Studies in The South and West, With Comments on Canada

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

III

I had been told that the Canadians are second-hand Englishmen. No estimate could convey a more erroneous impression. A portion of the people have strong English traditions and loyalties to institutions, but in manner and in expectations the Canadians are scarcely more English than the people of the United States; they have their own colonial development, and one can mark already with tolerable distinctness a Canadian type which is neither English nor American. This is noticeable especially in the women. The Canadian girl resembles the American in escape from a purely conventional restraint and in self-reliance, and she has, like the English, a well-modulated voice and distinct articulation. In the cities, also, she has taste in dress and a certain style which we think belongs to the New World. In features and action a certain modification has gone on, due partly to climate and partly to greater social independence. It is unnecessary to make comparisons, and I only note that there is a Canadian type of woman.

But there is great variety in Canada, and in fact a remarkable racial diversity. The man of Nova Scotia is not at all the man of British Columbia or Manitoba. The Scotch in old Canada have made a distinct impression in features and speech. And it may be said generally in eastern Canada that the Scotch element is a leading and conspicuous one in the vigor and push of enterprise and the accumulation of fortune. The Canadian men, as one sees them in official life, at the clubs, in business, are markedly a vigorous, stalwart race, well made, of good stature, and not seldom handsome. This physical prosperity needs to be remembered when we consider the rigorous climate and the long winters; these seem to have at least one advantage—that of breeding virile men. The Canadians generally are fond of out-door sports and athletic games, of fishing and hunting, and they give more time to such recreations than we do. They are a little less driven by the business goad. Abundant animal spirits tend to make men good-natured and little quarrelsome. The Canadians would make good soldiers. There was a time when the drinking habit pervaded very much in Canada, and there are still places where they do not put water enough in their grog, but temperance reform has taken as strong a hold there as it has in the United States.

The feeling about the English is illustrated by the statement that there is not more aping of English ways in Montreal and Toronto clubs and social life than in New York, and that the English superciliousness, or condescension as to colonists, the ultra-English manner, is ridiculed in Canada, and resented with even more warmth than in the United States. The amusing stories of English presumption upon hospitality are current in Canada as well as on this side. All this is not inconsistent with pride in the empire, loyalty to its traditions and institutions, and even a considerable willingness (for human nature is pretty much alike everywhere) to accept decorative titles. But the underlying fact is that there is a distinct feeling of nationality, and it is increasing.

There is not anywhere so great a contrast between neighboring cities as between Quebec, Montreal, and Toronto. Quebec is mediæval, Toronto is modern, Montreal is in a conflict between the two conditions. As the travelling world knows, they are all interesting cities, and have peculiar attractions. Quebec is French, more decidedly so than Toronto is English, and in Montreal the French have a large numerical majority and complete political control. In the Canadian cities generally municipal affairs are pretty much divorced from general party politics, greatly to the advantage of good city government.

Montreal has most wealth, and from its splendid geographical position it is the railway centre, and has the business and commercial primacy. It has grown rapidly from a population of 140,000 in 1881 to a population of over 200,000—estimated, with its suburbs, at 250,000. Were it part of my plan to describe these cities, I should need much space to devote to the finest public buildings and public institutions of Montreal, the handsome streets in the Protestant quarter, with their solid, tasteful, and often elegant residences, the many churches, and the almost unequalled possession of the Mountain as a park and resort, where one has the most striking and varied prospects in the world. Montreal, being a part of the province of Quebec, is not only under provincial control of the government at Quebec, but it is ruled by the same French party in the city, and there is the complaint always found where the poorer majority taxes the richer and more enterprising minority out of proportion to the benefits the latter receives. Various occasions have produced something like race conflicts in the city, and there are prophesies of more serious ones in the strife for ascendency. The seriousness of this to the minority lies in the fact that the French race is more prolific than any other in the province.

Perhaps nothing will surprise the visitor more than the persistence of the French type in Canada, and naturally its aggressiveness. Guaranteed their religion, laws, and language, the French have not only failed to assimilate, but have had hopes—maybe still have—of making Canada French. The French “national” party means simply a French consolidation, and has no relation to the “nationalism” of Sir John Macdonald. So far as the Church and the French politicians are concerned, the effort is to keep the French solid as a political force, and whether the French are Liberal or Conservative, this is the underlying thought. The province of Quebec is Liberal, but the liberalism is of a different hue from that of Ontario. The French recognize the truth that language is so integral a part of a people’s growth that the individuality of a people depends upon maintaining it. The French have escaped absorption in Canada mainly by loyalty to their native tongue, aided by the concession to them of their civil laws and their religious privileges. They owe this to William Pitt. I quote from a contributed essay in the Toronto Week about three years ago: “Up to 1791 the small French population of Canada was in a position to be converted into an English colony with traces of French sentiment and language, which would have slowly disappeared. But at that date William Pitt the younger brought into the House of Commons two Quebec Acts, which constituted two provinces—Lower Canada, with a full provision of French laws, language, and institutions; Upper Canada, with a reproduction of English laws and social system. During the debate Pitt declared on the floor of the House that his purpose was to create two colonies distinct from and jealous of each other, so as to guard against a repetition of the late unhappy rebellion which had separated the thirteen colonies from the empire.”