an lived more than a century ago, and yet, as his figure fades
back into nothingness, we see this other figure close by. It is David
Thompson, the Welshman, who has recently discovered a river, and has
called it by his own name. Also, he has captured the Astoria
fur-trade, and has established a trading post, which future generations
will know as Kamloops.

And here is Sir George Simpson, Resident Governor of the Hudson's Bay
Company. He likes to travel with pipers who go before him, piping as
he enters a fort in order that Lo, the Red Man, may be properly
impressed.

The ugly person with the harshly aggressive features is Sir James
Douglas. He looks as fully open to convincement as a stone pavement.
This spalpeen near by is none other than young Lieutenant Butler of
Ireland. He is gathering material for a volume he proposes to call
_The Great Lone Land_. I like the way he carries his head. Who runs
may read him for a fighter with a fighter's build.

But on they go, and on, this long procession of pioneers, till we can
only call out their names as they file by--Dr. Hector, Daniel Harmon,
Viscount Milton, Alexander Henry, Dr. Cheadle, and other lean,
laborious fellows, long since passed into the shadows. Dead men do
tell tales. You may hear if you care to listen.

And what a strange thing has come to pass in these latter months! The
tenuous, twisting trail--that very old trail--has been superseded by a
clean white road that is like to a long bowstring. Its impotent,
creeping life has given way before the gallant onslaught of pick and
spade, chain and transit, and before monstrous lifting machines which
have other names, but which are really leviathans.

Hitherto, it may be said of this land what was once said of Rome, that
the memory sees more than the eye. This is no longer true. Before we
realize it, Baedeker will be setting down a star opposite the name of a
fashionable hotel in the Athabaska Valley, and the whole of this
morning world, from end to end, will be spotted with a black canker of
towns. Right glad am I to go through it this day with a construction
party, and for my own satisfaction to mentally tie together the threads
of the Past and Present. And who knows but in a century from now some
curious boy in one of these towns may find this record in an attic
rubbish-heap, and may rejoice with me over the knotted threads. (I
love you, boy! you must know this.)

My fellows of the Way, who are