of the fast narrowing
firth, I no longer felt in doubt as to my ultimate destination. My
subconscious self, aided and abetted by the Irish steward, had already
decided that for me:--it was Canada, the West, the Pacific.

Soon after I had breakfasted, we reached the Tail of the Bank, and so
impatient was I to be on my long journey that I bade good-bye to my
little Irishman at Greenock, leaving him grinning and happy in the
knowledge that I was taking his advice and was bound for the Pacific
Coast.

In forty minutes more, I left the train at Glasgow and started in to a
hurried and moderate replenishing of my wardrobe, finishing up with the
purchase of a travelling bag, a good second-hand rifle and a little
ammunition.

I dispensed with my knapsack by presenting it to a newsboy, who held it
up in disgust as if it had been a dead cat. Despite the fact that I
was now on my own resources and would have to work, nothing could
induce me to part with my golf clubs. They were old and valued
friends. Little did I imagine then how useful they would ultimately
prove.

At the head office of the steamship company, I inquired as to the best
class of travelling when the traveller wished to combine cheapness with
rough comfort; and I was treated to the cheering news that there was a
rate war on between the rival Trans-Atlantic Steamship Companies and I
could purchase a second-cabin steamboat ticket for six pounds, while a
further eight pounds, thirteen shillings and four-pence would carry me
by Colonist, or third class, three thousand miles, from the East to the
Far West of Canada.

I paid for my ticket and booked my berth then and there, counted out my
remaining wealth,--ten pounds and a few coppers,--and my destiny was
settled.

With so much to tell of what befell me later, I have neither the time
nor the inclination to detail the pleasures and the discomforts of a
twelve days' trip by slow steamer across a storm-swept Atlantic,
battened down for days on end, like cattle in the hold of a
cross-channel tramp; of a six days' journey across prairie lands, in a
railway car with its dreadful monotony of unupholstered wooden seats
and sleeping boards, its stuffiness, its hourly disturbances in the
night-time in the shape of noisy conductors demanding tickets, incoming
and outgoing travellers and shrieking engines; its dollar meals in the
dining car, which I envied but could not afford; its well-nigh
unlightable cooking stoves an