the mighty town of Vancouver on the Pacific Coast. What a town! Wide
streets, huge buildings, tram-cars, and much bustle and life. But what
struck us most was the splendid playground of Stanley Park which covers
all the ground at the end of the peninsula stretching out into the sea.
This is not an Englishman's idea of a park at all, for we think of the
rather stiff green expanses, with a few trees scattered here and there,
that we are used to at home. Stanley Park is just a bit of primeval
forest with roads running through it. There are immense trees rearing
their crowns on stems twelve feet in diameter. There are thickets and
wild creatures and rich undergrowth. The inhabitants of Vancouver are
lucky indeed, and they have another park on the other side of the town
too. Stanley Park overlooks the harbour, where lie ships of all nations,
from the liners of China and Japan to the tiny tugs of the Cannery
Companies. The amount of trade coming here is immense. The ships carry
cargoes of tea, rice, and silk and oranges, with skins from Siberia, and
take away grain, timber, fish, machinery, cattle, and manufactured
goods. There are some sailing ships, you still see them in this part of
the world, and these are loading masses of timber baulks from the great
pine woods inland. Lumbering and logging are the two great occupations
of the Western Canadian winter, and what you see here is the fruit of
that work. Terribly hard work it is too. Swinging an axe all day among
the great giants of the forest requires knack as well as strength, and
when a man first starts that game he quickly finds he is as weak as a
baby till his muscles get hardened to it. When cut down the trunks are
dragged to any stream, or creek, as they call them here, to be drifted
down to the coast. It is a wonderful sight to see a river about half a
mile wide literally covered with tree trunks wedged against one another
from bank to bank. When the logs get jammed, and have to be released, it
requires a great deal of courage to go right into the middle of the
stream and find the key-log, the one which holds the whole together,
like the keystone of an arch; most exciting work this is, many a man
loses his life or his limbs over it. In Burma, where the teak companies
run their business on the same lines, elephants are taught to do this;
they feel around with their trunks and draw out the right log, and then
make for the banks at full speed, to get out of the way before