THE GREAT LAKES
If we found the prairie astonishing even when uncultivated, what of
this? Corn, ripened in the sun, and spreading over mile after mile on
both sides of the railway line! There are no neat little fences to cut
it up into fields, and it does not grow unevenly, but all at one height,
so the effect is a flat and boundless plain, yellow as the desert sand.
Everyone has heard of the grain fields of Canada, the great stretch of
land, about a thousand miles in width, from whence corn is shipped to
the remotest ends of the earth.
We lingered on so long with the Humphreys that already the harvest is
ready for cutting. On leaving Calgary we passed through some towns with
astonishing names. The first we noticed was Medicine Hat, which Mr.
Kipling has written about as "The Town that was Born Lucky," because gas
was discovered in great quantities below the surface, and when holes are
bored for it huge jets spring forth and can be used in countless ways;
even the engines of the C.P.R. make use of it.
Then we came across Moose Jaw, Swift Current, Indian Head, and Portage
La Prairie. I forget at which of these it was we saw Indians in all the
gaudy finery of their ancestors, with feathers sticking up on their
heads, buckskin shirts covered all over with beads and decorated with
tassels, in which coloured grasses were twisted. As the Indian may not
take scalps now he has to find other trimmings! These men dress up like
this to attract tourists, because they want to sell buffalo horns,
bead-work moccasins and bags, and many other things.
Then we got to Regina, the headquarters of the Royal North-West Mounted
Police, and were lucky enough to catch sight of one or two of the force
in their neat work-manlike khaki, with their round broad-brimmed hats
which the Boy Scouts have imitated. These men are hard as nails and
absolutely fearless; the story of the adventures of the force would make
a thrilling book.
[Illustration: INDIAN IN ANCIENT FINERY.]
At every station we notice tall odd-looking buildings which form no part
of an English station. These are grain-elevators. When the farmer has
threshed his corn he can bring it here and receive a receipt for it,
and have it stored; then it is run up to the top of one of these places
by endless ropes, and thence can be easily poured down out of a
funnel-like shaft into the waiting trucks for shipment.
[Illustration: NORTH-WEST MOUNTED POLICE.]
At last there is a farm where the corn is being cut! I have been
watching to see one. That row of machines following each other, in what
seems from here to be a line, are cutting and binding the corn and
turning it out in neat sheaves. The Canadian farmer is often very much
ahead of us in the way of machinery. He has to be, for sometimes he has
furrows four miles long and a farm the size of an English county. There
is, for instance, a steam-plough which takes twelve fourteen-inch
furrows at once! What would an English yokel, meandering along at the
tail of his two slow horses, say to that? His little job would be done
before it was time for breakfast! Hullo! there is another field, all in
stooks already--look across the boundless plain to the horizon. There is
nothing to be seen but stooks and that thin telephone wire running like
a line in the sky in the far distance. When you look at any map of
Canada you can't help noticing how straight the boundaries of the
provinces are, just as if ruled with a ruler; as a matter of fact they
run usually on lines of longitude or latitude, and are thus very
different from our county boundaries, which have grown up anyhow. This
province we are now in, Manitoba, has recently been increased by an
immense area of land in the north, so that it now has a seashore on
Hudson Bay, but before that it was nearly square. The farms are measured
out in the same exact way too; men have land given to them in sections a
mile square, and a man can take more than one section, or he can have a
part of one, but every bit of land granted is marked out evenly like the
squares on a chess-board.
The days of our journey east seem to be just a succession of endless
cornfields and grain-elevators, with glimpses of busy towns and small
stations. And in the evening we see a yellow glow of sunset lighting up
the uncut fields in a splendour of light that is worth coming far to
see. There is a very striking difference about the twilight here and in
the East. You remember there how night seemed to shut down close upon
sunset, here the light remains on in the sky for many hours, even at
nine o'clock we can see the hands of our watches.
Every now and then we discover our watches are an hour slow, and we have
to jump the pointers on. This is because Canada and the States are
divided up into strips by north and south lines, which mark off the
time to be kept in each. As I explained long ago--how very long ago it
seems!--America is too vast a continent to keep one set time from shore
to shore, as we do in our little country, so it was found convenient to
make definite lines, each one hour apart, all the way across.
Then we arrive at Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba and the largest
corn-market in the world. The town is almost exactly half-way across
Canada. But we are not going to stop here, for towns do not interest us
so much as nature, though if we could have had a peep into the wide main
street, with its towering buildings, remembering it was a prairie trail
thirty years ago, it would have been worth while.
The rest of that day we run through much prettier scenery than the
cornland, which has become very monotonous, and at night-time arrive at
a place called Port Arthur, where we are going to leave the train and
explore the Great Lakes. Well may they be called "Great"! In Lake
Superior, the largest of the five, you could put the whole of your
native land, Scotland, and have nearly two thousand square miles left
over! This is the largest fresh-water lake in the world. There are five
lakes here lying together, and the three largest--Superior, Michigan,
and Huron--spring from a common centre and stretch out just like the
fingers of a horse-chestnut leaf, but you will find out all this
to-morrow.
It is a glorious afternoon the next day when we first catch sight of the
steamer waiting to take us across Lake Superior. She is more like an
ocean liner than anything else. She is called the _Hamonic_, and is
indeed as large as many of the ships of well-known lines running out to
the East from England, for she is five thousand tons, with accommodation
for four hundred first-class passengers. On the upper deck is an
observation room with windows along the whole length of each side. For
all we can see, when once we are out of sight of the shore, we might
have left Canada for ever and be taking our final plunge across the
Atlantic homeward. And it is the same thing all the next day. We see no
land and might as well be on the broad ocean, until, after luncheon, we
come to the great lock, or canal, which joins the two lakes of Superior
and Huron. It is nine hundred feet long, and had to be made because the
levels of the two lakes are different, and no steamer could have come
through the rapids which the Indians used to love to shoot in their
canoes. When we are through the lock we stop at a large and flourishing
place called Sault Ste Marie, and then get into far the prettiest part
of the route among the islands, where we see fine trees already turning
crimson and gold. Right across Lake Huron we go, passing the entrance to
Lake Michigan, and reach Sarnia at one o'clock the next day. Sarnia
stands on a narrow strait, and just opposite is part of the territory of
the United States of America.
If Canadians are sons and daughters of Great Britain, the Americans are
first cousins, for there is no other country in the world, outside the
British Empire, of nearer kin to us than the mighty nation which leads
in the van of progress in all manufactures and enterprise.
[Illustration: A GATEWAY IN QUEBEC.]