We left Montreal, attached to the regular train, on the evening of September 22d. The company runs six through trains a week, omitting the despatch of a train on Sunday from each terminus. The time is six days and rive nights. We travelled in the private ear of Mr. T. G. Shaughnessy, the manager, who was on a tour of inspection, and took it leisurely, stopping at points of interest on the way. The weather was bad, rainy and cold, in eastern Canada, as it was all over New England, and as it continued to be through September and October. During our absence there was snow both in Montreal and Quebec. We passed out of the rain into lovely weather north of Lake Superior; encountered rain again at Winnipeg; but a hundred miles west of there, on the prairie, we were blessed with as delightful weather as the globe can furnish, which continued all through the remainder of the trip until our return to Montreal, October 12th. The climate just east of the Rocky Mountains was a little warmer than was needed for comfort (at the time Ontario and Quebec had snow), but the air was always pure and exhilarating; and all through the mountains we had the perfection of lovely days. On the Pacific it was still the dry season, though the autumn rains, which continue all winter, with scarcely any snow, were not far off. For mere physical pleasure of living and breathing, I know no atmosphere superior to that we encountered on the rolling lands east of the Rockies.

Between Ottawa and Winnipeg (from midnight of the 22d till the morning of the 25th) there is not much to interest the tourist, unless he is engaged in lumbering or mining. What we saw was mainly a monotonous wilderness of rocks and small poplars, though the country has agricultural capacities after leaving Rat Portage (north of Lake of the Woods), just before coming upon the Manitoba prairies. There were more new villages and greater crowds of people at the stations than I expected. From Sudbury the company runs a line to the Sault Sainte Marie to connect with lines it controls to Duluth and St. Paul. At Port Arthur and Fort William is evidence of great transportation activity, and all along the Lake Superior Division there are signs that the expectations of profitable business in lumber and minerals will be realized. At Port Arthur we strike the Western Division. On the Western, Mountain, and Pacific divisions the company has adopted the 24-hour system, by which a.m. and P.M. are abolished, and the hours from noon till midnight are counted as from 12 to 24 o’clock. For instance, the train reaches Eagle River at 24.55, Winnipeg at 9.30, and Brandon at 16.10.

At Winnipeg we come into the real North-west, and a condition of soil, climate, and political development as different from eastern Canada as Montana is from New England. This town, at the junction of the Red and Assiniboin rivers, in a valley which is one of the finest wheat-producing sections of the world, is a very important place. Railways, built and projected, radiate from it like spokes from a wheel hub. Its growth has been marvellous. Formerly known as Fort Garry, the chief post of the Hudson’s Bay Company, it had in 1871 a population of only one hundred. It is now the capital of the province of Manitoba, contains the chief workshops of the Canadian Pacific between Montreal and Vancouver, and has a population of 25,000. It is laid out on a grand scale, with very broad streets—Main Street is 200 feet wide—has many substantial public and business buildings, streetcars, and electric-lights, and abundant facilities for trade. At present it is in a condition of subsided “boom;” the whole province has not more than 120,000 people, and the city for that number is out of proportion. Winnipeg must wait a little for the development of the country. It seems to the people that the town would start up again if it had more railroads. Among the projects much discussed is a road northward between Lake Winnipeg and Lake Manitoba, turning eastward to York Factory on Hudson’s Bay. The idea is to reach a short water route to Europe. From all the testimony I have read as to ice in Hudson’s Bay harbors and in the straits, the short period the straits are open, and the uncertainty from year to year as to the months they will be open, this route seems chimerical. But it does not seem so to its advocates, and there is no doubt that a portion of the line between the lakes first named would develop a good country and pay. A more important line—indeed, of the first importance—is built for 200 miles north-west from Portage la Prairie, destined to go to Prince Albert, on the North Saskatchewan. This is the Manitoba and North-west, and it makes its connection from Portage la Prairie with Winnipeg over the Canadian Pacific. An antagonism has grown up ill Manitoba towards the Canadian Pacific. This arose from the monopoly privileges enjoyed by it as a Dominion road. The province could build no road with extra-territorial connections. This monopoly was surrendered in consideration of the guarantee spoken of from the Government. The people of Winnipeg also say that the company discriminated against them in the matter of rates, and that the province must have a competing outlet. The company says that it did not discriminate, but treated Winnipeg like other towns on the line, having an eye to the development of the whole prairie region, and that the trouble was that it refused to discriminate in favor of Winnipeg, so that it might become the distributing-point of the whole North-west. Whatever the truth may be, the province grew increasingly restless, and determined to build another road. The Canadian Pacific has two lines on either side of the Red River, connecting at Emerson and Gretna with the Red River branches of the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba. It has also two branches running westward south of its main line, penetrating the fertile wheat-fields of Manitoba. The province graded a third road, paralleling the two to the border, and the river, southward from Winnipeg to the border connecting there with a branch of the Northern Pacific, which was eager to reach the rich wheat,-fields of the North-west. The provincial Red River Railway also proposed to cross the branches of the Canadian Pacific, and connect at Portage la Prairie with the Manitoba and North-west. The Canadian Pacific, which had offered to sell to the province its Emerson branch, saying that there was not business enough for three parallel routes, insisted upon its legal rights and resisted this crossing. Hence the provincial and railroad conflict of the fall of 1888. The province built the new road, but it was alleged that the Northern Pacific was the real party, and that Manitoba has so far put itself into the hands of that corporation. There can be no doubt that Manitoba will have its road and connect the Northern Pacific with the Saskatchewan country, and very likely will parallel the main line of the Canadian Pacific. But whether it will get from the Northern Pacific the relief it thought itself refused by the Canadian, many people in Winnipeg begin to doubt; for however eager rival railways may be for new territory, they are apt to come to an understanding in order to keep up profitable rates. They must live.

I went down on the southern branch of the Canadian Pacific, which runs west, not far from our border, as far as Boissevain. It is a magnificent wheat country, and already very well settled and sprinkled with villages. The whole prairie was covered with yellow wheat-stacks, and teams loaded with wheat were wending their way from all directions to the elevators on the line. There has been quite an emigration of Russian Mennonites to this region, said to be 9000 of them. We passed near two of their villages—a couple of rows of square unbeautiful houses facing each other, with a street of mud between, as we see them in pictures of Russian communes. These people are a peculiar and somewhat mystical sect, separate and unassimilated in habits, customs, and faith from their neighbors, but peaceful, industrious, and thrifty. I shall have occasion to speak of other peculiar immigration, encouraged by the governments and by private companies.

There can be no doubt of the fertility of all the prairie region of Manitoba and Assiniboin. Great heat is developed in the summers, but cereals are liable, as in Dakota, to be touched, as in 1888, by early frost. The great drawback from Winnipeg on westward is the intense cold of winter, regarded not as either agreeable or disagreeable, but as a matter of economy. The region, by reason of extra expense for fuel, clothing, and housing, must always be more expensive to live in than, say, Ontario.

The province of Manitoba is an interesting political and social study. It is very unlike Ontario or British Columbia. Its development has been, in freedom and self-help, very like one of our Western Territories, and it is like them in its free, independent spirit. It has a spirit to resist any imposed authority. We read of the conflicts between the Hudson’s Bay and the Northwestern Fur companies and the Selkirk settlers, who began to come in in 1812. Gradually the vast territory of the North-west had a large number of “freemen,” independent of any company, and of half-breed Frenchmen. Other free settlers sifted in. The territory was remote from the Government, and had no facilities of communication with the East, even after the union. The rebellion of 1870-71 was repeated in 1885, when Riel was called back from Montana to head the discontented. The settlers could not get patents for their lands, and they had many grievances, which they demanded should be redressed in a “bill of rights.” There were aspects of the insurrection, not connected with the race question, with which many well-disposed persons sympathized. But the discontent became a violent rebellion, and had to be suppressed. The execution of Riel, which some of the Conservatives thought ill-advised, raised a race storm throughout Canada; the French element was in a tumult, and some of the Liberals made opposition capital out of the event. In the province of Quebec it is still a deep grievance, for party purposes partly, as was shown in the recent election of a federal member of Parliament in Montreal.

Manitoba is Western in its spirit and its sympathies. Before the building of the Canadian Pacific its communication was with Minnesota. Its interests now largely lie with its southern neighbors. It has a feeling of irritation with too much federal dictation, and frets under the still somewhat undefined relations of power between the federal and the provincial governments, as was seen in the railway conflict. Besides, the natural exchange of products between south and north—between the lower Mississippi and the Red River of the North and the north-west prairies—is going to increase; the north and south railway lines will have, with the development of industries and exchange of various sorts, a growing importance compared with the great east and west lines. Nothing can stop this exchange and the need of it along our whole border west of Lake Superior. It is already active and growing, even on the Pacific, between Washington Territory and British Columbia.

For these geographical reasons, and especially on account of similarity of social and political development, I was strongly impressed with the notion that if the Canadian Pacific Railway had not been built when it was, Manitoba would by this time have gravitated to the United States, and it would only have been a question of time when the remaining Northwest should have fallen in. The line of the road is very well settled, and yellow with wheat westward to Regina, but the farms are often off from the line, as the railway sections are for the most part still unoccupied; and there are many thriving villages: Portage la Prairie, from which the Manitoba and North-western Railway starts north-west, with a population of 3000; Brandon, a busy grain mart, standing on a rise of ground 1150 feet above the sea, with a population of 4000 and over; Qu’.ppelle, in the rich valley of the river of that name, with 700; Regina, the capital of the North-west Territory, on a vast plain, with 800; Moosejay, a market-town towards the western limit of the settled country, with 600. This is all good land, but the winters are severe.

Naturally, on the rail we saw little game, except ducks and geese on the frequent fresh-water ponds, and occasionally coyotes and prairie-dogs. But plenty of large game still can be found farther north. At Stony Mountain, fifteen miles north of Winnipeg, the site of the Manitoba penitentiary, we saw a team of moose, which Colonel Bedson, the superintendent, drives—fleet animals, going easily fifteen miles an hour. They were captured only thirty-five miles north of the prison, where moose are abundant. Colonel Bedson has the only large herd of the practically extinct buffalo. There are about a hundred of these uncouth and picturesque animals, which have a range of twenty or thirty miles over the plains, and are watched by mounted keepers. They were driven in, bulls, cows, and calves, the day before our arrival—it seemed odd that we could order up a herd of buffaloes by telephone, but we did—and we saw the whole troop lumbering over the prairie, exactly as we were familiar with them in pictures. The colonel is trying the experiment of crossing them with common cattle. The result is a half-breed of large size, with heavier hind-quarters and less hump than the buffalo, and said to be good beef. The penitentiary has taken in all the convicts of the North-west Territory, and there were only sixty-five of them. The institution is a model one in its management. We were shown two separate chapels—one for Catholics and another for Protestants.

All along the line settlers are sifting in, and there are everywhere signs of promoted immigration. Not only is Canada making every effort to fill up its lands, but England is interested in relieving itself of troublesome people. The experiment has been tried of bringing out East-Londoners. These barbarians of civilization are about as unfitted for colonists as can be. Small bodies of them have been aided to make settlements, but the trial is not very encouraging; very few of them take to the new life. The Scotch crofters do better. They are accustomed to labor and thrift, and are not a bad addition to the population. A company under the management of Sir John Lister Kaye is making a larger experiment. It has received sections from the Government and bought contiguous sections from the railway, so as to have large blocks of land on the road. A dozen settlements are projected. The company brings over laborers and farmers, paying their expenses and wages for a year. A large central house is built on each block, tools and cattle are supplied, and the men are to begin the cultivation of the soil. At the end of a year they may, if they choose, take up adjacent free Government land and begin to make homes for themselves working meantime on the company land, if they will. By this plan they are guaranteed support for a year at least, and a chance to set up for themselves. The company secures the breaking up of its land and a crop, and the nucleus of a town. The further plan is to encourage farmers, with a capital of a thousand dollars, to follow and settle in the neighborhood. There will then be three ranks—the large company proprietors, the farmers with some capital, and the laborers who are earning their capital. We saw some of these settlements on the line that looked promising. About 150 settlers, mostly men, arrived last fall, and with them were sent out English tools and English cattle. The plan looks to making model communities, on something of the old-world plan of proprietor, farmer, and laborer. It would not work in the United States.

Another important colonization is that of Icelanders. These are settled to the north-east of Winnipeg and in southern Manitoba. About 10,000 have already come over, and the movement has assumed such large proportions that it threatens to depopulate Iceland. This is good and intelligent material. Climate and soil are so superior to that of Iceland that the emigrants are well content. They make good farmers, but they are not so clannish as the Mennonites; many of them scatter about in the towns as laborers.

Before we reached Medicine Hat, and beyond that place, we passed through considerable alkaline country—little dried-up lakes looking like patches of snow. There was an idea that this land was not fertile. The Canadian Pacific Company have been making several experiments on the line of model farms, which prove the contrary. As soon as the land is broken up and the crust turned under, the soil becomes very fertile, and produces excellent crops of wheat and vegetables.

Medicine Hat, on a branch of the South Saskatchewan, is a thriving town. Here are a station and barracks of the Mounted Police, a picturesque body of civil cavalry in blue pantaloons and red jackets. This body of picked men, numbering about a thousand, and similar in functions to the Guarda Civil of Spain, are scattered through the North-west Territory, and are the Dominion police for keeping in order the Indians, and settling disputes between the Indians and whites. The sergeants have powers of police-justices, and the organization is altogether an admirable one for the purpose, and has a fine esprit de corps.

Here we saw many Cree Indians, physically a creditable-looking race of men and women, and picturesque in their gay blankets and red and yellow paint daubed on the skin without the least attempt at shading or artistic effect. A fair was going on, an exhibition of horses, cattle, and vegetable and cereal products of the region. The vegetables were large and of good quality. Delicate flowers were still blooming (September 28th) untouched by frost in the gardens. These Crees are not on a reservation. They cultivate the soil a little, but mainly support themselves by gathering and selling buffalo bones, and well set-up and polished horns of cattle, which they swear are buffalo. The women are far from a degraded race in appearance, have good heads, high foreheads, and are well-favored. As to morals, they are reputed not to equal the Blackfeet.

The same day we reached Gleichen, about 2500 feet above the sea. The land is rolling, and all good for grazing and the plough. This region gets the “Chinook” wind. Ploughing is begun in April, sometimes in March; in 1888 they ploughed in January. Flurries of snow may be expected any time after October 1st, but frost is not so early as in eastern Canada. A fine autumn is common, and fine, mild weather may continue up to December. At Dun-more, the station before Medicine Hat, we passed a branch railway running west to the great Lethbridge coal-mines, and Dunmore Station is a large coal depot.

The morning at Gleichen was splendid; cool at sunrise, but no frost. Here we had our first view of the Rockies, a long range of snow-peaks on the horizon, 120 miles distant. There is an immense fascination in this rolling country, the exhilarating air, and the magnificent mountains in the distance. Here is the beginning of a reservation of the Blackfeet, near 3000. They live here on the Bow River, and cultivate the soil to a considerable extent, and have the benefit of a mission and two schools. They are the best-looking race of Indians we have seen, and have most self-respect.

We went over a rolling country to Calgary, at an altitude of 3388 feet, a place of some 3000 inhabitants, and of the most distinction of all between Brandon and Vancouver. On the way we passed two stations where natural gas was used, the boring for which was only about 600 feet. The country is underlaid with coal. Calgary is delightfully situated at the junction of the Bow and Elbow rivers, rapid streams as clear as crystal, with a greenish hue, on a small plateau, surrounded by low hills and overlooked by the still distant snow-peaks. The town has many good shops, several churches, two newspapers, and many fanciful cottages. We drove several miles out on the McCloud trail, up a lovely valley, with good farms, growing wheat and oats, and the splendid mountains in the distance. The day was superb, the thermometer marking 70°. This is, however, a ranch country, wheat being an uncertain crop, owing to summer frosts. But some years, like 1888, are good for all grains and vegetables. A few Saree Indians were loafing about here, inferior savages. Much better are the Stony Indians, who are settled and work the soil beyond Calgary, and are very well cared for by a Protestant mission.

Some of the Indian tribes of Canada are self-supporting. This is true of many of the Siwash and other west coast tribes, who live by fishing. At Lytton, on the upper Fraser, I saw a village of the Siwash civilized enough to live in houses, wear our dress, and earn their living by working on the railway, fishing, etc. The Indians have done a good deal of work on the railway, and many of them are still employed on it. The coast Indians are a different race from the plains Indians, and have a marked resemblance to the Chinese and Japanese. The polished carvings in black slate of the Haida Indians bear a striking resemblance to archaic Mexican work, and strengthen the theory that the coast Indians crossed the straits from Asia, are related to the early occupiers of Arizona and Mexico, and ought not to be classed with the North American Indian. The Dominion has done very well by its Indians, of whom it has probably a hundred thousand. It has tried to civilize them by means of schools, missions, and farm instructors, and it has been pretty successful in keeping ardent spirits away from them. A large proportion of them are still fed and clothed by the Government. It is doubtful if the plains Indians will ever be industrious. The Indian fund from the sale of their lands has accumulated to $3,000,000. There are 140 teachers and 4000 pupils in school. In 1885 the total expenditure on the Indian population, beyond that provided by the Indian fund, was $1,109,604, of which $478,038 was expended for provisions for destitute Indians.

At Cochrane’s we were getting well into the hills. Here is a large horse and sheep ranch and a very extensive range. North and south along the foot-hills is fine grazing and ranging country. We enter the mountains by the Bow River Valley, and plunge at once into splendid scenery, bare mountains rising on both sides in sharp, varied, and fantastic peaks, snow-dusted, and in lateral openings assemblages of giant summits of rock and ice. The change from the rolling prairie was magical. At Mountain House the Three Sisters were very impressive. Late in the afternoon we came to Banff.

Banff will have a unique reputation among the resorts of the world. If a judicious plan is formed and adhered to for the development of its extraordinary beauties and grandeur, it will be second to few in attractions. A considerable tract of wilderness about it is reserved as a National Park, and the whole ought to be developed by some master landscape expert. It is in the power of the Government and of the Canadian Pacific Company to so manage its already famous curative hot sulphur springs as to make Banff the resort of invalids as well as pleasure-seekers the year round. This is to be done not simply by established good bathing-places, but by regulations and restrictions such as give to the German baths their virtue.

The Banff Hotel, unsurpassed in situation, amid magnificent mountains, is large, picturesque, many gabled and windowed, and thoroughly comfortable. It looks down upon the meeting of the Bow and the Spray, which spread in a pretty valley closed by a range of snow-peaks. To right and left rise mountains of savage rock ten thousand feet high. The whole scene has all the elements of beauty and grandeur. The place is attractive for its climate, its baths, and excellent hunting and fishing.

For two days, travelling only by day, passing the Rockies, the Selkirks, and the Gold range, we were kept in a state of intense excitement, in a constant exclamation of wonder and delight. I would advise no one to attempt to take it in the time we did. Nobody could sit through Beethoven’s nine symphonies played continuously. I have no doubt that when carriage-roads and foot-paths are made into the mountain recesses, as they will be, and little hotels are established in the valleys and in the passes and advantageous sites, as in Switzerland, this region will rival the Alpine resorts. I can speak of two or three things only.

The highest point on the line is the station at Mount Stephen, 5296 feet above the sea. The mountain, a bald mass of rock in a rounded cone, rises about 8000 feet above this. As we moved away from it the mountain was hidden by a huge wooded intervening mountain. The train was speeding rapidly on the down grade, carrying us away from the base, and we stood upon the rear platform watching the apparent recession of the great mass, when suddenly, and yet deliberately, the vast white bulk of Mount Stephen began to rise over the intervening summit in the blue sky, lifting itself up by a steady motion while one could count twenty, until its magnificence stood revealed. It was like a transformation in a theatre, only the curtain here was lowered instead of raised. The surprise was almost too much for the nerves; the whole company was awe-stricken. It is too much to say that the mountain “shot up;” it rose with conscious grandeur and power. The effect, of course, depends much upon the speed of the train. I have never seen anything to compare with it for awakening the emotion of surprise and wonder.

The station of Field, just beyond Mount Stephen, where there is a charming hotel, is in the midst of wonderful mountain and glacier scenery, and would be a delightful place for rest. From there the descent down the canon of Kickinghorse River, along the edge of precipices, among the snow-monarchs, is very exciting. At Golden we come to the valley of the Columbia River and in view of the Selkirks. The river is navigable about a hundred miles above Golden, and this is the way to the mining district of the Kootenay Valley. The region abounds in gold and silver. The broad Columbia runs north here until it breaks through the Selkirks, and then turns southward on the west side of that range.

The railway follows down the river, between the splendid ranges of the Selkirks and the Rockies, to the mouth of the Beaver, and then ascends its narrow gorge. I am not sure but that the scenery of the Selkirks is finer than that of the Rockies. One is bewildered by the illimitable noble snow-peaks and great glaciers. At Glacier House is another excellent hotel. In savage grandeur, nobility of mountain-peaks, snow-ranges, and extent of glacier it rivals anything in Switzerland. The glacier, only one arm of which is seen from the road, is, I believe, larger than any in Switzerland. There are some thirteen miles of flowing ice; but the monster lies up in the mountains, like a great octopus, with many giant arms. The branch which we saw, overlooked by the striking snow-cone of Sir Donald, some two and a half miles from the hotel, is immense in thickness and breadth, and seems to pour out of the sky. Recent measurements show that it is moving at the rate of twenty inches in twenty-four hours—about the rate of progress of the Mer de Glace. In the midst of the main body, higher up, is an isolated mountain of pure ice three hundred feet high and nearly a quarter of a mile in length. These mountains are the home of the mountain sheep.

From this amphitheatre of giant peaks, snow, and glaciers we drop by marvellous loops—wonderful engineering, four apparently different tracks in sight at one time—down to the valley of the Illicilliweat, the lower part of which is fertile, and blooming with irrigated farms. We pass a cluster of four lovely-lakes, and coast around the great Shuswap Lake, which is fifty miles long. But the traveller is not out of excitement. The ride down the Thompson and Fraser canons is as amazing almost as anything on the line. At Spence’s Bridge we come to the old Government road to the Cariboo gold-mines, three hundred miles above. This region has been for a long time a scene of activity in mining and salmon-fishing. It may be said generally of the Coast or Gold range that its riches have yet to be developed. The villages all along these mountain slopes and valleys are waiting for this development.

The city of Vancouver, only two years old since the beginnings of a town were devoured by fire, is already an interesting place of seven to eight thousand inhabitants, fast building up, and with many substantial granite and brick buildings, and spreading over a large area. It lies upon a high point of land between Burrard Inlet on the north and the north arm of the Fraser River. The inner harbor is deep and spacious. Burrard Inlet entrance is narrow but deep, and opens into English Bay, which opens into Georgia Sound, that separates the island of Vancouver, three hundred miles long, from the main-land. The round headland south of the entrance is set apart for a public park, called now Stanley Park, and is being improved with excellent driving-roads, which give charming views. It is a tangled wilderness of nearly one thousand acres. So dense is the undergrowth, in this moist air, of vines, ferns, and small shrubs, that it looks like a tropical thicket. But in the midst of it are gigantic Douglas firs and a few noble cedars. One veteran cedar, partly decayed at the top, measured fifty-six feet in circumference, and another, in full vigor and of gigantic height, over thirty-nine feet. The hotel of the Canadian Pacific Company, a beautiful building in modern style, is, in point of comfort, elegance of appointment, abundant table, and service, not excelled by any in Canada, equalled by few anywhere.

Vancouver would be a very busy and promising city merely as the railway terminus and the shipping-point for Japan and China and the east generally. But it has other resources of growth. There is a very good country back of it, and south of it all the way into Washington Territory. New Westminster, twelve miles south, is a place of importance for fish and lumber. The immensely fertile alluvial bottoms of the Fraser, which now overflows its banks, will some day be diked, and become exceedingly valuable. Its relations to Washington Territory are already close. The very thriving city of Seattle, having a disagreement with the North Pacific and its rival, Tacoma, sends and receives most of its freight and passengers via Vancouver, and is already pushing forward a railway to that point. It is also building to Spokane Falls, expecting some time to be met by an extension of the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba from the Great Falls of the Missouri. I found that many of the emigrants in the loaded trains that we travelled with or that passed us were bound to Washington Territory. It is an acknowledged fact that there is a constant “leakage” of emigrants, who had apparently promised to tarry in Canada, into United States territories. Some of them, disappointed of the easy wealth expected, no doubt return; but the name of “republic” seems to have an attraction for Old World people when they are once set adrift.

We took steamer one afternoon for a five hours sail to Victoria. A part of the way is among beautiful wooded islands. Once out in the open, we had a view of our “native land,” and prominent in it the dim, cloud-like, gigantic peak of Mount Baker. Before we passed the islands we were entertained by a rare show of right-whales. A school of them a couple of weeks before had come down through Behring Strait, and pursued a shoal of fish into this landlocked bay. There must have been as many as fifty of the monsters in sight, spouting up slender fountains, lifting their huge bulk out of water, and diving, with their bifurcated tails waving in the air. They played about like porpoises, apparently only for our entertainment.

Victoria, so long isolated, is the most English part of Canada. The town itself does not want solidity and wealth, but it is stationary, and, the Canadians elsewhere think, slow. It was the dry and dusty time of the year. The environs are broken with inlets, hilly and picturesque; there are many pretty cottages and country places in the suburbs; and one visits with interest the Eskimalt naval station, and the elevated Park, which has a coble coast view. The very mild climate is favorable for grapes and apples. The summer is delightful; the winter damp, and constantly rainy. And this may be said of all this coast. Of the thirteen thousand population six thousand are Chinese, and they form in the city a dense, insoluble, unassimilating mass. Victoria has one railway, that to the prosperous Nanaimo coal-mines. The island has abundance of coal, some copper, and timber. But Vancouver has taken away from Victoria all its importance as a port. The Government and Parliament buildings are detached, but pleasant and commodious edifices. There is a decorous British air about everything. Throughout British Columbia the judges and the lawyers wear the gown and band and the horse-hair wig. In an evening trial for murder which I attended in a dingy upper chamber of the Kamloops court-house, lighted only by kerosene lamps, the wigs and gowns of judge and attorneys lent, I confess, a dignity to the administration of justice which the kerosene lamps could not have given. In one of the Government buildings is a capital museum of natural history and geology. The educational department is vigorous and effective, and I find in the bulky report evidence of most intelligent management of the schools.

It is only by traversing the long distance to this coast, and seeing the activity here, that one can appreciate the importance to Canada and to the British Empire of the Canadian Pacific Railway as a bond of unity, a developer of resources, and a world’s highway. The out-going steamers were crowded with passengers and laden with freight. We met on the way two solid trains, of twenty cars each, full of tea. When the new swift steamers are put on, which are already heavily subsidized by both the English and the Canadian governments, the traffic in passengers and goods must increase. What effect the possession of such a certain line of communication with her Oriental domains will have upon the English willingness to surrender Canada either to complete independence or to a union with the United States, any political prophet can estimate.

It must be added that the Canadian Pacific Company are doing everything to make this highway popular as well as profitable. Construction and management show English regard for comfort and safety and order. It is one of the most agreeable lines to travel over I am acquainted with. Most of it is well built, and defects are being energetically removed. The “Colonist” cars are clean and convenient. The first class carriages are luxurious. The dining-room cars are uniformly well kept, the company hotels are exceptionally excellent; and from the railway servants one meets with civility and attention.

---