great lumber mills which we visited when the storm had subsided; but one day had to suffice for Montreal, so also must one day do for Ottawa, and at midnight we drove to the railway and took our places in the cars of the Pacific express, for our four days' journey to the Rocky Mountains. CHAPTER III. "What man would live coffined with brick and stone, And cramped with selfish landmarks everywhere, LOWELL. The Backwoods.-Winnipeg.-The Prairie.-Mementoes of the buffalo. —Prairie Indians.-Calgary.-First view of the Rockies. A COLD wet midnight is not the pleasantest time for hunting up one's luggage on an open railway platform; so having secured a pocket full of brass checks, representing the responsibility of the railway company for an equal number of boxes and packs, we stepped on board the nearest car. It was the colonists' sleeping car, down which, between four rows of men, women, and children, for the most part asleep, we made our way to our own quarters. Selecting seats in the firstclass car, I went on to the "Sleeper" at the end of the train, where I secured a luxurious upper berth, and getting inside the curtains was snug between the sheets, when the conductor's cry "All aboard," and the blast of the deep-toned whistle, more like a steamer's fog-horn than the shrill scream uttered by European locomotives, announced our departure from Ottawa for the Far West. We passed through some cultivated country during the night, and found when leaving our berths in the morning that we had fairly entered upon the rugged back-woods region, abounding in moose and bears and innumerable rock-bound lakelets and trout streams, the happy hunting grounds of sportsmen; but except for "lumber," and in some places minerals, the land was worth little from a commercial point of view, and for the most part utterly irreclaimable. All day we rattled along through these regions, stopping every now and then at some little station, for our engine to take a drink, when many of the passengers alighted and gathered wild flowers. Some Indians with little papooses came on board at one station, and got out further on. We were in the back woods: but what a wreck! Occasionally we got glimpses of fine forests with stately trees, but for the most part nothing was to be seen but burning, smouldering, or charred trunks; the very soil seemed to be consumed, and the bare surfaces of ice-polished domes of ancient rocks appeared everywhere. The smoke of the burning pines filled the air, and when night came on, the ruddy glare of forest fires III.] THE CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY. 25 made this wild region look still more weird. The railway engine is of course the chief culprit in this widespread devastation, and we hoped that the burnt-out belt did not extend many miles from the track. Our second morning found us coasting along the north shore of Lake Superior, the track finding its way in wide sweeps and curves, round deep bays and bold headlands. The great inland ocean lay placid in the sunshine, only a very gentle swell made itself apparent in small breakers on the shore. This portion of the Canadian Pacific Railway was the last constructed piece of the whole line, and was beset with the greatest engineering difficulties; it is also the most troublesome portion to keep open in winter, as the snow-storms blowing over the great lakes pile up heavy drifts in the numerous cuttings, which owing to the ruggedness of the route it was impossible to avoid. The alternative but longer route, from Owen Sound to Port Arthur, by the fine steamers on the lakes, is adopted by many passengers going west, and at Port Arthur we were joined by this contingent, and till we reached Winnipeg, the train was crowded in consequence. At Port Arthur we entered on the " Western division" of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which extends to Donald, on the Columbia, a distance of 1,454 miles. On our way to Winnipeg we traversed much of the route adopted by Lord Wolseley, in 1870, in his famous march on Fort Garry, as Winnipeg was then called, and saw some of his steamers, launches, and barges lying in a forlorn condition on the margin of a creek. It was breakfast-time on our second morning when, after passing through much cultivated prairie land clothed with a green, luxuriant crop of young wheat, we reached Winnipeg. Here we breakfasted at the railway station instead of in the dining car, as was our wont; changed into another train, and then started for our long run of 900 miles over the prairie. After quitting the rugged hills near Lake Superior it seemed as though we had left land behind us and were now crossing a great ocean. In truth we were crossing what had once been a wide expanse of sea, and that not very long ago, geologically speaking. For Canadian geologists tell us that in post-pleistocene times the old Laurentian and Huronian rocks of Eastern Canada were glacier-clad, and sent great ice-sheets down into a wide sea to the westward; that from these glaciers icebergs went adrift, as they now do from the Great Humboldt glacier in Greenland, bearing on their sides fragments of their Laurentian rocky bed that they drifted across an ocean of water, dropping the rocks they bore as they floated along, where now waves the great ocean of grass and prairie flowers. In early times many such bergs were able to sail all the way to the Rocky Mountains, and the blocks of Laurentian rocks now found on their slopes |