Victoria, British Columbia

“ Notwithstanding the importance claimed for Victoria as a commercial center and the capital of British Columbia, it has a rather young, loose-jointed appearance. The government buildings and some of the business blocks on the main streets are well built and imposing in bulk and architecture. ”

“ Of the thirteen thousand population six thousand are Chinese, and they form in the city a dense, insoluble, unassimilating mass. Victoria has one railway, that to the prosperous Nanaimo coal-mines. The island has abundance of coal, some copper, and timber. But Vancouver has taken away from Victoria all its importance as a port. The Government and Parliament buildings are detached, but pleasant and commodious edifices. There is a decorous British air about everything. Throughout British Columbia the judges and the lawyers wear the gown and band and the horse-hair wig. ”

“ As a Figure, the Indian is a Synopsis.
The land embraced by British Columbia is elemental—big. Every form of it, rivers, peaks, lakes and valley, is grand in the sense of bigness. It is a land of big trees, big mines, big ranches, big outlook. And the big outlook not only glances Eastward across a Continent, but wings its way outward across the Pacific with its ships touching the shores of Asia and Australia. ”

“ Alaric had not known that the Empress was to make one stop before taking her final departure from the coast. So when she was made fast to the outer wharf at Victoria, on the island of Vancouver, the largest city in British Columbia, and its capital, he felt like one who receives an unexpected reprieve from an unpleasant fate. ”

“ Already they have most of the things that make citizens pleased and proud—a beautiful site, fine streets, the most splendid of public parks, water-ways innumerable in front, and, behind, a country good to look at and rich in potentialities. Vancouver's industries, even if they do not justify the size of the place, are important and prosperous; and its propinquity to the salmon fisheries and vast timber tracts of British Columbia is something which alone would make a great town. In tone it is new world compared with Victoria, but old world compared with Seattle. ”

“ The oak groves and delicate undergrowth are a great contrast to the rude mill-sites of the Sound, where every thing is sacrificed to sending off so much lumber. He lives at Victoria in a simple, unpretending way. It was made a law in British Columbia, that no white man should live with an Indian woman as wife, without marrying her. He set the example himself, by marrying one of the half-breed Indian women. Some of the chief officers of the Hudson Bay Company did the same. The aristocracy of Victoria has a large admixture of Indian blood. ”

“ On the 28th April, 1871, or forty-one years ago, a meeting was held in Smith’s Hall, which was situated in the building now occupied by Hall and Gospel on Government Street. The meeting was called to organize a society of the pioneers of British Columbia, and especially of Victoria. Among those present, and one who took a prominent part in its work, was William P. Sayward. By the death of this pioneer I am the sole remaining member of those who founded the society. By Mr. Sayward’s death this city and province loses a man whom any city would be proud of. ”

“ The country is fabulously rich also in minerals, including gold. Scarcely the surface of the mineral richness has yet been scratched. When the mining resources are fully developed those resources alone would mean that British Columbia will be one of the richest States of the Dominion. The population of a country more than twice the size of Great Britain is as yet only about 600,000, and more than a third of its population is that of Vancouver city and Victoria in Vancouver island. ”

“ Then there are three perfect climates, for I have tasted 'em—California, Washington Territory, and British Columbia. I cannot say which is the loveliest.
When I left by steamer and struck across the Sound to our naval station at Victoria, Vancouver Island, I found in that quite English town of beautiful streets quite a colony of old men doing nothing but talking, fishing, and loafing at the Club. That means that the retired go to Victoria. On a thousand a year pension a man would be a millionnaire in these parts, and for four hundred he could live well. ”

“ Here, where the Japanese Current meets the cold air from off the coast, fogs are very liable to prevail, though it was not so in the writer’s case. We are now in comparatively open navigation and can lay our course without fear. Soon Queen Charlotte’s Sound is entered, and for a day and a half the steamer again skirts the picturesque shore of Vancouver, whose features are reproduced in the deep, quiet waters with marvelous distinctness, until finally we are once more landed at Victoria, the capital of British Columbia. ”

“ Part of this vast domain, upon the East, is Upper and Lower Canada; part, upon the West, is the new Colony of British Columbia, with Vancouver's Island (the Madeira of the Pacific) ; while the largest portion is held, as one great preserve, by the fur-trading Hudson's Bay Company, who, in right of a charter given by Charles II., in 1670, kill vermin for skins, and monopolise the trade with the Native Indians over a surface many times as big again as Great Britain and Ireland. Still, all this land is ours, for it owes allegiance to the sceptre of Victoria. ”

“ It must be remembered, too, that the early Indians did not know how to write in any form but that of carving and colour, so that the men who at different times carved these totems were not only artists of a kind, but historians, limning history—valuable Canadian history—upon the heart of the giant British Columbia cedar, to the end that all ages may read what happened in these parts when the world was young. ”

“ Both Vancouver and Victoria are already extremely important ports, and expect much additional ocean trade when the Panama Canal is opened. The northern port of Prince Rupert is also busy, although the railway, of which it is the terminal, is not yet completed. There are many other ports and inland towns; mining, railway construction, and lumbering camps all needing supplies; and the man who understands dairying or market-gardening or fruit growing has a choice of opportunities in British Columbia. ”

“ Down Nova Scotia way a man seems to concentrate better if he has a bit of wood in hand to whittle. And as his thoughts are concerned more or less with the sea; almost without thinking the bit of wood in his hand becomes a little model of a boat or a schooner, an oar, or a miniature mast. The wooden-ship was cradled in the fingers of these old-timers. Her spars may have been contributed by British Columbia, but what of that. Is not British Columbia, Canada’s Maritimer, too? So it is, from coast to coast.
Quebec’s carving is of a more domestic nature. ”

“ British Columbia in its valleys is a land of farms. It raises its own famous apples around its lakes, as Nova Scotia brings Bellefleurs and other{220} beauties to perfection, round the Bay of Fundy. Okanagan, Arrowhead, Kootenay, all have their ranches with their acres of meadow, bench-lands and climbing fields. And here, on these Ranches beside the Lake, backed by mountains from whose peaks the snow never melts, are perched the homes of the ranchers. ”

“ Each little log-cabin in its forest or surroundings of stump-land (and the big trees of British Columbia make an endless number of big stumps) is a stake in the land. Practically it represents the bombardment of the black and unfriendly wilderness with a home and a family—the best ammunition in the world for the pioneer.
There is a long list of miniature cities and little towns, with a hotel, a bank, a couple of grocery shops, a butcher, a drug-store with week-old newspapers from Winnipeg or Calgary, yesterday’s Vancouver Sheets and the Newspaper from the nearest Over-the-Border large city ”

“ There was not a brick building on the west side of Government Street save the residence of Thomas Harris on the corner of Bastion. His daughter, Mrs. Wilson, with a large family, is with us to-day. This building was afterward converted into the Bank of British Columbia.
The only brick building on the east side was the Victoria Hotel, now the Windsor, the first brick building in Victoria, constructed by George Richardson, still a resident. Where the B. C. Market is now was a neat cottage built of squared logs whitewashed, with green door and window casings. ”

“ We have been reliably informed that about 35,000 immigrants from California and elsewhere have arrived, and have produced a most marvellous state of transition in the two countries [Vancouver Island and British Columbia.] A number of wharves have been constructed this past season, a new timber bridge across James Bay has been built, giving access to the newly-erected Government offices for public lands and to Government House, which are of an ornamental character. Streets leading to the bridge have been graded and metalled over and are passable at all times. ”

“ Since the commencement of last year her population has at least doubled, and the increase of buildings and improvements has been almost in proportion. During the winter season the town is thronged with strangers from British Columbia and elsewhere, who migrate in the spring. Apart from that the number of the inhabitants may be set down at 6,000. Victoria contains about 1,500 buildings, some of them very creditable to the size of the city, among them the Government offices and the jail. There are several commodious brick hotels, the principal being the St. ”

“ The chief cities are Victoria, the capital, on Vancouver Island; and Vancouver on the mainland, New Westminster on the Fraser and Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. Rossland and Nelson in West Kootenay, as well as Fernie in East Kootenay and Grand Forks in the Boundary district, are also places of importance.
Mining.—Mining is the principal industry of British Columbia. The country is rich in gold, silver, copper, lead and coal, and has also iron deposits. From 1894 to 1904 the mining output increased from $4,225,717 to $18,977,359. ”

“ They continually recalled to us the surprise of some of the early explorers at seeing an uncultivated country look so much like a garden. We were told that much less rain falls here than on the American side; the winds depositing their moisture as snow on the mountains before they reach Victoria, which gives it a dryer winter climate.
Vancouver, in his narrative, repeatedly speaks of the serenity of the weather here, and says that the scenery recalled to him delightful places in England. He felt as if the smooth, lawn-like slopes of the island must have been cleared by man. ”

“ Romance seems to have reached idealism indeed when one of these peasants here on the uplands of a British Columbia valley meeting another on the highway, lifts his hat and makes a ceremonial bow—a bow arresting and almost Eastern in its slow dignity. The habitant of Quebec is hardly so solemn in making his obeisance to the roadside calvary. ”

“ Neither high nor low, but rising handsomely out of the water; indented with numerous coves, bays, and arms of the sea; its shore being dotted with trees, rather than heavily wooded, with some handsome villas in sight from the steamer, Vancouver's Island makes a good impression at the moment of approach—has, in fact, one of the handsomest approaches to its principal city of any country fronting on the Pacific.
It is impossible to have seen Victoria, the capital of the British possessions on the Pacific, and not give it a passing notice at least. ”

“ VIEWS ON THE PEAK. Nestling at the foot of the hills, and stretching from east to west for nearly five miles along the northern coast of the island, is the city of Victoria. A thriving hive of industry, built on a narrow riband of land, much of which has been won from the sea, it is a wonderful monument to the enterprise, energy, and success of the British as colonisers. The streets are well laid out and well kept, and the buildings which abut upon them are remarkable for their massive and imposing design. ”

“ The banks, the great insurance companies, and other financial concerns express their faith in the future of British Columbia by their willingness to advance millions for its agricultural and industrial development. The visitor to British Columbia soon discovers that the Province might well be named the Nova Scotia of the Pacific, for, as men of Scottish blood were among the pioneers, discoverers and settlers, so Scotsmen by the thousand, with their keen scent for places where money is to be made, have flocked, and are flocking, into British Columbia. ”

“ The organisation of part of the territory west of the Rocky Mountains into the province of British Columbia is rapidly modifying the character of its native population. But in recent years there were frequently to be found at Fort Vancouver upwards of two hundred voyageurs with their Indian wives and families, in addition to the factors and clerks. Thither also resorted for trading purposes, Chinook, Nootka, Nisqually, Walla-walla, Klikatat, Kalapurgas, Klackamuss, Cowlitz, and other Indians. ”

“ British Columbia has been called a "little paradise on earth," and if beauty of scenery, and the poetry of Nature, and the contentment, prosperity, and happiness of man can anywhere combine to make a spot on this earth anything approaching to a paradise, assuredly that spot is to be found in the fairest province of the Dominion of Canada. And how many of the names of the little towns which cling to the feet of the mountains mirrored in these lakes have not only musical, but richly poetic names! ”