In his historic tongue, and then in English, he spoke of the honour the Prince was paying the Stoneys, and of their enduring loyalty to him and his father; and he asked the Prince "to accept from us this Indian suit, the best we have, emblematic of the clothes we wore in happy days. We beg you also to allow us to elect you as our chief, and to give you the name Chief Morning Star."

The suit given to the Prince was an exceedingly handsome one of white buckskin, decorated with beads, feathers and fur, and surmounted by a great headdress of feathers rising from a fillet of beads and fur. The Prince put on the headdress at once, and spoke to the Indians as a chief to his braves, telling them of the honour they had done him.

When he had finished, the tom-toms were brought into action again, and a high, thin wail went up from the ring of Indians, and they began almost at once to move round in a dance. Indian dancing is monotonous. It is done to the high, nasal chanting of men gathered round a big drum in the centre of the ring. This drum is beaten stoically by all to give the time.

Some of the dancing is the mere bending of knees and a soft shuffling stamping of moccasined feet. In other dances vividly clad, broad-faced, comely squaws joined in the ring of braves, whose feathers and elk-tooth ornaments swung as they moved, and the whole ring, with a slightly rocking movement, shuffled an inch at a time round the tom-tom men. The motion was very like that of soldiers dressing ranks.

A more spirited dance is done by braves holding weapons stiffly, and following each other in file round the circle, now bending knees, or bodies, now standing upright. As they pass round and dip they loose little snapping yelps. All the time their faces remain as impassive as things graven.

The dancing was followed by racing. Boys mounted bareback the springy little horses, and with their legs twisted into rope-girths—with reins, the only harness—went round the track at express speed. Young women, riding astride, their dresses tied about their knees, also raced, showing horsemanship even superior to the boys. The riding was extremely fine, and the little horses bunch and move with an elastic and hurtling movement that is thrilling.

The ceremony had made the bravest of spectacles. The Indian colour and romance of the scene, set in a deep cup rimmed by steep, grim mountains, the sides and icecaps of which the bright sunlight threw up into an almost unreal actuality, gave it a rare and entrancing quality. And not the least of its picturesque attractions were the papooses in bead and fringed leather, who grubbed about in the earth with stoic calm. They looked almost too toylike to be true. They looked as though their right place was in a scheme of decoration on a wall or a mantel-shelf. As one lady said of them: "They're just the sort of things I want to take home as souvenirs."

II

Banff is an exquisite and ideal holiday place, and I can appreciate the impulse that sends many Americans as well as Canadians to enjoy its beauties in the summer.

It is a valley ringed by an amphitheatre of mountains, up the harsh slopes of which spruce forests climb desperately until beaten by the height and rock on the scarps beneath crests which are often snow-capped. Through this broad valley, and winding round slopes into other valleys, run streams of that poignant blueness which only glacial silt and superb mountain skies can Impart.

The houses and hotels in this Switzerland of Canada are charming, but the Banff Springs Hotel, where the Prince stayed, is genius. It is perched up on a spur in the valley, so that in that immense ring of heights it seems to float insubstantially above the clouds of trees, like the palace of some genii. For not only was its site admirably chosen, but the whole scheme of the building fits the atmosphere of the place. And it is as comfortable as it is beautiful.

It faces across its red-tiled, white-balustered terraces and vivid lawns, a sharp river valley that strolls winding amid the mountains. And just as this river turns before it, it tumbles down a rock slide in a vast mass of foam, so that even when one cannot see its beauty at night, its roar can be heard in the wonderful silence of the valley. On the terrace of the hotel are two bathing-pools fed from the sulphur springs of Banff, and here Canadians seem to bathe all day until dance-time—and even slip back for a moonlight bath between dancing and bed.

It is an ideal place for a holiday, for there is golfing, climbing, walking and bathing for those whose athletic instincts are not satisfied with beauty, and automobile rides amid beauty. And it is, of course, a perfect place for honeymooners, as one will find by consulting the Visitors' Book, for with characteristic frankness the Canadians and Americans sign themselves:

"Mr. and Mrs. Jack P. Eeks, Spokane. We are on our honeymoon."

The Prince spent an afternoon and a morning playing golf amid the immensities of Banff, or travelling in a swift car along its beautiful roads. There are most things in Banff to make man happy, even a coal mine, sitting like a black and incongruous gnome in the heart of enchanted hills, to provide heat against mountain chills.

The Prince saw the sulphur spring that bubbles out of quicksand in a little cavern deep in the hillside—a cavern made almost impregnable by smell. In the old days the determined bather had to shin down a pole through a funnel, and take his curative bath in the rocky oubliette of the spring. Now the Government has arranged things better. It has carved a dark tunnel to the pool, and carried the water to two big swimming tanks on the open hillside, where one can take a plunge with all modern accessories.

III

From Banff in the afternoon of Thursday, September 18th, the train carried the Prince through scenery that seemed to accumulate beauty as he travelled to another eyrie of loveliness, Lake Louise.

At Lake Louise Station the railway is five thousand feet above the sea-level, but the Chateau and Lake are yet higher, and the Prince climbed to them by a motor railway that rises clinging to the mountain-side, until it twists into woods and mounts upward by the side of a blue-and-white stream dashing downward, with an occasional breather in a deep pool, over rocks.

The Chateau is poised high up in the world on the lip of a small and perfect lake of poignant blue, that fills the cup made by the meeting of a ring of massive heights. At the end of the lake, miles away, but, thanks to the queerness of mountain perspective, looking close enough to touch, rises the scarp of Mount Victoria, capped with a vast glacier that seemed to shine with curious inner lambency under the clear light of the grey day. There is a touch of the theatre in that view from the windows or the broad lawns of the Chateau, for the mountain and glacier is a huge back-drop seen behind wings made by the shoulders of other mountains, and all, rock and spruce woods, as well as the clear shining of the ice, are mirrored in the perfect lake that makes the floor of the valley.

Up on one of the shoulders of the lake, hidden away in a screen of trees, is the home of an English woman. She used to spend her days working in a shop in the West End of London until happy chance brought her to Lake Louise, and she opened a tea chalet high on that lonely crag. She has changed from the frowsty airs of her old life to a place where she can enjoy beauty, health and an income that allows her to fly off to California when the winter comes. The Prince went up to take tea in this chalet of romance and profit during his walk of exercise.

There is another kind of romance in the woods about the Chateau, and one of the policemen who guarded the Prince made its acquaintance during the night. In the dark he heard the noise of some one moving amid the trees that come down to the edge of the hotel grounds. He thought that some unpleasant intruder on the Prince's privacy was attempting to sneak in by the back way. He marched up to the edge of the wood and waited in his most legal attitude for the intruder—and a bear came out to meet him. Not only did it come out to meet him, but it reared up and waved its paws in a thoroughly militant manner. The policeman was a man from the industrial East, and not having been trained to the habits of bears, decided on a strategic withdrawal.

His experience was one of the next day's jokes, since it appears that bears often do come out of the woods attracted by the smell of hotel cooking. On the whole they are amiable, and are no more difficult than ordinary human beings marching in the direction of a good dinner.

From Lake Louise the Prince went steadily west through some of the most impressive scenery in Canada. The gradient climbs resolutely to the great lift of petrified earth above Kicking Horse Pass, so that the train seemed to be steaming across the sky.

A little east of the Pass is a slight monument called "the Great Divide." Here Alberta meets British Columbia, and here a stream springs from the mountains to divide itself east and west, one fork joining stream after stream, until as a great river it empties into Hudson Bay; the other, turning west and leaping down the ledges of valleys, makes for the Pacific.

Beyond "the Great Divide" the titanic Kicking Horse Pass opens out. It falls by gigantic levels for 1,300 feet to the dim, spruce-misted valleys that lie darkly at the foot of the giant mountains. It is not a straight canyon, but a series of deeper valleys opening out of deep valleys round the shoulders of the grim slopes. Down this tortuous corridor the railway creeps lower, level by level, going with the physical caution of a man descending a dangerous slope.

The line feels for its best footholds on the sides of walls that drop sheer away, and tower sheer above. We could look over the side down abrupt precipices, and see through the dense rain of the day the mighty drop to where the Kicking Horse River, after leaping over rocky ramps and flowing through level pools, ran in a score of channels on the wide shingly floor of the Pass.

Beneath us as we descended we could see the track twisting and looping, as it sought by tunnelling to conquer the exacting gradient. The planning of the line is, in its own way, as wonderful as the natural marvel of the Pass. One is filled with awe at the vision, the genius and the tenacity of those great railway men who had seen a way over this grim mountain barrier, had schemed their line and had mastered nature.

At Yoho Station that clings like a limpet near the top of this soaring barrier, the Prince took to horse, and rode down trails that wind along the mountainside through thickets of trees to Field at the foot of the drop. The rain was driving up the throat of the valley before a strong wind, and it was not a good day for riding, even in woolly chaps such as he wore, but he set out at a gallop, and enjoyed the exercise and the scenery, which is barbaric and tremendous, though here and there it was etherealized by sudden gleams of sunlight playing on the wet foliage of the mountain-side and turning the wet masses into rainbows.

During this ride he passed under the stain in a sheer wall of rock that gives the Pass its name. For some geological reason there is, high up in a straight mass of white towering cliff, a black outcrop that is like the silhouette of an Indian on a horse. I could not distinguish the kick in the horse myself, but I was assured it was there, and Kicking Horse is thus named.

From Field, a breathing space for trains, about which has grown a small village possessing one good hotel, the Prince rode up the valleys to some of the beauty spots, such as Emerald Lake, which lies high in the sky under the cold glaciers of Mount Burgess. It was a wonderful ride through the spruce and balsam woods of these high valleys.

IV

During Saturday, September 20th, the train was yet in the mountains, and the scenery continued to be magnificent. From Field the line works down to the level of the Columbia River, some 1,500 feet lower, through magnificent stretches of mountain panorama, and through breathless gorges like the Palliser, before climbing again steeply to the highest point of the Selkirk Range. Here the train seemed to charge straight at the towering wall of Mount MacDonald, but only because there is a miracle of a tunnel—Connaught Tunnel—which coaxes the line down by easy grades to Rogers Pass, the Illicilliwaet and Albert Canyon. Through all this stretch the scenery is superb. In the gorges and the canyon high mountains force the river and railway together, until the train runs in a semi-darkness between sheer cliffs, with the water foaming and tearing itself forward in pent-up fury between harsh, rocky walls. Sometimes these walls encroach until the water channel is forced between two rocks standing up like doorposts, with not much more than a doorway space between them. Through these gateways the volume of water surges with an indescribable sense of power.

At places, as in the valley of the Beavermouth, east of the Connaught Tunnel, the line climbs hugely upward on the sides of great ranges, and, on precarious ledges, hangs above a gigantic floor, tree-clad and fretted with water channels. The train crept over spidery bridges, spanning waterdrops, and crawled for miles beneath ranges of big timber snowsheds.

The train stopped at the pleasant little mountain town of Golden, where the Prince went "ashore," and there was the ceremony of reception. This was on the program. The next stop was not.

West of the Albert Canyon, at a tiny station called Twin Butte, we passed another train standing in a siding, with a long straggle of men in khaki waiting on the platform and along the track, looking at us as we swept along. Abruptly we ceased to sweep along. The communication cord had been pulled, and we stopped with a jerk.

The Prince had caught sight of the soldiers, and had recognized who they were. He had given orders to pull up, and almost before the brakes had ground home, he was out on the track and among the men, speaking to them and the officers, who were delighted at this unexpected meeting.

The soldiers were English. They were men of the 25th Middlesex, H.A.C. and other regiments, four hundred all told. They had come from Omsk, in Russia, by way of the Pacific, and were being railed from Vancouver to Montreal in order to take ship for home. The men of the Middlesex were those made famous by the sinking of their trooper off the African coast in 1916. Their behaviour then had been so admirable that it will be remembered the King cabled to them, "Well done, Diehards!"

By the isolated railway station and under the lonely mountains so far from their homes, they were drawn up, and the Prince made an informal inspection of the men who had been so long away, and who had travelled the long road from Siberia on their way Blightyward.

The inspection lasted only a few minutes, and the episode, spontaneous as it was characteristic, scarcely broke the run into Revelstoke. But it was the happiest of meetings.

Revelstoke is a small, bright mountain town known, as its inhabitants say, for snow and strawberries. It is their way of explaining that the land in this deep mountain valley is splendidly fertile, and that settlers have only to farm on a small scale in order to make a comfortable living, though in winter it is—well, of the mountains. The fishing there is also extremely good, and we were told almost fabulous tales of boys who on their journey home from school spent a few minutes at the creeks of the Columbia River, and went on their way bearing enough fish to make a dinner for a big family.

The chief feature of Revelstoke's reception was a motor run up Revelstoke mountain, a four thousand feet ride up a stiffish road that climbed by corkscrew bends. This was thrilling enough, for there were abrupt depths when we saw Revelstoke far down on the valley floor looking neat and doll-like from this airman's eye-view, and we had to cross frail wooden bridges spanning deep crevices, some of them at ugly corners.

From Revelstoke the train went on to Sicamous, where it remained until the middle of Sunday, September 21st. Sicamous is merely an hotel and a few houses beside a very beautiful lake. It is a splendid fishing centre, for a chain of lakes stretches south through the valleys to Okanagan. A branch line serves this district (which we were to explore later), where there are rich orchard lands.

With Revelstoke, Sicamous acts as a distributing centre for the big Kootenay areas, that romantic land of the earliest trail breakers, those dramatic fellows who pushed all ways through the forest-clad valleys after gold and silver, and the other rich rewards of the prospector. Even now the country has only been tapped, and there are many new discoveries of ore in the grim rock of the district.

A short stop at Kamloops on Sunday, September 21st, and then a straight run through the night brought us to Vancouver, with just a note of interest outside the Pacific city. For miles we passed dumps of war material, shells, ammunition boxes, the usual material of armies. It was lying discarded and decaying, and it told a tragic story. It was the war material that the Allies had prepared for Russia. These were the dumps that fed the transports for Russia plying from Vancouver. After the peace of Brest-Litovsk all work ceased about them, and there they remained to that day, monuments to the Bolshevik Peace.



CHAPTER XVII

THE PACIFIC CITIES: VANCOUVER AND VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA

I

Vancouver was land after a mountain voyage. With the feelings of a seafarer seeing cliffs after a long ocean journey, we reached common, flat country and saw homely asphalt streets.

There can be no two points of view concerning the beauty and grandeur of the mountain scenery through which the Prince had passed, but after a succession of even the most stimulating gorges and glaciers one does turn gladly to a little humanity in the lump. Vancouver was humanity in the lump, an exceedingly large lump and of peculiarly warm and generous emotions. We were glad to meet crowds once more.

There are some adequate streets in this great western port of Canada. When Vancouver planned such opulent boulevards as Granville and Georgia streets, it must have been thinking hard about posterity, which will want a lot of space if only to drive its superabundant motors. But splendid and wide and long though these and other streets be, the mass of people which lined them on Monday, September 22nd, was such as to set the most long-headed town planner wondering if, after all, he had allowed enough room for the welcoming of Princes.

From the vast, orderly throng massed behind the red and tartan of the Highland guard of honour at the station, thick ranks of people lined the whole of a long route to Stanley Park.

This crowd not only filled the sidewalks with good-tempered liveliness, but it had sections in all the windows of the fine blocks of buildings the Prince passed. Now and then it attempted to emulate the small boys who ran level with the Prince's car cheering to full capacity, and caring not a jot whether a "Mounty" of the escort or a following car went over them, but on the whole the crowd was more in hand than usual.

This does not mean that it was less enthusiastic. The reception was of the usual stirring quality, and it culminated in an immense outburst in Stanley Park.

It was a touch of genius to place the official reception in the Park. It is, in a sense, the key-note of Vancouver. It gives it its peculiar quality of charm. It is a huge park occupying the entirety of a peninsula extending from the larger peninsula upon which Vancouver stands. It has sea-water practically all round it. In it are to be found the greatest and finest trees in Canada in their most natural surroundings.

It is one big "reservation" for trees. Those who think that they can improve upon nature have had short shrift, and the giant Douglas pine, the firs and the cedars thrive naturally in a setting that has remained practically untouched since the day when the British seaman, Captain Vancouver, explored the sounds of this coast. It is an exquisite park having delightful forest walks and beautiful waterside views.

Under the great trees and in a wilderness of bright flowers and flags as bright, a vast concourse of people was gathered about the pretty pavilion in the park to give the Prince a welcome. The function had all the informality of a rather large picnic, and when the sun banished the Pacific "smoke," or mist, the gathering had infinite charm.

After this reception the Prince went for a short drive in the great park, seeing its beautiful glades; looking at Burrard Inlet that makes its harbour one of the best in the world, and getting a glimpse of English Bay, where the sandy bathing beaches make it one of the best sea-side resorts in the world as well. At all points of the drive there were crowds. And while most of those on the sidewalks were Canadian, there was also, as at "Soo," a good sprinkling of Americans. They had come up from Seattle and Washington county to have a first-hand look at the Prince, and perhaps to "jump" New York and the eastern Washington in a racial desire to get in first.

In this long drive, as well as during the visit we paid to Vancouver on our return from Victoria, there was a considerable amount of that mist which the inhabitants call "smoke," because it is said to be the result of forest fires along the coast, in the air. Yet in spite of the mist we had a definite impression of a fine, spacious city, beautifully situated and well planned, with distinguished buildings. And an impression of people who occupy themselves with the arts of business, progress and living as becomes a port not merely great now, but ordained to be greater tomorrow.

It is a city of very definite attraction, as perhaps one imagined it would be, from a place that links directly with the magical Orient, and trades in silks and tea and rice, and all the romantic things of those lands, as well as in lumber and grain with all the colourful towns that fringe the wonderful Pacific Coast.

Vancouver has been the victim of the "boom years." Under the spell of that "get-rich-quick" impulse, it outgrew its strength. It is getting over that debility now (and perhaps, after all, the "boomsters" were right, if their method was anticipatory) and a fine strength is coming to it. When conditions ease and requisitioned shipping returns to its wharves, and its own building yards make up the lacking keels, it should climb steadily to its right position as one of the greatest ports in the British Empire.

II

Vancouver, as it is today, is a peculiarly British town. Its climate is rather British, for its winter season has a great deal of rain where other parts of Canada have snow, and its climate is Britishly warm and soft. It attracts, too, a great many settlers from home, its newspapers print more British news than one usually finds in Canadian papers (excepting such great Eastern papers as, for instance, The Montreal Gazette), and its atmosphere, while genuinely Canadian, has an English tone.

There is not a little of America, too, in its air, for great American towns like Seattle are very close across the border—in fact one can take a "jitney" to the United States as an ordinary item of sightseeing. Under these circumstances it was not unnatural that there should be an interesting touch of America in the day's functions.

The big United States battleship New Mexico and some destroyers were lying in the harbour, and part of the Prince's program was to have visited Admiral Rodman, who commanded. The ships, however, were in quarantine, and this visit had to be put off, though the Admiral himself was a guest at the brilliant luncheon in the attractive Vancouver Hotel, when representatives from every branch of civic life in greater Vancouver came together to meet the Prince.

In his speech the Prince made direct reference to the American Navy, and to the splendid work it had accomplished in the war. He spoke first of Vancouver, and its position, now and in the future, as one of the greatest bases of British sea power. Vancouver, he explained, also brought him nearer to those other great countries in the British Dominions, Australia and New Zealand, and it seemed to him it was a fitting link in the chain of unity and co-operation—a chain made more firm by the war—that the British Empire stretched round the world. It was a chain, he felt, of kindred races inspired by kindred ideals. Such ideals were made more apparent by the recent and lamented death of that great man, General Botha, who, from being an Africander leader in the war against the British eighteen years ago, had yet lived to be one of the British signatories at the Treaty of Versailles. Nothing else could express so significantly the breadth, justice and generosity of the British spirit and cause.

Turning to Admiral Rodman, he went on to say that he felt that that spirit had its kinship in America, whose Admiral had served with the Grand Fleet. Of the value of the work those American ships under Admiral Rodman did, there could be no doubt. He had helped the Allies with a most magnificent and efficient unit.

At no other place had the response exceeded the warmth shown that day. The Prince's manner had been direct and statesmanlike, each of his points was clearly uttered, and the audience showed a keen quickness in picking them up.

Admiral Rodman, a heavily-built figure, with the American light, dryness of wit, gave a new synonym for the word "Allies"; to him that word meant "Victory." It was the combination of every effort of every Ally that had won the war. Yet, at the same time, practical experience had taught him to feel that if it had not been for the way the Grand Fleet had done its duty from the very outset, the result of the war would have been diametrically opposite. Feelingly, he described his service with the Grand Fleet. He had placed himself unreservedly under the command of the British from the moment he had entered European waters, yet so complete was the co-operation between British and Americans that he often took command of British units. The splendid war experience had done much to draw the great Anglo-Saxon nations together. Their years together had ripened into friendship, then into comradeship, then into brotherhood. And that brotherhood he wished to see enduring, so that if ever the occasion should again arise all men of Anglo-Saxon strain should stand together.

There was real warmth of enthusiasm as the Admiral spoke. Those present, whose homes are close to those of their American neighbours living across a frontier without fortifications, in themselves appreciated the essential sympathy that exists between the two great nations. When the Admiral conveyed to the Prince a warm invitation to visit the United States, this enthusiasm reached its highest point. It was, in its way, an international lunch, and a happy one.

III

After reviewing the Great War Veterans on the quay-side, the Prince left Vancouver just before lunch time on Tuesday, September 23rd, for Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, which lies across the water on Vancouver Island.

It was a short run of five hours in one of the most comfortable boats I have ever been in—the Princess Alice, which is on the regular C.P.R. service, taking in the fjords and towns of the British Columbian coast.

Leaving Vancouver, where the towering buildings give an authentic air of modern romance to the skyline, a sense of glamour went with us across the sea. The air was still tinged with "smoke" and the fabled blue of the Pacific was not apparent, but we could see curiously close at hand the white cowl of Mount Baker, which is America, and we passed on a zig-zag course through the scattered St. Juan Islands, each of which seemed to be charming and lonely enough to stage a Jack London story.

On the headlands or beaches of these islands there were always men and women and children to wave flags and handkerchiefs, and to send a cheer across the water to the Prince. One is surprised, so much is the romantic spell upon one, that the people on these islets of loneliness should know that the Prince was coming, that is, one is surprised until one realizes that this is Canada, and that telegraphs and telephones and up-to-date means of communication are commonplaces here as everywhere.

Romance certainly invades one on entering Victoria. It seems a city out of a kingdom of Anthony Hope's, taken in hand by a modern Canadian administration. Steaming up James Bay to the harbour landing one feels that it is a sparkling city where the brightest things in thrilling fiction might easily happen.

The bay goes squarely up to a promenade. Behind the stone balustrade is a great lawn, and beyond that, amid trees, is a finely decorative building, a fitted back-ground to any romance, though it is actually an hotel de luxe. To the left of the square head of the water is a distinguished pile; it is the Customs House, but it might be a temple of dark machinations. To the right is a rambling building, ornate and attractive, with low, decorated domes and outflung and rococo wings. That could easily be the palace of at least a sub-rosa royalty, though it is the House of Parliament. The whole of this square grouping of green grass and white buildings, in the particularly gracious air of Victoria gives a glamorous quality to the scene.

Victoria's welcome to the Prince was modern enough. Boat sirens and factory hooters loosed a loud welcome as the steamer came in. A huge derrick arm that stretched a giant legend of Welcome out into the harbour, swung that sign to face the Princess Alice all the time she was passing, and then kept pace on its rail track so that Welcome should always be abreast of the Prince.

The welcome, too, of the crowds on that day when he landed, and on the next when he attended functions at the Parliament buildings, was as Canadian and up-to-date as anywhere else in the Dominion. The crowds were immense, and, at one time, when little girls stood on the edge of a path to strew roses in front of him as he walked, there was some danger of the eager throngs submerging both the little girls and the charming ceremony in anxiety to get close to him.

The crowd in Parliament Square during the ceremonies of Wednesday, September 24th, was prodigious. From the hotel windows the whole of the great green space before the Parliament buildings was seen black with people who stayed for hours in the hope of catching sight of the Prince as he went from one ceremony to another.

It was a gathering of many races. There were Canadians born and Canadians by residence. Vivid American girls come by steamer from Seattle were there. There were men and women from all races in Europe, some of them Canadians now, some to be Canadians presently. There were Chinese and Japanese in greater numbers than we had seen elsewhere, for Victoria is the nearest Canadian city to the East. There were Hindus, and near them survivors of the aboriginal race, the Songhish Indians, who lorded it in Vancouver Island before the white man came.

And giving a special quality to this big cosmopolitan gathering was the curious definitely English air of Victoria. It is the most English of Canadian cities. Its even climate is the most English, and its air of well-furnished leisure is English. Because of this, or perhaps I should say the reason for this is that it is the home of many Englishmen. Not only do settlers from England come here in numbers, but many English families, particularly those from the Orient East, who get to know its charms when travelling through it on their way across Canada and home, come here to live when they retire. And this distinctly English atmosphere gets support in great measure from the number of rich Canadians who, on ceasing their life's work, come here to live in leisure.

Yet though this is responsible for the growing up in Victoria of some of the most beautiful residential districts in Canada, where beautiful houses combine with the lovely scenery of country and sea in giving the city and its environments a delightful charm, Victoria is vigorously industrial too.

It has shipbuilding and a brisk commerce in lumber, machinery and a score of other manufactories, and it serves both the East and the Canadian and American coast. It has fine, straight, broad streets, lined with many distinguished buildings, and its charm has virility as well as ease.

IV

The Prince made a long break in his tour here, remaining until Sunday, September 28th. Most of this stay was given over to restful exercise; he played golf and went for rides through the beautiful countryside. There were several functions on his program, however. He visited the old Navy Yard and School at Esquimault, and he took a trip on the Island railway to Duncan, Ladysmith, Nanaimo and Qualicum.

At each of these towns he had a characteristic welcome, and at some gained an insight into local industries, such as lumbering and the clearing of land for farming. On the return journey he mounted the engine cab and came most of the way home in this fashion.

The country in the Island is serene and attractive, extremely like England, being reminiscent of the rolling wooded towns in Surrey, though the Englishman misses the hedges. The many sea inlets add beauty to the scenery, and there are delightful rides along roads that alternately run along the water's edge, or hang above these fjords on high cliff ledges.

In one of our inland drives we were taken to an extraordinary and beautiful garden. It is a serene place, laid out with exquisite skill. In one part of it an old quarry has been turned into a sunken garden. Here with straight cliffs all round there nests a wilderness of flowers. Small, artificial crags have been reared amid the rockeries and the flowers, and by small, artificial paths one can climb them. A stream cascades down the cliff, and flows like a beautiful toy-thing through the dainty artificial scenery.

In another part of the grounds is a Japanese garden, with tiny pools and moon bridges and bamboo arbours—and flowers and flowers and flowers. And not only does the maker of this enchanted spot throw it open to the public, but he has built for visitors a delightful chalet where they can take tea. This chalet is a big, comely hall, with easy chairs and gate tables. It is provided with all the American magazines. In a tiny outbuilding is a scullery with cups and saucers and plates and teapots—all for visitors.

The visitors take their own food, and use these articles. The Chinese cook at the house near by provides boiling water, and all the owner asks is that those who use his crockery shall wash it up at the sink provided, and with the dish-cloths provided, and leave it in readiness for the next comer.

That generosity is the final and completing touch to the charm of that exquisite place, which is a veritable "Garden of Allah" amid the beauties of Canadian scenery.

Another drive was over the Malahat Pass, through superb country, to a big lumber camp on Shawnigan Lake. Here we saw the whole of the operations of lumbering from the point where a logger notches a likely tree for cutting to the final moment when Chinese workmen feed the great trunks to the steam saw that hews them into beams and planks.

Having selected a tree, the first logger cuts into it a deep wedge which is to give it direction in its fall. These men show an almost uncanny skill. They get the line of a great tree with the handle of their axes, as an artist uses a pencil, and they can cut their notches so accurately that they can "fall" a tree on a pocket-handkerchief.

Two men follow this expert. They cut smaller notches in the tree, and insert their "boards" into it. These "boards" have a steel claw which bites into the tree when the men stand on the board, the idea being both to raise the cutters above the sprawling roots, and to give their swing on the saw an elasticity. It is because they cut so high that Canada is covered with tall stumps that make clearing a problem. The stumps are generally dynamited, or torn up by the roots by cables that pass through a block on the top of a tree to the winding-drum of a donkey-engine.

When the men at the saw have cut nearly through the tree, they sing out a drawling, musical "Stand aw-ay," gauging the moment with the skill of woodsmen, for there is no sign to the lay eye. In a few moments the giant tree begins to fall stiffly. It moves slowly, and then with its curious rigidity tears swiftly through the branches of neighbouring trees, coming to the ground with a thump very much like the sound of an H.E. shell, and throwing up a red cloud of torn bark. The sight of a tree falling is a moving thing; it seems almost cruel to bring it down.

A donkey-engine mounted on big logs, that has pulled itself into place by the simple method of anchoring its steel rope to a distant tree—and pulling, jerks the great trunks out of the heart of the forest. A block and tackle are hitched to the top of a tall tree that has been left standing in a clearing, and the steel ropes are placed round the fallen trunks. As this lifting line pulls them from their resting-place, they come leaping and jerking forward, charging down bushes, rising over stumps, dropping and hurdling over mounds until it seems that they are actually living things struggling to escape. The ubiquitous donkey-engine loads the great logs on trucks, and an engine, not very much bigger than a donkey-engine, tows the long cars of timber down over a sketchy track to the waterside.

Here the loads are tipped with enormous splashes into the water to wait in the "booms" until they are wanted at the mill. Then they are towed across, sure-footed men jump on to them and steer them to the big chute, where grappling teeth catch them and pull them up until they reach the sawing platform. They are jerked on to a movable truck, that grips them, and turns them about with mechanical arms into the required position for cutting, and then log and truck are driven at the saw blade, which slices beams or planks out of the primitive trunk with an almost sinister ease.

Uncanny machines are everywhere in this mill. Machines carve shingles and battens or billets with an almost human accuracy. A conveyor removes all sawdust from the danger of lights with mechanical intelligence. Another carries off all the scrapwood and takes it away to a safe place in the mill yard where a big, wire-hooded furnace, something like a straight hop oast-house, burns every scrap of it.

The life in the lumber camp is a hard life, but it is well paid, it is independent, and the food is a revelation. The loggers' lunch we were given was a meal fit for gourmets. It was in a rough pitch-pine hut at rough tables. Clam-soup was served to us in cylindrical preserved meat cans on which the maker's labels still clung—but it lost none of its delightful flavour for that. Beef was served cut in strips in a great bowl, and we all reached out for the vegetables. There were mammothine bowls of mixed salad possessing an astonishing (to British eyes) lavishness of hard-boiled egg, lemon pie (lemon curd pie) with a whipped-egg crown, deep apple pie (the logger eats pie—which many people will know better as "tart"—three times a day), a marvellous fruit salad in jelly, and the finest selection of plums, peaches, apples, and oranges I had seen for a long day.

I was told that this was the regular meal of the loggers, and I know it was cooked by a chef (there is a French or Belgian or Canadian chef in most logging camps), for I talked with him. To live in a lonely forest, in a shack, and to work tremendously hard, may not be all the life a man wants, but it has compensations.

I understand that just about then the lumbermen were prone to striking. In one place they were demanding sheets, and in another they had refused to work because, having ordered two cases of eggs from a store, the tradesman had only been able to send the one he had in stock.

While we were in this camp we had some experience of the danger of forest fires. We had walked up to the head of the clearing, when one of the men of a group we had left working a short distance behind, came running up to say a fire had started. We went back, and in a place where, ten minutes before, there had been no sign of fire, flames and smoke were rising over an area of about one hundred yards square. Little tongues of flame were racing over the "slashings" (i.e., the debris of bark and splintered limbs that litter an area which has been cut), snakes of flame were writhing up standing trees, sparks blown by the wind were dropping into the dry "slashings" twenty, thirty and fifty yards away and starting fresh fires. We could see with what incredible rapidity these fires travelled, and how dangerous they can be once they are well alight. This fire was surrounded, and got under with water and shovelled earth, but we were shown a big stretch of hillside which another such fire had swept bare in a little under two hours. The summer is the dangerous time, for "slashings" and forests are then dry, and one chance spark from a badly screened donkey-engine chimney will start a blaze. When the fire gets into wet and green wood it soon expires.

These drives, for us, were the major events in an off time, for there was very little happening until the night of the 28th, when we went on board the Princess Alice again, to start on our return journey.



CHAPTER XVIII

APPLE LAND: OKANAGAN AND KOOTENAY LAKES

I

On Monday, September 29th, the Prince of Wales returned to Vancouver and took car to New Westminster, the old capital of British Columbia before picturesque Victoria assumed the reins.

New Westminster was having its own festival that day, so the visit was well timed. The local exhibition was to begin, and the Prince was to perform the opening ceremony. Under many fine arches, one a tall torii, erected by Chinese and Japanese Canadians, the procession of cars passed through the town, on a broad avenue that runs alongside the great Fraser River. Drawn up at the curb were many floats that were to take part in the trades' procession through the town to the exhibition grounds. Most of them were ingenious and attractive. There were telegraph stations on wagons, corn dealers' shops, and the like, while on the bonnet of one car was a doll nurse, busy beside a doll bed. Another automobile had turned itself into an aeroplane, while another had obliterated itself under a giant bully beef can to advertise a special kind of tinned meat.

All cars were decorated with masses of spruce and maple leaf, now beautiful in autumn tints of crimson and gold. And Peace and Britannia, of course, were there with attendant angels and nations, comely girls whose celestial and symbolical garments did not seem to be the right fashion for a day with more than a touch of chill in the air.

Through this avenue of fantasy, colour and cheery humanity the Prince drove through the town, which seems to have the air of brooding over its past, to the exhibition ground, which he opened, and where he presented medals to many soldiers.

II

From New Westminster the Royal train struck upward through the Rocky Mountains by way of the Kettle Valley. It passed through a land of terrific and magnificent scenery. It equalled anything we had seen in the more famous beauty spots, but it was more savage. The valleys appeared closer knit and deeper, and the sharp and steep mountains pinched the railway and river gorges together until we seemed to be creeping along the floor of a mighty passage-way of the dark, aboriginal gods.

Again and again the train was hanging over the deep, misted cauldron of the valley, again and again it slipped delicately over the span of cobweb across the sky that is a Canadian bridge. In this land of steep gradients, sharp curves and lattice bridges, the train was divided into two sections, and each, with two engines to pull it, climbed through the mountain passes.

This tract of country has only within the last few years been tapped by a railway that seems even yet to have to fight its way forward against Nature, barbarous, splendid and untamed. It was built to the usual ideal of Canada, that vision which ignores the handicaps of today for the promise of tomorrow. Yet even today it taps the rich lake valleys where mining and general farming is carried on, and where there are miles of orchards already growing some of the finest apples and peaches in Canada.

On the morning of Tuesday, September 30th, the train climbed down from the higher and rougher levels to Penticton, a small, bright, growing town that stands as focus for the immense fruit-growing district about Okanagan Lake.

Here, after a short ceremony, the Prince boarded the steamer Sicamous, a lake boat of real Canadian brand; a long white vessel built up in an extraordinary number of tiers, so that it looked like an elaborate wedding-cake, but a useful craft whose humpy stern paddle-wheel can push her through a six-foot shallow or deep water with equal dispatch. And a delightfully comfortable boat into the bargain, with well-sheltered and spacious decks, cosy cabins and bath-rooms, and a big dining saloon, which, placed in the very centre of the ship with the various galleries of the decks rising around it, has an air of belonging to one of those attractive old Dickensian inns.

On this vessel the Prince was carried the whole length of Okanagan Lake, which winds like a blue fillet between mountains for seventy miles. On the ledges and in the tight valleys of these heights he saw the formal ranks of a multitude of orchards.

A short distance along the lake the Sicamous pulled in to the toy quay of Summerland, a town born of and existing for fruit, and linked up with the outer world by the C.P.R. Lake Service that owned our own vessel.

All the children of Summerland had collected on the quayside to sing to and to cheer the Prince, and, as he stood on the upper deck and waved his hat cheerfully at them, they cheered a good deal more. When he went ashore and was taken by the grown-up Olympians to examine the grading and packing sheds, where the fruits of all the orchards are handled and graded by mechanical means, prepared for the market, and sold on the co-operative plan, the kiddies exchanged sallies with those waiting on the vessel, flipped big apples up at them, and cheered or jeered as they were caught or missed.

The Sicamous went close inshore at Peachland, another daughter town of Mother Fruit, to salute the crowd of people who had come out from the pretty bungalow houses that nestle among the green trees on a low and pretty shore, and who stood on the quay in a mass to send a cheer to him.

At Okanagan Landing, at the end of the lake, he took car to Vernon, a purposeful and attractive town which is the commercial heart of the apple industry. Indeed, there was no need to ask the reason for Vernon's being. Even the decorations were wrought out of apples, and under an arch of bright, cherry-red apples the Prince passed on to the sports ground, and on to a platform the corner posts of which were crowned with pyramids of apples, and in the centre of which was a model apple large enough to suit the appetite of Gargantua.

In front of this platform was a grand stand crowded with children of all races from Scandinavian to Oriental, and these sang with the resistless heartiness of Canada. The Oriental is a pretty useful asset in British Columbia, for in addition to his gifts of industry he is an excellent agriculturist.

After the ceremonies the Prince had an orgy of orchards.

Fruit growing is done with a large gesture. The orchards are neat and young and huge. In a run of many miles the Prince passed between masses of precisely aligned trees, and every tree was thick with bright and gleaming red fruit. Thick, indeed, is a mild word. The short trees seemed practically all fruit, as though they had got into the habit of growing apples instead of leaves. Many of the branches bore so excessive a burden that they had been torn out by the weight of the fruit upon them.

It was a marvellous pageant of fruit in mass. And the apples themselves were of splendid quality, big and firm and glowing, each a perfect specimen of its school. We were able to judge because the land-girls, after tossing aprons full of specimens (not always accurately) into the Prince's car, had enough ammunition left over for the automobiles that followed.

Attractive land girls they were, too. Not garbed like British land-girls, but having all their dashing qualities. Being Canadians they carried the love of silk stockings on to the land, and it was strange to see this feminine extremity under the blue linen overall trousers or knickers. They were cheery, sun-tanned, laughing girls. They were ready for the Prince at every gate and every orchard fence, eager and ready to supplement their gay enthusiasm with this apple confetti.

The Prince stopped here and there to chat with fruit growers, and to congratulate them on their fine showing. Now he stopped to talk to a wounded officer, who had been so cruelly used in the war that he had to support himself on two sticks. Now he stopped to pass a "How d'y' do" to a mob of trousered land-girls who gathered brightly about his car, showing himself as laughing and as cheerful as they.

The cars left the land of growing apples and turned down the lake in a superb run of thirty-six miles to Kelowna. This road skirts fairyland. It winds high up on a shoulder above Long Lake, that makes a floor of living azure between the buttresses and slopes of the mountains. Only when it is tired of the heights does it drop to the lake level, and sweeping through a filigree of trees, speeds along a road that is but an inch or two above the still mirror of Wood Lake, on the polished surface of which there is a delicate fret of small, rocky islets. So, in magnificent fashion, he came to Kelowna, and the Sicamous, that carried him back to the train.

III

Through the night and during the next morning the train carried the Prince deeper in the mountains, skirting in amazing loops, when the train seemed almost to be biting its tail, steep rocky cliffs above white torrents, or the shining blue surfaces of lakes such as Arrow Lake, that formed the polished floor of valleys. Now and then we passed purposeful falls, and by them the power houses that won light and motive force for the valley towns from the falling water. There are those who fear the harnessing of water-power, because it may mean the spoiling of beautiful scenery. Such buildings as I saw in no way marred the view, but rather added to it a touch of human picturesqueness.

Creeping down the levels, with discretion at the curves, the train came in the rain to Nelson on Wednesday, October 1st. Rain spoilt the reception at Nelson, a town that thrives upon the agricultural and mining products of the hills about. There seemed to be a touch of mining grey in the air of the town, but, as in all towns of Canada, no sense of unhappiness, no sense of poverty—indeed, in the whole of Canada I saw five beggars and no more (though, of course, there may have been more). Of these one man was blind, and two were badly crippled soldiers.

There are no poor in Nelson, so I was told, and no unemployed.

"If a man's unemployed," said a Councillor with a twinkle in his eye, "he's due for the penitentiary. With labourers getting five dollars a day, and being able to demand it because of the scarcity of their kind, when a man who says he can't find work has something wrong with him ... as a matter of fact the penitentiary idea is only speculative. There's never been a test case of this kind."

I don't suppose there have been many test cases of that kind in the whole of Canada, for certainly "the everyday people" everywhere have a cheerful and self-dependent look.

At Nelson the Prince embarked on another lake boat, the Nasookin, after congratulating rival bands, one of brass, and one (mainly boys) of bagpipes, on their tenacity in tune in the rain. Nelson gave him a very jolly send-off. The people managed to invade the quay in great numbers, and those who were daring clambered to the top of the freight cars standing on the wharf, the better to give him a cheer.

As the boat steamed out into the Kootenay River scores of the nattiest little gasoline launches flying flags escorted him for the first mile or so, chugging along beside the Nasookin, or falling in our wake in a bright procession of boats. Encouraged by the "movie" men they waved vigorously, and many good "shoots" of them were filmed.

At Balfour, where the narrow river, after passing many homesteads of great charm nestling amid the greenery of the low shore that fringes the high mountains, turns into Kootenay Lake, the Prince went ashore. Here is a delightful chalet which was once an hotel, but is now a sanatorium for Canadian soldiers. Its position is idyllic. It stands above river and lake, with the fine mountains backing it, and across the river are high mountains.

Over these great slopes on this grey day clouds were gathered, crawling down the shoulders in billows, or blowing in odd and disconnected masses and streamers. These odd ragged scarves and billows look like strayed sheep from the cloud fold, lost in the deep valleys that sit between the blue-grey mountain sides.

The Prince spent some time visiting the sanatorium, and chatting with the inmates, and then played golf on the course here. The C.P.R. were, meanwhile, indulging themselves in one of their habitual feats. The lakes make a gap in the line between Nelson, or rather Balfour siding, and Kootenay Landing at the head of the water. Over this water-jump the whole train, solid steel and weighing a thousand tons, was bodily carried.

Two great barges were used. The long cars were backed on to these with delicate skill—for the slightest waywardness of a heavy, all-steel car on a floating barge is a matter of danger, and each loaded barge was then taken up the lake by a tug grappled alongside.

At Kootenay Landing the delicate process was reversed, and all was carried out without mishap though it was a dark night, and the railwaymen had to work with the aid of searchlights. Kootenay Landing is, in itself, something of a wonder. In the dark, as we waited for the train to be made up, it seemed as solid as good hard land can make it. But as the big Canadian engine came up with the first car we felt our "earth" sway slightly, and in the beam of the big headlight we saw the reason. Kootenay Landing is a station in the air. It is built up on piles.



CHAPTER XIX

THE PRAIRIES AGAIN

I

In cold weather and through a snowfall that had powdered the slopes and foothills of the Rocky Mountains the Prince, on Thursday, October 2nd, reached the prairies again. Now he was travelling well to the south of his former journey on a line that ran just above the American border.

In this bleak and rolling land he was to call in the next two days at a series of small towns whose very names—McLeod, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Maple Creek, Swift Current, Moose Jaw and Regina—had in them a savour of the old, brave days when the Red Man was still a power, and settlers chose their names off-hand from local things.

McLeod, on the Old Man River, just escapes the foothills. It is prairies, a few streets, a movie "joint," an hotel and a golf course. In McLeod we saw the dawn of the Mackinaw, or anyhow first saw the virtues of that strange coat which seems to have been adapted from the original of the Biblical Joseph by a Highland tailor. It is a thick, frieze garment, cut in Norfolk style. The colour is heroic red, or blue or mauve or cinnamon, over which black lines are laid in a plaid tracery.

We realized its value as a warmth-giver while we stood amid a crowd of them as the Prince received addresses. Among the crowd was a band of Blood Indians of the Blackfeet Tribe, whose complexions in the cold looked blue under their habitual brown-red. They had come to lay their homage before him and to present an Indian robe. The Prince shook hands and chatted with the chiefs as well as their squaws, and with the missionary who had spent his life among these Red Men, and had succeeded in mastering the four or five sounds that make up the Indian language.

We talked to an old chief upon whose breast were the large silver medals that Queen Victoria and King George had had specially struck for their Indian subjects. These have become signs of chieftainship, and are taken over by the new chief when he is elected by the tribesmen. With this chief was his son, a fine, quiet fellow in the costume of the present generation of Indians, the cowboy suit. He had served all through the war in a Canadian regiment.

At Lethbridge, the next town, there was a real and full Indian ceremonial. Before a line of tepees, or Indian lodges, the Prince was received by the Chiefs of the Blood Tribe of the Blackfeet Nation, and elected one of them with the name of Mekastro, that is Red Crow.

This name is a redoubtable one in the annals of the Blackfeet. It has been held by their most famous chieftains and has been handed down from generation to generation. It was a Chief Red Crow who signed the Wolseley Treaty in '77. Upon his election the Prince was presented with an historic headdress of feathers and horns, a beautiful thing that had been worn by the great fighting leaders of the race.

There were gathered about the Prince in front of these tall, painted tepees many chiefs of strange, odd-sounding names. One of these immobile and aquiline men was Chief Shot on Both Sides, another Chief Weasel Fat, another Chief One Spot, another Chief Many White Horses. They had a dignity and an unyielding calm, and if some of them wore befeathered bowler hats, instead of the sunray feathered headdress, it did not detract from their high austerity. Chief One Spot—"he whose voice can be heard three miles"—was a splendid and upright old warrior of eighty; he had not only been present at the historic treaty of '77, but had been one of the signatories.

The Prince chatted with these chiefs, while the Lethbridge people, who had shown extraordinary heartiness since the public welcome in the chief square of the town, crowded close around. While he was talking, the Prince asked if he could be shown the interior of one of the wigwams, and his brother, Chief Weasel Fat, took him to his own, over the door of which was painted rudely the emblem of the bald-headed eagle.

The wigwam is a fine airy home. Its canvas walls are supported by tall, leaning poles bound at the top. There is no need of a centre pole, and a wood fire burning on a circular hearth sent up a coil of smoke through the opening at the top of the poles.

The floor was strewn with bright soft rugs, on which squaws in vivid red robes were sitting, listening to all that was said with impassive faces. The walls were decorated with strips of warm cloth upon which had been sewn Indian figures and animals. The wide floor space also held a rattanwork bed, musical instruments and the like; certainly it was a more comfortable and commodious place than its bell-tent shape would suggest.

Leaving the exhibition grounds, on which the encampment stood, the Prince passed under an arch made of Indian clothes of white antelope skin, beads and feathers, and after reviewing the war veterans, went to the town ball that had been arranged in his honour.

Lethbridge is a mixture of the plain and the pit. It is a great grain centre, and there is no mistaking its prairie air, yet superimposed upon this is the atmosphere of, say, a Lancashire or Yorkshire mining town. Coal and other mines touch with a sense of dark industrial bustle the easy air of the plain town. It is a Labour town, and a force in Labour politics. That, of course, made not the slightest difference to its welcome; indeed, perhaps it tinged that greeting with a touch of independent heartiness that made it notable.

As a town it impresses with its vividity at once. That, indeed, is the quality of most Canadian cities. They capture one with their air of modernity and vivacity at first impact. True, one sometimes finds that the town that seemed great and bustling dwindles after a few fine streets into suburbs of dirt roadways, but one has been impressed. It may be very good window dressing, though, on the other hand, it is probably good planning which concentrates all the activity and interests of the town in the decisively main avenues.

II

Friday, October 3rd, saw the Prince visiting a string of three towns.

Medicine Hat was the first of these, an attractive, park-like place full of "pep." Medicine Hat's claim to fame beyond its name lies in the fact that, having discovered that it was sitting upon a vast subterranean reservoir of natural gas, it promptly harnessed it to its own use. Now, that elemental thing is in the control of humanity, and heats the town, and tamely drives the wheels of industry.

The outstanding ceremony was the way little boys suddenly took fright on a roof. In the middle of the town, beside the street, is a tall, thin standpipe, and this standpipe was to demonstrate a "shoot off" of the gas. Scores of small boys climbed on to the roofs of neighbouring sheds to see the fun. First there was a meek, submissive flame burning at the top of the pipe, and looking weak in the fine sunlight. Then, abruptly, the flame shot up a hundred feet, and there was a loud roaring. Not only was the roaring a terrifying thing, but the force of that rush of gas made the ground, the roof and the little boys tremble. Little boys came off that roof in record time, and with such a clatter that the effort of the standpipe almost lost its place as a star turn. This tremendous pressure is not habitual; it is, I believe, obtained by bursting a charge in one of the gas wells.

The Prince also saw the uses to which the gas was put in a big pottery mill. The kilns here were an incandescent mass of fire, the work of the easily controlled gas that does the work with a tithe of the labour and at a mere fraction of the cost necessitated by ordinary baking kilns.

Maple Creek and Swift Current were stepping-off places, with all their populations packed in the square about the station to give the Prince a hearty greeting. At Maple Creek the pretty daughters of the township were very much in evidence, and held His Royal Highness up with autograph albums.

Moose Jaw, one of the few towns where a quaint name is traceable, for it is the creek where the white man mended the cart with a moose jaw-bone, which the Prince reached on the morning of October 4th, is a bigger town and proud of its position as a grain, food and machinery distributing centre for Southern Saskatchewan. In its station courtyard it had built up an admirable exhibit of its vegetables and fruit, its sides of bacon, its grain in ear, its porridge oats in packets, and its butter and cream in drums and churns; while chiefest of all it showed ramparts of some of the two million sacks of flour it handles annually. The whole of the exhibit was set in a moat of grain and potatoes.

The Prince went to the University Grounds, where a mighty crowd attended the welcoming ceremony, and where a wild and timeless waltz-quadrille of motors which straggled all-whither over the grounds, marked the attempts of people to locate and follow him when he drove away to the hospital and a big packing factory. At the packing plant he saw the whole process of handling meat, from the moment when cowboys in chaps drove the herd to the pens to the final jointing of the steer.

From Moose Jaw he went to Regina, which he reached that afternoon. Regina is the capital of Saskatchewan, but an accidental capital. Somewhere about 1880 it was decided to start itself in quite another place. Qu'Appelle, where there was a Hudson Bay Fort and the country was attractive, was the site chosen. And Qu'Appelle opened its mouth too wide—or, anyhow so the version of the story I was told goes. The land-owners there asked an outside number of million dollars, and the townplanners went to Pile o' Bones instead.

Pile o' Bones was a point near Wascana Lake where there had been a big slaughter of buffaloes. It was a point of no importance, but Canadians don't mind that sort of thing. When they make up their minds to build a city, a city arises. Regina arose, broad and bustling, a trifle chilly as becomes a city of the prairie, rather flat and not altogether attractive, yet purposeful.

It also gained another reason for regard by becoming the headquarters of the "Mounties," the Royal North-West Mounted Police, whose main barracks are here. We saw something of the discipline of that fine service in the way the big crowds were handled, for the Prince drove through the streets in the order and state of a London or New York pageant.

The Parliament Buildings are beautifully situated before a wide stretch of water. They are the semi-classical, domed, white stone buildings of the design of those at Edmonton and other cities—a sort of standardized parliament building in fact. Before them, on the terraces and lawn that shelved down to the water, the big throng made a scene of quick beauty. There were ranks of pretty nurses, rank upon rank of khaki veterans, battalions of boy scouts mainly divorced from hats which were perpetually aloft on upraised and enthusiastic poles, aisles of sitting wounded whom the Prince shook hands with, and thick, supporting masses of civilians. Lining this throng were unbending fillets of scarlet statues, the "Mounties" of the guard. And humanizing the whole were solid banks of school-children who sang and cheered at the right as well as the wrong moment.

The presentation of medals—one to a blinded doctor, who, led by a comrade, received the most poignant storm of cheers I have ever heard in my life—and a giant public reception finished that day's ceremonies. Sunday, October 5th, was a day of rest, and Monday was the day of the "Mounties."

The Prince showed a particular interest in his visit to the Headquarters of this splendid and romantic corps. The Royal North-West Mounted Police is a classic figure in the history of the Empire. The day is now past when the lonely red rider of the wilds stood for the only token of awe and authority among Indian tribes and "bad men" camps, but though that may be there are no more useful fellows than these smart and sturdy men, who, scarlet-coated, and with their Stetsons at a daring angle, add a dash of colour and bravery to the streets of Western Canada.

In his inspection the Prince saw the reason why the physique of the men should be so splendid and their nerve so sure. The training of the R.N.W.M.P. makes no appeal to the weakling of spirit or flesh. He saw their firm discipline. He saw them breaking in the bucking bronchos they had to ride. He saw them go through exhausting mounted tests. His congratulations on their wonderful show were expressed with great warmth.

III

From Regina the Prince took a holiday. He went up to the sporting country near Qu'Appelle for duck and game shooting, spending from Monday, October 6th, until Friday, October 10th, there. This district abounds in duck, and the Prince and his staff had very fair sport. During his stay the weather suddenly turned colder, the rivers froze over and snow fell. So sudden was the cold snap that one of those with the Prince was caught napping. He woke up to find that his false teeth were frozen into the solid block of ice that had been water the night before. He had to take the tooth glass to the kitchen of the house where he was staying, and thaw it before he could even articulate his emotions adequately.

Riding in a fast car from the scene of the sport to the station gave the Prince an indication of what winter would be like in the prairies, where the wind from the north sweeps down unresisted, and with such a force that it seems to go right through all coats, save the Canadian winter armour of "coon coat" or fur.

Brandon and Portage la Prairie, two determined little towns, gave the Prince a snow welcome. The weather kept neither grown-ups nor children away from the liveliest of greetings. They were attractive halts in a run that took the Prince to Winnipeg.

In Winnipeg we appreciated the virtues of central heating, for the wind made the whole universe extraordinarily cold. Up to this I had considered central heating a stuffy subject, and I am yet not fully converted, for though there are those who say it can be controlled quite easily, I have yet to meet the superman who can do it.

All the same, steam heating has its virtues. On those cold days in Winnipeg we lived in a world that knew not draughts. It was almost a solemn joy to sit in a bath, and to feel that though half of one was in hot water, the other half was also comfortable and not the prey of every devilish current of icy air such as sports itself in those damp refrigerators, the British bathrooms. Naturally, since we are staying in a Canadian hotel of the up-to-date kind, a bathroom was attached to our bedroom as a mere matter of course. But if we had had to wander Anglicanly along corridors in search of a bathroom we should still have been draught free, for central heating deals with corridors, and stairways, and halls and lounges with one universal gesture.

Not merely in so fine an hotel as the "Royal Alexandra," but in the private houses and the "apartments" (English—"flats"), central heat and good bathrooms are items of everyday—though many Canadians burn an open fire in their sitting-rooms for the comfortable look it gives.

These things are not merely for comfort, but they are, with the hardwood floors, the mail chutes in "apartment" houses and the rest, part of the great science of labour-saving, which the whole of America practises.

One realizes the need of labour-saving when one sees in a theatre vestibule the following notice:

"ALL CHILDREN NOT LEFT WITH THE MATRON MUST BE PAID FOR"

As nurses are rare, and servants are rare, the Americans have to organize themselves to simplify the task of housekeeping.

The "apartments" are compact and neat, arranged for easy handling. The rents are not cheap. One very pleasant little "apartment," "hired" by a newly-married couple, was made up of three rooms, a kitchen and a balcony. It was in the suburbs. The rent was thirty-five dollars a month, say eighty-four pounds a year, for a flat, which, under the same conditions (rates included) could be obtained for thirty-five pounds a year in England in pre-war days. For this, however, central heating and perpetual hot water are included. My friend told me that his electric light bill came to three dollars a month, and his gas bill (for cooking) to rather less than that. In Calgary a friend of mine had a pretty "apartment" even smaller in a suburban district, was paying about ninety-six pounds a year over all, i.e., rent, light and gas (central heating being included). Most of these "apartments" have an ice house (refrigerator) attached, blocks of ice being left on the doorstep every morning, just as the milk is left.

Winnipeg is an attractive town to live in. It has plenty of amusements, including several good theatres and music halls—fed, of course, mainly from American sources. Mrs. Walker, whose husband owns the Walker Theatre, told me that Laurence Irving and his wife acted on their stage just before sailing on the ill-fated Empress of Ireland. She went up to his dressing-room to say "Good-bye" to him, the night before he left, and in answer to her knock he suddenly appeared before her, dressed in black from head to foot, for the character he was playing that night. His appearance filled her with dread—it seemed to her, as she looked at him, that something terrible was to happen. Both Laurence Irving and his wife were, however, in excellent spirits. Canada treated them royally, and they were going back home full of optimism, confident that the play that Laurence Irving was then finishing—one dealing with Napoleon—was to prove the greatest success of their careers.

We met at Winnipeg, also, a number of the brilliant men and women journalists whose energy and brains are responsible for the many fine papers that focus in this city. We had met such companions of our own dispensation in other cities, in Ottawa, Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto and Quebec. They were not merely keen and accomplished craftsmen, but their hospitality to us was always of the most delightful generosity.

The Princess visit to Winnipeg was undertaken to give him the opportunity of saying au revoir to the West. At the vivid luncheon he gave in the attractive Alexandra Hotel to all the leaders of the West, men and women, he insisted that it was au revoir, and that so well had the West treated him, so attractive was its atmosphere, that he meant not merely to return, but to become something of a rancher here in the "little place" he had bought in Alberta. He spoke of the splendid spirit of the West, and the magnificent future that was the West's for the grasping, and he left on all those who heard him an impression of genuine affection for the people and the land with which his journey had brought him in contact.

He himself left the West a "real scout." It is a mere truism to say that his personality had conquered the West, as it had won for him affection everywhere. His straightforward masculinity and his entire lack of side, his cheerfulness and his keenness, his freedom from "frills," as one man put it, had made him the friend of everybody. I heard practically the same expressions of real affection from all grades, from Chief Justice to car conductors. I heard, I think, but one man pooh-pooh, not so much this universal regard for the Prince, as a universal enthusiasm for something royal. A labour-leader, who happened to be present, administered correction:

"That chap's all right," he insisted, and his word carried weight. "I saw him in France, and there's not much that is wrong with him. If you're as democratic as he is, then you're all right."

The brightest of dances, a game of squash rackets, and the Prince left, undaunted by the snow, for week-end shooting. On Tuesday, October 14th, he was in the train again, travelling East, in the direction of the Cobalt mining country, buoyed up by the prophecy of the local weather-wise that the cold snap would not endure, but would be followed by the delightfully keen yet warm weather of the "Indian Summer." The local weather-wise were right, but it took time.



CHAPTER XX

SILVER, GOLD AND COMMERCE

I

Cobalt is a fantasy town. It is a Rackham drawing with all its little grey houses perched up on queer shelves and masses of greeny-grey rock. Its streets are whimsical. They wander up and down levels, and in and out of houses, and sometimes they are roads and sometimes they are stairs. One glance at them and I began to repeat, "There was a crooked man, who walked a crooked mile." A delightful genius had done the town to illustrate that rhyme.

And the rope railways that sent a procession of emotionless buckets across the train when we pulled in, the greeny-grey lake that presently (inside the town) ceased being a lake and became a big lake basin of smooth, greeny-grey mine slime, the vast greeny-grey mounds of mill refuse, the fantastic spideriness of the lattice mill workings, and humped corrugated iron sheds, all of them slightly greeny-grey in the prevailing fashion—the whole picture was fantastic; indeed, Cobalt appears a city of gnomes.

We had travelled all Tuesday and Wednesday, striking east from Winnipeg, only stopping occasionally for the Prince to return the courtesies of the CHAPTER XXI

NIAGARA AND THE TOWNS OF WESTERN ONTARIO

I

The best first impression of Niagara Falls is, I think, the one the Prince of Wales obtained.

Those who really wish to experience the thrills of grandeur and poetry of this marvel had better delay their visit until a night in summer, and make arrangements with the railway time-table to get there somewhere after dark. Upon arriving they must hire a car, and drive down to the splendid boulevard on the Canadian side. They will then see the great mass of water under the shine of lights, falling eternally, eternally presenting a picture of almost cruel beauty. They will then know an experience that transcends all other experiences as well as all attempts at description.

The curious feeling of disappointment which comes to many in daylight will have been guarded against, and, stimulated by that wondrous first vision, they will tide over that spiritually barren period which many know until the marvel of the Falls begins to "grow on them."

The Prince came from Hamilton to Niagara somewhere very close to midnight on Saturday, the 18th. He was carried through the dark town and country to the house of one of the Falls Commissioners. From here, through a filigree of trees and leaves, he could look across the smoking gorge to the Falls on the American side. Batteries of great arc lights, focused and hidden cunningly, shone upon the curtain of white and tumbling waters, and upon the strong, black mass of Goat Island, that is perched like a diver eternally hesitant on the very brink of the two-hundred-foot plunge.

The ghostly beauty of the falling water through the light, now a solid and tremendous curve, now broken into filaments and zigzag whorls, now veiled by the upward drift of the gossamer spray, held the Prince's gaze for some time. But even that beauty was transcended. He himself pressed an electric switch, and the grand curve of the Canadian Horseshoe blazed fully alight for the first time in their history, and though from this position this could not be fully seen, this new addition of light gave the whole mass before his eyes an additional loveliness.

From this point the Prince motored through the town to the splendid wide promenade that borders the Canadian side of the gorge, and spent half an hour watching the fascinating play of falling water and spray in the narrow cauldron of the Horseshoe.

He stood a foot away from the point where the water leaps in its magnificent and enigmatic curve into the tortured pool below. Green at the curve, the water is a mass of curdled white in the strong lights as it falls. Beneath, the face of the water is a passionate surface of whirlpools and eddies and tossing whiteness. From the tremendous impact of the drop a column of spray shoots and curls high up in the air. It towers quite six hundred feet above the surface of the water, and it is hard to believe that enduring mass of spray comes from the fall; in the distance one is convinced that it is steam arising from some big factory.

On the next day (Sunday) the Prince saw the Falls in their every phase. He walked up-stream above the Horseshoe to where the Niagara River jostles down over a series of ledges in the grand and angry Canadian Rapids, a sight as tumultuous and as thrilling in its own fashion as the Falls themselves. He visited the big, white stone power-house to examine with the greatest interest the machinery that traps the tremendous latent power of the plunging water, harnesses it, and so turns the wheels of a thousand industries, and lights hundreds of towns.

Partly walking, partly riding in a car of the scenic tramway, he followed the line of the Falls and river downward to where the Whirlpool Rapids curdle and eddy within the deep walls of the gorge. Over on the American side he saw the castles and keeps of modern industry: power-houses and factories, springing up from the very rock of the cliff, and almost forming part of it. On the Canadian side the people have not let their utilitarian sense run away with them to such an extent. Where America edges the gorge with commercial buildings, Canada has constructed her beautiful promenade, which continues the comeliness of the Falls Park through a pretty residential district. America has Prospect Park and the very beautiful Goat Island Park on its side, but these are not extended along the gorge.

Below the Whirlpool Rapids the Prince descended to the level of the river; later, he came to the top of the gorge again, and crossed, swinging two hundred feet above the water on the spidery ropes of the aerial railways, the great pool at the end of the river canyon, into which the pent-up water pushes swirling before turning at right angles towards Lake Ontario.

The Prince did not go over to the American side, but America came to him. The white number-plates of New York State seemed to be everywhere on automobiles, even outnumbering the yellow of Ontario. One had the impression that every American motor-owner within gasolene radius had decided that he would take his Sunday spin to Niagara Falls, and on to the Canadian side of the Falls to boot.

American cars were coming over the bridges all day, and American owners waited cheerfully along the route to get a glimpse of "The Boy," as the American papers called the Prince. They joined themselves to the very friendly crowd of Canadians who gathered everywhere along the route, and their cheering, mingling with Canadian cheering, showed that friendliness is not an affair that frontiers can manipulate.

As a matter of fact, the frontier at Niagara is the most imaginary of lines. Now that the war is over there is no difficulty in getting to either side. And there is no change in atmosphere either. People and conditions are much the same, only on the American side our dollars cost us more.

II

Western Ontario is, in the main, the most British part of Canada. Its towns have British names, and the streets of the towns have British names, while their atmosphere and design are almost of the Home Counties. The countryside (if one overlooks the absence of hedges—though rows of upturned tree-roots with plants growing among them sometimes have the look of hedges) is the suave, domesticated countryside of England. England is in the very air. And at the first of these curiously English towns the Prince became an Indian chief.

Brantford, though it reminds one of a comely British country town, preferably one with a Church influence in it, is really the capital of the Six Nation Indians. It actually owes its name to Joseph Brant, the Mohawk chief, who, having fought his Indians on the side of the British—as the braves of the fierce and powerful Six Nations had always fought on the side of the British—in the War of Independence, marched his tribes from their old camping-grounds in the Mohawk Valley to this place, so that they could remain under British rule.

The Indians of the Six Nations still live in and about Brantford, for, though they have ceded away their lands to settlers, they are among the few of the aboriginal races that have thrived and not decayed under civilization. The Prince's visit to Brantford on Monday, October 20th, was nearly all a visit to the Mohawks, the leaders of the ancient Indian federation of six tribes.

This is not to say that the welcome given him by Canadians was not a great one. As a matter of fact, it was astonishing, and it was difficult to imagine how a small town like this could pack its streets with so many people. But Brantford is industrial and scientific also, as well as being Indian. After a strenuous reception, for instance, the Prince went along to the statue that shrines the town's claim to a place in the history of science. This was the memorial to Dr. Bell, who lived in Brantford and who invented the first telephone in Brantford. They will even show you the trees from which the first line over which the first spoken message sent, was strung.

But the colourful ceremonies of Brantford were those connected with the Mohawks. The Prince was taken out to the small, old wooden chapel that George III. erected for his loyal Mohawk allies. It is the oldest Protestant chapel in the Dominion. On its walls are painted prayers in Mohawk, and it contains an old register that King Edward had signed in 1861. The Prince added his own signature to this before going into the churchyard to see the grave of Joseph Brant.

In the little enclosure before the church were the youngest descendants of the loyal Joseph Brant: ranks of Mohawk boys in khaki, and small Mohawk girls in red and grey. They sang to the Prince in their own language, a singular guttural tongue rendered with an almost abnormal stoicism. The children did not move a muscle of lips or face as they chanted; it might have been a song rendered by graven images.

In the main square of Brantford the Prince was elected chief of the Six Nations. This ceremony was carried out upon a raised and beflagged platform about which a vast throng of pale-faces gathered. Becoming a chief of the Six Nations is no light matter. It is a thing that must be discussed in full with all ceremonies and accurate minutes. The pow-wow on the platform was rather long. Chiefs rose up and debated at leisure in the Iroquois tongue, while the pale-faces in the square, at first quite patient, began to demand in loud voices:

"We want our Prince. We want our Prince."

And to be truthful, not merely the pale-faces found the ceremony lengthy. Gathered on the platform were a number of Mohawk girls, delicate and pretty maidens, with the warmth of their race's colour glowing through the soft texture of their cheeks. They were there because they had thrown flowers in the pathway of the Prince. At first they were interested in this olden ceremony of their old race. Then they began to talk of the wages they were drawing in extremely modern Canadian stores and factories. Then they looked at the ceremony again, at the clothes the Indians wore, at the romance and colour of it, and they said, one to another:

"Say, why have those guys dressed up like that? What's it all about, anyhow? What's the use of this funny old business?"

The romantic may find some food for thought in this attitude of the modern Mohawk maid.

In the end, after a debate on the fitness of several names, the Prince, as president of the pow-wow, gave his vote for "Dawn of Morning," and became chief with that title. But apparently he did not become fully fledged until he had danced a ritual measure. A brother chief in bright yellow and a fine gravity, came forward to guide the Prince's steps, and the Prince, immediately entering into the spirit of the ceremony, joined with him in shuffling and bowing to and fro across the platform. Only after the congratulations from fellow-Mohawks and palefaces, did he leave the dais to fight—there is no other word—his way through the dense and cheerful mass that packed the square almost to danger-point.

It was a splendid crowd, good-humoured and ardent. It had cheered every moment, though, perhaps, it had cheered more strongly at one moment. This was when an old Indian woman ran up to the Prince, crying: "I met your father and your grandfather, and I'm British too." At her words the Prince had taken the rose from his buttonhole and had presented it to her. And that delighted the crowd.

III

The fine weather of Monday gave way to pitiless rain on the morning of Tuesday, October 21st. All the same, the rain did not prevent the reception at Guelph from being warm and intensely interesting.

Guelph is one of the many comely and thriving towns of West Ontario, but its chiefest feature is its great Agricultural College that trains the scientific farmer, not of Ontario and Canada alone, but for many countries in the Western World. This college gave the Prince a captivating welcome.

It has men students, but it has many attractive and bonny girl students, also, and these helped to distinguish the day, that is, with a little help from the "movie" men.

The "movie" men who travelled with the train had captured the spectacle of the Prince's arrival at the station, and had driven off to the college to be in readiness to "shoot" when His Royal Highness arrived. They had ten minutes to wait. Not merely that, they had ten minutes to wait in the company of a bunch of the prettiest and liveliest girl students in West Ontario. "Movie" men are not of the hesitant class. Somewhere in the first seventy-five seconds they became old friends of the students who were filling the college windows with so much attraction. In one minute and forty-five seconds they had the girls in training for the Prince's arrival. They had hummed over the melody of what they declared was the Prince's favourite opera selection; a girl at a piano had picked up the tune, while the others practised harder than diva ever did.

When the Prince arrived the training proved worth while. He was saluted from a hundred laughing heads at a score of windows with the song that had followed him all over Canada. He drove into the College, not to the stirring strains of "Oh, Canada," but to the syncopated lilt of "Johnny's in Town."

The Prince was not altogether out of the youthful gaiety of the scene, for after the lunch, where the students had scrambled for souvenirs, a piece of sugar from his coffee cup, a stick of celery from his plate, even a piece of his pie, he made all these dashing young women gather about him in the group that was to make the commemorative photo, and a very jolly, laughing group it was.

And when he was about to leave, and in answer to a massed feminine chorus, this time chanting:

"We—want—a—holiday."

He called out cheerfully:

"All right. I'll fix that holiday." And he did.

IV

The whole of these days were filled with flittings hither and thither on the Grand Trunk line (the passage of the Prince being smoothly manipulated by another of Canada's fine railway men, and a genius in good fellowship, Mr. H. R. Charlton), as the Prince called at the pretty and vigorous towns on the tongue of Ontario that stretches between Lake Huron and Lake Erie to the American border.

Stratford, with something of the comely grace of Shakespeare's town in its avenues of neat homes and fine trees, gave him as warm a reception as anywhere in Canada on the evening of October 21st. On Wednesday, October 22nd, the same hearty welcome was extended by those singularly English towns, Woodstock and Chatham.

On the afternoon of the same day London gave him a mass welcome mainly of children in its big central park. London, Ontario, is an echo of London, Thames. It has its Blackfriars and Regent Street, its Piccadilly and St. James'. It is industrial and crowded, as the English London is. Its public reception to the Prince was remarkable. It had managed it rather well. It had stated that all who wished to be present must apply for tickets of admission. Thousands did, and they passed before the Prince in a motley and genial crowd of top hats and gingham skirts, striped sweaters and satin charmeuse. But though they came in thousands, the numbers of ticket-holders were ultimately exhausted. When the last one had passed, the Prince looked at his wrist watch. There was half an hour to spare before the reception was due to close. He told those about him to open the doors of the building and let the unticketed public in.

From London the Grand Trunk carried us to Windsor on Thursday, October 23rd, where crowds were so dense about the station that they overflowed on to the engine until one could no longer see it for humanity and little boys. From the engine eager sightseers even scrambled along the tops of the great steel cars until they became veritable grandstands.

Crowds were in the virile streets, and they were not all Canadians either. A ferry plies from Windsor to the United States, and America, which at no time lost an opportunity of coming across the border to see the Prince, had come across in great numbers. Canadians there were in Windsor, thousands of them, but quite a fair volume of the cheering had a United States timbre.

A city with an electric fervour, Windsor. That comes not merely from the towering profile of Detroit's skyscrapers seen across the river, but from the spirit of Windsor itself. Detroit is America's "motoropolis," and from the air of it Windsor will be Canada's motoropolis of tomorrow. It is already thrusting its way up to the first line of industrial cities; it is already a centre for the manufacture of the ubiquitous Ford car and others, and it is learning and profiting a lot from its American brother.

The Canadian and American populations are, in a sense, interchangeable. The United States comes across to work in Windsor, and Windsor goes across to work in America. The ferry, not a very bustling ferry, not such a good ferry, for example, as that which crosses the English Thames at Woolwich, carries men and women and carts, and, inevitably, automobiles between the two cities.

Detroit took a great interest in the Prince. It sent a skirmishing line of newspapermen up the railway to meet him, and they travelled in the train with us, and failed, as all pressmen did, to get interviews with him. We certainly took an interest in Detroit. It was not merely the sense-capturing profile of Detroit, the sky-scrapers that give such a sense of soaring zest by day, and look like fairy castles hung in the air at night, but the quick, vivid spirit of the city that intrigued us.

We went across to visit it the next morning, and found it had the delight of a new sensation. It is a city with a sparkle. It is a city where the automobile is a commonplace, and the horse a thing for pause and comment. It contained a hundred points of novelty for us, from the whiteness of its buildings, the beauty of its domestic architecture, the up-to-date advertising of its churches, to its policemen on traffic duty who, on a rostrum and under an umbrella, commanded the traffic with a sign-board on which was written the laconic commands, "Go" and "Stop."