On the Cars and Off ... With nineteen collotype plates and eighty-seven illustrations in the text. With additional matter on Klondike by P. A. Hurd

Front matter

ON THE CARS AND OFF, BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR. THE JAPS AT HOME. Fifth Edition. 2s. 6d. FRITHJOF AND INGEBJORG. 5s. AUSTRALIAN LYRICS. Is. A POETRY OF EXILES. 1s. A SUMMER CHRISTMAS. 6s. IN CORNWALL AND ACROSS THE SEA. 6s. EDWARD THE BLACK PRINCE. 4s. THE SPANISH ARMADA. 6d. LESTER THE LOYALIST. 2s. 6d. TO BE OBTAINED FROM WARD, LOCK & BOWDEN, LIMITED. THE GATE OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS i THE THREE SISTERS AT CANMORE. Vide p. 277. ON THE CARS AND OFF BEING THE JOURNAL OF A PIL GRIMAGE ALONG THE QUEEN'S HIGHWAY, FROM HALIFAX IN NOVA SCOTIA TO VICTORIA IN VANCOUVER'S ISLAND. BY DOUGLAS SLADEN, AUTHOR OF "THE JAPS AT HOME." With Nineteen Collotype Plates and Eighty-Seven Illustrations in the Text. TOtb ao&ttional Matter cm IRloncuke by n>. a. IburO. LONDON : WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED, WARWICK HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE, E.C NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE. {All rights reserved.) 2>eMcate& to tbe LORD DUFFERIN, WHOSE NAME IS A HOUSEHOLD-WORD IN CANADA.

NOTE. r I M1E letter in which Lord Duiferin did me the honour of accepting the dedication will be of such interest to all who love Canada, that, with his permission, I publish it. — D. S. Clandeboye, " Co. Down, Sept. 27, 1894. "My dear Mr. Sladen, — " I gladly acquiesce in your proposal to dedicate to me your forthcoming book, ' On the Cars and Off,' not only on account of the honour thus conferred upon me, but more especially as adding another link, however slight, to the ties by which my affections are indissolubly bound up with Canada and its people. Though many years have passed since I quitted Quebec, I have never ceased to take the deepest interest in those who accepted in so indulgent a spirit my poor attempts to do them loyal service. Since then the Dominion has gathered fresh strength and majesty.

Her great North-West has NOTE. been traversed by railways, and its prairies decorated by prosperous settlements, which ere long Avill have grown into populous cities. The voyage between Liverpool and Montreal has been reduced to half the number of days it required in my time, and Toronto has become, I am informed, one of the most beautiful cities on the Continent, whilst Quebec still sits upon her rock in all her pristine loveliness. In endeavouring to make our countrymen better acquainted with the glories and beauties of ' this Canada of ours,' you are rendering an equal service to the tAvo kindred communities that are joined in hand and heart across the Atlantic, and in united loyalty to a common throne. " Believe me, yours sincerely, "DUFFERIN AND AVA." TO THE READER. f I "'HIS does not pretend to be a historical, or statistical, -*- or, in any way, an authoritative book.

Chapter I. Nova Scotia

: THE LAND OF EVANGELINE. "TTTHAT a change from the floating hotel on the » » Pall River to the taut sea hull-dog Halifax, trading froni Boston to Halifax ! The change is from luxury to sturdiness ; in fact, from the American to the Canadian. Not that the Halifax is not as luxurious as an ocean-going hoat of her size need he — she has a delightful saloon — hut that she is essentially an ocean-going hoat, which all the winter through has to face the wildest weather in the world. She is the model of a ship for such a line, built of steel, with tremendously powerful engines, and not an inch of unnecessary top-hamper ; and in moments of danger the face of the genial Canadian who commands her takes a grim, un daunted expression, which makes him look like one of Nelson's captains, in the great pictures of England's sea-fights at Greenwich Hospital.

K.N. is written in every line of Captain Hill's face. A fair passage brings us to Halifax, and as we glide between the formidable batteries which guard this noble harbour our eyes gladden at the sight of the beautiful white ensign, which guards the com merce of England in Earth's many waters, floating over the stern of the Queen's ships, and the Union Jack shining over the summit of the citadel. British soil again. Uncle Sam, like St. Michael, is good to strangers ; but it is better to stand in one's own country, in whatever continent the particular bit of one's country may be. Britain is not two small islands, but an empire — Canadian, Australian, and what not — thrice the size of the United States. But to return to Halifax. It was in June, the leaves' and lovers' month, that we made our entry into Canada at the eastern point, the beautiful and romantic peninsula of Nova Scotia.

The staunch steel steamer went its fourteen knots past the sparsely inhabited coast, and the once important Shelburne, to Halifax. The sea was rough, and black semi submerged reefs showed their teeth all the Avay. There are few more dangerous coasts in the world, apart from the frequency of fogs and gales. Halifax is a veritable harbour of refuge, protected by its narrow mouth alike from storm and foe. There is no bar, and inside there are ten square miles of deep wrater ; and, as in Sydney Harbour, large ships can lie alongside of the wharves. Halifax is a beautiful place, a rus in urbe, a city full of turf and trees, clustered round the citadel as a mediæval town grew under the shelter of its castle. It has its citadel for a heart, and the arms of the sea to embrace it. It has a charmingly laid-ont public park, yet more charming because it is not laid out at all, but simply faithfully preserved Nature ; and delightful villas embowered in the wroody banks of "'The Arm."

The city is enlivened, moreover, with naval and military pomp. Stately men-of-war ride in the harbour, while dashing, sunburned British officers and well set-up, scarlet-tunicked Tommy Atkinses capture the feminine hearts of their re spective grades in society ; for Halifax is as particular about its society as an English garrison town. We spent a day in Halifax to drive through its pleasant streets, admire its court-house and one or two other fine old mansions, go over the seat of the Provincial Legislature and Supreme Court, and wander reverently round its old church, full of monuments to young scions of noble English families, who died in what was then a distant and perilous service. The English founders of Canada were literally men of the best blood in England ; and though the Provincial Government is anything but enthusiastic in the matter of patriotism, Haligonians remind me with intense pride that the Knight of Kars, and Sir Provo Wallis, and Stairs, the com panion of Stanley, were Nova Scotians ; as was the founder of the Cunard Line.

I was struck with the happy combination of public institutions in the Province Building — viz., the Houses of Parliament, the General Post-office, and the leading museum. There is, however, plenty of room for them all, for the Council contains but seventeen members and the Assembly thirty-eight. As we left Halifax by train for Windsor we were enraptured by the beauty of the environs. The mas-nificentlv wooded " Arm " was succeeded bv a bewildering tangle of lake and forest and hill, rivalling Norway. Windsor is a flourishing town of four thousand inhabitants, without anything apparently for so many to live on. But one learns that the real industry of the place is ship-owning, in which only two ports of Canada exceed it. One can hardly find a village on the Bay of Eundy that is not building its barque or schooner of staunch Nova Scotia spruce, much cheaper and easier to work than oak, though it does not last as long.

And when these are not owned in St. John, they are owned in Windsor for the most part. At Windsor we were, of course, a good deal taken up with the venerable University, which celebrated its centenary a few years ago. King's College, as it is called, is a veritable bit of old Oxford, looking exactly like one side of an Oxford quadrangle sheathed in wood, and having its Oxford encænia, its Oxford scale of degrees, its Oxford suite of gowns. Behind the college are its woods, a grove of spruce and pine, with here a delightful glade such as that of " The Three Elms," and there a clear pool fringed with bulrushes, and glowing with fleur-de-lys or golden water-lily, according to the season. In front, separated only by a line of quaint colonial elms, with their trunks feathered with leaves like the le°-s of Cochin China fowls, are deep aromatic meadows.

What meadows Windsor has ! Not Grand Pre itself only, but Grand Pre, Windsor, and all the places round are one vast dyked meadow. The meadowvestured limestone hills above the dykes are quamtness itseli — for they are full of deep " pots," as they are called in Yorkshire, down one of which a stream disappears like the famous Mallam River. These meadows, TROFESSOR C G. D. ROBERTS hill and dyke alike, are glowing with ox-eyes, self-heal, and St. John's wort, with here and there an orchid, or an archipelago of reed-fringed pools full of the purple Fleur-de-lys Iris — the Purple Flag. And what berries ! — wood and meadow alike carpeted Avith wild strawberries, and every little thicketed hollow a tangle of wild raspberries, blueberries, pigeonberries, and mitchella. Over this earthly Paradise we wandered with the poets, Bliss Carman and Charles Roberts, the University Professor of Literature, bathed in sunshine all day and sleeping at night in the quaint old college, where we had large, airy rooms, and lived on the fat of the land for a sovereign a week. 0 1 Fortitnati nimiurn sua si bona norint, the people who live in this delicious country.

No Avonder that Roberts's nature-poems are so lovely. Charles Roberts, "the Canadian Laureate" — Nova Scotia's link Avith the great world — lives in a pretty house in the croft behind the college. His muscular exploits have instilled in the undergraduates a genuine regard for poetry, which has resulted in a more literary atmosphere than I eA-er remember finding in an university. Roberts is a well-knit man, a little beloAAr middle height, with large broAA'n eyes, spectacled from OA"erAArork, in general appearance reminding one strongly of Rudyard Kipling. He is devoted to literature, hospitality, and sport. He feels his seclusion from the great world, but living in the Arcadia of North America has given his poetry a certain aroma that one gets noAvhere else in English verse. Professor Roberts, Avhose Avork has a great vogue in the American magazines, spreads Nature in her romantic Nova Scotian garb before us like an open book.

He is not mystical like Mr. Carman, the other nature-poet of the Maritime Provinces. NOVA SCOTIA : THE LAND OF EVANGEL1NE. 7 I had almost forgotten the Avon, that red daughter of Fundy, by Avhose broad bosom Roberts and I AA^atched the building of a ship — a spruce schooner of seven hundred tons— that Avas being put together by the hand labour of a handful of men. The Avon at Ioav tide is a valley of red sand and mud ; but at the turn the mighty tides of Fundy roll up like a bush fire, and make a river as great as the Thames at London Bridge. As we sailed doAA*n it to the basin of Minas to pay our respects to mighty Blomidon, we found a ship building at every little toAvn, some as large as tAA^o thousand tons. Nor must I leave Windsor Avithout mentioningthe dear old country house, emboAvered in trees, AArhere Judge Haliburton, himself a King's College graduate, and the only Canadian novelist avIio has a Avorld-Avide reputation, Avrote " Sam Slick," and the queer old beetling block-house fort, that Avas standing when the Acadians sailed aAvay to their southern exile.

From Windsor we did not fail to go once, tAvice, thrice, to Grand Pre — the inconspicuous Acadian village, made halloAA'ed ground by the genius of Longfellow, though his felloAV Bostonian, Parkinan, has shoAvn that he AAras rather ignorant and ex aggerated in his sympathies. Parkinan has proved that the British Government had been most long suli'ering Ayith the Acadians. King George might Avell have said : " Forty vears long have I been V fy ZJ grieved of this generation ; for they have erred in their hearts and ha\'e not knoAvn my ways." The English Government had done its best to make them contented. Thougha conquered people, their re ligion, their property, and much freedom had been secured to them ; and no doubt this simple, kindly, industrious people would have been delighted to live placidly under the, for once, paternal SAvay of the Georges.

But the arch-schemer, La Loutre, avIio was the secret agent of France, corresponding to the Russian agents in the Balkan peninsula, did not intend them to become placid subjects of King George. He meant them always to be ready to rise in revolt Avhen any invading force from France appeared in Nova Scotia ; and to do this he had tc keep the international sore open — an end for Avhich he was ready to use the most approved Land-League methods. The Indians, and Acadians disguised as Indians, cut off lonely English settlers ; Avell-disposed Acadians Avere boycotted ; supplies Avere either denied to their English masters, or sold at fabulous jirices, and furnished, if need Avere, for nothing to the enemies of the English ; and New England Avas kept in constant dread of the French making Nova Scotia a basis for a descent upon their shores.

NeAV England Avas even more anxious than Old England that these treasonable practices should be put an end to, and accordingly the Acadians Avere told they Avould absolutely have to take the oath to behave themselves loyally and sincerely to England, which they had been evading through forty years of the greatest kindness ever shown to a conquered people. NOVA SCOTIA : THE LAND OF EVANGELINE. 9 Unwilling, or unable, to believe that the Government was actuallv in earnest this time, theAT Avere at length removed, Avith all the humanity possible (families being taken to the same places, and Avhere feasible in the same ships), by a body of troops, Avith few exceptions, from NeAV England. That there was much real suffering is Avithout doubt. These good souls were as fond of their holdings as an Irish peasant, and had been rebellious, not from inclination, but because they Avere body and soul in the control of the Church, Avhich Avas a mere machine in the hands of the Abbe La Loutre.

Their sacrifices and sufferings gave LongfelloAV genuine material, Avhich he worked up Avith the art of an advocate, avIio picks out eA'ery point for his client and against his ad versary, and would be embarrassed by extenuating circumstances. Nathless, Evangeline is a lovely poem, and Avill hold men's hearts and illuminate Grand Pre as long as English is the language of this continent. Dear old Longfellow ! And noAv for Grand Pre. What is Grand Pre ? A deep aromatic meadow dyked in from the basin of Minas and its tributary rivers, and rising on the land side to a gently SAvelling horseshoe hill, on the declivities of Avhich stand what remains of a village. One can still trace not a feAV cellars, more or less filled in with loose stones by the present owners, in the hopes of winning a yard and a half more for cultivation.

These sites are generally marked by thickets of glorious wild raspberries, and are found, as a rule, near the lines of stunted willows planted by the Acadians, and cut doAvn in vain by their conquerors. The vitality of Willows is astonishing : the closer they are polled the thicker they grow, Here and there are pathetic little touches. By one cellar or foundation a footworn threshold-stone is still in situ, and round it cinnamon roses, once in its garden, run wild. Doavii in the river meadow is a Avell, and at the hill-foot the debris of a forge. From the bottom of this Avell the other day were dredged a number of articles, some of AAdiich in all probability were flung into it by Colonel Winslow's New Englanders Avhen they Avere rendering the village uninhabitable for stragglers, avIio had disobeyed the summons to come in.

Two Avell-bucket chains, three or four hatchet heads of an old-fashioned pattern, a queer clasp knife, a knife and fork, undoubtedly old French, a bucket handle or tAvo, and the like, are the principal relics ; and they are preserved, as they should be, at the house of the gentleman Avho is noAv " The Avealthiest farmer in Grand Pre." The Avell is fondly called "Evangeline's Well." Grand Pre is delightfully pretty. The meadoAV itself, like all Acadian meadows, is deep Avith hay grass, aromatic Avith clover, and gloAving with Avild floAvers ; above all marguerites, evening primroses, and St. John's Avort as large as its garden cousin the rose of Sharon ; and there are not a feAV purple Canterbury bells. Round the edges of the raihvay, NOVA SCOTIA : THE LAND OF EVANGELINE. 11 the roads, the cellars — round the edges of everything — are thickets of exquisite Avild roses of an unusually deep crimson.

I gathered a hatful, to press as relics of a place which LongfelloAv had made me yearn to visit. Dotted about the hills are picturesque farmsteads ernboAvered in orchards ; and when one climbs the hill the prospect is magnificent. At one's feet, according to the tide, is broad red sand or broad red sea — a veritable Red Sea ; and across the basin on opposite sides are the stately promontories of Blomidon, looking like a couching lion, and Cheverie, standing out as bold and clear as the ramparts of Quebec. In the blue haze of the distance are the Five Islands and the fine bluff of Partridge Island, Avith Parrsboro' on its elboAv, and nearer home the Avinding estuary of the far-famed Gaspereau, and that little bay Avhere rode the little fleet of King's ships while WinsloAv and his NeAV Englanders Avent through the dis agreeable task of carrying out a political necessity against sheep misled by their shepherd.

When I Avas there, Nova Scotia rejoiced in the funniest of legal fictions — the Scott Act, prohibiting the sale of spirituous liquors. It Avas openly dis regarded. In the larger toAvns hotels sold liquor as if the Act did not exist, and in the smaller ones it Avas merely a case of finding out Avhether the milkman, or the milliner, or the fancy stationer, would oblige you. Nova Scotia differs to this extent from Vermont, Avhere in prohibitionist toAvns every diversified with hop-gardens, the homesteads are more ancient and much finer, and exquisite church towers, dating back to far beyond the Reformation, Avill overhang a river at intervals of a mile or two. And the same applies to the Annapolis Valley ; To the American, charmed by a richly cultivated landscape, it is almost the nearest approach to scenery such as he rhapsodises over from the AvindoAv of the railwav carriage as he flies from Dover to London by the Continental Express.

The Englishman prefers the Avild grandeur of forest and Avater betAveen Halifax and Mount Uniacke. However, as one approaches Annapolis, the vieAV is made more interesting by some fine old Loyalist houses. Annapolis, or as it is called by its inhabit ants, Annapolis Royal, in proud remembrance that it is the original Port Royal of the Ordre de Bon Temps, Lescarbot, Charnisay, and others, who have filled the poetry of Canada Avith an old-Avorld romance, is the oldest toAvn on the continent north of Florida — a quaint old toAvn, with clear old Avooden colonial houses overgrown Avith creepers. It amply makes up in picturesqueness for the tamer scenery of the rich valleys, Avhich are its avenues from Halifax, with its queer old Avooden quays, such as one reads of in Dickens's London noA'els, lying betAveen a fine pool above and a lordly sea-basin beloAV, at the foot of forested hills which send doAvn tributary rivers ; and with its capelike point occupied by the quaint Fort, pictured over and over again for the antique block-house and archAvay, above which floated the lilies of France Avhen Louis Quatorze Avas king.

The oldest part of the city is across the river. Three or four miles from the present Granville rose the original forts of De Monts and Poutrincourt, immortal for the genius of Cham plain and the Avit of the merry Lescarbot. From the fifteen gentlemen of the colony Champlain organised the most famous dining club that has ever been on NeAV World soil. " He organised them," says Hannay, the historian of Acadia, " into a society Avhich he called the Ordre de Bon Temps. Each guest in his turn became steward and caterer for the day, during which he wore the collar of the order and a napkin, and carried a staff. At dinner he marshalled the Avay to the table at the head of the procession of the guests. After supper he resigned the insignia of the office to his successor, with the ceremony of drinking to him in a cup of Avine.

It became the point of honour with each guest, as his day of service came, to have the table well supplied Avith game, either by his OAArn exertions or by purchase from the Indians ; and, in consequence, they fared sumptuously during the Avhole winter, so that Lescarbot was enabled to reply Avith truth to some Parisian epicures, Avho made sport of their coarse fare, that they lived as luxuri ously as they could have clone in the street Aux Ours in Paris, and at much less cost. It is painful, hoAvever, to be obliged to record that, although bread and game were so abundant, the wine of those festive Frenchmen fell short, so that before spring they Avere reduced from three quarts a man daily to the inconsiderable alloAvance of a pint." A quaint old place is Granville, with its fast-decaying Avooden wharves, once lined Avith shipping from the East and West Indies, in the good old days Avhen Salem, Massachusetts, was a great seaport, and Nathaniel HaAvthorne its Collector.

Annapolis then did a brisk trade in what the Germans call " colonial wares " — sugar and spice, and all that's nice ; and even uoav a considerable register of Avooden shipping hails from this port, though for the most part employed on other routes. Granville is a happy hunting-ground of pastmasters of merchant vessels — bluff sea cajotains Avith blue eyes and purple faces, who have braved Atlantic hurricanes their half-century apiece in stout barques built of spruce on the Bay of Fundy. They rather affect modern brick villas, Avith no trade-mark beyond hard oil-paintings or woohvork portraits of the shijDs they have commanded, and perhaps a toj)-heavy model of a schooner, put together by some sailor Avith a jack-knife to beguile a voyage round the world. No wonder the French chose Granville for their abiding city in the NeAV World — nestling betAveen lofty hills and the beautiful Annapolis basin, a stretch of AArater nearly tAventy miles long, land-locked from sea-storms.

Of the original Port Royal, founded in 1606, hardly a stone remains, though there is a fine old fort on the Annapolis side, Avith its turf ramparts abandoned to AA'ild floAvers, but its block-house of massive masonry still intact. It Avas in this very block-house, with its steep-pitched roof, that the citizens of 1781 wrere locked up while the toAATn AA'as being looted by tAvo American war-ships, Avhich had taken it by surprise. Old as it is, Annapolis has unsubdued Avilds within a drive of it, where the beaver still builds and the trout fishing is in virgin plenty. There are a good many Indians in the vicinity — I forget Avhether Melicetes or Micmacs — clothed and civilised as the Hurons round Quebec. They are famous for the magnificent birch-barks they manu facture ; especially their sea-going canoes, staunch enough to navigate the great basin and coast along the shores of Fundy.

We passed a good many of them fishing as wre journeyed across the bay, in the smart white steamer City of Monticello, from the original French settlement to that of the American Loyalists, who left the United States in 1783, rather than live under an alien flag. I mean of course the stately rock founded city of St. John. FOREST AND FELL: THE HEAD OF THE EMERALD LAKE NEAR FIELD, B.C. Vide p.

Chapter II. New Brunswick

: THE LAND OF THE LOYALISTS. r I day that Ave crossed the Bay of Fundy, tAvo -*- of our most rooted preconceptions were upset — Ave were pursued by a Avail, and saAV a Avaterfall turn round and run up. We Avere on the sea Avhen a Avhite Avail, many feet in height, fleAv after us faster than our SAvift little steamer. It turned out to be one of the sudden fogs of Fundy, which roll up in this Avay. The other phenomenon Ave saw when Mr. Bliss Carman, the delightful Canadian poet who has just taken literary England by storm Avith his Shelley-like poeticality of A^ision, drove us out just before dinner to see the falls of the noble river from Avhich St. John takes its name. These are, in a way, the most remarkable in the wrorld. Through a gorge Avith angry black cliffs the river at Ioav tide hurls itself in a mighty Avaterfall into the harbour, Avhile the incoming tide when it gets sufficiently high pours back over the Avail of rock into the river ; and at certain states of the tide there is no fall at all, but a smooth river safely navigable by boats and rafts, — the fact being that there is a mere Avail of rock running across the bed of the river in a closely shut-in gorge.

When the phenomenon Avas explained to me by Mr. Carman, and I saAV the mad swirl as the huge volume of water poured over the cliff at the turn of the tide, I said I thought it Avas very high-spirited of the citizens to preserve this wonder of the Avorld Avhen a dollar's worth of dynamite Avould bloAV up the barrier and make everything plain sailing. Then he expounded the origin and use of this lusus naturœ. A A'olcanic upheaval eleArated a strip of the NeAV Brunswick coast, leaving the fertile country behind, lying round the stately river Avith its tributaries and lakes, about the best land in Canada, beloAV sea-leA'el ; and if it were not for the double Avaterfall, the raA-enina; tides of Fundy would turn the garden of NeAV Brunswick into another Zuyder Zee. FeAV things in Canada impressed me more than St. John, a city of spires, built upon a lofty acropolis, dominating one of the world's great harbours.

As Ave steamed up to the Market Slip) below King Street, Mr. Carman reminded me that it was at the head of this estuary that La Tour built the famous fort from which he defied the superior authority of Charnisay, the representative of the most Christian king in Acadia, Avho lorded it at Port Royal. In the sIoav days of the seventeenth century sailing ships the authority of the King of France was more or less shadowy on the other side of the stormy Atlantic, and La Tour was so eager in his struggle for independence against Charnisay NEW BRUNSWICK: THE LAND OF THE LOYALISTS. 21 that he did not hesitate to call in the aid of the English in Massachusetts. For a long time La Tour maintained himself against the superior authority and poAver of Charnisay, and one attack on the fort at the mouth of the St. John, during his absence, was beaten off by his beautiful and spirited wife.

But the second time he was aAvay the attack Avas more successful ; and Madame La Tour surrendered, only to find the terms of surrender scornfully repudiated when the invaders had taken possession. Charnisay hung every man in the garrison, and only spared Madame La Tour when he had subjected her to the ignominy of Witnessing the executions Avith a halter round her neck and wearing fetters. One at least of the best Canadian historical poems deals with this subject. After this there were various small settlements on the St. John of the English from the eastern colonies. But they are lost sight of in the surpass ing interest of that grey morning in the May of 1783 when the five thousand Loyalists, men of the best blood and brains in America — judges, lawyers, clergymen, doctors, and the principal merchants and landoAvners — came to pioneer in the wilderness rather than forswear their allegiance to Great Britain.

In one day the city of five thousand people was founded and was christened ParrtoAvn, a name which was almost immediately changed to St. John ; and about the same time Avhat is uoav NeAV BrunsAvick, and had previously been included in Acadia, Avas erected into a separate colony. The United Empire Loyalists, as they are called, have thriven exceedingly, and to-day St. John is the fifth toAvn in Canada for population, and the first for the tonnage of its shipping. For this latter it has the sjiecial advantage of being one of the tAvo great seaports in Eastern Canada open to navigation all the year round. Truly impressive is it to land at St. John. It rises up so quickly from the water's edge ; and no town in Canada has statelier streets. These are due to a blessing in disguise, the great fire of June 1877, in which nearly a couple of thousand buildings Avere burnt ; and though the city felt the rebuilding severely from the financial point of A'ieAV, there is no doubt that the streets gained immensely in regularity and magnificence.