We were told to go and see the public garden, which is very well laid out with carpet beds and a miniature river. The gardener is a resident of Halifax, and was sent home to England a short time ago, to model it on our London parks. In the evening we attended the Presbyterian Church to hear Principal Grant preach. He is the able, sympathetic and popular Principal of the Kingston University. The Presbyterians have a strong following, and fine churches throughout Canada, probably owing to the large number of original Scotch settlers.
From Halifax we should have gone to St. John, New Brunswick, by Annapolis, through the beautiful country celebrated by Longfellow, and called the Land of Evangeline, and across the Bay of Fundi, but there was doubt as to the hour of arrival of the steamer to be in time for a meeting of the United Empire Trade League. I must here digress a minute to explain that it was no part of our original Canadian tour to practically be "stumping" the country from Halifax to Vancouver on the subject of Imperial Preferential Trade. The meetings were thrust upon my husband, and, once begun, each city claimed its meeting in due course. Albeit, I must confess that he fell in gladly with the arrangement. I may fairly say that for over six weeks in Canada, I was the victim of the United Empire Trade League.
In our schoolroom days we learnt that St. John is the capital of New Brunswick, and Halifax the capital of Nova Scotia. In the weariness of a hot study and the drowsiness of a summer afternoon, we may vaguely wonder of what use this, and much else that we learn, will ever be to us. It is pleasant now to have knowledge triumphantly vindicated, and geography by personal visits made easy.
Lying on several peninsulas formed by the river of St. John, the harbour, and the Bay of Fundi, the city is surrounded by water. You cannot be many minutes in the town without hearing of the fire of 1877, that great epoch in local history. Beginning in a blacksmith's shop, it destroyed nine miles of streets and an entire portion of the town. We were shown the one building that was left untouched in the midst of the conflagration, and for what reason no one has ever been able to ascertain. The town was rebuilt with red sandstone, granite and brick. It looks so handsome and substantial when compared to the wooden cities of Halifax and other Canadian towns.
The Mayor (Mr. Peters), the President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Robertson), met us at the station and drove us about the town, and pointed out to us such public buildings as the Custom House, the hospital, the asylum for the insane, etc. My experience goes to tell that they are the same in all cities of the world. We passed rapidly from the summit of one peninsula on to the next, looking down streets that always seem to lead to water. There are pretty views from these heights of the large city, containing 40,000 inhabitants, spread out over these successions of hills, with the harbour dotted with sails below. Far away into the country, the river is seen winding amongst grey, overhanging cliffs and pine-clad mountains. They claim for it scenery as fine as the Hudson.
But the prettiest view of all is from the Cantilever Bridge. Here the wide mouth of the St. John river flows through the harbour to the sea, interrupted by rocky islands, clothed in green. They have a great curiosity here in the shape of a reversible waterfall. The tide at the mouth of the river rises and falls as much as forty feet. As the river flows seawards it is forced by the volume of water coming down the river over a ridge of rock, and forms a waterfall into the harbour at low tide. When the tide turns, the salt water is forced backwards up the river, and forms a waterfall the reverse way.
St. John was founded by the United Loyalists. The other day there was a touching incident of a brave boy who went out in a storm here and saved the life of a child, perishing in the attempt. Subscriptions poured in for the erection of a public monument. They proposed to erect it on a spot we were shown, but in excavating they came upon the well-preserved coffins of twenty of these United Loyalists.
The city is the centre of a great lumber trade; 30,000 yards of timber are cut on the banks of the river annually and floated down to St. John's. They have free and undenominational education. The streets are paved with blocks of cedar. Electric light is in general and domestic use. Altogether, St. John is a most enlightened and advanced city.
We got into the "cars" at night for a long journey of two days and two nights to Toronto.
Through the State of Maine we sped at night; one of the two American total Prohibitionist States. Though saving 200 miles by this route, it seems a pity that the C. P. R. could not keep their line in Canadian territory, as, in the event of war with America, or one in which she was a neutral ally, her connections could be severed.
During this long journey of 1500 miles from Cape Breton, through the Maritime Provinces, to the more cultivated and open country of Ontario, the scenery has been beautiful but monotonous.
There are two features which repeat themselves over and over again to the eye, the ear and the senses: they are that Canada is a land of many forests, and that Canada is a land of many waters.
For many hundreds of miles we passed through the midst of these enduring spruce forests, the narrow track whose path has been roughly cleared by burning, extending with its thin thread of iron through their densest growth, lost through their trackless depths. On either side of the clearing though these, mighty forests, there is a belt of blackened stumps of grey, armless stems, where the fire has passed over them. Sometimes even there will be one green living tree left standing among the dead. And these dull grey mutilated trees look quite pathetic in their pale nakedness, leaning hither and thither, and finding support across one another, as if falling in their last agony, or lying dead and uprooted on the ground. They exercise quite a fascination as they continue for mile after mile in their dying contortions, whilst in the background there are their living brethren, so green, hardy and dense in their growth. The ground beneath is strewn with blackened snags that are partly covered with green moss and ferns, their fresh growth mingling with these dark reminiscences of man's ruthless hands. In sedgy places there are beds of waving bulrushes, and sometimes a few wild flowers, such as the fox-glove, the mimosa, and the golden-rod.
Hundreds of acres of these lumber forests are on every side, and indeed, a large proportion of the Dominion is covered with these mighty stretches of pine and spruce. There are other varieties such as maple, birch and poplar, but the spruce fir is the chief growth, as it covers all the land that is not cleared or occupied by water. We see piles of ready-cut timber, stacked for transport, or cars laden with it at every station. The rivers and lakes are full of floating timber, and abandoned rafts. Frequently the whole surface of the river will be blocked with lumber, which, carried by the current, arranges itself transversely in floating down. This generally happens near a town or village. For miles away up these deep valleys, there are men busy lumbering all the summer. They cut down and strip the trees of bark and then float the lumber down to the nearest place for export. We constantly pass sawing mills where water power is used for the machinery. The bark is only useful for "kindling" or firewood. Some of the wood is crushed to pulp and used for the manufacture of paper.
Occasionally in the middle of these forests the engine will startle us with an unearthly whistle. It is a sign that we are approaching a human habitation, and in a rough clearing we pass two or three wooden huts, with a potato patch mingling with the black stumps, and women and children at the door. One pities their solitary life, shut in by the impenetrable forest, and wonders how they obtain supplies. Sometimes there is a larger clearing with more attempts at farming, but where the fields, though divided off, are still a mass of charred stumps.
This work of clearing by the Eastern settler must be terribly disheartening. There is, first of all, a dense undergrowth to be hewn through and piled up ready for burning. This when dry kindles the conflagration which is to help so materially in the task. After a spell of dry weather and with the wind in the direction he wishes to clear, it must be joy to the settler to see the flames leaping up and hungrily devouring the trees. The fiercer and longer