With the World's Great Travellers Volume Ii Part 1

With the World's Great Travellers.

Volume 2.

by Various.

THE WORLD'S GREAT CAPITALS OF TO-DAY.

OLIVER H. G. LEIGH.

NEW YORK, WASHINGTON, CHICAGO.

The reflective voyager, on his first sight of New York, is baffled when he attempts to catalogue his sensations. All is so completely in contrast with the capitals of Europe. The gloriously bright sky, air that drinks like champagne, the resultant springiness of life and movement, that overdoes itself in excitement and premature exhaustion, and the obtrusively visible defects of this surface enthusiasm, monotonous streets, unfinished or unbegun city improvements, and the conspicuous lack of play-s.p.a.ces for children--this is the rough portrait sketch New York draws of itself for the newcomer. It does not disguise the fact that money-making was for many years the dominant consideration. The city was laid out for business, and public comfort had to look out for itself. The workers, the poor, and the helpless were apparently overlooked.

But there are at least three New Yorks to explore. Old New York stretches from the bay up to once aristocratic Madison Square, and this is the section that first leaves its mark on the aforesaid visitor. Then comes new New York, the splendid modern metropolis that spreads from Central Park along the Hudson to the northern heights where the stately mausoleum of Grant, the transplanted Columbia University, and the great Cathedral-to-be add majestic dignity to the grandly picturesque panorama by the river. The antiquated brownstone wilderness of fashionable houses blossoms into white and gray and red cl.u.s.ters of mansions, richly varied in form and treatment, with the welcome gra.s.sy settings so pitifully missing in the older quarter. From a neglected span of prairie ground, pimpled with bare rocks and goat-sheltering shanties also shared by dago families, this section has in a few years qualified itself to rival the famous features of old-world cities. A n.o.bler prospect than Riverside Drive alongside the mighty Hudson cannot be desired nor found. At last the city has discovered and worthily utilized its splendid opportunities. Then, thirdly, there is Greater New York. For the simplification of local government it is doubtless excellent policy for London and New York to la.s.so their humbler neighbor towns that the big cities may pose as suddenly greater than ever. The thing is done with a stroke of the pen and does not wound the pride of the newly scooped-in citizens, because the individuality of the suburban districts remains unchanged, but in our infantile capacity as mere sightseers the side-shows do not affect the glories of the ring proper. If this fashion of acquiring greatness continues, being inclusion rather than expansion, there need be no limit to the ciphers periodically tacked on to the population of the world's swarming hives. Now that New York is growing, it might drop its insignificant borrowed name and a.s.sume its rightful one of dignity and historic import, Manhattan. It fills the twenty-two square miles between Harlem river, the Hudson, the East River, and the bay, which area is Manhattan Island. North of the Harlem it includes the district of the Bronx, a little stream which for half a mile or so affords as exquisite a picture of nature's beauty as can be found anywhere. The drift from town to country homes is a sign of the times and an augury of great good to the coming generation, physical and patriotic. After all, bricks and mortar are not the making of a city.

New York is at its best beyond the borders. Its rich citizens overflow into these northern suburbs and lordly estates, and across the East River into Brooklyn and Long Island's garden villages, and across the Hudson into New Jersey's charming towns, and down the bay to Staten Island. In no great metropolis this side of Constantinople is it so easy and inexpensive to slip quickly from the office or home and enjoy the bracing delights of a sail down the salt water (the upper bay has fourteen square miles and the lower over eighty) or up a stately river with all the charms of the Hudson. Everything is on the grand scale, once the city's square blocks of barracky houses are left behind.

Old-world quietists are surprised to discover one cosy quarter, perhaps two, in the grimy section of New York. Stuyvesant Square and its immediate belongings around St. George's Church still survive as an oasis of sweetness and light in a wilderness of dismal commonplace.

Washington Square carries somewhat of the old aristocratic flavor to the borders of Bohemia, and the Theological College in Chelsea used to give a solemnizing leaven to that changing district. The social transformation is still in progress. It may, perhaps, be a token of the rise to metropolitanism that the distinctively American hotels of the old-fashioned type have virtually disappeared. European models have the preference for the time being in the in- and outdoor life of New Yorkers. English sports have apparently taken firm root, as seen in the popularity of golf, football, horse-racing, rowing, and some less desirable practices incident to one or two of these erstwhile sports that have developed into business undertakings, to the regret of true sportsmen. In this connection it is worth while to notice the striking disparity in the sizes of the audiences and outdoor crowds of New York and London. If fifteen thousand people pay to see the Harvard-Yale football game, or other such sport, it is considered worthy of special headlines in the papers. Madison Square Garden holds that number, seated, but the occasions when it has been filled at meetings have been few. Football crowds in England range from thirty up to seventy thousand, by turnstile record. The Crystal Palace accommodates over one hundred thousand holiday-makers without being crowded, in its central nave, sixteen hundred feet by eighty, besides transepts, and its famous grounds. The late Rev. C. H. Spurgeon had congregations of six thousand, seated, twice each Sunday for twenty-eight years. Mr. Gladstone and others have addressed twenty-five thousand in the Agricultural Hall, which covers over three acres, and St. Paul's Cathedral has occasional congregations of over twenty thousand. These facts are the more curious as applying to a small country.

One explanation of this contrast lies in the fact that New York is not a h.o.m.ogeneous community. In a more marked degree than other capitals it is a congeries of towns and colonies, largely alien in sympathies. You can wander in turn through Judea, China, Italy, Ireland, France, Russia, Poland, Germany, Holland, and colored colonies. Local color is strong in each. The English speech is not used, not known, by many of these people. The picturesqueness of tenement life and its Babel sounds does not atone for the want of the deep-rooted Americanism which must sooner or later be the test of welcome immigration.

Broadway is one of the great streets of the world though really a Narrow-way for so important a thoroughfare. Running north and south and having no rival for its most used section it has more than its natural share of traffic. From the historic Bowling Green and Trinity Church--two fine monuments of pre-Revolution days--up to Fourteenth Street, Broadway is mainly a wholesale market. Then it changes to a retail bazaar, and its trading features disappear as it nears the park.

There used to be a well-defined sky-line in the lower city, but this has been sadly damaged by the towering office Babels that make the older quarter of the city a cave of the winds. If some day an earthquake were to shake the lower end of Manhattan Island, mighty would be the fall of these presumptuous files and woe betide their inhabitants. Fifth Avenue up to Thirty-fourth Street has given up its fashionable prestige in exchange for the profits of business. The Stock and Produce Exchanges are far down-town, among the mult.i.tude of banks that crowd around the spot made sacred ground to future generations of patriots as the scene of Washington's inauguration as President. The city and its environs are rich in historic sites and monuments of the Revolutionary struggle.

These, happily for the country's future, are every year being sought and studied by the young, also by bands of teachers from states near and far, and by visitors from abroad. The devotion of one or more societies of private individuals has of late years conferred a boon upon the public which can hardly be too highly appreciated, in causing durable memorial tablets to be placed on buildings of historic interest. In this and kindred ways New York is fast removing all justification for the stale reproach that it cared not for shrines and took small interest in its own history.

A mere suggestion, yet a very helpful one, toward realizing somewhat of the enormous shipping business done for the country by New York can be got by a tour of the main wharves. There is a water-front of twenty-five miles around the island, without reckoning the sh.o.r.es of Brooklyn and Hoboken. The bird's-eye view from the wonderful and graceful Suspension Bridge enlarges one's conception of what such a metropolis is and can do. Alpine grain elevators circle the city on the opposite sh.o.r.e of the rivers and upper bay. Two thousand ships sail out each year laden with the grain that feeds the nations on the other hemisphere. Three thousand steamships enter these wharves yearly with human and commercial freight from foreign ports. Nearly ten thousand steerage immigrants land each week the year round, besides an immense pa.s.senger contingent. These are the sights that fascinate the thoughtful: the comings and goings of the peoples of the earth and its products. Old Castle Garden and the Battery have greatly changed in recent years, but their memories linger. If it had been possible to keep the triangle south of Fourteenth Street as the select residential quarter, what an unrivalled site it would now be! A water panorama worth crossing the Atlantic to see, for its immensity, its picturesque bordering, and the magnificent view of the foreground of an embowered city by the sea.

Human needs shaped these water avenues to other destinies. They draw from the great ocean beyond the Narrows the sources of all that has gone to the building of national greatness. In turn they have borne to other lands the seeds of a larger liberty, patterned after and stimulated by the unparalleled success that has so splendidly rewarded self-achieved freedom to grow, to think, to speak out, and to speed the commerce of the world.

The wealth thus created has of recent years done much to beautify the city with palatial residences. In the northern districts detached mansions in gra.s.s-plots supersede the monotonous brownstone rows. Many of these vie with each other in the extent and delicacy of decorative carvings outside. Others are fashioned after the castellated structures of Europe. The general impression left by a town of the newer fashion quarter is that Jeffersonian simplicity, in architecture at least, is no longer to be understood as synonymous with severe plainness. Probably no other city can point to an equally rapid transition from conventional taste, excellent for its period, to the present enthusiasm for the best in artistic construction, whatever its cost.

The bicycle proved a revolutionizer of dress as well as a stimulus to outdoor exercise. Each nation learns from the others and so we progress, though there is possible weakness in the tendency toward rigid uniformity. The picturesque and the primitive are disappearing in every land. National individuality should not lightly be allowed to lapse, even in minor matters of costume and recreation.

Experienced travellers know that a country is not to be judged by its metropolis. There is a st.u.r.dier back-bone of conservatism in the provinces than in the great cities, so largely made up of aliens and sojourners. A goodly proportion of the business men whose genius has made New York what it is, and who are admittedly qualifying it soon to become the financial centre of the world, are country-born and raised.

Great as New York is, and mightier as it will become by reason of its situation, the true and abiding greatness of the nation is spread over the thousand cities and towns that equally represent American pluck and stability. In the farming districts and the scattered rural communities, in vast agricultural areas of which city people take too little note, and in the steady, plodding, smaller towns, there abides a calm but potent force that throbs with high patriotism, and will prove an all-sufficient strength in time of peril.

Washington! Its very name an inspiration, its every feature a fascination to the lover of his country who makes his first pilgrimage to the national shrine. Other great cities bear the glorious marks of the tribulations and triumphs they suffered and enjoyed as they pa.s.sed through their historic experiences. Here is a capital created as the consummation of a people's release from thralldom. A new city, invented as the proclamation of a new nation's advent, the symbol and promise of a mightier world-power than its proudest founders ever conceived possible in their highest enthusiasms. The youngest of famous capitals, it already holds its own with the best of its kind for grandeur and the _rus in urbe_ charm. Its s.p.a.cious avenues, one hundred and sixty feet wide, are lined with trees and gra.s.sy walks. Their stately sweep gives chances for fine landscape effects, which are finely used. The vistas of the grand avenues are bounded by some piece of memorial statuary or an imposing structure in the distance, as is Pennsylvania avenue by the incomparable Capitol. No national monument is better known throughout the world than this n.o.ble edifice. Its majestic stateliness is enhanced by its snowy whiteness.

The Capitol is the greatest building for its purposes in the United States. It covers three acres and a half, and has a frontage of seven hundred and fifty feet. The great dome, with its figure of Liberty, reaches a height of over three hundred and seven feet. Standing on the rising ground among the rich foliage it has an aspect of quiet strength, an impressive a.s.surance of dignity and permanence peculiar to itself among ma.s.sive buildings in the great cities. Everyone goes, or should go, to see Congress at work, and to explore the corridors trod by generations of the nation's legislators, soldiers, jurists, orators, in short, by all the great makers of the nation since Washington laid its foundation stone. A singular instance of fate thwarting intention is found in the situation of the Capitol. It was planned to face eastward, the White House was to be in the rear, and the city was expected to spread away from the river, eastwardly. But it perversely grew to the northwest, with the result that the Capitol turns its back on the capital. No one would suppose this is so unless told, so splendidly balanced in architectural dignity are both fronts of the edifice.

Another peculiarity is that the head city of the republic is monarchically governed, and governed better than any other city in the Union. Three commissioners are appointed by the President, and the citizens have no political franchise. The city was planned as a grand example of what a capital should be. Impressed by the lessons of the revolutions in Paris the designer dotted the area with circular gra.s.s-plots or miniature parks, from which avenues and streets radiate like wheel-spokes. In case of need a gun in each of the circles could command an enemy approaching from any quarter. The peaceful use of these charming sites is more befitting the spirit of the republic. Statues of its soldier-heroes who saved the Union adorn each circle and give historic interest to the vistas. There are two hundred miles of streets.

In summer-time they are groves of rich foliage. They and the park s.p.a.ces take up half the area of the city. It is wisely intended to re-name the princ.i.p.al streets after famous American patriots instead of alphabetically.

Washington is pre-eminently a city of "sights." The great government buildings are distributed over the city with excellent effect. They are n.o.ble edifices, worthy of the Capitol and the capital. The Treasury, with its never-to-be-forgotten scenes inside, the Army and Navy offices, the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution, and the rest of the head-quarters of national business need no further mention here. The Corcoran Art Gallery, the Patent Office, and the new Library of Congress demand a special word. The latter is one of the most exquisite buildings in the world, with interior decorative treatment quite beyond anything hitherto known in the country. Its brilliant dome does not suffer by proximity to the Capitol. An inspection of the Patent Office is a revelation of genius peculiarly American, and its display throws the clearest light on the secret of the country's amazing material prosperity. A visit to Washington ought to be the finishing touch to the schooling of every girl and boy. Historic sites and shrines appeal to the mature mind, but the show places of the capital peculiarly suit the youthful instinct for the novel and striking in matters of fact.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, WASHINGTON]

To see the Senate and House of Representatives in session is a high privilege for any citizen, yet it is hampered by few, if any, such restrictions as are imposed in other national legislatures. The chambers are s.p.a.cious and handsome, so are the cla.s.sified galleries for spectators, and the sessions are held in daylight. Equally impressive is the Supreme Court of the United States--a temple of equity in all its features, wherein the instinctive reverence for the highest embodiment of justice and legal authority is encouraged by the surroundings. The robes worn by the justices invest the bench and court with a dignity which various state courts wisely emulate by adopting the same rule.

Isolated in striking grandeur, the lofty Washington obelisk lifts the contemplative mind to heights above the level of material evidences of prosperity. Like the Stuart portrait, this memorial of Washington leaves the meaner measurements of a man's stature for other seasons and moods, and by a touch of sublimity gives the n.o.bler cue to patriotic devotion and whole-hearted enthusiasm for him who, though human indeed, in his life-work neared the divine.

Summer is not the best time to appreciate the social life of the capital. It lies low, the Potomac's swampy margin is near and the street forests of trees aid humidity. The White House snugly reposes in beautiful grounds, with the great obelisk as a perpetual reminder of the first President's example and reward. Another white portico gleams in the distance, Arlington, the resting-place of the nation's hero-martyrs.

In the winter season Washington blooms into cosmopolitan grandeur. It becomes the focus of the nation's lights in statesmanship, art, literature, and social pleasures. The foreign emba.s.sies supply the grace of brilliant color so lacking in the gatherings of men in the sombre attire of the period. A continuous round of social festivities gladdens the mild winter days and nights. Here, as in royal capitals, society has its greater and lesser constellations. There are the senatorial, judicial, diplomatic, military, and naval groups, too sharply divided, to judge from audible criticisms in New York circles. Still literature, art, and commerce have as free a welcome in Washington salons as anywhere else, despite the plaints of overlooked suppliants. The White House knows nothing of artificial shibboleths. It happily dispenses its hospitalities--which are coveted honors--impartially upon all whom it is an honor to honor, and so sustains the true American principle of equal courtesy to citizens and sojourners of every degree. Washington is an inexhaustible field for the student of men, manners and movements, a theatre on whose stage the comedy of life plays itself, with all-potent moulders of opinion and legislation as the actors, backed by a supernumerary army of minor aids. Among its most eager auditors are outsiders, reporting every byplay to profoundly interested critics across the seas. The drama cannot be too deeply watched and pondered, for it is fraught with issues vital to the well-being of coming generations.

Chicago is usually figured as a conventionally insipid beauty, in flowing garments which would obstruct her progress and could never be kept white. This is a mistake. Most masculine of cities, most American of America's great centres, its shield should portray a strong youth in the flush of adolescence, conscious power in his proud curled lip, fire in his eye, springing to the foreground in the first ray of dawn, in his right hand the sceptre of genius and his left grasping the key of destiny. The good people of Chicago are not conspicuously lacking in civic self-appreciation. They are accustomed to being twitted by rivals in the rear on their boundless faith in their city's future greatness.

They can afford to listen smilingly. If the child is father of the man, full-grown Chicago must some day tower above the up-stretched heads of its envious seniors like a giant among, say, a committee of venerable munic.i.p.al Solons. Ordinary cities develop as babies do, slow growth to maturity, but this extraordinary late-comer into the family attained mental and muscular precocity in shorter time than its sisters required to cut their wisdom-teeth. Considered in relation to its geographical position and its express-speed rate of progress, Chicago has the promise and potency of an imperial greatness no easier to exaggerate than to limit. It was tried by fire in the day of small things, but quickly rose to a new life and it still carries the memorial glow in its heart as an inspiration to great things.

The word Chicago is a simpler form of the Indian name, Chacaqua, given to the river in honor of their deity, the Thunderer. The position of Chicago makes it the greatest lake port in the world. It is already the second city in the United States, though only born in 1830, and has hopes of becoming the first, by growth, and not by annexation policy.

True, the newest city inherits the wealth and experience which the older ones had to gain for themselves, yet Chicago has done some fine original things. It hitched up an inland sea as its beast of burden and made a vast lake its pleasure pond. Finding itself only seven feet above the level of Lake Michigan it lifted itself bodily another seven feet, churches, warehouses, dwellings and all, with jack-screws, and shovelled a new foundation of dry earth beneath. Fifteen years later the great fire laid it lower than ever. On Oct. 8, 1871, began the disaster that made nearly a hundred thousand people homeless, destroyed seventeen thousand buildings and two hundred lives, and caused the loss of two hundred millions of dollars. Within a year or so the wooden town was transformed into a city of ma.s.sive palaces built of stone and brick. It is now fast changing itself into a maze of towering Babels, whose tops support the pall of smoke that tells of manufacturing activity. It drove tunnels beneath its river for street-cars. Its thirty-five bridges were not enough for the constant rush. On its lake first swam the novel whale-back boats. One sin will rise up against the city on the day of doom: the twenty-mile line of lake sh.o.r.e has been largely prost.i.tuted to railway interests instead of being conserved as an unrivalled pleasure park for the people and an adornment to the city. It can plead in mitigation of sentence that its six public parks cover more than three square miles, besides some sixty linear miles of park-like boulevards of which Paris might be proud. Of these Michigan Avenue has a well-won fame. No business traffic is permitted on its wide and well-sprinkled roadway, the morning and afternoon procession of carriages taking its wealthy residents to and from business at times recalls the Queen's Drive in the London season. If the Chicago man of affairs works hard at his calling, he takes his pleasure zestfully and plenty of it. On the grand occasion of the American Derby (for Chicago has its Epsom and Ascot in one) it is a revelation to see the gay caravan _en route_ to the race-course, as impressive a display of metropolitan luxury as any capital can present. And on this day the West can match the big crowds of England with this sixty thousand throng, each person paying two dollars for bare admission to the ground.

In a city primarily devoted to business it takes time for the development of the beautiful. Chicago has its "sights" for seekers after the merely outlandish, who often miss the real greatnesses that are less catchy to the eye. One of its achievements which impresses both the trained and untrained observer is the undertaking which has the uninviting name of Drainage Ca.n.a.l. The pure water of Lake Michigan used to be polluted by the inflow of the Chicago River. To prevent this the city has made an immense waterway by which the lake water is carried to the Illinois River and the tide of the Chicago River is diverted from its former course. The new ca.n.a.l is navigable and opens a route between the great lakes and the Gulf of Mexico. The territory involved embraces the city and forty-three square miles of Cook County. The main channel is twenty-eight miles long and the cost was about thirty millions.

In their commercial aspect the famous Stock-yards have greater interest than as a show place. They cover four hundred acres, the plant is valued at four million dollars, and about twenty millions of animals are killed and packed in a year. Similarly imposing are the statistics of most of Chicago's enterprises. The Board of Trade is one of the most remarkable sights in the country. Its public galleries are usually filled with spectators of the feverish bidding of the grain operators, whose slightest nod affects the markets of the world. The Stock Exchange is yearly taking a more important share in the money market. The financial inst.i.tutions of Chicago and the West have more than once saved the East from impending panic, and immense loans are constantly being renewed, insuring the speedy recognition of the city as a force in the money markets of the nations.

More interesting is the honor-roll of Chicago's intellectual enterprise.

The Columbian World's Fair of 1893 astonished the world with its beauty, its perfection of artistic skill and taste. It gave an impetus to the pursuit of the beautiful and refining which has borne substantial results. Near the site of the Fair is a cl.u.s.ter of buildings const.i.tuting the University of Chicago, dating from 1891, to which a single donor has given nine million dollars, and loyal citizens are continually adding to its possessions. The heads of the University count on an endowment fund of fifty millions. Nowhere is Chicago enthusiasm for progress more finely manifested than here. The great public libraries of the city are envied by foreign visitors. The central Public Library is a splendid triumph of architecture, next in interior elegance to the Library of Congress. It is valued at three millions, exclusive of its books. The Newberry and Crerar libraries form special branches of the system. The city's churches and charities are doing n.o.bly in ameliorating the condition of the toilers and the handicapped in life's race. The name and fame of Miss Jane Addams and the Hull House settlement are world-wide. How difficult the task is may be conceived from the fact that out of a million and seven hundred thousand people in the city, nine hundred thousand are Americans, German, and Irish; the remainder represent twenty-four nationalities, exclusive of negroes. A report issued by an investigating committee of Hull House states that "the density of population in the Polish quarter in Chicago is three times that of the most crowded portions of Tokio, Calcutta, and many other Asiatic cities."

As in New York there is a marked tendency among the richer people to set up country homes. New suburban towns and villages of great attractiveness are drawing an increasing number away from the smoky city. On the other hand the far-famed hospitality of its people to prophets of every school of thought, and the spirit of enterprise which welcomes every new idea, attracts eccentrics and adventurers whose trumpetings are loud enough to mislead superficial observers into the notion that Chicago is the crank's paradise. If a fault at all, this amiable toleration leans to virtue's side. Rightly to appreciate the depth and breadth of Chicago's influence we must follow its trade to the remotest corners of the earth. We must trace the influences of its seats of learning and refinement. We must count, if we can, the tremendous results of its world-renowned enterprises that have stimulated nations to follow the successful lead. Be its faults what they may, Chicago has the heart, the will, and the muscle to mend them, as the world will see, and then will the true greatness of the Western metropolis be discerned, and its full influence be felt.

WINNIPEG LAKE AND RIVER.

W. F. BUTLER.

[Colonel W. F. Butler, in "The Great Lone Land," gives us some very interesting information about the life and scenery of the great American Northwest, from which we select the following description of a picturesque lake and river. His journey was made during the Riel rebellion, and the traveller was on his way to the Lake of the Woods, where he expected to meet an expedition sent for the suppression of the rebellion. The Red River Indians gave him a hearty send-off.]

The chief gave a signal, and a hundred trading guns were held aloft, and a hundred shots rang out on the morning air. Again and again the salutes were repeated, the whole tribe moving down to the water's edge to see me off. Putting out to the middle of the river, I discharged my fourteen-shooter into the air in rapid succession; a prolonged war-whoop answered my salute, and, paddling their very best, for the eyes of the finest canoers were upon them, my men drove the little craft flying over the water until the Indian village and its still firing braves were hidden behind a river bend. Through many marsh-lined channels, and amidst a vast sea of reeds and rushes, the Red River of the North seeks the water of Lake Winnipeg. A mixture of land and water, of mud, and of the varied vegetation which grows thereon, this delta of the Red River is, like other spots of a similar description, inexplicably lonely.

The wind sighs over it, bending the tall weeds with mournful rustle, and the wild bird pa.s.ses and repa.s.ses with plaintive cry over the rushes which form his summer home.

Emerging from the sedges of the Red River, we shot out into the waters of an immense lake,--a lake which stretched away into unseen s.p.a.ces, and over whose waters the fervid July sun was playing strange freaks of mirage and inverted sh.o.r.e-land.

This was Lake Winnipeg,--a great lake, even on a continent where lakes are inland seas. But vast as it is now, it is only a t.i.the of what it must have been in the earlier ages of the earth.

The capes and headlands of what once was a vast inland sea now stand far away from the sh.o.r.es of Winnipeg. Hundreds of miles from its present limits these great landmarks still look down on the ocean, but it is an ocean of gra.s.s. The waters of Winnipeg have retired from their feet, and they are now mountain-ridges, rising over seas of verdure. At the bottom of this by-gone lake lay the whole valley of the Red River, the present Lakes Winnepegoos and Manitoba, and the prairie islands of the Lower a.s.siniboine,--one hundred thousand square miles of water. The water has long since been drained off by the lowering of the rocky channels leading to Hudson Bay, and the bed of the extinct lake now forms the richest prairie-land in the world.

But although Winnipeg has shrunken to a tenth of its original size, its rivers still remain worthy of the great basin into which they once flowed. The Saskatchewan is longer than the Danube, the Winnipeg has twice the volume of the Rhine. Four hundred thousand square miles of continent shed their waters into Lake Winnipeg; a lake as changeful as the ocean, but, fortunately for us, in its very calmest mood to-day.

Not a wave, not a ripple on its surface, not a breath of breeze to aid the untiring paddles. The little canoe, weighed down by men and provisions, had scarcely three inches of its gunwale over the water, and yet the steersman held his course far out into the gla.s.sy waste, leaving behind the marshy headlands which marked the river's mouth.

A long low point stretching from the south sh.o.r.e of the lake was faintly visible on the horizon. It was past mid-day when we reached it; so, putting in among the rocky boulders which lined the sh.o.r.e, we lighted our fire and cooked our dinner. Then, resuming our way, the Grand Traverse was entered upon. Far away over the lake arose the point of the Big Stone, a lonely cape whose perpendicular front was raised high above the water. The sun began to sink towards the west; but still not a breath rippled the surface of the lake, not a sail moved over the wide expanse, all was as lonely as though our tiny craft had been the sole speck of life on the waters of the world. The red sun sank into the lake, warning us that it was time to seek the sh.o.r.e and make our beds for the night. A deep sandy bay, with a high backing of woods and rocks, seemed to invite us to its solitudes. Steering in with great caution among the rocks, we landed in this sheltered spot, and drew our boat upon the sandy beach. The sh.o.r.e yielded large store of drift-wood, the relics of many a northern gale. Behind us lay a trackless forest, in front the golden glory of the western sky. As the night shades deepened around us and the red glare of our drift-wood fire cast its light upon the woods and rocks, the scene became one of rare beauty.

As I sat watching from a little distance this picture so full of all the charms of the wild life of the voyageur and the Indian, I little marvelled that the red child of the lakes and the woods should be loath to quit such scenes for all the luxuries of our civilization. Almost as I thought with pity over his fate, seeing here the treasures of nature which were his, there suddenly emerged from the forest two dusky forms.