “behind the camera.” Roos was plainly jealous over it, but, as he had no goats of his own, and as Harmon’s goat was hardly likely to be “borrowable” after bouncing on rock pinnacles for a thousand feet, there was nothing to do about it. He would have to make up by putting it over Harmon on his “glacier stuff,” he said philosophically. And he did; though it was only through the virtuosity of his chief actor.
Harmon had confined his glacier shots to one of hisparty riding up over the rocks, and another of it grouped at the entrance of the largest cave and looking in. Being an old mountaineer, he was disinclined to take any unnecessary chances in stirring up a racket under hanging ice. Roos was new to the mountains, so didn’t labour under any such handicap. His idea was to bring the whole outfit right up the middle of the stream and on into the cave. The approach and the entrance into the mouth of the cave were to be shot first from the outside, and then, in silhouette, from the inside.
Nixon, pointing out that the roof of the cave had settled two or three feet since we were there yesterday and that the heat seemed to be honeycombing all the lower end of the glacier pretty badly, said that he didn’t like the idea of taking horses inside, but would do so if it would make a better picture that way. He was quite willing to take chances if there was any reason for it. But what he did object to was trying to take the horses up the middle of the stream over big boulders when it would be perfectly plain to any one who saw the picture that there was comparatively smooth going on either side. “You can easy break a hawss’ leg in one of themgeeslyholes,” he complained; “but the loss of a hawss isn’t a patch to what I’d feel to have some guy that I’ve worked with see the pictur’ and think I picked that sluiceway as the best way up.”
Roos replied with a rush of technical argument in which there was much about “continuity” and “back-lighting,” and something about using the “trick crank so that the action can be speeded up when it’s run.”Not knowing the answer to any of this, Nixon finally shrugged his shoulders helplessly and signalled for Jim to bring up the horses. There was no need of a “trick crank” to speed up the action in the stream, for that glacial torrent, a veritable cascade, had carried away everything in its course save boulders four or five feet high. Nixon, in a bit of a temper, hit the ditch as though he were riding a steeplechase. So did Jim and Gordon. All three of them floundered through without mishap. “Grayback” tried to climb up on the tip of a submerged boulder, slipped with all four feet at once and went over sidewise. I kicked out my stirrups, but hit the water head first, getting considerably rolled and more than considerably wet. To Roos’ great indignation, this occurred just outside the picture, but he had the delicacy not to ask me to do it over again.
Taking the horses inside the cave was a distinctly ticklish performance, though there could be no question of its effectiveness as a picture. Roos set up a hundred feet in from the fifty-feet-wide, twenty-feet-high mouth and directed us to ride forward until a broad splashing jet of water from the roof blocked our way, and then swing round and beat it out. “Beat it out snappy!” he repeated. “Get me?” “Yep,Igot you,” muttered Nixon; “you’re in luck if nothin’ else does.”
The ice that arched above the entrance looked to me like the salt-eaten packing round an ice-cream can as we pushed up and under it. The horses could hardly have noticed this, and it must have been their instincts—their good sound horse-sense—that warned themthat a dark hole full of hollow crackings and groanings and the roar of falling water was no place for self-respecting equines to venture. It took a deal of spurring and swearing to force them inside, and most of the linear distance gained was covered in circles on their hind legs. It was old “Grayback” whose nerves gave way first; he that started the stampede back to light and sunshine. There was no question but what we “beat it snappy.”
Roos came out rubbing his hands gleefully. “That photographed like a million dollars,” he cried with enthusiasm. “Now just one thing more....” And forthwith he revealed what had been in his heart ever since he chanced onto that “natural shower bath” in the cave the previous afternoon. No one could deny that it was a natural shower bath. And since itwasa natural shower bath, what could be more natural than for some one to take a shower under it? How would Nixon feel about trying it? Or Jim? He admitted that it might be something of a shock, but he was willing to make that all right. Would ten dollars be fair? Or say twenty? Or why not twenty-five? He knew Mr. Chester didn’t reckon cost when it was a question of getting a high class, he might say a unique, picture. Now which should it be? Nixon, a bit snappily, said his rheumatism put him out of the running, and Jim was equally decided. Money wouldn’t tempt him to go even into the Columbia at Windermere, let alone a liquid icicle under a glacier.
And right then and there I did a thing which Roos maintained to the end of our partnership repaid him for all the grief and worry I had caused him to date,and much that was still to accrue. “Since I’ve got to take a bath and dry these wet togs out sooner or later,” I said with a great assumption of nonchalance, “perhaps the ice cave will do as well as anywhere else. Just promise me you won’t spring a flare on the scene, and build a fire to dry my clothes by....” Roos was gathering wood for a fire before I finished speaking. As for the flares, Harmon had not given him any yet. It was only a silhouette he wanted—but that would show up like a million dollars in the spray and ice. There never had been such a picture; perhaps would never be again. I wasn’t joking, was I? And primitive....
“Go on and set up,” I cut in with. “I’ll be there by the time you’re ready to shoot. And don’t ever let me hear you say primitive again. Oh, yes—and you needn’t remind me to ‘Be snappy!’ There won’t be any trouble on that score. Just make sure your lens is fast enough to catch the action.”
I’ve had many a plunge overboard off the California coast that shocked me more than that “natural shower bath” did, but never a one with so exhilarant a reaction. Stripping off my wet clothes by the fire, I slipped into my big hooded “lammy” coat and hippity-hopped into the cave. Roos, set up ten yards inside the splashing jet from the roof, was already standing by to shoot. At his call of “Action!” I jumped out of my coat and into the black, unsparkling column of water. There was a sharp sting to the impact, but it imparted nothing of the numbing ache that accompanies immersion in water a number of degrees less cold than this—a feeling which I camelater to know only too well on the Columbia. Nixon had warned me against tempting Providence again by making any unnecessary racket in the cave, but it was no use. No one could have the fun that I was having and not holler. It was against nature. Whooping like a Comanche, I continued my hydro-terpsichorean revel until a muffled “Nuff” from Roos called a halt. He had come to the end of his roll. I have been in more of a shiver coming out of the Adriatic at the Lido in August than I was when I ambled back to dry off by the fire and the sunshine. Glowing with warmth, I even loafed along with my dressing, as one does at Waikiki.
“You’d make a fortune pulling the rough stuff in the movies,” Roos exclaimed, patting me on the back. “You’ve got everything the real gripping cave-manhasto have—size, beef, a suggestion of brutal, elemental force, primitive....” I chucked a burning brand at him and went over to borrow Nixon’s glass. A shot from far up the cliffs told that Harmon’s “goat-hunt” was in full cry. The real thrill of the day was about to come off; rather more of a thrill, indeed, than any one was prepared for, Harmon included.
MY SHOWER BATH IN AN ICE CAVE(left)WARMING UP AFTER MY GLACIAL SHOWER BATH(right)
ROSS AND HARMON. DRAGON MORAINE IN DISTANCE (above)THE HORSES IN THE MOUTH OF THE ICE CAVE (below)
While we had been filming our “cave stuff” Harmon had finished setting the stage for his picture. He had two shots to make—one of his packers firing at the goat at the top of the cliff, and the other of the body of the goat falling to the glacier. Conrad, the Tyrolean, climbing like a fly, had scaled the face of the cliff and was standing by for the signal to start the goat “falling.” The shot which had attracted myattention had been the packer discharging his rifle at the goat, which had been propped up in a life-like position, as though peering down onto the glacier. Harmon was still cranking when I got him in focus, while the packer had jumped to his feet and was executing apas seulevidently intended to convey the impression he had made a hit. A curl of blue smoke from his rifle was still floating in the air. They had contrived that effective little touch by dribbling a bit of melted butter down the barrel before firing. Smokeless powder is hardly “tell-tale” enough for movie work.
Harmon now moved over and set up at the foot of the cliff, apparently to get as near as possible to the point where the goat was going to hit. As the sequel proves, he judged his position to a hair. Now he made his signal. I saw the flutter of his handkerchief. The goat gave a convulsive leap, and then shot straight out over the brink of the cliff. From where we stood I could plainly see the useful Conrad “pulling the strings,” but from where Harmon was set up this would hardly show. He was too careful to overlook a point like that in a “nature picture.” The white body caromed sharply off a couple of projecting ledges, and then, gathering momentum, began to describe a great parabola which promised to carry it right to the foot of the cliff.
I had kept my eyes glued to the glass from the start, but it was Nixon’s unaided vision which was first to catch the drift of what was impending. “You couldn’t drive a six-hawss team ’tween the side o’ Mista Ha’mon’s head and the trail in the air thatgeeslygoat’s going to make passing by,” he said with a calculating drawl. “Not so su’ you could squeeze a pack-hawss through.” Then, a couple of seconds later: “No’ ev’n a big dawg.” And almost immediately: “By Gawd, it’s going to get him!”
And that surely was what it looked like, to every one at least but the calmly cranking Harmon. He went on humping his back above the finder, and I could see the even rise and fall of his elbow against the snow. The dot of white had become a streak of grey, and it was the swift augmentation of this in his finder which finally (as he told me later) caused Harmon suddenly to duck. To me it looked as if the flying streak had passed right through him, but he was still there at the foot of his tripod after the Bolt of Wrath, striking the surface of the glacier with a resounding impact, threw up a fountain of pulverized snow and laid still. He was never quite sure whether it was the almost solid cushion of air or a side-swipe from a hoof or horn that joggled the tripod out of true. It was a near squeeze, for the flying body, which must have weighed all of two hundred pounds, was frozen hard as a rock. Conrad came staggering down with the remnants of the battered trunk over his shoulders. Only the heart and liver were fit to eat. The rest was a sausage of churned meat and bone splinters. There was no question about its fall having limbered it up.
The illumination of the cave by the calcium flares was beautiful beyond words to describe, or at least so I was told. The first one was a failure, through the outward draught of air carrying the smoke back ontothe cameras. I had set this off in a side gallery, about a hundred yards in from the mouth, with the idea of throwing a sort of concealed back light. Foolishly opening my eyes while the calcium was burning, I was completely blinded by the intense glare and did not regain my sight for several minutes. Harmon’s packer, who held the next flare set off—this time to the leeward of the cameras—had still worse luck. A flake of the sputtering calcium kicked back up his sleeve and inflicted a raw, round burn with half the colours of the spectrum showing in its concentric rings of singed cuticle. The chap displayed astonishing nerve in refusing to relinquish his grip on the handle of the flare and thus ruin the picture. I most certainly would never have done so myself. Roos described the glittering ice walls as a “veritable Aladdin’s Cave of jewels,” and only regretted that he couldn’t have had that lighting on my shower-bath.
That night we tried a camp-fire scene by flare. Roos set up on the further bank of the side channel of the creek which flowed past the tent. Between the door of the tent and the water a hole was dug in such a way that light from it would shine on a group in front of the tent but not on the lens of the camera. The glow from a flare burning in this hole represented the camp-fire. I was supposed to stroll up and tell a jovial story to Nixon, Jim and Gordon, who were to be “picked up” already seated around the fire. I made my entrance very snappily, but, unluckily, the blanket roll upon which I sat down spread out and let me back against the corner of the glowing sheet-iron stove, which was set up just inside the tent opening. Seeing I had not rolled out of the picture, Roos shouted for me to carry on, as it was the last flare. So, with the reek of burning wool rising behind me, I did carry on, making plausible gestures intended to convey the idea that the bit of comedy was just a humorous piece of by-play of my own. I carried on for something over half a minute. The only circumstance that prevented my carrying on my back the print of the corner of the stove for the rest of my days was the fact that the combined thicknesses of my duffle coat, lumberman’s shirt, sweater and heavy woollen undershirt were interposed to absorb the heat. The duffle coat was the worst sufferer, coming out with a bar-sinister branded most of the way through its half inch of pressed brown wool.
It was now neck-or-nothing with the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers picture. Having already been out much longer than we had expected to be, there were left only provisions for two days. Nixon had suggested making a hurried trip out and bringing in fresh supplies, but as the time set by Chester for his arrival for the Big Bend trip was already past, I did not feel warranted in prolonging the present jaunt any further. If the morrow was fair all would be well; if not, the main object of our trip would be defeated.
By great good luck the clear weather held. There was not a cloud hovering above the mountains at daybreak the following morning, and we got away for an early start to make the most of our opportunity. Nixon himself had run and cut out the trail to the Lake earlier in the summer, but horses had never been taken over it. Though it was extremely steep in pitches, our maiden passage was marked with few difficulties. Much to Nixon’s surprise and satisfaction, only one big dead-fall had been thrown down to block the way, and our enforced halt here gave Roos the opportunity for a very effective “trail shot.” He also got some striking “back-lighting stuff” at spots along the interminable cascade that was tumbling and bounding beside the trail. The elevation of our camp on the creek was something like six thousand feet, andthat of the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers a bit under eight thousand. The trail is between three and four miles long, and we were rather over two hours in making the climb. There were several halts out of this; steady plugging would do it much quicker.
Timber-line was passed half a mile below the lake, the last of the trees being left behind in a wonderful little mountain park studded with gnarled pines and still bright with late wild flowers. The autumn colouring here was a marvellous chromatic revel in dull golds and soft, subdued browns—the shedding tamaracks and the dying meadow grasses.
Clambering on foot up a steep-sided hillock that appeared to be an ancient glacial moraine augmented by many slides, we suddenly found ourselves on the edge of the high-water level of the lake. The transition from the flower-strewn meadow to a region of almost Arctic frigidity was practically instantaneous—the matter of a half dozen steps. One moment we were climbing in a cliff-walled valley, with rocky buttresses and pinnacles soaring for thousands of feet on either side, and with brown-black gravel and thinning brown-grey bunch grass under foot and ahead; the next, as we gained the crest of the old terminal moraine, the landscape opened up with a blinding flash and we were gazing at a sparkling emerald lake clipped in the embrace of an amphitheatre of glaciers and eternal snow, and floating full of icebergs and marble-mottled shadows. The “Hanging Glacier”—perhaps a mile wide across its face, and rearing a solid wall of ice a couple of hundred feet in the sheer—closed the further or southeastern end of the lake.Behind the glacier was a cliff of two thousand feet or more in height. It appeared to be almost solid ice and snow, but must have been heavily underlaid with native rock to maintain its abruptness as it did. Higher still a snow-cap, bright and smooth as polished marble, extended to the crest of the range and formed a glittering line against the cobalt of the sky. Of all the scenic gems of the North American continent, I recall none which is so well entitled to the characterization of “unique” as this white-flaming little jewel of the high Selkirks.
The lake was now rapidly receding to its winter low-water level, and to reach its brink we had to press on across three hundred yards of black boulders which were evidently covered in the time of the late spring floods. Ordinarily one would have expected the worst kind of rough and slippery walking here, but, to my great surprise, the great rocks were set as solid and as level as a pavement of mosaic. The reason for this became plain when we approached the water, where a flotilla of small icebergs, rising and falling to the waves kicked up by the brisk breeze drawing down the lake, were steadily thump-thumping the bottom with dull heavy blows which could be felt underfoot a hundred yards away. This natural tamping, going on incessantly during the months of high-water, was responsible for the surprising smoothness of the rocky waste uncovered by the winter recession. The great boulders had literally been hammered flat.
The icebergs, which were formed by the cracking off of the face of the great glacier filled half of thelake. They varied in size from almost totally submerged chunks a few feet in diameter to huge floating islands of several hundred. They were of the most fantastic shapes, especially those which had been longest adrift and therefore most exposed to the capricious action of the sun. By and large, the effect was that of a Gargantuan bowl sprinkled with puffy white popcorn. But if one took his time and searched carefully enough there were very few things of heaven or earth that were not represented in the amazing collection. One berg, floating on another, had been reduced by the sun to the seeming of a gigantic view camera—box, bellows and lens. A number of famous groups of statuary were there, but of course very much in the rough. “The Thinker” was perhaps the best of these, but even Rodin would have wanted to do a bit more “finishing” on the glacial cave-man humped up on his icy green pedestal. Roos, who had never heard of Rodin, said it reminded him of me drying out after my shower-bath in the ice-cave. His facile imagination also discovered something else. He had once seen a picture of “Lohengrin’s Farewell” in a Victrola record price-list, and there was a much sun-licked hunk of ice, very near the shore, which suggested the barge to him, swans and all. I saw the barge all right, but the Pegasus of my imagination had to have some spurring before he would take the “swan” hurdle.
Courtesy of Byron Harmon, BanffLOOKING ACROSS THE LAKE OF THE HANGING GLACIERS
Courtesy of Byron Harmon, BanffTHE LAKE OF THE HANGING GLACIERS, TAKEN FROM THE ICE WALLS, LOOKING NORTH
It was Roos’ idea that I should swim off, clamber over the side of the barge, lassoo the “near” swan with a piece of pack-rope to represent reins, and let him shoot me as “Lohengrin.” It wouldn’t exactlyrun into the “continuity” of the “sportsman” picture, he admitted; but he thought that Chester might use it, with a lot of other odds and ends, under some such title as “Queer People in Queer Places.” The idea appealed to me strongly. “Lohengrin’s Farewell” had always moved me strangely; and here was a chance actually to appear in the classic rôle! “You bet I’ll do it,” I assented readily. “What shall I wear?” The “Shining Armour,” which we both seemed to connect with “Lohengrin,” happened to be one of the things not brought up in our saddle-bags that morning. We were in a hot discussion as to the best manner of improvising a helmet and cuirass out of condensed milk and sardine tins, when Nixon, asking if we knew that the sun only shone about three hours a day in that “geeslycrack in the hills,” dryly opined that we should take our pictures of the lake while there was plenty of light. That sounded sensible, and we started feverishly to hurry through with the routine grind so as to be free to do proper justice to “Lohengrin.” As Fate would have it, however, that which was presently revealed to me of the ways of fresh-water icebergs quenched effectually my desire to swim off and take liberties with the capricious things at close quarters.
After making a number of scenic shots, Roos announced that he was ready to go ahead with the “falling iceberg” stuff. As it was quite out of the question making our way along the base of the cliffs on either side of the lake to the face of the glacier in the limited time at our disposal, and, moreover, as we had already demonstrated the impossibility of making artificialicebergs with “sixty per” dynamite, it became necessary to improvise something closer at hand. It was Roos’ idea that a piece of cliff cracked off into the lake might produce the effect desired, especially if “cut” with discrimination. “Here’s the way it goes,” he explained. “The cracked off rock plunks down into the lake right into the middle of a bunch of floating icebergs. I starts cranking at the splash, and with the bergs all rolling about and bumping into each other no one can tell but what it was one of them that really started it. Then I’ll pick you up hopping up and down on the bank and registering ‘surprise’ and ‘consternation’; and then follow with a close-up of you standing on that high rock, looking down on the quieting waves with folded arms. Now you register ‘relief’ and finally a sort of ‘awed wonder.’ Then you take a big breath and raise your eyes to the face of the glacier. You keep right on registering ‘awed wonder’ (only more intense) and as I fade you out you shake your head slowly as if the mighty mysteries of Nature were beyond your understanding. Get me? They ought to colour the film for that dark blue in the laboratory (I could tell ’em just the solution to make that ice look cold), and the sub-title ought to be ‘The Birth of an Iceberg,’ and....”
“Jim’s the midwife, is he?” I cut in. “Yes, I get you. Tell him to uncork some of that ‘sixty per’ ‘Twilight Sleep’ of his and I’ll stand by for the christening.”
After a careful technical examination of the terrain, Jim, chief “Powder Monkey,” located what he thought was a favourable spot for operations andstarted to enlarge a thin crack in the cliff to make it take five sticks of dynamite. That was more than half of our remaining stock; but Roos was insisting on a big iceberg, and plenty of powder was the best way to insure success. It must have been the tamping that was at the bottom of the trouble, for moss and damp earth are hardly solid enough to deflect the kick of the dynamite in the desired direction. At any rate, although there was a roaring detonation, the mighty force released was expended outward rather than inward. The face of the cliff hardly shivered, and only an inconsiderable trickle of broken rocks and sand slid down into the lake. Too sore to take more than hostile notice of Nixon’s somewhat rough and ready littlemotabout the “‘Birth o’ the Iceberg’ turning out ageeslymiscarriage,” Roos clapped the cap over his lens, unscrewed the crank and began taking his camera off its tripod. That rather hasty action was responsible for his missing by a hair what I am certain was the greatest opportunity ever presented to a moving picture operator to film one of the most stupendous of Nature’s manifestations.
The roar of the detonating dynamite reverberated for half a minute or more among the cliffs and peaks, and it was just after the last roll had died out that a renewed rumble caused me to direct a searching gaze to the great wall of ice and snow that towered above the farther end of the lake. For an instant I could not believe my eyes. It could not be possible that the whole mountainside was toppling over! And yet that was decidedly the effect at a first glance. From the rim of the snow-cap down to the back of the glacier—a mile wide and two thousand feet high—there was one solid, unbroken Niagara of glittering, coruscant ice and snow. Like a curtain strung with diamonds and pearls and opals it streamed, while the shower of flaming colours was reflected in the quivering waters of the lake in fluttering scarves of sun-shot scarlet, in tenuous ribbons of lavender, jade and primrose. It was only when the last shreds of this marvellous banner had ceased to stream (at the end of thirty or forty seconds perhaps) that I saw what it was that had caused it. The whole hair-poised brink of the great snow-cap—sharply jolted, doubtless, by the explosion of the dynamite—had cracked away and precipitated itself to the glacier level, nearly half a mile below. The shock to the latter appeared to have had the effect of jarring it sufficiently to crack down great blocks all along its face. The glacier had, in fact, been shocked into giving birth to a whole litter of real icebergs where, nearer at hand, we had failed dismally in our efforts to incubate even an artificial one. As glacial obstetricians it appeared that we still had much to learn.
Roos made a great effort to get his camera set up again in time to make it record something of the wonderful spectacle. He was just too late, however. Only a few thin trickles of snow were streaking the face of the cliff when he finally swung his powerful tele-photo lens upon it, and even these had ceased before he had found his focus. It was no end of a pity. I saw several of the greatvalangasstarted by the Austrian and Italian artillery in the Dolomites, and, previous to that, what I had thought were very considerable slides on Aconcagua and Chimborazi, in the Andes, and on Kinchinjunga and among the hanging ice-fields above the Zoji-la in the Himalayas. But any half dozen of the greatest of these would have been lost in that mighty avalanche of ice and snow that we saw descend above the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers. Nixon, with a lifetime spent in the Selkirks and Rockies, said he had never seen anything to compare with it.
Jim, reporting that he still had three sticks of dynamite in hand, said he reckoned there might be a better chance of starting an “iceberg” on the southern side of the lake than on the northern one, where we had failed to accomplish anything. The southern slope was even more precipitous than the northern, he pointed out, and he had his eye on a rock which looked as if a charge might turn it over and start it rolling. “You never can tell what you may be startin’ among a bunch o’ tiltin’ rocks like them ’uns,” he said hopefully. Nixon’s muttered “That ain’t nogeeslyhooch dream” might have meant several things; but I took it that he intended to imply that there was too much “unstable equilibrium” along that southern shore to make it the sort of a place that a neurasthenic would seek out for a rest cure. I felt the same way about it, only more so; but Roos’ disappointment over what he had already missed was so keen that neither of us had the heart to interpose any objections when he told Jim to go ahead and see what he could do. As two sticks of dynamite were already promised to Harmon, the trick, if it came off, would have to be pulled with one. Spitting tobacco juice on the taffy-like cylinderfor luck, Jim clambered off up the cliff and planted it under his “likely rock,” Roos meantime setting up in a favourable position below.
Courtesy of Byron Harmon, BanffTHE FACE OF THE HANGING GLACIER
Courtesy of Byron Harmon, BanffWHERE MY PARTY FOREGATHERED WITH HARMON’S ON THE SHORE OF THE LAKE OF THE HANGING GLACIER
Whether Jim’s “tobaccanalian libation” had anything to do with it or not, this time luck was with us. The sharp blast kicked Jim’s rock up on one ear, where it teetered for a second or two indecisively before rolling over sidewise and coming down kerplump on a huge twenty-ton cube of basalt that no one would have thought of moving with a barrel of giant. It wasn’t so much what the little rock did as the way it did it. The big block gave a sort of a quiver, much as a man awakening from a doze would stretch his arms and yawn, and when it quivered a lot of loose stuff slipped away from beneath and just let it go. It lumbered along at an easy roll for a bit, and then increased its speed and started jumping. Its first jump was no more than a nervous little hop that served to hurdle it clear of a length of flat ledge that reached out to stop its downward progress. A second later it had hit its stride, so that when it struck the water there had been nothing but rarefied air trying to stop it for two hundred feet. Down it went, pushing a column of compressedaqua puraahead of it and sucking a big black hole along in its wake. It was when that column of compressed water spouted up again and tried to chase its tail down the hole it had come out of that things began to happen, for it found something like a dozen fat icebergs crowding in and trying to insinuate their translucent bulks into the same opening. And of course they made a tremendous fuss about it. When an iceberg found thatit couldn’t get in standing up, it forthwith lay down on its side, or even rolled over on its back; which didn’t help it in the least after all, for the very good reason that all the other icebergs were adopting the same tactics. And so Roos, who was cranking steadily all the time, got his “Birth of an Iceberg” picture after all.
When the bergs ceased butting their heads off against each other Roos shot me in the scenes where I registered “consternation,” “relief” and “awed wonder,” and our hard-striven-for Lake of the Hanging Glaciers picture was complete. There was just a bit of a hitch at the “awed wonder” fade-out, though, but that was Roos’ fault in trying to introduce a “human touch” by trying to make Gordon’s dog perch up beside me on the crest of a hatchet-edged rock. The pup sat quietly wagging his tail until the moment came for me to lift up mine eyes unto the hills and increase the tenseness of my “awed wonder” registration. Then the altitude began to affect his nerves and he started doing figure “8’s” back and forth between my precariously planted feet. As a natural consequence, when Roos started in on his “fade-out” I was seesawing my arms wildly to maintain my balance, talking volubly, and registering—well, what would a temperamental movie star be registering while in the act of telling a dog and a man what he thought of them for their joint responsibility in all but pitching him off a twenty-foot-high rock into a vortex of tumbling icebergs? Again (unless this part of the film has been discreetly cut in the studio before exhibition) I beg the indulgence of lip-readers.
The lake was deeply shadowed before we were finally at liberty to take up again the sartorics of “Lohengrin”; but it was not that fact, nor yet the not entirely prohibitive difficulty of making shining armour out of tin cans, that nipped that classic conception in the bud. Rather it was the astonishing unstable-mindedness displayed by the bergs when impinged upon from without. Of the hundred or more hunks of floating ice within a five-hundred-yard radius of the point where our artificial berg had hit the water, only a half dozen or so of the broadest and flattest continued to expose the same profiles they had presented before the big splash. Most of the others had turned over and over repeatedly, and one, which seemed to “hang” in almost perfect balance, continued slowly revolving like a patent churn. “Lohengrin’s Barge,” half a mile distant from the heart of the “birth splash” and lapped by but the lightest of expiring waves, was rolling drunkenly to port and starboard as though in the trough of the seas of a typhoon. It looked ready to turn turtle at a touch, and there were too many angular projections on it—especially about the “swans”—to make even a man who aspired to grand opera care to court lightly the experience of tangling himself up in the wreck.
Descending to the timber-line meadow where the horses had been left, we found Harmon had brought up his outfit and pitched his tent midway of an enchanting vista framed in green-black pines and golden tamaracks, and with a wonderful background for “camp shots” both up and down the valley. There he was going to make his base, he said, until he foundjust the light he wanted on the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers. Then he hoped to get at least a negative or two that would do something approaching justice to so inspiring a subject. And there, working and waiting patiently through an almost unbroken succession of storms that raged in the high Selkirks for many days, he held on until he got what he wanted. It was in that quiet persistent way that he had been photographing the mountains of the Canadian West for many years, and it will be in that way that he will continue until he shall have attained somewhere near to the high goal he has set for his life’s work—a complete photographic record of the Rockies and Selkirks. It is a privilege to have met an artist who works with so fine a spirit, who has set himself so high an ideal. A number of Harmon’s scenic pictures of the mountains where the Columbia takes its rise are so much better than the best of my own of the same subjects, that I am giving them place in a work which it was my original intention to illustrate entirely myself.
We returned to our camp at the head of Horse Thief Creek that night, and set out on our return to Windermere the following morning. Save for a rather sloppy passage of the main ford, the journey was without incident. With light packs, we pushed right through to the head of the wagon-road—something over thirty miles—the first day. The seventeen miles to Invermere we covered in a leisurely fashion, reaching the hotel at three in the afternoon of the following day, Sunday, the twentieth of September. Here I found a wire from Chester, stating that it hadfinally proved impossible for him to get away from business, and asking me to go ahead and see the Big Bend trip through without him. In the event I decided to continue on down the river he would be glad to have his cameraman accompany me as long as the weather and light were favourable for his work. A letter with full instructions covering the two pictures he desired made had already been dispatched.
Chester’s instructions respecting the two new pictures he wanted us to work on came through to Roos the day following our return to Windermere. One of these was to be confined entirely to the Big Bend voyage. Essaying again my role of “gentleman-cum-sportsman,” I was to get off the train at Beavermouth, meet my boatman, launch the boat and start off down the river. The various things seen and doneen voyagewere to make up the picture.
In the other picture I was to play the part of a young rancher who was farming his hard-won clearing on the banks of the Columbia near its source. With the last of his crops in, he is assailed one day with a great longing to see the ocean. Suddenly it occurs to him that the river flowing right by his door runs all the way to the sea, and the sight of a prospector friend, about to push off with a sack of samples for the smelter many hundreds of miles below, suggests a means of making the journey. And so the two of them start off down the Columbia. What happened to them on their way was to be told in the picture. The introductory scenes of this picture were to be made somewhere in the vicinity of Windermere, but the thread of the story was to be picked up below the Arrow Lakes after the Big Bend voyage was over.
Hunting “location” and rainy weather kept us fouror five days in Windermere and vicinity, giving an opportunity we otherwise would have missed to meet and become acquainted with the always kindly and hospitable and often highly distinguished people of this beautiful and interesting community. From the time of David Thompson, the great astronomer and explorer of the Northwest Company who wintered there in 1810, down to the present Windermere seems always to have attracted the right sort of people. The predominant class is what one might call the gentleman-farmer, with the stress perhaps on “gentleman.” I mean to say, that is, that while a number of them have failed of outstanding achievement as farmers, there was none that I met who would not have qualified as a gentleman, and in the very best sense of the word. Sportsmen and lovers of the out-of-doors, there was this fine bond of fellowship between all of them. Nowhere have I encountered a fresher, more wholesome social atmosphere than that of this fine community of the upper Columbia.
That genial and big-hearted old Scot, Randolph Bruce, I recall with especial affection, as must every one of the many who has known the hospitality of his great log lodge on a bay of the lake below Invermere. An Edinburgh engineer, Bruce was one of the builders of the Canadian Pacific, and as such an associate and intimate of Van Horne, O’Shaughnessy and the rest of those sturdy pioneers who pushed to accomplishment the most notable piece of railway construction the world has ever known. In love with the West by the time the railway was finished, he built him a home in the most beautiful spot he knew—such a spot as few even among the Scottish lochs could rival—and associated himself with various projects for the advancement of the country. At the present time he is the owner of the Paradise mine, one of the richest silver-lead properties in British Columbia, and the head of an enterprise which purposes to bring the Windermere region to its own among the grandest of the playgrounds of North America.
We made the preliminary scenes for the “farmer” picture at a gem of a little mountain ranch in a clearing to the west of Lake Windermere. Shooting through one of his favourite “sylvan frames,” Roos picked me up violently shocking hay at the end of a long narrow field which the labour of a young Scotch immigrant had reclaimed from the encompassing forest. (As a matter of fact the hay was already in shocks when we arrived, and I had to unshock a few shocks so as to shock them up again before the camera and thus give the impression that this was the last of my season’s crop.) Then I threw up a couple of shocks for him set up at closer range, with more attention to “technique.” (This latter came easy for me, as I had been pitching hay for a fortnight on my California ranch earlier in the summer.) Finally I stopped work, leaned on my fork and gazed into the distance with visioning eyes. (I was supposed to be thinking of the sea, Roos explained, and in the finished picture there would be a “cut-in” of breakers at this point.) Then I registered “impatience” and “restlessness,” hardening to “firm resolve.” At this juncture I threw down my fork and strode purposefully out of the right side of the picture. (The cabin towhich I was supposed to be striding was really on my left, but Roos explained that some sort of a movie Median law made it imperative always to exit to right.) Then we went over to make the cabin shots.
OLD HUDSON BAY CART AT BEAVERMOUTH (above)MY FIRST PUSH-OFF AT THE HEAD OF CANOE NAVIGATION ON THE COLUMBIA (below)
OPENING SCENE OF THE "FARMER" PICTURE(left)OLD STERN WHEELERS AT GOLDEN (above)A QUIET STRETCH OF THE COLUMBIA NEAR GOLDEN (below)
The owner of the cabin was away at the moment, but his young Scotch wife—a bonnie bit of a lass who might have been the inspiration for “Annie Laurie”—was on hand and mightily interested. She asked if I was Bill Hart, and Roos made the tactical error of guffawing, as though the idea was absurd. She was a good deal disappointed at that, but still very ready to help with anything calculated to immortalize her wee home by emblazoning it on the imperishable celluloid. First I strode into the cabin, but almost immediately to emerge unfolding a map. Going over to a convenient stump, I sat down and disposed of a considerable footage of “intent study.” Then we made a close-up of the map—the Pacific Northwest—with my index finger starting at Windermere and tracing the course of the Columbia on its long winding way to the sea. That proved that there was water transit all the way to that previous cut-in of breakers which my visioning eyes had conjured up just before I threw down my fork. I stood up and gazed at the nearby river (which was really Lake Windermere, a mile distant), and presently stiffened to my full height, registering “discovery.” What I was supposed to see was a prospector tinkering with his boat. As this latter scene could not be made until we had bought a boat and signed up a “prospector,” all that was left to do here was to shoot me striding away from the cabin on the way to discuss ways and means withmy mythical companion, and then striding back, getting my roll of blankets and exiting in a final fade-out. As we had neglected to provide a roll of blankets for this shot, we had to improvise one from such material as was available. I forget all that went to make up that fearful and wonderful package; but it is just as well the precariously-roped bundle didn’t resolve into its component parts until the fade-out was pretty nearly complete.
Roos tried hard to introduce “human interest” and “heart appeal” by staging a farewell scene with “wife and child,” both of which were ready to hand. I was adamant, however, even when he agreed to compromise by leaving out the child. He was rather stubborn about it, refusing to admit the validity of my argument to the effect that a would-be screen hero who deserted so fair a wife would alienate the sympathies of the crowd at the outset. Finally it was decided for us. “It’s too late noo,” cooed a wee voice in which I thought I detected both reproach and relief; “while ye’re talkin’, yon cooms Jock.”
Itwastoo late all right; even Roos was ready to grant that. Jock was about six-feet-three, and built in proportion. Also a wee bitty dour, I thought. At least he glowered redly under his bushy brows when he discovered that I had wrapped up his own and anothernicht-goonin my hastily assembled blanket-roll. If that bothered him, I hate to think what might have happened had he surprised that farewell scene, especially as Roos—with his Mack Sennett training and D. W. Griffith ideals—would have tried to stage it.
Roos was young and inexperienced, and lacking in both finesse and subtlety. I granted that this wouldn’t have cramped his style much in doing “old home town stuff;” but farther afield it was electric with dangerous possibilities. Driving back to the hotel I quoted to him what Kipling’s hero in “The Man Who Would Be King” said on the subject, paraphrasing it slightly so he would understand. “A man has no business shooting farewell scenes with borrowed brides in foreign parts be he three times a crowned movie director,” was the way I put it.
It was my original intention to start the boating part of my Columbia trip from Golden, at the head of the Big Bend, the point at which the calm open reaches of the upper river give way to really swift water. The decision to make the push-off from Beavermouth, twenty-nine miles farther down, was come to merely because it was much easier to get the boat into the water at the latter point. There was little swift-water boating worthy of the name above Beavermouth. Donald Canyon was about the only rough water, and even that, I was assured, was not to be mentioned in the same breath with scores of rapids farther down the Bend. In the ninety miles between the foot of Lake Windermere and Golden there were but twenty-five feet of fall, so that the winding river was hardly more than a series of lagoon-like reaches, with a current of from one to four miles an hour. Between Columbia Lake—practically the head of the main channel of the river—and Mud Lake, and between the latter and the head of Lake Windermere, there was a stream of fairly swift current, but at thistime of year not carrying enough water to permit the passage of even a canoe without much lining and portaging.
From the practical aspect, therefore, I was quite content with the plan to start my voyage from Beavermouth. For the sake of sentiment, however, Ididwant to make some kind of a push-off from the very highest point that offered sufficient water to float a boat at the end of September. This, I was assured in Invermere, would be Canal Flats, just above the head of Columbia Lake and immediately below the abandoned locks which at one time made navigation possible between the Kootenay and the Columbia. Although these crude log-built locks have never been restored since they were damaged by a great freshet in the nineties, and although the traffic they passed in the few years of their operation was almost negligible, it may be of interest to give a brief description of the remarkable terrain that made their construction possible by the simplest of engineering work, and to tell how the removal of a few shovelfuls of earth effected the practical insulation of the whole great range of the Selkirks.
As a consequence of recent geological study, it has been definitely established that the divide between the Columbia and Kootenay rivers, now at Canal Flats, was originally a hundred and fifty miles farther north, or approximately where Donald Canyon occurs. That is to say, a great wall of rock at the latter point backed up a long, narrow lake between the Rockies on the east and the Selkirks on the west. This lake, unable to find outlet to the north, had risen until itswaters were sufficiently above the lower southern barriers to give it drainage in that direction. At that time it was doubtless the main source of the Kootenay River, and its waters did not reach the Columbia until after a long and devious southerly course into what is now Montana, thence northward into Kootenay Lake, and finally, by a dizzy westerly plunge, into a much-extended Arrow Lake. An upheaval which carried away the dyke at Donald provided a northward drainage for the lake, and the divide was ultimately established at what is now called Canal Flats. It was a shifting and precarious division, however, for the Kootenay—which rises some distance to the northward in the Rockies and is here a sizable stream—discharged a considerable overflow to the Columbia basin at high water. It was this latter fact which called attention to the comparative ease with which navigation could be established between the two rivers by means of a canal. For an account of how this canal came to be built I am indebted to E. M. Sandilands, Esq., Mining Recorder for the British Columbia Government at Wilmer, who has the distinction of being, to use his own language, “the person who made the Selkirk Mts. an Island by connecting the Columbia and Kootenay rivers.”
Mr. Sandilands, in a recent letter, tells how an ex-big-game hunter by the name of Baillie-Grohman obtained, in 1886, a concession from the Provincial Government of British Columbia for 35,000 acres of land along the Kootenay River. In return for this he was to construct at his own expense a canal connecting the Columbia and Kootenay. This cutwas for the ostensible purpose of opening up navigation between the two streams, but as nothing was stipulated in respect of dredging approaches the obligation of the concessionaire was limited to the construction of the canal and locks. “For this reason,” writes Mr. Sandilands, who was working on the job at the time, “our ‘Grand Canal’ was practically useless. Nevertheless, in 1888, it was opened with due form and pomp, engineer, contractor and concessionaire paddling up to the lock in a canoe well laden with the ‘good cheer’ demanded by such an occasion. I was driving a team attached to a ‘slush-scraper,’ and together with a jovial Irish spirit who rejoiced in the name of Thomas Haggerty, was ordered by the foreman to scrape out the false dam holding the Kootenay back from the canal. This we did as long as we dared. Then I was deputed, with gum-boots and shovel, to dig a hole through what was left of the false dam, and allow the Kootenay into the canal and the Columbia. This being done, the fact was wired to the Provincial Government at Victoria ... , and the promised concession of land was asked for and granted. I little thought at the time,” Mr. Sandilands concludes, “how distinguished a part I was playing, that I was making the Selkirk Mountains an ‘Island,’ a fact which few people realize to this day.”
Later a little dredging was done, so that finally, by dint of much “capstaning,” a shallow-draught stern-wheeler was worked up to and through the lock and canal, and on down the Kootenay to Jennings, Montana. It was Captain F. P. Armstrong who performed this remarkable feat, only to lose the historic little craft later in one of the treacherous canyons of the Kootenay. His also was the distinction, after maintaining an intermittent service between the Columbia and Kootenay for a number of years, of being the captain and owner of the last boat to make that amazing passage.
We reached Canal Flats at the end of a forty-mile auto-ride from Invermere. Traces of the old dredged channel were still visible running up from the head of Columbia Lake and coming to an abrupt end against a caving wall of logs which must at one time have been a gate of the inter-river lock. Out of the tangle of maiden hair fern which draped the rotting logs came a clear trickle of water, seeping through from the other side of the divide. This was what was popularly called the source of the Columbia. I could just manage to scoop the river dry with a quick sweep of my cupped palm.
A hundred yards below the source the old channel opened out into a quiet currentless pool, and here I found a half-filled Peterboro belonging to a neighbouring farmer, which I had engaged for the first leg of my voyage down the Columbia. It leaked rather faster than I could bail, but even at that it floated as long as there was water to float it. Fifty yards farther down a broad mudbank blocked the channel all the way across, and in attempting to drag the old canoe out for the portage, I pulled it in two amidships. I had made my start from almost chock-a-block against the source, however. Sentiment was satisfied. I was now ready for the Bend. Gropingmy way back to the car through an almost impenetrable pall of mosquitoes, I rejoined Roos and we returned to Invermere.
A wire from Blackmore stating that it would still be several days before his boat was ready for the Bend offered us a chance to make the journey to Golden by river if we so desired. There was nothing in it on the boating side, but Roos thought there might be a chance for some effective scenic shots. I, also, was rather inclined to favour the trip, for the chance it would give of hardening up my hands and pulling muscles before tackling the Bend. An unpropitious coincidence in the matter of an Indian name defeated the plan. Roos and I were trying out on Lake Windermere a sweet little skiff which Randolph Bruce had kindly volunteered to let us have for the quiet run down to Golden. “By hard pulling,” I said, “we ought just about to make Spillimacheen at the end of the first day.” “Spill a what?” ejaculated Roos anxiously; “you didn’t say ‘machine,’ did you?” “Yes; Spillimacheen,” I replied. “It’s the name of a river that flows down to the Columbia from the Selkirks.” “Then that settles it for me,” he said decisively. “I don’t want to spill my machine. It cost fifteen hundred dollars. I’m not superstitious; but, just the same, starting out for a place with a name like that is too much like asking for trouble to suit yours truly.” And so we went down to Golden by train and put in the extra time outfitting for the Bend.
Golden, superbly situated where the Kicking Horse comes tumbling down to join the Columbia, is a typical Western mining and lumbering town. Save fortheir penchant for dramatizing the perils of the Big Bend, the people are delightful. It is true that the hospitable spirit of one Goldenitedidget me in rather bad; but perhaps the fault was more mine than his. Meeting him on the railway platform just as he was about to leave for Vancouver, he spoke with great enthusiasm of his garden, and said that he feared some of his fine strawberries might be going to waste in his absence for lack of some one to eat them. I gulped with eagerness at that, and then told him bluntly—and truthfully—that I would willingly steal to get strawberries and cream, provided, of course, that they couldn’t be acquired in some more conventional way. He hastened to reassure me, saying that it wouldn’t be necessary to go outside the law in this case. “The first chance you get,” he said with a twinkle in his eye, “just slip over and make love to my housekeeper, and tell her I said to give you your fill of berries and cream, and I have no doubt she’ll provide for you.”
If his Vancouver-bound train had not started to pull out just then, perhaps he would have explained that that accursed “love stuff” formula was a figure of speech. Or perhaps he felt sure that I would understand it that way, if not at once, at least when the time came. And I would have, ordinarily. But my strawberry-and-cream appetite is so overpowering that, like the lions at feeding time, my finer psychological instincts are blunted where satiation is in sight. That was why I blurted out my hospitable friend’s directions almost verbatim when I saw that the door of his home (to which I had rushed at my first opportunity) had been opened by a female. It was onlyafter I had spoken that I saw that she was lean, angular, gimlet-eyed, and had hatred of all malekind indelibly stamped upon her dour visage. She drew in her breath whistlingly; then controlled herself with an effort. “I suppose I must give you the berries and cream,” she said slowly and deliberately, the clearly enunciated words falling icily like the drip from the glacial grottoes at the head of the Columbia; “but the—the other matter you would find a little difficult.”
“Ye-es, ma’am,” I quavered shiveringly, “I would. If you’ll please send the strawberries and cream to the hotel I am quite content to have it a cash transaction.”
Considering the way that rapier-thrust punctured me through and through, I felt that I deserved no little credit for sticking to my guns in the matter of the strawberries and cream. For the rest, I was floored. The next time any one tries to send me into the Hesperides after free fruit I am going to know who is guarding the apples; and I amnotgoing to approach the delectable garden by the love-path.
I had taken especial pains to warn Roos what he would have to expect from Golden in the matter of warnings about the Big Bend, but in spite of all, that garrulous social centre, the town pool-room, did manage to slip one rather good one over on him before we got away. “How long does it take to go round the Bend?” he had asked of a circle of trappers and lumber-jacks who were busily engaged in their favourite winter indoor-sport of decorating the pool-room stove with a frieze of tobacco juice. “Figger it fer yerself, sonny,” replied a corpulent woodsmanwith a bandaged jaw. “If yer gets inter yer boat an’ lets it go in that ten-twent’-thirt’ mile current, it’s a simpl’ problum of ’rithmatick. If yer ain’t dished in a souse-hole, yerhaster make Revelstoke insider one day. As yer has ter do sum linin’ to keep right side up, it’s sum slower. Best time any of us makes it in is two days. But we never rushes it even like that ’nless we’re hurryin’ the cor’ner down ter sit on sum drownded body.”
As the whole court had nodded solemn acquiescence to this, and as none had cracked anything remotely resembling a smile, Roos was considerably impressed—not to say depressed. (So had I been the first time I heard that coroner yarn.) Nor did he find great comfort in the hotel proprietor’s really well-meant attempt at reassurance. “Don’t let that story bother you, my boy,” the genial McConnell had said; “theyneverdid take the coroner round the Big Bend. Fact is, thereneverwas a coroner here that had the guts to tackle it!”
We met Blackmore at Beavermouth the afternoon of the twenty-eighth of September. He reported that his boat had been shipped from Revelstoke by that morning’s way freight, and should arrive the following day. As I had been unable to engage a boatman in Golden, and as Blackmore had found only one in Revelstoke to suit him, it was decided to give me an oar and a pike-pole and make out the best we could without another man. I had brought provisions for a fortnight with me from Golden, and Blackmore had tents and canvases. Through the efforts of influential friends in Golden I had also beenable to secure two bottles of prime Demerara rum. Knowing that I was going to pick up at least one cask of Scotch on the way, and perhaps two or three, I had not been very keen about bothering with the rum. But on the assurance that it might well be two or three days before any whisky was found, and that getting wet in the Columbia without something to restore the circulation was as good as suicide, I allowed myself to be persuaded. It was wonderful stuff—thirty per cent. over-proof; which means that it could be diluted with four parts of water and still retain enough potency to make an ordinary man blink if he tried to bolt it. We did find one man—but he was not ordinary by any means; far from it. I will tell about “Wild Bill” in the proper place.
There was a wonderfulaurora borealisthat night—quite the finest display of the kind I recall ever having seen in either the northern or southern hemispheres. Blackmore—weather-wise from long experience—regarded the marvellous display of lambently licking light streamers with mixed feelings. “Yes, it’s a fine show,” he said, following the opalescent glimmer of the fluttering pennants with a dubious eye; “but I’m afraid we’ll have to pay through the nose for it. It means that in a couple of days more the rain will be streaming down as fast as those lights are streaming up. Just about the time we get well into Surprise Rapids there will be about as much water in the air as in the river. However, it won’t matter much,” he concluded philosophically, “for we’ll be soaked anyway, whether we’re running or lining, and rain water’s ten degrees warmer than river water.”