TO THE 
 
 WIDE WEST
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 From the Great Lakes 
 to the Wide West 
 
 Impressions of a Tour between 
 TORONTO and the PACIFIC 
 
 By Bernard \M c E v o y 
 
 Author jtf "AWAY FROM NEWSPAPERDOM " Etc 
 
 WILLIAM BRIGGS 
 
 TORONTO : : MDCCCCII
 
 Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one 
 thousand nine hundred and two, by BERNARD McEvov, at the Depart- 
 ment of Agriculture.
 
 F 
 
 Pr eface 
 
 THE end of May, last year, found me pre- 
 paring to make a trip across Canada to the 
 Pacific. One of the things I was to do on 
 that tour was to write some descriptive letters 
 for the Toronto Mail and Empire. Now that 
 these letters are to be introduced a second 
 time to a kind public, I do not think it well 
 to make much change in them. The reader 
 who cares for them at all will not mind the 
 careless colloquialism that characterizes them, 
 in common with other specimens of rapid 
 writing by newspaper men in various places 
 and at odd times. My object was, and is, to 
 enable stay-at-home people to see with my 
 eyes and hear with my ears some of the 
 sights and sounds of the western half of our 
 
 great Dominion. 
 
 BERNARD McEvov. 
 
 TORONTO, January, 1902. 
 
 1363580
 
 Contents 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Owen Sound and its big Chair-making 
 
 Factory 7 
 
 II. From Owen Sound to Sault Ste. Marie 15 
 
 III. Sault Ste. Marie and its Enterprises . 23 
 
 IV. Sault Ste. Marie Enterprises Lake 
 
 Superior 32 
 
 V. Port Arthur and Fort William Rat 
 
 Portage 42 
 
 VI. Rat Portage and Rainy River ... 52 
 
 VII. First Impressions of Winnipeg ... 65 
 
 VIII. More about Winnipeg A Manitoba 
 
 Farm 75 
 
 IX. The Prairies Calgary 87 
 
 X. Edmonton and the North Country . 100 
 
 XL The Splendid Panorama of the Rockies 114 
 
 XII. Mountains and Again Mountains . .126 
 
 XIII. Kamloops and Vancouver .... 137 
 
 XIV. Salmon-canning 144 
 
 3
 
 Contents 
 
 CHAPTER PAGB 
 
 XV. Vancouver Saw-mills and the Assay 
 
 Office 155 
 
 XVI. New Westminster The Commercial 
 Traveller's Story Siwashes and 
 Chinese 169 
 
 XVII. Victoria, B.C 183 
 
 XVIII. The Quarantine Station at William 
 Head Warships and Fortifica- 
 tions at Esquimalt . . . . 197 
 
 XIX. The Coal Mines of Vancouver 
 
 Island, B.C 209 
 
 XX. Nanaimo to the Gold Country via 
 
 Victoria and Vancouver . . 222 
 
 XXI. Rossland and the Gold Mines . . 234 
 
 XXII. The Smelter at Trail and the Bound- 
 ary Country 249 
 
 XXIII. The Crow's Nest Pass Macleod 
 
 Lethbridge 261 
 
 XXIV. Regina The late Mr. Davin Con- 
 
 clusion 272
 
 Illustrations 
 
 OPPOSITE 
 PACK 
 
 SPREY VALLEY, FROM TUNNEL MOUNTAIN, BANFF, 
 
 ALBERTA Frontispiece 
 
 STEAMER APPROACHING FORT WILLIAM .... 40 
 
 RAT PORTAGE BAY 52 
 
 THE " DEVIL'S GAP," LAKE OF THE WOODS . . 58 
 
 A PASSING CLOUD ON RAINY RIVER 60 
 
 KOOCHICHING FALLS, AT FORT FRANCES .... 64 
 
 THRESHING SCENE, MANITOBA 84 
 
 RANCHING NEAR CALGARY 98 
 
 THE LOOPS, IN THE SELKIRKS 114 
 
 NEAR THE GAP, ALBERTA 116 
 
 THE C. P. R. HOTEL, BANFF 120 
 
 Bow FALLS, BANFF 122 
 
 FIELD, AND MOUNT STEPHEN 130 
 
 VALLEY OF THE TEN PEAKS, NEAR LAKE LOUISE, 
 
 LAKES IN THE CLOUDS 134 
 
 Bow RIVER, BANFF, ALBERTA 154 
 
 STEAMER Empress of India AT VANCOUVER . . . 162 
 
 PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS, VICTORIA, B.C 184 
 
 ROSSLAND, B.C 232 
 
 NELSON, B.C 262 
 
 FERN IE, CROW'S NEST PASS 274 
 
 5
 
 From the Great Lakes to 
 the Wide West 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 OWEN SOUND AND ITS BIG CHAIR- 
 MAKING FACTORY 
 
 OWEN SOUND, ONT., May 2Qth 
 " WESTWARD the Mail and Empire takes 
 its way." This is not exactly what Bishop 
 Berkeley wrote in 1727 in that poem of his, 
 " On the Prospect of Planting Arts and 
 Learning in America," but it is near enough. 
 I am going westward, and, as a representative 
 of the Mail and Empire, I am to record some 
 of my impressions. Repeated injunctions to 
 "Go West, young man," have at length had 
 their effect, and I am going a living testi- 
 mony to the effectual force of reiterated 
 counsels. My friends at starting were very 
 kind. They told me what to do. Some of 
 them had been West, and had ridden bucking 
 bronchos. I told them that any advice on 
 7
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wi<Je West 
 
 this subject would be superfluous, as I did not 
 propose to take exactly that form of exercise. 
 But they persisted in giving it. They also 
 loaded me up with preservatives against all 
 kinds of untoward happenings. That sort of 
 affectionate solicitude always touches me, and 
 I thanked them with tears in my eyes. Then 
 they told me how to write letters to the news- 
 papers while I was away, and at the feet of 
 these Gamaliels I listened humbly. I hope I 
 shall be able to put some of their precepts 
 into practice. But at last the train drew out 
 and bore me from the protection of the Mayor 
 and the Board of Control, so that I felt a 
 sense of orphanhood. 
 
 It was a full train of many cars, for an ex- 
 cursion rate of travel prevailed. There is no 
 doubt that the country people come in and 
 buy goods at Toronto stores. Our car looked 
 like the shipping-room of a mercantile estab- 
 lishment at a busy time. Parcels of all sizes 
 filled up every available nook, and bulged out 
 into the aisle. I got a seat at last by the side 
 of a man who had a bad cough. It was a sort 
 of cough that lasted a couple of miles or so 
 at a bout, but it appeared to trouble him less 
 than it did me. Between his lengthened par- 
 oxysms he made pleasing observations in- 
 stead of objurgating his cough. He was
 
 A Cheerful Invalid 
 
 knowing on the subject of crops, and said the 
 spring ones looked very good. " Look at 
 that ! " he would say, pointing to a glorious 
 field of spring wheat, coming up in regular 
 and abundant luxuriance. Even when he 
 was doubled up and speechless he would 
 point. The crops are indeed good. The 
 overflowing promise of Manitoba reaches 
 right down to Ontario. Everywhere things 
 look " kind," despite the weather. It will be 
 a good year. Yet there was a grumbler in 
 the next seat, though he had no cough. This 
 worthy maintained that the fruit was suffering 
 for want of sunshine. The bees and flies had 
 not been able to get their work in on the blos- 
 soms of the apple-trees. As a consequence 
 there would be only half the fruit that would 
 otherwise have developed. My coughing 
 friend argued otherwise in his moments of 
 respite. He seemed disposed to defend 
 Nature against all comers. When he got out 
 at a wayside station it was with a Parthian 
 observation to the effect that " the fruit would 
 be all right," and as the train passed on 
 through the twilight I saw him leaning 
 against a fence paying for his pertinacity with 
 a cough like a repeating decimal. At Card- 
 well Junction there was a longish wait for the 
 local train, and a regular parade on the plat- 
 9
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 form. It is impossible not to be struck by 
 the healthy and prosperous average of the 
 Ontario people one sees on such occasions 
 an average of which any democracy might be 
 proud. They are a strong, ruddy, well-fed- 
 looking people. If their faces are not " sick- 
 lied o'er with the pale cast of thought," they 
 certainly are not marred by sickness or anx- 
 iety. There is much prosperity abroad. It is 
 a good time. The people are doing well. At 
 every station there was a procession of those 
 plethoric parcels homeward. When it became 
 too dark any longer to admire the colour- 
 symphony of fresh green poplars and aspens 
 against dark pines, which was one of the 
 features of the Junction, the other train came 
 up, and we thundered on to Owen Sound 
 " lickety-split" 
 
 The recent census reveals the fact that the 
 population of Owen Sound is 9,255. It is a 
 comfortable, well-to-do town, and it already 
 rejoices in granolithic sidewalks on its main 
 street. Its very well-equipped Collegiate In- 
 stitute occupies a site of unparalleled beauty 
 on the side of a hill, where it is embosomed 
 in trees and verdure, and it seems to have 
 churches enough to hold the entire popula- 
 tion. The court-house and gaol have rural 
 and arboreal surroundings of considerable
 
 Trees Transmogrified 
 
 beauty, and its water supply descends from 
 springs on a neighbouring hill by gravitation, 
 which is enough to give adequate fire pres- 
 sure. The town derives importance not only 
 from its shipping connection with Georgian 
 Bay and the lakes, but from considerable 
 manufactures. There is a chair factory here 
 that is perhaps bigger than anything else of 
 the kind on the continent, where one sees 
 great elm saw-logs brought in dripping wet 
 from the river and converted into chairs be- 
 fore his eyes in a way that is altogether mar- 
 vellous. Strong men grapple hold of a 15 or 
 2O-foot length of the bole of a tree with the 
 rough, picturesque bark of years on it. In 
 a moment it is on the bed of the sawing 
 machine and falls into slabs. Then it is 
 passed to other saws that further divide it, 
 and to machines that steam, shape and bend 
 it ; to others that bore, turn, smooth and 
 further shape it, until you follow it to the 
 workshops, where men are putting chairs 
 together for dear life, or are staining, varnish- 
 ing, polishing or packing them. The output 
 is about 2,000 chairs per day, and there 
 appear to be enough finished chairs in the 
 vast warehouses to seat the whole Ontario 
 electorate. I have seen many manufactories 
 in various parts of the world, but I must 
 ii
 
 Prom the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 confess that I do not remember one that 
 seemed packed so full of live energy and all 
 agog. There was something that touched the 
 imagination in the ruthless determination 
 the irresistible force with which the dismem- 
 bered monarch of the forest was turned into 
 chairs. One stood in the shadows of the saw- 
 mill, a place of half-lights and gloom that 
 cloudy afternoon, and looked out through 
 openings on to glancing water, where many 
 logs lay waiting on the lapping waves. Then 
 Titanic men grappled one of them with hooks 
 and chain, and it began slowly to drag in. It 
 seemed like the tragic beginning of a final 
 scene. Perhaps there was a bit of greenest 
 moss on the trunk that gleamed like an 
 emerald in the light that was reflected from 
 the water ; or there might be even the veriest 
 little bud on some fatuous little twig the old 
 tree had put out like a fool in its last days, as 
 if it could not forget that it was once a sap- 
 ling. Everything about the great rough- 
 barked, massive log breathed of the recent 
 days of the forest, where this tree three feet 
 in diameter at the base stood up sturdy and 
 strong, its branching head reaching up towards 
 the sky. A moment, and the steam-devil has 
 got hold of it, and with a scream it loses a 
 slab from its side. This is jerked away, and
 
 The Furniture of Long Ago 
 
 again and again it is pressed against the saw, 
 losing piece after piece of its heart, each of 
 which at once begins its lengthened and tor- 
 tuous journey through the factory, and is fur- 
 ther and further dismembered and split up 
 and torn and heated and varnished, till at last 
 the bole of the forest-tree stands in the ware- 
 house in the transmogrified shape of several 
 scores of chairs, like one sees in the furniture 
 departments of the departmental stores. 
 
 I remember many years ago visiting a 
 furniture-maker's of the old-fashioned kind, 
 who lived and worked in an old English vil- 
 lage in Worcestershire. He made furniture 
 just as his father and grandfather had made it 
 before him, bestowing loving care on each 
 piece, and working as though he thought that, 
 as Longfellow says, "the gods see every- 
 where." I think it used to take him about a 
 week to make a chair. That was the time his 
 grandfather used to take, and he would have 
 thought it unfilial to exceed him in speed. 
 They did very good work, those men. Even 
 the grandfather's chairs are being used to-day 
 and are thought more of than ever. Of course, 
 wearing out or going to pieces are both out 
 of the question with chairs of that kind. But, 
 then, they cost about ten times what you can 
 get chairs for now ! That is the difference. 
 13
 
 From the Gt eat Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 The world to-day demands cheap chairs, and 
 they must have them made in ten minutes. 
 And wonderfully good chairs they are for the 
 money they cost and for the time it takes to 
 produce them. But as I stood watching the 
 wonderful machinery that could disintegrate 
 the bole of an elm tree, and send it helter- 
 skeltering through a series of workshops till it 
 emerged breathless, as it were in the shape 
 of newly-polished, genteel chairs, ready to go 
 into any of the million houses that are waiting 
 for them, I could not help thinking of the 
 old Worcestershire furniture-maker, who some- 
 times took orders for a set of dining-room 
 chairs, " to be delivered in two years," or for a 
 mahogany dining-table that was to be " ready 
 in three years, without fail ! " The whole 
 change results from the rise of that great 
 middle class, which is now such an important 
 part of the world, and which, from Britain, 
 from Australia, from New Zealand, from the 
 Cape and elsewhere, calls out to this corner of 
 Canada for chairs to sit upon, that shall be at 
 least genteel, even if they do not last quite so 
 long as those that were made for big houses 
 in the olden time.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 FROM OWEN SOUND TO SAULT STE. 
 MARIE 
 
 SAULT STE. MARIE, ONT., June ist 
 ALEXANDER HENRY, that cool and thrifty 
 fur trader, who has left us perhaps the most 
 interesting account of the condition of things 
 in this part of the country in the early days 
 of its settlement, left Montreal in 1760 with 
 four 3 5 -foot canoes and a little band of voya- 
 geurs to attend to them, and especially to 
 porter them over the portages killing work 
 that, by his report. They paddled by lake 
 and river, and ultimately came by way of the 
 Georgian Bay to Sault Ste. Marie. Since that 
 time much has been said and written about 
 our inland seas. Scribblers have scribbled, 
 and stump speakers have exploited their 
 vibrant voices on the theme ; premiers have 
 perorated and poets have sung, but when you 
 sail on them you feel that the half has not 
 been told. It is all true. You feel that even 
 15
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 a permanent orchestra of eloquent premiers, 
 with the best stump speaker in the country to 
 beat the big drum, and a poet or two thrown 
 in to do the " frills," couldn't begin to tell all, 
 because it is fresh every day, and Nature in 
 these great spaces of silence and beauty reveals 
 herself to her worshippers as she is, and car- 
 ries the mind back to a time when those awful 
 things called civilization and progress had not 
 begun to give men swelled heads. I came 
 here from Owen Sound on the A thabasca, one 
 of the three C. P. R. steamships that ply be- 
 tween Owen Sound and Fort William, and 
 drop passengers at this place. These boats 
 appear to the eye that is not nautical so much 
 alike that you can scarcely " tell t'other from 
 which " till you read the name. While there 
 are many people that know these boats by 
 pleasant experience, there are thousands who 
 don't, and for their benefit a word or two 
 about them may be in order. The Athabasca, 
 her twin sister the Alberta, and the Manitoba 
 take it in turns to slip into Owen Sound when 
 the shades of evening are falling, and to lie at 
 the wharf all next day until half-past five 
 o'clock, when the train from Toronto comes 
 ringing in with much noise and fuss and speed, 
 and passengers rush across the wharf to the 
 open gangway, and emit grunts or pious 
 16
 
 A Drizzling Start 
 
 ejaculations of gratitude for that at last they 
 are on board. The boat has been for some 
 time venting its impatience through its fog- 
 horn, but now it thrums with a brutally joy- 
 ful earnestness till the ropes are cast off, and 
 we are moving away from the wharf with the 
 satisfactory feeling that there is now no stop 
 till we get to the " Soo," as Sault Ste. Marie 
 is abbreviatively called. 
 
 On that drizzling, inhospitably cold evening, 
 it was a joy to get into the embrace of the 
 warm steamship. One felt the neighbourhood 
 of the engines to be full of welcome, though 
 by the hundreds and thousands who will take 
 this trip during the coming months, the ship 
 will be valued as the haunt of cool breezes, and 
 on her upper deck they will feel that they can 
 breathe and live once more. But on that even- 
 ing there was not a soul on the upper deck, 
 and hot July seemed as far away as Mars or 
 Venus. A few adventurous ones, with their 
 coat collars turned up, paced along the prom- 
 enade that runs outside the cabins on either 
 side of the lower deck, but these were only 
 the exceptionally strong and healthy, or the 
 exceptionally devout nature-worshippers. But 
 even these warm-blooded and pious ones 
 heard without regret the sound of the dinner 
 bell, and were soon seated with a grateful look 
 2 17
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 on their faces at one or other of the multitude 
 of beautifully white tablecloths that cover the 
 tables in the dining saloon. Good white 
 napery is able to cover a multitude of culin- 
 ary sins, but the C. P. R. provides the luxury, 
 and a faultless cuisine into the bargain. White, 
 indeed, is the prevailing note of the interior. 
 The deft and polite waiters are in the whitest 
 of white jackets. The woodwork walls, perfor- 
 ated with innumerable doors with bright brass 
 handles that open into the state-rooms, are 
 painted white. The elegantly carved rafters 
 that support the roof and form a pleasant 
 vista are white. Everything is spick and span, 
 and the flowers on the tables give a note of 
 colour that is delightful. One-half of the long 
 saloon is dining-room, and the other half 
 well, just saloon thickly carpeted with a 
 crimson carpet, into which the foot slips noise- 
 lessly, besprinkled with crimson velvet sofas 
 and easy chairs. A piano is there, too, on 
 which some kind amateur is sure to perform, 
 probably pounding out harmonies that are as 
 mechanically regular as the thud of the engine. 
 When the guests had experimented on the 
 pretty menu card from various points of view, 
 and found it satisfactory, there seemed to 
 grow up a more general sentiment of courage 
 as to the outside, and many promenaded on 
 18
 
 Beauty on the Lake 
 
 the lower deck, while two or three rash ones 
 ventured on the upper. 
 
 The green shores were yet in full view, 
 showing rounded masses of tenderest foliage, 
 against the gray, rain-charged sky, or masses 
 of dark pines against which were displayed 
 traceries of emerald verdure. Here and there 
 was a lonely house or a light-station, passing 
 which the fog-horn thrummed. Around us the 
 gulls wheeled in a ghostly silence, or gave a 
 faint, querulous call. We were sailing right 
 into the sunset, and the sunset was a glory of 
 silver grays and lightest blues and greens. 
 Long bands of gray vapour stretched across it. 
 On the water lay an illimitable bank of silvery 
 mist, like a bed of lightest down prepared for 
 the sun. The effect of the brilliant light of 
 departing day on this cloud that had descended 
 on the bosom of the water was indescribably 
 beautiful. When we came up to it the two 
 oil-coated, sou'-westered men on the bridge 
 looked out with as much anxiety as could 
 appear on their calm statuesque faces, on 
 which these solitudes have imprinted some- 
 thing of their everlasting peace. Anon, and 
 again, and again, the fog-horn blew its warn- 
 ing, and, night falling, we descended to our 
 state-rooms. 
 
 Comfortable and cosy are these little cabins, 
 19
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 as anyone could wish. Their two notes are 
 cleanliness and convenience. What do you 
 want more? There are your two berths 
 though you are only going to occupy one 
 your lounge, your washstand, your water- 
 bottle, your bright brass hooks to hang things 
 on, your little window, with its little shutter, 
 lowering which you can look out across the 
 water ; your door that shuts you in and gives 
 you the feeling of a householder at large. As 
 you look around on these comforts, and know 
 that it is but a step to the well-supplied, white- 
 naperied table outside, you don't mind much 
 how long it is going to take to get to your 
 next stopping place. You are in a very com- 
 fortable, floating, electric-lighted hotel. Yes, 
 I forgot the electric light that is made on 
 board, and that you can have in your state- 
 room in great effulgence by touching that 
 modernity, the latest species of button, so that 
 your page is flooded with radiance as you sit 
 down to read. You open the door, and, hey, 
 presto ! the white cloths have vanished, and 
 there is a comfortable room with any number 
 of tables at which you can write or read or 
 play cards or feel at home at in any way you 
 like. For " the ship is steady in the ocean," 
 as the ballad says, and there is nothing to 
 remind you that you are afloat except the
 
 The Wonderful "Soo" 
 
 thud, thud, thud of the good Clyde-built 
 engines as they whirl the screw in the green 
 water outside. 
 
 We all slept like babies, and got to Sault 
 Ste. Marie after lunch on the following day. 
 We had been passing great barges, United 
 States-bound, laden with ore and manufactured 
 lumber, all morning. The reign of fine weather 
 had begun, and the waves were dancing in 
 golden light. The sun was making magical 
 effects among the foliage of the emerald 
 shores. Ozone ? I should think so ! Life 
 in every waft of the breeze ! We came at last 
 in sight of this wonderful " Soo," that is to be 
 the scene, that has been the scene already, of 
 such marvellous business projects. When I 
 was here seven years ago the pulp mills were 
 not begun, though I saw the water let into 
 the Canadian canal, having previously walked 
 through its entire length dry-shod. The great 
 mill now stands, big and castellated, built of 
 the red variegated sandstone of the excava- 
 tion of that canal. The town that is talking 
 about being a city in the near future has 
 increased marvellously. It seems to be going 
 ahead in a flurry of yellow pine all over the 
 place. There are sidewalks of which Toronto 
 might be proud, and a general air of expec- 
 tation on every new-comer's face. You hear 
 
 21
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 various languages on the streets. The news- 
 papers are " alive and kicking." There is 
 even a great wooden theatre where an audience 
 of five or six hundred witness innocuous but 
 vivid melodrama with the most unfeigned 
 delight.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 SAULT STE. MARIE AND ITS 
 ENTERPRISES 
 
 SAULT STE. MARIE, ONT., June 4th 
 I WENT down into the comfortable cabin 
 of a trading steamer yesterday, lying off the 
 new steel works that are being built here of 
 solid masonry, in the Roman style of archi- 
 tecture. She is one of six that form the fleet 
 of the Clergue concern, 2,500 tons, a steel 
 boat and well found, built at Newcastle-on- 
 Tyne. She had just come out from England 
 with a cargo of Portland cement, several 
 thousand barrels of which were being un- 
 loaded with as much noise and circumstance 
 as if we were at Liverpool or Thames side, 
 instead of amidst these tree-girt shores that 
 come down to the dancing water and where, 
 getting upon an eminence, you can see mile 
 after mile of " second growth " pulp wood and 
 other timber. The skipper had a fine Nor- 
 thumbrian burr to his tongue, and the story 
 23
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 of a storm he had weathered, on his last voy- 
 age out, was very interesting. Both he and 
 his first engineer knew their Kipling, and 
 testified to the zest with which they had read 
 about Mr. Andrew, the Scotch engineer. It 
 seems, by the way, that there is an odd jeal- 
 ousy of the salt-water sailors on the part of 
 the fresh-water sailors of the lakes a sort of 
 professional distaste for these sons of Neptune 
 who plough the ocean and then venture to 
 bring their sea-going craft a thousand or two 
 miles inland. The salts get here neverthe- 
 less, and there is nothing that makes me feel 
 that the " Soo " trades with the world like 
 going aboard one of these ships and talking 
 with their crew about foreign ports and 
 British seas. Some of these Clergue ships 
 are actually carrying iron ore from Lake 
 Superior down to United States ports. The 
 Portland cement this ship had brought from 
 England is to be used in concrete foundations 
 for the great steel works, the building of 
 which was begun in February and is now far 
 advanced. No fewer than 550 men are at 
 work on the job, and there is a grand and 
 lavish pomp of contractor's machinery and 
 thrumming steam-engines, temporary tram- 
 ways, and big derricks. Everything is on a 
 large scale : heaps of sandstone for the solid 
 24
 
 Modern Titans 
 
 walls as thick as those of a mediaeval cath- 
 edral hills of sand, scores of waiting carloads 
 of granite to be chewed up into chips by the 
 irresistible grinder to make concrete. I saw 
 the men throwing hefty, irregular lumps of 
 this stone, that had lain asleep in its com- 
 fortable stratum for millions of years, into the 
 mouth of the strong-jawed monster, and heard 
 his teeth crunch on it, and pause and crunch 
 again as a dog crunches a bone till it came 
 out as little fragments for making concrete 
 that may be depended upon for a thousand 
 years or more. The whole " outfit," as they 
 call it, is Titanic. Make a railway to that hill 
 where there is granite, and blast your thunder- 
 ing way into it with dynamite ; rend the 
 rocks and load them on to cars. Let your 
 ships bring the unrivalled Portland cement 
 from the south of England. When your 
 laden ships go to Ohio ports let them ballast 
 with sand for the return voyage, and hey ! for 
 the solid concrete, on beds of which we are 
 going to lay these steel-producing monsters 
 for their long travail. The monsters bestrew 
 the side of the track for a mile or more ; they 
 are all ready, when the building shall be 
 finished, to be put into their places ; ponder- 
 ous cogwheels, massive levers, heavy founda- 
 tion-plates, pipes, cylinders, Bessemer steel 
 25
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 furnaces ; they lie around on the grass like big 
 antediluvian fauna on the boulder-strewn 
 waste, where here and there stick up the 
 stumps of trees that are sending out their 
 tender shoots of foliage after their kind. 
 
 Here lies the iron where grew the tree, 
 O Sault, what changes thou hast seen ! 
 
 Canada has reason to be proud of this lusty 
 young town, so vigorous in its new hopeful 
 energy, that stretches itself bravely along by 
 the St. Mary River. Every yard of it is of 
 historical interest, and recalls the days of the 
 first Jesuit missionaries, the suppositions of a 
 new route to China and to countries of gold 
 realized now, by the way the days of the 
 early pioneers and fur traders. But now it is 
 to the future that the Ontario " Soo " turns 
 her eyes. There seems every reason to sup- 
 pose that this place will, in time to come, be- 
 come a vast centre of wealth-producing in- 
 dustry. To some extent it is that now, but the 
 possibilities of the future look very bright. 
 There was the hectic flush and fever of a 
 " boom " here fourteen years ago, when the 
 sanguine townspeople took great spaces of 
 bush into their municipality and trafficked in 
 this forest real estate as town lots. But even 
 the inflated ideas of that period of epidemic 
 26
 
 Healthy Activity 
 
 as to the amount of room required will be 
 scarcely adequate to what good judges think 
 will be the ultimate needs of the population. 
 What is going on now is healthy growth, con- 
 ducted with earnest purpose and a calm pulse, 
 and as one climbs the high ground at the 
 north of the town and looks out over the un- 
 rivalled prospect of land and water, breathes 
 the clear, exhilarating air, and looks out to 
 where the great Clergue works tower in their 
 solidity and might at the west end, by the side 
 of our wonderful ship canal and those famous 
 foaming rapids that give the place its name, 
 one cannot but feel that here are surround- 
 ings that in some respects cannot be equalled 
 in the world. Of course, even now there are 
 incidents which show that the real estate 
 market is lively, but still no signs that are 
 unhealthy. Lots that a couple of years ago 
 could be had for $200 cannot now be bought- 
 for $1,000, and people who were bitten by the 
 former boom have found in the conditions of 
 to-day something to alleviate their sores. The 
 business atmosphere is bracing, and the Im- 
 perial Bank and the Bank of Commerce have 
 live branches here that are full of bud and fruit, 
 and are attended by wide-awake husbandmen 
 in fact, to go into either of them is to recall 
 the style of their head offices. You can buy 
 27
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 furniture and dry-goods and hardware here as 
 well as anywhere, but there is a sensation 
 everywhere of newness, and of the fact that a 
 very moderate walk will take you right into 
 the midst of foliage and trees and grass. The 
 hotels are full ; everybody has some business 
 that he is pushing ; the people are good- 
 natured, friendly and alive. 
 
 THE CLERGUE WORKS. 
 
 The industrial enterprises that go under 
 the Clergue cognomen are at the west end of 
 the " Soo," while the best residences are at 
 the east, a reversal of the ordinary locations 
 which this original place has made without a 
 qualm. Much has been told about the big 
 pulp mills and the new steel works, but people 
 must see them before they are quite competent 
 to judge of their vast extent, and of the brain 
 and brawn that have gone to their making. 
 The pulp mill, the sulphite pulp mill, the 
 machine shops, the foundry, the ore-roasting 
 works, the office building, are like castles of 
 solid masonry. The red variegated sandstone 
 that had been excavated from the canals was 
 there, and it was as well to build it up in these 
 solid walls as to cart it away. The buildings 
 look like great forts that might readily be 
 made strong places of defence, and their 
 28
 
 Pulp-wood Stew 
 
 castellated tops would afford abundant oppor- 
 tunities for sharp-shooters. You see the big 
 sulphite mill silhouetted against the sunset by 
 the side of the water, as you look from the 
 veranda of the International hotel, and it 
 looks like some strong fortress on the Rhine. 
 When you enter it you know that there is 
 nothing more massive, more overpoweringly 
 Brobdingnagian, more scientifically economi- 
 cal in the adaptation of means to ends in the 
 whole world. I saw there two great digesters, 
 something like gigantic steel bottles, made of 
 inch-and-a-quarter plates. They were fifty- 
 four feet high, and their inside diameter was 
 seventeen feet. They weighed 750 tons each, 
 and each of them will hold and stew thirty- 
 five cords of pulp wood as a charge. Beneath 
 them were great pits into which the hot 
 stewed mass would go with a rush when it 
 was cooked, and where it would have the 
 acid washed out of it. I looked out to where 
 the roasting of nickel ore was to be done, 
 and where the sulphur smoke, instead of being 
 allowed to escape into the air and kill every- 
 thing around it, will be made into useful 
 sulphurous acid to do the stewing with. I 
 saw great wooden cylinders, 130 feet high, 
 where this gas will be passed through broken 
 limestone and water-jets to cool it, and other- 
 29
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 wise prepare it for use. " Use everything, 
 waste nothing," seems to be the motto of this 
 enterprise. Then there were roomy " rifflers " 
 over which the pulp will be passed and fur- 
 ther washed, and enormous screens of brass 
 flat troughs of many square yards' extent 
 through the fine slits of which it will be 
 sucked. Why, it looked as if half a world's 
 paper material would be prepared here ! The 
 mechanical pulp mill has been in operation 
 for some time, and also the alkali works, and 
 there the same notes of bigness and economy, 
 solidity and adaptation, are visible. There is 
 a foundry that is possibly as big as anything 
 of the kind in Toronto, and a machine shop 
 where there are the finest lathes, shaping 
 machines, planers, and all the usual appurten- 
 ances of such an establishment, besides many 
 things that have been invented and made, as 
 occasion required, on the spot. The whole is 
 the product of highly educated brains, officered 
 by the quiet, calm, far-seeing, quick-thinking, 
 Napoleonic man who is at the head of these 
 vast concerns, and his gifted brothers. Not 
 far off is an extensive hotel-like wooden 
 building, where the small army of scientists, 
 engineers, chemists, mathematicians, that Mr. 
 F. H. Clergue has gathered from the world, is 
 boarded in great comfort. Here are Swedes, 
 3
 
 Scientific Business 
 
 Russians, Germans, Poles, Frenchmen, Cana- 
 dians and English. Mr. Clergue has skimmed 
 the cream of the great technical colleges of 
 the world. He has brought science to the 
 help of commerce ; intellect to the problem 
 of how best to deal with manufacturing. 
 Regarded as a fine philosophical experiment, 
 and altogether apart from its commercial 
 aspect, this concern is among the greatest of 
 the day. It makes one proud that this thing 
 has been done in Canada. There is also the 
 consciousness in the beholder that this is how 
 to do business, this is how to turn natural 
 resources to their best account to escape from 
 waste, to imitate the economy and design of 
 Nature, to bring to a focus and concentrate 
 on the object in hand all available powers. 
 There are 4,000 or 5,000 men at work around 
 here, and apparently no women. It is a haunt 
 of masculine energy. Mr. Clergue, at this end 
 of the nineteenth century, looks like the First 
 Consul who made such a stir at its beginning, 
 and he possesses many of the great Corsican's 
 characteristics.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 SAULT STE. MARIE ENTERPRISES- 
 LAKE SUPERIOR 
 
 STEAMSHIP Athabasca, 
 
 LAKE SUPERIOR, June 8th 
 THE storm signals were out when I crossed 
 the river at Sault Ste. Marie to come on board 
 this vessel, which, since I left her on Friday 
 last, has been up to Fort William and down 
 to Owen Sound again for another lot of 
 passengers. She was now lying at the dock 
 on the Michigan side, previous to ascending 
 the United States lock on her way to the 
 watery expanses of Lake Superior. Rough 
 weather afterwards came on, and it mani- 
 fests itself on Lake Superior much as it does 
 on the Atlantic, or the Pacific, or any other 
 little old ocean. Of course, " the ship creaks 
 and the cordage strains," and after the shock 
 of a great wave " she bounds forward like a 
 thing of life," as they say in the nautical 
 novels. You feel constrained to get " abaft 
 the binnacle," or do something seamanlike, if 
 32
 
 Ho! for Superior 
 
 you knew how. As for the ladies, they retire 
 from the table with a sickly, deprecating 
 smile on their faces, and do not reappear, so 
 that the waiters clear away many dainty 
 uneaten dinners. The Mail and Empire 
 ruled the waves, however, and ate its dinner 
 with appetite and gratitude, though strong, 
 bronzed men lay prone in the state-rooms. 
 But I am over-running my story somewhat. 
 It was interesting coming through the lock 
 and seeing a great tank of masonry about as 
 large as King Street between Bay and Victoria 
 streets reckoning from front to front of the 
 buildings and with great swinging gates at 
 either end of it, alternately filled and emptied. 
 Taking the asphalt pavement as the level of 
 the water on which we entered, we were 
 raised as high, perhaps, as the second row of 
 window-sills in the Mail and Empire building 
 eighteen feet. Yet it is just this eighteen 
 feet small as it looks with Lake Superior 
 behind it, that produces the many thousands 
 of horse-power that are being used, and will 
 be used in the future, at Sault Ste. Marie. 
 
 One has time, as the boat is ploughing her 
 way through the roughening water of the 
 estuary of the St. Mary River, under a gray, 
 threatening sky and past tree-girt shores, to 
 think over the items that go to make up the 
 3 33
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide "West 
 
 outlook of the future, so far as the great in- 
 dustrial and commercial enterprises in pro- 
 gress at the " Soo " are concerned. The tall 
 sulphite mill and the group of large buildings 
 near it, the rising walls of the great steel 
 works, wreathed with the smoke and steam of 
 the contractor's busy engines, are now lessen- 
 ing in the distance. The items of the Sault 
 Ste. Marie lookout assort themselves in my 
 mind as follows : 
 
 1. Mr. F. H. Clergue. 
 
 2. The new Bessemer steel works. 
 
 3. The Algoma Central Railway and the 
 country it is tapping on its route to Hudson 
 Bay. 
 
 4. The pulp industry. 
 
 5. The new power canals now in course of 
 construction, both on the Canadian and 
 United States sides of the river. They will 
 produce a total horse-power of 1 1 5,000. 
 
 6. The nickel and chemical industries. 
 
 7. The iron foundry and machine shops. 
 
 The foregoing undertakings are being con- 
 ducted by the Lake Superior Consolidated 
 Power Company, Limited, under which title 
 are federated the various Clergue enterprises 
 that have sprung into existence during the 
 past seven years, and which has a share capital 
 of $i 17,000,000, or thereabouts. 
 
 34
 
 Mr, Clcfgoc 
 
 It is in corisequence of these things that an 
 increasing population of a cosmopolitan sort 
 is gathering at the Sault, that new buildings 
 are going up, that the hotels are full of pro- 
 jectors who are going to do likewise, and 
 other people. The Algoma Central Railway, 
 with its connected line of steamships trading 
 to Windsor, and the wonderfully rich country 
 it opens up, north, would demand a whole 
 chapter for itself, were there space for it. At 
 Michipicoten, thirty miles away on this line, 
 is the great Helen mine, where millions of 
 tons of ore are in full view, and an inexhaust- 
 ible hoard of nature is waiting development. 
 This is the country of big things. The hour 
 has come, and it has brought the man. I was 
 right in placing Mr. F. H. Clergue as the first 
 of the items of the Sault's outlook. I regard 
 him as one of the pivotal men of Canada ; 
 well-born, naturally gifted, cool, intellectual, a 
 student of books and of men, a rapid thinker, 
 a man who does nothing until he is ready, 
 and then does it like fate. Mr. Clergue forms 
 an interesting study. He lives close to the 
 great works, in the snug little bachelor home 
 that he has made out of the old Hudson's Bay 
 Company blockhouse of a hundred years ago, 
 retaining the very form of it, so that he veri- 
 tably " holds the fort." But as you look down 
 35
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 from the lofty towers of the sulphite mill on 
 this little house it looks small indeed. 
 
 Mr. Clergue has none of the modern striv- 
 ing after a millionaire establishment. He 
 devotes his great intellect and his carefully 
 husbanded vitality to his business. An odd 
 thought occurred to me as I contemplated his 
 refined and purposeful face, so full of reserve, 
 and restraint, and inscrutable dominance, and 
 that was that if he had gone into the church 
 he would have made a prince of ecclesiastics. 
 I had the great pleasure of seeing Mr. 
 Clergue's father, a polite French gentleman 
 of the old school. I heard of his mother, a 
 New England woman, of fine endowments. 
 Not without reason, therefore, did I say that 
 Mr. Clergue was well born. There is a finish 
 and a style about him that only come in that 
 way. He is a gentleman who has gone into 
 business, rather than a business man who has 
 become a gentleman. 
 
 Many Toronto people will be pleased to 
 hear of the success at Sault Ste. Marie of 
 Rev. E. H. Capp, formerly curate of St. 
 Stephen's, in Toronto, and now rector of the 
 pro-Cathedral at the Sault, where also is the 
 seat of the Bishop of Algoma Rev. H. G. 
 Thorneloe, D.D. Bishop Thorneloe has done 
 a great work in this diocese, and has steered 
 36
 
 Church and Post-office 
 
 it through many difficulties. Besides being a 
 devout and earnest Anglican prelate and an 
 eloquent preacher, he is an admirable finan- 
 cier, and in this regard has done wonders in 
 his diocese, his vigorous handling of affairs 
 having lifted a load of anxiety from many 
 hearts, both clerical and lay. Mr. Capp 
 preaches to crowded congregations sermons 
 that last twenty minutes, every word of which 
 is listened to. I discovered that he is exceed- 
 ingly popular in the town, and that " Father 
 Ted," as he is called, was as great a power 
 among the young people as he was in 
 Toronto. The pro-cathedral, where he min- 
 isters, is a well-appointed Gothic structure of 
 red sandstone, and its chancel is well designed 
 and satisfactory. 
 
 Not too soon has the Government made an 
 appropriation of $20,000 for the " Soo " post- 
 office. It is rather worse than it was seven 
 years ago, and even then it was only suitable 
 to the exigencies of a small village. I do not 
 say a word against the staff of officials, who 
 do their best to cope with the vastly increased 
 mail they have to handle, but if the staff 
 were to be doubled, and the size of the build- 
 ing quadrupled, it might begin to be adequate 
 to the requirements of the town. As it is, the 
 post-office occupies a small room or two in a 
 37
 
 From the Great Lakes to the "Wide West 
 
 building devoted to town purposes, tax-col- 
 lecting, etc.; it is filled most of the time by a 
 polyglot inquiring crowd, and at busy times, 
 just after the mail has come in, they have to 
 wait half an hour for their letters. 
 
 The wind was strong and cold, with a sting- 
 ing lash of rain in it that blew in our faces as 
 we got nearer to the spot where the watery 
 horizon of Lake Superior is stretched across 
 in front of the ship's nose, and you see a dis- 
 tant vessel hull down against the sky line. We 
 had overhauled and passed two steamers of 
 less capacity for speed than ours, and against 
 their black sides we had seen the waves length- 
 ening and deepening from crest to crest, and 
 dashing up now and then with a head of angry 
 foam. The sky darkens, and our white top- 
 works and masts begin to show up with more 
 emphasis against its purple grays, and as we 
 stand at the rear end of the upper deck, that 
 graceful and mighty swaying pitch begins that 
 gladdens the heart of a true salt, and makes 
 that of the land-lubber sink within him. It is 
 not much of a movement yet just a majestic, 
 periodical rise and fall, to slow fiddling, as it 
 were. But the shores are sinking off to dim 
 outlines in the mist, and the great horizon of 
 waters is widening, and the waves are becoming 
 deeper and grander and more various in their 
 38
 
 The Cradle of the Deep 
 
 ever-changing surfaces. The ship tosses them 
 haughtily from her bows, and their crests sink 
 into the deep with an angry hiss ; but she has 
 to dip her prow deeper and deeper in her dig- 
 nified obeisance to the storm. 
 
 At length we looked out on either side of 
 us to a wilderness waste of tossing waves. It 
 was like being on the Atlantic with half a gale 
 blowing, so that a good proportion of the pas- 
 sengers began to have " that tired feeling," 
 and crept away to their berths. Most of the 
 night we were " rocked in the cradle of the 
 deep," in good earnest, and the last thing I 
 remember before going to sleep is that I men- 
 tally hummed over the old air, and called to 
 mind how a friend of mine used to sing it in 
 far-off years. I half woke in the dead of night, 
 and heard the waves lashing against the side, 
 but that mighty, slow, gently-powerful rocking 
 soon put me to sleep again this time with the 
 thought : " I must see the sun rise." So at 
 4.30 a.m. I rose and looked out of my little 
 window, and saw that the grand ceremony was 
 to take place just opposite. 
 
 The storm had gone down ; there was not 
 more motion than one experiences on an Island 
 ferry. Far away was the hard, steel-gray hori- 
 zon of water ; above it an orange sky, fading 
 through gentle gradations of salmon-colour 
 39
 
 From the Great Lakes to the "Wide West 
 
 into deepest blue. Where was to be the cen- 
 tral point of illumination ? Very near the 
 horizon were some narrow strips of dark-gray 
 cloud, with here and there a snippet floating 
 by itself. These gradually told with a blush 
 that the sun was near. Then they became 
 incandescent ; they were burnt up in fervent 
 worship. Then very slowly two glittering pin- 
 points of light appear on the hard horizon line, 
 and remain so long that one wonders if they 
 are not electric-lighted buoys. But the irre- 
 sistible monarch of day is coming up ; between 
 the two gleaming dots rises the arc of his 
 splendid circle, with that unique glory that no 
 painter can pourtray, that no pigment can tell, 
 that no electrician can rival. And he beams a 
 majestic smile over the sleeping waves. 
 
 We had sunshine all the time after that till 
 we came in sight of that low, long mountain 
 that looks like a man lying on his back ; a 
 shrine of the aborigines, for there, or near it, 
 was the grave of Nanibozhu their "hero- 
 god," as Mr. James Bain calls him in his notes 
 to Henry's " Travels" till we came by rocky 
 headlands and bleak bluffs to Thunder Bay, 
 and at noon tied up at Port Arthur for a time, 
 a spreading town on a gently rising hill; 
 then through greenest foreground shores and 
 
 40
 
 The Great West Land 
 
 distant hills of deepest blue to Fort William, 
 Port Arthur's sister town. The air is begin- 
 ning to be exhilarating and sweet, and I feel 
 that I have passed through the gateway of the 
 Great West Land.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 PORT ARTHUR AND FORT WILLIAM- 
 RAT PORTAGE 
 
 FORT WILLIAM, June i3lh 
 NANIBOZHU, calm, gray, miles long, lies 
 peacefully in storm and shine, guarding these 
 two new thriving towns of Port Arthur and 
 Fort William, the lake-and-rail outposts of 
 the C. P. R. Nanibozhu, in his stony sleep, 
 cares not. A thousand times ancienter than 
 the Sphinx, Palmyra is a child to him, Rome 
 a baby, Stonehenge a weanling. Whensoever 
 the aborigines came to these Western wilds, 
 they saw in Nanibozhu that which struck their 
 spirits with awe. That great, calm figure, 
 lying on his back asleep, his arms folded on 
 his breast, as though he were taking a nap 
 until the Day of Judgment, was evidently a 
 great Somebody. To him, therefore, they 
 made offerings, so that up to 1 50 years ago, 
 and perhaps later, you might find tobacco, 
 tomahawks, pipes, bead-embroideries lying 
 42
 
 What Naniboshtt Sees 
 
 upon his rocky ledges. They crept up in their 
 canoes brown, stalwart, aquiline and trem- 
 bled as they laid their gifts before him. 
 Nanibozhu commanded the lightning, or if not, 
 perchance had weight with Those who did ; 
 Nanibozhu ruled the storm. Perhaps he had 
 his word to say about the crop of maize who 
 might tell ? Then, silently, they paddled back 
 to their hunting, their fishing, their council- 
 fire, their long stories, in the evening, of the 
 mighty deeds of Nanibozhu. Now, he slept ; 
 but let all men take heed when he should 
 arise ! 
 
 I could not but think of these things when, 
 yesterday, I climbed the long sloping hill on 
 which Port Arthur is situated, and looked out 
 on the magnificent harbourage of Thunder 
 Bay. Not content with its natural advan- 
 tages, the Port Arthurians have built a sub- 
 stantial breakwater of cribwork, so that to a 
 seaman's eye Port Arthur must look a very 
 proper port indeed. Looking out seaward 
 you see old Nanibozhu, and Thunder Cape, 
 grayish blue silhouettes against a dappled sky 
 of floating clouds ; while, on your right, Mount 
 McKay watches over Fort William. The two 
 towns are about two and a half miles apart, 
 and are connected by a street-car line oper- 
 ated by Port Arthur as a municipal institu- 
 43
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 tion ; for in Port Arthur they are ambitious, 
 and with a population of 3,500 are imitating 
 Glasgow, and getting hold of the public 
 franchises for the public weal. 
 
 As the early franchises are bent, so the resi- 
 dential advantages are inclined, think the Port 
 Arthurians. One enthusiastic man told me, 
 indeed, that in a year or two, what with the 
 power they are going to develop at the Cur- 
 rent River to run their street-car line, and their 
 water- works, and their electric light, the happy 
 Arthurians would pay no taxes. Port Arthur 
 is a lusty, independent youngster ; Lake 
 Superior is its washpot ; over the adjacent rich 
 mineral prospects it casts out its shoe. It is 
 the eastern terminus of the Canadian Northern 
 Railway, and has been the headquarters of the 
 contractors who have been building that road. 
 Its Mayor, Mr. Matthews, is a busy man and 
 a great fighter for the town's interests, but if 
 ever he leans back in his chair and indulges in 
 a day-dream it may be presumed that the sub- 
 ject of the vision is the time when Port Arthur 
 will be the shipping-point for the grain of the 
 tributary Western prairie districts that the 
 Canadian Northern will tap. 
 
 " New docks are under construction, and 
 elevators will follow," says the Industrial Re- 
 view, a promising little semi-monthly which 
 
 44
 
 Fort William 
 
 has its cradle at Fort William, and has just cut 
 its first tooth. 
 
 The C. P. R. steamships stop at Port Arthur 
 on their way up. But I didn't get off the 
 Athabasca, partly because there was such a 
 magnificent view from the upper deck, and 
 partly also because I wanted to go as far as 
 the gallant boat went. So we pulled out of 
 the spacious harbour, and in a short time 
 entered the mouth of the Kaministiquia River, 
 on which Fort William lies, with its four big 
 C. P. R. elevators. The green water we had 
 been looking down into changed here to a 
 brown tint, attributable to iron, the obliging 
 hotelkeeper said when the usual Toronto 
 thirst for this natural product developed itself. 
 That was the first I heard of iron 'in this 
 neighbourhood, though I subsequently heard 
 a great deal more, for on many a bronzed face 
 in this neighbourhood there is a mark of inter- 
 rogation, and the question behind it is, Any 
 iron ore here ? The bronzed men repeat the 
 question over miles of lumpy country, with 
 theodolites in their hands, camp outfits, Indian 
 guides. Broad - shouldered, knotty - handed 
 farmers come into the hotels with stories of it, 
 and sit there with a look on their faces of 
 " they could an' if they would " give informa- 
 tion that might be valuable. You see specimen 
 45
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 lumps of rich and heavy iron ore lying about 
 in hotels and offices, which everybody feels 
 the heft of and pronounces very fine, whether 
 they know anything about it or not. Iron is 
 what they are seeking in these parts not gold 
 or silver. 
 
 At Fort William I had an idea I should see 
 a fort, but I didn't, at least not much of one, 
 only a strong-built, four-square stone building, 
 thirty or forty feet square, perhaps all that 
 remains of the original Hudson's Bay Com- 
 pany's post. There is a big store at Fort 
 William with the company's name over it, but 
 the first was the stronghold of the Indian days. 
 It now lies in the midst of the C. P. R. sheds, 
 and is used for some unimportant railway 
 use or has been. This is emblematical of 
 what has really taken place the wave of rail- 
 way progress has enveloped and now domi- 
 nates the town it is what it gets its living by. 
 It is here that you first hear of Manitoba 
 wheat, and of the mighty influence of " No. I 
 hard." The talk of the people on the street 
 is of the crops. 
 
 " There was snow last night, but was there 
 frost?" 
 
 " No ? that's all right then snow in early 
 June is good ; it backens the wheat at the 
 right time. Yes, sir." 
 
 46
 
 The Aboriginal Inhabitants 
 
 " I never knowed snow in early June, but 
 what there was a large crop," says a third 
 man. 
 
 " You bet we'll have fifty million bushel 
 through these elevators this year if we have 
 one," says another. 
 
 The fifth of the group says nothing, and as 
 you note his dark skin and coal-black hair 
 you know that he is an Indian. Here and 
 there, not very often perhaps on street-car 
 or street you meet a man or a woman of 
 aboriginal descent, quiet, patient, inscrutable. 
 But on the Indian reserve near this place 
 farther up on the banks of the Kaministiquia 
 there are numbers of them. 
 
 On Sunday last, while I was making a vain 
 attempt to get within speaking distance of 
 Mount McKay, which forms a poetic back- 
 ground to this rather prosaic town, I came 
 opposite to the Jesuit mission there, and 
 though the river was between, I saw their 
 Corpus Christi procession headed by two aco- 
 lytes and a priest bearing a great cross. Then 
 followed Indian women and girls, the latter 
 dressed in white. Then a priest, under a 
 canopy held by four Indians, intoning the Te 
 Deum. After him followed perhaps 150 In- 
 dians, all singing, and bearing banners in the 
 sunshine. 
 
 47
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 Most of the passengers by the Athabasca 
 were going to board the C. P. R. train west, 
 and waited at the hotel for it till late in the 
 afternoon. And the Kaministiquia hotel is 
 comfortable. There you hear talk of fishing, 
 and the square " rotunda " is decorated with 
 birch-bark-framed skins of the lordliest trout. 
 At table you see sunburned men who have 
 been fishing, and are full of strange stories 
 that are truer than usual. They know places 
 accessible by yacht or tramp, where the shy 
 speckled beauties lie waiting for the expe- 
 rienced hand of the sportsman. In the store 
 windows there is the appropriate tackle. You 
 hear clergymen making appointments with 
 regard to the " gentle art," and your imagina- 
 tion points to all kinds of wild, beautiful 
 places in the neighbourhood, where the shad- 
 owed river runs over big stones, murmuring or 
 singing, and where wheat and iron and busi- 
 ness seem far away. 
 
 I wanted to see Port Arthur and to look 
 about, so I waited a day or so. As you leave 
 Fort William to go to the former town by the 
 street-car, it dwarfs to a scattered group of 
 low-lying buildings, over which the big C. P. R. 
 elevators tower in dominance. But Mount 
 McKay, blue-shadowed and wreathed with 
 cloud, towers over them. For the rest you 
 4 8
 
 A Talkative Scrivener 
 
 have comparatively treeless, vast expanses, 
 bounded by low blue hills. The street-car 
 line winds, however, through a pretty young 
 growth of larches, firs, nut-bushes, and the 
 like. It does not take long to get to Port 
 Arthur, where " before the end of the season 
 the town will have three miles of granolithic 
 sidewalks completed." 
 
 I left Fort William for Rat Portage by the 
 Imperial Limited, which has just begun to run 
 for the season. There was a man in the car 
 whose great idea was " ten per cent, for small 
 loans" in the neighbourhood of Calgary I 
 think. Mr. David Mills, jr., son of the Minis- 
 ter of Justice, who is a lawyer in Port Arthur, 
 had told me that there was an opportunity for 
 good safe loans in Port Arthur, on new prop- 
 erty, at seven per cent. But the Calgary man 
 talked of his ten per cent., for small loans, for 
 150 miles. " Say, two thousand one thousand 
 to two. Why, it gave you as much trouble as a 
 five or a ten thousand. Didn't it now ?" " Of 
 course it did," I said, to pacify him, "but I never 
 bothered with anythingunder$ioo,OOO myself." 
 Then he followed me about the cars, and sat 
 opposite to me at dinner, and wanted to put 
 me on to a Good Thing. So I had to tell 
 him I was a newspaper man, and recommended 
 him to take plenty of salad oil it was a whole- 
 
 4 49
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 some thing. He said, with some shortness, 
 that he never took it, and after that he left me 
 in peace. The train thundered on through 
 lovely scenery, and the witchery of the sunset. 
 How big this Ontario of ours is ! There was 
 a considerable length of rails from Toronto to 
 Owen Sound. Then two steamer trips, in- 
 cluding two nights " rocked in the cradle of," 
 etc. And now the coloured porter grabs my 
 arm, after apparently interminable slumbers, 
 and says, " Rat Portage, sir ! " It is between 
 two and three in the morning. Yes, Ontario 
 is very big who says anything against the 
 Parliament Buildings ? And I have been 
 sleeping through miles and miles of it. 
 
 As I sit writing, I look across the street and 
 see, sitting on the steps of an adjacent store, 
 an unmistakable squaw, a shawl over her head. 
 She is just such a one as might have been the 
 savage wife of one of those savages who laid 
 gifts on the ledges of Nanibozhu. Calmly 
 impassive she sits, one of the survivors of a 
 race that is passing away. Nanibozhu lies 
 sleeping still, but there is a sleeping giant 
 that is stirring in his sleep. He moves, he 
 wakes, he stretches himself, he will arise. It 
 is this great Dominion, over which, in daylight 
 and in dark, thunders the irresistible monster 
 of steam and brain. And yet as I think of 
 50
 
 Does Nanibozhu "Wink? 
 
 Nanibozhu, calm, gray, miles long, lying in 
 such peaceful sleep, I fancy I hear him say, 
 " For a time, perhaps ; for a time. After all, 
 what are a million years?" And is that a 
 half-wink I see in his stony eye ?
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 RAT PORTAGE AND RAINY RIVER 
 
 RAT PORTAGE, June i6th 
 THERE are many dogs at Rat Portage, but 
 they do not bark at the visitor possibly be- 
 cause there are so many rocks lying around 
 that might be thrown at them if they did. The 
 rocks are of all sizes and enter into the scen- 
 ery. Some of them contain gold, and that is 
 one reason why Rat Portage grew, a few years 
 ago, into a thriving town, that from this out, 
 through good and evil fortunes, will be an im- 
 portant centre of this corner of wide Ontario. 
 Besides being interested in the precious metal, 
 it is concerned in extensive lumbering opera- 
 tions, and a pulp mill is hopefully whispered 
 about. Moreover, the C. P. R. runs through it, 
 and it is at the head of Rainy Lake and Rainy 
 River navigation, and thus commands 200 
 miles of one of the finest waterways in Canada. 
 The legend about the name of the place is 
 that near its former site of Keewatin three 
 52
 
 Gaudaur, the Famous Oarsman 
 
 miles off and reached by boat was a portage 
 that was much used by a colony of muskrats. 
 There is enough good scenery about Rat 
 Portage to talk about for a year. The town is 
 most delightfully situated on ground of vari- 
 ous levels that rises from a large bay, into 
 which jut rocky, wooded headlands of great 
 beauty. This spacious sheet of water is the 
 place par excellence for aquatic sports, and it is 
 natural to find living here that straight sports- 
 man and famous oarsman, Jacob Gaudaur, 
 who holds * the championship of the world for 
 professional sculling. His triumphant pair of 
 sculls and the great silver cup which he now 
 permanently holds having won it three years 
 in succession decorate his hotel, also many 
 pictures of famous oarsmen that recall the 
 prowess of days that are fast fading into the 
 past. I called on Mr. Gaudaur and found him 
 big, modest and dignified ; as hard as nails, 
 and with calm purpose in his eye. He is a 
 fine specimen of athletic manhood, but he is 
 more he is a well-balanced, capable human 
 being. He confers an interest on athletic 
 sports that is entirely apart from his aspect as 
 a rowing human organization, and I do not 
 wonder at the many friends he has made. Self- 
 
 * The championship is now (1902) in the keeping of Towns. 
 53
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 command is one of his salient features. French 
 and German blood have gone to his make-up, 
 and his fine face and bearing are indicative of 
 a character that is a credit to his Orillian 
 origin and to Canada, that, through him, holds 
 one of the respectable distinctions of the 
 world. Gaudaur is in capital condition, and 
 is training systematically and thoroughly. His 
 challenge to George Towns, of London, Eng., 
 to come to Rat Portage and row him on the 
 waters of Lake of the Woods will naturally 
 draw much attention to this place. A better 
 opportunity for the purpose or a finer sheet 
 of water cannot be conceived. Rat Portag- 
 ians who see Gaudaur every day implicitly be- 
 lieve in the power of their champion to hold 
 the distinctions he has attained, and the Rat 
 Portage Miner, of Saturday, in publishing the 
 articles of the forthcoming race, took occasion 
 to give emphatic utterance to this confidence. 
 Said the Miner : " He has never allowed 
 adulation or the applause of the multitude to 
 cause him to swerve from the path that should 
 be followed by all true manhood, nor has ex- 
 cess or dissipation on his part ever been per- 
 mitted to work deterioration of his magnificent 
 physical powers. He has always known that 
 success meant hard work and self-denial, and 
 he has always followed this course." 
 54
 
 The Lake of the Woods Trip 
 
 I think that to most Ontario people it would 
 be a surprise could they come to this place 
 and take the trip across the Lake of the 
 Woods and up Rainy River. Of course, these 
 localities are down on maps, and very much 
 has been written about them. Now that the 
 Ontario and Rainy River Railway is being so 
 rapidly made, attention will be still further 
 called to the district. But you must see it to 
 understand its charm. When you have taken 
 the trip to Fort Frances, or Francis it is spelt 
 both ways hereabout on the steamship 
 Keenora, as I had the pleasure of doing re- 
 cently, you find that you have stored up mem- 
 ories of beauty that will serve you for a life- 
 time, and, moreover, that you have seen many 
 interesting features connected with the open- 
 ing up of a new section of country. To go 
 1 68 miles and back on a magnificent water- 
 way, much of it through solitudes, and the 
 remainder through the homes of pioneers, 
 whose farms come down to the water's edge, 
 and who are carving their homesteads out of 
 the bush, is an experience to be remembered. 
 It was about eight o'clock on Saturday even- 
 ing when I went down to the Keenora, lying 
 at her wharf at the foot of a hilly street, 
 at the top of which is Gaudaur's hotel. She 
 is a staunch, well-fitted, modern boat, with 
 55
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 two screws ; a pleasant and comfortable boat 
 to travel in ; her berths, cooking, and attend- 
 ance leaving nothing to be desired, and I write 
 these commonplace words sincerely they are 
 not prospectus- English. 
 
 It was a perfect evening, and across the 
 water you saw the lovely wooded scenery 
 and the C. P. R. bridge over an arm of the bay 
 leading to the falls, where the electric light 
 plant for the city is situated, and the compact 
 works of the Gold Reduction Company, or 
 something of that sort, the head office of 
 which, as it says on the sign, is in " Leaden- 
 hall Street, London." But on the wharf, be- 
 sides people, there was the greatest conglom- 
 eration of things to go aboard that boat that 
 could be imagined. It was a mountainous 
 heap of miscellaneous freight, for always bear 
 in mind that we are going up the Rainy 
 River, and that, following the course of that 
 river, 1,600 men are at work making the 
 O. and R. R. Railway ; moreover, that settlers 
 are rushing in to build houses and take up 
 grants, and " shove up " towns of yellow pine 
 boards. Many things are therefore wanted, 
 and the Keenora at present affords the chief 
 route for them. Consequently there were 
 cows and horses, crates of live chickens, also 
 a fine, young black pig in a crate, whose eye 
 56
 
 A Miscellaneous Cargo 
 
 was philosophical and meditative, and whose 
 grunt was positively human in its question- 
 ings. There were rolls of tar paper, number- 
 less boxes of provisions, canned and other- 
 wise, bags of flour and rolled oats, ploughs, 
 cooking stoves, a child's cot, household furni- 
 ture, lots of bags of potatoes, and a buggy. 
 In fact, I tried to think of something that 
 wasn't there, and found it difficult. Men of 
 the kind commonly called " husky " began to 
 handle this freight, and from time to time 
 more "huskiness" was developed. Amid 
 such incidents as a cow stopping to think on 
 the gang-plank as to the wisdom of the step 
 she was taking, and having " co boss " said 
 to her by about six men and three boys at 
 once, each of whom laid a caressing hand on 
 some part of her lumpy anatomy, the loading 
 went forward. As for the young calves, they 
 skipped up the plank thoughtlessly, half side- 
 ways, as if undetermined as to which end of 
 them ought to go first. But one felt it would 
 take some time, and went up on the upper deck 
 and looked at the sunset over that delightful, 
 still, mirror- like water. Here and there a 
 canoe was paddling over the calm surface, 
 with a man and a woman in it. By and by a 
 racing skiff came by, propelled at a fine rate 
 by two athletes in rowing costume, sitting in 
 57
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 all their glory on sliding seats. Above all, 
 the ineffable splendour of clouds, rose-tinted 
 and glorious. Darker grew the colours of the 
 islands, and the wooded points slowly passed 
 from green to sepia, and from sepia to Indian 
 ink, and from Indian ink to the sharp sil- 
 houetted blackness of a dark photograph. 
 Then the hoarse whistle of the steamer blew ; 
 Captain Thompson ascended his watch-tower 
 and took hold of the fateful wheel ; while Mr. 
 Graham, the busy manager of the Rainy 
 River Navigation Company, mopped his brow 
 and scratched his head at the amount of 
 freight that it was impossible to get on, and 
 we started. 
 
 It soon looked to my inexperienced eye as 
 though we had got no sea-room at all. We 
 began twisting and turning our way through 
 islands with a sinuosity that was as remark- 
 able as it seemed perilous. We came to a 
 place called the " Devil's Gap," where rocky 
 promontories approached so close to us on 
 either side that to get through it took steering 
 as clever as that of the London cabby, who 
 " gets through " if there is the thickness of a 
 coat of paint to spare between the hub of his 
 wheels and that of the vehicle next to him. 
 The speed of the boat was slackened, and all 
 the passengers on the prow helped by holding 
 58
 
 Up the Rainy River 
 
 their breath and assuming a certain muscular 
 rigidity. We did it, and then we relaxed the 
 tension, and felt we had doubted whether we 
 could. Lovely waters and lovely islands, but 
 all growing darker and more mysterious 
 under the black clouds. Then a great thun- 
 derstorm broke over us till there came a time 
 when the engines stopped and the electric 
 lights went out suddenly, and there was a 
 crunch and a universal " What's the matter ?" 
 through the ship. The fact was that it was 
 too dark to go on, and we had tied up at an 
 island. So we went to bed and slept, and in 
 the morning, lo ! we had passed through the 
 archipelago of islands and were out in the 
 middle of what is called the Big Traverse, 
 which is the widest part of the Lake of the 
 Woods, where you may get out of sight of 
 land. After that we entered the mouth of 
 Rainy River, and soon we came to the regular 
 run of it with, on the Minnesota side, woods 
 down to the water's edge, and on the Canadian 
 side settlers' farms with their log huts, shacks, 
 frame houses, besides plenty of bush. 
 
 Even on the Minnesota side I heard that all 
 the farm lots are taken up, so that a man who 
 had been prospecting them and had jotted five 
 down as being desirable, thinking that he 
 would be sure at any rate to get one of them, 
 59
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 found on going to the land office that they 
 were all arranged for. This Rainy River was 
 a great surprise to me. There was a man on 
 board with whom I had some conversation, 
 who was born on the banks of the St. Law- 
 rence. I said that I had seen no river that put 
 me so much in mind of that noble stream, and 
 he said he had been thinking the same thing. 
 But the channel is not so available for navi- 
 gating purposes as that of the St. Lawrence, 
 and careful piloting is necessary. Steadily all 
 the day we ploughed our course up the wide 
 waterway. In the morning a caribou had been 
 seen swimming diagonally across in front of 
 our bows, and the woods on the Minnesota 
 side looked primitive enough to be the haunt 
 of numbers of them. Here and there we saw 
 Indians squatting by their teepees or posing 
 in aboriginal attitudes as we went by, and all 
 the way as we passed were the clearings of the 
 Canadian pioneers, their log houses in some 
 cases turned into stables or barns because a 
 more pretentious frame residence had been 
 built, their rough docks made of logs with the 
 bark on them, their heaps of cordwood neatly 
 built up for sale on the edge of the river, and 
 all the signs of their strenuous beginnings. 
 
 A hundred miles we went up this beautiful 
 river, coming every now and again to the dock 
 60
 
 A Settler's Household Gear 
 
 of a rising village that had its hotel and post- 
 office, or perhaps its roughly built church. At 
 one place there was a store, built of yellow 
 boards, with a sign over it, " Men's Furnish- 
 ings," the bush coming up very close to it at 
 the back. And we saw hardware stores and 
 provision stores of an equally primitive char- 
 acter. At each of these docks there were 
 things to be unloaded and the post-bag to be 
 delivered and received. We came to the Sault 
 and Manitou rapids, up which we had to be 
 tugged by a strong little steamer, and latish 
 in the afternoon we came to a farm dock 
 where we put off a farmer who had come to 
 settle there, and saw all his household and 
 farm things unloaded before us, to our great 
 content. We saw his horse and his cows 
 taken off, and watched them begin at once to 
 munch the green grass, and his chickens, and 
 his plough, and his churn, and his drawing- 
 room furniture swathed up in wrappages, and 
 all his household gear. We all stood and 
 looked unabashed at everything, and specu- 
 lated as to what was in some of the odd-shaped 
 boxes, for when you have been going up a river 
 for a hundred miles, however beautiful, you are 
 instantly absorbed by an event of such human 
 interest as this. And was the man married ? 
 Yes, he must be there was the sewing- 
 61
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 machine. His wife had come on ahead, per- 
 haps, or she had said she would not come till 
 he had got straight. How in the world was 
 he going to get all those things to his farm, and 
 was that new yellow house his, or the one in the 
 distance ? But we had to leave him standing 
 in the midst of the heap of his household 
 stuff on the rough dock of pine logs. It was 
 more than half-past eight in the evening when 
 we got to Fort Frances, where are the great 
 Koochiching Falls, which look like the Chau- 
 diere at Ottawa, and are nearly as big, the 
 water tumbling with great grandeur over a 
 wild disarray of primeval rocks. It is the 
 spray from these falls, dispersing in showers, 
 that in sunshine displays rainbows, that gives 
 to Rainy River and Rainy Lake their names. 
 The site of the rising town of Fort Frances is 
 admirable. It rises high above the water. 
 Before you, as you stand upon it, lies the 
 glorious river. On the left the great falls, 
 with their perpetual thunder, and beyond them 
 the quiet woods. Above the falls is the 
 entrance to Rainy Lake, where another steamer 
 waits to take passengers on a further stage of 
 their voyage, viz., across Rainy Lake to Mine 
 Centre. I have never seen any place that 
 seemed quite so new and quite so go-ahead as 
 Fort Frances. This, again, is a post of the 
 62
 
 A Summer Play-grotmd 
 
 Hudson's Bay Company, and the buildings of 
 that great business organization are among 
 the first things you see as you make your ap- 
 proach up the river. Wooden buildings are 
 going up in all directions, and merchandise is 
 being rammed in. I went into a lawyer's 
 office, built of rough pine boards, against 
 which the " sheep " bound law-books and the 
 Remington typewriter looked strange, but the 
 occupant was a young man of nerve, who, 
 having got through Osgoode Hall, came to 
 this far corner of Ontario so as to give the 
 other fellows room. I found that the man 
 born on the banks of the St. Lawrence was 
 going to start a shoe shop, and I felt half in- 
 clined to stop off myself and start a news- 
 paper. You do everything in about a day at 
 Fort Frances. But, after a couple of hours, the 
 hoarse whistle of the boat blew, and by mid- 
 night we were thud-thudding down the river 
 on our way back. I never saw such sky- 
 splendour as was over us all the next day, or 
 such varying scenes of beauty as surrounded 
 us. You may talk of Muskoka, and you may 
 mention the Thousand Islands. But before 
 you conclude your Judgment of Paris you 
 must see the Lake of the Woods and Rainy 
 River. Already these are the summer play- 
 ground of the people of Winnipeg, southern 
 63
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 Manitoba, and the adjacent places. About 
 1,200 Winnipeg people come to their summer 
 cottages in Rat Portage every year. Numbers 
 of them have islands to themselves. As to the 
 number of these islands, it is legion I heard 
 figures quoted that seemed to me impossible. 
 But look on the map, and if you want a very 
 enjoyable trip come to Rat Portage and take 
 the voyage on the Keenora. 
 
 64
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF WINNIPEG 
 
 WINNIPEG, June 25th 
 
 THE Imperial Limited is timed to arrive at 
 Rat Portage at 2.30 in the morning, but it was 
 3.20 before it came grandly around the curve 
 into the station, so that one had time to 
 observe the yellow light of the growing dawn 
 come into the sky and make the adjacent 
 buildings stand in black relief against a back- 
 ground of luminous lemon-colour. Even the 
 prose of a railway station has no chance 
 against the dawn. A young Englishman 
 came up and asked, in a very English voice, 
 what was the fare to Winnipeg. He was 
 evidently just out from the Old Country, and 
 travelled without baggage, like many another. 
 He was a dollar short, but he went away and 
 speedily returned with it, awaking one's 
 respect ; for a man who can raise a dollar in 
 a strange place at three o'clock in the morn- 
 ing must have gifts. I thought afterwards, 
 5 65
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 however, that perhaps he had money secreted 
 in various parts of his apparel, as a provision 
 against need, and only retired to extract it 
 unseen. He appeared to be of the sort that 
 come out prepared to do " anything " par- 
 ticularly anything that they have not been at 
 all accustomed to. Thus a clerk is naturally 
 attracted to farming ; and a watchmaker's 
 apprentice looks forward to navvy work on a 
 new railway. There is a feeling that in the 
 New Land all must be different, and that in 
 some miraculous way new strength and 
 capacity will be theirs. They all " get there " 
 in time, bless them, or most of them do for 
 there is at least food and some sort of shelter 
 for all. It is a queer thing that in nine cases 
 out of ten the English emigrant comes by 
 himself Scotchmen and Irishmen are usually 
 in twos and threes Galicians and Doukhobors 
 in scores or hundreds. A few days before I 
 had seen a train-load of Galicians come 
 through. It was a Sunday evening, and the 
 preliminaries of a service were being conducted 
 by a detachment of the Salvation Army just 
 outside the station. The brass instruments 
 ceased their blare, the big drum its vibrant 
 throbbing, and the captain knelt in the midst 
 of a kneeling circle and uttered an impassioned 
 prayer in a loud voice. The wonder that was 
 66
 
 Galicians and Doukhobortsi 
 
 exhibited on the scores of Galician faces that 
 filled the windows was very interesting. It 
 was the most vivid expression of questioning 
 awe one could imagine. They knew it was 
 prayer, but who could these uniformed men 
 and women be who knelt and prayed in the 
 open street ? What was the drum for ? Were 
 they going to battle? A man in a queer 
 sheepskin coat rushed out to buy a loaf, being 
 urged thereto by his wife, who had a small 
 Galician baby and also kept the purse. Marks 
 of hard toil and hard living were on the faces 
 of these resigned women, wondering if ever 
 they should get to the end of this terrible 
 journey. But of all the strange people I have 
 seen, so far, in the West, the Doukhobors are 
 the most massive and unique. A detachment 
 of these men has found its way to the new 
 Rainy River Railway, and as we passed up 
 the river the other day I saw six of them 
 standing near one of the little wharves at 
 which we tied up. They were in long, 
 brown camel's-hair cloaks, that descended to 
 their heels, and they seemed to rather like 
 being out in the rain it could never get 
 through that thick coarse cloth. Fine big 
 men they were, and exceeding grave. 
 
 The telegraph instruments click out that the 
 train will be here in twenty minutes. I walk to 
 67
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 where I can look over Rat Portage Bay, a 
 stretch of miles of white water. This makes 
 me think of Jake Gaudaur again, for I called 
 on him yesterday, and saw the three framed 
 addresses, all ornamented by the art of the 
 illuminator, that hang up in his hotel. One 
 of them is from Toronto, and is signed, " R. J. 
 Fleming, Mayor," and there is Mr. Little- 
 John's signature, and many other familiar 
 ones. Jake confers on that exploited mining 
 neighbourhood an interest that it would not 
 otherwise have. Everybody must hope that 
 Towns will be a man and come out and row 
 him. He ought to. Jake went all over the 
 world to get his own distinctions. 
 
 The train is full when it comes, for every- 
 body seems to be going West these days. 
 We are soon slipping along through a rocky 
 landscape, for the spare ribs of the old earth 
 stick up effusively for the first third of the 
 journey between Rat Portage and Winnipeg. 
 We pass many a lonely lake where gray rocks 
 jut into the mist-wreathed waters. We rattle 
 through rock cuttings, where, when the road 
 was blasted through, the impotent teeth of 
 antediluvianism were left grinning. Then 
 miles of half-grown bush and waste places of 
 the wilderness that only want John the 
 Baptist to be the wilderness of Judea. What 
 68
 
 En cRpute to "Winnipeg 
 
 if one should get off here and live lonely, as 
 people did that went into the wilderness? 
 Surely one might live here for years without 
 seeing a human face. What a place for a 
 hermitage ! Simon Stylites wasn't in it. I 
 stick up for Canada. We've got patches of 
 wilderness that for ragged, unadulterated 
 solitude beat the world. Those Old Testa- 
 ment places have been over-estimated. 
 
 But from time to time we are ascending, for 
 Winnipeg is seven hundred feet above Lake 
 Superior, and we have to reach the flat and 
 level plain on which it stands. We leave the 
 small firs and larches and other conifers be- 
 hind. We leave the ragged and insistent 
 rocks, and the lonely mist- wreathed lakes. It 
 is broadest daylight, and we come at last to 
 where the trees are smallish poplars with an 
 elm or two, and one begins to have glimpses 
 of a far-away flat horizon, the plain diversified 
 only with clumps of small bushes. Then we 
 come to a few small white homesteads, and 
 see a ploughman driving a very long furrow. 
 But what strikes you more than anything else 
 is that the soil is becoming sweeter and 
 kinder, and more adapted to grow things 
 you can tell it as soon as you look out of the 
 rapidly moving train ; it bears the inscription 
 " Home of Agriculture " all over it. And 
 69
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 there, at last, is the wheat ! Yes, standing up 
 bravely in the sunshine are square miles of it 
 none of your little patchy fields, but long 
 stretches into blue, level distance. And here 
 are cows feeding on rich lush grass milk 
 producers, every one of them. There are no 
 big barns when the wheat is ready it is 
 threshed and sent to the elevators, and the 
 farmer gets his cheque. But there are occa- 
 sional comfortable frame homesteads, with 
 their group of trees, and other familiar sur- 
 roundings that give them an Old Country 
 look. These get more numerous as we go on, 
 and at last the train is sliding along through 
 a semi-suburban belt ; then we dash across a 
 long bridge over the Red River, and are on 
 the outskirts of Winnipeg, for the most part 
 small frame houses, on widish, ploughed-up- 
 looking, dirt streets. Then we pass a big 
 pork-packing establishment, and a gasometer, 
 and some shops at the corners of streets, and 
 draw up at the long Winnipeg platform that 
 is on the same level as the street, and wide 
 open to it and I stroll forth to get impres- 
 sions with a fresh eye. 
 
 I thought at first that things looked like 
 
 London, especially in the neighbourhood of 
 
 the railway station, which bears marks of an 
 
 everlasting crowd coming through it, and 
 
 70
 
 Main Street, "Winnipeg 
 
 which has a somewhat begrimed and much- 
 used aspect as though there had always been 
 too much helter-skelter business to bother 
 with architecture and things. The railway 
 platform is of plank, and so are the adjacent 
 sidewalks, and when I saw this I gave up the 
 notion of London and thought of Chicago, 
 especially as I could count ten one-dollar-a- 
 day hotels as soon as I came round the corner 
 of the station building. Still there was cer- 
 tainly a touch of Liverpool and a dash of the 
 east end of Toronto about one side of the 
 street which was more higgledy-piggledy 
 than the other. But of all the places for signs, 
 Winnipeg holds the record. As soon as you 
 get out of the station you know that the sign 
 painter is abroad, and you are not allowed to 
 forget it until you get far away into the sub- 
 urbs, where there are tree-shaded boulevards 
 and highly attractive houses. The Winni- 
 peggers like the letters on their signs as large 
 as possible, and as a rule they are not satisfied 
 till they have covered every available spot on 
 their premises with some legend in immense 
 block-letter characters. There is no art, as a 
 rule, in this lettering a brutal legibility is all 
 that is required ; so that the first impression a 
 stranger gets is one of signs and telegraph 
 poles and wires, and a very wide roadway,
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 block-paved. This is one end of the principal 
 street we have emerged upon, and it is called 
 Main Street. It is not perfectly straight, but, 
 roughly speaking, it lies north and south, and 
 the railway station is at the northern end. 
 Down at this end of it, on the eastern side, are 
 the beloved miscellaneous shops, some only 
 one storey high, some two. There are fruit- 
 erers' shops here, and shops where they sell 
 overalls and other ready-made garments that 
 make you hot to look at them ; and these 
 shops are all rammed close together side by 
 side in the true metropolitan way in thorough- 
 fares, but as the street is about three times as 
 wide as King Street, Toronto, there is room 
 and verge enough in front of them. " Old 
 Country Second-hand Shop " is on one sign 
 here, and there are several of that character, 
 where you can pick up the impedimenta 
 which some inexperienced immigrants have 
 turned into money at a sacrifice. 
 
 As you walk south on Main Street, how- 
 ever, the aspect changes ; the buildings 
 become larger and more important, and you 
 feel that you are in no mean city. The 
 pavements are stone or granolithic ; you pass 
 the City Hall a considerable building with 
 a cupola, and a flagstaff with the Jack flying, 
 in front of it a monument to dead soldiers, and 
 a bust of Queen Victoria. There is a sort of 
 72
 
 Many Banks and Shops 
 
 bend in the street here, and you come in view 
 of its most important part There, at the 
 corner of the street, is the massive post- 
 office, and you can now count as many banks 
 as you previously could count hotels. And 
 with few exceptions the banks seem to have 
 given their architects the hint that they had 
 to do something out of the common. Per- 
 haps the palm is taken by the Bank of Com- 
 merce, a white stone building in the Italian 
 style, designed by Mr. Frank Darling, of 
 Toronto, which is worthy of any metropolis 
 in the world. The Dominion Bank, which 
 makes an attractive corner of another street, 
 is a building of red sandstone in very good 
 taste and of dignified proportions. But there 
 are numbers of business blocks, with elevators 
 and multitudinous offices in them, and there 
 are silversmiths' shops with things in them that 
 are apparently too beautiful and precious for 
 anybody to buy, unless they are connected 
 with Wheat and it is a good season or con- 
 nected with Trusts, or Banks, and things of 
 that sort What I feel is that I am in a city 
 again, after being nearly a month without 
 seeing one ; that the air is wonderfully clear, 
 and that there are shops where you can get 
 almost anything ; also, that the streets are 
 laid out on a wide and generous plan, and 
 that they are full of business ; that prospects 
 73
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 are good, and that everybody is looking for- 
 ward to the wheat crop that is going to be so 
 enormously overpowering. Winnipeg is the 
 most enterprising phenomenon in the way of 
 a juvenile city ever known. It has beaten 
 the record of the continent for sudden and 
 substantial growth. Building permits for 
 $1,000,000 have already been issued this 
 season. 
 
 Although Winnipeg is 700 feet above the 
 sea, it is not a city set on a hill. It is set 
 on an ever-widening plain. Build, toy fashion, 
 with tiny dice, in the middle of a billiard 
 table, a sketch-model of a city. Arrange a 
 skein of drab-coloured silk in sinuous fashion 
 on one side of it, to represent the Red River, 
 and a smaller one, also sinuous, branching out 
 of it, to indicate the Assiniboine. Turn a big 
 punch bowl over it for the sky, and you have 
 an idea of Winnipeg and its surroundings. 
 
 But it is a grand sky. Last night, after a 
 most oppressive day, it was continuously 
 bright with lightning for hours. Thunder 
 and rain were of corresponding vehemence. 
 But the heat, and the moisture, and the long, 
 level stretches of flat prairie are all necessary 
 for the Wheat. And it is in an atmosphere of 
 Wheat that Winnipeggers live, move, and 
 have their being. 
 
 74
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 MORE ABOUT WINNIPEG A MANITOBA 
 FARM 
 
 WINNIPEG, July 3rd 
 
 WINNIPEG reveals itself, if you stay in it for 
 a few days, as a city of very considerable 
 actualities, and very great possibilities. As a 
 commercial, educational, governmental, and 
 social centre it is a capital city that holds a 
 distinct and unique place. Its wide streets 
 are typical of the breadth of its notions. 
 Winnipeggers have not the slightest doubt 
 about their city. They have heard of New 
 York and London, and they have some dim 
 remembrance that there is a city called Tor- 
 onto, and one called Montreal also that on 
 the west coast there are a couple of thriving 
 communities that some people call cities. 
 But, O pshaw ! People will do these things. 
 But look around you. Ask some of the old 
 fellows what this was twenty years ago. 
 Very well, then. There you are. 
 75
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 I am disposed to be tolerant and respect- 
 ful to this attitude as I walk down Main Street, 
 with its banks and business blocks and stores, 
 or board a street-car and ride to some of the 
 pleasantest streets, boulevarded and with 
 growing shade trees, whereon are the pleasant 
 homes each in its little garden or larger 
 grounds of the well-to-do. Well designed, 
 comfortable, elegant houses of white brick or 
 frame they are, for the most part. There are 
 streets, too, where there are smaller homes ; 
 down to the little three or four-roomed, white- 
 painted, neatly-kept frame cottages, tempting 
 to people of small means, and which are no 
 doubt the adequate castles of many a thriving 
 and worthy couple. There are six Baptist 
 churches, ten Anglican, two Congregational, 
 nine Methodist, nine Presbyterian, five Roman 
 Catholic, five Lutheran, and seven "miscel- 
 laneous" half a hundred in all. What would 
 you have in twenty-five years? There are 
 colleges with grave and reverend doctors of 
 divinity immersed in theology the theologi- 
 cal element has the upper hand in the colleges 
 and there are summer schools where bud- 
 ding divines perspire over the problems of the 
 Infinite. There are also alert and capable 
 men of mathematics and science, a university 
 with its separate building, a Normal school, a 
 76
 
 A Vigorous Young City 
 
 collegiate school, and there is a medical col- 
 lege that turns out, on the whole, a very good 
 provincial sort of doctor, of whom some 
 have the mark of intellect, and some the 
 mere ox-like, sheep-brained determination to 
 bluff their way through, in this differing no 
 whit from medical men that are to be found 
 in other parts of the world. The Government 
 buildings on Broadway which is a sort of 
 Spadina Avenue, but has the queer effect of 
 being nearer the sky are several sizes less 
 than those in Toronto, but they have all the 
 parts and members proper to such places, and 
 no lack of intelligent and approachable of- 
 ficials. The chamber in which the Provincial 
 Legislature sits is comfortable and unpretend- 
 ing. Everything seems a little newer than 
 things down in Ontario, as of course it is, and 
 one feels in Winnipeg as one does when going 
 over the new manage of a young couple just 
 setting up housekeeping, and with whom one 
 is on familiar terms. " So this is your dining- 
 room, and your drawing-room very nice ; and 
 your kitchen ? Yes. All the things look so 
 spick and span, don't they ? Why, you have 
 really everything ! What a dear little stove 
 a No. 8 ? Hot and cold water, of course. 
 Why, there isn't a thing you haven't got. You 
 might have been married for years ! " 
 77
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 But for a determination against giving any 
 suspicious touch of the guide-book to these 
 letters, I might enlarge on the law courts and 
 drill-shed. Connected with the military out- 
 fit of the city are two companies of dragoons, 
 similar to those we have in Toronto, the poth 
 Regiment being the highly creditable volun- 
 teer stand-by. The parks of the city would 
 also deserve notice, especially River Park, to 
 which full trains of street-cars three or four 
 coupled together go every evening. The habit 
 of street-car riding is as prevalent here as in 
 Toronto. 
 
 Winnipeg is not a picturesque city very few 
 cities are. But, fortunately, Main Street is not 
 quite straight, but bends about somewhat, fol- 
 lowing faintly the bends of the Red River, 
 which winds eastward of it. And in the even- 
 ing the skyline of the various piles of building 
 is by no means uninteresting from an artistic 
 point of view. The other night I slipped down 
 the street, on the corner of which the big post- 
 office stands, and in a few moments found 
 myself in the midst of unfinished surroundings 
 of vacant land, where there were grass, and a 
 tree or two, and stables, and small houses, with 
 a few good blocks of commercial buildings 
 Winnipeg's waterfront and backyard. But 
 there was a great view of a river as big as old 
 78
 
 The Picturesque in Winnipeg 
 
 Father Thames, on the other side of which 
 was a sparsely-inhabited region, showing much 
 vacant land, and, in the distance, on the north- 
 east, Ogilvie's flouring mills, which, they say, 
 are the biggest in the world. It was the sort 
 of view that is glorified by moonlight or the 
 sunset sky. A railway runs along the river 
 bank, which is twelve or fourteen feet above 
 the water, and standing on this, the spacious- 
 ness of the prospect is very striking. I wan- 
 dered along southward till I came to a toll- 
 bridge across the river, and from the middle 
 of this the view was as picturesque as most 
 things you can see in cities : the mass of the 
 buildings and houses black along the river 
 bank, the sky glorious with light and colour, 
 and the great breadth of water reflecting it. 
 All it wanted was a barge or two with brown 
 sails, but these you don't find here. The bridge 
 ended at the French settlement of St. Boni- 
 face, where is the Archbishop's house lying 
 back from the road among trees ; the cathe- 
 dral church, the St. Boniface Hospital, and 
 the convent. About 2,000 French Canadians 
 live here, and take Le Manitoba, the office of 
 which is at the corner as you come off the 
 bridge. The church is undergoing repairs, 
 but about 150 labouring men knelt at their 
 prayers in an area near the door, where there 
 79
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 were no scaffold poles, and the responses to 
 the priest's rapid French sentences were like 
 the wind among the trees. Then the bells 
 chimed sweetly thrice, and thrice again, and 
 the men came out and lit their pipes and 
 walked home happily. At the corner, by the 
 bridge, stood Pierre, who had been fishing, and 
 from one of his hands hung a quivering four- 
 teen-pound finny specimen, and from the other 
 four or five of a pound and a half. There was 
 about as much difference in the general look 
 and atmosphere of the two sides of the river 
 as it would be possible to get 
 
 A MANITOBA FARM. 
 
 I have seen for myself a Manitoba farm, 
 and stayed at it a couple of days. It was a 
 good way from Winnipeg, and I had to drive 
 six miles from the railway station across the 
 prairie before I got to it, and the mosquitoes 
 accompanied me every step of the way, and 
 were decidedly affectionate. Even they did 
 not prevent admiration of the glorious sky, 
 under which the green spaces of these won- 
 derfully fertile plains are stretched, diversified 
 by " bluffs " of poplar and small bushes here 
 and there. "That's the house," said my 
 driver, when we were within about three miles 
 of it. There was no possibility of mistake, as 
 80
 
 Mosquitoes and Farm-yard ** Smudges " 
 
 there was no other in sight. It resolved 
 itself, ultimately, into a considerable group of 
 farm buildings, and a decidedly comfortable 
 house, with 480 acres of land about it, that 
 now belongs to the once pioneer, now sub- 
 stantial and settled farmer. Moreover, there 
 was the small log shanty in which he and his 
 wife had lived when first they came out to 
 try their fortune on the prairie. In the 
 adjacent farmyard were seventeen cows, 
 which the farmer and his sons were milking. 
 In the stables were ten or twelve horses, 
 while in the barn some calves called loudly 
 to be fed, and well-bred black pigs came 
 round corners and squinted up at us with 
 inquisitive eyes and interrogative grunts. 
 The cows were standing contentedly amid 
 the smoke of "smudges." To make a 
 smudge you put down a little heap of dry 
 wood, hay, or stubble, set it alight, and then 
 cover it up with damp straw or manure. The 
 cattle will crowd round these smudges with 
 delight they give them relief from their 
 pesky little foes, the mosquitoes ; indeed, 
 without the "smudges" milking would be 
 difficult. As we had already partaken of our 
 evening meal in a shack on the way, where 
 two manly young farmers are taking the first 
 steps towards independence, if not wealth, we 
 6 Si
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 did not get to the farm in question until 
 supper was over, and, in the wide kitchen we 
 entered, everything was swept up and put 
 away for the night. There was a great zinc- 
 lined vat used for cheese-making, and a 
 cheese-press, besides the ordinary kitchen 
 utensils, and chairs and tables. The family 
 stove, in which wood was burned, was in evi- 
 dence, and looked as though it was kept 
 going pretty fairly for the Manitoba farmers' 
 houses are houses of plenty. A stair led up 
 to the boys' bedrooms above. Out of the 
 kitchen opened a dining-room of comfortable 
 dimensions, and from this you entered a 
 good-sized sitting-room with a very handsome 
 piano in it, on which the daughter of the house 
 plays, while beyond this was a drawing-room 
 that was quite modern in its elegant comfort 
 and knick-knacks, and hung around with 
 flower-pieces painted by the deft hand of the 
 farmer's wife, who can turn from making a 
 cheese to making a picture. At present, how- 
 ever, she was at work at her sewing-machine. 
 Soon, the farmer, looking hearty and strong, 
 and with work-worn hands, came in and con- 
 versed. The family are of Scottish origin, 
 and the farmer and his wife came years ago 
 from Ontario. They have worked hard and 
 prospered ; have husbanded their resources, 
 82
 
 Piety Allied with Industry 
 
 and been careful of expenditure. He has 
 now two or three hundred acres of wheat that 
 looks as though it were going to produce 
 twenty-five bushels to the acre. Some of his 
 land has not had the " breaking plough " put 
 into it. He has his large patch of potatoes, 
 his onion patch, his fertile, " careless-ordered " 
 vegetable garden. There are enough trees 
 about to take off any aspect of bareness, 
 though from my bedroom window, before 
 retiring, the moonlit prairie looked vast and 
 unbroken. When you are living on it, how- 
 ever, there is no sense of monotony. The 
 fertile soil has a charm of its own the mag- 
 nificent stretch of overarching sky, the 
 occasional clump of brushwood. They did 
 not feel so cold on the prairie in winter, 
 they said, as they did when they paid a winter 
 visit to Toronto two years ago. They could 
 keep the house quite warm ; they had a large 
 furnace, and pipes all over the dwelling. 
 
 When it neared bedtime the wife brought 
 the husband the " big ha' Bible," and he con- 
 ducted family worship, reading with great 
 expressiveness, and praying with a certain 
 dignified simplicity and propriety of phrase 
 reminiscent of the kirk services of by-gone 
 days. In the life of these worthy people it 
 was to be seen that their religion lifted them 
 83
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 above sordidness. They felt that the earth 
 they cultivated was the Lord's, and the ful- 
 ness thereof ; and the horizon of their prairie 
 home was heaven. Hard work, courage and 
 faith had been theirs ; they had followed 
 Cromwell's advice to his soldiers, " Trust in 
 God and keep your powder dry." The man, 
 when he took up this agricultural life in 
 Manitoba, was an expert carpenter, the wife a 
 woman of energy and ability, gentle withal, 
 and in the best sense well bred. They saved 
 a little money and they have done well. There 
 is room in Manitoba for people like these of 
 the right sort to go and do likewise ; room 
 for tens of thousands of them. The abundant 
 stretches of fertile soil and the opportunities 
 of living wholesome, independent and happy 
 lives have not been over-estimated. But the 
 land demands people of grit and sterling 
 worth, and not unstable fools. As for oppor- 
 tunities of education, the boys had done well 
 at the neighbouring school, where, in a school- 
 house of twenty feet square or thereabouts, a 
 " clever young man " was doing his best 
 towards nation-building, and one of the 
 daughters was taking there her High School 
 course. 
 
 They had very good water on the place 
 84
 
 and Cons 
 
 from a five-inch tube well, 40 feet deep. The 
 Provincial Government provides an expert 
 with proper tackle for well-boring, the only 
 charge being for the tubes and the fetching of 
 the apparatus for driving them into the ground 
 from the last place at which it was used. 
 Ploughs and most other implements are 
 worked with four horses each ; in fact, a man 
 wants four horses at least to begin with, and 
 if he has an extra one, so much the better. 
 There are no apple-trees, but there are small 
 fruits, some of them growing wild. Tomatoes 
 do not, as a rule, ripen. Roots do well, but 
 everybody goes in for as much wheat as he 
 can grow, and has not much time to bother 
 with root crops beyond those required for per- 
 sonal use. 
 
 Per contra, there are the dry seasons, which 
 mean a failure of the crop, and there are also 
 the dangers of hail and frost. If the crop is 
 too good there is danger of it " lying down," 
 so as to be difficult to cut. It costs $7.50 to 
 put in and take off an acre of wheat, and last 
 year the average crop did not produce more 
 than $5 or $5.50 per acre, so many farmers 
 went behind. This year it looks as if the crop 
 would be worth $12.50 per acre. And, of 
 course, thrifty people get their victuals off the 
 85
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 farm, somehow, what with poultry and one 
 thing or another. Taken altogether, the 
 chances are in favour of the Manitoba farmer. 
 But he must be of the right sort, and if he 
 has some money to begin with, so much the 
 better. 
 
 86
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 THE PRAIRIES CALGARY 
 
 CALGARY, July isth 
 
 IT was half-past nine in the morning of the 
 immortal and glorious twelfth of July when 
 we pulled out of the Winnipeg station for a 
 bout of prairie-crossing. Here and there we 
 had seen a ramping and decorated horse ; 
 here and there an Orange decoration. When, 
 however, we got past the advanced guard of 
 scattered houses that Winnipeg is throwing 
 out in all directions, we found the prairies de- 
 fying the Day, and wearing green instead of 
 orange. I suppose it is allowable to allude to 
 prairies in the plural. In no other way can 
 you arrive at any method of speaking about 
 them to friends who have not seen them. If 
 they are just ordinary persons, tell them to 
 imagine the biggest plain they can not any 
 of your little plains, such as the Plains of 
 Abraham (or if they have been to England, 
 87
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 Salisbury Plain), but a real good big plain 
 about the size of the Sahara, as we think of it, 
 or that stretch of country that Moses looked 
 over when he went up on Pisgah. Then, 
 when they have got their imagination-focus 
 good and definite, tell them to think of about 
 nineteen of those spaces joined together, edge 
 to edge. If they look incredulous, you are 
 justified in assuming the attitude of meritori- 
 ous veracity. Tell them to wait till they 
 travel from Winnipeg to the purlieus of the 
 Rockies say, to this good town of Calgary 
 from which I am writing and they will ulti- 
 mately confess, with the Queen of Sheba, that 
 " the half was not told them." A few years 
 ago a man wrote an article in one of the re- 
 views was it the Fortnightly ? in which he 
 spoke of the entire occupation of the whole 
 area of this earth by its population, if the in- 
 crease of that population went on at the pres- 
 ent rate. He said that in 169 years there 
 would be barely enough land to give each per- 
 son two square feet. That writer could never 
 have seen the boundless stretch of the prairies. 
 Why, you could put all the cities you ever 
 heard of on them, and they would hardly be 
 within shouting distance of each other ! Well, 
 the prairies were " wearing the green " with a 
 vengeance ; it was the green of wheat, that 
 88
 
 The C P. R. Dini 
 
 spread its multitudinous acres of promise in 
 the sun, and made glad the heart of the ex- 
 pectant farmer. 
 
 We got so hungry, looking at this over- 
 powering area of bread in preparation, that 
 the dining-car presented attractions, and the 
 knife and fork symphony, played by a number 
 of capable artists, was soon heard above the 
 rattle of the train. 'Twas a hot day, but a 
 prairie appetite is proverbial, or should be. 
 The cooks and waiters of a dining-car always 
 put me in mind of those performers who do 
 things at theatres and circuses, or on tight- 
 rope wires stretched across gorges. Now, 
 playing a violin is attainable, with persever- 
 ance, even by persons of limited powers, but 
 when a man bends himself backwards into a 
 letter O and plays " Home, Sweet Home " 
 between his ankles, of course it brings down 
 the house. Smoking a pipe is common 
 enough, but he who can do it under water is a 
 hero to the populace for a minute. So is the 
 tight-rope performer when he gets to the 
 middle of the perilous wire, and with his little 
 cooking-stove prepares an omelet. There is 
 all that sort of thing and more about a C. P. R. 
 dining-car, and it must be confessed that 
 though the railroad has cost the country a 
 million or two, it gives you good meals. I 
 89
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 always expect to hear the band start up slow 
 music, with a little staccato picking at the 
 string, when the smart linen-clothed, fat, clean- 
 shaved little waiter makes his appearance, 
 with six glasses of iced water, two napkins 
 and a teaspoon in his bare hands, and deftly 
 dabs the six tumblers in front of six people, 
 and in a twink distributes said napkins and 
 teaspoons in the place where they ought to go. 
 Why don't they clap, as he does this so 
 cleverly in the rocking forty-mile-an-hour car, 
 when at the end of the performance he calmly 
 draws a menu card from somewhere in much 
 the same manner as the circus performer 
 draws the invisible hair from between his 
 teeth at the end of a great act and presents 
 it with a polite bow to the sixth man ? Of 
 course, he knows that he is an artist, but there 
 is a calm and pious meritoriousness on his face 
 that abjures conceit. Only on pictures of 
 saints have I seen such a transcendent peace 
 that of him who has attained. A waiter 
 that knows his business is better than a Prime 
 Minister that doesn't. But there is more con- 
 juring. It was reported some time ago that a 
 famous " wizard " of the stage had shuffled off 
 his mortal coil. But we may well believe that 
 it was only a canard. They really keep him 
 in C. P. R. trains, getting things out of hats. 
 90
 
 He is up in that mysterious corner whence 
 everything you ask for comes. 
 
 And besides the conjuring, which is great 
 for the quality of these magically-produced 
 things is quite as good, and in fact a little bet- 
 ter than those you buy in shops and cook in 
 your stoves there is so much to entertain that 
 the band ought really to play. Why don't 
 they strike up the intermezzo from "Caval- 
 leria Rusticana," for instance, when the chic 
 little French-woman her voluminous hair 
 also a thaumaturgical wonder, when you con- 
 sider that it was done up in that style in the 
 confined recesses of the ladies' toilet comes 
 prettily tottering in with her little girl, who 
 speaks such entrancing broken English ? The 
 waiter, with his hand on his heart, you can 
 see, is promising eternal fidelity. There is 
 the California lawyer, whose talk has been of 
 the excellence of the hotels and railroads of 
 his country for the last fifty miles, but who 
 confesses that the roast meat is "elegant." 
 There is the amazingly adipose man to whom 
 any more eating at all for the term of his 
 natural life would seem to be a superfluity. 
 There is the young child of thirteen, travel- 
 ling alone, in care of the conductor, on whose 
 pure, young sweet face is the expressed hope 
 that she is behaving just as her mother would 
 91
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 like to see her. There is the very old lady, 
 all in her best blacks, in whom patience has 
 worked experience, and experience hope. A 
 fine old face she has, and the waiter knows 
 she is the old mother of somebody and attends 
 to her as if she were his own, to her simple 
 gratitude and gratification, nor is there a man 
 in the car who isn't pleased that the prairie 
 air has given her " quite an appetite." There 
 is the Cabinet Minister and his daughters, who 
 are quite enfamille at one of the larger tables. 
 Outside, the everlasting prairie on which 
 Nature is spreading her table abundantly for 
 millions. Inside, the naperies, the glass, the 
 silver and cutlery, and the victuals of Art, with 
 human nature to study into the bargain. The 
 band ought really to play. 
 
 I was reminded as I looked out of the win- 
 dow at the perpetual prairie, of that ridiculous 
 old chestnut of a conundrum : " If you were 
 at the theatre, and the curtain drew up and 
 revealed a wooden horse, what ancient Grecian 
 place would it remind you of?" Answer, 
 " Delos " (deal 'oss). " And now the curtain 
 is let down, and is drawn up again, and there 
 is no change in the stage properties now what 
 ancient place?" Answer, " Samos" (same 'oss). 
 Readers will excuse the doddering old joke, 
 but there seemed to be a good deal of 
 92
 
 The Boundless Prairie 
 
 " Samos " about the prairie. I fell asleep try- 
 ing to discover some difference between one 
 mile and another. My subconsciousness told 
 me that I was sure to see it looking exactly 
 the same when I woke again. In the smok- 
 ing-car we tried to talk the prairie out, like 
 they talk a bill out in the House of Commons, 
 and though we had the Minister to help us it 
 did not come to much. The Californian made 
 a speech on California, sixty-five miles long, 
 and we agreed that everything in that State 
 was taller and bigger round than anywhere 
 else. Yet, when we looked out, there was the 
 prairie. We saw that we had got pretty well 
 past the wheat, though. The Minister made a 
 series of speeches in answer to leading ques- 
 tions, and never said anything that would 
 make half a line of political copy so you can 
 tell what length they would be, especially as 
 in answer to the last question he confessed 
 himself a great admirer of Mr. Gladstone. 
 Yet at the end there was the prairie, the same 
 everlasting expanse of dull green, stretching 
 to the horizon, with just a little shading of 
 yellows and browns here and there. The doc- 
 tor made a longish speech on " Specialism in 
 the Profession, its Aims and Ends." I fancy 
 he had been giving it at some convention. Yet 
 there was the prairie. If it had not been for 
 93
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide "West 
 
 a hypochondriac who began telling us about 
 his symptoms, like a patent medicine testi- 
 monial, it's my belief we should be there now. 
 He had not got to the end of his first chapter, 
 when we all said simultaneously, " There's a 
 coyote ! " pointing so vigorously at it with 
 one accord that we nearly broke the glass, let 
 alone half-killing the dogified-looking mongrel 
 with fright. We settled down now to hear 
 more symptoms with an eager interest that 
 rather flattered the hypo., and it was not long 
 before we had a snapshot at a " bunch " of 
 cattle. The Minister said, " Ah, now we are 
 getting to the grazing country," and the effort 
 to extract some political significance from the 
 remark took us twenty miles. But we settled 
 that statesmanship wasn't " in it " with symp- 
 toms, and turning on our friend again, he not 
 only got us a pair of antelope scouring over 
 the plain, but any number of little " prairie 
 dogs " or gophers, and at last a ranch all set 
 out for the opening of a week's starring, with 
 real cowboys, all the accessories, and a herd 
 of cattle that the Californian immediately de- 
 clared worth $30,000, and he was ready to take 
 ten to one on it. And with the ingratitude 
 of human nature, though we had crossed the 
 previous part of the prairie, we forgot all about 
 the kind symptomatic friend who had tided 
 94
 
 In the Ranching Country 
 
 us over it He went away soon, and I am 
 afraid had more symptoms. 
 
 As for ourselves, we began to revel in 
 " bunches " of cattle and " bunches " of horses 
 as though they were bunches of radishes. A 
 man came in with a kodak, and said, " You 
 had not to wait an hour now before you could 
 get anything to take." He shot six ranches 
 and an Indian " dugout " habitation in succes- 
 sion, and then, after dipping into various 
 light literature, we went to bed. And as if to 
 punish us for our ingratitude to old Symp- 
 toms, as we dubbed him, when we woke there 
 was the prairie again ! It was a little browner, 
 a little more undulating, but it was there. 
 We had come into a zone of utter loneliness. 
 So we settled down to a practical considera- 
 tion of the essentials of happiness in a popu- 
 lation of one-tenth of a person to the square 
 mile. Of course, we had passed towns on the 
 way, some of them of considerable preten- 
 sions, and at which I mean to get out on my 
 way back and apologize for not mentioning 
 them before. But what we were studying 
 was prairie, and we did it thoroughly. I 
 should mention that before we went to bed, 
 as already mentioned, the evening had ended 
 with the grandest sunset it was ever my privi- 
 lege to see a splendid riot of rose colour and 
 95
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 crimsons, and grays and light greens and 
 blues, that made one wish to cow-punch the 
 Californian when he barely conceded that it 
 was " elegant." 
 
 At last, late in the evening, we came to Cal- 
 gary. We had been steadily climbing, for 
 whereas Winnipeg's altitude is but 700 feet 
 above the sea, Calgary's is 3,388. And it is 
 the most attractive little city, for many reasons, 
 that I have seen in Canada. There is an in- 
 describable Western freshness and freedom 
 about its people, and its situation is exquisite, 
 lying in a spacious valley as it does, with the 
 beautiful fast-running Bow River winding on 
 one side of it. Then one sees Indians about 
 Blackfeet and Sarceys in their picturesque 
 attitudes, and with their often striking coun- 
 tenances, their free, moccasined gait. And 
 there are cowboys, too, and ranchers, the 
 former riding their wiry little ponies with the 
 inevitable cowboy sixty-dollar saddle lariat 
 rope at their side the latter (many of them) 
 Englishmen of good family, who have the 
 delightful but indescribable air of well-bred 
 men. And there are gentlewomen who look 
 nice and talk with an English accent. There 
 is an absence of boastfulness, an utter and 
 complete dearth of "blow." The men talk 
 horse honestly day in and day out. They
 
 Calgary and the Rockies 
 
 may well do it now, for Colonel Dent is here, 
 attended by his clever vet., buying horses for 
 the British army. He is a typical English 
 officer, a gentleman from his boots up, and as 
 the last time he was here he left $30,000 be- 
 hind him, his visit naturally awakens interest. 
 Calgary itself is well built there is capital 
 building stone within a few stone's-throw, and 
 lumber mills that turn out timber. The air 
 of the place makes young again the elderly, 
 and the child as merry as the kidling of the 
 hills. There are shops where you can buy 
 anything you have a right to have. 
 
 I confess that I was excited to learn that 
 the far-famed and often-dreamed-of Rockies 
 could be glimpsed from this place, and it was 
 not long before I climbed one of the hillsides 
 that surrounded the city and looked over to 
 the west. There, far-off, sixty or eighty miles 
 away, they lay in all their cloud-like splendour, 
 their snowy peaks dazzling white, an inspir- 
 ing image of everlasting steadfastness. They 
 were defined with blue shadows and glittering 
 white, and their peaks and shoulders form the 
 skyline between that quarter of the horizon 
 that lies between due west and due south. 
 When one has not seen mountains for a long 
 time, there is something in the first sight of 
 them that is very overpowering, yet that fills 
 7 97
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 the soul with a quiet peace. In the presence 
 of the immovable majesty of those solemn 
 heights distant, yet awful one ceases to 
 speak. The triviality of speech and of most 
 other mortal things is too apparent to allow 
 of anything but silence. 
 
 Of all the towns I have seen on my west- 
 ward progress, Calgary has an honoured place 
 in my recollections. It is a thriving, pleasant 
 place a city, by the way, now, by legislative 
 enactment. As excellent building stone is to 
 be found very near to it, this material is em- 
 ployed in many of the edifices with great 
 advantage, though it is found that its quality 
 is not suitable for the salt air of the coast 
 towns. As a ranching and farming centre 
 Calgary has many attractions, and the most 
 decided " Old Country " atmosphere I have 
 yet " struck." There are numbers of pleasant 
 residences, excellent stores, pretty women and 
 manly men. The bronzed rancher, wearing a 
 cowboy hat, roomy riding breeches and 
 leather leggings, is in constant evidence on 
 the streets or at hotel tables, and proves on 
 further acquaintance to be a fine gentlemanly 
 fellow. The picturesque Indian and his 
 squaw canter by on their hardy little ponies, 
 the latter invariably riding man-fashion like 
 her spouse, and using, like him, a cowboy 
 saddle. As a rule the aborigines conduct 
 98
 
 The North-West Mounted Police 
 
 themselves very well on their reserves, but 
 when they go out of the straight path of 
 rectitude it is the duty of the " N. W. M. P." 
 to bring them back again. I visited the ex- 
 tensive barracks of the Mounted Police, which 
 are at the east end of Calgary. The white 
 buildings and grounds occupy a considerable 
 number of acres, and there is quite a Govern- 
 ment look about them, all of them being airy, 
 rather bare, and kept scrupulously clean. 
 About fifty-eight men are stationed here, and 
 their horses are kept in capital condition. To 
 see a detachment of them riding out or com- 
 ing in, clothed as they are in khaki and 
 wearing broad-brimmed hats, puts one in 
 mind of what one has read of South African 
 experiences. More than one of these men 
 had been out to the war, and I saw a Boer 
 rifle and a sword that had been brought back 
 from South Africa. A good reading-room 
 and an excellent billiard-table are among the 
 accompaniments of the place, and the men 
 are uncommonly bright fellows, who look very 
 military in their full-dress scarlet tunics and 
 smart forage-caps tilted at the proper soldierly 
 angle over one ear. They show here not only 
 a considerable outfit of field-waggons, which 
 are used for carrying men and supplies to 
 field outposts, but the two field-guns which 
 were used in the 1885 rebellion. 
 99
 
 CHAPTER X 
 EDMONTON AND THE NORTH COUNTRY 
 
 EDMONTON, ALTA., July 2ist 
 IF one may believe what he sees on station 
 platforms and hears in railway cars, there is 
 a considerable influx of settlers from the 
 Western United States toward the Canadian 
 North- West. A number of these were on the 
 train on which I travelled from Calgary north, 
 on Saturday, a distance of about two hundred 
 miles. They talked of their affairs with a free- 
 dom that was very informing. It is the first 
 requisite of a settler that he be an egotist, and 
 that his affairs shall appear to be the most 
 important things in the world. This inclines 
 him to give you every particular about them, 
 and when he gets started he doesn't stop short 
 at a trifle. I begged one man to remember that 
 I myself was not asking him about his birth, 
 his parentage, his early days, his courtship and 
 marriage, his wife's merits and defects, and 
 the way he was bringing up his children. He 
 100
 
 Homes of the Pioneers 
 
 said if I would excuse him he would keep on 
 he liked to tell the whole story he did not 
 always have a chance. And he was a good 
 talker and had notions about things that did 
 credit to his long cogitations about them as 
 he drove the long furrow hour after hour on 
 his South Dakota farm. Not often had he 
 such a chance of unburdening himself to an 
 impartial listener. He blew off upon me the 
 accumulated thought of years, and his talk 
 was an accompaniment that enabled me to 
 understand the life upon these boundless fertile 
 prairies, to which settlers are always coming in 
 bravely with their savings, their oddments of 
 stock, and their tremendous determination to 
 make themselves a home. That white dot 
 three miles off is a settler's shack that he has 
 built of boards, and the small excrescences 
 near it are the beginnings of his farm build- 
 ings. A mile away on one side of it is an- 
 other shack, and there is positively nothing 
 else in sight on the vast green stretch of the 
 prairie but these two human habitations, ex- 
 cept a few cattle. Not a tree diversifies the 
 prospect. But there is rich virgin soil, and if 
 the settlers plough it and sow it, it yields an 
 immediate crop. They have not the prelim- 
 inary toil of clearing, and there is the " town " 
 within a few miles also a beginning con- 
 101
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 sisting of a dozen board houses and a store 
 or two, built courageously in the middle of 
 the lonely prairie. There is Bill who is not 
 more than a mile off, and Tom who is not 
 more than two. Above all, there is the rail- 
 way, as an available avenue with the world of 
 business and humanity. 
 
 But as you get more north the country im- 
 proves, and you have trees and occasional 
 water, and greater variety, a land indeed of 
 considerable beauty and charm. The soil, 
 moreover, is of the best description. In places 
 it looks very much like England, and if you 
 leave the railway and drive ten miles or so you 
 will come to a well-settled and happy-looking 
 neighbourhood. This country to the north 
 of Calgary is being opened up by a very 
 desirable class of settlers. There are perhaps 
 a dozen stations between Calgary and Ed- 
 monton, and nearly every one of them is the 
 centre of the trade of the neighbourhood and 
 contains the general store and the inevitable 
 agricultural implement agency. You start on 
 a long, slow, miscellaneous worm of a train 
 whose eye is its headlight, and the parasites of 
 which are not only people, but cattle. It rubs 
 these off here and there, and sometimes de- 
 taches a joint of its tail bodily. The daily 
 train is the link with existence. In the even- 
 
 102
 
 Edmonton on the Saskatchewan 
 
 ing people come down to the platform to see 
 it come in. You wait long enough sometimes 
 to become acquainted with the people of the 
 settlement. We left Calgary at about 1.30 
 in the afternoon and reached Edmonton at 
 three o'clock Sunday morning ; that is, we 
 reached Strathcona, the terminus of the rail- 
 way. We still had three miles to go, and this 
 was accomplished behind a team of the 
 gamest horses any man might wish to drive. 
 Seven or eight of us mounted one of the rigs 
 of the district to which these honest horses 
 were harnessed, and we soon had cause to be 
 thankful that our driver was anexperienced 
 and able whip. Edmonton was on the other 
 side of the gorge of the Saskatchewan. This 
 we had to descend by a steep incline, to cross 
 the river by a suspension bridge, and to climb 
 the two-hundred-foot ascent on the other side. 
 Moreover, the road was of the " dirt " descrip- 
 tion and there had been frequent rains. It 
 was not getting through one Slough of De- 
 spond there were scores of them. Rapid 
 change of level on the part of the occupants 
 of the vehicle was inseparable from this sort 
 of road. At one time you were apologizing 
 to your neighbour for sitting on the top of 
 him, and at another three or four were sitting 
 on you without apologizing. I never knew 
 103
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 before how far a rig will topple without going 
 over. On either side were the solemn woods, 
 seen dimly in the faintly-breaking dawn. At 
 last we came to the descent, and our driver 
 clapped on the brake, and we prayed that 
 nothing might snap. Then a long bridge 
 across the rapid river, and after that the tre- 
 mendous climb, during which the horses had 
 to stop three times and breathe, and only the 
 good little brake kept us from going over the 
 river bank backwards. Edmonton, electric- 
 lighted, with its two thousand inhabitants (in 
 their beds) was at the top, and we found a 
 surprisingly good hotel and went to bed by 
 daylight. A handbill in the rotunda an- 
 nounces that a weekly stage for Athabaska 
 Landing leaves every Tuesday morning at 
 eight o'clock and reaches its destination at six 
 o'clock on Wednesday evening. We are at 
 the jumping-off place for the Yukon, and 
 there are advertisements of miners' stores. 
 
 Edmonton is one of the many instances of 
 towns in north-western Canada the origin of 
 which is to be traced to the existence of Hud- 
 son's Bay Company trading-posts. A fort and 
 trading establishment were placed here by that 
 enterprising organization about a hundred 
 years ago. I went to see the substantial, old- 
 fashioned buildings. They occupy a command- 
 104
 
 Packing-box Architecture 
 
 ing and romantic site on the west bank of the 
 Saskatchewan River, a mile and a half from 
 the centre of the town. Let it be confessed 
 that the architecture of these new Western 
 towns and I need make no invidious com- 
 parisons, for with very few exceptions they 
 are all "much of a muchness " is principally 
 governed, in the main streets, by commercial 
 considerations and by the exigencies of neces- 
 sity. On the way from Calgary to Edmonton 
 you can see, at one or other of the score of 
 stations that intervene, the whole process of 
 town-building. The unit, the primal cell the 
 germ, as it were is the store, and the store, in 
 most instances, is simply a magnified packing- 
 box. A man sends a few carloads of lumber to 
 a township site, gets hold of a carpenter, and 
 the big packing-box for commodities is built. 
 Nowhere is the adventurous spirit of trade more 
 manifest A few oblong holes are punched 
 in for windows in the upstairs department, 
 and of course there are the large store-win- 
 dows below. Something in the way of nice 
 architecture might be done with the gable end 
 of the roof, but the merchant likes to have the 
 front boarding carried up square and high to 
 hide the roof; in fact, he likes it ugly. A 
 plain boarded parallelogram, reaching seven 
 or eight feet above the ridge, strikes him as 
 105
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 about the thing. You can't see the roof then ; 
 in fact, you would not know there was a roof. 
 What could be better? The spirit of com- 
 petition soon attracts another merchant, and 
 we may be very sure that he will make an 
 effort to outdo the first man in ugly utility. 
 He will, perhaps, have no apertures or break 
 of any kind in the vast square of boarding 
 above his store windows. By and by people 
 build houses to live in, and an hotel ; and 
 naturally the same conditions prevail. The 
 packing-box style of architecture is established 
 for the buildings of the early years of every 
 settlement. The people would consider it a 
 waste of money to employ an architect, and 
 the packing-box style of architecture needs 
 none. The object is to get a place to store 
 goods, or to live in, that will cost as little as 
 possible ; and it must be owned that there is 
 but little native appreciation of beauty in the 
 colonizing Anglo-Saxon. The trail of " Early 
 Commercial" is over all these new towns, 
 and it takes scores of years before they appre- 
 ciate Early English or any other more beautiful 
 style of building. Even the Doukhobors build 
 better than your prosaic and pushing Anglo- 
 Saxon, whose imaginative soul and shrewd 
 intelligence are set on dollars to the exclusion 
 of everything else, and who thinks nothing 
 106
 
 A Hudson's Bay Post 
 
 of desecrating a beautiful landscape with the 
 most detestably ugly buildings that can pos- 
 sibly be erected. Thereby much bad taste is 
 nurtured among children, and necessarily 
 prosaic lives are made still more prosaic and 
 featureless. When the people in these towns 
 " get up " a little, they travel, see better build- 
 ings, and by degrees a better style of archi- 
 tecture creeps in. They begin to acquire what 
 are called " residential streets," and the pack- 
 ing-box architecture gives place to something 
 much more tolerable, so that you may see both 
 at Edmonton and Calgary, notably in the 
 latter place, buildings of most satisfactory and 
 pleasing design. 
 
 But this is a digression. I was saying that 
 at the ancient trading-post of the Hudson's 
 Bay Company at Edmonton, you are away 
 from the modernity of the new town, and are 
 conscious of a certain atmosphere of historical 
 romance. From the front of the massive 
 whitewashed buildings, which have more than 
 once been attacked by hostile foes, you have a 
 fine prospect of river and woodland and fertile 
 plains, stretching away to the blue distance. 
 The Saskatchewan runs in a deep gorge below 
 you, and on the farther bank there is a diver- 
 sity of outline and foliage that is very delight- 
 ful. But I don't suppose the Hudson's Bay 
 107
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 people used to think much of the beauty of 
 the scenery in the midst of which their trad- 
 ing-post happened to be situated. Their eyes 
 were set on " the main chance " rather too in- 
 tently for that. When the Indian came for a 
 sack of flour, they stood his gun upright and 
 made him pile skins up to its muzzle from the 
 ground, as the price of it. Well, of course, it 
 had taken considerable trouble and expense 
 to get the flour there, and there was no com- 
 petition. 
 
 The fur trade is still pursued at Edmonton, 
 and on the main street one sees more than one 
 sign on which is painted in legible letters, 
 " Furs bought here for cash." Bears are to be 
 seen occasionally within a few miles of the 
 town, and it was not long ago that a Galician 
 farmer of the neighbourhood, seeing a cub 
 roaming near his stock, fetched his gun and 
 fired at it. Thereupon its mother appeared 
 and ran at him viciously, open-mouthed, and 
 wishful to tear his vitals. The man, having 
 powder but no more slugs, felt that a Gali- 
 cian's house is his castle, and retiring therein 
 barricaded himself as well as he could. Till 
 the day broke the she-bear clawed all over the 
 place in the endeavour to get at him. But the 
 daylight enabled the farmer to find a couple 
 more slugs, with which he despatched his 
 108
 
 The Trade in Fun 
 
 assailant, afterwards coming up to Edmonton 
 triumphantly with her skin and that of the 
 cub for sale. Only the other day a bear was 
 seen by a townsman prowling around his 
 backyard, though it decamped with rapidity, 
 warned apparently by the increasing daylight 
 and by the noise the Edmontonian made in 
 opening his backdoor, that the environment 
 was unsuitable for an animal of its type. If 
 you go forty or fifty miles north or north-west 
 you may " load for b'ar " with reasonable hope 
 of bagging a specimen. Other fur-bearing 
 animals are correspondingly numerous, and 
 many a Mooswa and his companions roam in 
 the vast wilderness. 
 
 I went into the principal fur warehouse 
 that of MacDougall & Secord and saw heaps 
 of furs just as they are brought in by the half- 
 breeds and Indians and traders, or collected 
 at the branch trading-posts which the larger 
 firms have established in various parts of the 
 country. There were skins of beaver and 
 bear, of fox and wolf and coon, the smaller 
 skins folded up inside-out, looking stiff and 
 flat just as they had come out of the packs in 
 which they had been brought over the long 
 trail from the forest. Hanging up by them- 
 selves were two fine skins which I was told 
 were silver fox, and which were worth $100 
 109
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 apiece. The ordinary yellow fox skins are 
 worth $3 or $4. It was in this place that 
 the famous silver fox skin was sold a year or 
 two ago unrivalled in the history of the fur 
 trade that brought the extraordinary price 
 of $1,740. It was the only one of its kind to 
 be had in the world, and someone who had a 
 good deal of money wanted it 
 
 These heaps of furs give evidence enough 
 of the constant warfare that is carried on 
 against the wild animals of the forest ; the 
 stealthy creep of the hunter, and the long 
 watch and careful machinations of the trapper. 
 To the north lies a vast wild country of forest 
 and wilderness, which, in the opinion of 
 traders, will always remain so, and will con- 
 tinue to produce a sufficient quantity of the 
 precious pelts. In reckoning, therefore, the 
 resources of Canada, it is plain that there is 
 the primitive forest to be accounted for as 
 well as that which produces lumber, and, in 
 addition to the wealth of the mine, the fishery 
 and the field. We have electricity and rail- 
 roads, and educational centres, but still on 
 the fringes of our half-continent are to be 
 found those who carry on one of the pursuits 
 of primal man. We say, " How d'ye do ? " 
 to Edison on one side of our territory, and 
 shake hands with Adam on the other. The
 
 The Galician Settlers 
 
 great zoologic world still for the most part 
 holds good, though we have exterminated the 
 buffalo. No doubt those skins I saw in the 
 fur warehouse were about the same in quality 
 as those with which our first parent clothed 
 himself when he was driven from the Garden 
 of Eden, and I suppose that one reason of the 
 survival of the fur trade is the fact that the 
 quality of the commodity is kept up, a condi- 
 tion that is not always observed in manufac- 
 tured goods, our ingenious workers being 
 always on the hunt for further methods of 
 adulterating their product without being 
 found out. 
 
 THE GALICIAN SETTLERS. 
 
 I heard a good deal of talk about the 
 Galicians, of whom there is a settlement of 
 some eight or ten thousand not far from 
 Edmonton, but as the weather was very much 
 unsettled and rainy while I was there I had 
 no chance of visiting them. They are said to 
 make very good farmers, and they are extra 
 good workers, "far better than the Douks," 
 said more than one. They seem likely to 
 conform to Canadian conditions, and to be a 
 valuable addition to our tribe of settlers. 
 They speedily discard their sheepskins and 
 other distinctive clothing, and wish to be
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 " allee samee as Clanadian man," as Jack 
 Chinaman says. Especially is this the case 
 with the girls, many of whom are in domestic 
 service in Edmonton, and whose taste for 
 the millinery and dry-goods of the Far West 
 is undoubted. They are usually shorter and 
 of heavier build than our slim Canadian girls, 
 and such is their desire to assimilate with 
 their new surroundings that they may even 
 soon hold the conviction that typewriting and 
 the business college are the chief end of 
 woman. At present, however, they afford a 
 valued solution of the problem that is a 
 familiar one to every householder that 
 which is presented by the difficulty of getting 
 goddesses for the kitchen. Meanwhile, the 
 question of who will get hold of the Galician 
 vote is one that is exercising some minds. 
 The Roman Catholic archbishop has, I under- 
 stand, put forward the claim that as they 
 were associated with that Church in Europe, 
 they naturally come under his jurisdiction, 
 although they had not entirely thrown off 
 their hereditary connection with the Ortho- 
 dox Greek Church. The majority of the 
 Galicians appear, however, to think that their 
 exodus to this new free country should enable 
 them to revive their ancient allegiance to the 
 Greek Church as it is in Russia. But they 
 112
 
 A Government Grant 
 
 are, to a great extent, ignorant and super- 
 stitious, and therefore little fitted to fight 
 their battle of theological freedom. Already 
 there is trouble over a Government grant of 
 forty acres for church purposes, of which a 
 good deal will no doubt be heard in the 
 immediate future.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE SPLENDID PANORAMA OF THE 
 ROCKIES 
 
 FIELD, B.C., July 3ist 
 
 THE comfortable and daring C. P. R. hotel 
 at Banff, perched high up on the side of a 
 lofty mountain, in the midst of the greatest 
 grandeurs and beauties to be found in Canada, 
 is essentially a pleasure and recreation place. 
 Not there do you meet, unless he is on a holi- 
 day, the industrious drummer or the pushing 
 business man " with a scheme on." The only 
 business at Banff is to enjoy one's self, to 
 recreate, to loaf in the sunshine and worship 
 nature. You sit at dinner in style, and eat 
 your fried chicken a la Maryland to the 
 " March El Capitan " or a " Fantaisie from 
 Der Freischutz," played by the Melrose Trio 
 three clever young ladies who are great on 
 the piano, the violin, and the seductive 'cello. 
 You look out on the mountains from any or 
 every window, and are only fetched back
 
 The Banff C R R. Hotel 
 
 from a reverie by an American female at your 
 table ordering green tea. The hotel is in a 
 measure unique. I have spoken of it as dar- 
 ing, and so it is a piece of good engineer- 
 ing as to its foundations, and of ingenious 
 architecture as to its construction. Light 
 stained and varnished pine is in evidence in 
 its spacious and comfortable interior. Succes- 
 sive galleries overtop one another in the 
 octagonal rotunda, so that you can come out of 
 your bedroom and gaze down at the company 
 assembled there " from all lands," as the rail- 
 way prospectus says. Not only is good music 
 played at dinner, but there is a charming 
 little instrumental concert in the evening by 
 the three ladies aforesaid. There is nothing 
 that takes the hotelishness off an hotel like 
 nice music. Under its influence the young 
 begin to sentimentalize and the elderly to be 
 retrospective. Another atmosphere is created 
 and a new note is given to the surroundings. 
 You are introduced to the mountains gradu- 
 ally, as you are able to bear it. Not with a 
 too precipitate haste does the railroad usher 
 you into the presence-chamber of these king- 
 like majesties. We had been looking at them 
 from afar, at Calgary, for days, and had been 
 awed by their calm and regal nobility. True, 
 they were miles and miles away, a mere 
 "5
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 dream, sometimes, of snow-capped peaks and 
 purple shadows. Not less were they the one 
 august thing in the surroundings of the new 
 and thriving western town. And now we 
 had boarded the "Limited" in the hot evening 
 sunshine, and should not leave it again till 
 we had been taken right into the heart of the 
 Rockies. At first our way lay through the 
 rounded " foot-hills " that circumferentiate 
 Calgary, and ever nearer us was the busy talk- 
 ing Bow River that was to be our companion 
 till we got to Banff, and after. Now, the Bow 
 River has its origin in the mountains, and is fed 
 by their everlasting snows and myriad trick- 
 ling streams. Fancy transformed its voices 
 into those of a crowded procession of pilgrims 
 returning from the wondrous region, and 
 talking about what they had seen. There 
 were the voices of old and young, of gentle 
 and simple, the prophetic and prosaic, the roar 
 of the undistinguished voices of the multitude. 
 But all were in accord as to the greatness of 
 the mountains. I caught that of an old man, 
 who was sententiously quoting Scripture as 
 the only thing that could properly express his 
 feelings on the occasion ; while near him 
 marched one who was by no means Scrip- 
 tural in his objurgatory remarks on the 
 general effect of the Rockies upon his feel- 
 116

 
 The Dream-chorus of a Crowd 
 
 ings. Still another said, "You bet your 
 bottom dollar they're great." An Imperialist, 
 with a very emphatic tone of utterance, said 
 that "nothing but the British Empire could 
 have produced such mountains," and the ever- 
 present witling said they had made him feel 
 " decidedly rocky," and called for a " B. and S." 
 Then a bold promontory came between us 
 and the river, and I could hear the voices no 
 longer. But soon afterwards that procession 
 wound about and in and out so much that we 
 heard it again and again at intervals like the 
 " chorus of five hundred voices " coming in 
 en masse at an oratorio. "They are!" they 
 shouted ; " they are ! " which under the cir- 
 cumstances and at the moment seemed very 
 satisfactory, although of the nature of a dream. 
 It may be that it is the property and attribute 
 of all great things in nature to seem like a 
 dream, whether the vastness of mountains or 
 the widespread wonder of the tossing sea, or 
 the colour of a purple moorland at sunset when 
 the orb of day grows crimson and hides in the 
 foliage of a few lonely trees. So now it seemed 
 like a dream when the gray and rugged top 
 of one of the mountains rose in its distant 
 height and serenity above the rounded green 
 of the foot-hills, and when, a few moments 
 afterwards, we came round a curve and saw 
 117
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 the Great Ones for the first time, in all their 
 grandeur, from purple base to snow-streaked 
 summit, and stretching up to them the fring- 
 ing growth of silent and dark-coloured pines. 
 By this time the brilliant sunlight which 
 had accompanied us and burnished every 
 blade of grass and flower and leaf of the land- 
 scape, and in which insects had gaily flut- 
 tered and gambolled, was dying down, and as 
 we went along, the rocky heights were painted 
 in divine purples and grays, sometimes ap- 
 pearing as undefined purplish-gray back- 
 grounds for multitudinous pines, and again, 
 for the moment, sharply defined in every 
 feature of their abrupt complexity by the rays 
 of the sinking sun. From now onwards for fifty 
 miles we had a series of the most inspiring 
 pictures, which, though no two of them were 
 alike, retained the main features of mountains, 
 pines, river and foreground. In fact, so great 
 is the variety in this Alpine district of 763,000 
 square miles, that you might almost think 
 that a competent artist who had spent some 
 time here and imbibed the spirit of the moun- 
 tains might safely go home and paint any 
 picture of the kind that his fancy dictated, 
 assured that somewhere in this region he 
 would find the scene he had depicted. You 
 begin to feel the unmitigated vastness of it all 
 118
 
 A Paradise for Painters 
 
 very soon after you come into the enchanted 
 area of eternal steadfastness. The unalterable 
 immobility and repose of it ; the consciousness 
 that no march of science or feat of puny man 
 can ever by any possibility change it ; that it 
 will remain until the next cosmic cataclysm 
 just as it is now ; that it can never be " util- 
 ized," even by the most pushing and purseful 
 of stock companies, consequently that it is an 
 inheritance for mankind till mankind is wiped 
 off the earth these are some of the ideas that 
 come into one's head when the train stops at 
 a wayside station and you look up through 
 the fresh, cool mountain air to the summits 
 of the great peaks. 
 
 And yet these are not the biggest of the 
 mountains. They are some of the ordinary, 
 every-day, don't-care-a-cent mountains, with- 
 out even a name. Subjects for the painter 
 abound without stint, and the whole Ontario 
 Society of Artists and Royal Canadian 
 Academy might be turned loose here without 
 treading on each other's toes. Nor need the 
 pictures produced have too much sameness 
 about them. There is endless variety of form 
 and mood, and even our best painters of this 
 part of the Dominion will be the first to con- 
 fess that there is an ideal that has at present 
 eluded them. Yet only the painter can give 
 119
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 anything like a due impression of them. I 
 respect the photographer's art, but it falls 
 lamentably short. To those who have seen 
 the mountains, photographs reproduce to a 
 faint extent their vivid impressions, but, some- 
 how, they do not give you the far-away gran- 
 deur, the sublime height and distance, the 
 elusive dream-like splendour of the reality. 
 
 I have said that there is great variety of 
 scene. Now and again we come to places 
 where life seems to be almost extinct, and 
 from the track to the summit all is unmitigated 
 rockiness, the whitened stems of blasted trees 
 looking drearier than if there were no organic 
 remains at all. They seem like the abodes 
 of the despairing lost. Yet in a few minutes 
 you come, perhaps, to a scene of beauty where 
 the river widens to a glassy lake, marged by 
 lush grass, among which grow gayest flowers ; 
 while mirrored in the water the graceful pines 
 stand in lovely masses, or pose apart like 
 beauties conscious of their charms. The trees 
 clothe part of the mountain with verdure, and 
 above the belt of vegetation towers the snow- 
 capped height Through a variety of pictures 
 like this we came at last to Banff, and saw 
 the electric lights of the hotel twinkling on 
 the mountain side, two miles from the station. 
 At this hotel, which is a wonder of art and
 
 THE C. P. R. HOTEL, BANFF
 
 Dignitaries and Millionaires Galore 
 
 invention in the wilderness, growing like an 
 air-fern up at that considerable height, without 
 any root or soil, as it were, you can have 
 everything that you can expect at a mountain 
 resort of the first class. There is also hot 
 sulphurous water gushing from the earth for 
 hypochondriacs to drink, and for the halt, 
 lame, and withered to bathe in well, the 
 baths are really very nice for anybody, 
 whether needing brimstone or not. In this 
 lovely place you find Church and State digni- 
 taries on their holidays, and American million- 
 aires and their wives, some of whom are very 
 plain people, and tell the story of how they 
 became rich with much naivet^ disowning the 
 idea of their possessing any special faculty 
 (in which the hearer is disposed to agree with 
 them) ; and confessing also that they don't 
 know what to do with their money now they've 
 got it, which seems also easily understandable. 
 For the present they are going to every place 
 they ever heard of, irrespective of expense or 
 distance, and not much enjoying it either. 
 And you can walk out or drive out, and make 
 intimate acquaintance with the mountains, t.e., 
 as intimate as they will allow, and wander by 
 the Bow River, whose translucent sea-green 
 flows over white stones and makes you rave 
 as to its colour. And ever rising high into the 
 
 121
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 blue sky are the serene snow-capped peaks, 
 from which the snow is melting in little run- 
 nels at least, they look like little runnels. 
 They are in reality good-sized streams, but 
 they are so many thousand feet up in the air 
 that they look little. And very near the 
 hotel are the Bow River Falls, which in every 
 way are most satisfactory a tumbling snow- 
 white mass of foaming water going down a 
 noble gorge, regardless of appearances and 
 altogether reckless. There is so much of it, 
 and it roars so loudly and shows such over- 
 mastering power, that it fills the demands of 
 the imagination and you sit and look at the 
 wonder with placid awe. The delightful air ; 
 the pleasant roads cut for miles along the 
 mountain sides ; the balsamic odour of pines 
 in sunshine ; the peeps into the quiet mossy 
 woods ; the gorgeous colour of the mountain 
 ranges in varying states of the atmosphere, 
 and the accompanying murmur of the Bow 
 River all these things, that look so common- 
 place in print, are there in their bewitching 
 reality. One could not help thinking how it 
 had all been there for ages before the railway 
 came. You have a sense of loneliness now, if 
 you get a mile or two from the hotel ; but what 
 must it have been a bare thirty or forty years 
 ago, when for months not a human foot trod
 
 Christening the Mountain Peaks 
 
 these stony solitudes ? And you know per- 
 fectly well that there are hundreds of square 
 miles of this lone territory that are unvisited 
 still. The great railway is a mere thread 
 running through a vast district where grandeur 
 towers over grandeur, and where only the 
 bear or the mountain goat know the way. 
 
 Of course, people have named a number of 
 these mountains, and the extraordinary satis- 
 faction it gives to a certain class of tourists to 
 know that they are named, and to be able to 
 point them out, is highly amusing. That seems 
 to be about everything they want. Guide- 
 book in hand, they sit looking out of the win- 
 dow, and dispute as to which is Mount Field 
 and which Mount Stephen. They will talk 
 for miles about it, and when they have settled 
 the point to their satisfaction, they are con- 
 tent. That at any rate is something settled 
 and done with. A mountain without a name 
 is, in their eyes, hardly respectable. It is like 
 a child found on a doorstep, and wants taking 
 to the police department. It must be con- 
 fessed that the self-constituted authorities have 
 not been backward in supplying the pressing 
 needs of these people. For one thing, there 
 is nothing to prevent you or me from christen- 
 ing them over again to our liking. As a rule, 
 they were named hastily by over-enthusiastic 
 123
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 people, who assumed a right to which they 
 had no claim ; and though these names are 
 down on maps, we may still please our fancy 
 by studying the appropriate in a private 
 nomenclature of our own. Naming one of 
 these grand mountains after any living person 
 seems utterly ridiculous when you are looking 
 at the mighty and everlasting masses. One 
 is inclined to break the silence with irreverent 
 laughter as one gazes. In truth, Alpine 
 climbers and engineers and geologists should 
 be restrained. So should astronomers. It 
 was all very well to name planets after the 
 good old mythological deities, but they are 
 actually calling stars after Dick, Tom and 
 Harry, which is surely the ne plus ultra of 
 commonplace vulgarity. 
 
 The' journey from Banff to Field in the 
 observation car by moonlight gave us a con- 
 tinuous panorama of mountain beauty. When 
 the train had gone on round the shoulder of 
 one of the castellated heights it was a quarter 
 past one a.m. and left us in the middle of 
 that small valley, solitary on the railway plat- 
 form, and we looked up at the mysterious 
 masses that rose high on all sides, and heard 
 the ghostly river that pours through it ever 
 murmuring, we felt like a little child that has 
 been left in a strange place by its mother. 
 124
 
 The Sleeping-car by the River 
 
 There was no room in the hotel, so the porter 
 put us into a sleeping-car on a siding. We 
 were the only occupant of this familiar vehicle, 
 and could have slept in a dozen beds consecu- 
 tively. As it was, however, we contented our- 
 selves with summoning on to the rear platform 
 those of our friends who we felt must have 
 travelled on that car in days gone by, before 
 it was relegated to be an appanage and 
 auxiliary to the C. P. R. hotel. 
 
 So, united in spirit, we watched the moon 
 sink out of sight behind the mountain, and 
 shadow and hush creep over all mortal things. 
 But still through the darkness came the 
 muffled murmur of the turbid river. 
 
 125
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 MOUNTAINS, AND AGAIN MOUNTAINS 
 
 VANCOUVER, August gth 
 
 You find mountain-climbers at Field, and 
 are disposed at first to join with the jog-trot- 
 ting critics who undervalue these youths 
 
 " . . . who bear through snow and ice, 
 A banner with the strange device, 
 Excelsior ! " 
 
 Strange, indeed ! quoth you. And some of 
 them are not youths. The intelligent and 
 mannerly lady-manager of the hotel tells you 
 that Mr. Whymper has been gone over the 
 mountains with his guides four whole days. 
 Mr. Whymper can be a callow youth no 
 longer think of the number of years you 
 have read of him in the Illustrated London 
 News ! And this elderly professor, too, from 
 a United States university, who is going about 
 the veranda on crutches palpably impro- 
 vised by the village carpenter, which rustic 
 126
 
 Some Typical Mountain-climbers 
 
 artisan must have exalted ideas of the quantity 
 of cubic feet of lumber in the supports neces- 
 sary to hold up a man of learning. You hear 
 he has dislocated his ankle in the act of moun- 
 tain-climbing, because the enthusiasm of the 
 moment overcame him, and he disregarded 
 the warnings and advice of his Swiss guide. 
 And here are four men one of them very fat, 
 so that if his companions were beneath him 
 on the ascent they might well cry, " Beware 
 the awful avalanche ! " Why should these 
 sober and industrious citizens, engaged usually 
 in stocks and railways and other Wall Street 
 things, thus court death ? Why should they 
 receive their natty boots from the hands of the 
 guide, with soles perfectly encrusted with 
 hobnails of abnormal size by the village shoe- 
 maker, and begin to put them on with glee, 
 as if they were the magic slippers of legend ? 
 Why should they depart whistling with an- 
 ticipatory joy ? You take note of the gentle- 
 man's crutches again, as they lean against the 
 wall, for he has sat down in a reclining-chair. 
 Are you going to place yourself in the way of 
 circumstances like those ? No, quoth you ; 
 not if you know it. 
 
 And then after a while you saunter across 
 the bridge over the river to the foot of the 
 mountain opposite, and you see a path a 
 127
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 straight and narrow path. What is there in a 
 path ? Of course, a path a mere path is all 
 right, and that is the sort of path you have 
 been always taught you should walk in. It is 
 a pretty path. It leads, apparently, through 
 arboreal shade, and the sun is hot. You 
 walk therein. The path ascends a little ; that 
 is natural at the foot of a mountain, where you 
 don't expect anything to be exactly on a level. 
 There are pines and an undergrowth of bram- 
 ble and various foliage ; flowers also bloom 
 there. Looking right and left, admiring and 
 enjoying, you come to a turn. Well, it is per- 
 haps a little steeper than the path you first 
 entered. How soft and pine-needly it is. So 
 quiet, too nothing but the murmur of the 
 river and the song of an occasional mosquito. 
 And there is a quick rustle among the dry 
 leaves of the undergrowth. What was that, a 
 squirrel or a fox ? A bird flies out suddenly. 
 The path turns again. It is a little steeper ; 
 well, for certain this is not the facile path to 
 Avernus, and no healthy man but likes an 
 occasional effort. And suddenly you leave it, 
 and catch hold of roots and stems of under- 
 brush, and plant your feet on smallish boulders 
 here and there. And now you come to a 
 place where a new trail has evidently been 
 made with picks and axes. Here a great 
 128
 
 A Charge up Canadian Kopjes 
 
 pine tree has been felled, and there a fallen 
 one has been yanked out of the way ; farther 
 on a ten-ton boulder has been skirted. Are 
 we to despise efforts like these ? What are 
 trails made for but to travel in ? And where 
 does this particular trail lead to ? There can 
 be no harm in going on just a little farther. 
 These are the pines of mossy eld. Who would 
 have thought that these trees on the mountain 
 side were so large? Bearded they are and 
 festooned with creepers and moss and tangled 
 growth of all kinds. The path grows palpa- 
 bly steeper, and you pant a little. Oh, well, 
 " in for a penny, in for a pound " ; water can't 
 run up hill, but you can. How awful it must 
 have been charging up those kopjes ! They 
 must have been about as steep as this. You 
 will try how it is to charge up hill. The Boers 
 are at the top, and you fancy you have your 
 rifle in your hand. Now then, Charge ! And 
 up you go with a rush, shouting insanely an 
 improvised war-whoop that would have fright- 
 ened a Cronje. 
 
 You can tell just how it was now, and you 
 sit down to think about it. A sedentary pos- 
 ture is favourable to thinking. Why, here is 
 a break in the foliage ! Who would have 
 thought you had got up so far ? The hotel 
 looks quite small down there, but everything 
 9 129
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide "West 
 
 is well defined. There is the professor sitting 
 as you left him, and there are his crutches 
 leaning against the wall. Wonder where it 
 was he fell ; there is nothing dangerous here. 
 Of course, if you lost your balance and fell 
 down among those boulders it might be 
 awkward, but who would think of doing 
 that ? You begin to fancy you have a native 
 instinct for mountain climbing. Strange, 
 these natural gifts perhaps a survival. Fol- 
 lowing the association of ideas, you get up, 
 unconsciously, and begin to climb. The 
 primal ape climbed. Did he climb moun- 
 tains ? You " reckon " he climbed anything 
 he came up against. Rather handy to be an 
 ape. An ape would be handy at a mountain, 
 even with his feet. How naturally you catch 
 hold of those roots and things ! You don't 
 think about it, you just "nacherally ketch 
 holt." Darwin was a trump. You can see the 
 very same thing in babies. They always 
 " ketch holt " saw an essay about it some- 
 where ; doctor had tried experiments ; baby 
 an hour old caught hold of his finger like a 
 monkey. Wanted to climb. Unnatural, in 
 fact, not to want to climb. 
 
 You wonder why Longfellow said, " Beware 
 the pine tree's withered branch." Hereabout 
 are numerous pine trees' withered branches, 
 13
 
 The Zigzag Mountain Trail 
 
 and there is nothing in them to beware of. 
 He only brought it in, you presume, to rhyme 
 with " avalanche." You wonder how that fat 
 man is getting on. Meanwhile you are climb- 
 ing in earnest, like a modern ape anxious to 
 prove the truth of the Darwinian theory. 
 Hello ! here is the trail again, and lo, another 
 opening through the branches of these imme- 
 morial pines. Far, far below you is the hotel 
 now. The professor sitting on the veranda 
 is a mere dot. The hotel itself is just a toy- 
 house ; you could put three or four of it into 
 a fair-sized Noah's ark ; an ordinary baby 
 would have it all broken up to flinders in a 
 minute or two. And the great mountain 
 opposite is actually leaning over to you it 
 almost overhangs you its height seems even 
 more august than from the valley. While you 
 are gazing you hear the distant murmur of 
 falling water, and you hasten up the trail. 
 You are reckless now. You gaze down 
 through the tangle of trees, through flecks of 
 sunlight and purple shadows. Gaps occur 
 through which you see the tops of hundred- 
 foot pines below you, and ever upward leads 
 the trail, winding, zig-zagging past obstacles. 
 You get nearer and nearer to the falling water, 
 and at last behold the mountain stream tum- 
 bling, jumping, bounding over boulders, and
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 foaming and sparkling right across your path. 
 Somebody has left a tomato-can on a boulder, 
 and with the instincts of a tramp you seize it 
 and drink, and you can tell by the taste of the 
 water that it is melted snow from the heights 
 above you. There are stepping-stones for 
 you to cross the stream by, and having drunk 
 of the enchanted draught you are naturally 
 enchanted, and crutches or no crutches, dislo- 
 cations or broken limbs defied, you are going 
 on. You do lunatic Boer rushes ; you imitate 
 your very earliest primeval ancestor the one 
 that used to play dibstones with live trilobites 
 in the intervals between the acts of his Excel- 
 sior business. You sometimes wish that there 
 was a captive balloon in a convenient place 
 above you, and a rope that you could take 
 hold of. Where there is a perceptible trail, of 
 course you use it, and there are generally 
 marks where someone has slipped down and 
 got up again, and there is always a root, or 
 the stem of a young tree, or a bunch of grass 
 to lay hold of. You get very near to mother 
 earth, and kneel sometimes as though you 
 were popping the question to her, and some- 
 times you sit, panting and breathless, as though 
 she had met you with her everlasting " No." 
 She does so meet you after a time, even when 
 you have scrabbled and grovelled to her, going 
 132
 
 Alps, Pyrenees and Himalayas Combined 
 
 not only on your knees, but on all fours. You 
 have left the trees behind you and come to 
 bare rocks and soil without much depth, sparse 
 in herbage ; and the path is scarcely worth 
 calling a path it is a mere occasional mark 
 showing where others have scrabbled before 
 you. At last these cease, and you come to an 
 impassable face of rock, down a cleft in which 
 falls the water that feeds the tumbling stream 
 below. You are among the mountains, where 
 the ages lie buried beneath miles of monu- 
 mental stone, a region of distance, height and 
 immensity. You know that above that wall 
 of rock lie the deep drifts of everlasting snow, 
 and if you could you would scale it. 
 
 After all, Swiss guides and climbing appa- 
 ratus have their uses. You wish that you 
 had them at hand now, and you know very 
 well that if you had them you would not be 
 content till you stood on the highest peak 
 of this mountain, the climbing of which you 
 were previously disposed to pooh-pooh. Time 
 and space would fail me were I to attempt to 
 tell all the wonders of these Canadian Alps, 
 these Pyrenees of the Dominion, these Him- 
 alayas of the land of the Maple Leaf. No- 
 body knows all these mountains, and there is 
 room for an army of explorers upon them. 
 What with the Ottertail Range, and the
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 Selkirks, and Mount Sir Donald, and Kick- 
 ing Horse Pass and the Great Glacier, and 
 heights, and depths, and torrents, you get 
 bewildered. It is too hurried a proceeding 
 to attempt to " do " them in a few days. I 
 should like to go with a small well-appointed 
 expedition and see some of those far-off 
 lonely heights, and hunt the bear and big- 
 horn that are frequent among their forests. 
 
 A drive of six miles from Field brings you 
 to Emerald Lake, with its attendant peak of 
 volcanic rock sticking sharply up into the 
 blue above the solemn pines. There are few 
 places where you may feel more absolutely at 
 rest and removed from the dust and grind of 
 life. Another still more beautiful piece of 
 water is Lake Louise, where from the ver- 
 anda of the Chalet hotel you look out on a 
 picture of lake and mountain beauty that you 
 are inclined to feel is quite unsurpassed in 
 your experience. 
 
 Between Field and Revelstoke the gran- 
 deurs of the mountains become almost oppres- 
 sive in their sublimity. " The Great Glacier 
 of the Selkirks a vast plateau of gleaming 
 ice extending as far as the eye can reach, is as 
 large, it is said, as all those of Switzerland 
 combined ; the ice-field of which the Great 
 Glacier is one of a number of outlets, embrac-
 
 Mountains You Pass in the Night 
 
 ing more than two hundred square miles." 
 The railroad that climbs up and down and 
 swings itself over chasms and creeps along 
 perilous ledges is altogether too speedy. 
 Your stock of adjectives runs out. You look 
 up and see a massive height towering in 
 granitic strength to the skies, and you say, 
 " What, after all, is puny man ? " Then you 
 rattle over some daring bridge across a deep 
 gorge, and are constrained to say that man is 
 a very wonderful being, indeed. Darkness 
 comes on and you seek your berth ; but when 
 morning breaks and you look out of window, 
 there, still, are the mountains. By and by, 
 when you have passed through scores of miles 
 of mountains you transfer your admiration 
 from man in general to the engineers who so 
 successfully carried the great railway through. 
 Not till they have been westward along it can 
 Canadians be said to know their Canada. 
 
 You see mountains with everlasting snow 
 upon them here and there until you reach the 
 coast, but there are also some very delightful 
 lakes, and all about this region the fishing and 
 hunting is very good. You hear lots of true 
 fish stories and much talk of caribou, so that 
 would-be Nimrods should pack up and pre- 
 pare to come here at once. You begin also 
 to meet mine prospectors on the train, for you
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 are approaching the land of gold. They tell 
 of places they have seen on the mountains 
 where game is so plentiful that they got tired 
 of eating it, and longed to change venison, 
 partridges and grouse for the usual city fare. 
 Passing Revelstoke, the centre of much poten- 
 tial mineral wealth, you come to three or four 
 beautiful lakes in succession, and presently to 
 the great Shuswap Lake, where for fifty miles 
 the line skirts the bending shores. Then for 
 many a league you begin to think that British 
 Columbia is a place of sand. Big sandhills 
 covered with dryish-looking grass, which you 
 learn is bunch grass, and good for cattle, form 
 the outlook on both sides and rather tire you, 
 they look so dry, and are only relieved by the 
 Thompson River, which begins to keep you 
 company. Yet there are numerous ranches, 
 and when you come to the thriving little town 
 of Kamloops, beautifully situated on its lake, 
 you see a lot of cattle being shipped west. 
 
 136
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 K AM LOOPS AND VANCOUVER 
 
 VANCOUVER, B.C., August i5th 
 I SPENT a day or two at Kamloops with 
 a good deal of pleasure, though the hotels are 
 by no means of a palatial quality. The town 
 is beautifully situated on its lake in what is 
 called the " dry belt," and it is a valued resort 
 for those who are suffering from pulmonary 
 affections. Perhaps it is from being in the 
 dry belt that a well-developed thirst seems to 
 be easily evolved there by some of its inhabi- 
 tants. The town is the centre of a very 
 prosperous ranching country, and a large 
 number of Chinese are employed. I met 
 there a man who told me that no one engaged 
 in agricultural operations who had made the 
 experiment of Chinese labour ever went back 
 to white employees. Chinese labourers, he 
 said, were always to be depended upon to go 
 on with the work they were set to do, whether 
 their employer's eye was upon them or not ;
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 while in all the operations of the farm their 
 performance was so superior to that of the 
 ordinary hired man as to leave no choice 
 between them. Some of the Chinamen in 
 Kamloops are decidedly well off. There is a 
 populous Chinese end to the town, and the 
 Mongolian settlement is under the domina- 
 tion and control of a Tyee, who is a very 
 important person indeed. I saw this portly 
 man, and he has quite the air of mastery 
 about him, and a rollicking, independent gait, 
 very different to the curious shuffle of the 
 rank and file of his countrymen of the in- 
 dustrial class. He was the only Chinaman 
 in Kamloops towards whom I felt any an- 
 tipathy. The rest of them seemed to be such 
 straightforward, amiable and satisfactory little 
 fellows, that one did not wonder at the 
 encomiums one had heard from the before- 
 mentioned agriculturist. 
 
 Anything will grow in Kamloops if you 
 supply it with water ; and I saw gardens and 
 flowers there that were the very acme of 
 luxuriant growth and colour. The town is 
 built on both sides of a long street, down the 
 middle of which the C. P. R. runs, but when 
 passing through this thoroughfare the speed 
 is limited to four miles an hour. There is a 
 very nice little club here, at which I was 
 138
 
 Speeding the Parting Guest 
 
 obligingly " put up " by one of the members, 
 and which, for its size, has a remarkably com- 
 plete collection of current newspapers and 
 literature. When I was leaving this hos- 
 pitable place I took advantage of the passing 
 of the train slowly down the central street to 
 board it while it was moving, as going to the 
 railway station would have involved a walk 
 which the hot weather made one deprecate. 
 The only thing that made me doubt the 
 safety of performing this feat on that hot, 
 sunny morning, was the fact that I had three 
 considerable pieces of baggage and an um- 
 brella. But four of the thirsty habitues of 
 the hotel were so anxious to do something 
 meritorious and kindly that I had no diffi- 
 culty. "You get on the train, boss, and 
 we'll see to your things." And taking each an 
 article of my impedimenta, they stationed 
 themselves at intervals of half a dozen yards 
 immediately beside the track. So that when 
 I had boarded the train it was easy to suc- 
 cessively receive the various items of my 
 baggage. The only embarrassing thing about 
 it was that each of them, after giving me the 
 respective thing he had the care of, insisted 
 on shaking hands with me and wishing me a 
 pleasant journey ; but the experience on the 
 whole was such a pleasing one that I could
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 not refrain from leaning out from the side of 
 the train and waving persistent farewells to 
 my row of kindly helpers. 
 
 After you leave Kamloops you come to the 
 most God-forsaken-looking place of desola- 
 tion the Black Canyon. Treeless, arid, des- 
 ert-like, it would take the pen of a Dante to 
 fitly characterize its dour gloom. Hurry on, 
 train, and bring us to the Fraser Canyon, with 
 its wild rocks, its trees, its unparalleled gran- 
 deur. The river swirls far beneath you 
 through great masses of fallen rock, and every 
 turn of the line shows you fresh beauty, for 
 you are coming to the big British Columbia 
 pines, to more luxuriant foliage, to a wealth 
 of wild flowers, to richer vegetation of all kinds. 
 The air is softer and more balmy, and you 
 begin to see moss on the roofs of the cottages 
 as you used to see it in the Old Country years 
 ago. At length Mount Baker rears his snow- 
 covered head on the left, and keeps you com- 
 pany nearly all the way to Vancouver. His 
 snows grow pink in the sunset glow, and on 
 your right mysterious dark-blue, shadowy 
 mountains are rising. Between you and them 
 is placid water the inlet from the Pacific. 
 The train slips along rapidly and soon you are 
 at the important and spacious Vancouver sta- 
 tion, and, afterwards, at what your friends tell 
 140
 
 The Problem of the Mongolian 
 
 you is the " best Canadian hotel west of Mont- 
 real." You are inclined to believe it as one of 
 the numerous Jap bellboys takes your bag- 
 gage and conducts you through elevator and 
 roomy corridors to a perfectly appointed and 
 metropolitan-looking apartment. 
 
 Two of the things that strike the visitor to 
 Vancouver are the exceeding beauty of its 
 situation, in which land and water are com- 
 bined in delightful proportion, and also the 
 number of Chinese and Japs to be seen every- 
 where. I do not see exactly what the British 
 Columbians would do without the Chinese. A 
 householder in Vancouver said : " For us it is 
 either having Chinamen as servants, or hand- 
 ing our wives and daughters over to drudgery. 
 We cannot get girls, and if we could get them 
 they would not stay with us." Consequently 
 you find them as domestics in the houses you 
 go to ; they are on hand in the hotels, and you 
 see them peddling fruit and vegetables in the 
 streets. 
 
 Vancouver is a charming city, and it has the 
 makings in it of a great western emporium of 
 trade. It is laid out on big lines. Its port, 
 where the vessels from India, China, Japan 
 and Australasia come in, is a scene of vivid 
 interest, situated as it is on a splendid deep- 
 water harbour that seems meant by nature to 
 141
 
 Ff om the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 be one of the principal trading localities of the 
 world. Its business streets and street-cars are 
 up-to-date, and business blocks and banks are 
 visible on every hand. The snow-capped 
 mountains on the other side of Burrard Inlet 
 afford a background to the outlook that gives 
 it an element of grandeur and dignity. They 
 look down on a city of homes. Far away into 
 the suburbs spread the streets of neat and 
 attractive wooden houses, the great propor- 
 tion of which are of most satisfactory design, 
 while flowers and shrubs flourish everywhere. 
 Close to the city is Stanley Park, nine miles 
 round, which is a beautiful piece of the prim- 
 eval forest, where you can see in all their glory 
 the gigantic trees of British Columbia. Im- 
 mense pine trees and cedars rise in columnar 
 beauty, and underneath is every variety of 
 tangled brushwood ferns, moss, and what- 
 ever goes to fill up woodland scenery. I 
 measured one big cedar : it was forty-seven 
 feet round, or about sixteen feet through, 
 while trees of ten feet or twelve feet diameter 
 are common, and they rise to mighty heights. 
 There is a solemn silence in this woodland, 
 and few bird-voices. Only an occasional caw 
 from a crow breaks the stillness, and you have 
 the feeling that nature is waiting for some- 
 thing that is going to happen. You walk a 
 142
 
 A Complacent Population 
 
 little way and gaze out over the sea, and look- 
 ing back you see the avenues of the forest full 
 of purple shadows and sun-gilded haze. There 
 is a nobility and majesty about the scene that 
 calms and exalts the mind. 
 
 The people are hospitable, democratic and 
 good-natured. They believe in their province 
 and think it the only place worth living in. 
 At English Bay, where there is a fine bathing 
 beach, and which is within a quarter of an 
 hour's street-car ride of the centre of the city, 
 you see numbers of them in the beautiful sea 
 water, of all ages and both sexes, enjoying 
 themselves with great freedom, and as happy 
 as a school of porpoises. When they exchange 
 the element for terra firma they are none the 
 less disposed to make the best of their bless- 
 ings. One of the minor ones is that their city 
 is not on a dead level, but exhibits a pleasing 
 diversity of grade, so that everywhere you can 
 get views of sea and mountains by walking an 
 inconsiderable distance. A greater is their 
 soft Pacific climate that is never very cold and 
 never very hot, and it is only in the winter 
 that the soft fine rain becomes, perhaps, a 
 little too persistent 
 
 143
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 SALMON- CANNING 
 
 IT is at the salmon canneries on the Eraser 
 River that you see the greatest number of 
 Chinamen at work. The date of my visit 
 synchronized with the great annual rush of 
 the fish from the sea up the river to deposit 
 their spawn in the flowing water that has had 
 the chill taken off it by the hot summer sun- 
 shine. Helter-skelter, crowding together 
 with an eagerness to obey natural law which 
 is as cosmic as the daily rising and shining of 
 the great luminary on the soft Pacific waves, 
 they come with a rush. This, also, is the 
 fourth year since the last specially enormous 
 catch, and consequently I have the oppor- 
 tunity of seeing the salmon fishery at the 
 height of its activity. For this great harvest 
 of the sea varies in its abundance. Next 
 year the salmon will be fewer. The following 
 year's rush will be less the next still less. 
 144
 
 The Drive to Stevcston Canneries 
 
 Four years from now will come again the 
 " great multitude of fishes," bigger than that 
 which " brake " Simon Peter's net. On 
 these recurring fourth years it is impossible to 
 cast the net on the wrong side of the ship. 
 This season there are really more fish than 
 the canneries can handle, and there is salmon 
 going a-begging. 
 
 We drove seventeen miles to Steveston to 
 see the canning. There are twenty-nine 
 canneries at this queer town of plank streets, 
 wooden houses and big canneries that strag- 
 gle all along the river-front. It is alive and 
 kicking for two or three months in the year 
 the rest of the time it sleeps, and the visitor 
 then wanders through deserted thoroughfares 
 and shut-up canneries. Our drive took us 
 over the half-mile bridge that spans " False 
 Creek," one of the waterways of Vancouver, 
 and through jmiles of fire-swept bush, where 
 the ruins of enormous pines stick up black- 
 ened into the sunshine. Below all is brush 
 and flowers ; a wilderness of green and pink, 
 with the pink predominating in masses, for 
 there is a pink flower that grows luxuriantly 
 everywhere. Then we came to more long 
 bridges over sea inlets, and to a region of 
 fertile farms, off which a big hay harvest had 
 just been reaped ; and at last, over a mile 
 10 145
 
 From the Gt eat Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 and a half of the straightest and dustiest road 
 it was ever my lot to travel, to the long 
 straggling Steveston canneries. All the way 
 it had been tolerably dusty, for when Van- 
 couver and its neighbourhood are dry they go 
 in for drought with a vengeance ; but that last 
 piece of the drive was so dusty that when, 
 owing to the superiority of your horseflesh, 
 you passed any vehicle on the road, you felt 
 that the language of the occupants was justifi- 
 able. We gave orders that the horse should 
 be put through the whole menu card at the 
 feed-stables, and, having taken a mild snack 
 ourselves salmon was " off," by the way, but 
 what could you expect ? we sauntered to the 
 canneries through odd streets where there 
 were boats on dry ground here and there, 
 and by back ways where we met Indian 
 women and a fishy smell. The canneries are 
 great sheds opening on one side on the river ; 
 and going into their semi-darkness out of the 
 sunshine we became conscious of the perform- 
 ance of a great provision industry by the 
 agency of blue-bloused, sallow Chinamen of 
 all ages. First, however, let us walk to the 
 river front, where the boats are coming in 
 with their cargoes of fish. Soon we are look- 
 ing out on the bright-glancing, drab water 
 for the Fraser is turbid. There are many 
 146
 
 Salmon-fishing: Calls up Memories 
 
 sailboats sixteen or eighteen feet long, per- 
 haps ; broadish in the beam, strongly built. 
 They go out into the river, and from them 
 nets are cast, into the meshes of which the 
 eager fish rush and are caught by the gills. 
 The principal work this year seems to be 
 taking the fish out of the nets and knocking 
 them on the head to stop tail-wagging. It 
 would be a great place for an amateur sports- 
 man to come to who likes to take home a full 
 creel. He wouldn't have to go to the fish- 
 monger's at all. The greatest fool of a fisher- 
 man could get any number. Look at these 
 boats waiting to discharge their cargo there 
 is a big cart-load in each of them ! You 
 could load fish and dump it as Elias Rogers 
 & Company's carts do coal in Toronto. I 
 call to mind that salmon-fishing was the 
 favourite recreation of John Bright and Millais, 
 and think of the " Tribune of the People," 
 the day, perhaps, after he had made a 
 great speech at Manchester, plying his deft 
 rod in the brown and sparkling waters of 
 some Scotch river ; the artistic and sentient 
 hand that had been raised to emphasize a 
 point of oratory throwing the line with deli- 
 cate skill, while Millais a little lower down 
 the stream was enjoying both the scenery and 
 the fishing. Well, that was recreation this
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 is business ; there is no delicate handling 
 necessary here it is just shovelling up salmon 
 out of Nature's abundant tank. Twelve 
 and a half cents each the men get for their 
 fish. A moment or two ago at the hotel you 
 had seen one of them give the landlord $250 
 to take care of for him. He said he had 
 earned it during the previous week. 
 
 We turn to the interior of the cannery, and 
 find ourselves standing by a great heap of 
 salmon. The heap is about forty feet long 
 and ten wide. There may be ten or fifteen 
 thousand salmon there. Flanking this is a 
 long, wet, fishmongery-looking bench, at which 
 a solemn old Chinaman is at work with a big 
 sharp knife. It is rather wet and slippery 
 everywhere, so that you walk carefully, and 
 there is such an amphibious atmosphere about 
 that you might expect to meet a mermaid. 
 A fateful young Jap in rubber boots digs a 
 hook into a fish and lays it on the bench. 
 He has performed this process so often that 
 a row of fish is lying there side by side. His 
 job is to take care that the old Alice Knifee 
 shall always have one to his hand. Alice 
 Knifee is clever with that knife. He is an 
 artist. It is the supreme peculiarity of the 
 Chinese worker in any department that he 
 does not " hustle." The man or the woman 
 148
 
 The Clever Chinese Fish Carver 
 
 who " hustles " is not civilized. The Chinese 
 brings to any task he has to do just the amount 
 of nervous energy and muscular exertion 
 required, and no more. Watch a Chinaman 
 going down the street He doesn't hurry. 
 The uncivilized barbarian rushes, pants, 
 hustles, wastes nervous force " by the jugful." 
 He wants everybody to do the same. Per- 
 haps the Chinese did three or four thousand 
 years ago. But watch Alice Knifee. Is it by 
 magic that the fish's head comes off with a 
 clean cut ; then his tail ; then his big back 
 fin, and his side fins? The head is pitched 
 through a hole in the board that fronts Alice 
 Knifee, the tail through another, the body 
 through a third. Facing the old master of the 
 knife, on the other side of the board, is a long 
 tank of water, and here a dozen Indian squaws 
 stand cleaning the fish for Indian women 
 clean salmon by immemorial instinct. Chinese 
 labourers are perpetually carrying the cleaned 
 fish to a most ingenious machine, that goes by 
 power, and saws the salmon up into lengths 
 just the height of the ordinary salmon tin. 
 It is entertaining to watch the thin circular 
 saws, gauged to the proper distance apart, on 
 an axle, cut up the fish into short lengths, 
 and roll it down a shoot. A score of China- 
 men and Japs are packing these short lengths 
 149
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 of salmon into cans ; rolling the red fish into 
 cylindrical form, and jamming it into the 
 receptacles with much art. The cans are then 
 weighed, and if they do not contain the pre- 
 scribed quantity, more fish is jabbed in. These 
 full cans are then carried in trays to another 
 most ingenious machine, into one part of 
 which they are fed, while into another part a 
 supply of can-tops is kept going. The machine 
 puts the tops on the cans ; that is, it pushes 
 them on tight. If one of them misses getting 
 its cover, a Chinaman or a Jap seizes a top 
 and pushes it on by hand. Still, however, 
 they require soldering. For this another 
 clever arrangement is put into requisition, 
 whereby a succession of cans roll down an 
 incline. They roll a-tilt, on the circular edge 
 of their tops, the cylindrical portion of the 
 can being at an angle of forty-five degrees. 
 They also roll through a thin stream of molten 
 solder, which is kept hot by fires underneath 
 it. Before they start to roll they pass under 
 dropping acid (technically known as "fake") 
 which acts as a flux for the solder. They 
 emerge with their tops soldered on air-tight. 
 Then they are placed in a boiling vat for an 
 hour and ten minutes. On coming from this 
 ordeal a small hole is pierced in the top of 
 each can, which allows of the escape of the 
 150
 
 *The Consoling Power of Opiurri 
 
 imprisoned steam and moisture. This hole 
 is immediately soldered up again and the 
 packing is complete. When the cans are cold 
 they will be japanned, labelled, and packed in 
 cases. 
 
 There is a strange fascination about this 
 haunt of industry this assemblage of con- 
 tinuously working Celestials and Japs and 
 stolid, broad-faced Indian women. There is 
 no chatter ; you scarcely hear a word spoken 
 from the time you go in till you come out, for 
 strict attention to business is characteristic of 
 these Mongolian workers and their confreres. 
 But here and there, leaning up against a bench, 
 is a well-worn tin opium pipe. It is about 
 two feet long and an inch in diameter. An 
 inch or two from the bottom is the small bowl 
 where the fragment of charcoal is placed, and 
 the top of the long light cylinder is formed 
 into a mouthpiece. While we stand looking 
 at it a young sallow -faced Chinaman comes 
 up to " hit the pipe." He ignites the char- 
 coal with a match and takes a rapid pull or 
 two to get it into a state of incandescence. 
 Then he drops upon it a tiny bit of opium, 
 enough to get three or four whiffs out of. He 
 takes the whiffs a little less quickly than 
 the inspirations to get the charcoal hot, but 
 the whole performance does not take much 
 15*
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 more than a minute and goes back to his 
 monotonous work with a look of peace and 
 satisfaction on his face. He will go on for a 
 couple of hours, and then "hit the pipe" 
 again. 
 
 Many of the first fish that come up the river 
 are veritable " whoppers," some of them reach- 
 ing sixty pounds in weight. They are called 
 " spring salmon," and the impression prevails 
 that the canners can these for their own priv- 
 ate consumption and their purple-and-fine- 
 linen friends. The great supply for the can- 
 neries, however, is the tribe of " sockeyes," fish 
 of ten pounds to fourteen pounds in weight, 
 red in the flesh, and good in quality. After 
 the sockeyes come the "humpbacks" the 
 late comers, who have been " humping them- 
 selves " so vigorously to get there at all that 
 they are like so many Richard III.'s, or like 
 the average male young of the bicyclist. Last 
 come the " cohoes," an utterly plebeian fish 
 who has scarcely the cheek to call himself a 
 salmon, his flesh is so pale in colour ; a mere 
 blush of shame at his place in the fish world 
 removes him from utter whiteness. They 
 don't can him they can't. Some fish they 
 can and some they can't, because importing 
 Britishers would say they were not getting 
 salmon at all. Yet everybody says that 
 152
 
 Wonderful Resources of British Columbia 
 
 echoes are all right in their way, and perfectly 
 good eating. It was lamentable to see the 
 great overplus of salmon at the canneries this 
 year. I saw heaps of fish that were refused 
 by the canners simply because they had a 
 greater supply than they could pack. If there 
 had been anybody on hand with salt and 
 barrels he could have sent off carload after 
 carload of good sound salmon, which he could 
 have purchased at five cents apiece. At pres- 
 ent large quantities of fish have to be thrown 
 away or used as manure. The abundant 
 catch of this year means much to Vancouver. 
 It is so much wealth cast up by the sea into 
 the outstretched hands of these British Col- 
 umbia workers. 
 
 Of the wonderful resources of this province 
 it is impossible to speak in measured lan- 
 guage. Its mineral, forest and fishery wealth 
 is beyond calculation, and the British Col- 
 umbians are tantalized by the slowness with 
 which capital comes in to take advantage of 
 them. The surface of the wealth only has 
 been scratched, and it still awaits the hand 
 of the capitalist and developer. Like other 
 parts of Canada, British Columbia has suf- 
 fered from the rapacity of the shark ex- 
 ploiter and the conscienceless greed of the 
 prospectus maker. There has been a flock of
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 the immoral people who want to be rich in 
 ten minutes without working, and the sad in- 
 fection of the epidemic that these people 
 suffer from is visible everywhere. Many of 
 the British Columbians appear to me to live, 
 as it were, on tip-toe. They are expecting to 
 make a lucky strike somehow. They find it 
 difficult to settle down into that calm indus- 
 trial activity by which alone a great province 
 like this can be built up. 
 
 154
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 VANCOUVER SAW-MILLS AND THE 
 ASSAY OFFICE 
 
 VANCOUVER, August 23rd 
 A " COON " song that is occasionally sung 
 here by the hilarious on their way home of a 
 night may be taken as interpreting the feel- 
 ings of a good many men who have come to 
 British Columbia with the view of making 
 their fortunes. Its absurd refrain is : 
 
 " My dear Lucy Jane, you done t'rowed me down, 
 Oh, what have I done that is wrong ? " 
 
 The bewilderment of the darkey lover at the 
 tantrums of his sweetheart is not greater than 
 that of these adventurers at their present for- 
 lorn condition. The idea that people who 
 have never been able to do anything at home 
 will certainly fall on their feet if they go 
 abroad, is responsible for the presence in 
 British Columbia of a number of nice fellows 
 whose only fault is that, while they are ready
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 to do anything in general, they never learned 
 to do anything in particular. They don't 
 know " what they have done that is wrong," 
 and they never will know. They ought to 
 have got rich in the land of gold, but they 
 haven't. Their parents were well off; they 
 never learned to dig, and to beg they are 
 ashamed. With the manners and cultured 
 voice of the well-bred, they live a life that is 
 akin to the tramp's. They learn to bear with 
 philosophy a certain amount of doubt as to 
 where their next meal is to come from. When 
 they get a remittance from home they are 
 temporarily happy, and with the feeling of 
 having a little money in their pockets their 
 hopes revive, and an Eldorado dances once 
 more before their eyes. But the mirage soon 
 fades, and the uncertainty as to dinner again 
 becomes a factor in their lives. Like the 
 darkey lover they are continually being 
 " t'rown down," and the process will go on to 
 the end of the chapter. And they are, unfor- 
 tunately, of no manner of use in advancing 
 British Columbia. 
 
 Of little more value to the Province, in a 
 business point of view, are the English gentle- 
 folk whose incomes were too small for home 
 expenditure, and who consequently have 
 transported themselves and their effects here. 
 156
 
 Mawkish Sentiments about Miners 
 
 They are everything to be desired socially, 
 and they give a tone to local circles that other- 
 wise they would not possess. But, as assist- 
 ants to the progress of British Columbia, their 
 value is almost nil. True, their money is 
 spent here, and they live a more or less vege- 
 tating sort of life. But they rather help than 
 restrain an idea that is too prevalent here, 
 viz., that to get rich without working is the 
 chief end of life. 
 
 A land out of whose hills you may dig gold 
 always attracts a number of greedy men who 
 dislike work and yet are anxious to have the 
 rewards of a laborious life. The miner has, 
 in my humble opinion, been needlessly glori- 
 fied. As a rule, he is no hero, but a sordid 
 individual of low aims and shocking manners, 
 whose occasional and spasmodic generous im- 
 pulses have received an altogether unnecessary 
 and too gushing apotheosis from mawkish 
 writers. I am speaking, of course, of the 
 heterogeneous army of roughs that is always 
 mobilized by the discovery of gold, and that 
 must always be distinguished from the genu- 
 ine labourers, who are much more respectable, 
 and who are the true backbone of the country. 
 Why a loafer and a tough, who has been gal- 
 vanized into temporary industry by the hope 
 of getting rich in a week, should be wept over
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 because he occasionally shuts off the torrent 
 of his drunken profanity in order that he may 
 weep a tear or two over his dead mother, or 
 lift a little child over a mud-puddle, I have 
 never been able to understand. The world 
 has, very sanely, got tired of sentimental 
 stories of this class, which were surely written 
 for the sort of people who take flowers to con- 
 demned murderers, and have a morbid fancy 
 for lurid and abandoned convicts. But there 
 are plenty of men in British Columbia of 
 whom such tales might be written still, were 
 the market for such trash not already glutted. 
 Also, there are the Micawbers of all sorts and 
 classes, every one of whom expects to make a 
 pot of money suddenly out of something or 
 other. They wait with a patience that is 
 usually moistened by frequent drinks. The 
 commercial salvation of British Columbia will, 
 however, be wrought neither by cultured nor 
 vulgar loafers, but by the earnest business 
 men who understand the magnificent resources 
 of their province, and are steadily working 
 away at their development. The froth and 
 fever of speculation, which seem to be the 
 inevitable accompaniment of mineral riches, 
 will be clarified and transformed into steady 
 energy, and British capital, which has been 
 frightened away by the misguided efforts of 
 158
 
 The Stately Douglas Fir 
 
 rapacious fools, may yet be employed in the 
 development of what is, perhaps, the richest 
 part of the Dominion. Meanwhile, it is inter- 
 esting to observe the instances in which legiti- 
 mate industrial activity is being exhibited. 
 
 I visited this afternoon the Hastings saw- 
 mill, a busy hive of work, which is differenti- 
 ated from similar enterprises in the East by 
 the great size of the lumber that is handled. 
 The Douglas fir Oregon pine, it used to be 
 called is one of the possessions of British Col- 
 umbia. It grows to an immense height and 
 girth, and as you see the enormous logs that 
 have been rafted down from the woods and 
 now lie on the waters of Burrard Inlet, on the 
 bank of which the mill stands, you cannot 
 help comparing them with those you have seen 
 at the great saw-mills at Ottawa and other 
 places. There are logs here 140 feet long and 
 three or four feet in diameter. When I en- 
 tered the immensely large saw-mill, which I 
 suppose covers more ground than the Union 
 Station, Toronto, with all its appurtenances, 
 the men were handling a log no feet long and 
 about three feet in diameter, that must have 
 weighed many tons. It lay upon a frame that 
 comprised a number of transverse girders, with 
 a screw arrangement worked by power, that 
 was capable of giving it a lateral movement,
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 while the whole frame could be made to travel 
 on wheels in a longitudinal direction so as to 
 bring the log up to the saws. These were cir- 
 cular, very large in diameter, and two in num- 
 ber, one being placed exactly over the other 
 and a little in advance of it, and revolving 
 at immense speed by means of leather belts 
 of astonishing dimensions. The mere weight 
 of the log seemed to be enough to keep it 
 steady on the frame, and it was rapidly moved 
 forward and a slab taken off its round side in 
 a very short space of time. The clear surface 
 of sound timber thus exposed was a wonder 
 to behold, when, very rapidly, the travelling 
 frame came back to the starting point. Not a 
 knot or imperfection was to be seen in the 
 entire length. By means of power apparatus 
 the log was then pushed laterally and turned 
 over on to the flat side thus made. It fell 
 over with a bang that shook the building and 
 gave full evidence of its enormous weight. 
 Again and again it was made to walk up to 
 the saws, and in a few minutes it was made 
 into planks for scow-building, ninety-five feet 
 long and twenty-two inches by five inches. 
 Practical men will appreciate these figures, 
 and if they could see the timber they would 
 recognize its splendid and unique quality. I 
 asked Mr. Beecher, one of the managers of the 
 160
 
 The Supply of British Columbia Pine 
 
 mill a nephew of Henry Ward Beecher, by 
 the way how long the tree had been grow- 
 ing, to which he replied "about 300 years." 
 
 "And are there plenty of similar trees 
 where that came from ? " I asked. " Yes," he 
 replied, " there are all we want at present, 
 though, of course, the number is limited." 
 Well, I looked out on the water where about a 
 square mile of big logs lay floating, close to- 
 gether, and thought of the immense forests of 
 this Douglas fir I had seen from the railway 
 for hundreds of miles, and felt that my guide 
 need not have been quite so cautious. Of 
 course, he was thinking of the specially 
 enormous logs. Of ordinary logs that in 
 the East would be considered immense there 
 is practically an unlimited supply, and the 
 world need not stand still at present for 
 British Columbia fir. I walked out to the 
 dock where a fine four-masted brig was being 
 loaded for San Francisco. Exclamatory ex- 
 pressions of all kinds were called for by the 
 tremendous cargo of really beautiful lumber 
 they were loading her with. That magnificent 
 harbour, the finest in the world, four or five 
 miles wide, lay before me sparkling in the sun, 
 and beyond it rose the glorious mountains 
 snow-streaked at their summits which give 
 to the situation of Vancouver such a unique 
 ii 161
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 charm. Away down eastward, less than a mile 
 off, lay the great sugar refinery, which is an- 
 other important enterprise of this city, while 
 to the westward was one of the Australian 
 steamers taking in the last of her cargo and 
 preparing for another voyage to the Southern 
 Seas. One could not help feeling that this 
 wonderful young city, stretching out to the 
 Orient and to Australasia on the one hand, 
 and vitally linked with Eastern Canada on 
 the other, must in the course of years develop 
 into a port that will be indispensable not only 
 to Canada but to the Empire. Vancouver 
 cannot help but grow and flourish, and every 
 circling year will see additions to her trade 
 and population that will ultimately make her 
 the Liverpool of the West 
 
 In other parts of this great mill all sorts of 
 lumber were being manipulated, much of the 
 labour employed being Japanese. The Japs 
 are short, immensely strong, sturdy and quick. 
 Some were chopping pine for household use at 
 a chopping machine hardwood is not used 
 in this country. Others were taking boards 
 away from planing machines. Some were 
 bundling up laths. The only disadvantages 
 about Jap labour are that they speak no Eng- 
 lish, for the most part, and that in the summer 
 they are disposed to run away to the canneries, 
 162
 
 Japanese and Chinese Labour 
 
 where they make large wages for a few 
 months. I conversed with the proprietor of a 
 brickyard about 50 miles north of Vancouver, 
 who told me that he employed Japs almost 
 exclusively, and found them highly satisfac- 
 tory with the before-noted exceptions. He 
 said that when you gave an order to a Jap 
 you were never quite certain whether he un- 
 derstood it, and that when he tried to com- 
 municate anything, you were never quite sure 
 as to what he meant ; also, that a little know- 
 ledge of the Jap language was worse than 
 none at all, as it frequently led the ambitious 
 linguist into sad pitfalls. You hear very con- 
 trary opinions expressed as to Japanese and 
 Chinese labour. One man will tell you that 
 in British Columbia they cannot do without 
 the Chinese, but that the Japs ought to be 
 kept out, as they are ambitious and pushing, 
 and will endeavour to supplant the whites in 
 any avenue of trade or commerce to which 
 they are admitted. Another man will say, 
 " Keep out the Chinese and give us plenty of 
 Japs. Japs afford the best solution of the 
 cheap labour problem, and cheap labour we 
 must have." So that you have to look round 
 and form your own opinions, which will pro- 
 bably be that both Japs and Chinese are abso- 
 lutely necessary at the present time to the 
 163
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 development of British Columbia, and that 
 they will be kept out at about the same time 
 as the Fraser River begins to flow backward 
 toward its source. Besides, no missionary 
 operations can be quite so good as the free 
 admission of them to our borders in order that 
 they may see the effect of that religion on 
 ourselves which our missionaries are desirous 
 of proclaiming to them in their own land. 
 
 There are five large steam-engines at the 
 Hastings mill, and any amount of steam to 
 work them. " It is no object to us to save 
 steam," said the manager, " we want to burn 
 our sawdust." The sawdust, therefore, is 
 dribbled into the furnaces of fourteen 24-foot 
 x 5 -foot boilers by automatic machinery, and 
 nothing but sawdust is burned. They don't 
 bother with cut-offs or condensers. All they 
 want to do is to get rid of their overplus of 
 steam, so their engines go slogging away at 
 140 revolutions a minute, which, with 2-foot 
 cylinders, will do a lot of work. The engineer 
 told me they had 1,3 50 horse-power. And all 
 this without a single stoker, for the boilers 
 worked themselves, and only needed the cast 
 of an eye round the corner about twice an 
 hour to see that the sawdust was dribbling on 
 to the incandescent mass below properly. No 
 clinkers to get out ! 
 
 164
 
 The Dominion Assay Office 
 
 I saw some clinkers at the next place I went 
 to, though ; at least, they would pass for clink- 
 ers. They were bits of slag the " chief melter " 
 at the Dominion Assay Office knocked off a 
 gold brick he had been casting. The Do- 
 minion Government cannot be accused of ex- 
 travagance in the " Assay Office of the Do- 
 minion of Canada " they have started in Van- 
 couver. The whole outfit is characterized by 
 a cautious tentativeness. Some business pre- 
 mises have been acquired next door to an 
 auctioneer's, and as they are not particularly 
 suitable to the requirements of an assay office, 
 they have been " altered to suit the conveni- 
 ence of tenants." But the area of the ground 
 floor is only about half as large as is required 
 for anything like the business that the Assay 
 Office will do, and to any one who is familiar 
 with similar establishments in the Old Coun- 
 try the arrangements seem rather inadequate. 
 The miner coming in from the country up 
 north with his nuggets and gold-dust might 
 be in doubt whether to have it assayed or to 
 auction it off at the mart which is so closely 
 adjacent. On entering the shop door you find 
 a space reserved for the public, which is 
 divided off from the office and melting-room 
 by a strong iron grille, through which the per- 
 son bringing gold to be assayed can see it 
 165
 
 From the Great Lakes to the "Wide "West 
 
 weighed and transferred to a tin box. He can 
 also watch the entire operation of melting it 
 down in one of the two gas furnaces available, 
 which are worked with a forced draught 
 operated by means of an electric motor. In 
 the small melting-room a good deal of gold 
 has already being melted. There is no doubt 
 that it was a capital idea to start the Assay 
 Office in Vancouver, and miners and others 
 from the Yukon are now bringing their gold 
 here instead of taking it down to Seattle as 
 they did formerly. Mr. McCaffery, the super- 
 intendent, kindly showed me a great brick of 
 gold, weighing 693 oz., which tested even his 
 muscularity to bring it from the safe and 
 deposit it on the counter before me inside 
 the grille, of course. It looked about as yellow 
 as brass, and might have passed for the meaner 
 metal. When the gold is thus cast into a 
 brick two opposite corners are chipped off it, 
 and the assayers go to work upon it and de- 
 termine its value. This particular brick was 
 worth between $16 and $17 per ounce, and its 
 value would therefore verge on $11,000. I 
 also saw a small brick from Edmonton, which 
 looked a good deal more like gold, being of a 
 rich orange tinge. I see by the local press 
 that about $35,000 worth of gold found its 
 way to the Assay Office yesterday, as .the 
 166
 
 Left-handed Street-Cars 
 
 ship Hating was in from Skagway, with a 
 number of people on board who carried gold. 
 At the Assay Office the Dominion Govern- 
 ment buys the gold from whomsoever brings 
 it in, and the value of the institution to Van- 
 couver is at once obvious. A large amount of 
 money will thereby be kept in the country 
 that formerly went to the United States. 
 
 Among the minor things one observes in 
 Vancouver is the fact that all the street-cars 
 run on the wrong side of the road. I wondered 
 at first why they were so difficult for a To- 
 rontonian to board and leave, but soon dis- 
 covered that it was because one had to use 
 his left hand instead of his right. The cars 
 follow the custom of driving which obtains 
 here, which is to go to the left when meeting 
 another vehicle the British plan. This city 
 and Victoria are, I believe, the only places in 
 the West where this is done. 
 
 The considerable number of Chinese one 
 sees on the street, with their felt-soled shoes 
 and peculiarly insouciant gait, is another 
 feature. The inscrutable countenance of the 
 Mongolian is a study, and one often wonders 
 what lies behind it. Many of the Chinamen 
 are well dressed, and display a taste for neat 
 apparel and a certain dignity of demeanour 
 which carries off with honour even a three-foot 
 167
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 pig-tail. But, for the most part, they are in 
 blue or white cotton blouses, which seem to 
 be a good attire for this season of the year in 
 Vancouver, when the sun blazes down out of 
 cloudless skies. When it rains in Vancouver 
 it rains for weeks together, and you know it ; 
 but when it is fine you would hardly believe 
 that rain was ever possible. 
 
 168
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 NEW WESTMINSTER THE COMMERCIAL 
 
 TRAVELLERS STORY SI WASHES 
 
 AND CHINESE 
 
 NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C., August 3ist 
 THE amount of trade that Ontario does with 
 Western Canada is illustrated everywhere by 
 the presence of commercial travellers from that 
 province, not only in important centres, but in 
 smaller places. My respect for the commer- 
 cial traveller has been growing ever since I 
 started on my tour. As a geographer H. M. 
 Stanley could not hold a candle to him, and 
 he could give pointers to Columbus were he 
 alive. I have explored considerably on this 
 trip, and have seen infantile communities 
 starting to grow in all sorts of places. My 
 experience leads me to say that if any enter- 
 prising man began to build a store in a 
 remote place on the prairie, or in the midst of 
 primeval bush miles from everywhere, and 
 169
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 far from the usual avenues of travel he would 
 have three or four Ontario commercial travel- 
 lers waiting on him with samples before he 
 got the shingles on his roof, and by the time 
 he had his floors laid and his shelving con- 
 structed, the goods would be there to fill them ; 
 providing, of course, that he seemed a sound 
 and likely addition to the commercial world. 
 In towns of medium size the drummer is per- 
 sistent, patient and polite, and, as a rule, he 
 displays an absorption in his business that is 
 highly creditable to him, and would be reas- 
 suring to his employers could they see him. 
 It is impossible always to judge of a traveller 
 by results, except in the long run. He may 
 display quite as much ability and do as much 
 hard work over a slim order book as over a fat 
 one. As a matter of fact, his fat order books 
 are much easier in the compiling than the slim 
 ones, for to get a few orders under adverse 
 conditions is much more of a test of a man 
 than to get some bumping ones when things 
 are good. 
 
 Commercial representatives do not open out 
 effusively to strangers except in the way of 
 business. This is not, however, because they 
 are deficient in human geniality. On the con- 
 trary, it indicates a self-respecting reticence. 
 I happened to meet recently however, one of 
 170
 
 A Humble Commercial Beginning 
 
 them with whom I had been intimately 
 acquainted a dozen years ago or more, when 
 as a young man from the Old Country he 
 came out to Canada to try his fortune. We 
 were soon mutually recounting experiences, 
 and his were certainly interesting. The son 
 of parents in affluent circumstances, they came 
 to the rare and wise decision that their boy 
 should learn to work for his living as though 
 they were poor. Accordingly, he was sent 
 from school and apprenticed for three years to 
 a storekeeper in a large country town north 
 of the Tweed. His duties here were, at first, 
 of the most menial and humble description, 
 and it was certainly rather disgusting to a boy 
 who had distinguished himself in Latin and 
 been prominent in mathematics, to have to be 
 at the store early to sweep it out, and during 
 market days to protect the goods put out in 
 front from the attacks of bipeds and quadru- 
 peds. In a week or two, however, he was 
 trusted to sell brooms, papers of pins and 
 potatoes, not to mention oatmeal and hucka- 
 back, and he gradually went through the whole 
 gamut of the store as an Old Country boy does 
 who keeps his eyes open, learning more about 
 various kinds of merchandise than he could in 
 any other way. It was a proud time for him 
 when he was put to sell ribbons and dry goods. 
 171
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 It was here, I imagine, that his nimble tongue 
 and pleasant manners began to stand him in 
 good stead. There is, no doubt, a way of sell- 
 ing a yard or two of ribbon to a customer, 
 even though she be a plain country dairy- 
 maid, who trips a couple of miles over the 
 moor to get her finery, that induces her to 
 come again, and our friend knew just the way 
 to do it. When the three years' apprenticeship 
 came to an end, his employer was anxious to 
 keep him. The heart of the boy was, however, 
 set on going to London. " You may go," 
 said his stern and singularly Spartan parent, 
 " but you must go on your own resources. 
 Don't expect to get any remittances from me." 
 He determined, notwithstanding, to risk the 
 future, and with two other Scotch boys arrived 
 at the Mecca of the mercantile. They had 
 very little money amongst them, but they 
 determined to share and share alike to the last 
 gasp, and ultimately all of them obtained em- 
 ployment in large wholesale houses. Our 
 friend received 50 per year as his salary. 
 The sum of 20 per year was, however, re- 
 tained by his employers to pay for his dinner 
 and tea, which, according to London custom, 
 was provided within the walls of the house. 
 He had to find his lodging, breakfast and 
 Sunday's meals out of the remaining 
 172
 
 Frugal Fare for Three 
 
 Here, then, was a boy of eighteen with a very 
 healthy appetite and the sum of about $3 per 
 week to find all his expenses out of, with the 
 exception of his six days' dinner and tea. It 
 was the custom of the house in which he was 
 to make their employees work for their wages, 
 and the meals were provided, not only that 
 time might not be lost, but that each day's 
 work might be done in the day. Accordingly, 
 the workers were often at the warehouse after 
 the usual hours, and they had, therefore, every 
 opportunity of learning their business and of 
 acquiring habits of industry. Sometimes the 
 three boys got home feeling very hungry, and 
 if it was towards the end of the month they 
 would often be very short of money to buy 
 anything with, for salaries were paid monthly. 
 There were occasions when, if they could 
 " scare up " threepence between them, they 
 felt like princes. Then would they descend 
 to those wonderful London streets, and with 
 two big roasted potatoes and a pen'north of 
 fried fish, cold, they would return and make 
 their supper of it with gusto. Sometimes one 
 potato and the screw of salt which the itiner- 
 ant dealer supplied, had to do for the three, 
 and often on Sundays they kept a Lenten 
 fast when it was not the season of Lent, sus- 
 taining themselves as well as they could by
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 attending the kirk and partaking of spiritual 
 food. 
 
 At any rate, during three years of hard 
 work these purposeful youths learnt to do 
 with little, and learnt many things about 
 business besides. And now came a visitor to 
 the wholesale warehouse in which our par- 
 ticular boy was employed, in the shape of a 
 buyer from Canada a member of the firm he 
 represented. He seemed to "take to" our 
 young friend at once, and told him about the 
 cities of the Dominion and their prospects. 
 It was one of the one-potato days, and the 
 boy wondered if a little better fare was to be 
 got in Canada. Would there be likely to be 
 employment for him if he went over ? Yes, 
 the Canadian thought so a young man so 
 smart and attentive as he was ought to find 
 no difficulty. But the fare to the Canadian 
 city he could not go without money. And 
 how smartly the Canadian dressed ! The 
 poor boy looked disconsolately at his own 
 patched and well -darned clothes tailored 
 and re-tailored by himself in the recesses of 
 their lodgings while one of the other boys 
 read aloud from some book they had obtained 
 the loan of for they had wits and brains, 
 these beginners, and kept themselves abreast 
 of things as far as they could. He had never
 
 A New Yorker's Spendthrift Sons 
 
 asked his father for a penny since he left 
 home. Supposing he wrote him now and 
 begged the loan of money for clothes and 
 passage? He determined to do it. The 
 pater sent the money, again putting the boy 
 on his own responsibility, and saying that the 
 cash was to be regarded strictly as a loan. So 
 eventually he came to Canada. He has been 
 connected with one firm since he set foot on 
 our shores, and he is now a member of it. He 
 was speaking of these things to a wealthy 
 New York manufacturer a short time ago, 
 who said, " I wish you would narrate your 
 history to my three boys. They keep me 
 poor, those boys of mine. Of course, I spent 
 a lot of money on their education. Now they 
 are, respectively, 22, 24, and 26 years old, 
 and not one of them has ever earned a penny. 
 They were too swell to go to work, and now 
 they have to have a big allowance, which 
 they spend on automobiles, and theatres, and 
 clothes, and all sorts of things, and they 
 expect me to live in great style for them on 
 Fifth Avenue, but, by Jove, it keeps me 
 working sixteen hours a day to do it. Of 
 course, the lads are in the swim, but it comes 
 expensive. It wouldn't do for me to say 
 anything to them, but I wish you'd come to 
 dinner some night, and when I tip you the 
 '75
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 wink just open out about young men making 
 their way in the world." 
 
 So our friend went to the grand house, and 
 was received by one footman and waited upon 
 by another, and when the opportunity arrived 
 he complied with the father's request The 
 gilded youths listened attentively, and then 
 one of them said : 
 
 " Do you mean to say that you went 
 through all that hard work in London when 
 your old man had plenty of money at home ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Then you must have been a slob" 
 
 So the lesson on self-help was utterly thrown 
 away. 
 
 It is an interesting thing in connection with 
 my friend's history to narrate that, a year or 
 two ago, an old gentleman began to talk to 
 him during the course of a Western journey 
 as they occupied contiguous seats in a railway 
 car, and, as was natural, the talk came round 
 to business. His white-haired interlocutor 
 began to " speer " at him as to his early his- 
 tory for he, too, was a Scotchman and as 
 the various details came out, he would ex- 
 claim, " Just like me," " My ain verra ex- 
 peerience ! " "I know it. I've done the verra 
 thing ! " all the time displaying the greatest 
 interest in the story. When it was concluded 
 176
 
 Through a Burnt District 
 
 he clapped my friend on the back and said, 
 "You've just told my own life. That is 
 exactly what I did mysel' ! " So interested 
 was he that the broad Scotch of him came 
 out naturally. It goes without saying that 
 my friend, whose story I have thought worth 
 putting in black and white, was very much 
 interested to learn, when the old gentleman 
 got off at a wayside station, that he was no 
 other than the present Lord Strathcona and 
 Mount Royal. 
 
 The foregoing story had occupied the time 
 during a journey by trolley car from Van- 
 couver to New Westminster about fifteen 
 miles. For most of the hour we had been 
 passing through the usual British Columbian 
 surroundings of a city fire-swept bush, in 
 which nature has been doing her best to 
 repair the ravages of flame. The great trees 
 were cut down years ago, and their gigantic 
 stumps are visible everywhere at intervals. 
 Forest fires seem inseparable from this part 
 of the British Columbian year, when little or 
 no rain falls and a conflagration easily spreads. 
 Even now the hot sunshine comes through a 
 smoky haze, and there is the heavy stifling 
 smell of burning woods. In Howe Sound, a 
 few miles off, the fires are said to be devas- 
 tating a vast area. As we look out we see 
 12 177
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 the black and columnar remains of former 
 fires around us, and it cannot be said that 
 black and charcoal pillars everywhere at all 
 add to the beauty of the prospect. Thick 
 brush and vegetation fill up the interspaces, 
 however, and the growth is wild and rampant. 
 On the seats in front of us were two Siwash 
 women and their husbands. These Indians 
 of the coast are very different from the typi- 
 cal North American Indian of the sculptor, 
 the painter, and Fenimore Cooper's novels. 
 They are fat, squat, broad -faced, good- 
 humoured and well fed. Moreover, they have 
 money. There is the Indian quietness about 
 them and the absence of chatter, and their 
 babies are as fat and quiet and broad-faced as 
 themselves. They have dark and somewhat 
 expressive eyes, and for the most part are 
 dressed in ordinary costume, except that the 
 women wear brighter colours than ordinary, 
 and no hats. Their thick coal-black hair is 
 neatly arranged, however, quite plain in front 
 and made up in a heavy plait at their backs. 
 They carry their babies in a basket-cradle, 
 supported by a band that goes round the 
 mother's forehead in the old style. The men 
 are employed in the fisheries at New West- 
 minster and other places, for New Westmin- 
 ster is also the abode of salmon canneries, and 
 178
 
 New Westminster and its Fishermen 
 
 lives principally by that industry and lumber 
 mills. It is a town of 6,300 population on the 
 broad part of the Fraser River, near its open- 
 ing to the sea. To-day all the fishermen have 
 been paid off, for the season is closing. When 
 we come to the trolley car terminus, we find 
 a broad, busy street, and an active commercial 
 aspect that is wonderful, when one remembers 
 that the whole town was reduced to ashes 
 two years ago. Hotels are numerous, and the 
 shops have huge miscellaneous stores. We 
 pass the end of one street that is evidently 
 the Chinese quarter ; it is full of pig-tailed 
 Chinamen sitting on chairs, or otherwise 
 taking their ease, to-day being an off day at 
 the canneries. Fishermen's races have also 
 been arranged on the mile-wide river, and a 
 band of music is perambulating the town. 
 We walk to the long wharf and look down on 
 numberless Si wash two-masted boats, roomy, 
 and most of them containing a miscellaneous 
 family. The occupants are either sleeping or 
 eating, or looking out lazily at the fishermen's 
 boats that, with all sails crowded, are contend- 
 ing for the prizes. Many of the Siwash Indians 
 live in these boats and go about from place 
 to place where money and work are stirring. 
 The old grandmother squaw looks after the 
 brown children, while the younger women 
 179
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 gravely and persistently clean fish in the 
 canneries, and meditate on what bright- 
 coloured fineries they will buy at the store. 
 
 While the Indian female world is much in 
 evidence, you see very few Chinese women. I 
 have only seen two during my whole trip 
 The Chinaman seems able to solace himself 
 without the society of the fair sex. You see 
 him reading a letter over and over again, and 
 as you glance over his shoulder you cannot 
 help wondering at the learning of him who 
 indited those strange, intricate characters, and 
 the reading-power of him who can interpret 
 them. Strange, deft, silent, inscrutable race! 
 They seem to regard the world with a placid 
 equanimity, but with little active interest 
 
 Nothing can be more diverse than the 
 Chinese and Japanese. I had some conver- 
 sation this week with Mr. Shimizu, the Japan- 
 ese Consul at Vancouver, a highly intelligent 
 and cultivated gentleman alert, intellectual, 
 perceptive. He told me that there were 
 about 4,000 Japs in British Columbia, but 
 that their Government had now stopped 
 emigration here. " They say," said Mr. 
 Shimizu, "that we have done it because we 
 want our young men for military purposes. 
 Nothing of the sort. We could afford to lose 
 10,000 of them, or 50,000 for that matter. It 
 i So
 
 An Impenetrable Wall of Separation 
 
 is simply because we have no wish for our 
 people to go anywhere where they are not 
 wanted. There seemed to be a disinclination 
 to receive them on equal terms, so we stopped 
 them coming." Nothing could exceed the 
 cool, gentlemanly independence of this utter- 
 ance. The Japanese meet us on our own 
 ground. There is something about them that 
 makes you feel they have adopted many of 
 our ideals. But the Chinese are separated by 
 an impenetrable wall of dissimilarity. You 
 cannot tell what they are thinking of or what 
 are their purposes. As business men they 
 can give us miles of a start and beat us. You 
 see a Chinaman at the bank pick up the frame 
 of wooden beads that is always kept there for 
 his use and calculate the rate of exchange on 
 a given sum in a way that makes you stare. 
 You see them paying over and receiving large 
 sums. You find they understand the financial 
 market as well as anybody, and that numbers 
 of the lower orders are absolutely subject to 
 their " tyee," who lords it over them. You 
 visit a large house and are met by a spotlessly 
 clean Chinese servant in white raiment that is 
 equally spotless, and as he takes your card 
 you are conscious of a certain veiled contempt 
 for you and your race in his eye. He is more 
 like a priest than a servant, and his dignity is 
 181
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 undoubted his gravity more so. But why is 
 he so grave, and dignified, and philosophical 
 as though all things were the same to him, 
 and there was no joy and no sorrow in life : 
 neither sweet nor bitter ; love nor hate ? Ah, 
 this you will never know. 
 
 182
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 VICTORIA. 
 
 VICTORIA, B.C., September 6th 
 THERE are two questions that people al- 
 ways ask in the West The first is, " Is this 
 your first trip?" and the second, "How do 
 you like the country?" I suppose it is the 
 proximity of the Orient that is the source of 
 this style of interrogatory salutation. I know 
 that if I went to China by one of these fine 
 Empress boats, and saw Li-Hung-Chang, that 
 he would ask me the same questions. He 
 would also add, " How old are you ?" We 
 are obliged, by the way, to fall back on that 
 convenient word "Orient," because that which, 
 by immemorial English usage, has been called 
 the East, lies eastward no longer, so that when 
 you speak of " the East " you are taken to 
 mean Toronto, and Montreal, and Hamilton, 
 and other great cities from which wise men 
 come. The wise men, by the way, do not 
 return, unless they are past the first hey-day 
 183
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 and flush of youth. They remain and exalt 
 the census of British Columbia at the expense 
 of that of Ontario. 
 
 But Ontario is in many respects the pro- 
 genitor of British Columbia, and from Ontario's 
 broad shoulders the lusty and vigorous child 
 has looked on to the future. Meanwhile there 
 is a flavour and a finish about the East which 
 the West will catch up to in the course of 
 years, naturally. Nor is the child quite like 
 its parents of the East, who might sometimes 
 regard it as an enfant terrible. On the whole, 
 however, affection triumphs, and we say in the 
 words of the song, " He gets more like his dad 
 every day." 
 
 The sail from Vancouver to Victoria is a 
 very enjoyable experience. The Charmer, a 
 well-found and staunch C. P. N. steamship, 
 leaves the former city every day at one o'clock, 
 and makes the trip in about six and a half 
 hours, during the whole of which you pass 
 through a panorama of beauty that makes 
 you inclined to say that the name of the 
 steamer was not ill-chosen. Dim outlines of 
 mountains mysterious in their grandeur ; bold 
 headlands looming up out of the horizon and 
 proving, as you get nearer, to be scenic with 
 rocks and trees ; wide spaces of tossing green 
 water where the tide is coming in through 
 184
 
 
 CO" 
 
 O
 
 Victoria and its Noisy Hotel-touts 
 
 " the narrows " ; wider spaces where the sea is 
 calm, and the light winds play with the sur- 
 face and diversify it with a smile like that of 
 a sleeping infant; Plumper's Pass, a narrow 
 passage through rock-bound, tree-crowned 
 islands these are some of the details of 
 scenes that live long in the memory of those 
 who pass through them. 
 
 By and by when the sun is sinking in the 
 midst of roseate cloudlets and an amber glory, 
 Victoria heaves in sight, beautiful for situation, 
 and you see its noble Government buildings, 
 and its fine post-office, one of the finest in the 
 Dominion ; its churches, and its dwelling- 
 houses streaming out on all sides into the 
 surrounding beauty of landscape. A little 
 while, and we swing around into the harbour 
 and tie up, and by that time the sky is dusk- 
 ing with night. The babel of hotel-shouting 
 touts that meets you on landing passes belief. 
 I never heard such a row. I think the hotel - 
 keepers hire savages from the Andaman 
 Islands and other cannibal resorts, not to 
 mention a dozen or two Indians, as wild as 
 you can now catch them, and used to the 
 war-whoop. An aged lady clings to you 
 tremulously and begs you to see her through 
 it ; of course, you comply, swing a couple of 
 heavy grips viciously, use the French kick, 
 185
 
 From the Great Lakes to the "Wide West 
 
 and for once give way to language that is not 
 quite parliamentary. It is battling through a 
 human surf; and if it were not for the fears 
 of your trembling companion, you would be 
 interested in it as the wildest, loudest and 
 most diversified noise you have ever heard. I 
 am going to-night for the purpose of listening 
 to it again. It has the diapason of a great 
 organ, and if it is the " lost chord " it had 
 better stay lost to the majority of people. 
 
 But in some ways Victoria is delightfully 
 old-timish, and, perhaps, this is one of the 
 things of the past they preserve here. Where 
 are the stocks and the ducking-stool, I wonder? 
 I must inquire. 
 
 I arrived at last, without the assistance of 
 any touts, at a nice, quiet hotel, where you 
 could shake salt out of the salt-castor without 
 slamming it on the table or getting the top 
 off. Ex pede Herculem. From the salt-cellar 
 you can judge the house. I was content. I 
 began to be sensible of the good old English 
 style of the place. Wandering out into the 
 street after dinner, numerous jack-tars were in 
 evidence man-o'-war's men from the ships 
 in the Esquimalt harbour, three miles off. 
 Jolly, clean, healthy fellows they are, swing- 
 ing down the street with a rolling gait, their 
 wide trousers sitting with a nautical nattiness 
 1 86
 
 Jolly British Tars 
 
 over the shoe, their broad collars seaman-like 
 on their shoulders. They seem to go, gener- 
 ally, three or four abreast, and you can see 
 that it is a treat for them to be on land. Very 
 often the first thing they do is to hire bicycles, 
 which they mean to ride or die, and their 
 attempts are very interesting illustrations of 
 their bull-dog pertinacity. They curse the 
 thing up and down when it throws them off, 
 but they are on it again like a flash, and in 
 the end they are always triumphant. Also, 
 they have a penchant for five-cent beer, a 
 harmless and exhilarating drink which is sold 
 here in considerable quantities, and is much 
 better for them than spirits. A drunken 
 sailor I have not seen. 
 
 THE GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS. 
 
 Government Street looked very homelike 
 and natural in the morning sunshine, with its 
 shops and buildings so much like those of the 
 Old Country, its English-looking people wear- 
 ing gloves, or at least carrying them. At the 
 end of it you come to an arm of the harbour 
 called James Bay and beyond this, at the end 
 of a longish bridge, are the Government 
 buildings with a sizable lawn in front of them 
 coming to the water's edge. They are built of 
 gray stone, and are very handsome and pala- 
 187
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide "West 
 
 tial, having a central tower and cupola and 
 numerous smaller cupolas. They present a 
 long front, and at each end is a semi-detached 
 building connected with the main structure 
 by a colonnade. The style is classic-Italian, I 
 suppose, and the utmost cavil of criticism is, 
 perhaps, that they have too many features for 
 the size of them ; but I speak with diffidence, 
 for I cannot but respect the genius of Mr. 
 Rattenbury in designing this, his chef cfazuvre. 
 They are as much more beautiful than our 
 Toronto Parliament Buildings as the Parthe- 
 non is than our old City Hall at the back of 
 the market, and how the B. C. Government 
 got them built and fitted for $950,000 is a 
 mystery that would strike Toronto aldermen 
 dumb. Nor is their superiority confined to 
 their exterior ; the inside of them is equally 
 admirable. Architectural beauty confronts 
 one at every turn. The central circular hall, 
 with its lofty dome and its beautiful mosaic 
 floor, forms a fitting approach to the legis- 
 ative chamber, which has a dignity that is 
 worthy of its functions, while the corridors 
 and offices are admirably planned. One of 
 the things that strikes you about these build- 
 ings is their high degree of finish. Many of 
 the windows in the halls, corridors and stair- 
 cases, which are beautifully lighted, are filled 
 1 88
 
 Palatial Interior of Government Buildings 
 
 with stained glass of appropriate design and 
 inscriptions. Here and there are beautiful 
 brass gates. In front there is a grand flight of 
 steps to the central entrance. When one 
 regards all these features and notes the excel- 
 lence with which they are carried out, one 
 wonders again how it was all done for that 
 $950,000. As was to be expected, the wood- 
 work of the buildings is a feature of great 
 merit, the splendid British Columbia woods 
 being exploited with great skill. In her tim- 
 ber British Columbia has a great possession. 
 There are cedar fittings in these buildings, 
 that not only please a practical eye by their 
 excellent craftsmanship, but exhibit a delight- 
 ful variety of texture and grain and colour in 
 the material of which they are constructed. 
 
 The semi-detached building at one end of 
 the range is the printing department. That 
 at the other end is the museum. The press- 
 room in the basement of the printing depart- 
 ment is the cleanest and lightest I ever saw, 
 and every press works like a seven-jewelled 
 watch. There are two cylinder presses and 
 a number of " Gordons " ; also, there is the 
 very latest embossing machine, made in Lon- 
 don, England, and doing its work with a clean, 
 slick deftness that is surprising. Here, also, 
 are some clever wire-binding machines for 
 189
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 pamphlets, and a capable folding machine. 
 Ascending to the composing-room well, I 
 found it nearly as good as that of the Mail 
 and Empire. Adjoining it was the bindery, 
 where the employees were busy binding up the 
 B. C. Year-Book. The whole department is 
 under the care of Lieut-Colonel Wolfenden, 
 who was the pioneer newspaper man in the 
 province, having started a newspaper here 
 in the very early days of its settlement. 
 
 The museum, which, as I have said, is at 
 the other end of the range of buildings, is a 
 compact but spacious structure of several 
 floors. It was very instructive to examine 
 here stuffed specimens of the wild animals 
 and birds of this great province. I had heard 
 numerous sportsmen's stories of cougars and 
 bears, wolves and deer of various kinds. 
 There is so much of dense forest in British 
 Columbia yet, that within a comparatively 
 short distance of civilization the hunter may 
 well look to his weapons and see that his rifle 
 is in good order. Here is a great grizzly bear, 
 for instance, and the date when he fell to the 
 sportsman's gun seems so recent, and the 
 locality in which his course was arrested so 
 close, that the observer determines to keep a 
 sharp lookout when he goes anywhere near 
 that neighbourhood again. And what more 
 190
 
 Natural History and Archaeology 
 
 can the sportsman ask than the magnifi- 
 cent moose represented by the fine specimen 
 on view, the lordly caribou, the black-tailed 
 deer, the big-horn sheep of the mountains, not 
 to mention an array of birds and fishes, the 
 variety and development of which strike one 
 as extraordinary? I can imagine a man visit- 
 ing this museum and starting off to buy a gun 
 at once. Here, too, was our ancient friend, 
 the pelican, a native of this province ; while 
 the list of web-footed inhabitants of the soli- 
 tudes is a long one indeed. As for wild ducks, 
 I have heard that there is such an extensive 
 crowd of them in some places that the sports- 
 man can make any sized bag he wants to, and 
 that in very short order. Of Indian remains 
 and curiosities the collection on the upper 
 floor of the museum is very complete and 
 interesting, while at the entrance to the 
 museum are some particularly good totem 
 poles. I noticed an interesting collection of 
 masks used by the Indians in their ceremonial 
 dances, also a complete assortment of Indian 
 pots and utensils, while pipes, tomahawks, axes 
 and various other things of the sort were 
 arranged with an order and a system that 
 would have done Mr. David Boyle's heart 
 good to see. The fact is that the B. C. Gov- 
 ernment is convinced of the value of museums 
 191
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 and has laid itself out to have good ones. In 
 addition to the institution I have been attempt- 
 ing to describe, they have a museum of flora 
 and plants and grasses in the Agricultural 
 Department, not to mention a complete col- 
 lection of cereals. Everything that can be 
 exhibited in such a museum is there, and a 
 view is thus presented of the products of the 
 country that cannot fail to impress the visitor 
 and to be useful to him in many ways. Here, 
 too, are specimens of the various woods of the 
 province, showing a wealth in fine timber 
 unequalled on the globe. But this is not all. In 
 another part of the grounds, in a separate 
 annex, is a well-appointed mineral museum, a 
 place of vital importance to the development 
 of the splendid resources which the Govern- 
 ment has to administer. In these buildings 
 you find, as it were, the microcosm of the 
 whole province. When we reflect that there 
 is no place that is more constantly visited by 
 people with whom it is important for a pro- 
 vince to keep in touch than Victoria, the 
 importance of these efforts comes into view. 
 In her Government buildings British Columbia 
 has made great progress towards the adult 
 stage, and she may be forgiven an occasional 
 mix-up in politics so long as she keeps before 
 192
 
 British Columbia Politics 
 
 her so admirably the responsibility of her 
 great resources. 
 
 As for those same politics, it would seem 
 to be necessary for a neophyte from the East 
 to sit up studying late at nights with a wet 
 towel round his brow in order to understand 
 them. So far as I can make out, the Province 
 is trying at the happy-family business, such 
 as we see occasionally illustrated in side- 
 shows, where the cat is comfortable with the 
 parrot, and the rat strokes the terrier's nose. 
 An effort has been made to obliterate party 
 lines by stamping on them when they have 
 shown, and asseverating that they are not 
 there. The lion has lain down with the lamb, 
 and care has been taken from time to time 
 that the lamb shall not be inside him. Of 
 course, keepers have had to come round now 
 and again with red-hot pokers and shot-guns, 
 and the electoral spectators of the show have 
 often raised a vast hub-bub, and some of them 
 have rather wanted the original instincts of 
 the animals to have full sway. Such a 
 periodic convulsion seems now to be passing 
 over the electorate. Taking it altogether, 
 though, the happy-family business seems to 
 have answered tolerably well, and the Pro- 
 vince can point to substantial results. There 
 are some, however, who hold that the usual 
 13 i93
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 Rugby football of parties is the proper thing, 
 and who opine that the Happy Family will 
 be put into the museum. Nous verrons. 
 
 Meanwhile the Province numbers some men 
 who have striven with patriotic impulse for 
 its good, and prominent among these must be 
 reckoned Hon. J. H. Turner, who was for 
 some time the Premier. He has now re- 
 signed office, and has been appointed Agent- 
 General in London, an appropriation of 
 $10,000 having been voted for that purpose. 
 Having been seventeen years in active busi- 
 ness in Victoria, and understanding well, as 
 he does, the needs of the Province, Mr. Turner 
 will no doubt be able to do valuable work in 
 London. He is a sound man, of much ability, 
 and possessed of great personal magnetism. 
 His idea is that Canada should have an im- 
 portant building in London, with a depart- 
 ment for each province, and a thoroughly 
 representative man in it, the whole working 
 under the supervision of Lord Strathcona as 
 chief. He thinks that in this way the re- 
 sources and status of Canada would be 
 brought before the central world of London 
 in a way that could not fail to be beneficial to 
 the Dominion and to the various provinces of 
 which it is composed. The Canadian head- 
 quarters at present is not in the very best 
 194
 
 In Touch with the Mother Land 
 
 place for it, nor is it entirely commensurate 
 with our best interests of various kinds. It 
 has been shown that London is the me- 
 tropolis of the commercial activity of the 
 world. Let Canada make such a showing 
 there that those who conduct the commerce 
 of the world cannot fail to know of her, not 
 only in the bulk but in detail. It would help 
 not only our exports but our imports, and 
 especially our imports of the precious human 
 material we so much need. Mr. Turner 
 makes a strong point of the necessity of such 
 agents-general returning to Canada at least 
 once a year in order that they may keep in 
 sympathetic touch with that part of the 
 Dominion they represent. 
 
 To-night there has been a band concert at 
 Beacon Hill Park, an open space of wide 
 common and firs, overlooking the matchless 
 prospect of sea and mountain which is such a 
 distinguishing characteristic of this lovely 
 place. When the usual melange of airs and 
 pieces had been finely rendered by the band 
 of the Fifth Regiment there was a slight pause, 
 and then the strains of " God Save the King " 
 floated out over the sea, and lost themselves 
 among the firs. One could not help remem- 
 bering the tune when it was not " God Save 
 the King," but " God Save the Queen," and
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 thinking of the loyalty and love that, sixty 
 years ago, named this place after her who was 
 destined, from that time to her death, to be 
 the First Lady of the World. 
 
 It was Victoria when it was but a settle- 
 ment of ten square miles with a house or two 
 and a few business places upon it. 
 
 It is Victoria now that it is a beautiful city 
 of twenty thousand inhabitants, and the capi- 
 tal of one of the most thriving provinces of 
 our great federation. 
 
 Here forever the capital of British Co- 
 lumbia will be, for in addition to the over- 
 whelming reasons which now determine 
 this position for it, there is the sentimental 
 one that is found in the fact that this city 
 commemorates the name of the Great, Good 
 Queen. 
 
 196
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE QUARANTINE STATION AT WILLIAM 
 HEAD WARSHIPS AND FORTIFICA- 
 TIONS AT ESQUIMALT 
 
 VICTORIA, B.C., September i2th 
 IT is many a year since I was in Thames 
 Street, London street of broad-wheeled 
 drays delivering heavy merchandise to dim 
 and vast warehouses there. Rosy-cheeked 
 draymen rolled barrels of untold weight into 
 dark arches, at the end of which gleamed the 
 river that is filled, not with water, but with 
 tincture of the history of England. We used 
 to slip down alleyways to rudimentary wharves 
 built on piles, and wait for one of the dear old 
 tubs or side-wheel steamers that would take 
 us to " Grinnige," with a fiddle and harp on 
 board, the performers on which wore top hats 
 the worse for wear, though nothing could 
 exceed the sentimentality of their eyes as the 
 violinist nursed his instrument between his 
 chin and his shoulder, and the harpist was 
 197
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 perpetually drawing the strings of his instru- 
 ment to his bosom, a hand on either side, and 
 his head inclined at the true virtuoso angle. 
 
 And you may be sure that there is many a 
 cockney inhabitant of this city who thinks of 
 London as he steps down from the main street 
 Government Street which runs parallel to 
 the wharves on the bay, down to the piers on 
 piles covered with barnacles, where the water 
 laps and the tide comes in and out. The water 
 is not so reminiscent and historical as that of 
 Old Father Thames, but when you have got 
 into a boat and are pulling out into the har- 
 bour you revel in its green translucency. You 
 pass the big white steamer that plies to 
 'Seattle, and the ditto that connects with Van- 
 couver, and every old boat that goes any- 
 where else, and soon you are rowing steadily 
 up the " Arm " towards the Gorge. Quieter 
 and quieter gets the water, and more and 
 more charming becomes the scenery, for the 
 Arm is a four-mile inlet from the bay, with 
 a subterranean connection with the sea at the 
 end of it, and you pass over water now broad- 
 ening to a mile and now narrowing to an 
 eighth of one, past hills and rocky promon- 
 tories, beautiful with oak and arbutus and 
 lovely with underbrush, and trailing briers 
 and bush and mossy delights. Here and there 
 198
 
 Quarantine Station Steamer 
 
 a fine country-house stands in its retired and 
 turfy grounds, that come down to the water's 
 edge, and now and again a gray and pictur- 
 esque rock juts out into the quiet water. 
 Take care that the tide does not catch you at 
 the Gorge, the narrowest part of the course, 
 for your utmost efforts will not suffice to stem 
 its force ; it will be better to land and be a 
 lotus-eater under the shade of an arbutus 
 until the moon-drawn waters once more retire. 
 It was not to row up the Arm, however, 
 that I dropped down to the Custom- House 
 wharf, bright and early, the other morning. 
 The taut little steamer Earl, of the William 
 Head Quarantine Station, was waiting there, 
 and I was to be the only passenger. The 
 Earl is not a boat to be sneezed at ; she has 
 engine^ that you can look down upon from a 
 skylight in the upper deck as you look down 
 on those of an Atlantic steamer, and she can 
 make a sufficient number of knots per hour 
 on occasion. She has the nicest little cabin in 
 the stern that anyone could desire, fitted up 
 with lounges and knowing little lockers, and, 
 moreover, her captain wears a uniform with 
 gold lace upon it, and even the engineer wears 
 a decorated cap, for this is a Government ship. 
 William Head, where I was going, is only ten 
 miles or so from Victoria, but when our crew
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide "West 
 
 had cast off, and we began to leave a fine 
 bubbling and foamy trail behind us on the 
 dancing water, I wished we were going a 
 longer voyage, for there is something about a 
 well-found boat, throbbing with energy, that 
 makes you feel like that. The morning, too, 
 was full of the lovely feeling of early autumn. 
 The air was charged with ozone and sunshine. 
 The captain was in his wheel-house aloft, the 
 engineer was regarding his rapidly-moving 
 engines with a scientific eye, the fireman was 
 at his boiler, and the general-utility seaman, 
 an experienced Scotchman, as wise and canny 
 as they make them, had no thoughts of 
 mutiny. The crowd in the cabin, consisting 
 of me, enjoyed existence as much as absence of 
 company permitted. But one could not keep 
 to the cabin on such a morning, and soon the 
 engineer was pointing out to me the barracks, 
 where a detachment of regulars is kept, and 
 the position of the concealed fortifications and 
 disappearing guns that no civilian may see 
 and live. These 'fortifications, combined with 
 powerful electric search-lights, effectually 
 guard Victoria from the ships of a foreign foe, 
 even were not the five or six seadogs of the 
 Pacific Squadron always lurking round the 
 corner in Esquimalt harbour. The engineer 
 also pointed out several large ranches that 
 
 200
 
 Landing at the Quarantine Wharf 
 
 came down to the water's edge, while, above, 
 rose the tree-clothed hills where wild animals 
 in abundance may be found by the adventur- 
 ous hunter, including the dreaded cougar or 
 mountain lion, who is very fond of sheep, and 
 does not turn back from man if he is hungry 
 and man is alone. Recently a boy of sixteen 
 had shot one of these carnivora who had 
 shown himself rather too fond of the farmer's 
 sheep. 
 
 But the Quarantine Station is coming in 
 sight with its wharves and buildings, and we 
 are soon alongside one of the former and tie 
 up, just as the engineer has been telling me 
 about how difficult it is to board a ship in 
 rough weather. Sometimes the Earl is used 
 for this purpose, and, if the water is very 
 lumpy, a naphtha launch that can shoot near 
 the side of the big steamer, allow a moment 
 for the doctor to jump, and shoot away again. 
 The superintendent who has to perform this 
 athletic nautical feat is Dr. Alfred T. Watt, 
 who presently came forward to meet me, and 
 who looked capable of anything of the kind. 
 In fact, in many ways Dr. Watt seems to be 
 " the right man in the right place," and as the 
 governor of this little lonely settlement on 
 the rocky coast he exercises manifold func- 
 tions. All the big eastern ships that come to 
 
 201
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 British Columbia have to pass his inspection, 
 and if there is any suspicious case of disease 
 on board, all the passengers are landed, and 
 occupy large buildings provided for the pur- 
 pose, in order that the " suspects " may be 
 put into hospital and possible latent cases 
 develop themselves. Not only is there here a 
 hospital of sixty beds, but there are two large 
 dwellings, one for the saloon and the other for 
 the steerage passengers. And truly there 
 could not be a nicer place to be detained in. 
 The sixty acres fenced in for the quarantine 
 station is like a natural park, and one of the 
 most picturesque spots I was ever privileged 
 to see. Arbutus trees and oak trees grow to 
 a great size in it, and exhibit every artistic 
 form of gnarl, bend and foliage. Scenes for 
 the painter abound, for there are the gray old 
 rocks, fringed by the dry and yellow grass on 
 which Dr. Watt's fat lambs are feeding, the 
 beautiful sea, the distant hills, and the far- 
 away mountains. At every turn you see a 
 picture, while the purity of the air is most 
 exhilarating. No one could want a more 
 delightful place at which to live, and as a 
 health resort it would make a fortune. 
 
 Down by the wharf, however, things look 
 very business-like and functionary. Here there 
 are large sheds and very complete machinery 
 202
 
 The Shower-bath for Mongolians 
 
 for fumigating and disinfecting. There is a 
 sulphur apparatus by which brimstone fumes 
 can be forced into a vessel's hold with great 
 rapidity ; a formaldehyde plant for produc- 
 ing another disinfecting gas, and a big steam 
 disinfector for killing germs in clothes and 
 bedding ; also, there is a bathing arrange- 
 ment of great effectiveness, through which 
 incoming Chinamen, nude and shivering, are 
 always put. It consists of a very strong and 
 effusive shower-bath that plays on the subject 
 all ways at once. On the hither side they 
 leave their clothes to be put through the dis- 
 infecting machine. When they emerge from 
 their bath they are given a blanket. A ship- 
 load of 250 of them came from China the 
 other day, and everyone, of course, had to 
 pass through the ordeal and to be examined 
 as to the state of his health. If it becomes 
 necessary to detain a number of passengers in 
 the buildings provided for that purpose, the 
 ship sends up cooks and waiters and sees to 
 feeding them kitchens being a part of the 
 outfit of the dwellings. In such cases the 
 Chinamen bring their mats, take the space 
 allotted to them, and are soon reconciled and 
 comfortable. They wander out on to the 
 rocks and fish, or gather seaweed to cook in 
 their own queer way, and they are prepared 
 203
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 to stay for life. They don't want to move. 
 The Japanese, on the other hand, while they 
 are more impatient, display a greater faculty 
 for organization. Dr. Watt told me that on 
 the first night they select a head man and an 
 executive committee, so that everything may 
 be conducted in due order. 
 
 Last year a ship came for examination that 
 contained a posse of newspaper men. The 
 ship was suspected of smallpox, and as the 
 weather was fine they were put into tents. 
 The scribes erected a flag-pole and immedi- 
 ately began to run a daily paper, which they 
 called The Microbe. I saw their flag-pole ; I 
 would very much have liked to see a copy of 
 their sheet. The name of it need not go 
 a-begging one would think that there are 
 papers to which it might be legitimately 
 applied to-day. Not far from the fence which 
 divides the sixty acres from the mainland is 
 Dr. Watt's pleasant home, every window of 
 which seems to look out on a beautiful view, 
 and which is presided over by his talented 
 wife, well-known as a writer on New York 
 magazines and newspapers under her maiden 
 name of Madge Robertson, and still a con- 
 tributor to the local press. Dr. Watt has an 
 able assistant in the person of Dr. Ander- 
 son, and at times when two or three big ships 
 204
 
 Village and Harbour of Esquimalt 
 
 follow each other in pretty close succession, 
 the two medical men have enough to do. 
 What strikes one in this comparatively iso- 
 lated spot, where for the time the medical 
 officer has autocratic powers over the vessels 
 that come to be examined, is that much ability 
 and power of rapid decision are required, and 
 these qualities Dr. Watt appears to possess in 
 a high degree. 
 
 Esquimalt is one of the show places to 
 which all visitors to Victoria are taken, and 
 the street-car ride there is through one of its 
 most pleasant suburbs. You come at last to 
 a quaint, old-timish, waterside village of 
 wooden houses, where there are several 
 taverns, and at the end of the main street a 
 little wharf, from which you can take a boat 
 to board one of the big ships that lie in the 
 land-locked bay. There are the Warspite, 
 the Amphion, and the Phaeton ; also, there is 
 a determined-looking torpedo-boat-destroyer 
 with four funnels, that looks capable of no 
 end of execution. We determine to go 
 aboard the Warspite, which is the flagship, 
 and are soon being pulled over the quiet 
 water by a boatman whose speech is the 
 speech of London. Very solid and big does 
 this iron war-castle look as we come near to 
 it, and when we clamber up the ladder and 
 205
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 step over the side we are in a new world. An 
 intelligent corporal of marines is detailed to 
 show us over the ship, and he also is a 
 cockney of the most agreeable and pro- 
 nounced description. In fact, the visit to the 
 warship is really a visit to a bit of England 
 floating on these far-away waters. You can 
 close your eyes, and as you listen to the 
 seamen's talk you can fancy yourself once 
 more in the " right little, tight little island." 
 There is a business-like air about a modern 
 man-of-war that constrains one's respect for 
 the brain-power and industry that have gone 
 to her construction. We examine one of the 
 big six-inch guns, such as the blue-jackets 
 mounted on carriages and used with such 
 effect in South Africa. The movable breech 
 is swung round and we look through the 
 rifled barrel, and in imagination see the great 
 shell rushing on its path of destruction. Then 
 we are taken to the conning tower, whence, 
 when the ship goes into action, the captain 
 directs the fight. Here are numbers of speak- 
 ing tubes for communicating with the various 
 guns, and a small wheel which enables the 
 captain " to work the 'elm," our guide tells us. 
 He explains the various pieces of apparatus for 
 directing the engines, and bids us mark the 
 solid nine-inch steel walls by which we are 
 206
 
 Blue-jackets and Torpedo Tubes 
 
 surrounded, and the steel dome overhead 
 which comes down to within about a foot of 
 the top of the walls, which are about five and 
 a half feet high, or perhaps a little higher. 
 There is room for half a dozen people easily 
 in the conning tower, and it is on the level of 
 the main deck, and well forward. It seems 
 so secure and invulnerable that you feel you 
 might stand there and witness a naval battle 
 unharmed. By and by we go below, where 
 between decks there are more guns and a 
 great number of blue-jackets lying about in 
 all directions, sound asleep. They are lying 
 principally on the bare planks, and a very 
 little boy of the party says : "Are they dead ?" 
 They might easily be supposed to be so in 
 the dim light, and so silent as they are. And 
 we see a couple of big torpedo tubes, and have 
 the mechanism of that deadly thing they 
 discharge explained to us that sort of 
 mechanical fish with a potentiality for destruc- 
 tion in its snout and a screw propeller for its 
 tail, that drops into the water and silently 
 makes its way to its object like a thing of 
 sense. Space would fail, however, to make a 
 list of the wonderful machinery one sees on a 
 man-of-war. The impression it all leaves on 
 one is of immense solidity and impregnable 
 strength. The half-light that prevails shows 
 207
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 you that everything is beautifully clean and 
 in " apple-pie order." You descend to a yet 
 deeper depth, far below the water-line. There 
 are the magazines of shells and shot and 
 cordite, behind iron doors. There also are the 
 giant engines that propel this mighty mass of 
 metal. The tremendous costliness of the 
 whole machine comes home to you with great 
 effect, and you do not wonder that the Chan- 
 cellor of the Exchequer has to ask for big 
 sums. Afterwards we are shown through the 
 navy yard, where stores are kept, and where 
 there are repairing shops. We see, too, the 
 dry-dock and its beautiful pumping machinery 
 and neatly arranged hills of coal. And we 
 come away with a clearly-defined sense that 
 here on this far Western coast is a big chunk 
 of Britain's power, where the strong watch- 
 dog sleeps with one eye open and ready to 
 spring to his feet with a growl should occasion 
 arise. 
 
 208
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE COAL MINES OF VANCOUVER 
 ISLAND, B.C. 
 
 NANAIMO, B.C., September 2oth 
 WHEREVER you go in British Columbia you 
 find the institution of Chinese labour. I called 
 the other day in Victoria, on Mr. Lee Mong 
 Kow, the Chinese interpreter at the Customs 
 House, who is a gentleman of much intelli- 
 gence. I had heard a rather good story about 
 him before I called, to the effect that one day 
 some bustling man went into his office and 
 began to address him, brusquely, in that sort 
 of mixed patter that a Chinaman is supposed 
 to understand. But all his "savvys" and 
 "allee samee" failed to elicit any response 
 from the grave Oriental, who was sitting at 
 his desk. The visitor became at last some- 
 what obstreperous and angry, when, suddenly, 
 Lee Mong Kow arose, drew himself up and 
 said in the purest English : 
 
 " Sir, are you an Englishman ? " 
 14 209
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 " Why, yes," said the astonished questioner. 
 
 " Then, why in the world don't you speak 
 your own language, instead of coming in here 
 calling out a jargon that no reasonable man 
 can tolerate ? " 
 
 Which made the visitor feel somewhat cheap 
 and apologetic. 
 
 I saw on Mr. Lee Mong Kow's mantelpiece 
 a fine photograph of a distinguished Toronto 
 judge. " That makes me think of home," I 
 remarked. 
 
 " Indeed ! Do you know Mr. Justice ? 
 
 He is a friend of mine also. I like to keep 
 his portrait there. He has mine, too," he 
 observed with charming simplicity. 
 
 He told me that there were about 14,000 
 Chinese in British Columbia, of whom 137 were 
 women, and 200 children who had been born 
 here. On my remarking on the small propor- 
 tion of women, he said, " Very few can afford 
 to bring their wives only a few of the richer 
 merchants. That is one thing that makes a 
 Chinaman go back to China when he can his 
 wife and family are there." 
 
 I saw a sample of Chinese femininity one 
 evening. There is a permanent show of 
 moving pictures on one of the Victoria streets, 
 where through the ever-open doors you can 
 hear the lecturer talking about his "fillum" 
 
 210
 
 Chinese Women and the Graphophone 
 
 (film), and over a vista of chairs you can see the 
 familiar white sheet. As a further attraction, 
 a phonograph is placed near the door, that 
 gives out through a big trumpet-shaped funnel 
 such strident concert-hall ditties as the pro- 
 prietor thinks will be attractive to the crowd. 
 But the favourite selection seems to be a song 
 sung by a highly-gifted baritone-robusto, who 
 has apparently swallowed a saw, and who is 
 evidently singing to a very large audience. 
 At the end of each verse there is a laughing 
 chorus that is very loud and definite. In 
 front of the machine, and listening to it with 
 signs of pleasure, were three small, slim, 
 Chinese women, two girls about fourteen, 
 and three little Chinese babies. They were 
 all very clean, very neatly dressed, and the 
 women and girls wore wide trousers, and 
 coats that a friend called " automobile " 
 well, I suppose they were the Mongolian ana- 
 logue of that modern garment. Nothing 
 could exceed the rare neatness of their black, 
 smooth hair, around which they wore some 
 sort of Oriental bead arrangement, very severe 
 in pattern. Their faces expressed a happy 
 placidity while each verse of the absurd song 
 was proceeding, but when it came to the rather 
 long " Ha ! ha ! ha ! " Mephistophelian sort of 
 chorus, their faces beamed with a delight as 
 
 211
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide "West 
 
 of children. It was very curious to see the 
 doll-like babies laughing laughing with their 
 mouths and their chubby cheeks, and their 
 bright little eyes. Any old parental sort of 
 person would feel inclined to take them in 
 his arms, for children are children all the world 
 over, and the Chinese babies are the " cutest " 
 on record. There was a certain petite, lady- 
 like dignity about the women, so small and 
 strong. It was like looking at an ordinary 
 woman of our race through the wrong end of 
 a telescope, so that she appeared a new type 
 of condensed womanhood. Nor was the 
 expression of their merriment devoid of a 
 tinge of tolerating amused scorn, as if they 
 would say, " To think that we should laugh 
 at such a ridiculous thing ! " 
 
 When you have exhausted all your adjec- 
 tives on the general greatness of Canada and 
 its immense resources, you still feel, in British 
 Columbia, that you want a special set. It 
 almost needs an expletive added to every 
 adjective and descriptive term you can think 
 of or find in the dictionary. Even then the 
 effect is as poor as that of a simian solo on an 
 organ fit for the hand of a Sebastian Bach. 
 The British Columbia people are as proud of 
 their province as if they had made it, and well 
 
 212
 
 Opportunities for Capital and Labour 
 
 they may be. If there were a population in it 
 of twenty millions, instead of two hundred 
 thousand, there would be lots of room for them. 
 You could drop the United Kingdom of Great 
 Britain and Ireland into the middle of it, and 
 still have a good many thousand square miles 
 to spare. And it is very much richer in natural 
 resources than ever the United Kingdom was. 
 Of course, the entire population of the 
 Dominion could move in here and put up 
 "To Be Let " signs in the other provinces, and 
 in either case it could not be said that British 
 Columbia was over-populated. 
 
 There is room for persistent missionary 
 effort among the congested and crowded 
 centres of the whole world, where the gospel 
 of emigration to Canada needs preaching in 
 season and out of season. For, as one travels 
 through it and begins to understand its mag- 
 nificent distances and wide areas, its capacities 
 for support, its endless openings for capital 
 and labour, it is impossible to avoid feeling 
 that all the efforts of the Immigration Depart- 
 ments are but as a drop in the bucket. Take, 
 for instance, this Vancouver Island, from 
 which I am writing. It is a land of beauty 
 and wealth. The extreme length of it is 285 
 miles; its greatest breadth, 80 miles. It con- 
 213
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 tains 16,400 square miles, or about 10,000,000 
 acres, and of this more than one-third is 
 practically unexplored. 
 
 I came up to Nanaimo from Victoria, on 
 the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway, in a 
 north-easterly by north direction, and the 
 seventy-three miles I thus travelled formed a 
 continuous panorama of beautiful scenery 
 woods and hills and deep gorges, grand 
 coloury rocks, and glimpses of the surrounding 
 sea through the tall firs. There is not so 
 much fire-swept bush here as there is on the 
 mainland, and the mountains are less awful. 
 Occasionally, across the water you glimpse 
 those vast heights, and very beautiful they 
 look in the vaporous distance, mysteriously 
 impressive, giving a note of sublimity to the 
 landscape that nothing else could. The vege- 
 tation is very luxuriant, and the glades of the 
 woodland are bosky with bracken. It was so 
 in the long-ago ages when the immense coal 
 deposits of the island were formed, after 
 several great cataclysms that flung mountains 
 over the bush, and then, after aeons of 
 time, upheaved them with volcanic force, so 
 that in one of the coal mines the tunnel, a 
 mile and a half long, whereby the black 
 mineral is extracted, goes straight into the 
 side of a hill. The fallen trees in these woods 
 214
 
 Ladysmith and Nanaimo 
 
 grow mossy, and there is a smell such as 
 you only get in a country where there is 
 plenty of moisture. As you come along 
 through the sylvan scenery, the thought of 
 busy coal and copper mines is far from you. 
 But at last you are at Ladysmith, fifty-nine 
 miles above Victoria, and see long coal trains 
 drawn by powerfully-purring locomotives, and 
 the usual big trestle arrangement for loading 
 ships. Vancouver Island is specially fitted 
 for the shipping coal trade. Nowhere is the 
 sea far off, and the great ships come up and 
 take off their supplies with great convenience. 
 Chinese brakesmen were handily manipulat- 
 ing these trains, and on one of them I saw a 
 Chinese fireman. A dollar and "two bits" 
 (25 cents) is the wage of a Chinaman per day 
 in these supplementary above-ground indus- 
 tries of the coal region. Only in one pit on 
 the Island is he employed to get the coal out 
 of the mines. 
 
 Nanaimo is a thriving coal town I beg its 
 pardon, I should have said city of five or 
 six thousand inhabitants. Its surroundings 
 are very beautiful, and there is an air of sound 
 prosperity about it. The arm of the sea on 
 which it is situated is irregular in shape, and 
 there is considerable variation of level in the 
 land on which it is built, so that it is easy to 
 215
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 look far out to sea where there are tree-clothed 
 islands and distant mountains. There is some- 
 thing in the irregularity of its streets that 
 reminds one of the Old Country towns. Its 
 main thoroughfare is said to follow the line of 
 an old deer-trail, just as one or two of the 
 streets of Boston grew out of cow-paths. Nan- 
 aimo has some very good stores, and it sup- 
 ports a number of hotels, banks, lawyers, eight 
 churches and two newspapers. It, in turn, is 
 supported by the coaF industry, as represented 
 by the very extensive enterprise of that great 
 commercial aggregation, the New Vancouver 
 Coal Mining and Land Company, an English 
 concern, among the first promoters of which 
 were Mr. Charles Fitzwilliam, a scion of an 
 old Yorkshire family, and brother of Earl 
 Fitzwilliam, Sir William Cunard, and Judge 
 Haliburton, author of " Sam Slick." The 
 latter famous litterateur was chairman of the 
 company until his death. Among other 
 original shareholders also was Agnes Strick- 
 land, the well-known author of " The Queens 
 of England," an old-time work that in its day 
 had a great vogue. This important company 
 and the great Dunsmuir concern divide be- 
 tween them at present the vast coal resources 
 of Vancouver Island, and both were started 
 long before the advent of the great transcon- 
 216
 
 Productive Coal-mining: Industry 
 
 tinental railway that now links coast with 
 coast. Not without much perseverance and 
 the expenditure of vast capital has the New 
 Vancouver Coal Mining Company reached its 
 present status and output. Although there 
 are very extensive and rich beds of coal in 
 Vancouver Island, the deposits are much less 
 continuous than those, for instance, of Nova 
 Scotia, and consequently much more capital 
 has had to be expended in exploring and 
 locating seams. The works, which are under 
 the able management of Mr. Samuel Robins, 
 who is a very popular magnate at Nanaimo, 
 comprise five mines, but coal is only being 
 raised from three. 
 
 I walked about a mile out of the town and 
 came to the mouth of the great shaft, 650 feet 
 deep, around which are grouped the various 
 buildings necessary to the industry. There is 
 the engine-house, containing a double-cylinder 
 winding engine of the most massive propor- 
 tions, the great drum of which reels up and 
 unwinds the ij^-inch steel ropes which let 
 one cage down and bring another up. It is 
 quick work, about one load a minute being 
 brought out of the pit. I looked down into 
 the black and awful depth, but having been 
 down coal pits before, and time being of value, 
 I did not ask the privilege of descending. It 
 217
 
 From the Great Lakes to the "Wide West 
 
 seemed dreadful to think of a large number of 
 men and a hundred mules being down so far 
 from the light of day, but it was gratifying to 
 find when, later, I saw the men come up from 
 their " shift " they work eight hours a day 
 that they were fine, strapping, well-fed fellows. 
 They are well paid, too, their wages ranging 
 from $100 to $140 per month; and as they are 
 paid piecework and have their slices of luck, 
 when a good shot brings down a large quan- 
 tity of coal without much rock in it, and that 
 can be got out with comparative ease, their 
 lot is by no means hopeless, and they seem to 
 thrive on it. They are superior in physique 
 to the coal miners of the Old Country. Many 
 of them are from Great Britain, but there is a 
 considerable mixture of nationalities ; there 
 are Finns and Belgians, Poles and Swedes. 
 Looking away across the water to Protection 
 Island, about two miles off, I was told that 
 the underground work extended to that spot, 
 where there is an upcast shaft. The tram- 
 ways, which are the arteries of ingress and 
 exit, and which form a regular railway system 
 down in the mine, are worked for the most 
 part by electricity, on the trolley system, 
 though, as I have before said, a considerable 
 number of mules are also employed. These 
 animals are well looked after and are kept in 
 218
 
 Loading Ships with Coal 
 
 admirable stables. Fodder is raised on the 
 company's farm near by, which is several 
 hundred acres in extent, and in which Mr. 
 Robins, with the instincts of an Englishman 
 of the old school, takes a deep interest. The 
 electrical power-house is large and well- 
 equipped. Interesting also it was to inspect 
 the immense fan, worked by its separate large 
 steam-engine, by which the ventilation of the 
 mine is kept up a great wheel, with vanes on 
 it like a paddle-wheel. It is 37 feet in diam- 
 eter, and 12 feet across it This never stops 
 night or day, for the work in the pit is con- 
 tinuous three shifts of eight hours each. The 
 machinery for weighing the coal, sieving it 
 into different sizes and loading it into cars 
 is all very ingenious and up-to-date. It is 
 handled by Chinamen. Then the cars are 
 pulled out by locomotives up a stiff incline to 
 the loading trestle, to which the big ships 
 come. I walked out to the end of the line 
 and saw the steamer Titania lying there being 
 loaded. She carries coal to San Francisco, 
 and her cargo is 5,800 tons. Such is the 
 effectiveness of the machinery that they can 
 put this immense quantity of coal aboard of 
 her in eleven hours. It always looks as though 
 there was another ship waiting to be loaded, 
 and when one contemplates this great thick 
 219
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide "West 
 
 stream of coal going out, not only here, but 
 in two other places on Vancouver Island, it 
 gives one some idea of the extent of the coal 
 industry. 
 
 When the monthly pay-day comes round 
 things hum at Nanaimo. There is about 
 $200,000 to be distributed among the stores 
 and other avenues of expense. At no time 
 does money seem to be very scarce. They 
 are having a great celebration of the annual 
 fall fair here, which is to be opened by his 
 Honour the Lieutenant-Governor, and one of 
 the features of it is the election of a Queen 
 of the Fair. The queen has been elected 
 amid considerable excitement, as each popular 
 girl had her adherents. Voting was by tickets, 
 which cost ten cents each, and the total 
 sum taken in was $1,100. People seemed 
 to think nothing of spending $10 or $20 in 
 tickets. At one boarding-house at which 
 coal miners lived, there was a young lady that 
 the lodgers thought should hold the coveted 
 position. They were determined to secure 
 the election of their favourite, if possible, so 
 they clubbed together and raised $140, 
 which they brought down with the intention 
 of buying tickets, and casting 1,400 votes for 
 her. Tickets had given out, but the officials 
 of the fair gave them a document certifying 
 
 220
 
 Miners in Easy Circumstances 
 
 that it was equal to that number, and I saw 
 them just after they had deposited it in the 
 proper quarter. Their candidate did not win 
 after all, but the incident shows that at 
 Nanaimo the grimy coal miners have money 
 to spend. And when they have " cleaned 
 themselves," and put on very well-made 
 clothes and smart collars and neckties, you 
 would not know that they were coal miners 
 at all. They have opinions about politics, 
 too, and some of them are rather advanced 
 Socialists. 
 
 221
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 NANA1MO TO THE GOLD COUNTRY VIA 
 VICTORIA AND VANCOUVER 
 
 GRAND FORKS, B.C., October ist 
 THE place from which I date this letter 
 shows that I have left Vancouver Island and 
 its coal, four or five hundred miles to the 
 west, and that I have to some extent retraced 
 my tracks on the C. P. R. I have been in 
 the gold country of British Columbia for 
 several days, but of that more anon. 
 
 In my last I said something about the 
 working of the great coal deposits of Van- 
 couver Island, especially with reference to the 
 extensive works of the New Vancouver Coal 
 Mining and Land Co. But there is also the 
 great Dunsmuir coal interest, which gets out 
 the black mineral and loads ships to an even 
 greater extent. Ships seem to be always 
 waiting for coal, and a perpetual stream of 
 it is being poured into their dark holds. 
 Of the vast deposits of British Columbia 
 
 222
 
 Coal Deposits in the Forest 
 
 the top has only been scratched, and there 
 appears to be enough to last a good deal 
 longer than for ever. The Dunsmuir in- 
 terest on Vancouver Island is very large 
 indeed. The railway from Victoria to Wel- 
 lington belongs to it, and also the Govern- 
 ment concession of ten miles on either side 
 of it. Dunsmuir pere was a practical coal 
 miner, who prospected long in the forest, and 
 at last found coal near the upturned roots of 
 a great tree. From this discovery grew many 
 millions for him and his family. His son is 
 now Premier of the Province, and in taking 
 that position Mr. James Dunsmuir has shown 
 a creditable public spirit, and has somewhat 
 departed from the traditions of the great 
 enterprise of which he is now the head. 
 
 The Dunsmuir coal mines are at Welling- 
 ton, at Extension, and at Comox. I went to 
 Extension from Nanaimo by a stage-waggon, 
 the distance being six or seven miles, part of 
 it through the woods, where there are great 
 firs and cedars. A notion of the sort of 
 country it is is afforded by the fact that a 
 couple of days afterwards two commercial 
 travellers were driving thither in a buggy, and 
 at a turn of the road through the trees, they 
 came upon a big black bear and her two cubs, 
 which ambled away very quickly as the 
 223
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 travellers came up, and made them regret 
 that they had not guns with them. " Exten- 
 sion " is not a mere noun of the " common " 
 variety, but a village of pine-board houses 
 among the hills, and you soon see the build- 
 ings of the coal mines. I walked up to the 
 mouth of a low tunnel, which is driven 
 straight into the heart of one of the hills. A 
 trolley wire, suspended at a level of six or 
 seven feet from the ground, passes into its 
 darkness. Soon I heard an approaching 
 rumble, and, presently, a very strong-built, 
 dwarfish motor locomotive came out, drawing 
 behind it thirty or forty small box-cars, each 
 containing about 1,600 pounds of coal of fine 
 quality. Lying on top of the coal, on fifteen 
 or twenty of the cars, were coal miners coming 
 off their " shift " big, strapping fellows, each 
 wearing a cap with a lamp in the front of it, 
 which they extinguished when they got off 
 the cars. The road goes down a slope for 
 about a mile before it comes to the workings, 
 and after that the numerous avenues go for 
 miles into the bowels of the mineral moun- 
 tain. The coal is loaded into railway cars 
 and taken by rail to Ladysmith, about a 
 dozen miles off, where it is poured into ships. 
 Ladysmith is a city, and is a remarkable in- 
 stance of quick growth, as is evidenced by its 
 224
 
 Educated English Settlers 
 
 name, which originated in the present South 
 African campaign. Now it has five or six 
 hotels, a departmental store or two, and a 
 smart, up-to-date newspaper. Both this place 
 and Extension live on the coal industry. 
 
 Getting on board the train at Nanaimo, I 
 proceeded to Victoria, passing on the way the 
 settlement called Duncans, a locality which 
 is the abode of many English ranchers. Near 
 it, also, is a most hopeful and paying copper 
 mine. The people who get into the train about 
 here speak out-and-out English, and some of 
 them are going back to the Old Country on a 
 visit. From conversing with one or two of 
 them I learn that they lead very pleasant lives, 
 but make no money to speak of. One fine 
 young fellow of three or four and twenty told 
 me he had come out here immediately after 
 leaving one of the principal great schools of 
 England. He had been farming for eight 
 years, and finding that it opened no career, he 
 had determined to " chuck it " and to go to 
 McGill and take a four years' course in engin- 
 eering. He said he knew a good many young 
 fellows who had come out here in the same 
 way, and after some years of unsuccess had 
 gravitated to the gold mines, where they were 
 working as labourers in a hopeless sort of way, 
 without special knowledge and without pros- 
 15 225
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 pects. There is nothing more pathetic than 
 the history of some of these young men, who 
 have been used to comfort and even luxury, 
 and who, without any special training, are 
 packed off to this country to sink or swim. 
 That the greater proportion of them sink is a 
 fact that illustrates the difficulty of finding 
 careers for educated boys. The only way 
 out of it seems to be to teach every boy of 
 merely ordinary faculty some respectable 
 trade, and to see that he learns it thoroughly 
 and is not a mere "gentleman apprentice." 
 The men who get on in new countries are 
 generally those who begin very low down on 
 the ladder, and thus obtain a basic experience 
 that serves them all their lives. It is difficult 
 to see how our nice, gentlemanly, well-edu- 
 cated boys are to get exactly this foundation- 
 knowledge that their less favored compeers 
 have to pay for with such bitter discipline. It 
 is true that if they are content to forego the 
 expectation of material success of an ambitious 
 order, and are willing to live simple, hard- 
 working lives, this great country offers them 
 a pleasant home. I have visited such homes 
 of late, where educated and refined people 
 were found amid frugal surroundings, and 
 doing things which once they never thought 
 they would have to do. There is probably 
 226
 
 Victoria and its Trade Prospects 
 
 more poor gentility in British Columbia than 
 in any country under the sun. 
 
 There were evidences at Victoria that the 
 Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York 
 were coming. Artificers were at work build- 
 ing arches and fixing Venetian masts along 
 the long bridge that leads to the Government 
 Buildings. But I was going away, and con- 
 sequently I looked around me with a some- 
 what valedictory eye. 
 
 Victoria is a capital of which any province 
 might be proud. Moreover, it shares with 
 Vancouver those highly respectable pros- 
 pects of trade with the Orient which probably 
 indicate the direction from which British 
 Columbia's expansion will come. The trade 
 it is after is that which has built up Seattle, 
 San Francisco, and the other American cities 
 to the south ; and which is sure to go on 
 increasing. No doubt it owes some restric- 
 tions to its insular position. A city of homes, 
 there does not seem to be the continual round 
 of amusements and evening engagements that 
 are the questionable advantages of some of 
 our other cities. But it has a solid respect- 
 ability, without overmuch display, that to 
 many minds presents undoubted attractions. 
 
 The boat leaves Victoria an hour after mid- 
 night. It was a damp evening, and the tears 
 227
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 of autumn dimpled the dimly-lighted expanse 
 of harbour. Afar off the disappearing lamp 
 of the lighthouse alternately threw its beams 
 over the water and withdrew them. Among 
 the piles of the pier the waves gently lapped. 
 A Chinaman sat motionless in the smoking 
 cabin, with the placid passivity which only a 
 Chinaman can exhibit. A cockney woman 
 with a child alternately swore at Victoria as 
 compared with London, and told her infant 
 that she would " knock him silly " if he didn't 
 stop his whimpering. Below, the men were 
 taking in cargo with much rumbling and roll- 
 ing. At last that stopped, and the passen- 
 gers began to come in to take up their berths. 
 Here and there a man or a woman lay sleep- 
 ing in the large, comfortably furnished saloon. 
 Nothing more desolate than the prow of the 
 ship on that misty night can be imagined. 
 At last the ropes were cast off, and we glided 
 out into the harbour towards the black night 
 of waters beyond, past the winking light and 
 out to where, by the aid of the young moon, 
 the dim outlines of black rocks and headlands 
 were visible. At length the lights of Victoria 
 were left far astern, and we were in the midst 
 of a wild gray waste of waves. 
 
 Vancouver presents a somewhat imposing 
 appearance as you approach it from the sea 
 228
 
 Beauties of the Eraser Canyon 
 
 in the morning light, with its accompaniments 
 of big ships lying at anchor, and its busy, 
 smoking haunts of industry. Moreover, it is 
 a city set on a hill, or rather hills, which adds 
 to its spectacular effect, while its neighbouring 
 mountains give it dignity. 
 
 There is really so much to write about in 
 British Columbia that selection is difficult. 
 The afternoon train-ride along the Fraser 
 canyon was matchlessly beautiful. There 
 was no sun, but the soft play of light and 
 shadow was overpoweringly charming. One 
 could look out freely with wide-open eyes at 
 the picturesque rocks, the green river swirling 
 below, the grand mountains rising to their 
 snow-capped peaks, the solemn woods, with 
 their wealth of luxuriant undergrowth touched 
 with the tints of autumn. The pity of it was 
 that the train went so fast : there were num- 
 berless spots where one wanted to linger and 
 gaze. I do not think anything can be more 
 awe-inspiring and grand than this Fraser 
 canyon seen on an autumn afternoon. There 
 is a silent majesty about it that hushes one to 
 silence, and its beauties alone are worth a 
 trip to the West. There is so much of it ! 
 
 I got to Arrowhead at half-past eight in the 
 morning of the day after leaving Vancouver. 
 This is the head of navigation southwards 
 229
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 towards the land of gold. A big stern-wheel 
 steamer was waiting on the other side of the 
 platform, and if I had not known that I was 
 approaching the gold country, various signs 
 would have told of it, such as the men who 
 came slowly down from the hotel to the boat, 
 and the packs they carried. Taking one of 
 these packs as a sample, all we see as it lies 
 on the cabin floor is that it is a bundle done 
 up in canvas, with rope, and that it looks as 
 if its interior was miscellaneous. Across the 
 top of it lies a miner's pick a very natty 
 tool with a three-foot handle the head of 
 which is a hammer at one end and a pick at 
 the other. Below the bundle is an ordinary 
 gold-washing pan of thin steel, in which lie 
 two good-sized frying-pans. I dare say if we 
 were to open the bundle we would find, in 
 addition to food, the rest of a prospector's 
 culinary outfit, and, certainly, a pair of heavy 
 blankets. The whole kit weighs fifty or 
 sixty pounds, perhaps, and this the gold-seeker 
 packs over the mountains. Here and there, 
 on the side of one of these rocky heights, we 
 see a thin blue smoke curling among the 
 pines. It comes from a prospector's fire he 
 has been cooking his breakfast before starting 
 for another day on his everlasting quest. 
 The green and pellucid waters of Arrow 
 230
 
 The Sail Down Arrow Lake 
 
 Lake are shallow, but they afford a convenient 
 means of communication between the main 
 C. P. R. line and the gold settlements. We 
 are to reach Robson, at the lower end of the 
 lake, at half-past five in the evening, or there- 
 about. We pass through ranges of dark gray 
 mountains, covered with a growth of pines, 
 their topmost peaks snow-capped. At about 
 one-third of their height lie long lines of white 
 clouds, soft and fleecy. Sometimes even the 
 tops of the mountains are .half-hidden by 
 clouds, for it is a gray day. The feeling of 
 autumn is everywhere ; the heats and the 
 mosquitoes are over. At about three o'clock 
 in the afternoon the sun shone. We had 
 been passing since morning through a con- 
 tinuous panorama of mountains whose soli- 
 tary heights lift themselves thousands of feet 
 above the calm surface of the lake. We 
 had left two sanatoriums behind us "hot 
 springs," as their signs stated big hotels 
 built high up on the mountain sides and look- 
 ing the very places to recuperate in. We had 
 discharged considerable cargo at Nakusp, 
 which is a railway terminus. Down below in 
 the hold were fifty head of cattle that the 
 boat was carrying for transhipment to Ross- 
 land. Let no one think he quite knows his 
 Canada till he has taken this trip down the 
 231
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 Arrow Lake. It is an entrance to the gold 
 country that is full of beauty a scene of 
 lonely grandeur that one will never forget. 
 
 On the steamer there are a dozen men 
 whose pursuit is gold, and they might be 
 divided into two classes, the talkers and the 
 non-talkers. I think those who talk are 
 chiefly successful in that occupation of their 
 powers. It is the others who find the gold. 
 There was one man on board who talked 
 continuously all day, and another who was a 
 good second. The first had a tenor larynx, the 
 other was a basso. I gather that they took to 
 mining because it affords an opportunity for 
 effort that is not unremitting. They appeared 
 to have been everywhere in the world, and to 
 have tried many avenues to fortune, and each 
 of them seemed to know everything about 
 everything. By their own account they were 
 scientists, mathematicians, explorers, his- 
 torians, theologians, and they were at one 
 time extensive capitalists. There seems to be 
 a floating population of that kind in British 
 Columbia. 
 
 We boarded the train at Robson, and were 
 soon speeding through the mountains in the 
 darkness. But when we got to Trail there 
 was a great taking in of coal on the part of 
 the locomotive, for we had before us one of 
 232
 
 The Railway Climb to Rossland 
 
 the stiffest railway ascents on the continent. 
 Rossland is distant from Trail about seven 
 miles, as the crow flies, but as there is a dif- 
 ference of about 2,300 feet between the levels 
 of the two places, it may be imagined that a 
 very circuitous route is taken. The seven 
 miles' direct distance takes about an hour 
 and a half to accomplish. Very often the 
 grade reaches four feet in one hundred feet, 
 and on one part of the line there is a series of 
 switchbacks up which the train is alternately 
 pushed and pulled. The loud puffing of the 
 engine, which has eight coupled driving-wheels, 
 showed the immense amount of work it was 
 doing. At last, when we had got high up on 
 the side of one mountain we saw the numer- 
 ous electric lights of Rossland gleaming at the 
 top of another. I had never realized that this 
 city of gold was so near the sky. By a long 
 detour we skirted the head of the valley and 
 drew up at the platform of the station of one 
 of the most remarkable places in the Domin- 
 ion. We were in the midst of the gold-bearing 
 mines, from which so much wealth has been 
 extracted, and where such enormous amounts 
 of capital have been expended. But of the 
 wonders of the gold region I must speak in 
 my next. 
 
 233
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 ROSSLAND AND THE GOLD MINES 
 
 TRAIL, B.C., September 3oth 
 THE power that actuates the electric light 
 system of Rossland is made at Bonnington 
 Falls, about thirty-three miles off. The city 
 is well lighted, and the interior of the hotel 
 was a blaze of brilliance, while the neatness of 
 one's bedroom, the absolute spotlessness of 
 the bed, and the perfection with which it was 
 " made," showed that Chinamen, rather than 
 chambermaids, were employed in the upstairs 
 work. It was not bedtime, however, and I 
 strolled forth to see if newspaper editors had 
 to work at nights in Rossland, as they do in 
 Toronto. In the office of the Miner I found 
 Mr. Houston, brother of Mr. William Houston, 
 M.A., of our city, writing a powerful and tren- 
 chant editorial, and Mr. Laird, son of a former 
 minister of Elm Street Methodist Church, gaily 
 rattling off three or four " scoops " on a type- 
 writer. I knew they were scoops by the 
 234
 
 A Long-lost Acquaintance 
 
 seraphic expression on his face. While I was 
 there, Chief of Police Vaughan came in with 
 another " scoop." A Chinaman had tried to 
 smuggle himself across the line which is 
 fourteen or fifteen miles south of Rossland 
 into British territory without paying the tax. 
 Chief Vaughan had caught him jumping 
 like a rabbit from bush to bush in the dark. 
 Mr. Laird introduced me to the Chief, a 
 soldierly-looking man of forty or thereabout, 
 and it soon transpired that I had known him 
 as a boy in Birmingham, Eng., years and years 
 ago. Since then he had been in the Soudan 
 and Zulu wars. But this is only one instance 
 of many, for I can scarcely meet anybody 
 without finding that some relation of his 
 married my grandmother's aunt's niece, or 
 something of that sort. It is not the slightest 
 use to try anywhere in the West to "get away 
 from the bloomin' old rag " of acquaintance- 
 ship or even relationship. The chief was so 
 pleased with the rencontre that next day he 
 brought round the smartest light waggon, with 
 high yellow wheels, and the best team in Ross- 
 land and they have some good horses in 
 that top-of-the-mountain town and insisted 
 on taking me a drive to show me the country. 
 I noticed that there was a foot-brake on the 
 vehicle, and it soon came into use, but first 
 235
 
 From the Great Lakes to the "Wide West 
 
 my friend had to restrain the horses from 
 galloping up a hill about as steep as the roof 
 of a house. It was when we began to pick 
 our tortuous way among boulders, between 
 wood piles and over railway crossings, with 
 purring locomotives that made our steeds prick 
 up their sensitive ears, that his skill as a whip 
 was evidenced. Not that he used the whip ; 
 it was all done by talking to the intelligent 
 animals. But there were more triumphs to 
 come. Our rig and its pair of fresh and danc- 
 ing horses was proceeding along a very narrow 
 and very indifferently made road that wound 
 along the mountain side, and allowed about 
 four inches between the outside of our outside 
 wheels and a comfortably steep and boulder- 
 strewn descent of 700 or 800 feet. I began to 
 wonder whether it was better when pitched out 
 under such circumstances to hold one's self 
 tense or to relax any sort of purpose and leave 
 matters to instinct Should I close my eyes, 
 when I was describing my forced parabola, or 
 shut them? Again, what shape should I en- 
 deavour to assume, and on what part of one's 
 person would it be most satisfactory to fall ? 
 It was while I was revolving these thoughts 
 that we overtook a heavy dray and team pull- 
 ing along an immense wooden drum, contain- 
 ing wire for electrical purposes, while farther 
 236
 
 An Inch of Roadway to Spare 
 
 along we saw an equally heavy team and 
 waggon coming to meet us. I did not know 
 at all what we should do, and our horses were 
 impatient, making as though they would clear 
 both obstacles in one leap. The on-coming 
 team backed, however, till they came to a 
 place where the road was wider, and where by 
 placing our hubs close against those of the two 
 waggons successively, we should have at least 
 an inch of roadway to spare. Our horses rose 
 to the occasion, and that they knew it was a 
 close shave was perfectly evident. They 
 went very gingerly past the tight place, with 
 as much interrogation in their ears as could 
 possibly be expressed, and, the obstacles 
 clearly passed, they gave their heads a shake 
 and swung into a trot down the hill, as much 
 as to say, " a little thing like that does not 
 unnerve us." 
 
 After that I grew less apprehensive, though 
 we came to places where a precipice rose on 
 one side and a sheer depth of 1,500 feet sank 
 on the other. It was a lovely drive among 
 the mountains, the vast masses of which gave 
 sublimity to every turn. We passed far 
 above the tops of giant Douglas firs, through 
 groves of poplars " yellowing to the fall," and 
 odorous brakes of fern and underbrush. We 
 met nothing and nobody ; all was grandeur, 
 237
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide. West 
 
 and beauty, and silence, and atmospheric 
 wonders and mystery. Now and again we 
 passed a heap of rock and waste on the moun- 
 tain side, where a gold mine had been begun, 
 or where a noisy rivulet dashed headlong 
 down the mountain. Then by slow degrees 
 and winding ways we reached the bottom of 
 the gorge, and, after a mile or two along the 
 level, saw at its end the Union Jack floating 
 over the shed which does duty as a custom- 
 house. 
 
 In Uncle Sam's country we came now and 
 again to pioneer settlers who were beginning 
 to hew themselves homes out of the forest. 
 We pulled up to listen to the silence that 
 silence that is unbroken by voice of bird or 
 rustle of beast and through which you look 
 down shadowed aisles of columnar forest. 
 
 The drive back was grander still, the vast 
 mystery of the mountains more accentuated. 
 But the moon rose, and the horses knew they 
 were going home. When we had got to the 
 stables they had taken us thirty miles, and 
 they were " as fresh as daisies." 
 
 I suppose the Chief thought I might break 
 my neck in that break-neck country, for when 
 I was climbing up to the Le Roi mine the 
 next morning, he came round a corner very 
 naturally. The top works of this mine are very 
 238
 
 Two Monster Driving Engines 
 
 extensive and lofty. They comprise a high 
 pyramidal sort of erection over the mouths of 
 the two shafts which contain the hoisting 
 pulleys and the crushing machinery. They 
 also comprise the most majestic pair of wind- 
 ing engines I have ever seen. These look 
 strong enough and big enough to pull the 
 Toronto City Hall down Bay Street. They 
 are in a fine spacious engine-house, very light, 
 where everything is kept very clean. They 
 control the up and down work of a 9OO-foot 
 shaft which has three compartments, and an- 
 other having five compartments, and which 
 reaches to a depth of 1,150 feet. In these 
 shafts stations are cut at approximately 
 every 100 feet in depth to 900 feet, and from 
 these stations "drives" are run out to the 
 boundary limits of the property, which is 
 about seventy acres, covering an irregular par- 
 allelogram about 2,800 feet in length by 900 
 feet in width. 
 
 We saw the driver of the great winding 
 engines aloft on a platform with his hands on 
 the levers. Ting-tang ! went a bell, and 
 instantly the great drum, carrying the \y 2 - 
 inch wire-rope, began to revolve. Then the 
 engines came slowly to a stop, and we 
 heard a five-ton lot of copper and gold ore 
 being upset with a thunderous rumble into 
 239
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide "West 
 
 the hopper above. We climbed the stair lead- 
 ing to the hopper, and saw the " Comet 
 crusher" biting up the massive lumps of 
 stone into convenient sizes. As the rocking 
 jaw of this chewer cracks these nuts they fall 
 on to three endless belts below, which are 
 divided into compartments, and which are so 
 arranged that you see a constant succession 
 of trayfuls of ore passing slowly up an incline. 
 The belts vary from 18 inches to 36 inches 
 wide, and they travel 45 feet per minute, pass- 
 ing a line of ore-sorters on either side. These 
 men pick out the waste rock, while the belts 
 carry on the ore to the sampling mill, where 
 it is still further crushed, and a sample of the 
 day's run, one-thousandth part of the amount 
 hoisted, is taken automatically. This sample 
 is supposed to be an exact representation in 
 value of all the ore hoisted, and the mechanism 
 by which it is taken from the bulk is very 
 ingenious. The sample is sent to the assay 
 office and assayed, and it thus gives the aver- 
 age value of all the ore hoisted for that day. 
 After being thus sampled, the ore is conveyed 
 to ore " bunkers " at the railway siding, by an 
 aerial tram-line, operated by gravity ; full 
 buckets going down pulling empty ones back, 
 the mechanism of this tramway being con- 
 240
 
 The Northport Smelting "Works 
 
 trolled by one man who by its means loads 
 the buckets and governs the speed at which 
 the train is allowed to run. From the ore 
 bunkers at the railway the ore is loaded into 
 cars through gates operated by compressed 
 air, ten or fifteen minutes being sufficient to 
 load a train of twenty 3O-ton cars. The ore 
 is then hauled seventeen miles to the reduc- 
 tion works at Northport, where the smelting 
 works of the Le Roi Company are situated. 
 The capacity of the mine is 1,000 to 1,200 tons 
 per day, and the smelting works are capable 
 of treating 1,500 tons daily. The treatment 
 consists of fusing the rock to a copper matte, 
 by which operation the metallic value of 
 thirty tons of the crude ore is concentrated 
 into one ton of matte. The matte is then 
 shipped to the refining works of the American 
 Smelting and Refining Company, of New 
 Jersey, where the metals are separated from 
 each other and turned out in a refined state, 
 i.e. y as copper, gold, and a small proportion of 
 silver. There are as yet no refining works in 
 Canada. The approximate percentage of 
 metal in the crude ore is half an ounce of gold, 
 thirty pounds to forty pounds of copper, and 
 one ounce of silver to the ton. 
 
 16 241
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 DESCENDING THE SHAFT. 
 
 I gleaned the foregoing particulars while we 
 were waiting for an opportunity to go down 
 the poo-foot shaft say, twice as deep as To- 
 ronto City Hall is high, and a good piece over. 
 They were given to me by Mr. Bernard 
 Macdonald, the capable and courteous man- 
 ager of the mine. Mr. Bratnober, one of its 
 earliest shareholders and a miner of life-long 
 experience, was also with us, so that we made 
 a party of four. Mr. Bratnober is a man of 
 vast height and weight, and we therefore 
 rejoiced in the strength of the steel cable. We 
 each got a candle and lighted it, and then 
 the four of us entered a box- like cage open 
 on one side, pulled the bell, and down we 
 began to move. It goes without saying that 
 we packed ourselves as tightly as possible at 
 the back of that box. We had no wish to 
 "come to the front" on that occasion ; on the 
 contrary we had a retiring tendency, and I for 
 my part had a sort of feeling that if the back 
 of the box were a little farther from the open 
 front it would not be any the worse seeing 
 that from the open front you could step into 
 black, vacant depth. It is true that the shaft 
 slants a little, so that the box in which you 
 descend is tipped slightly backwards ; but 
 242
 
 Into the Bowels of the Earth 
 
 even so, you felt that you did not want to 
 practise leap-frog or anything athletic of that 
 kind. I wondered how it would be if the Chief, 
 instead of accompanying three peaceable 
 citizens on their descent, were bringing up a 
 red-handed criminal who objected to extra- 
 dition. What a theme for melodrama " The 
 Struggle in the Shaft ! " 
 
 But while I thus thought, we passed the 
 first station and had a glimpse of electric- 
 lighted avenues and busy figures of men 
 working. Then blackness again for 100 feet, 
 and then another station, till at length we 
 were down the whole 900 feet, and got out in 
 what seemed like a black railway-tunnel, so 
 spacious are these cavernous cloisters in the 
 heart of the mountain. Tram lines were laid 
 there, and holding our candles and peering 
 into the dark we proceeded in Indian file. 
 The air was good, for the mine is ventilated 
 by a tunnel that goes right out of it to the 
 mountain side and the open air. But where 
 we were all was weird night, and the gigantic 
 sighs of a great pump, worked by compressed 
 air at the end of one of the tunnels, sounded 
 like the dying expirations of some cyclopean 
 monster who felt very badly about our irrup- 
 tion into his lair. This was behind us. In 
 front of us we could hear two compressed air 
 243
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 drills at work, 240 strokes a minute, and there 
 is nothing more noisily busy than a com- 
 pressed air drill going into hard rock. What 
 amazed me about the mine was the size and 
 extent of these underground excavations. As 
 for Mr. Bratnober, he got over big heaps of 
 ore with the agility of the schoolboy he was 
 forty-five years ago, and knocked off chunks of 
 ore with a miner's pick. When he displayed 
 them, with a knowing glance, we looked 
 knowing, too, as much as to say it was the 
 right kind of stuff; for it was no use trying to 
 make yourself heard anywhere near those 
 compressed air drills. And by and by we 
 wandered on and on through the chain of 
 lofty caverns till we got to almost perfect 
 silence. Then we could hear other drills 
 going rapidly, but faintly. They sounded 
 like "woodpeckers tapping the hollow elm 
 tree," and Mr. Macdonald said they were 240 
 feet away on the other side of the rock wall, 
 so conductive of sound are these ribs of 
 Mother Earth. 
 
 Then we went up to the 8oo-foot level, and 
 I was left alone with my guttering candle. It 
 was grotesque to see the shadows of the 
 party as they went along the cavern and dis- 
 appeared around a curve. Then from the 
 deep silence came a rumbling, and presently 
 244
 
 A Friendly Irishman 
 
 a figure came in sight pushing a car loaded 
 with ore. It was a strong, raw-boned mine- 
 blackened man, and when he had dumped his 
 ore into the " pocket " from which it is loaded 
 into skips below, for ascent to the upper 
 regions, he said : 
 
 " Ye'll be from the Quid Counthry ? " 
 
 "Yes," I replied. 
 
 " God bless ould Ireland ! " says he. 
 
 " And England, too," I replied. 
 
 " And Scotland as well," he said. 
 
 " They're all right," I remarked. 
 
 " Give us a shake o' yer hand," said he. 
 
 So we shook hands. 
 
 " Wherever we are, eh ? " 
 
 " Why, certainly," said I. 
 
 This seemed to give him prodigious satis- 
 faction, and he went off trolling an Irish ditty 
 as well as his car. In about five minutes he 
 was back with another load, and remarked 
 that "it was all right." I appreciated the 
 humour and humanity of him. I suppose my 
 being down there was an event in the day's 
 work that was a little out of the common, and 
 he felt he must express some appreciation of it. 
 So did his sunshiny spirit triumph over that 
 Cimmerian gloom. Even when he came along 
 with the third load he winked. And then we 
 went up to the next level. But how sweet 
 245
 
 From the Great Lakes to the "Wide West 
 
 the daylight looked when we came up after 
 three hours in that eternal darkness ! 
 
 After that we went down the mountain a 
 couple of hundred feet and saw the big air- 
 compressing plant, and the battery of boilers 
 that supply steam for the engines. And 
 seeing all this we could understand why 
 the Le Roi Company needed a capital of 
 $5,000,000. Most of the stock is held by 
 English shareholders, and the head office of 
 the enterprise is at Salisbury House, London. 
 
 In common with the numerous other min- 
 ing properties at Rossland, the Le Roi is 
 feeling the effects of the disastrous strike 
 which recently occurred. The mine was 
 but partially at work, a few hundred men 
 only being engaged instead of eight or nine 
 hundred. Numbers of idle men hung about 
 the streets and watched the incoming trains 
 with a view to disconcerting the influx of 
 incoming labourers. As a matter of fact, the 
 action of the labour unions is a little in 
 advance of what is reasonable, and it has 
 brought things pretty much to a standstill. 
 The gold in British Columbia cannot be got 
 out without the expenditure of a good deal of 
 capital, but so long as labour prevents capital 
 from getting any return on outlay, so long 
 will progress be impeded. The wages the 
 246
 
 Demands of the Labour Unions 
 
 employers are prepared to pay are $3.50 
 per day of eight hours, for miners, and $2.50 
 per day for " muckers," or unskilled labourers. 
 But the union wants $3.00 a day for muckers, 
 and $3.50 a day for blacksmith's helpers, and 
 that carpenters should only work eight hours 
 per day instead of ten ; moreover, that the 
 officers of the labour union should have access 
 to the mine at all times in order to obtain 
 recruits. These demands not being supported 
 by public opinion, the strike is gradually 
 petering out, and many of the miners feel that 
 they have been somewhat misled by their 
 officers and demagogues. For among labour 
 leaders wise and capable men are as rare as 
 they are in any other department of affairs. 
 Where you have one good man you have 
 twenty rattlepates who cannot see an inch 
 beyond their noses. As one looks around at 
 Rossland, over all the valuable mining pro- 
 perties the Le Roi, which is the biggest in 
 Canada, the Centre Star, the War Eagle, the 
 Iron Mask, and all the rest of them he cannot 
 help feeling that up to the present they have 
 been conducted in the face of difficulties 
 which would have effectually damped the zeal 
 of any but very enterprising managers. 
 
 Nevertheless, Rossland is a surprising city 
 when it is considered that it is only seven 
 247
 
 From the Great Lakes to the "Wide West 
 
 years old. The Montreal Bank block and 
 the Court-house are very fine buildings. A 
 second school is being built, and though fewer 
 people go to church in Rossland than any- 
 where else in Canada, there are several 
 churches, besides thirty hotels. There is also 
 a club, which for convenience and comfort 
 ranks high among institutions of that kind 
 in the West. 
 
 248
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 THE SMELTER AT TRAIL AND THE 
 BOUNDARY COUNTRY 
 
 GREENWOOD, B.C., October ist 
 I LEFT Rossland by the afternoon train, 
 and, standing on the rear platform, much en- 
 joyed the devious descent of 2,300 feet to Trail. 
 Seeing it thus by daylight, it was impossible 
 not to admire the engineering skill with 
 which the railroading has been done, and not 
 to hope, also, that nothing in the massive 
 locomotive that was backing up against the 
 train thus descending by its own weight, 
 would give way. Previously to getting on 
 the train, however, I had been struck by the 
 brute strength of the evolutionary demon, as 
 he stood at the station, the cylinders of his 
 pump breathing stertorously. His four mas- 
 sive coupled driving-wheels on each side, with 
 enormously thick tires on them, meant busi- 
 ness, and his immense bulk and weight were 
 satisfying. I suppose our engineers are strong 
 because they evolve slowly and are still. 
 249
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 Much more brain and imagination and spinal 
 marrow have been spent on this locomotive 
 and this perilous descent from Rossland to 
 Trail than ever were put into any novel in the 
 world, yet few of the general public know who 
 did it, nor was the portrait of the engineer in 
 half the periodicals of the world. He did not 
 even undertake a lecturing tour under the 
 superintendence of Major Pond prime mark 
 of merit or have his performance dramatized 
 with the assistance of poster artists and an 
 adulatory press. All the same, I can imagine 
 him coming sometimes and sitting quietly on 
 the side of the mountain, among these silent 
 and towering trees, smoking a pipe with per- 
 haps one friend, and watching the great 
 black offspring of creative energy cautiously 
 appear away up there in the high forest 
 silences, and begin his astonishing descent, 
 taking one after another the daring curves 
 and inclines, and at last triumphantly disap- 
 pearing far below. As for me, I stood at the 
 back of the train and admired and enjoyed, 
 and here is my humble tribute to the men 
 who made that enjoyment possible. For the 
 rails lead down among scenes the most 
 sylvan and beautiful, and you look up 
 through glades and gulches in which you 
 want to linger. The changing colours of 
 250
 
 A Country of Ups and Downs 
 
 autumn are being spilt about in patches, and 
 every now and again come the odours of the 
 woods that speak of calm and half melancholy 
 decay. 
 
 Every sort of mountain and hill is to be 
 found in British Columbia, and I say again 
 that let any artist draw a mountain scene 
 from his imagination, it will be quite safe to 
 label it B. C., because here, somewhere or 
 other, he will find the very thing. The Gov- 
 ernment might really take a census of moun- 
 tains rather than population, and it might 
 reasonably be expected to accomplish better 
 results than appear to have attended the 
 recent numbering of us, since the mountains 
 would undoubtedly stand still to be counted. 
 But you get used to every sort of elevation 
 and incline when you are here. Conse- 
 quently, when I got out at Trail, I was not 
 surprised to find that the town lay in a valley 
 about two hundred feet below the railway 
 platform. Nor was I in the least disconcerted 
 when being driven, with my impedimenta, 
 down the winding and quite sandy descent 
 that debouches in the main street, at being 
 told half way down by my youthful Jehu, 
 that " a rig went over there a bit ago and the 
 horse was killed." I recognized with ap- 
 preciation that the boy wished to give zest to 
 251
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 my drive. I saw Trail below me, spread out 
 like a map, in the midst of the mountains 
 that rise on all sides of it. On one side is the 
 broad sweep of the Columbia River its 
 waters swift and mountain-born. These 
 green and rapid waters and the somewhat 
 barren heights give it character. Besides, 
 some of the houses are on stilts, because in 
 places the ground is low ; so that part of the 
 main street is carried by a bridge. For the 
 rest it is a collection of shacks and frame 
 houses of various shapes and sizes, and, as is 
 usual in all these mining towns, there are 
 plenty of hotels ; for it would appear that not 
 only does the prospector require the cheering 
 cup in looking forward to his achievements, 
 but also when he regards them as past his- 
 tory. Still more does he demand it when his 
 efforts have proved unsuccessful. I think 
 there is a considerable floating population in 
 British Columbia who regard life as a hard 
 proposition, and who cannot face the con- 
 templation of it without the assistance of a 
 stimulant. 
 
 It is only the main street of Trail that is 
 straight and has a building line ; the rest of 
 the avenues are sandy by-ways, where a man 
 puts up a more or less commodious shack, 
 where he wants it, and with his own ideas as 
 252
 
 Trail and its Big Smelter 
 
 to its aspect. Moreover, a good piece of the 
 town is built in a gulch between two moun- 
 tains, where it is sheltered from the winds of 
 winter. All this gives a sense of freedom and 
 a unique quality that are precious. You are 
 near gold mines, and you get used to walking 
 on the ties over a long trestle when the trains 
 aren't coming through the town, and there is 
 always the smelter, pouring out clouds of 
 smoke that never seem to matter up there 
 (for it is situated on the same level as the 
 upper railway station), and the air is very 
 good. Also, there is a newspaper and four 
 churches, and you can get a pony and be in 
 the heart of the mountains very soon, for 
 there is the original trail from which the town 
 takes its name. 
 
 The smelter, which is the property of the 
 Canadian Pacific Railway, and is run on very 
 scientific principles, dominates the town, being 
 situated on the eminence before mentioned. 
 It consists of a large group of buildings with 
 two huge chimney-stacks, one of which is 200 
 feet high and has an inside measurement of 
 twelve feet square or an area of 144 square 
 feet ; practical men will know what sort of a 
 chimney that is, and it is about the same 
 width all the way up. From these two chim- 
 neys pour, day and night, week-days and 
 253
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 Sundays, continuous clouds of smoke that are 
 soon dispersed in the clear mountain air. 
 
 In front of the works, facing the valley, is 
 an immense mound of black slag-sand. This 
 mound must be many acres in extent. It is 
 the finely-divided waste of the ore. You see 
 it tapped out of the furnaces a molten, water- 
 thin, white-hot liquid and this highly-heated 
 stream is poured into a small cataract of 
 rushing water that not only disintegrates it 
 immediately into sand-like grains, but bears it 
 out on to the aforesaid big mound, and leav- 
 ing it stranded there, drains away into the 
 river. But I am taking you to the bottom of 
 the furnaces first. I should instead have 
 climbed to the upper part of them, first show- 
 ing you the immense fan worked by electricity 
 that blows the enormous fires. In the upper 
 part of these blast furnaces there is a wide 
 opening into which the ore is cast, together 
 with coke, and limestone for flux. You stand 
 on the iron floor and look into the hungry 
 maw of the thing, roaring, darting its angry 
 flames, consuming whatever is given to it 
 Two men are standing there, and a big barrow- 
 ful of coke is brought and shovelled in, then 
 another, and the monster chortles in its angry 
 joy, and multitudinous crackling sparks fly 
 up the flue to the great chimney. Now a 
 254
 
 Fiery Furnaces of the Smelter 
 
 car of ore give him that ! He makes nothing 
 of it. Now a barrowful of limestone shovel 
 it in ! Then more coke, and the valves of his 
 great iron mouth are closed, but you can hear 
 him roaring over his meal with insatiate glee. 
 So they keep feeding him. Down below they 
 are tapping off the slag first, and then they 
 draw off the matte that contains the metals, 
 and that will be sent to the United States 
 to be refined. There are several of these 
 furnaces. 
 
 And there are others which contain molten 
 lakes of metallic material ; still others that 
 slowly revolve and roast the ore to free it 
 from sulphur. This is also done in another 
 part of the works by the " open-hearth " pro- 
 cess, which allows the sulphur to escape into 
 the air, because in this remote part of the 
 country there is no other use for it. And 
 there are huge bins in which various sorts of 
 gold and silver and copper ores are kept in 
 bulk, as they are brought from the mines, 
 until the proper sort of ore to mix with them 
 comes along ; which means not only that 
 much specialistic knowledge of chemistry is 
 required, but that a vast amount of money is 
 sometimes locked up in these ore-stocks. 
 They have the same arrangement here for 
 the automatic sampling of the ore, in order 
 255
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 that its average value may be accurately ob- 
 tained, as they have at Rossland. The sample 
 is assayed, and on that basis the ore is pur- 
 chased from the mine sending it. 
 
 What strikes the observer about all the 
 gold mining and smelting of this neighbour- 
 hood is the vastness of the operations under- 
 taken and the immense amount of capital em- 
 ployed. As you look at the extent of the 
 Trail smelting works, see the many furnaces, 
 roasting hearths, stocks, tramways, electric 
 installations, laboratory, offices, and all the 
 rest of the great establishment, you cannot 
 help feeling how immense has been the de- 
 velopment since the lonely prospectors among 
 the mountains first began to sample the rocks 
 and locate the various veins. 
 
 Gold mining seems to involve three pro- 
 cesses. First, there is the adventurous ex- 
 plorer who, with his pack, frying-pan and gun, 
 goes a-hunting for the gold-bearing rock. He 
 generally dies poor, frequently by the aid of 
 whiskey and poker. Then there comes the 
 wild-cat, wolfish middleman, who sees the 
 chance of a "good thing" without doing 
 much work for it. He is a rapacious animal, 
 who should be shot on sight or hanged, but 
 somehow this fate doesn't get to him. He 
 goes to church on Sundays, eats the fat of 
 256
 
 Heavy Capital Required 
 
 lambs, and is clothed in purple and fine linen. 
 Instead of being hanged he may look forward 
 to consolatory resolutions to his family, and 
 a eulogium by the best orator to be had. 
 Finally there are the hard-working managers 
 and engineers and operatives of the com- 
 panies, of large and widely-distributed capital, 
 who recognize that gold extraction must be 
 conducted on a commercial basis and com- 
 mercial methods ; that there are profits to be 
 had in gold mining, but not extravagant ones, 
 and that very often a small percentage of 
 precious metal means a large and continuous 
 supply that may possibly make a fair return 
 for a liberal and judicious expenditure of 
 capital. 
 
 Even then the tendency of organized labour, 
 which is to kill the goose that lays the golden 
 eggs, has to be borne in mind, as well as many 
 contingencies which always await the oper- 
 ations of enterprising commerce. Anybody 
 can make a dollar a day by washing particles 
 of gold out of the sand of the Eraser River, 
 and the Chinamen do it. Adventurous men, 
 taking their lives in their hands, may go up 
 to the Yukon and find nuggets. But in the 
 mountainous regions of British Columbia you 
 have to pay for scratching the back of the gold- 
 bearing district, and only by the application 
 17 257
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 of commercial methods and large capital can 
 a satisfactory consummation be arrived at 
 
 Proceeding on my journey through what is 
 called the Boundary Country, I got to Grand 
 Forks about nine o'clock on a chill autumnal 
 night, and found that we had about a mile 
 and a half to drive to the town. The aggre- 
 gation of houses near the station is called 
 Columbia, and it and Grand Forks are about 
 to amalgamate. Naturally there is a difficulty 
 about the name the Columbia people want- 
 ing theirs, while Grand Forks folk think that 
 theirs will answer every purpose, particularly 
 as they are the larger community. The hotel 
 accommodation of Grand Forks is very ample, 
 and seven-eighths of the population consist 
 of incomers from the United States who have 
 been attracted to the gold mines in the vicinity. 
 Four years ago, when the first mayor of the 
 town was elected, there were only eight 
 residents who were qualified by British citizen- 
 ship and property qualification for the position, 
 and when the town council was chosen only 
 one of the qualified men was left outside. A 
 considerable number of the citizens have, how- 
 ever, since taken out their naturalization 
 papers. The growth of the town has largely 
 been due to the establishment here of a 
 smelter on extensive lines, and which was 
 258
 
 Grand Forks and Greenwood 
 
 completed rather more than a year ago. It is 
 controlled by the Granby Mining and Smelt- 
 ing Company, of which Mr. S. H. C. Miner, 
 head of the Granby Rubber Company, of 
 Granby, Quebec, is the financial backer. Grand 
 Forks is a go-a-head and rather ambitious 
 town, and will no doubt grow into a still more 
 important place. It is beautifully situated, and 
 near it there is twenty miles of good ranching 
 country which is assisting in its development 
 on lines broader than the merely metallic. 
 The town is well watered by the Kettle River, 
 from the forks of which it takes its name, and 
 its pleasant surroundings and aspects are 
 evidently attractive to the people over the 
 line that separates Canada from the United 
 States. 
 
 I got to Greenwood late at night, and under- 
 went the usual varieties of level in the hotel 
 'bus between the station and its destination. 
 In the West you get accustomed to these 
 things, and the drivers make their horses go 
 up or go down anything and everywhere. We 
 were rewarded by a cordial reception at the 
 hands of a most artistic landlord, who had 
 reduced the business of a hostelry to a science. 
 He welcomed us as though we were his long- 
 lost blood relations, and he could not have 
 been more solicitous for our comfort if we had 
 259
 
 From the Great Lakes to the "Wide West 
 
 been princes. By the morning light I see that 
 much that I have said about Grand Forks is 
 applicable to Greer vood. It is a mining town 
 that has grown up in this Boundary Country 
 because gold has been found in the neigh- 
 bourhood and a smelter has been erected in 
 close proximity. Greenwood has its banks 
 and churches and its main street, with highly 
 respectable stores in it. In ten years' time it 
 will, no doubt, be a very important place. To 
 me, however, one of its features is that it is the 
 point from which my eastward journey home 
 will very shortly begin. 
 
 260
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 THE CROW'S NEST PASS MACLEOD 
 LETHBRIDGE 
 
 REGINA, N.W.T., October 7th 
 THE railway journey from Greenwood to 
 Nelson took from about 1 1.30 a.m. to 9 p.m., 
 for there was a long wait at Robson, situate 
 about halfway. It was through nearly one 
 hundred miles of most uncommon beauty, 
 even in British Columbia the Switzerland, 
 the Scotland, the Wales of Canada. When 
 we got within a dozen miles of Robson the 
 conductor suggested that I should come out 
 on the back platform of the train, which then 
 began to run along the sides of the mountains 
 overhanging the lower end of Arrow Lake. 
 View succeeded view of most entrancing 
 mountain beauty, as we rattled along the 
 road with a precipice rising on one side of us 
 and a descent on the other to the very edge 
 of the lake. On the opposite side a continu- 
 ous panorama of mountains met the eye, 
 now rising to snow-capped summits and again 
 261
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 opening a vista of many distant foldings of 
 far-away heights. A long wait for the Arrow 
 Lake steamer from Revelstoke occurred at 
 Robson, so that the latter part of the jour- 
 ney to Nelson was performed in the dark. 
 The train goes straight to the waiting boat 
 on the Kootenay River, a large stern-wheel 
 steamer of the kind employed by the C. P. R. 
 on these lakes, and very well appointed. We 
 looked across the water at Nelson, and saw 
 its numerous electric lights reflected in the 
 still surface. It is a large and thriving town, 
 and as metallic as the rest of these gold- 
 searching communities, the number and size 
 and activity of which strike one with astonish- 
 ment. We decided, however, to take Nelson 
 as "done," though its importance as one of the 
 great Plutoesque fraternity entitles it, I suppose, 
 to more adequate treatment. One of the best 
 things about it is the beautiful river that leads 
 away from it, and as the steamer pushed 
 through its translucent waters, silvery in the 
 moonlight, and the neighbouring hills showed 
 gray and mysterious in the half light, one 
 determined that the Kootenay country pos- 
 sesses a great wealth of natural beauty as well 
 as that which is merely metallic and pecuniary. 
 They called us at five o'clock the next morn- 
 ing, and we found our way in the dark to the 
 262
 
 The Crow's Nest Pass 
 
 train that was to take us through the Crow's 
 Nest Pass to Macleod, which it will be re- 
 membered is in Alberta. All that day, till 
 about four o'clock in the afternoon, we were 
 thundering along that romantic and, in some 
 senses, historical railway. I have said so 
 much about the natural beauty of these places 
 that I fear to repeat myself, and to become 
 wearisome ; but I can only say that the scenery 
 of the Crow's Nest Pass will be worthy of its 
 painter when he shall arise, and of the most 
 detailed study by any lover of nature. 
 
 I am aware, however, that the live interest 
 of to-day is in the immense coal tracts that 
 are being opened up at Coal Creek and at 
 Fernie, the enterprising nature of which is 
 being evidenced by rapidly rising towns all 
 along the line. It would seem that on the 
 whole coal is as valuable a find as gold ; and 
 in the hundreds of coke-ovens at Fernie the 
 coke is made which is found necessary in the 
 ore-smelters of the Kootenay. Canada will 
 grow to the adult stage, but, as you travel 
 about, you cannot help feeling that the great 
 Dominion is in its infancy. Everywhere the 
 opening-up process is going on, and in the 
 future the great influx of population will come. 
 Canada's prairies and mines and forests fore- 
 tell it. Nowhere do you have this feeling 
 263
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 more strongly than in the neighbourhood of 
 the coal mines of the Crow's Nest. The in- 
 dustry is bringing the population, and the 
 population is building the towns with a helter- 
 skelter liveliness that is surprising. Mean- 
 while long coal and coke trains thunder along 
 the railways, and the fires of the coke-ovens 
 gleam at night through the dark. 
 
 You leave the mountains at last and come 
 to the wide cattle-feeding prairies again. 
 There is almost a relief in it. Whether from 
 the natural liking for variety, or from the 
 attractive force of the storied and stable East, 
 and the knowledge that every mile on the 
 prairies brings one nearer home, it would be 
 idle to inquire. There were the bunches of 
 good cattle, however, and now and again there 
 was a prairie dog, and you looked westward 
 and backward at snow-capped mountains be- 
 coming more and more ethereal in the blue 
 distance. 
 
 Macleod is an incident on the great alluvial 
 plain. It contains a couple of hotels, houses 
 for half a thousand people or more, and the 
 barracks of the Mounted Police. For the 
 N. W. M. P. I have the greatest respect, as a 
 fine body of men, well officered, and to the 
 last degree useful. Whenever you drop into 
 their barracks you find everything neat, 
 264
 
 Macleod and Neighbourhood 
 
 orderly, soldierly and manly. There are at 
 the Macleod barracks ninety men, eight 
 Indian scouts and two interpreters, eighty- 
 seven horses and eight pack-ponies. 
 
 But Macleod is the centre of a wide ranch- 
 ing and farming district that is being opened 
 up with great success. I saw there samples of 
 grain quite as good as anything that has been 
 grown in Manitoba, to my thinking and I 
 have seen a large number of grain samples 
 since I started on my trip. At a compara- 
 tively short distance from here, at Cardston, 
 there is a thriving Mormon settlement that is 
 doing some surprising things in the way of 
 farming. In fact, the whole district is on the 
 tip-toe of expectation of great things in the 
 agricultural line. 
 
 An almost impossibly fine morning found 
 me on October the third (the date is worth 
 spelling out), making my way over that part 
 of the prairie that intervenes between Leth- 
 bridge and the coal-mining works of the Al- 
 berta Railway and Coal Company. It was a 
 mile and a half varied by descents into coulees 
 and climbs up on the other side. Even in this 
 short distance one found that the prairie is by 
 no means uninteresting or deficient in charac- 
 teristics. The rolling surface gives to the dry 
 grass a light and shade that are unique, and 
 265
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide "West 
 
 always there is the far-off mysterious horizon 
 meeting the sky. There are few things that 
 remain common-place if you get enough of 
 them, and this is the case with the prairie. 
 An acre of prairie fenced off might be monot- 
 onous, but a thousand square miles of it rises 
 to grandeur. Very near the coal mines on 
 this vast waste lie the two Lethbridge ceme- 
 teries one of them the Roman Catholic, with 
 its large cross. They are quadrangular spaces 
 with a neat paling around them. Not a vest- 
 ige of a tree is in sight. I leave them on the 
 left, and as I climb out of the last coulee, I 
 find by the side of the track a bleached buffalo 
 skull. There is no mistaking the short, 
 strong horn, the broad forehead of this relic of 
 the past. Here, then, the aborigines pursued, 
 and here their arrows sang the song of death 
 as they left the twanging bowstring. But be- 
 fore me are the rows of tall, black, iron chim- 
 neys ; the miscellaneous roofs showing grimy 
 against the Italian sky of blue ; the columns of 
 black smoke rising high in the air ; the gaunt 
 trestle work for loading coal into cars ; the 
 great heaps of black mine-waste, the aggre- 
 gate of years ; the scaffold work that upholds 
 the quickly-turning pulleys over which the 
 wire ropes run that pull up and lower the 
 cages in the black mirk of the three-hundred - 
 266
 
 Galicians as Coal-miners 
 
 foot shaft. A sound of work is everywhere. 
 Almost every minute a cage comes up with its 
 waggon of coal, and at the same time an 
 empty one goes down. A long train of coal 
 trucks for despatch north, south, east and 
 west is being filled. 
 
 "Shall we send those Douks down and 
 those Italians that came last night ? " says Mr. 
 Hardie, the mine foreman, to Mr. Nasmith, 
 the manager. 
 
 " Yes, and the Frenchmen, too. How many 
 are there of them ? " 
 
 " Nine have showed up out of the seven- 
 teen ; the others will come in. Some of them 
 haven't got caps and lamps, though. There's 
 one of the Galicians hasn't." 
 
 It is arranged that this Slav shall get his 
 outfit. "You have Doukhobors working in 
 the mine, then ? " I interrogate. 
 
 " No, we haven't Douks. The fact is the 
 Galicians are often called Douks." 
 
 " How do you find the Galicians as work- 
 ers?" 
 
 " Very good. The Galician is a decent, 
 hard-working fellow. He wants to assimilate 
 and be a good Canadian. The Douk wants 
 to be by himself, and make his own laws and 
 live in his own way." 
 
 " What wages do your miners get ? " 
 267
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 " It is a poor hand that does not make 
 $100 a month. Some of them make $150 
 to $180." 
 
 " What is your output of coal ? " 
 
 " Ten or twelve hundred tons a day." 
 
 " And your market ? " 
 
 " As far as the Rockies on the west and 
 Winnipeg in the east. Southward to the 
 boundary. Then we supply our own railway 
 down to the boundary, and a section of the 
 C. P. R." 
 
 " What is coal worth in Lethbridge ? " 
 
 " Three and a quarter dollars a ton, deliv- 
 ered into your bin." 
 
 Granted the freedom of the place, I wandered 
 about the top works of the mine, peered down 
 the black shaft, inspected the winding engines 
 and those that compress the air to work the 
 machine drills that make the holes into which 
 the dynamite is put. All around is the prai- 
 rie. They used to dig the coal out of the 
 hills down by the winding St. Mary River, 
 that flows a mile west of Lethbridge, but haul- 
 ing the coal up the incline from that level was 
 too expensive, so they sank the shaft. Coal 
 is come at immediately under a thin super- 
 imposed bed of crumbly shale. There is 
 enough coal within a hundred miles of Leth- 
 bridge to supply the entire continent for a 
 268
 
 Prairie "Wolves, Coyotes and Gophers 
 
 thousand years. The coal raised here is used 
 for domestic purposes, and is of good hard 
 quality. 
 
 Within a few yards of the compressor en- 
 gines, where a little patch of prairie grass lay 
 still untouched and primitive, a nimble little 
 gopher was nibbling his lunch. I approached 
 with wary step. He sat up alert, in the pretty 
 way gophers have, and looked keenly round. 
 Seeing that I did not move, he went on nib- 
 bling, but when I took a step forward he 
 darted into his hole. 
 
 "Are there any coyotes about here?" I 
 asked of the tall young French Nova-Scotian, 
 who runs the compressors. 
 
 " Oh, yes, and wolves, too. I hunt the 
 wolves sometimes. The Government offers a 
 pretty good bounty $15 on a she and $10 
 on a he. You get a horse and run them 
 down. Some you can run down in a mile, 
 others will take two or three. They do a 
 good deal of damage. A couple of them will 
 pull down a big steer if they are hungry. 
 Then they eat what they want and leave the 
 carcass, and the coyotes get their turn. But 
 the coyotes will kill a calf just born ; that's 
 what they're fond of." 
 
 The day before I had seen a mean, slinking 
 coyote from the train window. The coyote 
 269
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 can run. He soon took his long tail out of 
 view. 
 
 The scattered houses and churches and 
 plain public buildings of Lethbridge lay on 
 the prairie in the sun. The town has the 
 advantage of a big public square a piece of 
 the prairie that has been fenced in. Away on 
 the west and south were the indescribably 
 beautiful Rockies, their snow-capped peaks 
 glittering, their mountainous forms defined 
 with pale blue shadows. I passed the solitary 
 and treeless graveyards and went across the 
 drab, dry grass to the head of the coulee that 
 led down to the river. Before me was a wide 
 expanse of valley, through which the gleam- 
 ing river wound, and on its flats were numbers 
 of smallish poplar trees of the bushy kind, 
 their foliage a bright yellow glory in the 
 abundant sunshine. It was the third of 
 October, but it was as hot as July. There 
 was no sign of animal or human life, and the 
 place was inexpressibly lonely. Across the 
 river the land rose in rounded green-gray 
 hills. Coming down to the lower level, I saw 
 the tunnel leading into the hill from which 
 the coal used to be extracted, and wandering 
 into its dark and cool depths I came to the 
 coal, under the shale, and had the pleasure of 
 detaching a fragment from the bed it had 
 270
 
 A Deserted Prairie Valley 
 
 occupied for millions of years. Then I came 
 out into the hot sunshine, and wondered at 
 the broad-spread, silent valley. Not a bird- 
 note broke the stillness. Only the grass- 
 hopper rose snapping from one's footstep, 
 displaying lemon-yellow or scarlet wings. 
 Presently I passed the bleached skeleton of a 
 horse. It was a strange, weird, silent place, 
 for all the glorious sunshine. And overhead 
 were the interminable depths of overarching 
 blue. 
 
 271
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 REGINATHE LATE MR. DAVIN 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 WINNIPEG, October 2ist 
 I BEGIN to write this last letter of a rather 
 garrulous series in the city which is destined 
 to be the pivotal centre of the Dominion. 
 "We are here to stay" may be written on 
 Winnipeg's walls, but not in the sense in 
 which it was graved, by his own request, on 
 the newspaper editor's tombstone. The more 
 you see of Winnipeg the more you feel it is 
 going to be a central heart of things, and 
 whether Manitoba be increased by the addi- 
 tion of a slice of the North- West Territories 
 or not, the position and people of this city are 
 going to make it one of importance and 
 power. Not for nothing is it a confluence of 
 railways and the capital of the richest wheat 
 lands in the world. It is getting to be a 
 metropolitan place, where you are always 
 meeting someone you know. Branch offices 
 272
 
 Prairie Fires Seen by Night 
 
 of distant firms are here, banks are much in 
 evidence, in education it is forging ahead. 
 Notwithstanding occasional bad times, Win- 
 nipeg is bound to keep in the front rank of 
 the procession. 
 
 A rather cloudy Sunday afternoon brought 
 me to Regina from Lethbridge, after a night 
 in a Pullman sleeper and a forenoon of prairie 
 travel. Soon after we left Lethbridge on the 
 previous evening we had seen the darkness of 
 the prairie illuminated by a level line of fire a 
 mile a half long one of the many conflagra- 
 tions that burn up the dry brown grass and 
 go on till they come to a place where there 
 is nothing to burn. The line could not have 
 been straighter if you had ruled it with a 
 straight-edge. Later on we had come to a 
 place where the burning of a straw-pile lit up 
 the heavens, for in these parts the farmer 
 often burns the straw he does not want for his 
 own use, though to ignorant eyes it seems 
 waste to devote so commonly salable a thing 
 to the flames. 
 
 Vast spaces of prairie, with occasional 
 farms and little towns, had been the objects of 
 our vision, and when we got to Regina, the 
 capital of the North- West Territories Al- 
 berta, Assiniboia, Saskatchewan, etc. we did 
 not find it very striking. It straggles out from 
 18 273
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 the railway on to the surrounding prairie, and 
 its streets are the primeval black prairie soil, 
 than which nothing is better for producing a 
 thick, rich, tenacious mud. The ruts in this 
 mud are so deep that when they are sun-dried 
 a little the crossing of a road is like traversing 
 a piece of a ploughed field of stiff clay ; and 
 should some of the seven inches of rain, which 
 is all the Territories are favoured with during 
 the year, come during your visit, you would 
 stand in danger of being covered with mud 
 from head to heel, as the Mounted Police were 
 the other day during the visit of the Duke 
 and Duchess. Under these circumstances 
 one naturally clings to sidewalks, of which 
 there are a fair number, and finds out, in time, 
 that there are a few highly respectable stores 
 and buildings, not to mention several churches, 
 the court-house, and some schools, of which a 
 larger city might be proud. There are no 
 lights in the streets at night, and the water 
 service is that of individual wells, with pumps 
 worked by windmill or by hand. 
 
 I must here put down some record of an 
 interview I had at Regina with one who was 
 from many points of view the most remark- 
 able man there, and whose recent tragic 
 death gives a melancholy interest to the 
 circumstances as I look back upon them. 
 274
 
 Interview with the late Mr. Davin 
 
 I had been to the post-office for my mail 
 on the morning after my arrival, and was 
 walking towards the main street of the town, 
 when I overtook a tall, well set-up figure in a 
 black velvet coat, and wearing a white soft 
 hat I soon saw that it was Mr. Davin, and 
 introduced myself, calling to mind an Irish 
 journalists' dinner we both attended some 
 years before. He was delighted to meet me 
 again, and I went with him to his rooms, 
 which were situated over the office of the 
 Leader newspaper, with which he was formerly 
 connected. There was a sign at the door, 
 " N. F. Davin, Advocate," and we went 
 upstairs to find a spacious room, very light and 
 pleasant, and with windows that looked out 
 over the somewhat scattered houses of Regina 
 to the distant prairie. As for the interior of 
 the room, what was not windows was books, 
 and I congratulated Mr. Davin on their 
 variety. True, on one side were law books, 
 but on the other three you could browse 
 among the literatures of the world. 
 
 He showed me his Shakespeare in several 
 volumes interleaved with writing paper for 
 notes. We talked a good deal about poetry, 
 and I reminded him that I knew he had 
 written some. 
 
 " Ah ! " he said, " don't say a word about 
 275
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 it The world will not believe that a man 
 can write poetry and practise law, too. Keep 
 quiet about my poetry, my friend." 
 
 " As for these books," continued Mr. Davin, 
 "every book is a working book. Why, of course, 
 every man who is worth anything is versatile, 
 and every man who does intellectual work 
 must draw inspiration from many sources. I 
 don't mind taking the position that unless a 
 man is versatile he cannot be great." 
 
 " Give me an instance," I said. 
 
 " Do you want to sit here all morning ? " 
 said Mr. Davin, humorously. " How long 
 will it take us to discuss Caesar, and Na- 
 poleon, and Mr. Gladstone and a few others?" 
 
 " How do you like living here ? " I said. 
 
 " Well, I can tell you that you don't know 
 the prairies till you have lived on them. 
 When I have been among the mountains I 
 have felt somewhat ' cribbed, cabin'd and con- 
 fined,' but here you can get on a horse and 
 ride right away to the horizon and feel free." 
 
 He looked very well, and seemed full of 
 spirit and energy. There was a wonderful 
 simplicity and charm in his manner. He 
 spoke like a man who had plans for the 
 future, both literary and political. 
 
 He showed me a rare and very interesting 
 portrait of Sir John A. Macdonald an early 
 276
 
 Davin's Remarkable Poem 
 
 photograph also a later one that he called 
 " the Kingston portrait." He wrote my name 
 in a presentation copy of his poem, " Eos : An 
 Epic of the Dawn," and kindly gave it to me, 
 also copies of his speech on the opening of 
 Lansdowne College, Portage la Prairie, and 
 the one on the occasion of the first parade of 
 the Strathcona Horse. 
 
 I told him when I afterwards saw him here 
 in Winnipeg that I had read his poem in the 
 train and that I thought there were some very 
 good lines in it. 
 
 " The Saturday Review praised it," he said, 
 " but it is very deficient in technique deficient 
 in technique." 
 
 " It is well worth writing about," said I. 
 " I wish you would withdraw your embargo." 
 
 With some reluctance he consented to do 
 this. I little thought that so soon and so 
 sadly I should avail myself of it. I have 
 just been looking at the book. Here are 
 some lines : 
 
 " We are immortal ! Man's frail life, a whiff 
 From swamp or river puffs out ; all the odds 
 Against achievement ; his rewards, they grow 
 Upon the precipice's ledge ; he toils, 
 Fails, fights again for doubtful prizes, plucks 
 His flowers with wide-mouthed ruin gaping far 
 Below. He lives and sweats for other men, 
 277
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 Whose tardy praises will not reach his ears. 
 He thinks, he acts, he laughs, he weeps, he loves, 
 And always in death's shadow. Whatever house 
 He builds, his destined lodging is the tomb ! " 
 
 Requiescat in pace. 
 
 The Government buildings are a mile away 
 from Regina, on the bare prairie, and you go 
 to them by a bleached sidewalk that runs 
 parallel with one of the extra muddy roads of 
 the district. You are thankful that there is a 
 sidewalk, for you feel that if you had to cross 
 the road there you would stick till they came 
 to pull you out with the horse they keep in 
 the town. And there is something fresh and 
 novel in going to Parliamentary institutions 
 along a path from which you can see to the 
 horizon without the let or hindrance of even a 
 cow or a tree. Perhaps with a telescope I 
 might have seen a farm-house in the distance, 
 but I hadn't one with me. As a matter of 
 fact, I walked past the N. W. T. Government 
 buildings, thinking they were a kindergarten 
 school or an asylum, or something of that sort, 
 for they are comparatively small and unim- 
 portant. I saw ahead of me, some distance 
 farther, on the other side of the straight road, 
 a considerable block of buildings with half a 
 tattered Union Jack flying, and that looked so 
 278
 
 Headquarters of the N.W.M. P. 
 
 much more like Government institutions than 
 the two-storey buildings in a garden on my 
 right, that I kept mechanically on. It turned 
 out, however, that the big building, which is 
 about three times the size of the Government 
 buildings, was the residence of Lieut-Governor 
 Forget, as I found when I was received by 
 his Honour's secretary, and signed my name 
 in a visitor's book that had recently been dec- 
 orated by the clear and beautiful signature, 
 " Victoria May." The Lieutenant-Governor, 
 however, was indisposed, and I could not see 
 him. He has a beautiful house, and is build- 
 ing what will be one of the finest conserva- 
 tories in Canada. 
 
 From Government House I proceeded to 
 the headquarters of the North- West Mounted 
 Police. At Calgary and Macleod I had seen 
 subsidiary barracks ; here is the place where 
 recruits are received and trained, and from 
 which the force is administered. The build- 
 ings surround a spacious square, and com- 
 prise barracks, officers' houses, a chapel, guard- 
 room, and other administrative buildings. The 
 deputy commissioner received me with a 
 dignified military air, and turned me over to 
 another highly military-looking warrior, who 
 in turn consigned me to the kind care of 
 Regimental Sergeant-Major Knight, a re- 
 279
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide "West 
 
 turned South African hero, who a day or two 
 before had received a medal from the hand of 
 the King's son. As I was dying of thirst after 
 that long, hot sidewalk, he took me to his 
 room and gave me a drink of the best water I 
 ever experienced, and it was there I saw his 
 medal hanging up he wouldn't have told me 
 he was a decorated hero ; the big, manly fellow 
 was far too modest. Under Sergeant-Major 
 Knight's auspices I saw the stables, where he 
 put his own horse through his paces. At a 
 word the sagacious animal left his stall and 
 came out on to the grass in the big square. 
 At another word he stood, and at a sign he 
 obediently lay down on his side as though he 
 were dead, when his master sat on him. There 
 he would have lain had the sergeant fired a 
 gun over him, for this is what these horses are 
 trained to do. And, when bidden, he got up 
 and went to his stall again. From the stables 
 we went to the very fine riding-school, a spa- 
 , cious place, nearly as big as the Toronto 
 Armouries, the floor covered deep with hay. 
 Here the recruits are taught to ride and the 
 horses are trained to stand fire. The building 
 is of wood, and has a finely-designed roof, in 
 which the material is most scientifically ap- 
 plied. Attached to the riding-school is the 
 gymnasium, with the usual outfit of apparatus. 
 280
 
 Scene of the Execution of Riel 
 
 The guard-room, in which prisoners are 
 kept, is administered very much like a jail, 
 having its separate kitchen and dining-room ; 
 also a number of cells, each with its hinged, 
 planked bed and pair of blankets. When I 
 was there the prisoners were out working in 
 the grounds. Outside of the guard-room is a 
 little yard, perhaps 25 feet square. It has a 
 high board fence around it. The fence is 
 whitewashed, and it is surmounted by barbed 
 wire. The door from the guard-room opens 
 into it, and an upstairs window looks into it. 
 Otherwise there is no entrance or exit. A 
 clothes-line was stretched diagonally across 
 it, and some clothes were drying upon it. 
 It was in this narrow, commonplace area that 
 Riel was hanged. He came out of that up- 
 stairs window to meet his doom. Nor was he 
 the first to whom this was the place of death. 
 Now, however, criminals are only kept here 
 pending their transference to the jail at Regina. 
 
 Leaving this gloomy place, I saw the con- 
 cert-room, with its little stage at the end, 
 where, in the winter, the officers and men get 
 up amateur theatricals and other entertain- 
 ments. I was also much pleased with the 
 well-appointed chapel, where service is held 
 by the Anglican clergyman from Regina, 
 Rev. G. C. Hill, a man of much eloquence and 
 281
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide "West 
 
 energy. And after that I sought my never- 
 ending prairie sidewalk. This time the un- 
 pretending character of the Government 
 buildings did not prevent my entering and 
 making a full inspection. 
 
 Looked at in connection with the vast area 
 of the North- West Territories these modest 
 edifices seem small, and it is only when one 
 remembers that their whole population is less 
 than that of Toronto that the appropriateness 
 of their scale is apparent. I went first into 
 the Legislative Chamber, which is about 50 
 feet by 25 feet, a one-storey building that put 
 me in mind of the chapel of a very small sect 
 I once saw in a garden. It is a sort of pocket 
 edition of a Legislature that thus stands 
 prairie-surrounded and dominant. Yet here 
 the thunders of the Opposition reverberate, 
 and Parliamentary tactics are carried out in 
 all their glory. There is the beginning of a 
 good library in an adjoining building, which 
 is under the care of a lady librarian, and the 
 administrative offices, which are on the front 
 of the Legislative lot, are apparently large 
 enough for their purpose. 
 
 But there is no doubt at all that these Ter- 
 ritories, that are now seeking to receive full 
 provincial rights, with their modest begin- 
 nings of self-government, represent what will 
 282
 
 The Territories as World-beaters 
 
 be in the future one of the richest and most 
 important parts of Canada. The visitor to 
 Regina and the immediate neighbourhood is 
 apt to go away thinking that it is a dead-alive 
 and unprosperous district. Nothing could be 
 a greater mistake. For ranching and farming 
 purposes the Territories are going to beat 
 the world. Within a square of ten miles of 
 Regina there are 200 farmers, 1 50 of whom 
 are estimated as being worth $5,000 apiece, 
 while here and there are farmers who are worth 
 $40,000 or $50,000. These agriculturists have 
 learned how to make the best of their 7-inch 
 rainfall. What are facts of the case ? They 
 have a soil that is the result of thousands of 
 years of prairie fires, and enriched, too, for 
 thousands of years by wandering herds of 
 buffalo. It is as black as your hat, and rich 
 beyond parallel. Dig a well of 1 5 or 20 feet, 
 and you find it the same all the way down. 
 Now the farmers have discovered that the way 
 to work this soil is to summer-fallow about 
 half of their land at a time. A man in the 
 neighbourhood had ploughed his land and 
 found he had only seed enough to sow half 
 of it. As a matter of necessity, he deter- 
 mined to leave the unsowed half fallow, and 
 by keeping the top of it well stirred, light, and 
 porous, a non-conductor of heat was created, 
 283
 
 From the Great Lakes to the Wide West 
 
 which conserved the moisture below, and did 
 not allow the sun's rays to penetrate. When 
 next season he sowed this summer-fallowed 
 land, in which also this treatment had com- 
 pletely eradicated weeds, the crop he got alto- 
 gether astonished him by its abundance. The 
 method is spreading, and glorious harvests are 
 being reaped. 
 
 Moreover, where the rainfall is still less, 
 irrigation is being pushed with vigour. When 
 I was at Lethbridge, I called on Mr. C. A. 
 Magrath, who is the manager of the Canadian 
 North-West Irrigation Company. This or- 
 ganization has a canal in course of construc- 
 tion, which is to bring water from the St. 
 Mary's River, at the foot of the Rockies, right 
 through a plain which only wants water to 
 enable it to be in the highest degree fertile and 
 productive. The canal will be 1 1 5 miles long, 
 25 feet wide, and 5 feet deep, and lateral 
 channels will be provided, whereby its life- 
 giving moisture can be diverted to the locali- 
 ties in which it is required. This is a begin- 
 ning that augurs well for the future, and should 
 success attend the present endeavour, there is 
 no doubt that the example will be widely fol- 
 lowed in other parts of the Territories. 
 
 284
 
 Aim and Moral of this Book 
 
 I have been West, and I have endeavoured 
 to record some of my impressions. The 
 theme is very vast, and I am sensible that in 
 some parts of it I have only touched the fringe 
 of my subject. It has been my aim, however, 
 to avoid as much as possible the style of the 
 guide-book, and to give a somewhat personal 
 and human interest to my narration. If I 
 have done anything towards increasing their 
 knowledge of their country, I am thankful, 
 because the better the various parts of Canada 
 understand each other, the better it will be 
 for all parties concerned. Union is strength, 
 and the old parable of the bundle of sticks is 
 fairly applicable to the case of the present 
 inhabitants of the Dominion. And if in en- 
 deavouring to perform this service I have at 
 the same time ministered to their entertain- 
 ment, and have even sometimes caused the 
 healthy ripple of a smile, I am glad. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 285
 
 Ind 
 
 ex 
 
 Aborigines, 42. 
 
 Alberta, C. P. R. steamship, 
 1 6. 
 
 American settlers, influx of, 
 100. 
 
 Arrowhead, 229. 
 
 Arrow Lake, 230. 
 
 Assay Office, Vancouver, 165. 
 
 Athabasca, C. P. R. steam- 
 ship, 1 6. 
 
 Athabasca Landing, 104. 
 
 Banff, 114. 
 
 Banff, C. P. R. hotel, 115. 
 Bears, 190, 223. 
 Big Traverse, 59. 
 Bishop of Algoma, 36. 
 Black Canyon, 140. 
 Boundary Country, 260. 
 Bow River, 116. 
 Bratnober, Mr. 242. 
 British Columbia resources, 
 214. 
 
 Calgary, elevation of, 96. 
 
 Its inhabitants, 96. 
 
 Its characteristics, 98. 
 Califomian lawyer, 91,93,94, 
 
 96. 
 
 Canadian kopjes, 129. 
 Capp, Rev. E. H., 36. 
 Cardwell Junction, 9. 
 Cardston, 265. 
 Chair-making, 11-13. 
 
 Cheerful invalid, 9. 
 Chinese, the, 137, 141, 167, 
 
 181. 
 
 Chinese women, 211. 
 Clergue, F. H., 35. 
 Clergue enterprises, 23. 
 Commercial travellers, 169. 
 Commercial traveller's story, 
 
 iyi. 
 
 Coal deposits, 223. 
 Coal miners, 2 1 8. 
 Coal Creek, 263. 
 Copper, 215, 225, 241. 
 Corpus Christi procession, 47. 
 Crow's Nest Pass, 263. 
 
 Davin, the late N. F., 275. 
 Devil's Gap, 58. 
 Dining-car, 89. 
 Doukhobors, 106. 
 Douglas fir, 159. 
 Drive at Rossland, 237. 
 Dunsmuir, James, 223. 
 Dunsmuir, coal mines, 222, 
 224. 
 
 Edmonton, 103, 107. 
 Emerald Lake, 134. 
 English Bay, Vancouver, 143. 
 English immigrant, 65. 
 English settlers, 155, 225. 
 Esquimalt, fortifications of, 
 
 200. 
 Esquimalt, warships, 205. 
 
 286
 
 Inde: 
 
 Fernie, 263. 
 
 Field, 126. 
 
 Fishing, 48. 
 
 Fort Frances, 55, 63. 
 
 Fort William, 41, 42. 
 
 Franchises, Port Arthur, 44. 
 
 Fraser Canyon, 229. 
 
 Fraser River, 146. 
 
 Fur trade, 108. 
 
 Galicians, 66, in. 
 Gaudaur, J. , oarsman, 53, 68. 
 Gold miners, 157. 
 Gold mining, three aspects 
 
 of, 256. 
 
 Gorge, the Victoria, 198. 
 Graham, Mr., 58. 
 Grand Forks, 258. 
 Greek Church, 112. 
 Greenwood, 259. 
 
 Hastings saw-mill, Vancou- 
 ver, 1 60. 
 
 Henry's Voyage, 15. 
 
 Hill, Rev. G. C., 281. 
 
 Hudson's Bay Company, 46, 
 107. 
 
 Hunting, 135. 
 
 Indians 
 
 Blackfeet, 96. 
 
 Offerings of, 42. 
 
 Sarcees, 96. 
 
 Siwashes, 178. 
 Irrigation, 284. 
 
 Japanese labour, 162. 
 
 Kaministiquia River, 45. 
 Kamloops, 136, 137. 
 Keenora, steamship, 55. 
 Keewatin, 52. 
 Koochiching Falls; 62. 
 Kootenay River, 262. 
 
 Lake Louise, 134. 
 
 Lee Mong Kow, 209. 
 Le Roi mine, 238. 
 Lethbridge, 265. 
 
 Coal mines, 265. 
 
 Coal miners, 267. 
 
 Macleod, 264. 
 
 Manitoba, C. P. R. steam- 
 ship, 1 6. 
 
 Manitoba, 69. 
 
 Manitoba farm, 80. 
 
 Mine Centre, 62. 
 
 Miners' gold, 157. 
 
 Miners' strike, 246. 
 
 Minnesota, 59. 
 
 Mongolian labour, 137, 151, 
 164, 209. 
 
 Mormon settlement, 265. 
 
 Mountain climbing, 126. 
 
 Mountain district, 118. 
 
 Mount Baker, 140. 
 
 Mounted Police, 99, 264, 279. 
 
 Mount McKay, 48. 
 
 Nanaimo, 214, 220. 
 Nanibozhu, 40, 42, 50. 
 Nelson, 262. 
 New Westminster, 177. 
 North-West farming, 283. 
 North-West Mounted Police, 
 
 99, 264, 279. 
 North-West Territories, 273. 
 
 Ontario country people, to. 
 Ontario, crops of, 9. 
 Organized labour, 257. 
 Orient, the, 183. 
 Ottertail Range, 133. 
 Owen Sound, 10. 
 
 Packing-box architecture, 
 
 105. 
 Port Arthur, 40, 43. 
 
 Franchises, 44. 
 
 Mortgage loans, 49. 
 Prairie, crossing the, 87. 
 
 287
 
 Index 
 
 Prairies, extent of, 88. 
 Pulp mill, Sault, 28. 
 
 Quarantine station, 201. 
 
 Rainy River, 52, 56, 60. 
 
 Rainy River Railway, 56. 
 
 Rainy River Navigation Co., 
 58. 
 
 Ranching district, 95. 
 
 Rat Portage, 49, 65. 
 
 Red River, 70, 78. 
 
 Regina, 273, 274. 
 
 Regina, Government build- 
 ings, 278, 282. 
 
 Revelstoke, 134. 
 
 Riel, his execution, 281. 
 
 Robins, Mr. S., 217. 
 
 Robson, 232. 
 
 Rockies, the, 97. 
 
 Rossland, 233, 234. 
 
 Rossland, descent from, 250. 
 
 Salmon, 147. 
 
 Sockeyes, 152. 
 
 Humpbacks, 152. 
 
 Cohoes, 152. 
 Salmon-canning, 144. 
 Salvation Army, 66. 
 St. Boniface, Winnipeg, 79. 
 Saskatchewan River, 103. 
 Sault Ste. Marie, 21. 
 
 Enterprises, 34. 
 
 Steel works, 24. 
 
 Land values, 27. 
 Shimizu, Mr. , Japanese Con- 
 sul, 180. 
 
 Shuswap Lake, 136. 
 Silver, 241. 
 Silver fox skin, 1 10. 
 Siwashes, 178. 
 Smudges, 81. 
 
 Stanley Park, Vancouver, 142. 
 Steveston, 145. 
 Strathcona, Lord, 177. 
 Street-cars. 167. 
 Sunrise on Lake Superior, 40. 
 Summer following, 283. 
 Superior, Lake, voyage on, 32. 
 
 Thorneloe, Bishop, 36. 
 Trail, 251. 
 Trail, smelter, 253. 
 Trees, gigantic, 142. 
 Turner, Hon. J. H., 194. 
 
 Vancouver, 141. 
 
 Assay office, 165. 
 
 English Bay, 143. 
 
 Island, 215. 
 
 Mining and Land Co., 216. 
 
 Saw-mills, 160. 
 Vaughan, Chief of Police, 
 
 Rossland, 235. 
 Victoria, 183. 
 
 Government buildings, 187. 
 
 Museum, 191. 
 
 Printing department, 190. 
 
 Trade of, 227. 
 
 Warships, 205. 
 Watt, Dr. A. T., 201. 
 Wheat, talk of, 46. 
 
 Cost of production, 85. 
 Wilderness, 69. 
 Winnipeg, churches, 76. 
 
 Elevation of, 69. 
 
 First view of, 70. 
 
 Its future, 272. 
 
 Legislative buildings, 77. 
 
 Main Street, 71. 
 
 Red River, 70, 78. 
 Wolves, 269. 
 
 288 
 
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