Westward with the Prince of Wales Part 23

Riding in a fast car from the scene of the sport to the station gave the Prince an indication of what winter would be like in the prairies, where the wind from the north sweeps down unresisted, and with such a force that it seems to go right through all coats, save the Canadian winter armour of "c.o.o.n coat" or fur.

Brandon and Portage la Prairie, two determined little towns, gave the Prince a snow welcome. The weather kept neither grown-ups nor children away from the liveliest of greetings. They were attractive halts in a run that took the Prince to Winnipeg.

In Winnipeg we appreciated the virtues of central heating, for the wind made the whole universe extraordinarily cold. Up to this I had considered central heating a stuffy subject, and I am yet not fully converted, for though there are those who say it can be controlled quite easily, I have yet to meet the superman who can do it.

All the same, steam heating has its virtues. On those cold days in Winnipeg we lived in a world that knew not draughts. It was almost a solemn joy to sit in a bath, and to feel that though half of one was in hot water, the other half was also comfortable and not the prey of every devilish current of icy air such as sports itself in those damp refrigerators, the British bathrooms. Naturally, since we are staying in a Canadian hotel of the up-to-date kind, a bathroom was attached to our bedroom as a mere matter of course. But if we had had to wander Anglicanly along corridors in search of a bathroom we should still have been draught free, for central heating deals with corridors, and stairways, and halls and lounges with one universal gesture.

Not merely in so fine an hotel as the "Royal Alexandra," but in the private houses and the "apartments" (English--"flats"), central heat and good bathrooms are items of everyday--though many Canadians burn an open fire in their sitting-rooms for the comfortable look it gives.

These things are not merely for comfort, but they are, with the hardwood floors, the mail chutes in "apartment" houses and the rest, part of the great science of labour-saving, which the whole of America practises.

One realizes the need of labour-saving when one sees in a theatre vestibule the following notice:

"ALL CHILDREN NOT LEFT WITH THE MATRON MUST BE PAID FOR"

As nurses are rare, and servants are rare, the Americans have to organize themselves to simplify the task of housekeeping.

The "apartments" are compact and neat, arranged for easy handling. The rents are not cheap. One very pleasant little "apartment," "hired" by a newly-married couple, was made up of three rooms, a kitchen and a balcony. It was in the suburbs. The rent was thirty-five dollars a month, say eighty-four pounds a year, for a flat, which, under the same conditions (rates included) could be obtained for thirty-five pounds a year in England in pre-war days. For this, however, central heating and perpetual hot water are included. My friend told me that his electric light bill came to three dollars a month, and his gas bill (for cooking) to rather less than that. In Calgary a friend of mine had a pretty "apartment" even smaller in a suburban district, was paying about ninety-six pounds a year over all, _i.e._, rent, light and gas (central heating being included). Most of these "apartments" have an ice house (refrigerator) attached, blocks of ice being left on the doorstep every morning, just as the milk is left.

Winnipeg is an attractive town to live in. It has plenty of amus.e.m.e.nts, including several good theatres and music halls--fed, of course, mainly from American sources. Mrs. Walker, whose husband owns the Walker Theatre, told me that Laurence Irving and his wife acted on their stage just before sailing on the ill-fated _Empress of Ireland_.

She went up to his dressing-room to say "Good-bye" to him, the night before he left, and in answer to her knock he suddenly appeared before her, dressed in black from head to foot, for the character he was playing that night. His appearance filled her with dread--it seemed to her, as she looked at him, that something terrible was to happen. Both Laurence Irving and his wife were, however, in excellent spirits.

Canada treated them royally, and they were going back home full of optimism, confident that the play that Laurence Irving was then finishing--one dealing with Napoleon--was to prove the greatest success of their careers.

We met at Winnipeg, also, a number of the brilliant men and women journalists whose energy and brains are responsible for the many fine papers that focus in this city. We had met such companions of our own dispensation in other cities, in Ottawa, Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto and Quebec. They were not merely keen and accomplished craftsmen, but their hospitality to us was always of the most delightful generosity.

The Princess visit to Winnipeg was undertaken to give him the opportunity of saying _au revoir_ to the West. At the vivid luncheon he gave in the attractive Alexandra Hotel to all the leaders of the West, men and women, he insisted that it was _au revoir_, and that so well had the West treated him, so attractive was its atmosphere, that he meant not merely to return, but to become something of a rancher here in the "little place" he had bought in Alberta. He spoke of the splendid spirit of the West, and the magnificent future that was the West's for the grasping, and he left on all those who heard him an impression of genuine affection for the people and the land with which his journey had brought him in contact.

He himself left the West a "real scout." It is a mere truism to say that his personality had conquered the West, as it had won for him affection everywhere. His straightforward masculinity and his entire lack of side, his cheerfulness and his keenness, his freedom from "frills," as one man put it, had made him the friend of everybody. I heard practically the same expressions of real affection from all grades, from Chief Justice to car conductors. I heard, I think, but one man pooh-pooh, not so much this universal regard for the Prince, as a universal enthusiasm for something royal. A labour-leader, who happened to be present, administered correction:

"That chap's all right," he insisted, and his word carried weight. "I saw him in France, and there's not much that is wrong with him. If you're as democratic as he is, then you're all right."

The brightest of dances, a game of squash rackets, and the Prince left, undaunted by the snow, for week-end shooting. On Tuesday, October 14th, he was in the train again, travelling East, in the direction of the Cobalt mining country, buoyed up by the prophecy of the local weather-wise that the cold snap would not endure, but would be followed by the delightfully keen yet warm weather of the "Indian Summer." The local weather-wise were right, but it took time.

CHAPTER XX

SILVER, GOLD AND COMMERCE

I

Cobalt is a fantasy town. It is a Rackham drawing with all its little grey houses perched up on queer shelves and ma.s.ses of greeny-grey rock. Its streets are whimsical. They wander up and down levels, and in and out of houses, and sometimes they are roads and sometimes they are stairs. One glance at them and I began to repeat, "There was a crooked man, who walked a crooked mile." A delightful genius had done the town to ill.u.s.trate that rhyme.

And the rope railways that sent a procession of emotionless buckets across the train when we pulled in, the greeny-grey lake that presently (inside the town) ceased being a lake and became a big lake basin of smooth, greeny-grey mine slime, the vast greeny-grey mounds of mill refuse, the fantastic spideriness of the lattice mill workings, and humped corrugated iron sheds, all of them slightly greeny-grey in the prevailing fashion--the whole picture was fantastic; indeed, Cobalt appears a city of gnomes.

We had travelled all Tuesday and Wednesday, striking east from Winnipeg, only stopping occasionally for the Prince to return the courtesies of the CHAPTER XXI

NIAGARA AND THE TOWNS OF WESTERN ONTARIO

I

The best first impression of Niagara Falls is, I think, the one the Prince of Wales obtained.

Those who really wish to experience the thrills of grandeur and poetry of this marvel had better delay their visit until a night in summer, and make arrangements with the railway time-table to get there somewhere after dark. Upon arriving they must hire a car, and drive down to the splendid boulevard on the Canadian side. They will then see the great ma.s.s of water under the shine of lights, falling eternally, eternally presenting a picture of almost cruel beauty. They will then know an experience that transcends all other experiences as well as all attempts at description.

The curious feeling of disappointment which comes to many in daylight will have been guarded against, and, stimulated by that wondrous first vision, they will tide over that spiritually barren period which many know until the marvel of the Falls begins to "grow on them."

The Prince came from Hamilton to Niagara somewhere very close to midnight on Sat.u.r.day, the 18th. He was carried through the dark town and country to the house of one of the Falls Commissioners. From here, through a filigree of trees and leaves, he could look across the smoking gorge to the Falls on the American side. Batteries of great arc lights, focused and hidden cunningly, shone upon the curtain of white and tumbling waters, and upon the strong, black ma.s.s of Goat Island, that is perched like a diver eternally hesitant on the very brink of the two-hundred-foot plunge.

The ghostly beauty of the falling water through the light, now a solid and tremendous curve, now broken into filaments and zigzag whorls, now veiled by the upward drift of the gossamer spray, held the Prince's gaze for some time. But even that beauty was transcended. He himself pressed an electric switch, and the grand curve of the Canadian Horseshoe blazed fully alight for the first time in their history, and though from this position this could not be fully seen, this new addition of light gave the whole ma.s.s before his eyes an additional loveliness.

From this point the Prince motored through the town to the splendid wide promenade that borders the Canadian side of the gorge, and spent half an hour watching the fascinating play of falling water and spray in the narrow cauldron of the Horseshoe.

He stood a foot away from the point where the water leaps in its magnificent and enigmatic curve into the tortured pool below. Green at the curve, the water is a ma.s.s of curdled white in the strong lights as it falls. Beneath, the face of the water is a pa.s.sionate surface of whirlpools and eddies and tossing whiteness. From the tremendous impact of the drop a column of spray shoots and curls high up in the air. It towers quite six hundred feet above the surface of the water, and it is hard to believe that enduring ma.s.s of spray comes from the fall; in the distance one is convinced that it is steam arising from some big factory.

On the next day (Sunday) the Prince saw the Falls in their every phase.

He walked up-stream above the Horseshoe to where the Niagara River jostles down over a series of ledges in the grand and angry Canadian Rapids, a sight as tumultuous and as thrilling in its own fashion as the Falls themselves. He visited the big, white stone power-house to examine with the greatest interest the machinery that traps the tremendous latent power of the plunging water, harnesses it, and so turns the wheels of a thousand industries, and lights hundreds of towns.

Partly walking, partly riding in a car of the scenic tramway, he followed the line of the Falls and river downward to where the Whirlpool Rapids curdle and eddy within the deep walls of the gorge.

Over on the American side he saw the castles and keeps of modern industry: power-houses and factories, springing up from the very rock of the cliff, and almost forming part of it. On the Canadian side the people have not let their utilitarian sense run away with them to such an extent. Where America edges the gorge with commercial buildings, Canada has constructed her beautiful promenade, which continues the comeliness of the Falls Park through a pretty residential district.

America has Prospect Park and the very beautiful Goat Island Park on its side, but these are not extended along the gorge.

Below the Whirlpool Rapids the Prince descended to the level of the river; later, he came to the top of the gorge again, and crossed, swinging two hundred feet above the water on the spidery ropes of the aerial railways, the great pool at the end of the river canyon, into which the pent-up water pushes swirling before turning at right angles towards Lake Ontario.

The Prince did not go over to the American side, but America came to him. The white number-plates of New York State seemed to be everywhere on automobiles, even outnumbering the yellow of Ontario. One had the impression that every American motor-owner within gasolene radius had decided that he would take his Sunday spin to Niagara Falls, and on to the Canadian side of the Falls to boot.

American cars were coming over the bridges all day, and American owners waited cheerfully along the route to get a glimpse of "The Boy," as the American papers called the Prince. They joined themselves to the very friendly crowd of Canadians who gathered everywhere along the route, and their cheering, mingling with Canadian cheering, showed that friendliness is not an affair that frontiers can manipulate.

As a matter of fact, the frontier at Niagara is the most imaginary of lines. Now that the war is over there is no difficulty in getting to either side. And there is no change in atmosphere either. People and conditions are much the same, only on the American side our dollars cost us more.

II

Western Ontario is, in the main, the most British part of Canada. Its towns have British names, and the streets of the towns have British names, while their atmosphere and design are almost of the Home Counties. The countryside (if one overlooks the absence of hedges--though rows of upturned tree-roots with plants growing among them sometimes have the look of hedges) is the suave, domesticated countryside of England. England is in the very air. And at the first of these curiously English towns the Prince became an Indian chief.

Brantford, though it reminds one of a comely British country town, preferably one with a Church influence in it, is really the capital of the Six Nation Indians. It actually owes its name to Joseph Brant, the Mohawk chief, who, having fought his Indians on the side of the British--as the braves of the fierce and powerful Six Nations had always fought on the side of the British--in the War of Independence, marched his tribes from their old camping-grounds in the Mohawk Valley to this place, so that they could remain under British rule.

The Indians of the Six Nations still live in and about Brantford, for, though they have ceded away their lands to settlers, they are among the few of the aboriginal races that have thrived and not decayed under civilization. The Prince's visit to Brantford on Monday, October 20th, was nearly all a visit to the Mohawks, the leaders of the ancient Indian federation of six tribes.

This is not to say that the welcome given him by Canadians was not a great one. As a matter of fact, it was astonishing, and it was difficult to imagine how a small town like this could pack its streets with so many people. But Brantford is industrial and scientific also, as well as being Indian. After a strenuous reception, for instance, the Prince went along to the statue that shrines the town's claim to a place in the history of science. This was the memorial to Dr. Bell, who lived in Brantford and who invented the first telephone in Brantford. They will even show you the trees from which the first line over which the first spoken message sent, was strung.

But the colourful ceremonies of Brantford were those connected with the Mohawks. The Prince was taken out to the small, old wooden chapel that George III. erected for his loyal Mohawk allies. It is the oldest Protestant chapel in the Dominion. On its walls are painted prayers in Mohawk, and it contains an old register that King Edward had signed in 1861. The Prince added his own signature to this before going into the churchyard to see the grave of Joseph Brant.

In the little enclosure before the church were the youngest descendants of the loyal Joseph Brant: ranks of Mohawk boys in khaki, and small Mohawk girls in red and grey. They sang to the Prince in their own language, a singular guttural tongue rendered with an almost abnormal stoicism. The children did not move a muscle of lips or face as they chanted; it might have been a song rendered by graven images.

In the main square of Brantford the Prince was elected chief of the Six Nations. This ceremony was carried out upon a raised and beflagged platform about which a vast throng of pale-faces gathered. Becoming a chief of the Six Nations is no light matter. It is a thing that must be discussed in full with all ceremonies and accurate minutes. The pow-wow on the platform was rather long. Chiefs rose up and debated at leisure in the Iroquois tongue, while the pale-faces in the square, at first quite patient, began to demand in loud voices: