Westward with the Prince of Wales Part 24

"We want our Prince. We want our Prince."

And to be truthful, not merely the pale-faces found the ceremony lengthy. Gathered on the platform were a number of Mohawk girls, delicate and pretty maidens, with the warmth of their race's colour glowing through the soft texture of their cheeks. They were there because they had thrown flowers in the pathway of the Prince. At first they were interested in this olden ceremony of their old race. Then they began to talk of the wages they were drawing in extremely modern Canadian stores and factories. Then they looked at the ceremony again, at the clothes the Indians wore, at the romance and colour of it, and they said, one to another:

"Say, why have those guys dressed up like that? What's it all about, anyhow? What's the use of this funny old business?"

The romantic may find some food for thought in this att.i.tude of the modern Mohawk maid.

In the end, after a debate on the fitness of several names, the Prince, as president of the pow-wow, gave his vote for "Dawn of Morning," and became chief with that t.i.tle. But apparently he did not become fully fledged until he had danced a ritual measure. A brother chief in bright yellow and a fine gravity, came forward to guide the Prince's steps, and the Prince, immediately entering into the spirit of the ceremony, joined with him in shuffling and bowing to and fro across the platform. Only after the congratulations from fellow-Mohawks and palefaces, did he leave the das to fight--there is no other word--his way through the dense and cheerful ma.s.s that packed the square almost to danger-point.

It was a splendid crowd, good-humoured and ardent. It had cheered every moment, though, perhaps, it had cheered more strongly at one moment. This was when an old Indian woman ran up to the Prince, crying: "I met your father and your grandfather, and I'm British too."

At her words the Prince had taken the rose from his b.u.t.tonhole and had presented it to her. And that delighted the crowd.

III

The fine weather of Monday gave way to pitiless rain on the morning of Tuesday, October 21st. All the same, the rain did not prevent the reception at Guelph from being warm and intensely interesting.

Guelph is one of the many comely and thriving towns of West Ontario, but its chiefest feature is its great Agricultural College that trains the scientific farmer, not of Ontario and Canada alone, but for many countries in the Western World. This college gave the Prince a captivating welcome.

It has men students, but it has many attractive and bonny girl students, also, and these helped to distinguish the day, that is, with a little help from the "movie" men.

The "movie" men who travelled with the train had captured the spectacle of the Prince's arrival at the station, and had driven off to the college to be in readiness to "shoot" when His Royal Highness arrived.

They had ten minutes to wait. Not merely that, they had ten minutes to wait in the company of a bunch of the prettiest and liveliest girl students in West Ontario. "Movie" men are not of the hesitant cla.s.s.

Somewhere in the first seventy-five seconds they became old friends of the students who were filling the college windows with so much attraction. In one minute and forty-five seconds they had the girls in training for the Prince's arrival. They had hummed over the melody of what they declared was the Prince's favourite opera selection; a girl at a piano had picked up the tune, while the others practised harder than diva ever did.

When the Prince arrived the training proved worth while. He was saluted from a hundred laughing heads at a score of windows with the song that had followed him all over Canada. He drove into the College, not to the stirring strains of "Oh, Canada," but to the syncopated lilt of "Johnny's in Town."

The Prince was not altogether out of the youthful gaiety of the scene, for after the lunch, where the students had scrambled for souvenirs, a piece of sugar from his coffee cup, a stick of celery from his plate, even a piece of his pie, he made all these dashing young women gather about him in the group that was to make the commemorative photo, and a very jolly, laughing group it was.

And when he was about to leave, and in answer to a ma.s.sed feminine chorus, this time chanting:

"We--want--a--holiday."

He called out cheerfully:

"All right. I'll fix that holiday." And he did.

IV

The whole of these days were filled with flittings. .h.i.ther and thither on the Grand Trunk line (the pa.s.sage of the Prince being smoothly manipulated by another of Canada's fine railway men, and a genius in good fellowship, Mr. H. R. Charlton), as the Prince called at the pretty and vigorous towns on the tongue of Ontario that stretches between Lake Huron and Lake Erie to the American border.

Stratford, with something of the comely grace of Shakespeare's town in its avenues of neat homes and fine trees, gave him as warm a reception as anywhere in Canada on the evening of October 21st. On Wednesday, October 22nd, the same hearty welcome was extended by those singularly English towns, Woodstock and Chatham.

On the afternoon of the same day London gave him a ma.s.s welcome mainly of children in its big central park. London, Ontario, is an echo of London, Thames. It has its Blackfriars and Regent Street, its Piccadilly and St. James'. It is industrial and crowded, as the English London is. Its public reception to the Prince was remarkable.

It had managed it rather well. It had stated that all who wished to be present must apply for tickets of admission. Thousands did, and they pa.s.sed before the Prince in a motley and genial crowd of top hats and gingham skirts, striped sweaters and satin charmeuse. But though they came in thousands, the numbers of ticket-holders were ultimately exhausted. When the last one had pa.s.sed, the Prince looked at his wrist watch. There was half an hour to spare before the reception was due to close. He told those about him to open the doors of the building and let the unticketed public in.

From London the Grand Trunk carried us to Windsor on Thursday, October 23rd, where crowds were so dense about the station that they overflowed on to the engine until one could no longer see it for humanity and little boys. From the engine eager sightseers even scrambled along the tops of the great steel cars until they became veritable grandstands.

Crowds were in the virile streets, and they were not all Canadians either. A ferry plies from Windsor to the United States, and America, which at no time lost an opportunity of coming across the border to see the Prince, had come across in great numbers. Canadians there were in Windsor, thousands of them, but quite a fair volume of the cheering had a United States timbre.

A city with an electric fervour, Windsor. That comes not merely from the towering profile of Detroit's skysc.r.a.pers seen across the river, but from the spirit of Windsor itself. Detroit is America's "motoropolis," and from the air of it Windsor will be Canada's motoropolis of tomorrow. It is already thrusting its way up to the first line of industrial cities; it is already a centre for the manufacture of the ubiquitous Ford car and others, and it is learning and profiting a lot from its American brother.

The Canadian and American populations are, in a sense, interchangeable.

The United States comes across to work in Windsor, and Windsor goes across to work in America. The ferry, not a very bustling ferry, not such a good ferry, for example, as that which crosses the English Thames at Woolwich, carries men and women and carts, and, inevitably, automobiles between the two cities.

Detroit took a great interest in the Prince. It sent a skirmishing line of newspapermen up the railway to meet him, and they travelled in the train with us, and failed, as all pressmen did, to get interviews with him. We certainly took an interest in Detroit. It was not merely the sense-capturing profile of Detroit, the sky-sc.r.a.pers that give such a sense of soaring zest by day, and look like fairy castles hung in the air at night, but the quick, vivid spirit of the city that intrigued us.

We went across to visit it the next morning, and found it had the delight of a new sensation. It is a city with a sparkle. It is a city where the automobile is a commonplace, and the horse a thing for pause and comment. It contained a hundred points of novelty for us, from the whiteness of its buildings, the beauty of its domestic architecture, the up-to-date advertising of its churches, to its policemen on traffic duty who, on a rostrum and under an umbrella, commanded the traffic with a sign-board on which was written the laconic commands, "Go" and "Stop."

And, naturally, we visited the Ford Works. A place where I found the efficiency of effort almost frighteningly uncanny. One of these days those inhumanly human machines will bridge the faint gulf that separates them from actual life, then, like Frankenstein's monster, they will turn upon their creators.

Galt (Friday, October 24th) gave the Prince another great reception; then, pa.s.sing through Toronto, he travelled to Kingston, which he reached on Sat.u.r.day, October 25th.

Kingston, though it had its beginnings in the old stone fort that Frontenac built on the margin of Lake Ontario to hold in check the English settlers in New York and their Iroquois allies, is unmistakably British. With its solid stone buildings, its narrow fillet of blue lake, its stone fortifications on the foresh.o.r.e, and its rambling streets, it reminded me of Southampton town, especially before Southampton's Western Sh.o.r.e was built over. Its air of being a British seaport arises from the fact that it is a British port, for it was actually the a.r.s.enal and yard for the naval forces on the Great Lakes during the war of 1812.

And it also gets its English tone from the Royal Military College which exists here. The bravest function of the Prince's visit was in this college, where he presented colours to the cadets and saw them drill.

The discipline of these boys on parade is worthy of Sandhurst, Woolwich or West Point, and their physique is equal to, if not better, than any shown at those places. It is not exactly a military school, though the training is military, for though some of the cadets join Imperial or Canadian forces, and all serve for a time in the Canadian Militia, practically all the boys join professions or go into commerce after pa.s.sing through.

The Prince's reception at the college was fine, but his reception in the town itself was remarkable. The Public Park was black with people at the ceremony of welcome, and though he was down to "kick off" in the first of the a.s.sociation League football matches, his kick off was actually a toss-up. That was the only way to get the ball moving in the dense throng that surged between the goal posts.

Kingston, too, gave the Prince the degree of Doctor of Laws. It is a proud honour, for Kingston boasts of being one of the oldest universities in Canada. But though its tradition is old, its spirit is modern enough; for its Chancellor is Mr. E. W. Beatty, the President of the Canadian Pacific Railways. It was from the Railway President-Chancellor the Prince received his degree.

CHAPTER XXII

MONTREAL

I

The Prince had had a brief but lively experience of Montreal earlier in his tour. It was but a hint of what was to happen when he returned on Monday, October 27th. It was not merely that Montreal as the biggest and richest city in Canada had set itself the task of winding up the trip in befitting manner; there was that about the quality of its entertainment which made it both startling and charming.

Even before the train reached Windsor Station the Prince was receiving a welcome from all the smaller towns that make up outlying Montreal.

At these places the habitant Frenchmen and women crowded about the observation platform of the train to cry their friendliness in French, where English was unknown. And the friendliness was not all on the side of the habitants.

"They tole me," said one old habitant in workingman overalls, "they tole me I could not shake 'is han'. So I walk t'ro' them, _Oui_. An'

'e see me. A' 'e put out 'is 'an', an' 'e laf--so. I tell you 'e's a real feller, de kin' that shake han' wis men lak me."

Montreal itself met the Prince in a maze of confetti and snow.

Montreal was showing its essential self by a happy accident. It was the Montreal of old France, gay and vivacious and full of colour mated to the stern stuff of Canada.

It is true there was not very much snow, merely a fleck of it in the air, that starred the wind-screens of the long line of automobiles that formed the procession; but Canada and Montreal are not all snow, either. It was as though the native spirit of the place was impressing upon us the feeling that underneath the gaiety we were encountering there was all the sternness of the pioneers that had made this fine town the splendid place it is.

There was certainly gaiety in the air on that day. The Prince drove out from the station into a city of cheering. Mighty crowds were about the station. Mighty crowds lined the great squares and the long streets through which he rode, and crowds filled the windows of sky-climbing stores. It was an animated crowd. It expressed itself with the unaided throat, as well as on whistles and with eerie noises on striped paper horns. It used rattles and it used sirens.

And mere noise being not enough, it loosed its confetti. As the Prince drove through the narrow canyon of the business streets, confetti was tossed down from high windows by the bagful. Streamers of all colours shot down from buildings and up from the sidewalks, until the snakes of vivid colour, skimming and uncoiling across the street, made a bright lattice over flagpole and telephone wire, and, with the bright flutter of the flags, gave the whole proceedings a vivid and carnival air.