moving shapes and figures, that are curiously lifelike and distinct. The forests of the Selkirks are less desolate, as one sees more birds and beasts, and the vegetation and timber are far more picturesque.

Next morning we tried to climb one of the spurs of Mount Murchison. We had a very bad hour with the logs in the wood, and when we got out into the open above the trees, the weather gave us little encouragement. A tedious shaleslope led up to steep rocks which afforded some interesting scrambles, Woolley manipulating a big jammed stone in a rock-chimney with much skill. We halted for lunch on an arête at a height of about 9000 feet. As the mountains were enveloped in mist and it was snowing steadily, we had no view to speak of, but two remarkable phenomena attracted our attention. The first was a tall column of rock that had become detached from the cliff and formed a slender pillar 400 feet high and tapering towards the summit and base. Much more extraordinary, however, was a group of rocks, formed, as it seemed, of petrified tree-trunks with numerous fossilised remains at their base. In his paper read before the Royal Geographical Society on February 13, Dr Collie presses the opinion that these were really gigantic petrified seaweed. What a tremendous upheaval must have occurred to throw them up here! Nor am I aware of any similar remains having been previously found at so great an elevation.

ex

The weather steadily got worse, so Collie carefully photographed the petrified trees, and we returned to camp.

Sunday, 4th Sept.-Pushed on up Bear Creek towards the Bow Pass. Violent hailstorms, followed by heavy snow, in which we hopelessly lost the trail through the wood. Camped in slush on the edge of a muskeag. Bitterly cold night, with hard frost. The morning was bril'iantly fine, and the sun shone in a cloudless sky. Ice crystals sparkled on every leaf and twig, the pails and buckets were all frozen hard, and Byers asked for time to thaw his socks before he could put them on and give us our breakfast. At the summit of the Bow Pass (6700) we left the trail, and, ascending a hill to the right, had a glorious view of Murchison and the Waputehk Mountains. The most striking of these is the Pyramid (about 11,200), whose eastern face descends in an almost sheer cliff 6000 feet high to the valley. Our camp was pitched on the shore of the Bow Lake, a beautiful sheet of water embosomed in high mountains.

It is full of big

trout, and the whole district, which is well described in Mr Wilcox's book, can be recommended to people with a taste for camp-life.

On Wednesday, 7th September, we had our last climb. Following the northern shore of the lake, we passed the mouth of a remarkable gorge, with a big jammed stone forming a natural bridge, and reached the foot of the Bow Glacier, which descends from

SIR WILLIAM BUTLER's remarkable book1 has brought to my mind many rcollections, both rcollections, both sad and stirring. It seems to me a masterly presentment of a life of no ordinary kind. It seems to me to state with calmness and to prove with clearness the beauty of a noble character, and to set forth impartially and dispassionately the historical events in which Sir George Colley was a chief actor-events around which political and party strife has stormed and raged. I shall not attempt to review the book, for I could not pretend to be an impartial critic. It is the work of a personal friend and old comrade, about one who in his life was also my comrade and friend, and all that I propose is to add a brief humble tribute, drawn from my personal recollections, to the memory of one whom to know was to love and honour.

It was my lot to be associated with Sir George Colley or to follow after him on many occasions. We were colleagues as instructors in military history at home; we were comrades in the Ashanti war of 1873-74; we served together on Sir Garnet Wolseley's staff in Natal in 1875; we again served together in Zululand and the Transvaal in 1879.

I succeeded him in the duties of chief of the staff in South Africa in the latter year; and again, only a few months later, in 1880, I succeeded him as private secretary to the Viceroy of India, so that I had ample opportunities of knowing him and his work under many and varied conditions.

We first became acquainted in 1868, when I was appointed Professor of Military History at Woolwich, and he was examiner in that subject for the Council of Military Education.2 I was at once struck with the clearness and fairness of the questions set by him in his examination papers. Nearly all of them were directed to exercise the thinking powers of the students, but not all: some were simply directed to bring out their knowledge and memory of historical facts. And he explained to me that while the former class of question aimed at stimulating to the fullest the abilities of the ablest and most original thinkers, the latter class of question was given to enable the students who had not original ability, but who had worked conscientiously and well according to their lights, to reap the reward of their efforts, and obtain the quali

Hills, I had an unusually clear view of the mountains to the north, and made a rough but careful sketch of them; and the result of my observations seemed to be that no pass could possibly exist between any of the peaks near the supposed Brown and Hooker by which any four-footed animal less active than a goat could cross. The solution of the problem seemed as far off as ever, so after a consultation we decided to move half the outfit over Wilcox Pass into the Athabasca main valley. This we accordingly did, leaving poor Roy alone to look after the camp.

The Athabasca flows through a wide valley, covered in most places with an ugly wash-out, which we found, however, very convenient for travelling purposes. The general features of the scenery were less attractive than those of the charming vale we had left, though the mountains here were on a bigger scale, and Athabasca Peak nobly filled the head of the valley. We had hoped to find a lateral glen by which we could reach the foot of Mount Columbia; but the mountains slope on their eastern sides in a continuous line of cliffs, intersected only at places by impassable ice-falls. We, therefore, followed the bed of the stream for some miles, and camped at an elevation of 5600 feet near the mouth of a gorge, down which a creek tumbled in a picturesque cascade. Our men spent the next morning vainly prospecting for gold, and in the

ing - bags and provisions and ascended the gorge, with a view to sleeping out, for some peak of the main range. The stream issued from a glacier descending from a group of mountains with three principal summits, of which the northern one (Diadem Peak) was the curious snow-crowned peak I had seen from Wild Sheep Hills. The central and highest summit was named by Collie after Woolley, and the third after my humble self. Our two peaks appeared to have been sadly misbehaving themselves in bygone ages. A tremendous rock-fall had evidently taken place from their ugly bare limestone cliffs, and the whole valley, nearly half a mile wide, was covered to a depth of some hundreds of feet with boulders and débris. In our united experiences in the Alps, the Himalayas, the Caucasus, and other mountains, we had never seen indications of a landslide on so colossal a scale. Following the edge of the glacier, we bivouacked, our objective next day being Peak Woolley, which we hoped to climb by a steep icefall that separated it from Diadem. I made a delicious bed of heather and pine twigs, and slept soundly till I was awoke by the rain pattering on my sleeping-bag. The weather had changed for the worse, and the pale sickly light of an unpromising dawn had overspread the eastern sky when we started up the glacier. All went well as far as the foot of the ice-fall, when a black cloud that had been gathering over Mount

Columbia burst, and heavy rain drove us to seek shelter under a friendly rock. In five minutes it cleared, and we were just putting on the rope for our ascent of the ice-fall, when with a roar and a clatter some tons of ice that had broken off near the summit came tumbling down, splintering into fragments in their descent. The five minutes' delay had been a lucky one, so we took the friendly hint and left that icefall alone. The only alternative peak was Diadem, which we climbed in about four hours, three rock-chimneys and some steep rocks near the top affording us a certain amount of diversion. The rocks were not particularly difficult, but great care was necessary, owing to their excessive rottenness. The snow crown proved to be 100 feet high, and from its top (11,600) a wonderful panorama burst upon us, in spite of the murky atmosphere. Standing, as we were, on the Great Divide, we looked down upon a marvellous complexity of peak and valley, of shaggy forest and shining stream, with here and there a blue lake nestling in the recesses of the hills. Quite close, as it seemed, the overpowering mass of the supposed Mount Brown (now called Mount Alberta) towered frowning 2000 feet above us. It was a superb peak, like a gigantic castle in shape, with terrific black cliffs falling sheer on three sides. On almost every side, far as the eye. could reach, the world of mountains extended: taken individually, I have seen finer peaks elsewhere,

but what impressed me here was a sense of their seemingly endless continuity. Northwards, as was to be expected, the landscape presented a sterner and more forbidding aspect: indeed, the softer and more homely features of Alpine scenery were everywhere absent. One missed the green pastures dotted about with brown châlets, and the familiar tinkle of the cow-bells would have sounded more musical than ever on my ears,-for, as I think Mr Leslie Stephen observes in The Playground of Europe,' these evidences of civilisation improve rather than spoil mountain scenery.

Collie's surveying kept us some time at the top, and bitterly cold work it was. We descended the peak through pelting hail, while the thunder roared and rattled among the crags in grand style, so that we were more than once constrained to halt and throw aside our ice-axes for fear of the lightning.

In the woods we were struck with a still worse storm, with hailstones as big as-well, of the usual size that hurt as they hit you; and again we ran down into camp like three drowned rats. During the night another thunderstorm, the fifth in twenty-four hours, broke over us; but though the drippings from our leaky tent soaked my already damp sleeping-bag, I slept soundly through it all.

In the morning we struck the tents and returned over Wilcox Pass to the Procamp. visions were again running short, so we decided to make tracks homewards, and moved