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THE ONLY REAL INDIAN BUY WORK FROM HIM.

The lodges Champlain saw belonged to an Algonquin horde, 'Denizens of surrounding wilds, and gatherers of their only harvest--skins of the moose, cariboo, and bear; fur of the beaver, marten, otter, fox, wild cat, and lynx.'

Other days, other harvests. From the shack of the Only Real Indian I saw one stout tourist issue forth , laden with three toy bows and arrows, as many miniature canoes, and what appeared to be a couple of patchwork bedspreads. That the descendant of braves should live by making patchwork bedspreads seemed too much, even though I had given up as illusions the Red Indians of my boyhood. Far rather would I at that moment have seen the stout tourist come forth, either scalpless himself, or dangling at his ample belt the raven locks of the Only Real Indian.

In the night we went on to Chicoutimi, but saw nothing of that, being asleep. We had sung songs, American songs--'John Brown's Body,' 'Marching through Georgia,' etc., till a late hour of the night; and in any case the bracing river air would have insured sleep. Only in the morning as we came down the Saguenay again did I wake to its beauty and strangeness. Men have learnt to tunnel through rocks at last, but the Saguenay learnt this art for itself thousands of years ago. A wide water tunnel through the sheer rock, a roofless tunnel, open to the sky, that is the Saguenay--most magnificent at the point where Cap Trinit? looms up, a wall of darkness fifteen hundred feet high.

It is a curious fact that famous landscapes always produce a remarkable frivolity in the human tourist visiting them. Perhaps it is man's instinct to assert himself against nature. When the boat draws opposite Cap Trinit?, stewards produce buckets of stones and passengers are invited to try and hit the Cap with the stones from impossible distances. I do not know that it greatly added to the pleasure of the trip, but we all tried to hit the cliff with the stones and most of us failed, and had to content ourselves with drawing echoes from it. After that we went on, and some of the white whales which are characteristic of the Saguenay began to appear, and experienced travellers explained that they were not really white whales but a sort of white porpoise. Once again, as we passed it, Tadousac was invisible, but this time because a white fog had wrapped it round. So silently we turned out of the Saguenay into the St. Lawrence. I think the silence of the Saguenay was what had most impressed me. Not very long before I had steamed down the Hoogly where by day the kites wheel and shriek overhead, and the air buzzes with insects' sounds, and all night the jackals scream--a noisy river, full of treacherous sandbanks, its shores green with the bright poisonous green of the East. The Saguenay, unique as it is in many ways, seemed by the contrast of its deepness and silence, and by the fresh darkness of the rocks and trees that shut it in, to be peculiarly a river of the West. I do not know if it would have made the somewhat bald young American tired.

It is only fair to say that his attitude about Quebec is not at all characteristic of his fellow-countrymen. For most Americans, Quebec province is becoming almost as popular a playground as Switzerland is for Englishmen. Camping out has become a great craze among Americans, and if the camping out can be done amid unspoilt natural surroundings, close to rivers where one can fish and woods where one can hunt, an ideal holiday is assured them. I forget who it was who said that much of the old American versatility and nobility had disappeared since the American boys left off whittling sticks, but in any case the desire to whittle sticks is renewed again among them, from Mr. Roosevelt downwards. And in Canada this whittling of sticks--this return to nature--can easily be accomplished. For the north is still there, unexploited. In Quebec province, fishing and hunting clubs of Quebec and Montreal have secured the rights over vast tracts of country. So vast are those tracts that one or two clubs, I was told, have not even set eyes on all the trout streams they preserve. This may be an exaggeration, though probably not a great one. There remains--especially in Ontario--much water and wood that any one may sport in unlicensed, or get access to by permission of the local hotel proprietor. Some of the Americans on the boat had been fishing in Quebec streams and told me of excellent sport they had had, so that I began to wonder why no Englishmen ever came this way. The voyage to Canada is a little further than that to Norway, but there are more fish in Canada. And there is certainly only one Saguenay in the world.

STE. ANNE DE BEAUPR? AND A TRAVELLER'S VOW

Ste. Anne de Beaupr? is usually referred to as the Lourdes of Canada. When a metaphor of this sort is used it usually means that the spot referred to is in some way inferior to the original. In the case of Ste. Anne de Beaupr?, the inferiority is not, I believe, in the matter of the number of miracles wrought there, but in the matter of general picturesqueness. Ste. Anne de Beaupr? is not nearly so picturesque as Lourdes. If you wish to palliate this fact, you say, as one writer has said, that 'The beauty of modern architecture mingles at Beaupr? with the remains of a hoary past.' If you do not wish to palliate it, you say, as I do, that Ste. Anne de Beaupr? is not in the least picturesque. I did not particularly care for the modern architecture, and the hoary past is not particularly in evidence. Do not suppose me to say that Beaupr? has not a hoary past. Red Indians, long before the days of railroads, travelled thither to pray at the feet of Ste. Anne. Breton seamen, who belong only to tradition, promised a shrine to Ste. Anne, if she would save them from shipwreck. They erected the first chapel. The second and larger chapel was built as far back as 1657, and miracles were quite frequent from then onwards. Nevertheless, the basilica is quite new, and so is the whole appearance of the place.

I visited it in company with a French-Canadian commercial traveller. He was a great big good-looking youth with curly hair and blue eyes, and he travelled in corsets or something of that sort for a Montreal firm. I could not help thinking that many ladies would buy corsets from him or anything else whether they wanted them or not, because of his charming boyish manner and his good looks. He asked me to go to Ste. Anne de Beaupr? with him. He said that he supposed that I was not a Catholic, but that did not matter. He wished to go to the good Ste. Anne, and it would be a good thing to go. He had been several times before, but he had not been for several years. He could easily take the afternoon off, and first of all we would go by the electric train to the good Ste. Anne, and then on the way back we would step off at the Falls station, and see the Montmorency Falls, and also the Zoo that is there. It would be great fun to see the Zoo. He had not seen the Zoo for several years, and the animals would be very interesting.

So we took an afternoon electric train. There are electric trains for pilgrims, of whom a hundred thousand at least are said to visit the shrine yearly, and there are also electric trains for tourists. We took a tourist train, and having secured one of the little handbooks supplied by the electric company, had the gratification of knowing that even if the car was pretty full it was, so the company claimed, run at a greater rate of speed than any other electric service.

At times in Canada I found myself getting very slack in attempting descriptions of things simply because some company that had rights of transport over the particular district had, so to speak, thrust into my hand some pamphlet in which all the description was done for me. Thus it was in the case of the district line between Quebec and Ste. Anne de Beaupr?. 'It is difficult,' I read in the electric company's handbook which we had secured, 'to describe in words the dainty beauty of the scenery along this route.'

'That is a nuisance,' I said to my companion, 'because words are the only things I could describe it in.'

'It is much better to smoke,' said he.

So we smoked; and now I tell you straight out of that illogical pamphlet, that 'The route from Quebec to Ste. Anne may be compared to a splendid panorama. There are shady woodlands and green pastures, undulating hills and sparkling rivers, whose banks are lined with pretty villages, the tinned spires of the parish churches rising above the rest of the houses, sparkling in the sun.' There, a little ungrammatically, you have the scene 'to which,' adds my pamphlet, 'the Falls of Montmorency river add a touch of grandeur.' Ste. Anne de Beaupr? itself is twenty-one miles from Quebec. We went straight from the station into the church, where the first thing to catch the eye are the votive offerings and particularly the crutches, walking-sticks, and other appliances left there by pilgrims who, having been cured of their infirmities by miracle, had no further use for these material aids. It is difficult to arrange such things in any way that can be called artistic, and since the general effect is nothing but ugly it might be wise for the church officials also to dispense with such material aids to faith. Apart from these the most striking object is the miraculous statue. It stands on a pedestal ten feet high and twelve feet from the communion rails. The pedestal was the gift of a New York lady, the statue itself was presented by a Belgian family. At the foot of it many people were kneeling. A mass was being said and the church was very full, and every time a petitioner got up from his knees from the feet of the statue another moved down the aisle and took his or her place. I suppose we were in the church fully half an hour before my companion found an opportunity to go and kneel at the feet of the good Ste. Anne, and having watched him there, I got up from my place and went out into the village. It was rather a depressing village, full of small hotels and restaurants and shops stocked with miraculous souvenirs. I suppose more rubbish is sold in this line than in any other. After inspecting a variety of it, I bought a bottle of cider and a local cigar and sat on a fence smoking until my friend reappeared. He came out most subdued and grave--not in the least the boisterous person who had gone in--and said we would now go back. As we had to wait half an hour for a returning train, I suggested that we should go and have some more cider, but he said no, he would rather drink from the holy spring. 'Although this water,' said my pamphlet, 'has always been known to be there, it is only within the last thirty or thirty-five years that the pilgrims began to make a pious use of it. What particular occasion gave rise to this confidence, or when this practice first spread among the people, cannot be positively asserted. However it may be, it is undeniable that faith in the water from the fountain has become general, and the use of it, from motives of devotion, often produces effects of a marvellous nature.' Unfortunately, the fountain was not working, owing, I expect, to the water having got low in the dry weather, and my friend had to go without his drink. He said, however, that it did not matter, and remained in a grave, aloof state all the way back in the train as far as the Falls station, and indeed till we got to the Zoo in the Kent house grounds. There, the exertion of trying to get the beavers to cease working and come out and show themselves to me--an exertion finally crowned with success, for the fat, furry, silent creatures came out and sat on a log for us--livened him up a bit. But he fell into a muse again in front of the cage containing the timber wolf, and remained there so long that I was almost overcome by the smell of this ferocious animal. I got him away at last, and I do not think he spoke after that until we got to Quebec and were walking from the station to our inn.

'I have made a vow,' he then said suddenly.

'What sort of vow?' I inquired.

'I made it this afternoon,' he said, 'to the good Ste. Anne--never any more to drink whisky.'

'It's not a bad vow to have made,' I said.

'No,' he said seriously, 'whisky is very terrible stuff. I shall never drink it again. When I drink it it goes very quickly to my head. Soon I am tight. That will not do.'

'Much better not to drink it certainly,' I agreed.

'Yes,' he continued vehemently. 'I am married. You did not guess that perhaps? Also it is only recently that I have gone "on the road." If the company I work for hears that I go about and get tight, I shall at once be fired. So I shall not drink any more whisky. Never. That is why I made the vow to the good Ste. Anne.'

We walked in silence the rest of the way to the inn, and I reflected on the nature of vows. It seemed very possible that a vow like this might easily be a help to my companion. He was obviously not what is called a strong character. It is strange how often a charm of manner goes with a weakness of the will. And commercial travelling--particularly perhaps in Canada--lays a man open to the temptations of drink. If he went on drinking, it would probably mean the ruin of the young girl he had married. Only one has always the feeling that a vow is only a partial aid to keeping upright, just as a stick is to walking. A man may lean too heavily on either. Moreover, the making of a vow, while it may strengthen a man temporarily in one direction tends to leave him unbalanced in other directions. It makes him feel so strong perhaps in one part of him that he forgets other parts where he is weak. I rather think that the last part of these somewhat superficial reflections upon vows occurred to me later in the evening, and not as we were walking home. We had had supper by that time, and my companion had drunk a good deal of water during the meal--a beverage, by the way, which is not particularly safe either here or in any other Canadian town. At times he had been depressed by it, at times elevated. After we had smoked together and he had grown more and more restless, he jumped up and said:

'Let us go out for a walk.'

'Where to?' I asked.

'Oh, up on to the terrace,' he said. 'I tell you,' he went on excitedly, 'where I will take you. There is a special place up there that I know very well. It is where one meets the girls. We will go there to-night and meet the girls.'

Really, I could have given a very good exposition of the temptation offered by vows at that moment when he suggested this Sentimental Journey.

A HABITANT VILLAGE AND ITS NOTAIRE

'Il trotte bien.'

The second time I made use of this simple compliment I was again being driven by a French Canadian, and again it was on an extraordinarily bad road. But the vehicle was a sulky, and the road was a country road--about halfway between Quebec and Montreal. I had been already two days in the Habitant country which the ordinary Englishman misses. Tourists in particular will go through French Canada too fast. Their first stop after Quebec is Montreal, and the guide-books help them to believe that they have lost nothing. It may be that they do lose nothing in the way of spectacular views or big hotels, but on the other hand they have undoubtedly lost the peaceful charm of many a Laurentian village, and they have seen nothing at all of the life of the French-Canadian farmer. That is a pity for the English tourist, because they too, the Habitants, belong to the Empire, and we ought to know them for what they are apart from their politics--courteous, solid, essentially prudent folk, often well to do, but with no disposition to make a show of themselves.

I had spent my two days at the villa of a most hospitable French lady, in one of the older villages on the St. Lawrence. It was not exactly a beautiful village--rather ramshackle in fact--but remarkably peaceful, and the great smooth river running by must give it a perennial charm, such as comes from having the sea near. I had missed my train going from that village, and had passed the time by taking lunch at a little inn near the station. It was Friday, and the landlord gave me pike and eggs for lunch. I had seen my pike and several others lying in a sandy ditch near, passing a sort of amphibious life in it, until Friday and a guest should make it necessary for one of them to go into the frying pan. The landlord came and chatted with me while I had lunch, and was grieved to find that I was not a Catholic. I was English, but not Catholic? I said that was so, and he shook his head sorrowfully. But there were Catholics in England, he asked a little later. I said, Oh yes, certainly. Many? I said that there must be a good many, but I could not tell him the exact numbers. Would a tenth of the English at least be Catholics, he next demanded? I said I thought at least that number, but I left him, I fear, a disappointed man. He had hoped more from England than that, and even my strenuous praise of the fried pike did not draw a smile from him.

My compliment about the horse drawing the sulky--to go back to that drive, obtained a better response. The driver replied in the French tongue: 'Monsieur, he trots very well, particularly in considering that he has the age of twenty-eight years.'

I said that this was wonderful, and the driver replied that it was, but that in French Canada such wonders did happen. He was intensely patriotic, and this made the drive more interesting. He was all for French-Canadian things, excepting, I think, the roads, which were indeed nothing but ruts, some of the ruts being less deep than the others, and being selected accordingly for the greater convenience of our ancient steed. I liked his patriotism. It was at once so genuine and so complete. For example, when I said that I had not seen any Jersey cows on the farms we had passed, the driver said: 'No. The cow of Jersey is a good cow and gives much milk. But the Canadian cow is a better cow and gives still more milk.' I was unable to make out what the prevailing milch-cow was in that part. Canada has, I believe, begun to swear by the Holstein, but this can hardly as yet be claimed as the Canadian cow. Still it passed the time very pleasantly to have my driver so enthusiastic, and of what should a man speak well, if not of his own country? He articulated his French very slowly and distinctly, so that I was able to understand him more easily than I should have understood a European Frenchman. I was surprised at this, because one is usually told that French Canadians talk so queerly that they are very hard to follow. Perhaps my obvious inferiority in the language caused those Habitants I met to adapt themselves to my necessity. I can only say that from a few days' experience of conversation with all sorts and conditions, I carried away the impression that French-Canadian was a very clear and easy language. As for the country, I should call it serene and spacious in aspect rather than fine. The farmhouses are pleasant enough and comfortable within, but their immediate surroundings are apt to be untidy. Very seldom of course does one see a flower garden, and vegetables do not make amends for the lack of flowers. On the other hand, the tobacco patch that is so frequently to be seen in the neighbourhood of the small farms is pleasant to look at, especially for one who thinks much of smoke. There is not much satisfaction to the eye in the small wired fields, nor would either the farming or the soil startle an English farmer. I think that the maple woods are the one thing that he would regard with real envy.

Nevertheless, no one would have denied that it was a really pretty village, to which my driver brought me at last in the sulky. It was built all round an old church in a sort of dell, behind which the land rose steeply to a wood of maples. I had been given an introduction to the cur?, and we drove to his house by the church, only to be told by the sexton that Monsieur le Cur? had, much to his regret, been called to Quebec, but had begged that I would go over to the notaire, who would be pleased to show me everything that was to be seen. We went to the notaire. I think he was the postmaster too--at any rate he lived in the post office, and a very kindly old gentleman he was. I do not know one I have liked more on so short an acquaintance, though he did start by giving me Canadian wine to drink. It was a sort of port or sherry--or both mixed--and was made, I think he said, in Montreal. It had the genuine oily taste, but also a smack of vinegar. That in itself would not have mattered so much, if the notaire had not said it was best drunk with a little water, and provided me with water from a saline spring which had its source in his backyard. These saline springs seem not uncommon in Canada, and must be considered as a distinct asset. But not mixed with port. Some local tobacco which was very good, as indeed much of the tobacco grown in Quebec province seems to be, took the taste away, and after that the notaire proposed that he should take me out to see one of the huts where they boil down the maple water in the early spring. He told me that my own horse and driver should rest, and that we should go on the carriage of Monsieur Blanc which was, it appeared, already in waiting, together with Monsieur Blanc himself. Monsieur Blanc was the local miller, and solely for the purpose of showing the village to a stranger from England he had put himself to all this trouble. After we had all bowed to one another and exchanged compliments, we started for the maple wood, and all the way the notaire explained to me the economy of the village. It appeared that the farms round averaged eighty acres of arable land, and a man and his son would work one of that size. Each farmer would also have rights of grazing on pasture land which was held in common--not to mention his piece of maple wood. All the farmers belonged to a co-operative farmers' society, which saved much when purchasing seeds, implements, and so forth. The notaire himself was secretary of this society. I believe he was also secretary of pretty well everything that mattered, and might be regarded as the business uncle of the parish in which the cur? was spiritual father. As we drove along, avoiding roads as much as possible, because the fields were so much more level, he greeted everybody and everybody greeted him, stopping their field work for the purpose. Jules left hay-making to show us the shortest cut to the nearest hut; Antoine fetched the key. It was a tiny wooden shack, the one we inspected--standing in the middle of the trees--with just room in it for the heating apparatus and the boilers to boil the maple water in. The cups which are attached to the trees in the early spring, when the sap begins to run--the tapping is done high up--hung along the wooden walls. The notaire explained the whole process to me. In the spring, when all is sleet and slush and nothing can be done on the farm, the farmer and perhaps his wife come up into the wood, and tap the trees and boil the water up until the syrup is formed. It takes them days, very cold days, and they camp out in the hut, though it hardly seemed possible that there should be room for them. But it is all very healthy and pleasant, and they drink so much of the syrup, while they are working, that they usually go back to their farms very 'fat and salubrious.' So the notaire said, and he also assured me that seven years before another English visitor who spoke French very badly had come to the village in the spring, and slept in one of the huts for days, and helped make the sugar and enjoyed himself thoroughly. I told the notaire I could quite believe it and wished I had come in the spring too. I am not sure that I shall not go back in the spring some day, for the simplicity of the place was fascinating, even though the railway had come closer, and land had doubled in value, and the farmers were more scientific than they used to be and made more money, though even so--as the notaire earnestly declared--they would would never spend it on show. I remarked that the notaire, even while he was recounting these modern innovations, such as wealth, was not carried away by the glory of them as a Westerner would be. He took a simple pride in the fact that the village marched forward, but he was prouder still that it remained modest. And when we got back to the post office, he told me that what he liked best was the simplicity of it all. People used to ask him sometimes why he who spoke English and Latin and Greek, for he had been five years at college, qualifying to become a notaire, should be content to live in such a small out-of-the-way place, instead of setting up in Quebec or Montreal. They could not understand that to be one's own master, and not to be rushed hither and thither at the beck of clients, contented him, especially in a place where the farmers looked upon him as their friend, and he could play the organ in the village church. He made me understand it very well, even though his English was rusty , and he had a scholarly dislike to using any but the right word, and he would sometimes bring up a dozen wrong ones and reject them, before our united efforts found the only one that conveyed his precise meaning.

I think I understood, and many times on the way back, seated behind the twenty-eight year-old horse, I said to myself, that altogether the notaire was a very fine old gentleman, and if there were many such to be found in the French Canadian villages, I hoped they would not change too soon. To make the money circulate--after the fashion of the Toronto drummer--is a virtue no doubt; but courtesy and simplicity and prudence are also virtues that not the greatest country that is yet to come will find itself able to dispense with.

GLIMPSES OF MONTREAL

Just as a man who knows mountains can in a little time describe the character of a mountain that is new to him, so a man who knows the country in general will soon find himself becoming acquainted with new country. It is not so with cities. Only a long residence in it will reveal the character of a city. I suppose that is because man is more subtle than nature. A clay land is always a clay land; it produces the same crops, the same weeds, the same men. But who will undertake to say what a city on a clay land produces? Only the man who has long been familiar with the particular city, and he probably will not even be aware that it stands on clay.

This is preparatory to saying that being a stranger to Montreal, I did not find out much about it in the few days I was there, and I will not pretend that I did. It is, I suppose, architecturally, far the most beautiful city in the Dominion, and indeed in the Western Hemisphere, and for that very reason appears less strange to European eyes than most other Canadian towns. I would not suggest that all European towns are architecturally beautiful, or that Montreal is anything but Canadian inwardly. Superficially it looks like some fine French town. It also smells French.

'But them thereon didst only breathe And sentst it back to me, Since when it blows and smells, I swear, Not of itself but thee.'

The time has gone by for great commercial undertakings to be conducted by means of gesticulations or by the aid of an interpreter. Master and man must speak the same language, at any rate outwardly. Therefore all clerks learn English, which is also American; and I take it that statistics, if they were kept, would show many more French Canadians speaking English every year--whatever they may be thinking.

So commerce, long the butt of moralists, takes its part among the moral influences of the world. Already writers like Mr. Angell have begun to assure us that it alone--by reason of its enormous and far-reaching interests--can keep international war at a distance: here is an example of how it increases peace within a nation. In the end, perhaps, Mammon himself may appear, purged of his grossness upon the canonical list--St. Mammon!

Montreal has, so I am told, sixty-four millionaires--real, not dollar millionaires; self-made, not descended millionaires; strenuous, not idle millionaires. Most of them live in Sherbrooke Street, or near it, on the way up to the Mountain. It is a fine wide road with an extraordinary variety of houses in it. You cannot point to any one house and say this is the sort of house a millionaire builds, for the next one is quite different, and so is the next and the next. It is natural that Canadians should be more original in their house-building than our millionaires. They are more original men altogether. They have made their money in a more original way, and when they have made it, they have to think out original methods of spending it--unlike ours, who find the etiquette of it all ready made for them, and a practised set of people who want nothing more than to be able to help millionaires scatter their money in the only correct and fashionable way. You have to think everything out for yourself in Canada, even to the spending of your money. That is, if you have the money in large quantities. For the ordinary person the inherent slipperiness of the dollar suffices, and he will find that it will circulate itself without his worrying. The diversity of house-building, such as may be found in Sherbrooke Street, should give encouragement to Canadian architects, but does, as a matter of fact, let in the American architects as well. I could not feel that they had altogether succeeded in this street--certainly not half so well as they have succeeded in some of the business buildings, especially the interior of the Bank of Montreal--but that is not surprising. Architects must have their motives, and the reasons that went to the building of some of the stately private houses of Europe have ceased to exist now. The most that a man can demand from his house--certainly in Canada--is that it shall be luxurious. Nobody is going to keep retainers there. The three hundred servants even that went to make up the household of an Elizabethan nobleman could not be had in Canada either for love or money. Those three hundred serve in the bank or the shops--not in the houses--and it is there that the big man works also. Slowly we come to the right proportions of things; nor am I suggesting that the private houses of the Canadian millionaires are in the least lacking in size. They are as large as they need be, if not larger; and where they did not altogether succeed was, I thought, in the attempt made with some of them to achieve importance by rococo effects. The road itself, curiously enough, was rather bad and rutty; I began to think, seeing it, that there is some strange influence at work in French Canada which prevents a road from ever being first-rate. It may be that since roads there are only needed in summer, for a half year instead of a whole one, the care and affection we lavish upon them is not necessary. The good snow comes and turns Sherbrooke Street into a sleigh-bearing thoroughfare only comparable with those of St. Petersburg. The ruts are drifted up and vanish--why bother about them? It is a good enough explanation. If another is needed, it may be that there is money to be made--by those in charge of the keeping up of the roads--by the simple method of not keeping them up.

Montreal has slums as well as Sherbrooke Street, which seems to show that sixty-four millionaires are no real guarantee of a city's perfectness. I heard about those slums from the editor of one of Montreal's leading newspapers. The subject arose out of a question I put him as to whether he could tell me the difference between Conservatives and Liberals in Canada. Some people maintain that the difference even in England is so slight as to be unreal. To a Canadian who is not much of a politician , the question amounts to being a catch question. He has to think for a long time before he answers. This editor, who was a Liberal, took it quite coolly.

'Oh,' he said, 'Liberals here are very much like Liberals in the old country; we stand for Social Reform and the interests of the People.'

Then he told me about the slums in Montreal. But for these I should have felt doubtful about the parallel, even though it was drawn by so eminent an authority as the editor of a newspaper. For, naturally, at present in most parts of Canada there is no People to stand for, just as there are no peers and no Constitution. Where there are slums, there may be a People to be represented. The more is the pity that there should be slums. Why does Montreal possess them? Largely, I suppose, for the reason that any very great city possesses them. There are landlords who can make money out of them, there are people so poor that they will live in them; and their poverty is accounted for by the fact that cities draw the destitute as the moon the tides. It seems against reason that Canada, capable of absorbing hundreds of thousands of immigrants, calling for them to be absorbed, so long as they are able men, should have any destitute to be drawn to the cities; but it has to be remembered that no immigration laws can really prevent a percentage of incapables arriving. They may not be incapables as such, but they are incapables on the land, which is indeed in Canada endlessly absorbent, but absorbent only of those who have in them in some way the land-spirit. To expect the land to take on hordes of the city-bred without ever failing is to dream. It would be easier for the sea to swallow men clothed in cork jackets. Some are bound to be rejected, and they turn to the cities. But the cities of a New World cannot absorb indefinite numbers of men; London or Glasgow cannot. The work is not there for them--not for all of them.

The Canadian winter also has to be remembered as a factor driving men to cities like Montreal. Even good men on the land cannot always during the winter obtain work on the farms; or think that the little they can make there is not worth while. So they, too, make for the cities, not always to their own improving. This problem of the Canadian winter is one that has still to be reckoned with, and no doubt the Canadians will solve it in due course--perhaps by some extension of the Russian methods whereby the peasant of the summer becomes the handicraftsman of the winter. It is not the winter itself that is at fault in Canada, as used to be thought; it is the method of dealing with it. The Canadian may not mind the hard, cold months--may even boast of them, but he cannot ignore them. And the solution of the winter problem seems to be that though Canada is marked out as an agricultural country, it must also equally become a manufacturing one, so that men--who cannot hibernate like dormice--may be able to work the year through. The whitest nation is that nation whose leisure is got by choice not by compulsion.

There must be local reasons, too, for Montreal slums, but these a visitor is not happy in describing. Municipal mismanagement is unfortunately not exclusive to Europe; and my editor gave me examples of it in Montreal which were impressive without being novel.

He also pointed out that there were forty thousand Jews in Montreal, as though that might have something to do with her slums. Others point out that the Catholic Church, which believes that the poor must be always with us, is supreme in Montreal; poverty and the faith, they say, go always together. I think it is truest to argue that, while all these things are in their degree contributory, it is not fair to fix on any one of them as the chief cause of the ill. One thing is certain. Montreal's slums are not typical of Canada, but of a great city. No great city has as yet found itself completely, and the greater it is, the less soluble are its problems of poverty. It may be that they can be resolved only by the great cities ceasing to exist in the form we know them.

Meanwhile it looks as though the welfare of employees is not being neglected by the leading directors of industry. Take, for example, the Angus Shops, which are larger than any other engineering shops in the world. Here are built these huge houses of cranks and pistons, the railway engines of the Canadian Pacific, that hustle one from end to end of the Dominion; here also are turned out all else that appertains to the biggest railway company in existence. In these shops a system has been introduced which might be called a Bourneville system, only Canadianised. The management refers to it as Welfare Work, and it consists mainly in certain methods whereby the men can obtain good food--while they are working--at low prices, apprentices are helped to an education, the cost of 'holiday homes' is defrayed, and so on. Very sensibly the management admits the system to be a part of a business plan, which it finds remunerative. The idea that beneficence plays a leading part in it is almost scouted; indeed it would not be easy to persuade Canadian working-men that their bosses were doing things from charity. I went over the shops, and found them built on a vast and airy scale. Not being an engineering sort of person, I usually feel, when I invade a machinery place, like some unfortunate beetle that has strayed into a beehive, and may at any moment be attacked by the busy and alarming creatures that are buzzing about there. As I watched the huge engines, swung like bags of feathers from the roof, some black demon would heave showers of sparks at me, and when I started back, another would come raiding out with red-hot tongs. I admired respectfully. But I am one of those who can enjoy my honey just as much without knowing just how it was made. Still, here was a big bit of Montreal, and what miles of French houses with green shutters one drove past to get to it!

It would be absurd to suggest that poverty or slums are conspicuous things in Montreal. The average tourist will see none of them, but only many beautiful things--from the Bank of Montreal to the Cathedral, from the Lachine Rapids to the Mountain. I will not describe shooting the Rapids, it has been so often done. I wish I could describe the view from the Mountain. It is the most beautiful view of a city that can be seen. Marseilles from her hill is beautiful, so is Paris from Champigny. From neither of these, nor from any hill that I know of, is there so complete a view of so fair a city. The Mountain is wooded, and through the arches of the trees you gain a score of changing outlooks; but from the edge you see all Montreal--houses and streets and spires, each roof and gate, each chimney and window--so it seems. And beyond, the great river, and beyond, and on every side--Canada. If there were a mountain above Oxford, something like this might be seen.

It was up this wooded steep to Fletcher's field, where an altar had been set up, that the great Eucharistic procession of 1910 wound its way. I was in Montreal just before this event, for which the Montrealers had spent months preparing, and I realised a little why Montreal hopes some day to be the New Rome. The whole city was in a fervour of enthusiasm. A society had been formed for the special purpose of growing flowers to line the way along which the Cardinal-legate would walk, and gifts of money for the same purpose had been received from every part of Canada. The papers, of course, were full of every detail about Church dignitaries arriving or about to arrive. Nor were the shops behindhand. 'Eucharistic Congress! House decoration at moderate prices' was everywhere placarded; and papal flags and papal arms were to be had cheap. There were Congress sales, too, and you could buy Congress 'creations' from the dressmakers, Congress hats from the milliners, Congress boots from the bootmakers.

On the day that Cardinal Vannutelli arrived, in a dismal and violent downpour of rain, all Montreal in macintoshes was to be seen dashing for the Bonsecours wharf to offer its respectful greetings to the papal legate.

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