Alps or Coast Range. Its climate is healthy, and in many parts mild. Its broken coast-line, 7000 miles in length, or nearly twice that of Great Britain, abounds in beauty. Its varied surface is seamed with deep valleys overhung by lofty mountains, whose western slopes are clothed to their tops with dense forests of noble pines and other timber trees. Between the mountain spurs spread grassy prairies.

2. The islands along the coast, Vancouver, Queen Charlotte, and others, have a climate not unlike that of our Devonshire and Cornwall. Just as the Gulf Stream in its northerly course keeps these counties warm in winter, so does a warm current flowing southward along the west coast of America drive away frost from the north Pacific seaboard.

3. The warm vapour hence arising, blown inward by the south-west winds, which prevail there as in Britain, supply the leaves with that moisture which enables trees to thrive in healthy vigour. Nor is their growth ever checked by those dry easterly winds which are so trying to man, beast, and plant, in our island home. In winter this excess of warm moisture in the air causes much fog and rain, but in summer the ground becomes warm enough to prevent fogs being thus formed.

4. East of the Cascade Range lies a tract which, being robbed of its due share of moisture by the western mountains, suffers from drought. The few thousand inhabitants of Victoria, the capital of the province, on Vancouver Island, enjoy a climate free from fog, cold, and excess of rain, a blue sky, and a glorious view of snowcapped peaks peering above the dark green of pine-clad slopes. For the main mass of the island is a mountain ridge, whose highest peak reaches more than twice the height of our English Cross Fell, and which forms a steep buttress along the

coast.

5. Facing this range, on the eastern side of the Strait of Georgia, towers the snowy ridge of the

Cascade Range. This name is due to the cascade formed by the great Columbia river in bursting through the mountains further south. Esquimault harbour, on the south of Vancouver's Island, is one of the finest in the North Pacific, and may some day serve as a coaling station for a British fleet. Nanaimo, on the south-east coast, is the outlet of a rich coalfield, and supplies the seaboard of the Western States with fuel.

6. The whole island is a little longer than Scotland, but has little more than half its breadth, and abounds in minerals, lakes full of fish, and short, swift streams, which supply water-power to drive mill-wheels, but no waterway for ships.

7. The mainland abounds in good inlets, sheltered from the roll of the Pacific by the outlying islands. Of its rivers, the best known is the Fraser, near whose mouth stands the former capital of the province, New Westminster. Up this river steamers ply for 150 miles, to Yale, but above this the rapids, formed in bursting through the Cascade Range, bar steam-boats. Port Moody, at the entrance of a safe and deep inlet, nine miles long, is the terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The Thompson, along whose valley the line passes, is the main feeder of the Fraser.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

BRITISH COLUMBIA-II.

1. The discovery of gold in the valley of the Fraser in 1858 brought a rush of diggers, and made this glorious country widely known. Gold has since been found in the basin of the Skeena, and along the upper waters of the great Peace River.* Next to gold and coal, the gigantic pines, which for hundreds

*The head waters of the Peace River are in British Columbia, though its course is easterly to Lake Athabasca.

of miles climb the mountain slopes, are the greatest source of wealth to this sparsely settled province of the Dominion. These pines exceed 300 feet in height. When we bear in mind how few church spires exceed half this height, we may picture to ourselves the grandeur of these lofty trees.

2. All our English fruits and garden-stuff thrive well around Victoria, New Westminster, Yale, and the other southern settlements. Next in value to her wealth of timber rank the fisheries of British Columbia. No bay or inlet throughout the whole length of its broken coast but teems with fish.

3. Up the rivers, through the lakes, into the streams swarm countless salmon, in such dense shoals that, in their blind eagerness to go further up stream to their spawning beds, they have been known to push each other ashore. This reminds one of the unseemly greed with which the self-seeking of mankind thrust aside any who seem to stand in the way of their success.

4. Fraser salmon of 30 lbs. weight have been sold for 6d. Chinese and native labourers are now largely employed, both on the Fraser, and also at the mouth of the more northerly River Skeena, to pack salmon in cans. The fish is thus shipped ready for use to lands where it is scarcer. The Skeena salmon are larger and fatter than those of the Fraser. In both these rivers huge sturgeon are also caught.

5. Off the coast, millions of candle-fish are taken. They are so full of oil that, when dried, they readily burn like candles. Anchovies, also, are found, besides cod, halibut, oysters, and herrings. The shoals of the latter are followed by dogfish and ground sharks. Oil extracted from the livers of these voracious fish, at Queen Charlotte Island, enables traders there to carry on a large business. The fishermen of British Columbia find a ready sale for their wares in the Sandwich Islands, South America, and even as far south as Australia.

6. From the north of the province costly furs are shipped. Among the most prized are those of the fox, black, red, and silver; the fur seal, the otter, both sea and river; the sable, beaver, musk rat, and marten. These are found chiefly in the basin of the Sticheen.

Here, too, roam herds of bison, elk, and reindeer. In the wooded mountains are found bears, black, brown, and grisly; and cariboo.

7. The lower valley of the Fraser has more rain in summer than Vancouver Island. Its middle course, east of the Cascade Range, lies through a rainless, and, therefore, barren tract. The lack of water between the Rocky and the Cascade Mountains hinders the gold-diggers from following their work in the dry season, as great force of water is needed to wash the broken rocks amid which gold is there found.

8. We have now roamed over sparsely peopled tracts, which may some day maintain as many millions of our race as they now do hundreds. We may well feel thankful that such a glorious country only awaits the coming of our spare workers to be turned from a wilderness to a land smiling with plenty. The completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway, of which the westernmost 500 miles lie wholly in British Columbia, welding together the whole Dominion, will throw open a wide field to the sons of that race whose march has been ever westward. May the future Canadian be as much beyond ourselves in all that becomes men and women as we are beyond our bloodthirsty forefathers of twenty centuries ago. May we learn to act as elder brothers and guides to those whom we deem lower races of mankind.

CHAPTER XXXV.

AUSTRALASIA.

1. We must now take a long farewell of that northern half of our globe on which we have so long been roaming. Thus far we have been wandering over lands which have their seasons all at the same time of the year. When the frosts of winter are making ice for the skater in Great Britain, they are also supplying our Canadian cousins with the leagues of snow over which their sledge-bells jangle merrily in the still, keen air. When the breath of spring coaxes the early violet to peep from our English hedgerows, it is clothing with tints of tender green the stately timber trees which climb the mountain sides in the far west of the Dominion.

2. While the short, cool English summer is decking our gardens with roses, our hedgerows with honeysuckle, and our fields with clover, a fiercer sun is ripening the heavy wheat-crops of Manitoba, and the melons, peaches, grapes, and apples of Ontario. When the boisterous winds of autumn are shaking the sere and yellow leaves from our copses and orchards, the forests of Canada are changing their deep-green summer livery for the red, purple, russet, and golden tints of "the fall," and the peaceful glories of the Indian summer are warning all to prepare for a five months' winter.

3. We are now to go where all this is otherwise, where Christmas falls on the hottest time of the year, because the sun is then at its highest in the heavens ; where autumn winds are blustering, while to us spring is breathing hopes of coming summer. Our wanderings hitherto have been westward over the north temperate zone. We have not as yet seen trees or living things that would not be able to live hear our own island home.