man he was, who ‘carried the profile of the line in his head,’ and, more than that, knew intimately the possibilities of back country which he had never seen nor travelled over.  There is always one such man on every line.  You can hear similar tales from drivers on the Great Western in England or Eurasian stationmasters on the big North-Western in India.  Then a fellow-traveller spoke, as many others had done, on the possibilities of Canadian union with the United States; and his language was not the language of Mr. Goldwin Smith.  It was brutal in places.  Summarised it came to a pronounced objection to having anything to do with a land rotten before it was ripe, a land with seven million negroes as yet unwelded into the population, their race-type unevolved, and rather more than crude notions on murder, marriage, and honesty.  ’We’ve picked up their ways of politics,’ he said mournfully.  ’That comes of living next door to them; but I don’t think we’re anxious to mix up with their other messes.  They say they don’t want us.  They keep on saying it.  There’s a nigger on the fence somewhere, or they wouldn’t lie about it.’

‘But does it follow that they are lying?’

’Sure.  I’ve lived among ’em.  They can’t go straight.  There’s some dam’ fraud at the back of it.’

From this belief he would not be shaken.  He had lived among them—­perhaps had been bested in trade.  Let them keep themselves and their manners and customs to their own side of the line, he said.

This is very sad and chilling.  It seemed quite otherwise in New York, where Canada was represented as a ripe plum ready to fell into Uncle Sam’s mouth when he should open it.  The Canadian has no special love for England—­the Mother of Colonies has a wonderful gift for alienating the affections of her own household by neglect—­but, perhaps, he loves his own country.  We ran out of the snow through mile upon mile of snow-sheds, braced with twelve-inch beams, and planked with two-inch planking.  In one place a snow slide had caught just the edge of a shed and scooped it away as a knife scoops cheese.  High up the hills men had built diverting barriers to turn the drifts, but the drifts had swept over everything, and lay five deep on the top of the sheds.  When we woke it was on the banks of the muddy Fraser River and the spring was hurrying to meet us.  The snow had gone; the pink blossoms of the wild currant were open, the budding alders stood misty green against the blue black of the pines, the brambles on the burnt stumps were in tenderest leaf, and every moss on every stone was this year’s work, fresh from the hand of the Maker.  The land opened into clearings of soft black earth.  At one station a hen had laid an egg and was telling the world about it.  The world answered with a breath of real spring—­spring that flooded the stuffy car and drove us out on the platform to snuff and sing and rejoice and pluck squashy green marsh-flags and throw them at the colts, and shout at the wild duck that rose from a jewel-green lakelet.  God be thanked that in travel one can follow the year!  This, my spring, I lost last November in New Zealand.  Now I shall hold her fast through Japan and the summer into New Zealand again.