I think I was aware long before the Ten Peaks came into sight that I should not reach the lake that day--or perhaps ever; but I was determined that I would at least see where it lay, though the sun set.
We came within sight of it at last. Before then the Ten Peaks had come into line one by one till there they stood, ten white peaks all in a row. At their base I thought I saw the lake lying, very still and cold among its ice-worn pebbles.
[Illustration: IN THE VALLEY OF THE TEN PEAKS. ROCKY MOUNTAINS.]
If I did not see it, if it was but a mirage, I do not greatly care. I achieved something more that afternoon than the mere sight of a lake. I got that pony back to the hotel almost in time for dinner. I was pretty stiff in the arms. It was not to be wondered at. Hauling a pony nine miles is no light work.
Emerald Lake is beautiful, but less beautiful, I think, than Lake Louise. It is more like a lake among mountains, and less like a lake in a dream. I went to it because I wanted to get into the Yoho Valley, if only for a day, and the trail from Emerald Lake into the Yoho is, I had heard, the most picturesque of all. Even superficially to see the valley takes four days, and I had left myself with only one, so that it was in a deprecating spirit that I asked the manageress of the lake chalet if I could at least get within sight of the valley and back before dark. She said that if I started at two o'clock punctually, on a pony, the thing could just be done. I said that I had tried one or two mountain ponies, and did not care about them when I was in a hurry.
[Illustration: ON THE TRAIL, YOHO VALLEY.]
'Oh, but I'll give you a slicker,' said the manageress. 'You see there's no run on { 207} the ponies at present, and I'll ask the man to give you his very best. He'll just get you there and back in time.'
I thanked her and said I would try the slicker; and, half an hour later, the slicker and I were skirting the wooded shore of the Emerald Lake at what was, for a mountain pony, quite a fast trot. We were alone together. There were a few guests at the chalet, but the lateness of the season and the snow-clouds that loomed on the horizon had deterred any of them from starting on the Yoho Valley trip that day. Earlier in the year, there would have been quite a party riding together with a guide in the direction I was taking, for there are four camps in the valley, placed at picturesque points an easy day's ride apart, where you may rest and sleep, one night beneath a waterfall, the next on the edge of a glacier, with the ponies tethered round, and the camp-fires crackling pleasantly, so that you feel that you are pioneering, but pioneering luxuriously.