Produced by Al Haines
[Transcriber's note: This book is an account by a British journalist of
the cross-Canada tour, by train, in 1919, of Edward VIII, British
Prince of Wales. In 1936, Edward abdicated from the British throne to
marry Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee.]
[Frontispiece: H. R. H. THE PRINCE OF WALES]
WESTWARD WITH
THE PRINCE OF WALES
BY
W. DOUGLAS NEWTON
AUTHORIZED CORRESPONDENT IN AMERICA WITH
H. R. H. THE PRINCE OF WALES
AUTHOR OF "GREEN LADIES," "THE WAR CACHE," ETC.
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK LONDON
1920
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
TO
"A. B."
AND THE CARGO OF "CARNARVON."
PREFACE
It was on Friday, August 1, 1919, that "the damned reporters" and the
_Times_ correspondent's hatbox went on board the light cruiser
_Dauntless_ at Devonport.
The _Dauntless_ had just arrived from the Baltic to load up
cigarettes--at least, that was the first impression. In the Baltic the
rate of exchange had risen from roubles to packets of Players, and a
handful of cigarettes would buy things that money could not obtain.
Into the midst of a ship's company, feverishly accumulating tobacco in
the hope of cornering at least the amber market of the world, we
descended.
Actually, I suppose, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales had been
the first interrupter of the _Dauntless'_ schemes. Lying alongside
Devonport quay to refit--in that way were the cigarettes covered
up--word was sent that the _Dauntless_ with her sister ship, _Dragon_,
was to act as escort to the battle-cruiser _Renown_ when she carried
the Prince to Canada.
Though he came first we could not expect to be as popular as the
Prince, and when, therefore, those on board also learnt that the honour
of acting as escort was to be considerably mitigated by a cargo from
Fleet Street, they were no doubt justified in naming us "damned."
We did litter them up so. The _Dauntless_ is not merely one of the
latest and fastest of the light cruisers, she is also first among the
smartest. To accommodate us they had to give way to a rash of riveters
from the dock-yard who built cabins all over the graceful silhouette.
When our telegrams, and ourselves, and our baggage (including the
_Times'_ hatbox) arrived piece by piece, each was merely an addition to
the awful mess on deck our coming had meant.
Actually we could not help ourselves. Dock strikes, ship shortage and
the holiday season had all conspired to make any attempt to get to
Canada in a legitimate way a hopeless task. Only the Admiralty's idea
to pre-date the carrying of commercial travellers on British
battleships could get us to the West at all. The Admiralty, after
modest hesitation, had agreed to send us in the _Dauntless_, and before
the cruiser sailed we all realized how fortunate we were to have been
unlucky at the outset.
We sailed on August 2 from Devonport, three days before _Renown_ and
_Dragon_ left Portsmouth, and when one of us suggested that this was a
happy idea to get us to St. John's, Newfoundland, in order to be ready
for the Prince, he was told:
"Not at all, we're out looking for icebergs."
We were to act as the pilot ship over the course.
We found icebergs, many of them; even, we nearly rammed an iceberg in
the middle of a foggy night, but we found other things, too.
We found that we had got onto what the Navy calls a "happy ship," and
if anybody wants to taste what real good fellowship is I advise him to
go to sea on what the Navy calls "a happy ship." However much we had
disturbed them, the officers of the _Dauntless_ did not let that make
any difference in the warmth of their hospitality. We were made free
of the ward-room, and that Baltic tobacco. We were initiated into "The
Grand National," a muscular sport in which the daring exponent turns a
series of somersaults over the backs of a line of chairs; and we were
admitted into the raggings and the singing of ragtime.
We were made splendidly at home. Not only in the ward-room that did a
jazz with a disturbing spiral movement when we speeded up from our
casual 18 knots to something like 28 in a rough sea, but from the
bridge down to the boiler room, where we watched the flames of oil fuel
making steam in the modern manner, we were drawn into the charmed
circle of comradeship and keenness that made up the essential spirit of
that fine ship's company.
The "damned reporters," on a trip in which even the weather was
companionable, were given the damnedest of good times, and it was with
real regret that, on the evening of Friday, August 8, we saw the high,
grim rampart wall of Newfoundland lift from the Western sea to tell us
that our time on the _Dauntless_ would soon be finished.
Actually we left the _Dauntless_ at St. John's, New Brunswick, where we
became the guests of the Canadian Government which looked after us, as
it looked after the whole party, with so great a sense of generosity
and care that we could never feel sufficiently grateful to it.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
PREFACE
I NEWFOUNDLAND
II ST. JOHN, NEW BRUNSWICK
III ON THE TRAIN BETWEEN ST. JOHN AND HALIFAX
IV HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA
V CHARLOTTETOWN, PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND AND HABITANT, CANADA
VI QUEBEC
VII THE MOBILE HOTEL DE LUXE: THE ROYAL TRAIN
VIII THE CITY OF CROWDS: TORONTO: ONTARIO
IX OTTAWA
X MONTREAL: QUEBEC
XI ON THE ROAD TO TROUT
XII PICNICS AND PRAIRIES
XIII THE CITY OF WHEAT: WINNIPEG, MANITOBA
XIV THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT NORTH-WEST: SASKATOON AND EDMONTON
XV CALGARY AND THE CATTLE RANCH
XVI CHIEF MORNING STAR COMES TO BANFF AND THE ROCKIES
XVII THE PACIFIC CITIES: VANCOUVER AND VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA
XVIII APPLE LAND: OKANAGAN AND KOOTENAY LAKES
XIX THE PRAIRIES AGAIN
XX SILVER, GOLD AND COMMERCE
XXI NIAGARA AND THE TOWNS OF WESTERN ONTARIO
XXII MONTREAL
XXIII WASHINGTON
XXIV NEW YORK
WESTWARD WITH THE PRINCE OF WALES
CHAPTER I
NEWFOUNDLAND
I
St. John's, Newfoundland, was the first city of the Western continent
to see the Prince of Wales. It was also the first to label him with
one of the affectionate, if inexplicable sobriquets that the West is so
fond of.
Leaning over the side of the _Dauntless_ on the day of the Prince's
visit, a seaman smiled down, as seamen sometimes do, at a vivid little
Newfoundland Flapper in a sunset-coloured jumper bodice, New York cut
skirt, white stockings and white canvas boots. The Flapper looked up
from her seat in the stern of her "gas" launch (gasolene equals
petrol), and smiled back, as is the Flapper habit, and the seaman
promptly opened conversation by asking if the Flapper had seen the
Prince.
"You bet," said the Flapper. "He's a dandy boy. He's a plush."
His Royal Highness became many things in his travels across America,
but I think it ought to go down in history that at St. John's,
Newfoundland, he became a "plush."
Newfoundland also introduced another Western phenomenon. It presented
us to the race of false prophets whom we were to see go down in
confusion all the way from St. John's to Victoria and back again to New
York.
Members of this race were plentiful in St. John's. As we spent our
days before the Prince's arrival picking up facts and examining the
many beautiful arches of triumph that were being put up in the town, we
were warned not to expect too much from Newfoundland. St. John's had
not its bump of enthusiasm largely developed, we were told; its people
were resolutely dour and we must not be disappointed if the Prince's
reception lacked warmth. In all probability the weather would conform
to the general habit and be foggy.
Here, as elsewhere, the prophets were confounded. St. John's proved
second to none in the warmth of its affectionate greeting--that
splendid spontaneous welcome which the whole West gave to the Prince
upset all preconceived notions, swept away all sense of set ceremonial
and made the tour from the beginning to the end the most happy progress
of a sympathetic and responsive youth through a continent of intimate
personal friends.
II
The _Dauntless_ went out from St. John's on Sunday, August 10, to
rendezvous with _Renown_ and _Dragon_, and the three great modern
warships came together on a glorious Western evening.
There was a touch of drama in the meeting. In the marvellous clear air
of gold and blue that only the American Continent can show, we picked
up _Renown_ at a point when she was entering a long avenue of icebergs.
There were eleven of these splendid white fellows in view on the
skyline when we turned to lead the great battleship back to the
anchorage in Conception Bay, north of St. John's, and as the ships
followed us it was as though the Prince had entered a processional way
set with great pylons arranged deliberately to mark the last phase of
his route to the Continent of the West.
Some of these bergs were as large, as massive and as pinnacled as
cathedrals, some were humped mounds that lifted sullenly from the
radiant sea, some were treacherous little crags circled by rings of
detached floes--the "growlers," those almost wholly submerged masses of
ice that the sailor fears most. Most of the bergs in the two irregular
lines were distant, and showed as patches of curiously luminant
whiteness against the intense blue of the sky. Some were close enough
for us to see the wonderful semi-transparent green of the cracks and
fissures in their sides and the vivid emerald at the base that the
bursting seas seemed to be eternally polishing anew.
When _Renown_ was sighted, a mere smudge on the horizon, we saw the
flash of her guns and heard faintly the thud of the explosions. She
was getting in some practice with her four-inch guns on the enticing
targets of the bergs.
We were too far away to see results, but we were told that as a
spectacle the effect of the shell-bursts on the ice crags was
remarkable. Under the explosions the immense masses of these
translucent fairy islands rocked and changed shape. Faces of ice
cliffs crumbled under the hits and sent down avalanches of ice into the
furious green seas the shocks of the explosions had raised.
This was one of the few incidents in a journey made under perfect
weather conditions in a vessel that is one of the "wonder ships" of the
British Navy. The huge _Renown_ had behaved admirably throughout the
passage. She had travelled at a slow speed, for her, most of the time,
but there had been a spell of about an hour when she had worked up to
the prodigious rate of thirty-one knots an hour. Under these test
conditions she had travelled like an express with no more structural
movement than is felt in a well-sprung Pullman carriage.
The Prince had employed his five day's journey by indulging his fancy
for getting to know how things are done. Each day he had spent two
hours in a different part of the ship having its function and mechanism
explained to him by the officer in charge.
As he proved later in Canada when visiting various industrial and
agricultural plants, His Royal Highness has the modern curiosity and
interest for the mechanics of things. Indeed, throughout the journey
he showed a distinct inclination towards people and the work that
ordinary people did, rather than in the contemplation of views however
splendid, and the report that he said at one time, "Oh, Lord, let's cut
all this scenery and get back to towns and crowds," is certainly true
in essence if not in fact.
It was in the beautiful morning of August 11th that the Prince made his
first landfall in the West, and saw in the distance the great curtain
of high rock that makes the grim coast-line of Newfoundland.
For reasons of the _Renown's_ tonnage he had to go into Conception Bay,
one of the many great sacks of inlets that make the island something
that resembles nothing so much as a section of a jig-saw puzzle. The
harbour of St. John's could float _Renown_, but its narrow waters would
not permit her to turn, and the Prince had to transfer his Staff and
baggage to _Dragon_ in order to complete the next stage of the voyage.
Conception Bay is a fjord thrusting its way through the jaws of strong,
sharp hills of red sandstone piled up in broken and stratified masses
above grey slate rock. On these hills cling forests of spruce and
larch in woolly masses that march down the combes to the very water's
edge. It is wild scenery, Scandinavian and picturesque.
In the combes--the "outports" they are called--are the small, scattered
villages of the fishermen. The wooden frame houses have the look of
the packing-case, and though they are bright and toy-like when their
green or red or cinnamon paint is fresh, they are woefully drab when
the weather of several years has had its way with them.
In front of most of the houses are the "flakes," or drying platforms
where the split cod is exposed to the air. These "flakes" are built up
among the ledges and crevices of the rock, being supported by
numberless legs of thin spruce mast; the effect of these spidery
platforms, the painted houses, the sharp stratified red rock and the
green massing of the trees is that of a Japanese vignette set down amid
inappropriate scenery.
Cod fishing is, of course, the beginning and the end of the life of
many of these villages on the bays that indent so deeply the
Newfoundland coast. It is not the adventurous fishing of the Grand
Banks; there is no need for that. There is all the food and the income
man needs in the crowded local waters. Men have only to go out in
boats with hook and line to be sure of large catches.
Only a few join the men who live farther to the south, about Cape Race,
in their trips to the misty waters of the Grand Banks. Here they put
off from their schooners in dories and make their haul with hook and
line.
A third branch of these fishers, particularly those to the north of St.
John's, push up to the Labrador coast, where in the bays, or "fishing
rooms," they catch, split, head, salt and dry the superabundant fish.
By these methods vast quantities of cod and salmon are caught, and, as
in the old days when the hardy fishermen of Devon, Brittany, Normandy
and Portugal were the only workers in these little known seas,
practically all the catch is shipped to England and France. During the
war the cod fishers of Newfoundland played a very useful part in
mitigating the stringency of the British ration-cards, and there are
hopes that this good work may be extended, and that by setting up a big
refrigerating plant Newfoundland may enlarge her market in Britain and
the world.
With the fishery goes the more dangerous calling of sealing. For this
the men of Newfoundland set out in the winter and the spring to the
fields of flat "pan" ice to hunt the seal schools.
At times this means a march across the ice deserts for many days and
the danger of being cut off by blizzards; when that happens no more
news is heard of the adventurous hunters.
Every few years Newfoundland writes down the loss of a ship's company
of her too few young men, for Newfoundland, very little helped by
immigration, exists on her native born. "A crew every six or eight
years, we reckon it that way," you are told. It is part of the hard
life the Islanders lead, an expected debit to place against the profits
of the rich fur trade.
Solidly blocking the heart of Conception Bay is a big island, the high
and irregular outline of which seems to have been cut down sharply with
a knife. This is Bell Island, which is not so much an island as a
great, if accidental, iron mine.
Years ago, when the island was merely the home of farmers and
fishermen, a shipowner in need of easily handled ballast found that the
subsoil contained just the thing he wanted. By turning up the thin
surface he came upon a stratum of small, square slabs of rock rather
like cakes of soap. These were easily lifted and easily carted to his
ship.
He initiated the habit of taking rock from Bell Island for ballast, and
for years shipmasters loaded it up, to dump it overboard with just as
much unconcern when they took their cargo inboard. It was some time
before an inquiring mind saw something to attract it in the rock
ballast; the rock was analyzed and found to contain iron.
Turned into a profiteer by this astonishing discovery, the owner of the
ground where the slabs were found clung tenaciously to his holding
until he had forced the price up to the incredible figure of 100
dollars. He sold with the joyous satisfaction of a man making a shrewd
deal.
His ground has changed hands several times since, and the prices paid
have advanced somewhat on his optimistic figure; for example, the
present company bought it for two million dollars.
The ore is not high grade, but is easily obtained, and so can be
handled profitably. In the beginning it was only necessary to turn
over the turf and take what was needed, the labour costing less than a
shilling a ton. Now the mines strike down through the rock of the
island beneath the sea, and the cost of handling is naturally greater.
It is worth noting that prior to 1914 practically all the output of
this essentially British mine went to Germany; the war has changed that
and now Canada takes the lion's share.
It was under the cliffs of Bell Island, near the point where the long
lattice-steel conveyors bring the ore from the cliff-top to the
water-level, that the three warships dropped anchor. As they swung on
their cables blasting operations in the iron cliffs sent out the thud
of their explosions and big columns of smoke and dust, for all the
world as though a Royal salute was being fired in honour of the
Prince's arrival.
III
During the day His Royal Highness went ashore informally, mainly to
satisfy his craving for walking exercise. Before he did so, he
received the British correspondents on board the _Renown_, and a few
minutes were spent chatting with him in the charming and spacious suite
of rooms that Navy magic had erected with such efficiency that one had
to convince oneself that one really was on a battleship and not in a
hotel _de luxe_.
We met a young man in a rather light grey lounge suit, whose boyish
figure is thickening into the outlines of manhood. I have heard him
described as frail; and a Canadian girl called him "a little bit of a
feller" in my hearing. But one has only to note an excellent pair of
shoulders and the strength of his long body to understand how he can
put in a twenty-hour day of unresting strenuosity in running, riding,
walking and dancing without turning a hair.
It is the neat, small features, the nose a little inclined to tilt, a
soft and almost girlish fairness of complexion, and the smooth and
remarkable gold hair that give him the suggestion of extreme
boyishness--these things and his nervousness.
His nervousness is part of his naturalness and lack of poise. It
showed itself then, and always, in characteristic gestures, a tugging
at the tie, the smoothing-down of the hair with the flat of the hand,
the furious digging of fists into pockets, a clutching at coat lapels,
and a touch of hesitance before he speaks.
He comes at you with a sort of impulsive friendliness, his body hitched
a little sideways by the nervous drag of a leg. His grip is a good
one; he meets your eyes squarely in a long glance to which the darkness
about his eyes adds intensity, as though he is getting your features
into his memory for all time, in the resolve to keep you as a friend.
He speaks well, with an attractive manner and a clear enunciation that
not even acute nervousness can slur or disorganize. He is, in fact, an
excellent public speaker, never missing the value of a sentence, and
managing his voice so well that even in the open air people are able to
follow what he says at a distance that renders other speakers inaudible.
In private he is as clear, but more impulsive. He makes little darting
interjections which seem part of a similar movement of hands, or the
whole of the body, and he speaks with eagerness, as though he found
most things jolly and worth while, and expects you do too. Obviously
he finds zest in ordinary human things, and not a little humour, also,
for there is more often than not a twinkle in his eyes that gives
character to his friendly smile--that extraordinarily ready smile,
which comes so spontaneously and delightfully, and which became a
byword over the whole continent of the West.
It is this friendly and unstudied manner that wins him so much
affection. It makes all feel immediately that he is extraordinarily
human and extraordinarily responsive, and that there are no barriers or
reticences in intercourse with him.
He is not an intellectual, and he certainly is not a dullard. He
rather fills the average of the youth of modern times, with an extreme
fondness for modern activities, which include golfing, running and
walking; jazz music and jazz dancing (when the prettiness of partners
is by no means a deterrent), sightseeing and the rest, and my own
impression is, that he is much more at home in the midst of a hearty
crowd--the more democratic the better--than in the most august of
formal gatherings.
The latter, too, means speech-making, and he has, I fancy, a young
man's loathing of making speeches. He makes them--on certain occasions
he had to make them three times and more a day--and he makes good ones,
but he would rather, I think, hold an open reception where Tom, Dick,
Vera, Phyllis and Harry crowded about him in a democratic mob to shake
his hand.
Yet though he does not like speech-making, he showed from the beginning
that he meant to master the repugnant art. To read speeches, as he did
in the early days of the tour, was not good enough. He schooled
himself steadily to deliver them without manuscript, so that by the end
of the trip he was able to deliver a long and important speech--such as
that at Massey Hall, Toronto, on November 4--practically without
referring to his notes.
During his day in Conception Bay, the Prince went ashore and spent some
time amid the beautiful scenery of rocky, spruce-clad hills and
valleys, where the forests and the many rocky streams give earnest of
the fine sport in game and fish for which Newfoundland is famous.
The crews of the battleships went ashore, also, to the scattered little
hamlet of Topsail, lured there, perhaps, by the legend that Topsail is
called the Brighton of Newfoundland. It is certainly a pretty place,
with its brightly painted, deep-porched wooden houses set amid the
trees in that rugged country, but the inhabitants were led astray by
local pride when they dragged in Brighton. The local "Old Ship" is the
grocer's, who also happened to be the Selfridge's of the hamlet, and
his good red wine or brown ale, or whatever is yours, is Root Beer!
For many of the battleships' crews it was the first impact with the
Country of the Dry, and the shock was profound.
"I was ashore five hours, waiting for the blinkin' liberty boat to come
and take me off," said one seaman, in disgust. "Five hours! And all I
had was a water--and that was warm."
IV
On Tuesday, August 12, the Prince transferred to _Dragon_ and in
company with _Dauntless_ steamed towards St. John's, along the grim,
sheer coast of Newfoundland, where squared promontories standing out
like buttresses give the impression that they are bastions set in the
wall of a castle built by giants.
The gateway to St. John's harbour is a mere sally-port in that castle
wall. It is an abrupt opening, and is entered through the high and
commanding posts of Signal and the lighthouse hills.
One can conceive St. John's as the ideal pirate lair of a romance-maker
of the Stevensonian tradition, and one can understand it appealing to
the bold, freebooting instincts of the first daring settlers. A ring
of rough, stratified hills grips the harbour water about, sheltering it
from storms and land enemies, while with the strong hills at the
water-gate to command it, and a chain drawn across its Narrows, it was
safe from incursion of water-borne foes.
It was the fitting stronghold of the reckless Devon, Irish and Scots
fishermen who followed Cabot to the old Norse _Helluland_, the "Land of
Naked Rocks," and who vied and fought with, and at length ruled with
the rough justice of the "Fishing Admirals" the races of Biscayan and
Portuguese men who made the island not a home but a centre of the great
cod fishery that supplied Europe.
St. John's has laboured under its disadvantages ever since those days.
The town has been pinched between the steep hills, and forced to
straggle back for miles along the harbour inlet. On the southern side
of the basin the slope has beaten the builder, and on the dominant
green hill, through the grass of which thrusts grey and red-brown
masses of the sharp-angled rock stratum, there are very few houses.
On the north, humanity has made a fight for it, and the white, dusty
roads struggle with an almost visible effort up the heavy grade of the
hill until they attain the summit. The effect is of a terraced and
piled-up city, straggling in haphazard fashion up to the point where
the great Roman Catholic cathedral, square-hewn and twin-towered,
crowns the mass of the town.
Plank frame houses, their paint dingy and grey, with stone and brick
buildings, jostle each other on the hill-side streets, innocent of
sidewalks. The main thoroughfare, Water Street, which runs parallel
with the harbour and the rather casual wharves, is badly laid, and
given to an excess of mud in wet weather, mud that the single-deck
electric trams on their bumpy track distribute lavishly. The black
pine masts that serve as telegraph-poles are set squarely and
frequently in the street, and overhead is the heavy mesh of cables and
wires that forms an essential part of all civic scenery in the West.
The buildings and shops along this street are not imposing, and there
seems a need for revitalization in the town, either through a keener
overseas trading and added shipping facilities, or a broader and more
encouraging local policy.
Most of the goods for sale were American, and some of them not the best
type of American articles at that. It was hard to find indications of
British trading, and it seemed to me that here was a field for British
enterprise, and that with the easing of shipping difficulties, which
were then tying up Newfoundland's commerce, Britain and Newfoundland
would both benefit by a vigorous trade policy. Newfoundlanders seemed
anxious to get British goods, and, as they pointed out, the rate of
exchange was all in their favour.
Through Water Street passes a medley of vehicles; the bumpy electric
trams, horse carts that look like those tent poles the Indians trail
behind them put on wheels, spidery buggies, or "rigs," solid-wheeled
country carts, and the latest makes in automobiles.
The automobiles astonish one, both in their inordinate number and their
up-to-dateness. There seemed, if anything, too many cars for the town,
but then that was only because we are new to the Western Continent,
where the automobile is as everyday a thing as the telephone. All the
cars are American, and to the Newfoundlander they are things of pride,
since they show how the modern spirit of the Colony triumphs over sea
freight and heavy import duty. Motor-cars and electric lighting in a
lavish fashion that Britain does not know, form the modern features of
St. John's.
When the two warships steamed through the Narrows into the harbour, St.
John's, within its hills, was looking its best under radiant sunlight.
The fishermen's huts clinging to the rocky crevices of the harbour
entrance on thousands of spidery legs, let crackers off to the passing
ships and fluttered a mist of flags. Flags shone with vivid splashes
of pigment from the water's edge, where a great five-masted schooner,
barques engaged in the South American trade, a liner and a score of
vessels had dressed ships, up all the tiers of houses to where strings
of flags swung between the towers of the cathedral.
From the wharves a number of gnat-like gasolene launches, gay with
flags, pushed off to flutter about both cruisers until they came to
anchor. From one of the quays signal guns were fired, and the brazen
and inordinate bangings of his Royal salute echoed and re-echoed in
uncanny fashion among the hills that hem the town, so that when the
warships joined in, the whole cup of the harbour was filled with the
hammerings of explosions overlapping explosions, until the air seemed
made of nothing else.
On the big stacks of Newfoundland lumber at the harbour-side, on the
quays, on the freight sheds and on the roofs of buildings, Newfoundland
people, who, like the weather, were giving the lie to the prophets,
crowded to see the Prince arrive. He came from _Dragon_ in the Royal
barge in the wake of the _Dauntless'_ launch, which was having a
worried moment in "shooing" off the eager gasolene boats, crowding in,
in defiance of all regulations, to get a good view.
There was no doubt about the warmth of the welcome. It was a
characteristic Newfoundland crowd. Teamsters in working overalls,
fishermen in great sea boots and oilskins, girls garbed in the
smartness of New York, whose comely faces and beautiful complexions
were of Ireland, though there was here and there a flash of French
blood in the grace of their youth, little boys willing to defy the law
and climb railings in order to get a "close up" photograph, youths in
bubble-toed boots--all proved that their dourness was not an emotion
for state occasions, and that they could show themselves as they really
were, as generous and as loyal as any people within the Empire.
The Prince was received on the jetty by the Governor and the members of
the legislature. With them was a guard of honour of seamen, all of
them Newfoundland fishermen who had served in various British warships
throughout the war. There was a contingent from the Newfoundland
Regiment also, stocky men who had fought magnificently through the grim
battles in France, and on the Somme had done so excellently that the
name of their greatest battle, Gueudecourt, has become part of the
Colony's everyday history, and is to be found inscribed on the postage
stamps under the picture of the caribou which is the national emblem.
The Prince's passage through the streets was a stirring one. There
were no soldiers guarding the route through Water Street and up the
high, steep hills to Government House, and the eager crowd pressed
about the carriage in such ardour that its pace had to be slowed to a
walk. At that pace it moved through the streets, a greater portion of
the active population keeping pace with it, turning themselves into a
guard of honour, walking as the horses walked, and, if they did break
into a trot, trotting with them.
The route lay under many really beautiful arches, some castles with
towers and machicolations sheafed in the sweet-smelling spruce; others
constructed entirely from fish boxes and barrels, with men on them,
working and packing the cod; others were hung with the splendid fur,
feathers and antlers of Newfoundland hunting.
Through that day and until midday of the next, lively crowds followed
every movement of the "dandy feller," swopping opinions as to his
charm, and his smile, his youthfulness and his shyness. They compared
him with his grandfather who had visited St. John's fifty-nine years
ago, and made a point of mentioning that he was to sleep in the very
bedroom his grandfather had used.
There was the usual heavy program, an official lunch, the review of war
veterans, a visit to the streets when the lavish electric light had
been switched into the beautiful illuminations, when the two cruisers
were mirrored in the harbour waters in an outline of electric lights,
and when on the ring of hill-tops red beacons were flaring in his
honour. There was a dance, with his lucky partners sure of
photographic fame in the local papers of tomorrow, and then in the
morning, medal giving, a peep at the annual regatta, famous in local
history, on lovely Quidividi Lake among the hills, and then, all too
soon for Newfoundland, his departure to New Brunswick.
There was no doubt at all as to the impression he made. The visit that
might have been formal was in actuality an affair of spontaneous
affection. There was a friendliness and warmth in the welcome that
quite defies description. His own unaffected pleasure in the greeting;
his eagerness to meet everybody, not the few, but the ordinary,
everyday people as much as the notabilities, his lack of affectation,
and his obvious enjoyment of all that was happening, placed the Prince
and the people, welcoming him, immediately on a footing of intimacy.
His tour had begun in the air of triumph which we were to find
everywhere in his passage across the Continent.