"These characteristics give more richness and contrast in the colour. On a clear day the snow-capped summits and crested peaks, tinged, perhaps, with the crimson glow of the setting sun, glisten and sparkle with dazzling brilliancy. Great luminous spears of transparent blue ice cut down into the dark rich green of the forest, which is blended into the warmer tints of shrubbery and foliage in the foreground. Great castellated crags of white and green rock break through the velvet mantle of forest. Blueberry bushes and alders, with white-flowered rhododendrons, adorn with delicate tracery the trailing skirts of the forest, and rich-tinted red, purple, and yellow wild-flowers nestle in the fringe. All this, rising against the clear blue of the sky, while soft veils of mist rise from the valleys, floating across the face of the mountains, or break and hang in fleecy tassels upon the edges of cliffs and crags, makes a study in colour and grandeur beyond the power of human artist to depict or poet to describe."
This description applies almost equally to the Rocky Mountains, the backbone that stretches from north to south of the continent, the gigantic barrier which separates the flat prairies from the broken coast districts.
In Canada they all wear glistening snow-caps, while glaciers of enormous extent rest in their awful cañons, and their hoary sides are laced with the most beautiful green-blue mountain torrents which leap from dizzy heights in cascades of dazzling beauty. Some of the most imposing scenery of the Rockies is enclosed within the great National Park at Banff, an area of 5,732 square miles of mountains, and here is a great game preserve, where are found bear, moose, elk, deer, mountain sheep and goats, and many smaller animals. No one may shoot or trap here, and it is expected that the number of wild animals will greatly increase. There is, too, a large herd of buffalo maintained in the park.
In the forests, on the slopes, grows the famous Douglas fir, which reaches a great size and height; trees 30 feet across the trunk are not uncommon, and there is one in Stanley Park, Vancouver, which your cabman is sure to show you should you visit that city, which has a hole in the trunk so large that parties of tourists stand in it to be photographed. The climate is so mild that winter is replaced by a rainy season, and roses bloom outside all the year round. This makes the famous Okanagan and Kootenay valleys so suitable for fruit-culture.
Victoria is the capital of British Columbia. It is situated on Vancouver Island, on the Pacific, and its climate and natural beauty have made it the home of choice for many English families retiring from service in the Orient, and so it is the most English of Canadian cities. Vancouver is the commercial capital, it is the terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and from its fine harbour steamship lines run to China, Japan, and Australia. Prince Rupert is a new port farther north, and is the western terminus of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway now being built across the continent.
British Columbia has been called a "little paradise on earth," and if beauty of scenery, and the poetry of Nature, and the contentment, prosperity, and happiness of man can anywhere combine to make a spot on this earth anything approaching to a paradise, assuredly that spot is to be found in the fairest province of the Dominion of Canada. And how many of the names of the little towns which cling to the feet of the mountains mirrored in these lakes have not only musical, but richly poetic names! Who can listen to such words as Kelowna, Summerland, Nelson, Vernon, Castlegar, Halcyon, Mara, Kootenay, Slocan, Okanagan, without feeling a thrill of poetic delight? Were these names as familiar to the mind as are Lomond, Katrine, Leven, Blair Athole, Glencoe, Inveraray, Oban, they would not fail to conjure up as many pictures of surpassing scenic beauty as do those pearls of the Scottish Highlands, especially as in many respects the physical features of the two regions are somewhat alike.
And the coast districts of British Columbia are every bit as remarkable as the mountainous lake districts of the interior. They, too, bear more than a superficial resemblance to the west coast of Scotland. Like the latter, the western shore of British Columbia is cut into deeply by the ocean. Like the west of Scotland, again, the numerous bays and fjords are rock-bound, and long and winding. And, once more, like that same Scottish ocean marge, the Pacific coast of this Canadian province is thickly studded with islands, varying in size from a tiny dot of rock to Vancouver Island, which is about half as big as Ireland, and studded with mountains which rise up to from 6,000 to 7,500 feet.
CHAPTER III
HOME-LIFE IN CANADA
The English visitor to a Canadian city finds things much as they are at home: there are different names for articles in common use; the hotel elevator goes faster than the lift at home; the trams are street-cars, the streets are not so clean; the traffic is not so well managed; and the public buildings and parks are newer, and lack the grace and beauty of the old land architecture. The houses all have verandas, on which, in summer, the people spend a great part of their time, even eating and sleeping there; and most of the houses have lawns unprotected from the street by walls or fences. The houses are kept much warmer in winter than is the English custom, and ice is everywhere used in the summer. All well-to-do people in the towns, and many in the country, have telephones. Other minor differences there are, but you would soon feel quite at home in a Canadian house.
The stranger visiting a Canadian town is at once struck by the keenness of the local enthusiasm. That is to say, the people who live in that town are immensely proud of it, and consider it the finest and best place to live in in all the world. They are very fond of pointing out the advantages which it enjoys, and never neglect the smallest opportunity of boasting of its beauty or wealth or public spirit, or whatever it may be that it excels in. The governing authorities of the town, as the Mayor and Town Council, vote money from time to time expressly to advertise their town, in the hope of attracting strangers to come and live there. Then the citizens form themselves into clubs for the purpose of helping the population to reach as soon as possible 20,000, or 50,000, or 100,000, as the case may be; and these clubs bear the strange titles of the Twenty Thousand Club, the Fifty Thousand Club, the Hundred Thousand Club, and so on.
The houses in the towns, and even many houses in the country, are not considered properly furnished if they have not the telephone fitted up inside them. The Canadians – women, and even children, as well as business men – use the telephone pretty well every day of their lives. Does a lady want to know how her neighbour's little girl's cut finger is getting on, she rings her neighbour up on the "'phone." A lady does her shopping at the grocery store, or orders her joint for dinner "over the 'phone." A boy asks his classmate how much history they have to learn for their home-lesson to-night. Indeed, in a Canadian home the telephone is used as much and as frequently as the poker is for stirring the fire on a cold winter's day in any English home.
In many of the thinly inhabited districts the place where people meet and gossip and pick up the news of what is happening in the country-side is not the weekly market or the church, because very often neither the one nor the other exists, but it is the "store." This is not a barn or similar building in which people put their hay or corn or other produce till they wish to sell it. The word means "a shop," and the country store, the focus and centre of the life of the district, is almost always a shop where pretty nearly every conceivable thing is sold, from iron wedges (for splitting logs) to oranges, from ready-made suits of clothes to note-paper. And the storekeeper is nearly always the postmaster as well. Thus, if you want to find out all about a district, you are most likely to obtain the information you seek from the storekeeper. He can tell you what land or what farms there are for sale in the locality, and the prices that are being asked. He knows the names of everybody within a range of a good many miles, and often knows a great deal more about people than their names alone.
In the older parts of the country, life on the farm is much the same as elsewhere; the houses are built of stone and brick, with verandas and lawns, heated by furnaces, and furnished with all that comfort, even luxury, demands. But far back in the newer parts of Ontario or New Brunswick we see in a small clearing in the forest or on the edge of a lake or