But "passes" are few and far between
in those gigantic fastnesses, and the fearless explorers, followed
by the equally fearless surveyors, were many a toilsome month
conquering the heights, depths and dangers of the "Crow's Nest
Pass."
Eastward stretched the gloriously fertile plains of southern
"Sunny Alberta," westward lay the limpid blue of the vast and
indescribably beautiful Kootenay Lakes, but between these two
arose a barrier of miles and miles of granite and stone and rock,
over and through which a railway must be constructed. Tunnels,
bridges, grades must be bored, built and blasted out. It was the
work of science, endurance and indomitable courage. The summers
in the canyons were seething hot, the winters in the mountains
perishingly cold, with apparently inexhaustible snow clouds
circling forever about the rugged peaks--snows in which many a
good, honest laborer was lost until the eagles and vultures came
with the April thaws, and wheeled slowly above the pulseless
sleeper, if indeed the wolves and mountain lions had permitted him
to lie thus long unmolested. Those were rough and rugged days,
through which equally rough and rugged men served and suffered to
find foundations whereon to lay those two threads of steel that now
cling like a cobweb to the walls of the wonderful "gap" known as
Crow's Nest Pass.
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