SKETCHES OF TRAVEL

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 16, 16 April 1903, Page 2

SKETCHES OF TRAVEL

VI.— THE THOUSAND ISLANDS OF THE WEST.

Dy the Editor. ' Round many Western islands I have been.'

— Keats.

It is April 15 as these lines are being clicked out at a merry rate on the flying keys of the type-composing machine. It is the first anniversary of the day when I sailed out, on the Canadian-Australian ship Moana, from Victoria,, the island-capital of British Columbia, to Vancouver, where her human freight of over two hundred passengers was to bid her good-bye and set their feet upon the mainland of the American continent. It was a bright, pleasant northern spring day. The sun was shining like a blessing from heaven. In the gently-stir-ring clear air you could almost count the twigs upon the cedars and the firs up the slopes that stretched away behind Victoria. The sky was as fleckless a blue as you see in the early summer days in the Swiss Engadine, , or above the green irrigated valleys that wind away to east and west from the lower slopes of Canigou, in the Eastern Pyrenees. We took on board at Victoria a new and Welcome Addition to our numerical strength : baggage officers, ticketagents, and a cloud of sturdy porters — all sent to our aid by the courteous and greatly appreciated forethought of the Canadian-Pacific Railway corporation. Customs officers also boarded the ship and accompanied us on our way— the most urbane that I had met in a tolerably wide experience of travel. The vessel had scarcely got well under way when they were busy chalking their strange hieroglyphics upon the passengers' luggage, on deck and in the cabins, almost as fast as it came under their indulgent eyes. Down in the saloons, the Canadian-Pacific ticket-agents were as busy as lamplighters giving ready information and kindly travel-hints, and issuing tickets to all parts of Canada, the United States, and Europe. In the meantime the baggage officials weie fast emptying the luggage-hold and the cabins upon the upper deck. In the days when, the footpad and the brigand infested the world's highways, it was a motto that he travelled safest who travelled lightest. Pugin, for dear comfort's sake, perambulated all central Europe, studying the glories of Cothic architecture, with no impedimenta save a sketch-ing-block, an o\eicoat, and a Sairey (iamp umbrella. Only the roving bicyclist envoys such heroic simplicity of tounng-attire nowadays. Your old and experienced tourist, however, whether by land or sea, will cut down his baggage to the irreducible minimum. O si sic omncs ! A glance at the t>ag|gtige-i oom of any ocean-going steamer, or at the littered upper-deck of the Moana on that April morning, reveals the fact that the average tourist, and especially ladies that go down to the sea in ships, encumber themselves with almost as many wjaps, rolls, valises, poitmanteaux, boxes, trunks, and heaven knows what besides, as if they weie setting out on a three-years' cruise with Nansen to the Farthest North For all, but in quite a special way for your cumbious travellers, the courteous Canadian-Pacific baggage otticials, and the system of dealing with Passengers' Luggage prevalent all over North Amcika, are blessings of the highest order On production of travelling tickets, luggage was chocked on the Moana, labelled, taken over, and sotted out wilh swift and business-like decision accoiding to its destination; and passengers were left tree to enjoy to their fullest bent the moving panorama of beauty that lay along our route A few da.vs' experience of the Canadian and American and Continental European systems of dealing with passengers' lug-gage leaves one plunged in a state of puzzled wonder that the tiavclhng public should continue to tolerate the risky and hapha/ai d method that is still permitted in Australia and New Zealand. Here, on arrival at one's destination, each individual passenger rushes, pushes, and struggles beloie a rough barrier in front of the luggage van, identifies his belongings as best he can amidst a long and tangled pile of boxes, valises, hat-cases, vv 1 aps ti links, swags, perambulatoi s, bonnetcases, dtuinmeis' samples, and household luiniture, and makes a dive to seize and hold his own before the festive

' ctook ' or ' magsman ' can remove them to that bourne lrom which stolen goods do not return. On the Cana-

dian and United States railroads the system of forwarding passengers' effects is Simple and Uniform. You first arm yourself with your travelling ticket. jYou then proceed to the baggage office with such of your belongings as you do not desire, or are not permitted, to cumber yourself with in the carriage (in American ' car '). You inform the baggage-master to which ' dopot ' (station) on your route you desire your impedimenta to be sent. Each piece is labelled in accordance with your instructions. A metal tag, numbered after the manner of a bank note, is at the same time securely attached to each by a leathern loop. On the same system of railroads no two tags bear the same combination of letters and figures. For each separate valise, box, etc., you receive a check — that is, a cardboard ticket. Each check bears the name of the issuing company, a number corresponding with that on the metallic tag attached to the piece of luggage for which it is issued, and the destination stamped or written plainly upon it. You pay excess charges, if any, and may then go your ways in peace. Arrived at the destination to which your effects have been consigned, you are free to leave them in the depot, where they are practically as secure as your scrip in the safe-deposit ; and you have, on production of your checks, free access to them at all times. Or, with or without the aid of wide-awake and willing baggage porters, you transfer them to cab or street car or overhead railroad. Or you hand your checks to one of the odd scores of registered express agents that are ever in attendance at arriving and departing trains, with instructions where to transfer your belongings to— instructions which are faithfully, promptly, and cheaply attended to. Or, finally, you pass your checks into the hands of the clerk at the hotel bureau, and your effects will be speedily and safely deposited in your bedroom. On some of the Australian State railways a tentative sort of check system is employed, at rather rare intervals, and only on the demand of the passenger. In Canada, the United States, and wherever I have travelled on Continental Europe the check system js in universal use. As we steamed out of Victoria's harbor, our vessel's bows pointed for a brief space to the south-east, where the broad inland sea narrows into long, deep fiords and sweeps past wooded islands and steep, rocky mountainsides, for over a hundred miles into the heart of the Washington State. It is the glorious waterway up which timber-laden steamers were coming from bustling young Seattle and Tacoma, and it winds away to the forestclad foothills upon which Mount Olympia raises its giant form. Soon, in a long, sweeping curve, the Moana's head came round to port, and our course lay a few points east of north to Vancouver. Our track lay through h've-and-eighty miles of a north-western paradise. Soon after leaving the open waters that look towards Seattle, wo were winding through a long and beautiful archipelago of Clustering Islands and islets of endless variety and a thousand shapes : some with sparse forest-trees and flowered meadow, most of them richly wooded to the water's edge ; here, so large that they seemed to be the shore-line of the mainland, there so small that they were little more than islet/-rocks holding their heads above the waters. How aptly Whittier's words describe the scene :—: — ' Beneath the westward-turning eye A thousand wooded islands lie — Gems of the waters ! — with each hue Of brightness set in ocean's blue. Each bears aloft its tuft of trees.' We rushed on the incoming tide past the massed grey rocks of Plumper's Pass and through the wider spaces where the soft-green waters of the ' Narrows ' tossed and swirled, and we glided into the open reaches whero the cir r cling islands drew off from each other and the fresh breeze from the purple-shadowed forests on the far-off shore came tripping lightly over the ripples. On our left nearly all the islands wore British territory ; on our right, they belonged to the land of the Stars and Stripes. At times the Moana cut the waters so close to the American side, that you could have tossed a biscuit ashore, and the long, slanting wave from the vessel's wake lapped the rocks and gambolled up the pebbly beach and played with the dark tresses of tho Douglas fir that trailed in the waters. Here and there picturesqjue Indian Catholic villages appeared in forest clearings, each with its modest presbytery and its pretty church with its ambitious-looking spire. To right and left, tree-clad islands,

And Ever More Islands ;

while bold, rugged headlands thrust their wooded heads into the waters. And to right and front and rear, circling the fast-changing diorama as in a massive frame, rose the great, snow-capped, jagged mountain heights of Washington and British Columbia.

' Westward the star of empire takes its way.' And westward, too, the gathering throng of American summer seekers follow, not content to go for ever swinging round the circle of the stale conventions of the many overdone coastal and mountain resorts of the east. One spot, however, retains its evergreen charm. It lies nearly 3000 miles to the eastward of Vancouver : the delightflul miniature archipelago of the Thousand Islands in the St. Lawrence ijiver, where iti empties out rot Lake Ontario. Thirty years ago it was almost unknown, save as a Tibet, a Sacred Land, of American and Canadian anglers. But one summer day in 1872, Mr. George M. Pullman entertained General Grant and a large party of American nabobs in the now far-famed archipelago. They came and saw and purchased, and soon the green, wooded islands were dotted with villas and cottages and great hotels and lordly castles like those upon the Rhine. Nature had made the Thousand Islands a spot of surpassing, if neglected, loveliness. Art turned it into A Fairyland. And thirty years have done it all. The past thirty years have also wrought a mighty transformation in British Columbia. The wealth of its fields and fisheries and forests and mines has attracted an almost unexampled inrush of population. And its genial climate, its scenic grandeur, Its facilities for fishing and the chase, will make it, year by year, a more and ever more favored spot of summer-pilgr image. The wheel of progress, once set in motion, gathers speed apace. Another thirty years will, no doubt, see some of the clustering wooded archipelagoes that extend for hundreds of miles along the Straits of Georgia far advanced in the process which has transformed the smaller islets of the St. Lawrence into 4 the Venice of America.' The sheltered and far-extending island-clusters of British Columbia form ideal spots on which, the over-wrought business man, ' too long in city pent,' might breathe the odor of pine-forests and ploughed fields nnd fresh-mown hay, amidst surroundings of alpine grandeur that ' Exhilarate the spirit and restore The tone of languid nature.' The Moana flew past the islands, past the open mouth of Canada's great salmon-river, the Fraser, and then, rounding a sharp-nosed 'promontory, swept into Burrard's Inlet. Vancouver was in full view : gay and sunlit ; its fine harbor thronged with shipping, its long, wide streets stretching away over the gently sloping hills to the towering mountain ranges that bar the way to the broad wheat-fields of the great North-west. The Moana rested her iron sides against the wharf four hours and fourteen minutes from the time when she cast off at Victoria. This (as the ' Daily Provinco ' of April 16 stated) represented a speed of 17.3 knots per hour and made the record for the journey. She made another record (22 days and some hours) for the long diagonal from Sydney across the Pacific by Fiji and Honolulu. The Canadian-Pacific Railway authorities did another act of greatly appreciated courtesy to the Moana passengers : they delayed the transcontinental express and suspended all running schedules to accommodate the antipodeans who desired to make a flying run eastward through the Rockies. Most of the passengers, however, remained to see the interesting and fast-growing young city that stands where there was nothing but a thick forest of giant firs until the day, 26 years ago, when the Canadian-Pacific Railway gouged its way through the rockj-ribbed mountains to the Pacific waters of Burr rard's Inlet.

The Rev. Dill Macky petitioned Rev. Canon Cooper, j?t Temora, to interest himself in furthering the interests of the Protestant Defence Association in that town, and received the following reply : — ' I have received your letter of the 12th instant, but I cannot take part in, or assist such a meeting as you propose. I have seen too much of the evils of religious animosity at home, especially in my own country, Ireland, that I should consider I was acting in an unchristian spirit if I assisted in any way to propagate or strengthen such feelings among the Australian people. This is supposed to be a land where there is civil and religious liberty. I must therefore conscientiously oppose any movement that would fetter or coerce the liberty of any xeligious body. 1