A JOURNEY THROUGH CANADA.*

MR. ROPER is an attractive writer, and he has seen a great deal to write about. With Canada, where he appears to have lived in early life, he is familiar; and having been favoured

with a free pass on the Canadian Pacific Railway, known in the country as the " C.P.R.," he has made good use of the privilege. He has the rare gift of describing scenery admirably, he is a clever draughtsman, he endeavours to describe impartially the merits and drawbacks of the country, be notes down the conversations which he had with intelligent Colonists, and, having had two charming English girls, with their father and brother, as companions on his journey, he is able to interweave with his narrative a pleasant love episode.

This may, of course, be pure invention, but it reads far more like the natural outcome of the circumstances in which the girls were placed. There is no preface to the volume, and there is an almost total want of dates ; but Mr. Roper's

journey was apparently undertaken in 1889. Some nameless editor occasionally inserts a foot-note the necessity for which is not very evident.

From a book so copious in material, in which the traveller's track covers some thousands of miles, we must be content to note a few subjects which may be regarded as of general interest. It cannot be doubted that Canada has a great future before her ; and being so young a country, one may excuse, perhaps, the somewhat American bumptiousness of the settlers, and the rudeness that is mistaken for independence. Civility would seem to be a rare virtue in the less civilised parts of Canada, and the most ordinary attention a traveller has a right to claim on railways or in hotels is not always granted.

If he asks a simple question at a station, or at the bar of a hotel, it is more than probable that no answer will be given. One would think that it was the chief aim of these hotel pro- prietors to mismanage their establishments, and to make their guests as uncomfortable as possible. One of the rules is to give no food to travellers except at fixed hours, and, there- fore, if a train is late, they are doomed to go supperless to bed. This was Mr. Roper's experience again and again. Here is the record of his experience at Broadview, where he asks for a bed and some supper :-

"' Guess you'll get nothing to eat in this town till morning,' is the reply ; ' you should have come earlier.'—' It was not my fault that the train was late. Surely such cases must occur often

enough. Have you got no food ? Oh, lots ; but not at this time of night. No, Sir. This is not the old country ; you can't have things as you like here.'—I was really faint with hunger, for I had not supped on board the train, expecting to do so on my

• By Track and Trail a Journey through Canada. By Edward Roper, F.R.G.S. With numerous Original Sketches by the Author. London : W. R. Allen and Co.

arrival in port. The manager looked a decent fellow enough, and I thought he spoke with something of a. Yorkshire accent, so I said, Come now, I believe you are an Englishman yourself ?'— ' Oh yes ! I am,' he replied with a laugh ; I'm English enough.' —` Well, then, what would you have thought of this sort of thing if it had happened to you at home, eh ?'—' Why, I expect I should have thought it real mean.'—' Ah ! and why isn't it so here ? '— He shrugged his shoulders, and came up close to me. Look here, I suppose it ain't your fault you don't know the ways of this country. Fact is, I'm sorry to treat you like this ; but I can't help myself. It's the servants. They're our masters and mistresses here, and I simply dare not ask one of them to serve you. But you take my advice; go right up into the hall, make up to one of the young ladies, and see if you can't manage to coax her into giving you something.' "

At another hotel the traveller was forced to clean his own boots, as there was no one who would undertake such menial

labour. Even at Quebec, where the hotels are supposed to be conducted on the European plan, there was the same absence of comfort and of common politeness. All this will have to be changed before the great railway-line between Montreal and Vancouver will be selected for pleasure-trips. The accom- modation for passengers on the line itself is said to be in every way satisfactory, and nothing seems to be forgotten to render travelling as little tedious as possible. The stu- pendous engineering feat that has carried the railroad through mountains, across raging torrents, and down steep inclines, will in time make a wonderful change in the character of the country. Towns are springing up on the track, some of which are in a strangely primitive condition at present, but promise ere long to be settled and civilised. The energy of the Colonists is very great. In order to build Vancouver, a space filled with mighty forest-trees had to be cleared, and the town is still surrounded with a forest, "such as is not to be found, I suppose," Mr. Roper writes, " any- where else on earth but on the Pacific coast of British North America." A few years ago, with two exceptions, every building in the town was burnt, but in the following year it was again flourishing. In 1886 the population of Van- couver was under 300, the following year it rose to about 5,000, and in 1889 it was estimated at 14,000. Victoria, in Vancouver Island, is equally flourishing, and, out of England, promises to be one of the pleasantest towns for a residence in the Queen's dominions. It is, in the author's judgment, the most essentially English town on the American Continent, and he was struck by the intensely English feeling that pervaded society, and by the refinement of the wealthier classes. There are no signs of poverty about, and every steady working man is said to make a comfortable liveli- hood, and in many cases more than that. The island is one of the most beautiful in the world, and promises to be one of the most prosperous, for in addition to its advantages of a pure climate and of an unrivalled position, it has " iron and coal enough for half the world."

The Chinese muster strongly at Victoria, and in Mr. Roper's judgment, the prejudice against them is uncalled for. A drunken or an idle Chinaman is, he says, unknown, and they

are generally honest. " A friend who had been in business in Victoria for more than twenty years, told me that he had never refused to give a Chinaman credit ; yet during all that time he had never lost a cent by one, and be added, ' I wish that I could

say the same of white men.' " As domestic servants, they are stated to be invaluable, and, which is not the common opinion, scrupulously clean in dress and person. Even among the miners and navvies on the mainland, they are said to compare most favourably with the white men around them. " A dirty Chinaman was a rare sight. The space outside their huts was invariably kept neat and well-swept. There was frequently some little idea of decoration, and almost invariably at every collection of shanties, we observed an attempt at a garden, and wherever a Celestial tries that he succeeds." Without Chinamen and Indians, Mr. Roper doubts if the railroad could have been " built," and he adds that, as things are at present, it is quite impossible to do without them. And here the anonymous editor has a note in which he corroborates these statements, but adds that Mr. Roper overlooks the political aspect of " the Chinese question," which is a vital one to every Pacific State or Colony.

Everybody knows by this time that some of the loveliest scenery in the world is to be found on the line of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Many of the most beautiful spots were visited by the traveller, and are portrayed by him with pencil and pen. The summer climate is delightful, but there is one drawback to the enjoyment of this paradise,—it is already abundantly populated by mosquitoes. They come in myriads, and drive the white men before them, or make their lives a torment. Mr. Roper was fairly beaten, and was pleased to meet an Indian, well muffled up, who also acknowleged his defeat. He had been trying to fish, but the mosquitoes made it impossible. The traveller complains that the hotels in these beautiful but infested districts do not, even provide visitors with mosquito-nets, and sleep is therefore well-nigh impossible. "If you'll believe me," said a man who came from a lovely spot on the "track," "I'm just clar beaten by them miskitties. They are just tarible thar now, I tell yer. Thar ain't no sleep thar; no sort of comfort thar in miskitty time, and that's just what it is thar now."

The prairie-land in the North-West is tolerably free from these pests, and the country is wonderfully healthy, in spite of the cold. Yet Mr. Roper does not think that it is a pleasant climate r-

" In May there was quite as much change in the weather as there is in any part of Great Britain. Two or three days warm, if not hot, then days varying from cool to bitterly cold. Moreover, it was always blowing in the day-time. I don't remember ever being able to use my sketching umbrella without elaborate anchoring and guying. But the nights were unusually quiet, and almost invariably there was a grand display of Northern Lights. There were frequent showers, the sky being seldom clear of clouds. One could almost always go to high ground, look around as if at sea, and see a storm raging somewhere. The distant prairie always has a sea-like appearance, the horizon usually sharply defined like an ocean horizon in colour."

The settlers are so occupied in securing the in emus of living, that comfort, and even ordinary cleanliness, seem to be neglected, and Mr. Roper describes an old English acquaint- ance, "a regular Nor'-Wester," whose clothes were ragged and who looked as dirty as a coal-heaver. " In the Canadian North-West, a man who is short of means has a harder battle with fortune than the people at home have the slightest idea of." As an illustration of the isolation and consequent privation of emigrants, he describes his visit to a large family whose farm was twenty-five miles from a store or a post-office, and the same distance from market. They were barely making a living. From November, when their potatoes were consumed, until the end of April, both parents and children had had nothing to eat but bread without batter, nothing to drink but tea without milk or sugar. To settle in Canada without previously gaining some knowledge of the country is, the writer asserts, the source of unnumbered evils :—

" There was no need of this family living in such low water. Within a mile or two of many a station on the C.P.R., land was to be had when they got there just as easily as that they had chosen. There the father's clerical abilities, the mother's industry, might have been made remunerative. Then near a village the children might have had some sort of education. There would be a place of worship ; some hints of civilisation would be found. Now they were twenty-five miles from anywhere ; several miles from a friend even. They knew nothing of Canada. They paid their fare from Liverpool to Broadview. They and their goods were bumped down on the prairie beside the track ; they wandered out to where they are, and there they are. For three years mother and children have not been three miles away, and during that time have seen, exclusive of ourselves, six strange persons."

Again and again in this volume, Mr. Roper urges colonists not to settle until they have learnt something of the country. Some work, he says, can always be obtained by men who will work, and in the meanwhile they will gain experience without paying for it too dearly. The hardships are immense daring the first years of a settler's life :—

"The conclusion I came to," he writes, "may be summed up in a very few words. It is a good enough country for those to go to who have a little money and understand farm-work; it is a terrible country for people to go to who have no money and do not know what real hard work is. The labouring man has a grand field before him there. But he must reckon on working ; he must do a very good day's work, for a very good day's pay. He will never do in Canada if he carries out the old British workman's notion of doing as little as he possibly can for his pay."