d, as darkness fell, considerably more of the populace
than it was ever intended to hold squeezed themselves into the wooden
building which served as city hall, while the rest sat in the dust outside
it, and cheered for no particular reason at regular intervals.

The best banquet the district could furnish was served in the hall, and I
sat opposite the surveyor near the head of one table, with my uncle and
Alice close by, and Grace and Colonel Carrington not far away. Cedar
sprays and branches of balsam draped the pillars, the red folds of the
beaver ensign hung above our heads, and as usual the assembly was
democratic in character. Men in broadcloth and in blue jean sat side by
side--rail-layer, speculator, and politician crowded on one another, with
stalwart axe-men, some of whom were better taught than either, and perhaps
a few city absconders, to keep them company; but there was only
good-fellowship between them. The enthusiasm increased with each orator's
efforts, until the surveyor made in his own brusque fashion, which was
marked by true Western absence of bashfulness, the speech of the evening.
Some one who had once served the English press sent a report to a Victoria
journal, of which I have a copy, but no print could reproduce the essence
of the man's vigorous personality which vibrated through it.

"What built up the Western Dominion, called leagues of wheat from the
prairie, and opened the gate of the mountains--opened it wide to all, with
a welcome to the Pacific Slope paradise?" he said. "The conundrum's
easy--just the railroad. Good markets and mills, say the city men, but
where do the markets come in if you can't get at them? What is it that's
binding London over the breadth of Canada with China and Japan--only the
level steel road. You said, 'We've gold and silver and timber, but we're
wanting bread, machines, and men.' We said, 'We'll send the locomotives;
it will bring you them;' and this railroad keeps its promise--keeps it
every time. So we cut down the forest, and we blew up the mighty rocks, we
drove a smooth pathway through the heart of the ranges--and now its your
part to fill the freight cars to the bursting.

"We'll bring you good men in legions; we'll take out your high-grade ore,
but you'll remember that the building of this railroad wasn't all luxury.
Some of those who laid the ties sleep soundly beside them, some lost their
money, and now when you have thanked the leaders in Ottawa, Montre