Part 25
If you want to go a-motoring in a foreign country without the expense and trouble of an ocean voyage, I doubt if you could do better than to put your car on a steamer at Seattle or Vancouver, with “Victoria” pencilled on the bill of lading. Take my word for it, you will find Vancouver Island as foreign (perhaps I should say as un-American) as England; in many respects it is more English than England itself. Though the aggregate length of the insular highways is not very great, for civilisation has as yet but nibbled at the island’s edges, the roads that have been built are unsurpassed anywhere. If roads are judged not only by their smoothness but by the scenery through which they pass, then the highways of Vancouver Island are in a class by themselves. They are as smooth as the arguments of an automobile salesman; their grades are as easy as the path to shame; they are bordered by scenery as alluring as Scherezade. The spinal column of Vancouver’s highway system is the splendid Island Highway, which, after leaving Victoria, parallels the east coast, running through Cowichan, Chemainus, Ladysmith, Nanaimo, and Wellington, to Nanoose Bay. Here the road divides, one fork continuing up the coast to Campbell River, which is the northernmost point that can be reached by road, while the other fork swings inland, skirting the shores of Cameron Lake and through Alberni, at the head of Barclay Sound, to Great Central Lake, which, as its name indicates, is in the very heart of the island, upward of a hundred and fifty miles from Victoria as the motor goes. The first twenty miles of the Island Highway are known as the Malahat Drive, the road here climbing over a mountain range of considerable height by means of a splendidly surfaced but none too wide shelf, with many uncomfortably sharp turns, cut in the rocky face of the cliff. This shelf gradually ascends until the giant firs in the gloomy gorge below look no larger than hedge-plants, and the waters of the sound, with its wild and wooded shores, like a miniature lakelet in a garden. The Malahat is a safe enough road if you drive with caution. But it is no place for joy riding. It is too narrow, in the first place, and the turns are too sharp, and it is such a fearfully long way to the bottom that they would have to gather up your remains with a shovel, which is messy and inconvenient.
Throughout our tour on Vancouver Island we were impressed with the universal politeness and good nature of the people we met, particularly in the back country, and by the courteous wording of the signs along the highways. The highway signs in the United States have a habit of shaking a fist in your face, metaphorically speaking, and shouting at you: “Go any faster if you dare!” But in Vancouver they assume that you are a gentleman and address you as such. Instead of curtly ordering you to “Go slow” without condescending to give any reason, they erect a sign like this: “Schoolhouse ahead. Please look out for the children,” and, a little way beyond, another which says, “Thank you”—a little courtesy which costs nothing except a few extra strokes of the brush and leaves you permeated with a glow of good feeling.
When we reached Nanaimo, which is a coal-mining centre of considerable importance, we found one of the periodic strikes which serve to relieve the tedium of life in the drab little colliery town in progress and a militia regiment of Highlanders encamped in its streets. When we speak of militia in the United States we usually think of slouch-hatted youths in rather slovenly uniforms of yellow khaki, who meet every Wednesday night for drill at the local armoury, spend ten days in an instruction camp each summer, and parade down the main streets of their respective towns on Decoration Day and the Fourth of July. But these Canadian militiamen were something quite different. I don’t suppose that they are a whit more efficient when it comes to the business of slaughter than their cousins south of the border, but they are certainly a lot more picturesque. But I ask you now, candidly, can you imagine several hundred young Americans dressed in plaid kilts and plaid stockings, with an interim of bare knees, jackets chopped off at the waist-line, and dinky little caps with ribbons hanging down behind keeping the upper hand in a strike-ridden American city? I can’t. These young men belonged, so I was told, to a “Highland” regiment, though after talking with a few of them I gathered that their acquaintance with the Highlands consisted in having occupied seats in the upper gallery at a performance by Harry Lauder. But, kilts or no kilts, there was no doubt that they were running the show in Nanaimo and, from all indications, running it very well.
Decidedly the most worth-while thing on Vancouver Island, either from the view-point of an artist or a motorist, is that portion of the Island Highway between Nanoose Bay, on the Straits of Georgia, and Alberni, at the head of Barclay Sound. When I first traversed it in the golden radiance of an October day, I thought it was the most beautiful road I had ever seen. And as I traverse it again in the motor-car of memory, with a knowledge of most of the other beautiful highways of the world to compare it with, I am still of the same opinion. So impressive is the scenery, so profound the silence that we felt a trifle awed and spoke in whispers when we spoke at all, as though we were in the nave of a great cathedral. High above us the tree tops interlaced in a roof of translucent green through which the sun-rays filtered, turning the road into a golden trail and the moss on the rocks and the tree trunks into old-gold plush. The meadowed hillsides were so thickly strewn with lacy ferns and wild flowers that it seemed as though the Great Architect had draped them in the dainty, flowered cretonne they use in ladies’ boudoirs; and scattered about, as might be expected in a lady’s boudoir, were silver mirrors—with rainbow-trout leaping in them. Then there were the mountains: range piled upon range, peaks peering over the shoulders of other peaks like soldiers _en échelon_. They ran the gamut of the more sober colours; green at the base, where the lush meadows lay, then the dark green of the forest, then the rusty brown of scrub and underbrush, the violet and blue and purple of the naked rock, and, atop of all, a crown of dazzling white.
The versatile gentlemen who write those alluring folders that you find in racks in railway offices and hotel lobbies very cleverly play on the Anglo-Saxon love for sport by describing the region through which their particular system runs as “a sportsman’s paradise.” It makes small difference whether they are describing the New Jersey mud-flats or the Berkshire hills, they are all “sportsman’s paradises.” But the northern half of Vancouver Island is all that this much-abused term implies and more. It is, I suppose, the finest and most accessible fish and game country on the continent south of the Skeena. I am perfectly aware that I may be accused of belonging to the Ananias Club when I say that certain of the smaller streams in Vancouver Island (and also in northern British Columbia) are at certain seasons of the year so choked with salmon that they can be, _and are_, speared with a pitchfork, and that ruffed grouse and Chinese pheasants are so plentiful and tame that they can be knocked over with a long-handled shovel. It’s true, just the same. We didn’t pitchfork any salmon ourselves, because it isn’t our conception of sport, but we saw natives tossing them out of a stream north of Alberni as unconcernedly as though they were pitchforking hay. Nor did we assassinate any game-birds with a shovel; but more than once, during the run from Nanoose Bay to Great Central Lake, we had to swerve aside to avoid running down grouse, which were so tame that a Plymouth Rock would be wild in comparison; and once, near Cameron Lake, we actually did run over the trailing tail-feathers of a gorgeous Chinese cock pheasant that insolently refused to get off the road.
Alberni and its bigger, busier sister, Port Alberni, occupy the anomalous position of being in the middle of the island and at the same time on its western coast. If you will take the trouble to look at the map you will see that the arm of the sea called Barclay Sound reaches into the very heart of the island, thus permitting deep-sea merchantmen to tie up at Port Alberni’s wharfs and take aboard cargoes of lumber and dried salmon. Alberni was one of the places that I should have liked to linger in, so peaceful and easy-going is its Old-World atmosphere as it dozes the sunny days away, the soft salt breath of the sea mingling with the balsamic fragrance of the forest which surrounds it. Because it is so comparatively little visited, and because the waters of the sound are famous for their salmon runs, we expected that we would have an opportunity to bend our rods off Alberni, but we were met with disappointment, for the salmon with which these waters swarm were, for strictly domestic reasons, not biting at the time we were there. So we kept on to Great Central Lake, a dozen miles north of Alberni, through the forest.
Even though you do not know a trout from a turbot, a fly from a spoon; even though some of the finest scenery in the three Americas could not elicit an “Oh!” of admiration or an “Ah!” of pleasure, I hope that some day you will visit Great Central Lake, if for no other reason than to experience the novelty of spending a night in its extraordinary hotel. It is called The Ark, and, like its prototype of Noah’s day, it is a floating caravansary. Briefly, it is a hotel of twenty bedrooms built on a raft anchored in the lake. When the fishing becomes indifferent in the neighbourhood, the proprietor hoists his anchors, starts up the engines of his launch, and tows his floating hotel elsewhere. The fish have a hard time keeping away from it, for it pursues them remorselessly. It is patronised in the main by that world-wide brotherhood whose members believe that no place is too remote or too difficult of access if their journey is rewarded by the thrill of a six-pound trout on an eight-ounce rod or by glimpsing a bighorn or a bear along a rifle barrel. For that reason one is quite likely to run across some very interesting people at The Ark. While we were there a party of English notabilities arrived. There were the Earl of Something-or-Other and his beautiful daughter, Lady Marjorie What’s-her-Name, and a cousin, the Honourable So-and-So, and the earl’s mine manager, and one or two others. Now there isn’t anything very remarkable about meeting British nobility in the Colonies, for nowadays you find earls and marquises and dukes floating around everywhere. In fact, as Mark Twain once remarked of decorations, you can’t escape them. The remarkable thing about this particular party was that they had tramped overland from the extreme northern end of the island, where some mining properties in which the earl was interested are situated, through unmapped and almost unknown forests, sleeping in the open with no covering save the blankets they carried on their backs, and with the Lady Marjorie for their cook. She was as slim and trim and pretty a girl as one could ask for, and, with her curly hair creeping out from under her soft hat, her Norfolk jacket snugly belted to her lissom figure, her smartly cut knickerbockers and her leather stockings, she might have stepped out of one of those novels by the Williamsons.
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The chief factor in the colonisation of British Columbia and in the development of its resources is the remarkable railway expansion which is now taking place. No region in the world has witnessed such extraordinary progress in railway construction during the past five years. Until the spring of 1914 the “C. P. R.,” as the Canadian Pacific is commonly called throughout the Dominion, enjoyed a monopoly of freight and passenger transportation in the province, being scarcely less autocratic in its attitude and methods than the Standard Oil Company before it was curbed by Federal legislation. But when, early in 1914, the last rail of the Grand Trunk Pacific was laid in the vicinity of Fort George and the last spike driven, the “C. P. R.” suddenly found its hitherto undisputed supremacy challenged by a rich, powerful, and splendidly equipped system, which, owing to its more northerly route and easier gradients, is able to make considerably faster running time from ocean to ocean than its long-established rival. Moreover, another great transcontinental system, the Canadian Northern, is already in partial operation and is rapidly nearing completion, while the construction gangs have begun work on the Pacific Great Eastern, a subsidiary of the Grand Trunk Pacific, over whose rails the latter plans to reach tide-water at Vancouver, thus invading territory which the Canadian Pacific has heretofore regarded as peculiarly its own. In another year or so, therefore, British Columbia will not only have a more complete railway system than either Washington or Oregon, but it will be the terminus of three great transcontinental systems, each of which will run from tide-water to tide-water, under the same management and the same name.
If you will glance at the map at the back of this volume you will see that the railway systems of British Columbia roughly resemble a gigantic Z. The lower right-hand corner of the Z represents Kicking Horse Pass, near Lake Louise, where the Canadian Pacific crosses the Rockies; the lower left-hand corner may stand for Vancouver, which is the terminus of the Canadian Pacific, the Canadian Northern, and the Pacific Great Eastern; the upper right-hand corner of the Z we will designate as Yellowhead (or Tête Jaune) Pass, where both the Grand Trunk Pacific and the Canadian Northern cross the Rockies; while the upper left-hand corner is the great terminal port which the Grand Trunk Pacific has built to order at Prince Rupert. The lower bar of the Z approximately represents the Canadian Pacific, the upper bar the Grand Trunk Pacific, and the diagonal the Canadian Northern.
The main line of the Canadian Pacific enters the province at Kicking Horse Pass and, dropping southward in a series of sweeping curves, strikes the Fraser at Lytton and hugs its northern bank to Vancouver. From the main line numerous branches straggle southward to the American border, thus giving access to the rich country lying between the Kootenai and the Okanogan. Entering British Columbia far to the northward, through the Tête Jaune Pass, where the mountains are much lower, the Canadian Northern lays its course southwestward in almost a straight line, crossing the Thompson just above its junction with the Fraser and thence paralleling the Canadian Pacific through the cañon of the Fraser, though on the opposite side of the river, to Vancouver. The Canadian Northern is, I might add, spending a large sum in the construction of railway shops and yards at Port Mann, a place which it is building to order amid the virgin forest, a few miles east of New Westminster. The Grand Trunk Pacific likewise uses the Tête Jaune Pass as a gateway. Instead of turning southward after crossing the mountains, however, it swings far to the north, following the east fork of the Fraser to Fort George and thence up the level and fertile valleys of the Nechako and the Bulkley to New Hazelton and so down the Skeena to Prince Rupert. Recognising the necessity of having a means of direct access to Vancouver, which is the metropolis of western Canada, the Grand Trunk Pacific now has under construction a subsidiary system, to be known as the Pacific Great Eastern, which, leaving the main line at Fort George, will follow the Fraser due southward to Lillooet and then strike directly across a virgin country to Vancouver, thus giving the Grand Trunk Pacific two west-coast terminals instead of one. The Grand Trunk Pacific engineers have also drawn plans for a line running due north from New Hazelton toward the Yukon, which would throw open to exploitation the rich coal-fields of the Groundhog and the fertile prairies of northernmost British Columbia, the idea being, of course, to ultimately effect a junction with the proposed Federal railway in Alaska, thus bringing Alaska into direct railway communication with the outside world.
Though enormously rich in timber and ore, Vancouver Island has not yet had its share of railway expansion, its only system of transportation at present being the Esquimault & Nanaimo Railway, which runs from Victoria to Alberni, in the heart of the island. The Canadian Northern, however, proposes to build a line from Victoria half-way up the west coast of the island, while the Grand Trunk Pacific, going its rival one better, has obtained a concession for building a railway from one end of the island to the other, thus opening up its enormously rich fisheries, mines, and forests. With this era of railway expansion immediately before them, it seems to me that the British Columbians are quite justified in looking at the future through rose-coloured glasses.
Consider the cities, how they grow—Prince Rupert, for example. A city literally made to order, just as a tailor would make a suit of clothes, is something of a novelty even in an age which jeers at precedent and slaps tradition in the face. “Rome was not built in a day,” but that was because it had no transcontinental railway system to finance and superintend and push forward its construction. If a Gaul, Transalpine, & Pompeian Railway had been in operation, and its directors knew their business, they would have turned loose their engineers, architects, and builders and, after staking out and draining a town site beside the Tiberian marshes, they would have run up the Eternal City and auctioned off the building lots along the Via Appia as expeditiously as the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway has brought into being the west-coast terminus which it has named Prince Rupert after that adventurous Palatine prince, nephew of Charles I, who was in turn a cavalry leader, a naval commander, and the first governor of the Hudson Bay Company. Unless your family atlas is of recent vintage (and I have regretfully observed that most of them were purchased at about the period of Stanley’s explorations) you will search it in vain for Prince Rupert, for this custom-made municipality came into existence about the same time as the tango and the turkey-trot. The easiest way to locate it, then, is to trace with your finger parallel 54° 40′ North (the slogan “Fifty-four forty or fight!” you will recall, once nearly brought on a war with England) until it reaches the Pacific Coast of North America. There, five hundred and fifty miles north of Vancouver, forty miles south of the Alaskan border, on Kai-en Island, at the mouth of the Skeena River, set on a range of hills overlooking one of the finest deep-water harbours in the world, is Prince Rupert. It is in the same latitude as London and has a wet and foggy climate which cannot fail to make a Londoner feel very much at home. Probably never before have there been so much time and money expended in the planning and preliminary work of a new city. The town site was chosen only after a careful inspection of the entire British Columbia coast-line and was laid out by a famous firm of Boston landscape engineers with the same attention to detail which they would have given to laying out a great estate. Experts who have studied the plan on which Prince Rupert is built assert that in time it will be one of the most beautiful cities on the continent. The site is a picturesque one, for, from the six-mile-long shore-line which sweeps around the front of the city, the ground rises abruptly, so that on clear days—which, by the way, are far from common—a magnificent view may be had from the heights of the forested and fiord-indented coast, of the island-studded channel, of the Indian village of Metlakatla, known as the “Holy City,” and, on rare occasions, of the mountains of Alaska. Unless one is conversant with the development of the Pacific Coast; unless one has seen its seaports—Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle, Tacoma, San Pedro, San Diego—spring into being almost overnight, one cannot fully realise the possibilities and potentialities of this new city with the unfamiliar name. To begin with, the distance from Liverpool to Yokohama by way of Prince Rupert is eight hundred miles shorter than via New York and San Francisco; it is five hundred miles nearer the Orient than any other Pacific port. Nothing illustrates more graphically the strategic value of its position than the fact that a traveller bound, say, for New York from China, Japan, or Alaska can board a train at Prince Rupert and be as far as Winnipeg, or virtually half across the continent, before the steamer from which he disembarked could reach Vancouver. In addition to the shorter distance across the Pacific must be added the much faster time that can be made by rail over the practically level grades (four tenths of one per cent) that the Grand Trunk Pacific has obtained through the lower mountains to the north, which will enable trains to be moved at the rate of two miles for every one mile on the heavier grades of rival systems. What is most important of all, however, Prince Rupert has at its back probably the potentially richest hinterland in the world—a veritable commercial empire waiting to be explored, developed, and exploited. The mineral wealth of all this vast region, the forest products, the gold, the coal, the copper, the iron ore of northern British Columbia and the Yukon, the food products of the prairie provinces, and the fish and fur of the far North—in short, all the westbound export wealth of this resourceful region—will find its outlet to the sea at Prince Rupert as surely and as true to natural laws as its rivers empty into the Pacific.