CHAPTER XXVIII

THE HAPPY FARMERS OF THE ISLAND

There are no lotus-lands attached to the Dominion, and will not be, unless we make over to it at some date the West Indies. But because Vancouver Island has a climate excelling that of any other part of Canada, and a beauty of scenery not surpassed anywhere; because also the men who have settled there have reckoned these possessions dearer than other things, such as the fat soil of the prairie and the chance of growing quickly rich, Canadians of the mainland are given at times to lay a charge of lotus-eating against them. I think the charge is an unfair one. Life may be less strenuous on the island, and there are men there, no doubt, who take their work there over easily. Against this has to be set the fact that the work that does go on in Vancouver Island goes on all the year round, that the colonists are men with an eye to the far future as well as to the immediate {267} one (they have, that is to say, an English ideal of permanent residence instead of the notion of getting what they can from the place and decamping), and that in their hands, if the island is not being developed as fast as it might be, it is at least safe from spoliation and waste. Some day, when the mainland Canadians have time to consider the amenities of a country life as well as the necessities, they will find themselves going to the island for hints.

As one crosses from Vancouver, the beauty of the straits prepares one a little for the beauty of the island which, so far as I saw it, has no bare or ugly places. Its coast-line has the contour of the Scandinavian fiords, but its charm is greater, owing to the luxuriant growth of the tall and splendid trees. Right to the edge of these rock-bound sea-water lakes the forest grows--Douglas firs, surely the finest of all straight-growing trees, cedar and maple, jack-pine and arbutus, and at their feet, flowers and mosses and saxifrages. Arriving at Victoria, I went straight through to Duncans, and, looking from the train, was reminded by the greenness of the land, freshened by the delicate rain that was falling, of the mountainous parts of Ceylon--which impression was strengthened by the fact of the {268} smoking-compartment being crowded with Orientals of all sorts, mostly Chinese, but Japanese too and some Indians, all seeming very much at their ease among the white men. It was a harmonious sight; but what, I wondered, would an Anglo-Indian say if he found himself condemned to sit with his cheroot among this riff-raff of natives? and what chance of any agreement on questions affecting our Indian Empire between the officials of India and these Westerners who admit the Oriental to an equality with themselves?

I was bound on a visit to friends who had a farm on Quamichan Lake, and found a buggy waiting for me at Duncans station, driven by an elderly man who had all the Canadian optimism, in spite of the fact that he had, in 1882, sold for a song the whole of Edmonton, then in his possession. Another of the missed millionaires of Canada. He brought me in the dark to my friends' farm, and when I looked out of my window next morning, I almost believed myself to be back in England. A little lake lay two fields below--a fresh-water lake still and reedy, with woods or orchards sloping to its edge, and in the distance a ring of hills. It might be Grasmere transported to some warmer county such as Devonshire; {269} but Devonshire never grew such stately trees, nor has England anywhere mountains wooded like these to their peaks. A heat-mist lay on the water, and the apples in the orchard seemed the reddest I had ever seen. Only the grass was not English grass, though it was greener than most of the grass of the new world. All round the lake were farms, belonging largely to Englishmen, dairy-farming or fruit-farming, making use of science and co-operation, but not sacrificing beauty to utility. Perhaps they could not spoil the island if they tried. The trees are so dominant and stately that every piece of cleared land seems to look at once like a part of an old English park.

It should have been called New England, this beautiful country which has so many English people in it, which carries on so much of the English tradition and sentiment, and which has even the English pheasant. I saw thousands of pheasants during the days I spent there. They were put down on the island not so very many years ago, and they have increased enormously. The deer were already there, and you may see them in the orchards, unless they are very high-fenced, at almost any time in the early morning. And there are {270} grouse and partridges in plenty too, and beasts that England no longer possesses--the coon and the puma, and the bear and the wolverine. To see the salmon leaping all across Cowichan Bay, on a bright October morning, is a sight for sore eyes, if they happen to be an angler's. To drive along the roads is to realise instantly that they are the best roads in the Dominion. Duncans is particularly English, even for Vancouver Island. I think it is vanity and a certain cause of vexation to expect in the new world a conformity to the ways of the old, which necessary differences of living--the indispensable growth of new habits, some of them better than the old--render in time impossible. Those who expect such a conformity are usually the first to forget that the old country changes too, and that it is we, as often as those across the sea, who have forgotten the ancient order and taken on the new, generally without thought, and often without reason. Though it is absurd to expect to find Canada a replica in ideas and habits of the old world, it is nevertheless pleasant to come upon a community there which, without holding itself too much apart from its neighbours or standing out against what is progressive, does represent some peculiarly {271} English qualities at their best. That is, perhaps, why the island makes a particular appeal to the man newly out from home. I certainly do not think its inhabitants are to be charged with stiffness and unadaptability. Men who have taken on the new life, and work in a spirit of optimism not less than that shown elsewhere, are rather to be admired than otherwise if they have retained, and even insist on, what is good in the old. And a love of sport and beauty and sociability, and even of leisure, is a good thing, especially when it is found among men who do their own work as these men do, and more especially when found among women who work as the women of the island do. The work is the best of all, but all work and no play turns many people--and not a few Canadians--not merely into dull folk, but into narrow-minded and backward ones, who will some day have all the unpleasantness of being rudely awakened to the fact.

No doubt there are some ne'er-do-weels on the island, but the great majority of those I met seemed to me to be capable men, likely to do well by what is the most beautiful, and will some day be, perhaps, the most valuable part of the Empire.

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