ength,
tonnage and ultimate mileage set up new records, but in it the
idealist's dream of perfection in travelling came true.

It might be truer to say the Royal Party did not take the train, it
took them. As each member of the party mounted into his compartment,
or Pullman car, he at once ceased to concern himself with his own
well-being. To think of oneself was unnecessary. The C.P.R. had not
only arranged to do the thinking, but had also arranged to do it better.

The external facts concerning the train were but a part of its wonder.
And the minor part. It was the largest train of its kind to accomplish
so great a single run--it weighed over a thousand tons, and travelled
nearly ten thousand miles. It was a fifth of a mile in length. Its
ten splendid cars were all steel. Some of them were ordinary sleepers,
some were compartment and drawing-room cars. Those for the Prince and
his Staff were sumptuous private cars with state-rooms, dining-rooms,
kitchens, bathrooms, and cosy observation rooms and platforms,
beautifully fitted and appointed.

The train was a modern hotel strayed accidentally on to wheels. It had
its telephone system; its own electricity; its own individually
controlled central heat. It had a laundry service for its passengers,
and its valets always on the spot to renew the crease of youth in all
trousers. It had its own newspaper, or, rather, bulletin, by which all
on board learnt the news of the external world twice a day, no matter
in what wild spot the train happened to be. It had its dark-room for
photographers, its dispensary for the doctor and its untiring telegraph
expert to handle all wired messages, including the correspondents'
cables. It had its dining-rooms and kitchens and its staff of
first-class chefs, who worked miracles of cuisine in the small space of
their kitchen, giving over a hundred people three meals a day that no
hotel in London could exceed in style, and no hotel in England could
hope to equal in abundance. It carried baggage, and transferred it to
Government Houses or hotels, and transferred it back to its cars and
baggage vans in a manner so perfect that one came to look upon the
matter almost as a process of nature, and not as a breathless
phenomenon.

It was the train _de luxe_, but it was really more than that. It was a
train handled by experts from Mr. A. B. Calder, who represented the
President of the Company, down to the cleaning boy, who swept up th