deep-rooted conviction which achieved it, we believe that the central pivot is to be found on which Canadian politics will turn. If it fails us, the blame will be due to the shifty tactics and the purblind vision of party prejudice at home. and its consequences may be worse than a little ridicule incurred by ourselves as individuals. Only a very little observation teaches us that the roughness of ordinary intercourse is merely superficial. It is the necessary accompaniment of a vigorous and always strenuous life, which develops strong personalities, and declines the circumlocution of conventional courtesy. To resent it unduly shows a lack of the sense of proportion, and perhaps an artificial eschewing of it on the part of the average Canadian might savour not a little of affectation. It is true that an ordinary inquiry in the street often meets, at first, with a curt reply. But the next sentence may show a fund of kindly helpfulness that would be rare in the ordinary intercourse of English life. The Good Samaritan may often by his manner disguise his good intentions to the wayfarer, but they are none the less effective in result. We must not forget, too, that while strenuous lives are apt to set little store upon conventional courtesies, deep-seated suspicions and antipathies are still more apt to develop a certain tartness of demeanour. Canada has her own animosities, which her history has taught her, and she bears the imprint of these upon her manners. For the moment we leave politics alone. The ready warmth of hospitality makes us feel at home. An essential unity of political aim cements the bond; and amongst those whose outlook is so wide, and whose experience of the old country is so full, as are those of the leading Canadian citizens, one scarcely realises that one is three thousand miles away from all familiar scenes. We are, as it were, guests in the house of an easy, an accommodating, a courteous host. The novelty of conditions only slowly impresses us. But in time the man in the street and in the train makes himself felt. It would be easy, as his peculiarities strike us, to feel repelled by what one later recognises to be the faults of his qualities. Distinctions of class may be condemned as relics of craven servility, but they do contribute to the smooth working of society. The spirit of still The spirit of independence may be worthy of all praise, but its constant assertion is none the less apt to savour of brusquerie and to introduce friction into social intercourse. We have to be on our guard against those insular prejudices which make us unduly sensitive to something jarring in the ordinary traffic of the street. Such sensitiveness is an ever-present danger, One of these, which it is idle to ignore, is the unbridgable division between the English and the French population. Religion has much to do with this. Language has still more. But temperament has most of all. It is hard to say what the political aim of the FrenchCanadian is. His attachment to the great names in the history of the past may count for something, but it is doubtful whether it goes very far with the great mass of the French population. He cannot long for annexation to France or to the United States, because under neither Power would his Church be likely to retain anything like her present privileges and her absolute immunity from any reforming legislation. But the Frenchman has no effective share in the real prosperity of the country, and plays no considerable part in her progress. To the average Frenchman of the poorer class, Canada's strenuous life offers no attraction. He seems to have an instinctive genius for political intrigue, and he wields a disproportionate influence in the minor affairs of administration which is often accorded to him from very weariness, resulting from the strain and stress that burden the more strenuous body of Canadian citizens. By a strange perversity, he seems to find occupation rather in perplexing the clear course of Canadian politics, than in striving for any settled and definite aim of his own. In the dangerous balance, which accident has given to him, between rival political parties, lies the greatest peril to Canada. We would be far from ascribing such perversities either to the whole of the Roman Catholic community or to the best class of Frenchmen in Canada. But they undoubtedly represent, on its bad side, the influence of a great mass of the French population. And the evil which these perversities produce has its effect upon their longsuffering Anglo-Saxon fellowcitizens, who suffer from its consequences, and are not unnaturally impatient at its manifestations. Even after making all possible allowances for the bewildering rapidity of growth of the Canadian cities, it can scarcely be said that municipal administration is the sphere in which efficiency is most conspicuous. The paving of the streets in Quebec and Montreal would not bring credit to an insignificant provincial town in England; and the reports of the inquiry now proceeding into the water supply of Ottawa, and the causes of the recent typhoid epidemic, afford very ugly reading. Let it be noted that a very large proportion of the extensive property of the Roman Catholic Church in Canada is exempt from municipal taxation. But in municipal affairs, the influence of the lower-class Frenchman is altogether out of proportion to his interest in the prosperity of the city or his contribution towards its burdens. In Mon 1 Perhaps we need not concern ourselves much with the fact, which is indubitably true, that a visitor might easily traverse the streets of Quebec without learning that such a man as Wolfe ever lived. All the names in evidence are those of Frenchmen. ing elements that disturb its peace. The same impression becomes more strong as we move westward. Journeying from Montreal, when we have passed through the picturesque playgrounds of the city, we proceed through hundreds of miles of stunted forest, in which pinetrees push themselves up between huge boulders with a tenacity of life that seems wonderful. It is a broad barrier between Eastern Canada and the new expansion towards the West, and it is beyond that barrier that the most vigorous and enterprising life of the continent is making itself a home. Some day it may yield hidden treasures and form a stepping - stone to the West. be West. Now it is only the long tenantless tract across which Canadian energy has pushed itself. Once over that, we break out upon the Lakes and the busy hives of Port Arthur and Fort-William, and presently find ourselves by the Lake of the Woods,-the playground of an entirely new industrial centre. The next stage brings us to the neck of the traffic between East and West, treal, for instance, the paving of some of the streets in the wealthiest quarters is wretched compared with that of the streets in the poorer French quarters towards the east of the city. A Board of Control has done something to improve conditions, and might be expected to do more; but its existence is now threatened by those whose malpractices it might check. The presence of that evil weed of American growth, commonly known as graft," is openly admitted, and just as openly condemned by all the better citizens. To some extent it is due to the absence of a leisured class, who could devote time and business capacity to municipal business without hope of profit. Canadian energy may be trusted to extirpate it in time. But meanwhile it provokes a sense of irksomeness and irritation which lectures from the outside would only aggravate. And the fact is indubitable that the part which a certain class of the French population bears in it, intensifies the jealousy between the diverse racial elements of which Canada is composed. The broad features of the situation are easily grasped. An essential loyalty to Imperial ideas, a deep-rooted sympathy with Anglo-Saxon ideals, is being perpetually jarred by the jealousy and intrigue of an alien racial section. It is no wonder that the mood of Canada becomes self-assertive, irritated by doubts of its loyalty, and impatient of criticism that takes no account of the vex that marvellously thriving city of yesterday, Winnipeg. It is there that a new Canada opens to our view,-vigorous, alert, clear-eyed to the vision that lies before her, having all but shaken herself free from the retarding and embarrassing intrigues and racial difficulties that have encumbered her path. It is there that we begin to recognise the marvellous fore sight of those pioneers of railway enterprise who saw that the true line of development was from east to west, and not from north to south. Our colonial history is too often the story of opportunities missed, of discernment sorely lacking, of purblind groping after some aim not clearly recognised. Those who planned the Canadian Pacific Railway were the men who shaped the destinies of Canada, and defeated schemes of American annexation thirty years before the real struggle came. They were statesmen in the best sense of the wordquick to conceive large schemes, and daring to execute them. They have reaped their reward, and have given not a little reality to the common saying that "the C. P. R. is Canada.' This is not the place to appraise the feats of engineering skill in the construction of the railway, or to comment upon its financial prospects. That must be left to experts. But no one who visits the railway yards at Winnipeg, who observes the massive strength of its permanent way, and hears the almost unceasing thunder of its huge trains,1 passing each other in constant succession, can doubt that behind this mighty organisation there work sleepless energy and superb strategic skill. Its forward march is directed by a staff as loyal as it is quick in intelligence. But it has been one of the blessings of Canada that the men who created this marvellous strategical feat of They have railway traffic, established a tradition of financial purity as marked as their unerring foresight and their unswerving boldness of action. opened a new path, but they have created no monopoly ; and Canada has not to fear, like America, that railway development may become a convenient engine of political corruption. Against such a catastrophe the character of the pioneers, repeated in the traditions maintained by their successors, will, we are confident, be a sufficient guarantee, even if there were not the further security of healthy rivalry. In Winnipeg we have a thriving and bustling centre of diversified prosperity-a landmark on the highway from east to west. Only about a generation old, she already stretches her arms over miles of country covered by handsome buildings. With the usual Canadian foresight, she has secured in the broad acreage of her Public Park a permanent possession of rare beauty, and an invaluable lung for the crowded population that must soon be gathered in her streets. Leaving Winnipeg and Manitoba, we pass into the prairie districts of Saskatchewan and Alberta, with marked idiosyncrasies of their own. There, along the line of the railway tracks, and away to the north towards Edmonton, stretch the wheat-producing districts. It is only natural that their chief aim should be the acquisition of a ready market; and pos 1 A train over half a mile in length is not an infrequent sight on the C. P. R. sibly this may give rise to tendencies towards a line of policy different from the prevailing trend of Canadian feeling. It is towards these provinces that emigration from the United States chiefly spreads; and it would be rash for a stranger to say whether the new settlers, who are acquiring Canadian nationality, will be moved mainly by sympathy with their new fellow-citizens or by aspirations towards a closer union with the land which they have left. At this moment the political complexion of these two provinces is sharply distinguished from the provinces to the east and to the west of them. But they are divided by no racial bar and by no bitter memories; and from all accounts the settlers from over the border find in the impartial administration of the law a security that is not unwelcome, and that may weld them closer to the nation which they have voluntarily adopted. The one essential is the development of access to a paying market, and that ought soon to be secured by the unresting energy of the various competing railways. The route to the east has been successfully established; it remains only to increase its stream so as to compete successfully with tempting routes that may be opened to the south. Leaving the rich prairielands, we mount from Calgary towards the gigantic barrier of the Rockies and the Selkirk Mountains that separate these from British Columbia. To carry the railway over that barrier a few years ago pass able only by the scanty convoys that could labour over the apology for a track that pierced its gullies and scaled its precipices-was an achievement of indomitable courage, and of splendid confidence in the development of the country. All the seeming probabilities were with those who prophesied bankruptcy for any such scheme. Hundreds of miles had to be traversed from which no produce was to be hoped for, and where no profits were to be found. The inspiring force was the statesmanlike ideal of connecting the links in the chain that was to make the West one with the East. In that faith the pioneers worked, and it is their fidelity to that faith that is now reaping its reward. If the finger of the compass continues to point truly, if no disloyalty deflects it, and no callous lack of sympathy from England undermines the faith, that reward will surely be a rich one for Canada and for the Empire. To attempt to gauge the future capabilities of British Columbia, or to measure her resources, would require investigation far beyond the scope of the present article. The lumber trade, now the chief source of her wealth, is one which time, in the absence of thrifty foresight and prudent renewal, must exhaust; and the fishing industry is not one on which reliance can be placed as a staple of prosperity. A fascinating catalogue of fortunes rapidly made by speculation in Real Estate is, no doubt, matter for congratulation to the |