But The First Touch Of Dry Land Makes The Sea And All Upon It Unreal.
Five Minutes After The Traveller
Is on the C.P.R, train at Vancouver
there is no romance of blue water, but another kind - the
Life of the
train into which he comes to grow as into life aboard ship. A week on
wheels turns a man into a part of the machine. He knows when the train
will stop to water, wait for news of the trestle ahead, drop the
dining-car, slip into a siding to let the West-bound mail go by, or yell
through the thick night for an engine to help push up the bank. The
snort, the snap and whine of the air-brakes have a meaning for him, and
he learns to distinguish between noises - between the rattle of a
loose lamp and the ugly rattle of small stones on a scarped
embankment - between the 'Hoot! toot!' that scares wandering cows from
the line, and the dry roar of the engine at the distance-signal. In
England the railway came late into a settled country fenced round with
the terrors of the law, and it has remained ever since just a little
outside daily life - a thing to be respected. Here it strolls along, with
its hands in its pockets and a straw in its mouth, on the heels of the
rough-hewn trail or log road - a platformless, regulationless necessity;
and it is treated even by sick persons and young children with a
familiarity that sometimes affects the death-rate. There was a small
maiden aged seven, who honoured our smoking compartment with her
presence when other excitements failed, and it was she that said to the
conductor, 'When do we change crews? I want to pick water-lilies - yellow
ones.' A mere halt she knew would not suffice for her needs; but the
regular fifteen-minute stop, when the red-painted tool-chest was taken
off the rear car and a new gang came aboard. The big man bent down to
little Impudence - 'Want to pick lilies, eh? What would you do if the
cars went on and took mama away, Sis?' 'Take the, next train,' she
replied, 'and tell the conductor to send me to Brooklyn. I live there.'
'But s'pose he wouldn't?' 'He'd have to,' said Young America. 'I'd be a
lost child.'
Now, from the province of Alberta to Brooklyn, U.S.A., may be three
thousand miles. A great stretch of that distance is as new as the day
before yesterday, and strewn with townships in every stage of growth
from the city of one round house, two log huts, and a Chinese camp
somewhere in the foot-hills of the Selkirks, to Winnipeg with her
league-long main street and her warring newspapers. Just at present
there is an epidemic of politics in Manitoba, and brass bands and
notices of committee meetings are splashed about the towns.
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