most perfect harbour. The town is built all round and
about the harbour, and young as it is, its streets are better than those
of western America. Moreover, the old flag waves over some of the
buildings, and this is cheering to the soul. The place is full of
Englishmen who speak the English tongue correctly and with clearness,
avoiding more blasphemy than is necessary, and taking a respectable
length of time to getting outside their drinks. These advantages and
others that I have heard about, such as the construction of elaborate
workshops and the like by the Canadian Pacific in the near future, moved
me to invest in real estate. He that sold it me was a delightful English
Boy who, having tried for the Army and failed, had somehow meandered
into a real-estate office, where he was doing well. I couldn't have
bought it from an American. He would have overstated the case and proved
me the possessor of the original Eden. All the Boy said was: "I give you
my word it isn't on a cliff or under water, and before long the town
ought to move out that way. I'd advise you to take it." And I took it
as easily as a man buys a piece of tobacco. _Me voici_, owner of some
four hundred well-developed pines, a few thousand tons of granite
scattered in blocks at the roots of the pines, and a sprinkling of
earth. That's a town-lot in Vancouver. You or your agent hold to it till
property rises, then sell out and buy more land further out of town and
repeat the process. I do not quite see how this sort of thing helps the
growth of a town, but the English Boy says that it is the "essence of
speculation," so it must be all right. But I wish there were fewer pines
and rather less granite on my ground. Moved by curiosity and the lust of
trout, I went seventy miles up the Canadian Pacific in one of the
cross-Continent cars, which are cleaner and less stuffy than the
Pullman. A man who goes all the way across Canada is liable to be
disappointed--not in the scenery, but in the progress of the country. So
a batch of wandering politicians from England told me. They even went so
far as to say that Eastern Canada was a failure and unprofitable. The
place didn't move, they complained, and whole counties--they said
provinces--lay under the rule of the Roman Catholic priests, who took
care that the people should not be overcumbered with the good things of
this world to the detriment of their souls. My interest was in the
line--the real and accomplished railw