Now There Sits A Great Spirit Under The Palm Trees Of The Navigator Group, A Thousand Leagues To The South, And He, Crowned With Roses And Laurels, Strings Together The Pearls Of Those Parts.

When he has done with this down there perhaps he will turn to the Smoky Seas and the Wonderful Adventures of Captain - .

Then there will be a tale to listen to.

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.

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