4 CHANGES IN THE COUNTRY SINCE EARLY DAYS

he could load and fire it was an everlasting source of
wonder to me. His powder was carried in an ordinary
flask slung round his neck, his caps were hung on strips
of buckskin so that they could be seized without delay,
and then, when game was sighted, four or five balls would
be thrust into his capacious mouth in readiness to be spat
down the muzzle when they were needed. If haste was
urgent wadding would not be used, but one bang of the
ramrod would drive the ball down on the powder and the
charge would be ready to fire. If there was plenty of
time wadding would be inserted, but as this usually
consisted of pounded cedar bark, which caught fire from
the discharge, many disastrous forest fires originated in
this way.

There have been many wonderful changes in British
Columbia since the days of the old musket, but, after all,
these changes only affect a very small part of this extensive
Province, the majority of which is still unsullied by man’s
hand and in its primeval state. The great mountain
ranges still have their snow-clad summits and immense
glaciers waiting for the cool-headed mountaineer to be
the first to seale their dizzy heights; the myriads of
pinnacles, rock walls and crevices, fashioned by time into
thousands of weird shapes, the deep boulder-strewn gorges
and immense gaping basins and amphitheatres, walled
by awe-inspiring precipices and cliffs, still retain all their
imposing majesty, while the charm and beauty of the
lofty, undulating plateaux and rolling forest-clad hills of
less pretentious heights, are as they ever were, and have
not been marred by roads and chateaux and other signs
of civilization. The countless snow- and glacier-fed creeks
and streams still rush riotously over the same rocky beds
to swell the mighty rivers as they wend their way seawards
through endless sand and gravel bars, through narrow
gorges and dreaded canyons and over surging rapids,
where many an adventurous traveller has found a watery
grave. The dark, forbidding depths of the coast forest
are still as murky and gloomy and silent as in days of yore.
The waters of our great lakes still have their wonderful