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Excerpt from In the Heart of the Canadian Rockies
The writer owes and most sincerely offers an apology for the existence of this book. Its inception was due to kindly pressure, only yielded to with great reluctance, and its completion has been effected under serious difficulties. The brain collapse from overwork, which first impelled him to the mountain heights for mental rest and physical recuperation, has throughout hampered clear thought and steady composition. A basis of a few magazine articles has been built upon by scraps of work at odd half-hours, and thrown together without the opportunity either to weld the fragments into literary form or polish the resultant in a manner that would justify its presentation to the public.
As there is no pretence to literary merit, so there is no attempt at a scientific treatment of any of the the geological, zoological, or botanical features met with in the Canadian Rockies, interesting as each undoubtedly is and deserving of the attention of specialists. These characteristics are dealt with merely en passant as they strike a very ordinary mortal, with less than an elementary acquaintance with these sciences.
The only claims to consideration the writer can put forward are those of an enthusiast; first, as a lover of Nature and her infinite Creator, who has had the privilege, during a long period of compulsory abandonment of all his wonted mental occupations, to spend a part of three summers in the most attractive region it has been his lot to visit; and, secondly, as a mountaineer, to whom, as to Childe Harold, "high mountains are a feeling," and who can say with him,
"Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends."
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