Frank G. Carpenter

“ We ride for miles where there is no sign of the works of man except the gleaming track, the snow sheds here and there, and the little mountain stations, where the shriek of our engine reverberates and echoes throughout the valley.
Each mile we cover seems to bring a new wonder. It may be a majestic waterfall, a towering peak, an over-hanging cliff, a glacier sparkling under the rays of the winter sun, or a vast panorama of glittering snow and ice standing out in bold contrast against the dark rocks and forests. ”

“ But nowhere have I found Mother Nature more lavish in scenes of rugged grandeur than right here in Canada not far from our own northern boundary.
The mountains change at every turn of the wheels of our train. Now they rise almost straight up on both sides of the track for hundreds upon hundreds of feet. They shut out the sun and their tops touch the sky. Now we shoot out into the open, and there is a long vista of jagged hills rising one above the other until they fade away into the peaks on the horizon. ”

“ In places the Yukon is bordered by low hills, behind which are mountains covered with grass, and, still farther on, peaks clad in their silvery garments of perpetual snow. At one place far back from the river, rising out of a park of the greenest of green, are rocky formations that look like castles, as clean cut and symmetrical as any to be seen on the banks of the Rhine. ”

“ The stream is continually building up and tearing down the land through which it flows, and the islands are in every stage of formation. Here they are sand bars as bare as the desert of Sahara; there they are dusted with the green of their first vegetation. A little farther on are patches of land with bushes as high as your waist, and farther still are islands covered with forest. Each island has its own shade of green, from the fresh hue of the sprouts of a wheatfield to the dark green mixed with silver that is common in the woods of Norway and Sweden. ”

“ THE OPEN DOOR IN CANADA Wherever I go in Canada I find the people on tiptoe with eagerness for the growth of their country. I do not mean that they are hungry for territory; they already have more than they can use for a century or two. The increases they are praying for are in population, in the size of their towns, in the area of land under cultivation, and in the number of families settling new farms.
For seventy-five years Canada has given a cordial welcome to immigrants and during the last quarter of a century she has been conducting recruiting campaigns to get settlers. ”

“ SASKATCHEWAN We have left Winnipeg and are now travelling across the great Canadian prairie, which stretches westward to the Rockies for a distance of eight hundred miles. This land, much of which in summer is in vast fields of golden grain, is now bare and brown, extending on and on in rolling treeless plains as far as our eyes can reach. Most of it is cut up into sections a mile square, divided by highway spaces one hundred feet wide. However, an automobile or wagon can go almost anywhere on the prairie, and everyone makes his own road. ”

“ Poor management or bad times, under your system, may bring disaster to a single bank, whereas with us losses in any branch would be easily absorbed in a great volume of business covering the whole country, and the shock hardly felt at all. Under our system it is a simple matter for a bank to concentrate its funds in the districts where they are most needed, and money flows easily into the channels where there is the greatest demand. This is of the utmost importance to Canada, for we have limited capital, and therefore must keep it liquid at all times. ”

“ THE CAPITAL OF THE YUKON I write of Dawson, the capital of Yukon Territory, the metropolis of the Klondike, and for years the richest mining camp of the world. In the height of its glory it had more than thirty thousand inhabitants, and in the region about there have been more than sixty thousand people. To-day the population of the town is less than one thousand. With the gradual exhaustion of the gold the population is decreasing, and it may be only a question of years when the precious metal will all have been taken from the ground and the chief reason for a city here will have disappeared. ”

“ My ride over the trail took me as far as the crest of the range beyond Little River, whence I returned to White Horse to go down the Yukon by steamer. The motor trip was a moving picture of the wonders of nature. On each side of the roadway the country is the same as it was when Columbus discovered America; it is the same as when the Scandinavian navigators drifted down our coast about 1000 A. D.—yes, I venture, the same as it was when old Cheops built his great pyramid on the banks of the Nile. ”

“ Indeed, I am prepared to believe, after what I have seen, that the Newfoundland fisherman is the world’s greatest “handy man.” He builds not only his house, but also his boats, landing stages, and fish-drying platforms; he makes his own nets, raises his own vegetables, and often has a sheep or two to furnish wool, which his wife will spin and weave into a suit of clothes or a jersey. ”

“ Rivers of wheat are sucked out of the barges, steamers, and freight cars, and flow at high speed into the storage bins. There are sixty miles of water-front railways, most of which have been electrified. Every operation possible is performed by machinery, and there are never more than a few workmen anywhere in sight. Yet the grain business is a source of great revenue to the city, and furnishes a living to thousands of people. One of the industries it has built up is that of making grain sacks, of which one firm here turns out two and one half millions a year. ”

“ Our own “wild and woolly West” has disappeared, but Canada still has vast areas of undeveloped country into which white men are pushing their way under conditions similar to those in the United States a generation or two ago. But where our frontier was notorious for its lawlessness, that of the Dominion is equally noted for its few crimes. In the Canadian Northwest a “bad man” cannot long escape the strong arm of the law, and in nine cases out of ten he meets with punishment both swift and sure. ”

“ Winnipeg is one of the chief markets of western North America. If you had a pair of long-distance glasses that would enable you to look from here to the Pacific you could find no city in western Canada that can approach it, and your eyes would travel as far as Toronto before any city of its size could be seen. ”

“ We find Vancouver’s commercial districts busy and crowded. At the wharves we see twenty ocean steamers loading lumber to be carried to all parts of the world, and learn that sixteen million feet are shipped from here in one month. Vancouver is increasing in importance as a wheat-shipping port. It sends a million bushels or more to the Orient, and twice as much to Europe by way of the Panama Canal. ”

“ Imagine a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of furs under one roof! Picture to your minds raw skins in bales, just as they were unloaded from an Indian canoe, and then look again and see wraps and coats made from them that would each bring five thousand dollars when sold on Fifth Avenue. If your imagination is vivid enough you may see the American beauties who will wear them and know how the furs will add to the sparkle of their eyes and at the same time lighten the purses of their sweethearts and husbands. ”

“ IRON MINES UNDER THE SEA I have just returned from a trip through caves richer than those of Aladdin. They lie far under the ocean, and their treasures surpass the wildest dreams of the Arabian Nights. The treasures are in iron ore, from forty nine to fifty two per cent. pure, and so abundant that they will be feeding steel mills for many generations to come.
I am speaking of the Wabana iron mines, located on, or rather under, Conception Bay on the southeast coast of Newfoundland. They are on an island seven miles long, three miles in width, and three hundred feet high. ”

“ During our Civil War Halifax served as a base for blockade runners, and the fortunes of some of its wealthy citizens of to-day were founded on the profits of this dangerous trade. No one dreamed then that within two generations England and America would be fighting side by side in a World War, that thousands of United States soldiers would sail from Halifax for the battlefields of Europe, or that an American admiral, commanding a fleet of destroyers, would establish his headquarters here. ”

“ Canada is still a young country, not yet done with pioneering, and its banks must lend a hand in promoting its development. When a branch bank is opened in a tent or shack in a new mining camp, the people know that the manager is there to give them service, and that he represents a strong institution with millions in assets. A remote fishing village or new paper-mill town is thus provided with banking facilities quite as effective as those of Montreal or Toronto. ”

“ The grain lands of western Canada begin in Manitoba in the fertile Red River valley, which is world famous for the fine quality of its wheat. From here to the Rockies is a prairie sea, with farmsteads for islands. American windmills tower over Saskatchewan prairie lands that were largely settled by American farmers. The province is still so thinly populated that it has only five people to every ten square miles. The wheat harvest, like time and tide, waits for no man and when the crop is ready it must be promptly cut. ”

“ We Americans are the greatest readers on earth. We consume about one third of the total world output of news-print paper. Our presses use more than two million tons in a year, or nearly twice as much as Europe, which has five times our population.
A generation ago Canada had not a dozen pulp mills, and only ten years ago its product was but one sixth92 that of the United States. Since then our production has hardly increased, but the Canadian output has so grown that it will soon exceed that of the States. Indeed, the industry now ranks second in the Dominion. ”

“ The Dominion is the second greatest wheat country in the world, ranking next to the United States. It is the granary of the British Empire, raising annually twice as much wheat as Australia and fifty million bushels more than India. The wheat crop is increasing and Canada may some day lead the world in its production. These prairies contain what is probably the most extensive unbroken area of grain land on earth. In fact, so much wheat is planted in some regions that it forms an almost continuous field reaching for hundreds of miles. ”

“ The roots go down to the ice and then spread out. When a tree dies one can easily pull the stump out, roots and all, and throw it aside. The overland trail was cleared in this way, and the sides of it are fenced with piles of such trees.
We are accustomed to think of this part of the world as all snow and ice. That is so in winter, but in summer the whole country is as spotted with flowers as a botanical garden. During our ride we passed great beds of fireweed and motored for miles between hedges of pink flowers, higher than the wheels of our automobile. ”

“ Much of the country is covered with spruce, and many of the farms have hedges and tall windbreaks of those trees. The farmhouses are large and well built; they are usually situated on high ground and surrounded by sloping fields and pastures considerably larger than the farm lots of New England. In some places the broad hills are shaped like the sand dunes of Cape Cod. At nearly every station freshly cut lumber was piled up, awaiting shipment, while one of the little rivers our train crossed was filled with birch logs floating down to a spool factory. ”