of the Anglo-American Age, nevertheless Victoria is substantially built, with good business blocks of stone and brick, and a Parliament House which is considered one of the finest examples of governmental edifices in Anglo-America. The houses of the wealthy citizens are generally surrounded by lawns and gardens, showing the taste and refinement of the people. The environs of the city are of marked beauty. Facing the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the long entrance to the British Columbian harbour and to the American waters of Puget Sound, is the natural park of Beacon Hill, from which the snow-capped heights of the Olympian Range in Washington, and the great dome of Mount Baker, form the background to a landscape which is much admired by the thousands of tourists who visit Victoria from all parts of the world. Besides being a residential place, the capital is important as a business and shipping centre. It is the first port of call for the great liners of the trans-Pacific service to Asia and the Orient, and the coast steamers for the north, and for the great freight vessels which journey from Europe viâ Cape Horn. Not far away is Esquimalt, forming the western suburbs of the city, with a fine harbour and fortifications which are among the strongest in the Empire. Esquimalt was the naval station for the British North Pacific fleet, but except for one or two ships the fleet has been withdrawn. Indeed, it is a noticeable fact all down this Great Pacific Coast, wherever we may journey, that the white ensign of Britain is regrettably non-conspicuous. Esquimalt has now been taken over by the Canadian Government as a Dominion naval base, and with recent Imperial developments and the creating of a Canadian navy will doubtless become of great importance as a centre of sea-power.

The commercial capital of British Columbia, and the city with the largest population (eighty thousand), is Vancouver, upon the splendid land-locked harbour. It is also the terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and from this great seaport of the Empire the fine Empress Line steamers sail for Australia and Asiatic ports, forming the complement by sea of the Canadian Pacific by land. From Vancouver the railway system of Canada and North America stretches eastwardly to the Atlantic Ocean, from three thousand miles

away, and southwards to the confines of Mexico and Guatemala; whilst the steamship lines give passage to Panama and all the ports of North and South America. The people of British Columbia are of marked British character and descent, as observed elsewhere; and in common with the Canadians generally, they differ from the character of the Americans in a marked degree. Notwithstanding that the boundary between the two countries of Canada and the United States, in the west, is only the imaginary geographical one of a parallel of latitude, law and order are much more respected, and life and property safer, on the Canadian than on the American side. The lynchings, bank-holding-up, and train robberies of the United States are scarcely ever heard of as occurring in Canada; for the Canadians have inherited in a much greater degree the British characteristic of holding the sacredness of human life. Yet both nations have much to learn from each other. Both are conquering for civilization those splendid new worlds fraught with such unending possibilities, working on steadfastly each in their allotted portion of the vineyard, in strenuous good-fellowship.

XI

BRITISH COLUMBIA: A BRITISH HERITAGE

IN the foregoing chapter we have observed the varied and truly remarkable range of topography and natural resources of this Pacific-fronting region which has fallen to dominion of the British people upon this great coast. Its mountainous character and its peculiarities of healthy climate give rise to varied and attractive natural conditions which, unlike the regions of Spanish-America generally, render it a fit home for a people of white imperial race, a counterpart of their progenitors in the far-off British Islands in similar latitudes but distant meridian.

Let us examine British Columbia from an “imperial point of view; considering first of all its mighty railway systems existing and building.

If there are two railways which should appeal to the imagination of the traveller in general and to the British citizen in particular, they are those two great trans-continental routes from the Atlantic to the Pacific littorals of the Dominion of Canada; routes of which one, the famous Canadian Pacific, has been in operation for a quarter of a century, and the other, the Grank Trunk Pacific, being pushed westward with all possible expedition to its completion in 1911. He who cares anything about the British Empire should recollect the great geographical and economical importance of these giant railways; and I will endeavour, briefly, to describe their salient points.

The Canadian Pacific Railway is 3000 miles from shore to shore; its conception and construction in the face of geographical and financial obstacles must always lead in the romance of history of railway building; its existence is of such importance as a public work as is only equalled in