Bin Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/canuckdownsouthOOweirrich Price: 25 cts. >i<^[j€^H£ € @ga a •• r A f anuck Down -South AIH HUR WEIR. A. Canuck DOWN SOI Til BY... ARTHUR WEIR I 2 U ** " MONTREAL : Printed by vr.u & Son T. G. Roddick, Esq., M.P. M.D.C.M. L.L.D., &c. My friend, I set it down with pride, " My Friend," without whom I had died, You, one of Nature's tireless police, Who sent me forth, the Golden Fleece Of health to find, will find herein How I that priceless boon did win. And, as my humble work you read With patience (patients are your meed) Before you reach the end, you may Regret you bade me haste away. If not, and you are glad to find My health more robust than my mind, And if the volume pleases you, Take it — it is not half your due. A. W. Bancroft Librmiy G0NTENTS. ~ •lie Trail of tin x l b Prairie . , 3' ci Over the Divide • 5« Or-* In Arcadia . 9> ^ In the Sierra .... 124 Roughing It . M7 Derringer Dick, the Bicyclist • . 178 OTHER WORKS BY THE SAtyE AUTHOR. Pleurs de Lys and other Poems- The Komance of Sir Eichard, Sonnets and other Poems. The Snowflake and other Poems- Prom Paddle to Propeller, a history of Transportation in Canada (nearly ready). jooorioooi 1000110(101 CIIAI'TKK I. Ml I KAIL OF THE VOYAOKUR When my friends heard that 1 was or- dered south for the winter, they remem- bered not mine offences. One estimable lady sent me a tract on Sudden Death, and a bachelor friend came forward with a bottle of his favorite Scotch. It was evident that both found in me a lack of spiritual consolation, which thqy proffered according to their lights. A third friend termed my physicians quacks because they had not adopted a certain system of treatment, and a fourth called them quacks because he thought they had. Within a week I had prescriptions enough from non-profes- sionals to establish a druggist in trade, and there was not a health resort on A Canuck down South. the face of the globe that some one did not beseech me to go to and some one else with equal vehemence appeal to me to avoid. It would only renew the controversy • were I to state why certain i laces were rejected. We decided upon Califor- nia because there we would have no un- bearable heat r! said that witty French- man, 4 'invited her mother to visit us when we were but a week back from honeymoon. Do you think I ob- jected V Not I; I said her presence was necessary to complete mj happiness, at \\ hich my wife raised her eyebrows. My her-in-law came, and I did not ne- glect her, as some men would have done. I took her to corcerts, theatres — with a petit souper a. terwards — and, in the af- ternoons, for long drives. And I left my wife at home. In one little week my mo- ther-in-law had departed for her charm- ing home, and I have not seen too much er since. My wife looks after that, she has great tact, I have none." My mother-in-law came, and she and the Princess began rifling the house like experienced burglars, stood upon their heads in trunks, gave me long lists of articles to be brought from town, and discussed bl asses, blouses, reveres and what not. until from belne: the certre of A Canuck down South. the projected flitting I sank to such insignificance that I began to fear that I would be accidentally left behind un- less I packed myself away in a band- box. The day before we left I came home and four id the two sitting beside a pile of trunks, with that contented look upon their faces which a good woman wears when she has crammed the last movable thing in the house into the last possible corner of her trunk. I said: "Are you sure you are leaving noth- ing behind ?" "Nothing.' ' "Six trunks, about 150 pounds each, say seven hundred in all. Do vou know that it will cost us over thirty-five dol- lars for extra baggage?" "What ! ! 1" ''We are allowed 150 pounds of bag- gage to each ticket, that's three hund- red, and we pay nine cents per pound for the rest. Is my calculation aptroxim- ately correct ?" I thought I was having my revenge for their neglect and I enjoyed the situation; On tfc imii of the Voyow that it, until the Princess spoke. She •aid: 4 wei f all the useless men — why didn't you toll us that a week ago?" I knew betttr than t<» argue with aid, with a flue sarcasm . tint wai nti -own away: "Don't see what you can take, but what leave btl fled. I was an invalid, and those two women might have wanted me to help them pack. Tearfully, and .vith many protests against the iniquity of railroad mono- polies the Princess and her mother be- gea tleir task anew, cr.d actually man aged to leave out a few pounds. Much of the rest, consisting of household lin- eu, cut '«ry and bocks a crarJcy s'udert thought he could not do without (I it mention my name, did I ?) we ultimately decided to box up and send as freight at about one-third the cost. This is a great scheme, and I do rot charge anything for making it public. By all means, if you are ever going to A Canuck down South. California, and have extra baggage, send it by freight, and you will probably get it again in time to ship it back, if you have any luck. Our boxes were three months getting to California, and they did not go tourist, either. They got as far as the States in pursuance of Horace Greeley's advice, and then some brilliant intellect ordered them back to Toronto because a man with a name like mine had lost one trunk somewhere between Parkdale and Kalamazoo, or some other points equally on the line to California, ar,d although he said my boxes were not his trunk, that they were consigned neither from nor to the same place as his trunk, the intelligent freight agent at Parkdale, or wherever the boxes lay, kept them, either because he thought the man would take them as a compromise, or because the freight hadn't been paid on them back from the States, or for some reason too deeply seated in the grey matter he called his brain, for common mortals to comprehend. Anyway, it ne- ver seemed to have entered his head that he had any reason to send them on to their destination as speedily as pos- sible, wi i s an apology. 1 we arrived In Cnliforni worry the ft t the boxes, we never censed to have a source o! in- tere^ ■ walk to the post ot ice. We had let' office boy in rs fmm port let- s. fr< m i tora's houses, from the Secretary of te, the Brl the Ambassn- at Waefoinpt the For and Colonial secretaries nt London, least, if we didn't have them, we mijrht have had them for the writing. We did get some of th(«e, referring to "vours of the — th," "Please refer to our No. 117- 459 A, in replying," and so on. S< times we would hear that the boxes bad been located at one place (whence they bad started) sometimes at another, then letter would take it all back and inform us that the boxes would be immediately enquired after, as though thai was the first the railroads had heard of them. There were four system* A Canuck down South. over which the boxes had to pass, areen in any attempt upon your northern brother. We readied Toronto late in the even- ing, and the customs officer with great courtesy examined our baggage, which the railroad officials with equal courtesy dragged from the luggage van. We had no claim on these offices as our trunks should either have been examined at Montreal before starting or have waited for the regular examination at dead of A Canuck doivn South. night at Port Huron. And then the train went on, and we escaped the danger of an experience the like to which for stag- nation and petty, narrow annoyances bred largely of religious or rather theo- logical intolerance, is, I am sure, not to be found elsewhere on the continent, nor anywhere in history sirce the days of the Commonwealth of England or the blue laws of the New England States; I mean, of course, a Sunday in Toronto, where the street cars were stopped and a man could do nothing but sit still and grow, and rot make any noise about it either. Toronto is the place where truly good people do not let their hens lay nor their cows give milk or. a Sunday, and have a sincere regret that the Crea- tor did not so arrange their anatomy as to make their heart and lungs cease working during the twenty-four hours. Toronto has dozens of connections by rail and water with all parts of the country; time was when the legislature could not assemble there for lack of communications. Within the memory of living men a walk from Toronto to 18 the \ ( mak- ing the Journey, and people still talk o! the wonderful stage journey made by 140. It was truly a record breaker. At six o'clock on Mon- lag, I ehruary 18th, the four io hand started, William Weller on the box. What visions the name alone con- jures up ! All day the light sleigh glid- ed along, now ng the snow, now drawn over bare roads or tl» rough mud where the February thaw had done its work. X.m>ii came, and night, the i horses were replaced by others at frequent intervals, and still Mr. Weller held the ribbons. Darkness covered the face of the country the stars came out amid flying clouds, and in all the circle of the horizon there was nothing seen but tho naked trees and the flying ground, and nothing heard but the musi- cal beat of the hoofs of the flying steeds. Immovable, wrapped in his great coat, the sleepless driver sat, till, at twenty minutes to six on Tuesday afternoon, he threw ilmvn his reins in the yard of the Exchange Hotel on St. Paul street, A Canuck down South. Montreal, and was helped from the box where he had sat for thirty-five hours and forty minutes and guided his gallop- ing horses over three hundred and sixty miles of mother earth. Ben Halliday wasn't "in it," Hank Monk, who drove Horace Greeley and jolted the buttons off his coat, made no such record as William Weller, and I, who am going where Hank Monk is still talked of, am proud to place our Canadian record in evi- dence. Canadians are lacking m one thing tor which the United Statesian is noted, the art of advertising. I do not believe that there is any country which has done so much as Canada, and at the same time talked of it so little, unless it be our motherland, and her natives make up for this by an air which plainly denotes that, if they do not boast of one achievement, it is because they are perfectly convinced of their superiority in all directions. Montreal was the first harbor in the world to be lighted by electricity. Can- ada sent the first ocean steamship on her voyage, has the most extensive railway 20 On the Trail of (he Voyageur. system In the world under one manage- ment, the most stupendous canal system the world has ever seen, the finest bank- ing system. She has more ocean suippirg than the United States, which could not have even what it has but for the sail- ors it draws from Newfoundland and Canada. Canada had to lend her voya- geurs to ensure the success of the Nile expedition, her oarsmen have been and her yachtsmen are worlds champions. She has had the strongest man in the world, and my lady friends say she has the hardsomest. She has civil servants who think nothing of making expedi- tions that Franklin or Xansen would have written a book on, and they send in only about a printed page. She has mounted police who keep in order In- dia is the United States permits to massacre standing armies. She has gold mines that surpass those which produced the forty nlners. She has wheat fields that rival those of Russia, she has the highest mountains, the noblest glaciers, the most fertile plains, and the most ma- jestic rivers on the cont inert. She has A Canuck down South. climates that equal those of the cham- paigne country or Siberia; s»he has coasts more wor* anoe that I was like enough to John Aitkins to be his twin brother, my new friend left me. Some tine later, when I was looking for a cab to drive about the city, I was again seized by the ha/nd. "Well, I never. Can this be BVxXgett, 27 A Canuck down South. my old friend Isiaa* Blodgett? What on earth brought yioxi to Chicago. And how are all the folk in Australia? I bet you're coming here to d'aWble in our Alaska mines. Yon know me, of course? I tell you now, you don't get out of this town without seeing the elephant. How do you dio? I'm just wild at meeting you!" '•Excuse me," I said, "I'm very sorry, but my name is not Blodgett, and I never was in Austrfaliia. My name's Ait- kins — John J. Aitkins, of Indianapo- lis." The effusive gentleman looked at me a moment. Then his left eye closed spasmodically, in what looked suspi- ciously like a wink*, and he left me sud- denly. We had a poor meal in the station restaurant, anid a good dealt (of billings- gate from the lady in attendance on the women and children's waiting- room (I hope I have her title right, or she will probably exercise her tongue further), and then we set forth to see the sights. On the Trail of the Voyageur. From the roof of the Masonic Tern | twenty-one stories hfgn (802 feet), a fair, if confused, idea is had of the I Lake Michigan rolls its green waiters on the one hand, and everywhere else are vast buildings and Interminable streets, dimly seen, even on that Sunday after- noon, through the smoke that bo* and billows over the whole town, quenching the sunlight and mak everything look like a Dutch picture. Pork packers have discovered the secret of the old masters, such is civilizat | We were still on territory pre-empted by Canadians. The town Is full of them now, and in the ages past here cam* Jean Nicolet, and crossed to tine Missis- sippi. Here came LaSalle and Mar- quette ; here waved the fleur-de-lys, and here the mass was sung. Earlier still, an extensive trade was here, a trade terminated so long ago that we learn of It only through excavations rn Ohio mounds, yet It extended north, east, sooth and west, almost to the confines of the continent. A little before ten that evening two A Canuck down South. very tired adults and two still more tired children, boarded the Atcheson, Topeka & Santa Fe California Limited, bribed the porter to make up their berths, and slept a sleep that Argus might have coveted. 30 CHAPTKU II. Across thk Prairie. "It is nil i-hnnged now/' said the Ar ponaut; "time was when out West a pistol-pocket was imperii tiwly jieces- sary. To-day we only require a pocket- pistol/ » "Man always has a want," moralised the Capitalist. "Especially if he is a Writiaher," said 1 al!-twister. Q it were not so," renaarked the Lieutenant, with a sly senile, "our friend, the Capitalist, would lose his vocation. M 1 said nothing, nor did the other ten- derfeet otter a word. We had had our innings as far west as the Missouri, but since leaving Kansas City modesty had fallen upon us, which was rather a strange sensation. n A Canuck down South. The Argonaut wjas an elderly man now, one who had borne the brunt of early California diays ((they don't say Calitoralan in California). He did not speak much — he belonged to diays when a loose tongue was fatal, unless hung on a hair trigger — and when he did make a rem ark 1 , it was epigrammatic as that of the derringer *hat had swung at his belt in the early fifties, and Hike that weapon, it usually let day light through the subject, las, for example, the remark quoted above. We were on the Sainta Fe California Limited, rolling through Kansas, in the sunshine of a late October day, — Kan- sas dear to Canadians through its close association with our early fur-trajding days, interesting to scientists as an ancient sea-botto .n , an/d the cemetery of geological monstrosities, valuable to the Capitalist through its wealth of gypsum and marbles, and hallowed in the eyes of the Argonaut as the portal through which a generation agio he had sought the New West. Our travelling companions were near- Across the Prairie. ly a)] typical. There waa the Argonaut, going back tor some unknown purpoee to his early home ; the Capitalist, with a new scheme In which to sink British capital, to which he haxl promised the extraction of sunbeams from cucumbers, or the turning of cactus deserts I ranch lands. There was the Tail-twist- er, narrow, uneducated, save in the af- fairs of his own country, and still bit- terly remembering the days of 1776, which, he thought, formed a live issus yet in the policy of the two great na- tions. There was the Lieutenant, re- joining his company in some far-away fort among the Indians; and there were a few stalwart ne'er-do-wells, who tiad been shipped frojn England with a little money to retrieve their fortune and their fame, and who would probably end their days on a Mttle fruit ranch high on the Sierra sides, mortgaged to the roof-tree, their ambition crushed by the dreamy, cloudless climate and dis- appointment. Alas, there were also others In high hopes, doomed to extinction, — others JL Canuck down South. with flushed cheeks and transparent hands, with a racking cough, for which they were seeking ease and sure by flee- ing the wintry blasts of the east. Some were alone, but several had relatives to share their exile; and, as I looked upon them, I thought myself, indeed, an in- valid no rionger, for among the blind the one-eyed man is king. But, such is the buoyancy of hope and the restorative power of change of scene and interest, that we were one and all the jolliest set of invalids ever seen. Cleopatra may have wept on An- tony's shoulder as she heard the melan- choly "Remember, thou art mortal," and Caesar may have flinched at the phrase ere he went to his unexpected death ; but, though there were few among us to whom those words mignt not significantly have been addressed, and notwithstanding that we knew the fatal yellow lantern might at any mo- ment flash out the sad intelligence of death or mute cry for medical aid through the night, as we rushed past the stations, we laughed and talked, 34 A0TO88 th> full of hope and seemingly needless >f the progress of the dread malady, to ar- rest which we had said farewell to friends and home, some of us for ever. One night, long after every one had retired, 1 went to the wash-room to di- lute a little water with whiskey. In- stantly, the recumbent porter sprang to his feet, and asked if 1 wanted as- sistance. As there was not much water in the mixture, I replied that I thought that I could manage to get the oetter of it myself, whereupon he sank back reetfully, saying: "1 thought some one was dying." That was a decided shock to me. It was disagreeable to have forced upon one in so strong a manner the fact that there might be a familiar face missing some morning; but, as indi- cating the hopefulness of consumptives, It would have been ludicruous had it not been pathetic, to see how anxiously each far-gone invalid asked his com- panions how they had rested during the night. He saw the mote; he could not see the beam. But it must not be thought that our A Canuck down South. Pullman was an hospital. It is not of- tan that, even on such trains, the dread ma'jady is brought toio forcibly before the eye. It is more frequently so on the east bound trains, when some heart yearns homeward fior a sight of lhaloed s«enes, and contests every Inch with death until the last sad wish has been accomplished. Our evenings in the moking-room were among the pleasant- est experiences of my life, and interest- ing as were the glimpses of life and scenery from the car windows, they were surpassed when the taciturn Ar- gonaut or the Lieutenant could be lured into conversation. From the instant we had crossed the Missouri, the Argonaut had been exhi- biting a suppiressed excitement. "I know the signs," said the Capital- ist. "He's got tine fever on him again. We're going over the old Santia Fe trail, and the love of California and the lust for gold have him once more, as forty years ago. He'll break out soon, and then you'll have aome idea of the ktnd of boys that made the biggest half of this co/untry." Across the Prairie. That evening, after I had superintend- ed the packing of the "enfant terrible" of our party in the "top drawer," as he persisted in calling the upper berth of our section, much to the porter's dis- gusrt, 1 entered the smoKing-room. The Capitalist winked at me, and nodded towards the Argonaut, who sat in the most comfortable corner. Then he be- gan to hum: I soon shall be in Frisco, And then I'll look all round, And when I see the gold lumps there I'll pick 'em off the groand , I'll scrape the mountains clean my hoys, I'll drain the rivers dry. A pocket full of rocks bring home ; So. brothers, don't you cry. The Lieutenant and Tall-twister took up the refrain: Oh! California: That's the land for me. I'm bound for San Francisco, With my washbowl on my knee. The Argonaut roused himself. "The railroad's good enough for California," he said; "for it can't take you any 87 A Canuck doicn South. further unless you wamt to ewim. But it's killed the country between. Time was when the whole overland trail was settled and busy. Once 1 counted nigh five hundred teams within nine miles. From the* Missouri to the Pacific ther* was one long procession. Twenty thou- sand people started in one body from Fort Laramie, in May, 1849. Some got to the very Sierra and turned back; ftome got left in the desert and stayed there, and when the cholera caught up with us," — Here the old man stopped, anid tine Tail-twister broke in: "It's the British- ers," be said. "They wanted California then, and they want it now. Look at them to-day. There isn't a horse in Los Angeles or Pasiadena that hasn't it's tail docked ; there isn't a dimmer-plate that w as made outside of England. They sent the cholera them, and they come out here now, and put their money intto everything — " "Hear, hear," cried the Capitalist, smiling over some imerry recolleetiom of some such investment, in which the money had doubtless remained. Across the rniirir. "And then they think tiu-y should be elected mayor or alderman, or be on the police force. Confiscate 'em. I ■ay." We side-tracked the Tail-twister with some difficulty. "It seems bo me," said the Lieuten- ant, "that travelling this way is better than by prairie schooner, and quicker." "It's different," replied the Angoaaut : "but it's roughing it in another way. Here we are cooped up day and eight, without a chance to stretch our legs, except for a few minutes at a station ; do sport, held up by the porter when- ever we speak to him, blackened by train smoke, blinded by dust, and have to wear a boiled shirt and high collar In all the heat, just because some lady with her lap-dog is on board, and doesn't want the clog's manners contam- inated. Give me the ok! schooner, plen- ty of time and grub, and a good horse. What's your hurry In this world? You young fellows want to get there as soon as you have started ; you might as well want to be born bald-headed and with A Canuck down South. spectacles. It's what comes between the beginning and the end that makes lhe. And, as for space! Why, sir, many a prairie schooner was almost as big as this car, and the outfit often cost over $ 5,000. I have seem $8,000 paid for the schooner alone, and $1,000 a pair for mules; amd that waggon took a dozen yoke ; twenty thousand dollars with- out the whip and the yeller dog." I suppose I showed surprise, for the Argonaut turned on me. "Ask ex-Positmaster-General J 'amies if that ain't true. And ask him if the newspapers weren't printed on tissue paper to save overweight. They charg- ed five dollars a letter In those days, and extra on love letters. It was big money times; tihere wasn't a nickel or a dime west of the Missouri." And so on amd so forth. The volcano was going, with frequent geyser-like ex- plosions, from the Capitalist >amd the Lieutenant. We did mot get to bed till long after mlldmlght. M.y last recollec- tion that nlgmt was of seeing the por- ter standing on tfhe rear platform, slow- 40 Across the Prairie. \j and regretfully dumping certain old soldiers into the darkness of the voice- lews desert. It is not surprising that the Argo- naut was loquacious on our first nigbt out from Kansas City, as we rattled through the scenes of his early days. We who had not been participators in the opening up of the West were not un- moved. The signt of a solitary cow- boy, long-haired, slouch hatted, big spurred, sitting firmly In his ornate Mexican saddle, and loping along on the prairie, had led the ladies to indulge in a waving of handkerchiefs, and, I fear, a sly throwing of kisses that filled our hearts with wrath; and had not the train been going, we would have got out amd sassed that cowboy, and some- body mijcht have been hurt. He had actually the audacity to wave his glov- ed hand towards the Princess, who as- sured me that she considered him highly impertinent, though she did not clinch her hand, which is tne infallible sign of resenting an insult. We had passed Newton at dusk, now a quiet little 41 A Canuck down South. town, but once a perfect hell on earth, where murder was the daily occupation of the population, and gambling and (Drinking and otiier vices their nightly diversion. When the much-needed vigi- lance committee got to Work, it hanged eleven men in one night, and would have hanged more had the posts held out. We had halted a moment at Dodge City, and t!he Argonaut had had to drag forth a timid littie guide-book-devouring ten- derfoot from under his berth, and as- sure him that the cowboys no longer shot holes in white shirts and two-inch collars at that station. Strange as was everything to a tenderfoot, it was still difficult to believe that we were actually hi the land sacred to boyhood as the scene of the most hairbreadth es- capes on record, and of the ultimate tri- umph of true love over the schemes of the villain and his band of tawny cut- throats. I have made no reference so far to the women on board, except in connection with the cowboy. They did not form a coterie quite as we men did, since the 42 Across the Pniirv. construction of even tlie Pullman car does not provide for such a club-room as we had in the smoker. Women must sit among the boxes, and must put up petty annoyances of varluos kinds from the familiarity of a porter, or his insolence, t<» drinking tepid instead of Iced water, Just because we men need Ice In the wash basin to keep our liquors cool. If wo,nen thoroughly understood the art of tipping, they would doubt- leas suffer less in traveling, but they do not. But of this hereafter. The Lieu- tenant's wife was there , he and she were the nabobs of the party, and occu- pied the state-room. There was the Princess, facile prtneeps, ol course, but a little too dignified to be able to show oil all her accomplishments before stran- gers, however agTeeable, whom she would "ee he last of n k>ur lays. The Princess is very English, very modest ana unassuming, and very proud. An the other women bung on ner neck wnen sne was leaving the train, and wavea their handkerchiefs out of the window at her when she was gone, but of course I warn A Canuck down South. with her, and besides she had always been ready to talk to the moping, help with a fretful child, and laugh with the cheerful, notwithstanding her own fa- tigue and two sturdy atoms of perpe- tual motion. Then there was a young wife going out with an invalid hus- band. Her's was a strange position. She had been so accustomed to having him pet her, thins for her, save her in things small and great, that she never quite got over the impression that she was the invalid and he the attentive nurse; and he never tried to undeceive her. Many a ti)ne, in the night, when he shiould have been resting, I have seem Mm stealing down the aisle to get her a drink of water. Her's was the first berth made up at night, and the last In the morning. Let us hope she woke to the situation in due time, for he was going fast. Halt the trouble in this world is brought about by not seeing things as they are. There are more peo- ple blind thian selfish. The proverbial old maid was there. We thought she had a romance, for stoe 44 Acro9$ the Prairie. was In perfect health, and was always consulting the time-table. There was nothing she likod better than Co get a man, preferably a married man, out on the back platform and monopolize him. She caught the Lieutenant that way once, and for an entire morning he named, described and gave the story ot every place and scene. The next morn- ing there was a marked coolness be- tween his wife and the maiden lady, and a glare In his wife's eye every time she looked at him. All the virgin's bland- ishments were subsequently thrown away upon him, but she inveigled the Argonaut Into what wc had begun to term the chamber of horrors. Much to our surprise, he returned in five minutes, and upon our asking him how he man- aged to escape, replied, as he settled himself down for a comfortable smoke, that he had merely to?d her a story he had given us in the smoking-room the previous night. Robert Louis Stevenson has some un- kind words to say of the officials on the line over which he passed on an im- A Canuck down South. migrant train. Our experience on the Limited was, of course, better, probab- ly as much better as the difference in ex- penses would certainly call for. But I cannot refrain from recounting a little experience which I hiad which sh/owed the Dower :f noney. We liad wired bo Chicago for two lower berths, but had ultimately been compelled to take a sec- tion, which meant that a child would have to sleep at the risk of its neck somewhere contiguous to the roof. I had been assured thiat this could be rec- tified en route. On asking the conduc- tor for a. lower berth Instead of the upper, and several lowers were empty, he instantly replied that he had not one to spare, that all were taken. Without urging him further, I slipped a bill into his band, and he, on his part, not evem turning away, or pretending to recon- sider the question, instantly made the change I had desired. The act was as barefaced as that of the restaurant wait- er who changes the label on a wine bottle in your presence, to suit your taste. I had a similar experience, with 46 Across th< 1'mirir. the same result, with the porter. I had tipped him once already, a large tip, as I thought, but on the third day out I found that Its Influence was just ex- piring. I couldn't get him to make up the children's berths at a reasonable hour ; he grumbled because they had left biscuit crumbs on the seat, and be- gan o hint that the regulations of the company prohibited the use of alcohol lamps, a fact.. I believe, but winked at when the eyes are covered with green paper bearing a couple of signatures and the portrait of some United States dignitary. Five minutes afterwards he was "yes-sirring" me in the most cheer- ful manner possible, romping about the »ar vestibule with the snildren, and keeping an eye on the teapot. I mentioned this peculiar psychical phenomenon to the Capitalist. "Sir," he said, 44 you \ rlerht. It's Just got to be done, and allowance made In the estimates. Many a man has lost a tat contract — I mean Just been worried to death by standing on bis rights and re- porting to the company. I tiled it once A Canuck down South. with a porter. Not on this line. Demme, sir, he mad© my life miserable. A straight hold-up would have been more humane. Whenever I sat down to read, he would come along and dust the seat, and tell me between whiles about the big tip he got from Vanderfoilt last week, 'a pufekt gemmen, sah.' If I moved across the aisle he would gather up all the stray valises in the car and put them on my legs and into my ribs, explain- ing that they belonged to de gem main dat holds dat seat. And every time I stood up, he'd produce his whisK to brush my coat, and stand there, just stand. If I went to the smoker, he would steal the matches and take away the cuspidors to clean them, opening the car door and filling the place with train dust t, like a garden of herbs," though the modern science of Irrigation has done much to ease the curse. Diogenes says they do not water by the foot out West, but by the "Inch * A. Western rancher to whom I quoted these 8crfptural passages replied that he had been told that there was a spe- culator named Joseph who was able to squeese the stxorte by getting a corner In Egyptian wheat when the Palestine crop ran out. It is not safe to argue out West, or I would have suggested that the Egyptian crop waa short that year also, and that Joseph had only cornered the supply. From the moment we had left Chi- cago, we had been climbing steadily skyward, and when we paseed Coolldge, A Canuck down South. the last statical in Kansas, we were 3,365 feet above tide-water, Chicago be- ing only 579 feet. We were to rise a» high again, and higher, ere from the suaiinit of the Continental Divide we could sweep dowm towards the Pacific. Hitherto, also, we had been speeding straight into the pathway of the setting sun, but at La Junta, shortly after en- tering Colorado, we turned southward, leaving behind us the famed health re- sorts and mining districts of the state, and seeing Pike's Peak dimly outlined northward in the azure distance. We cut off the flouth-eastern corner of Colorado, a land of virtual desert, of dry water courses, arid plains dotted with sage brush, and enlivened at In- frequent intervals only by the jack-rab- bit, whose lomg ears obscured the vi- sion. Our train chased one of these creatures, or rather we thought it did, until he settled down to work, and then we kmew he had only been sauntering before. Theref was 'just one brown streak, and we were alone again in the disconsolate desert. 56 Across the I'rtiirir. We ware not long In Colorado with- out running Into a mountain. Tne state is not half the alee of the Province of Quebec, horizontally, but if it had not been crumpled up eo, it would probably cover the whole of Canada. Ait least one gets this Imp re s si on from glimpses of Pike's Peak and the two majestlt Span- ish Peaks that have been splitting the horizon for some time, to say nothing of yonder wall of rock through which we are about to pass, treading in the footsteps of the Argonauts and of the aborigines who, centuries before Colum- bus, traversed the Raton Pass, one of the few : through the Rockies. 57 CHAPTER III. Over the Divide. Mountains have ever been the holy places of the eartlh. It was upon a mountain that Moses spoke with God, and froni a mountain that he brought down the commandments to those whio on the plains below were lost in super- stition and worshipped the golden calf. The world's two historic cities, Jerusa- lem and Rome, were built upon moun- tains, and the story of nations has shown time and again that the love of liberty and honor and great movements have originated among those who were mountain bred. The influence of the plains is depress- ing, their monotony stagnates €he nilud, or involves it in mystical theo- ries. Witness the theologies ot Egypt and the Populist movement In Kansas. The hills uplift to an approximation o! their own grandeur; the vulture for the plains, the eagle for the erags. Such, at any rate, is the sentiment of the tourist accustomed to a varied landscape who has had a day and two nights upon the prairie, and sees before him for the first time, rise upon rise, tne outliers of the Rocky Mountains. We were now well on along the Santa Fe trail, every mile of whkcn has had its tragedy, death by Apache bullet , death by hunger, death by thirst, death by torture, and, perhaps worst of all, death by heartbreak, when the stout heart that had braved the weary miles from the Missouri gave out and lay down to die before the heedless barrier that stood between him and the gold fields where he had hoped to win for- tune. The Arkansas River, along whose banks we had for some time been run- ning, Is now forsaken, and we shall see but little water for the remainder of A Canuck down South. our journey, slave an occasional moun- tain, stream. We were awakened for an early break- fast at La Junta, a little after six in the morning. La Junta, the Junction, the name is suggestive of black-eyed sig- norettas, with cigarettos and jealous lovers, and,, unlike the bulk of United States names, it does not disappoint us. Here a padre gets in, who has been re- cuperating at Colorado Springs or look- ing at the mines art Denver. What strange tales he will tell his little Mexi- can mission floek! Will his reputation tor veracity stand the strain ? He has actually seen men working, working while they had money in their pockets. Incredible ! And they did not celebrate a single saint's day. Monstrous I They smoke pipes. Caramba ! And drink strong waters. Ah, now the padre speaks truth ; that is to be a man. Meanwhile our train has resigned its apparently interminable journey, and is hurling itself like a battering ram against the walls- of rock that are draw- ing ever nearer. We have reached Trini- 60 dad shortly befcw I mow," says the Argonaut, "you ladles had better ootne upon the rear plfctfOHft." The Vir- gin ts mere already ; has ene not her guidebook to direct her 7 We notice that the Argonaut avoids her. and at- taches himself to the Princess. The Lieutenant '8 wife looks carefully after her personal property, but the Virgin is serene. She has her guide-book. Like the breath of the salt sea was the first breath of the hills. Trinidad is at their foot, and here a second pow- erful engine was attached. Shades of early scoffers who thought no train could progress on smooth rails, what do ye think of this 7 We were going to be hoisted 1,640 feet into the sky wfthin the next twenty miles, and would boldly go through a mountain that barred our further progress. Two engines to draw as, and yet he who would might have walked alongside the train, whose speed did not exceed four miles an hour. We wound round spurs, and rose upon trea- tle-work and curves yard by yard, the engines panting and the wheels ac- A Canuck down South. tuially screaming on the rails as the train turned and twisted snakily in and out among the hills, revealing to our de- lighted eyes wondrous vistas, canons and ridges. At times we clung miracu- lously to the face of a cliH, stole on filmy bridges over ravines shaded with tremulous aspens, slipped by long, straight slopes, rugged with pines, and anon paused, as though, at last, the en- ergy of man and the power of steam to- gether lespaired of surmounting the rise upon rise of interminable rock that overhung us. But man again proved his invincibility, and still we climbed the firemen feeding the insatiable fires, up, ever up, through the azure, such azure and dreamful sunlight as beggars description, until in the weirdest place of all, when the masses of rock seemed closing In upon us from all sides, we plunged into the Eatton Tunnel with so mighty a re-echoing roar and rumble that all Inferno seemed about to wel- come us to Its Walpurgis dance. "Uncle Dick," it was the Argonaut who was speaking, and his wordB were 62 Over the Divide. addressed to the Princess. "Uncle Dick lived there," pointing to a ruined shanty on the right of the track as we had ap- proached the tunnel. "And If ever man was glad to see his fellow-man It was us the night we pulled up here. Ht wasn't Miuch on religion, but it seems to me that that man was another St. Christopher or some kind of Broad Church missionary just set down there by God himself to do something to help along a crowd of half-dead, gold-hi tng, profane, blackguardly fellows like us, and put some heart into us and some faith in man after our fights with the redskin devils all along the line. Dick Wooten kept this pass In order tor the forty-niners, and if every man that owed him anything tor that was to sub- cribe two bits for a monument, it would scrape the stars out of the sky as the world turned round. •' The Capitalist said: "I reckon he made a good thing out of the pass, tf be charged toll." The Virgin chirped blithely : "Oh, yes, he did ; it says so in the guide- book. " A Canuck down South. The Argonaut said again, and Ms tome checked the two like a cold water douche ; "I reckon he made consider- able out of it, if the angels know their business. He's dead, and T hope I'll be good enough to meet him again." We had entered New Mexico an instant before plunging Into the Raton Tunnel, and were then 7,662 feet above the sea. The tunnel is 2,011 feet long, replacing an old switch-back track that winds like a corkscrew over the mountain, and once through it our descent began, fast and faster, the brakes on, the engines reversed, and the smoke from the burn- ing grease around the hot wheels of- fending our nostrils while we slid down the mountain slopes Into a valley that was but the prelude to another scram- ble towards the stars. A little more than a quarter of a mile nearer the earth's centre than Raton, we ■topped at Las Vegas, an important town and health resort, and then we began mountaineering again. From the rear platform of the Pullman scene fol- lowed scene until, near evening, we had 64 Over the Dirtd*. tealthlly risen to an altitude of 7,452 ft. at Glorleta Pass. Glorieta means bower or summer house, but the name does not sound so sweetly In the ears of a eon* sumptive. That place Is his Rubicon, often his Waterloo. The high altitude at which the train travel for a daant- ed me to subscribe. The Mexican takes pride in his hiorse and saddle, and every Canadian knows that Jean Baptiste may be slow in many things, but that he must have a fast horse to speed on the ice in winter or down the country road after mass, his best girl by his side. Neither Mexican nor habitant cares much for modern mprovements ; the Mexican still ploughs with a sharpened stick. There is no- thing in the Roman creed itself that should cause men to stagnate, but it is an undeniable fact that a large Roman r the Divide. Catholic community to generally behind one which to Protestant, la it that men who bow their wills In all things to one man, be he priest or ruler under any other name cannot hope to compete with men who have their wits sharpen- ed by sel!--Tehanc# T Is it that the un- numbered fete days and holidays ener- vate them for business, as men who dine by candle-light and sip liqueurs and wear gloves, go down before fhe bnawwy fisted noonday diners, till, but for the Inflow of farmers' sons from +he conn- try, great cities would deteriorate ? Whatever be the reason, ft Is indisr»ut« able that a priest-ridden people muwt rest content with the kingdom of hea- ven, for they will get but little of the good things of earth. And yet they get happiness. There is no denying the fact. The Mexican is born, marries and dies in constant son- light; be has no newspaper, no adver- tising, no business apparently ; no booms, no speculative fever (unless gam- bling means the same); has probably never heard of the President, and wonld A Canuck down South. show no interest in an election that sets every so-called clever man in the States frenzied with excitement. He never make himself a clothes-horse for election badges before the day, nor trundles his neighbor round town in a barrow, or shaves the one side of his face the day after ; yet he is far more contented than they. We were now truly in a foreign land. The United States owns it, but the once masterly Spaniard has left the im- press of his mailed hand upon it. And a still more ancient civilization piques the curiosity of the antiquary in the pueblos, grouped on the top of some al- most inaccessable rook or mesa, and reached by sheer climbing of ladders or niches in the rock. What terrible inva- sion in prehistoric times drove this an- cient people to suoh defensive meas- uers ? Vandals and Huns have roamed on every continent, and the Iaraelitish wanderings and conquent of the indwel- ler have been exemplified even on these Western plains at the very dawn of tlhe human era. 70 Over the Divide. We passed In the night, but saw cm our return one eufh Pueblo, Laguna, perch- ad upon a barren hill some sixty odd miles from Albuquerque, apparently ona house of adobe mud, flat-roofed and ca- pable of accommodating fully a thou- sand people. In older days entry was effected by climbing ladders to the roof, and descending through the scuttle, after drawing the ladder up. The Capi- at says that a latch key must have been a very cumbrous article in those times, and that to have seen a party of hilarious Pueblos staggering home in the wee sma* 'ours, and trying to ex- tract their ladders from their vest pock- ets and lean them up against the right house must have been a curious sight. There is a legend mot set down in the guide-books, that the Pueblo women used to sit upon the house-tops while their better halves were at the lodge, and would not let the ladder down to them unless they could pronounce Cua- uhquichollan, Tequechmecanlani and Tlacahuepancuexotzin. which, one would Judge, was a more severe ordeal than chrysanthemum. 71 A Canuck down South. The Mexican houses iare flat-roofed, one-storied affairs, not unlike large match-boxes, made of mud, which tihe everlasting sunlight bakes a light yel- low. This material is called adobe in the guide-books, and doby by Western- ers, and in tfoat rainless climate is prac- tically indestructible. The old Pecos church, visible in the valley snortly al- ter passing Glorieta, is some 350 years old, and its doby walls are as good as new. On the top of the hau/nted mesa, the observer imagines that he can still see the remains of the Acoma which was before the present Acoma, and the pre- sent Acoma claims to have had a few years the start of the Tower of Babel. The legend of the first town is a s/ad one, with which the guide-books make us familiar. It appears that a large landslide or a cloudburst, or something of the kind, took place while the men were working on their farms Hn the plains below, and their means of getting back to town was destroyed. Some say all the women, some say only three, were in the town when the catastrophe Over the Divide. took place ; but, however the number varies, the legends all agree that the men on the plains had the agonised (ate of looking vainly up the lace ot seven hundred feet of cliff, to where frantic women slowly starved to death. And from that day, somewhere back in the ages, to this, the foot of man has never walked in the^e deserted chambers or human eye looked over the wall where the dreadful tragedy was enacted. It la a strange thing to think of, a Pom- pell tn the sky, awaiting the coming of some nineteenth century investigator, who shall find, perhaps the children's toys untouched upon the floors, the wo- men's domestic implements, the evi- dences on the long-deserted hearth of the meal that was Joyfully being pre- pared for loved ones, and perhaps even the bodies of the dead, for in that at- mosphere even flesh dries, and scarcely will decay. Superstition has surround- ed that lone rock on the Mexican plains, and he who would solve the mystery will require armed men at his back. Will it be worth the while, or will the A Canuck doum South. result of amy investigation be but an- other useless desecration that shall cause us once more to bless the natu- ral law which decrees that even our bones should vanish ere the time ar- rives wfhetn we are strangers to the earth where once we were familiar, and serve to gratify the curiosity of some human mole. From Glorieta to Alouquerque the air- brakes were scarcely ever off. We were virtually tobogganing down mountain slopes, and within less than a hundred miles had subsided to an elevation 2,500 feet lower than at Glorieta. We crossed the Rio Grande in the gloom of night, which rendered that stream more roman- tically picturesque than was the Missouri under the sunlight, which had revealed the mud-flats diversified by a creek, the enormous bridge over which iooked like a piece of sarcasm. But the greater ease in breathing which the lower level gave us was not destined to last long, for from Albuquerque we were again toiling up grade towards the Continental Divide, that mystic point whence a glass of wa- OMT m IHviiit. ter spilled east or west might seek the sea of peace or that of storms, the grand old ocean that for centuries has crowned Bri- tish brows with triumph, or the vast new waters destined to roar through co- ral reefs or whisper on golden sands the story of a dawning age. Crossing the Divide T The term In olden times was synonymous with death, it was used In this sense by the Argonauts, possibly because their heaven was on the other or eastern side, probably because they could think of no fate more dread- ful than returning from their vast hori- tons and high, bracing, soul-stirring lati- tudes to a life on a lower level among starched shirts and the fetters of cus- tom and fashion forged about mankind by a dead and gone generation, a place where men are measured by their stone frontages and their great grandfathers, and no longer by their own human inches and mental imape < f t h««ir Creator. It about three In the morning when we pa ed this *iine," and moat ol us, notwith- standing our interest, were sleeping, though restlessly. A Canuck down South. It may have been the effect of the alti- tude, or it may have been something else, hut I know I dreamt a wonderful dream. The romance of the Maiden JLady came home at last. It was broad daylight, and we men were, as usual, sitting in the smoker spinning yarns. The dandies who had got on at Albuquerque were with as, each sitting on his hands and enjoying the conversation. Suddenly the train jar- red, and slowly came to a stop. The Ar- gonaut leaned forward, a strange fixed look on his face that was not agreeable, and his hand stole round towards his back, while he looked penetratingly into all our faces in rapid succession. "What is that?" said one of the tender- feet. "Is it a hold-up?" I don't know why, but we all followed the look of the Argonaut, which was fixed on the New York dudes, and each of these harmless creatures now held a re- volver in each hand, and each revolver looked like a cannon. Then one of the dudes said suavely: "It is a hold-up. I am sorry to interrupt the tory, but can assure you, gentlemen, that 78 Over the MiHdc. If you will only keep your hands above B heads for a little while, we will do you no harm. There's fifty thousand In the express to-day, and our pals want it. We dont intend you any harm If you nave horse sense." There were shots towards the front of he train, then screams, screams of a man, not reassuring if you have ever heard them ; yet the dudes sat Immovable with their howltsers, that now looked like hundred ton guns, pointing everywhere at once, as It seemed. I was there but I must have had a nightmare, for 1 couldn't raise my hands, and my pistol In my hip- pocket seemed to be about a thousand mnes away. Then came the denouement. The Maiden Lady entered, clad? — well, they aay dreams are made, as a mosaic, out of waking experiences; but If I ever saw a woman so dressed I want to know it. She wore pajamas and carried a parasol and said tragically : ••This is a hold-up.'- The mouths of the revolvers had mean- while expanded to about the size of the A Canuck down South. Baton Tunnel; yet on the lett side ol one I saw the robber wince. The Maiden Lady looked at him, and then there was a shriek. I said to myself : * Now, we'll get a first-class corpse." instead of which she threw herself upon the immaculate shirt front." "Found, found !" she cried; "my long lost brother." And then, as I woke, 1 still heard the long lost brother say "damn." But the last part wasn't a dream. I heard the word over and over again, as a night-shirted young husband who had got on — well, I will not say where — paraded the car with his squalling child. He did not stay In one place, but with generous instincts distributed that squall all over the car. Now he would hold the baby to the keyhole of the Lieutenant's state- room, and when he heard the Lieutenant's remark, would bolt impetuously to the other end of the car, distributing a war- whoop at every berth. By and bye our youngest woke, stretched himseh, put his toe in my mouth, and said : **Pa, is that a new baby?' .78 Over the Divide. 1 said 1 tlhiii 'Well, pa, II that's a oew baby, don't vou think the angels put him oat of hea- ven because he cries so?" Again i didn't know. "Pa, don't you think It needs oiling?" 1 said 1 didn't think It could do much better than it was doing. Morning dawned at last after an un- comfortable night, ushering In our fifth day on the cars. I do not know how others feel about It, but we felt after ttie first day as if a change to a coffin would be a welcome relief, and give us more room. On the second day we were willing to stand another tweuty-lour hours ; on the third day, we didn't care how long the Journey lasted, and on the fifth we thought of its termination with regret. There is no doubt tnat eels do get used to skinning. We had fallen so thoroughly into one another's ways, made such delightful friendships, and had, on the whole, so much comfort on the long Journey, that we would indeed have been very bard to please had we not begun to regret the A Canuck down South. now fast approaching hour of separation. The warmth of a trans-Atlantic acquain- tance is but cold and distant compared with that which is engendered by such a trip as ours. Compared with a Pullman car, a steamer is a wilderness. On board ship we can get away into nooks and corners ; in a Pullman, even a flirtation must he carried on under the eyes of old campaigners, and no one can get out of reach of his neighbor's ears and eyes. We ate together, talked together, almost dressed together, and slept so closely packed that one felt that his neighbor read his very dreams. A filmy curtain was our house front, and across the street our fellow-citizen fared no better. In our long journey from Chicago we had all become accustomed to much that would have appeared odd in a drawing- room, which reminds me of a ludicrous incident, which was, however, anything but funny to the chief actors. Some time during the night, at some way-station, a man and his wife got on, and we were immediately prejudiced against them, because the man had wak- 80 Over the Dit ened us with bis storming at toe con- ductor for not baring a lov to give them, as though the Company should have kept a berth empty for t heir conv ence nil the way from Chicago. In tht morning,while we were in the midst of our dressing in our usual tree and easy style, the Argonaut, sweeping under his berth for his collar-button, and the Capitalist making down the aisle towards the wash- room, with the bulk of his clothing over his arm, a flash of a neat ankle or bare arm, fringed somewhere around the shoulder with dainty lace showing from behind the berth curtains the kind of struggle the ladies were having to dress ; when, I say, we were thus engaged, this new comer, whom we regarded as an interloper among our party, returned from the wash-room, where he had dressed himself He took the situation in at a glance. His wife, who had been sitting in her seat, complet- ing her toilet, was, in his opinion, in im- minent danger, and he pounced upon the mildest-mannered and most modest of our party, an English Church clergyman, A Canuck down South. who stood without coat or vest, giving the finishing touches to the halyards that upheld his lower rigging, his standing rigging, as it were. 'Sir," screamed the irate and shocked husband ; "what do you mean by such conduct. How dare you, sir, unblushing- ly, dress in my wife's presence?" If a thunderbolt had fallen amongst us It would not have created more consterna- tion. The Argonaut stopped peering un- der the berth ; the Capitalist quickened his pace and disappeared into the smoking- room, while there was a sudden stoppage of the rustling behind the curtains, as though the ladies had imagined it was to them that loud-voiced Comstock address- ed himself. Our shy clergyman had no idea that he was being spoken to in that manner, and proceeded quietly to put on his vest, when a renewed roar in his ear lifted him from the car floor, and when he landed again he turned round and asked in ome confusion, "Are you speaking to ne?" M To you, sir, yes, sir ; it's perfectly Over the Dii scandalous, sir ! Porter, do you not see hat creature putting on bis vest, his vest, sir, before my wile's eyes." But the porter was out on the back platform, admiring the scenery by that time. The poor clergyman so suddenly as- saulted, lost his presence of mind for the moment, or I'm sure he would not have replied as he did. It was a good retort, but too good to be intended. He said : 44 1 beg your pardon ; I — I, I really didn't think she would object. X'm sure I didn't when I saw her putting on her-" "Sir, don't talk to me ; don't dare, sir. You ought to be ashamed of your cloth," the long coat being very much in evidence on the car seat, and the clerical vest hav- ing been buttoned all awry in great haste. Then the clergyman recovered his senses. He had not dealt with sinners for no* thing, and this boor was very much in his line. • My dear sir," he said, frigidly ; ,4 if you cannot be gentlemanly, you should at least be consistent. 1 do not consider A Canuck down South. that a man without his vest is so disre- putable an object as to call forth such remarks, and, at any rate, it is preposte- rous that you should cry out upon me at one moment? to be ashamed of my cloth, when you have just told me I should be ashamed of the want of it." Then followed language that I dare not set down, and it was not the clergyman who used it, either. But, fortunately, it did not last long. With one bound the Argonaut laid his still powerful arm on that of the boor (we weren't shocked at the lack of the collar-button just then), and he said : "You miserable hound, if you don't re- cognise that there are ladies on this car, and stop that profanity, I'll throw you from the car window. You never were on a Pullman before, nor mixed with de- cent people." And the way that man subsided and took his meek wife off the car at the next station is one of the plea- sant memories of my life, f bough I, and all of us, were deeply sorry for his wife. When the morning sun gilded the peaks about us we were in Arizona, If New 84 Over the Divide. Mexico affords us a glimpse of prehistoric civilization and peoples, surely Arizona re- Teals to us the secrets of the creation of the world. Here we seem to be In Na- ture's boiler-room, and her stupendous en- ergy, which in other parts of the world is concealed under vales smiling with flowers and flowing rivers, is here demon- strated in rivers of congealed lava and ashes and cinders, heaped up mountain high. Among yonder peaks lies cold and Ft ill the crater of many a volcano which once perhaps rivalled Krakatoa, Etna and Vesuvius. In the dawning ages, when the continent bore a different shape, and strange monsters lurked in the sea and stranger trod the earth, what a dreadful scene must Arizona have presented, the solid world trembling with pent-up va- pors, the lava wlndiug luridly down the vast mountain slopes, the air thick with steam and cinders and sick with th tinuous thunder of nr'ghty explosions ! For miles upon miles, upon all sides, as the train swept on, we saw nothing but the relics of subterranean fires. And then, as the hours slipped by, and once more A Canuck down South. we were on the flanks of the mountains, my heart went out to Arizona. We seem- ed once more in Canada. Here were whispering pines, long woodland aisles where the sunlight steeped verdant knoll and rocky crag with color and with warmth. Here were flowers, water- courses and life, and the axe of the lum- berman rang keen as in our woods at home. Yes, I love Arizona. Even in its deserts it has a charm such as endears Sahara to the Arab, and its bare hills have the strange, weird attraction such as Kob Wanlock sings of in his Scottish lilts. Arizona, like a capricious beauty, wins and holds us, in spite of will or rea- Bon. Whether it be the unique Devil's Canon, which the train leaps over, cling- ing to a filmy bridge 225 feet above the tiny stream beneath, or the incomparable Grand Canon of the Colorado, which is over 6,000 feet deep, or the 13,000 feet of the San Francisco mountain, half of which, even at the elevation we have reached, still towers above us: whether it be the chalcedony park, or the cave dwell- ings, or only the natural mountain parks, 86 Over the Divide. ♦ he ruddy desert and cinder cones and the valuable copper mines of the country, Arl- tona is a fitting gateway to California, the land 01 sunshine and treasure. I shall not soon forget Canon PJabolo. The Capitalist and I were standing on the rear platform, when suddenly the level prairie sank away swiftly from us to a depth that made us dizry to look down, as though the subterranean powers had cleft the earth to claim their own. We had lust time to gasp when the earth rose again to meet us, and the train was once more gliding along the level. There had not been the slightest warning of what was coming. At night a man would walk clear off the prairie, and apparently put his lifted foot down in tne streets of Hong Kong. The Capitalist mopped his brow. "I always forget that canon," he said ; '•and my heart jumps into my mouth when we leave the ground so unexpected- ly. I'm not as good now as the first time I was bald-headed, and that gulf scares me. What chances they lose out West I If I had that canon in New York A Canuck down Mouth. State, now, I could make a fortune out of it. Just picture it, a big hotel on each side, incline railway to the bottom, roller skating rink, rope-walkers going across, peanuts, banana sitands, merry-go-rounds for the children, and so on. Sir, there'd be a fortune in that canon ; and I'd ad- vertise it till there wouldn't be a man would dare come to America and not see it." We supped in California that Wednesday evening, at the Needles, and mirthful was ur last night on the train. What a won- derful creature is man ! While we, in the luxury of a Pullman car s,at smoking and spinning yarns over our ice-cold liquors, we were boring through the gloom of night over the great American Desert, where many an unfortunate forty-niner left his bones to bleach under the pitiless sun of a parched sea of sand and giant cactus. Here there was a sign of life only at the little stations set down along the line of steel, — one called Bagdad, a name which fitted it , another called Siberia. Whose grim irony named this hottest spot in the world after that region of ice ? I stood a short time on the platform that night, watching the placid stars and the dim stretches of mesa, broken by cactus shadows, and wondering at the energy of those who in a prairie schooner traversed the Western wilds, wound through the mountain passes, and crossed these two hundred miles of deadly alkali plains in pursuit of gold. Starvation Peak, Los Animas, the river of lost souls, Death alley, and hundreds of places, named and unnamed, witnessed the stern fight waged between barbartem and civiliza- tion and between man and nature, ere the Stars and Stripes waved in Pacific breexes. The journey across the continent, is it not an allegory of the journey of life ? Such thought, as the car wheels clanked rythmetically on the rails, shaped itself in my mind as follows : LIFE'S ARGONAUTS. Over the Red Missouri, Out on the op*n plain, Far from the haunts ofchildhood\ They ne'er shall see again, A Canuck down South. Seeking the golden treasure. Braving the toil and strife, Eagerly go the Argonauts On the journey of life. Vast and void and voiceless To the horizon's rim, Stretches the rolling prairie, As day by day grows dim. Beneath the wondrous star glow That lights the heavens calm, Come bivouac, rest and slumber And dreams of the lone first palm. Nor tree, nor grass, nor blossom, Anywhere under the eye, Sage brush, sand and cactus And glistening alkali; Promise of water often, But only a mirage sham, Till lips can hardly utter A sigh for the lone first palm. The prairie dog has his burrow. The prairie hen her nest; Only we, under heaven, Have neither home nor rest- Over the Divide. Over the shimmering level, Long as the hot sun swam. We plodded wearily forward. Seeking the lone first palm. Beyond the rolling prairie. Beyond the desert drear. At last, the ragged mountains Their mighty flanks uprear. Parched and starred and weary, We face their pitiless caJm — Oh, that the Journey were over, Oh, for the lone first palm 1 Indian braves in their ambush. Hark! how tho bullets sing! While, through nnfathomed canons, Shrilly the war whoops ring! Lying, face up to the heavens. Silent are Dick and Sam, God in His mercy bring the rest Safe to the lone first palm! Miles upon miles of desert Under a burning sun, Till the blood is boiling in our veins, And life Is almost done ; Then rise upon rise of mountains. And hope's eternal balm. In the rales beyond Is the goal we seek. Hurrah! for the lone first palm. A Canuck down South. Precipice, cliff and canon, Toirent and icy peak, Tempest, and whirling snow drifts* Hiding the trail we seek. Then sunshine, warmth and pleasure. And rest without pain or qualm In a riotous garden of flowers Beneath the lone first palm. Prairie and peak and desert, Hope, and the death of hope, Joys and alluring visions, Trials and the strength to cope ; Success to him xuho struggles t Defeat to him who faints, So strives each soul to reach its goal, The Haven of the saints. Next morning palm trees and graceful peppers, eucalyptus, poplar and other fa- miliar and unfamiliar trees, greeted our eyes. The desert had given place to a garden, and through orange and lemon groves, vineyards, apricot, prune and fig orchards, and a riot of roses and other flowers, we reached our destination. 92 |f^M^ PPlP»lf f V W W m CHAPTER IV. In Arcadia. When we reached Sierra Madre, after so long a railway journey that the time- table had come to be regarded as a piece of sarcasm, Diogenes met us at the sta- tion. Diogenes is a Canadian, and that is not his name, but as he sets up to be a philosopher and came to meet us with a lantern that glorious sunny mornng— a tribute to my honesty — he was so dubbed instanter, and the name has stuck to him. A short drive through avenues shaded with pepper-trees, euca- lypti* palms and live oaks, brought us to the cottage that was to be our Cali- fornia home, a sweet little place sun- smitten all day long, its vera gloomed with morning-glories and climb- A Canuck doum South. ing roses and its carriage drive lined with broad-leaved palmettos drawn up sol- dierly on either side, as though to keep in check the mob of orange and lemon trees that crowded the ranch. Here in the golden afternoon was gathered a party of reunited Canadians, and while the children romped in the garden, pelt- ing one another with roses and carna- tions or playing hide-and-seek behind banks of chrysanthemums, Diogenes and I talked of the long ago, and offered such incense of tobacco (brought from Canada) to the Manitou as would have made Barrie write a second volume in honor of 'My Lady Nicotine/ and have shamed the tribute of the Algonquins who guided Champlain beyond the Chau- diere Falls. After that October day we hunted health and killed time in Arcadia. Phyl- lis was not there, nor Strephon, except under less euphonious names and in more unromantic guise, nor did we ever spy a woodland nymph or hear the hoof of 94 In Arcadia. a satyr among the live oaks' gospel ling glooms. Otherwise?, it was Arcadia. The sun sauntered lazily through the sky, day after day, and let the seasons take care of themselves. The century- plant thought itself very energetic be- cause it had bloomed cnce since the De- claration of Independence, while the flowers forgot time altogether, and blos- somed the whole year round. There a thousand years were as a day, and a day as a thousand years. The inhabitants seldom knew the month and hardly ever the date. Calendars are handy when promissory notes have to be renewed. Diogenes had one, and so had I, but we were never able to induce any banker to allow us to put them to their proper use, and the only interest we had in keeping track of the date was connected with our remittances. No one could keep track of the days of the week in this Arcadia, and Diogenes, who has a deep reverence for the fourth command- ment, made it a rule not to work at all, A Canuck down South. lest he should inadvertently break the Sabbath. Physicians the world over send con- sumptives to southern California, but they never seem to get there. At least, there are none in Sierra Madre, although a good deal is heard about lung trouble. jSTo invalid dies there ; he does not even slip awa, like Drumtochty folk. His friends only say that he is gone, and shake their heads, fearing that, having gone farther, he may be faring worse. In the various sanitoriums time is plea- santly spent swapping symptoms, and the man who has most is looked upon with exceeding respect. Diogenes and I secured a fairly good reputation in this direction by the liberal use of a medical dictionary. It is truly wonderful how many symptoms can be got from an un- abridged medical dictionary, assisted by a vivid imagination. There was, however, one man in the place before whom we sank into irritating insignifi- cance. He had more diseases than a In Arc< civic hospitnl, and had a way of diagnos- ing some fatal and insidious malady from his companions had mistaken for signs of robust honltli. If he slept paresis was coming on ; if he slept ill, his days were numbered ; if he had a good appetite, there was a secret waste; if he ate but little, he was in the last stages of something awful. Diogenes and I eould not boast of a single symp- tom in his presence without being swamped with a list of his maladies. He was dying more variously than any p son we knew— and he is not dead yet. The mystery wes subsequently solved when we found tiiat he religiously read through all the patent medicine adver- tisements of the Los Angeles Times/ and we got to hating him so for his symptoms that we used to wish he would take some of the remedies prescribed, and die a natural death— that is, a nat- ural death for such an idiot. Sierra Madre is an extensive hamlet on the slope of the Sierra Madrc moun- 97 A Canuck down South. tains, overlooking the fertile valley of San Gabriel and about six miles from Pasadena and sixteen from Los Angeles, on the Kite-shaped Track, its station be- ing Santa Anita. It is devoted to the cultivation of oranges, lemons, apricots, figs, grapes and the tuberculous bacillus. As a health resort it is fast coming to the front, and seems to merit its reputa- tion. Its little cemetery does its best to prosper with the rest, but is not a success. It is a pathetic little God's Acre under the kindly shadow of the eternal hills. There are a few well- kept graves and several costly head- stones, but these are the exception. To- mato cans usually do service as mortu- ary urns and flower pots, but as the weeds conceal them and the flowers as well, they are quite as good as Carrara. The whole place is usually a blaze of wild sunflowers, and honeycombed with gopher holes, while often the jack rabbit or the cotton-tail sits, lost in reflection beneath its stupendous ears amid the 98 Ill Alrdili,!. lonely graves . The epitaphs, when de- ciphered, are not cheerful. The young may die, but the old must, says Long fellow, and in any properly regulated cemetery youth finds comfort in reading that so-and-so died at eighty or ninety, and in finding that he stands a good chance under the system of averages of being able to revisit that cemetery many times yet before he forgets to return to the bustling world. But our cemetery deals not easily with this simple faith of the young. Here lie, in the majority, those of our own age, stricken down be- fore their prime, their ideals unsullied, their hopes unrealized. Here lie some whose history we learn, lonely strangers whom a broad human sympathy has laid in the bosom of the eternal moth* from heme and friends, some whose de- serted and neglected graves bear mute testimony to the haste with which tl.e nursing relative packed his or her trunk with one hand and closed the dead eyes with the other, grief long since discount- A Canuck down South. ed in the early stages of the wearying malady and thoughts of home and relief and rest making welcome the close of the tragedy. When I was in Southern California I wrote an article in which I stated that the country could not progress any faster without pulling the earth out of its orbit, and that a man going hunting over waste lands in the morning, was apt to lose his way on his return home at ndgiht among the orchards that had been planted on the same ground during the day. A California paper printed the article, but on second thought, and at this distance, I would qualify the statement, by admit- ting that the bustle of trade in and around Sierra Madre was not sufficiently loud to prevent my sleeping at nigiht. Not that Sierra Madre was unenterpris- ing. The place had a 'bus driver, in- surance agent, press correspondent, pri- vate banker, real estate broker, news agent, and so on. The only trouble was that when this man wentt to town, busi- 100 7n Arcadia. ness languished until his return. He was also agent for a firm of undertaken, and was in consequence interested in the progress of every invalid- He dis- played great anxiety about my health from the first, and although we are fast friends, I feel that I disappointed him by the rapidity of my recuperation. Touting for trade, while the subject is still alive, is not uncommon among S oo th ei n California undertakers. One day a man came up our avenue while I *as on the verandah. TEIow do you do?' he said, bowing. Every one bows to us in the country parts of California, whether they know as or not, just as they do in French Canadian districts. It saves trouble if one leaves hie hat at home. I gave him good day and he came up the steps, expatiating upon the view of the vailey and mountains. Galifornians have the idea that the rest of the earth is flat, stale and unprofitable, and it does not do to try to undeceive them, KM A Canuck down South. unless one is the bigger man. After he had heard my opinion, he said. 'Out here for your health, I suppose.' 'Yes/ I replied, 'ordered to a warm place, to escape a warmer/ He laughed so heartily that I at once knew he was an agent of some kind. Agents can always see the point of a joke. But he quickly grew serious once more, and said, 'You're cautious, you're shrewd, you're the kind of man I like to meet. Now I'm sure you would like to have some positive assurance as to your future com- fort. I can give you that, at least, bo far as your mortal remains are concern- ed. I represent Messrs. Coffin & Graves, of Pasadena. Give me the date of your birth, and I'll get the other details from your wife later. She can telephone when you die, and we'll hlave you in cold storage within forty minutes. And say/ here he leaned confidentially towards me— 'If your -wife gets her message in ahead of our regular agent here, we'll 102 In Arcadia. allow her the usual commission, of course." I told the man I would be deeply ftd to give my custom to any one else ; to arrange for a first-class funeral, ami to come back, in which event I would cheerfully supply the corpse. He did not seem at all pleased when he went away, and he never came back. Perhaps I looked too healthy. n the two or three livery horses of which Sierra Madre oould boast were engaged by luckier people, we walked, but that was seldom. The grades are too steep. There is not a level hundred yards within the town limits, and in many places one could step from one's attic into a neighbor's parlor. It was the easiest thing in the world to drop a hint into a neighbor's ear, if one started it right, and as for scandal, it nev<-r I>ed between the highest house in the Sierra and the lowest in the valley. \'ell we had quail among the copses, jack rabbits in the vineyards and washes, squirrels in the live oaks, gophers in the wheat fields, wild pigeons, blue jays, «!omestic caU that made night hideous, an occasional coyote skulking round the chicken corrals) and the infrequent tramp disposed to take charge of our valuables. Among the mountains, the wild cat crouched along the branch, the mountain lion stole through the underbrush, the sheep clambered upon almost inaccessible crags and the grizzly lumbered along, ing tlio miles with an easy ra- pidity that was astonishing in one of his build. I did not hunt for him, hav- ing gone to California for my health, and I was careful where I went to deep. A man from Ventura, who went to sleep in the Sierra, woke to find that a grizzly bear had actually stepped across his body. He has always boasted what he would have done had he awakened at thai interesting moment, but we noticed 107 A Canuck down South. that lie could now never sleep within sigiht of a mountain. I would have added blackbirds and tur- key buzzards to my list, only that these are sacred birds in California. The blackbirds throng the busy streets of the towns as numerous and as imper- tinent as the sparrows in Canada. I do not suppose there would have been any objection to my hunting them, on ac- count of my peculiar style of shooting. All the game in the neighborhood soon got to know me as a mild mannered gentleman of pacific intentions. Even the Jack rabbits entered into the true spirit of the sport, and one in particular would often sit on his haunches among the orange trees and hoist his ears for a target. Wihen a bullet passed near enough to suggest that I might be grow- ing dangerous, he would shift his ground a few yards and I would have to try for the range again by sighting a few shots on the barns or disbant mountains. The 'enfant terrible/ with fine sarcasm, always Ill An adld. characterized my rifle practice aa 'bang- ir.g the mountain*.' Not the leaat pleasing of our oceupv tions, and one which, strange to lay, never tired Diogenes or myself, consisted in lying beneath a spreading live oak on some ranch and watdhing the orange gatherers at work, swart Mexicans and yellow Chinese, under huge sombreros or washbowl hats of straw, who, pouch on shoulder and ugly knife in hand, reaped the juicy harvest that clustered so thickly upon the trees that there seemed no shadow under the boughs but only a blaze of sunshine. At hand huge waggons were drawn up with their teams of patient mules, or went lumbering down the slopes, laden with full boxes, to the cry of the driver and the incessant crackling of his long whip. When all else failed we derived con- siderable entertainment from the climate. California has more weather in a day than Canada has in a year, and Old Probs always explains a failure in his 100 A Canuck down South. predictions by the statement that hi9 forecasts got mixed in the mails. It is to be understood that California extends through about ten degrees of latitude to begin with, then it extends up and down about three miles, and altitude gives as great a variety as latitude. Further, the state is washed by the Pacific on the w T est and dried by the American desert on the east. A man can select his own climate, and where we were he has a variety of choice almost every day with- in walking reach. This is very embar- rassing to a stranger. He gets up in the morning and perhaps happens to look in- to the valley which is overcast and full of fog, so he reaches. for his waterproof and umbrella. By the time he has thus equipped himself, he looks at the moun- tains, and when he sees them covered with new fallen snow he rubs his eyes and decides to wear an ulster and fur cap. When he gets to the front door in this guise, he sees the calla lilies and the orange and lemon trees round about //; .tn tally wandered into a climate that takes not kindly to linen dusters. In time he learns to wear heavy woollen under- wear all the year round. If a man stays at home he can enjoy the same climate for six months at a time, and the next six months is the twin brother of the first. When a San Franciscan sees the sun he thinks he has discovered a comet, and the Los Angel- enian will write a column editorial and half a dozen sonnets on a shower of rain one could carry in a bucket. And the biggest newspaper in the southern counties will publish his effort*. But I am not surprised at this. After one has lived some months in southern Cali- fornia, a vague dissatisfaction pej-mcates his soul, and it finally dawns upon him that a continuity of fine Jay* is mono- tonous. When, day after day, week in A Canuck down South. in and week out, the sun shines, the flowers bloom and the birds sing, the stranger finds himself praying for rain. Then he prays for snow, and as the Land of Sunshine continues to verify its name, he gradually increases his demands until he is importuning heaven for hail, wind, cyclones, blizzards, tornados, waterspouts, cloudbursts, anything in fact which will afford a change of weath- er even at the expense of all his wife's relations. But, if he is wise, he will not confess this weakness to a Calif ornian. During our sojourn a man was arrested in Los Angeles for beating his wife, and it came out at his trial that he knocked her down with the family thermometer because she had complained that the temperature did not fall low enough in a California winter. Once, and once only, we had snow on the level, and it scarcely remained long enough to permit a snowball to be made. That was on March 2 and 3, 1896, and the whole country turned out, including 112 In the governor of the state, to investigate When we arose that morning the ground was dusted with snow, and through the cool, ■ scented air every wind waft brought the heavy perfume of orange blossoms. The sky was overcast. Great clouds rolled down the mountain slopes, coming and going and changing shape every few min- utes, while through the otherwise air, from some height above the clouds, wild geese were screaming discontentedly on their way seaward. Whenever the clouds lifted, there, on the bold summits of the Sierra, the snow lay piled, and in the canons back among the mountains we heard the sullen reverberation <»f thunder peals rolling like the sound or some titanic drum calling to battle the powers of evil. The power of prose is inadequate to do justice to the weird- ness and beauty of the scene, and even the following attempt to descril e it in verse falls far short of conveying the proper impression : r A Canuck down South. A WINTER DAY IN THE SIERRA. O'er the Sierra scarce the moon yestre'en Was risen, to flood each sombre peak with light, Ere came a* cloud host through the gusty night, Storming the crags. Sheer canon walls be- tween, They swept, and hid bare ledge and living green. Hoarse thunder pealed frcm unseen height to height, As though the vast hills boasted of their might, Though Chaos' self upon them seemed to lean. Dawn drew aside night's veil of mist, and came Across the hills. The clouds retired, and lo! On every wind swept crag, as Day look- ed forth, ^Bright in the southern sunshine gleamed the snow, A vision of the unforgotten North "Twlxt golden skies and poppy fields aflame. IN THE VALLEY. Snow on the hills, but in the valley, flow- ers, Topples aflame and orange blooms wdom scent 114 In A With the faint odor of the tuow is blent. Snow on the peaks, but In the canons. shower?, And torrents drinking strength from stormy hours. The geese wheel seaward through the clouds half spent. Fleeing the snow and screaming discon- tent. But In the rale birds trill in odorous bow- ers. Summer is in the val?. though in the heights The bandit Winter lurks to seite his prey- Still springs the grain, vines grow and fruit deligh's Sun and soft winds through many a gold- en day In many an Eden valley, nestling warm Below the stern Sierra, wrapped in storm. The summer of southern California corresponds in it* effect with our winter. Tt is the fallow season, during which the toil bakes and brings nothing forth. The trees do not sit in sackcloth, but they certainly don ashes enough to sat- isfy the jrreatest mourner at the wailinf of the Jews, till the whole country lr. A Canuck down South. looks like a tramp badly in need of soap. Even in winter there is an occasional Sant'Anna which sweeps up the dust till it shrouds the hills and obscures the very sun, and that dust will remain float- ing in the atmosphere for several days, without, however, affecting the lungs. Farther north, in Utah, we heard of a similar storm which so coated the tele- graph wires and poles with salt that a hose reel had to be called into requisi- tion . A common error concerning the California summer is that it is unendur- ably hot . The story is often told of the bad Californian who died, and after a day or two in the place modern theol- ogy does not believe in, sent back for his blankets . Californians tell that story, but they tell it is a man from Yuma, Arizona, where, it is said, the hens lay hard-boiled eggs in winter. From what I could gather about the California summer, the thermometsr is entirely to blame. It persists in trying to make people believe it is overworked. in A rnito lis dry climate, even in wint have known it go up to a hundred and :y, when the heat was really no . oppressive than it would be at Montreal with tl. 'inter at Heat out there is not oppres- hut pleasant, if somewhat ener- vating. One just wants to lie out and scak in it. I do not mean perspire, for that is a rare phenomenon . And if one feels too hot he has only to go around the house into the nhade, and put on an overcoat. Often one might ae2 a man go down the sunny side of a street in Los Angeles with his ioat over his arm, while on the opposite side his friends were wearing overcoats. At sundown the man who has no overcoat • to perish with cold. These pe- culiarities of climate explain why ladies are to be seen dressed in muslins and with gay sunshades, while around their necks are twined huge furs. It rains about a fortnight, off and on, during the winter or rainy season. Then 117 A Canuck down South, from the middle of May to the end of October there is never a cloud in the sky. Once in a dozen years a section of the Pacific Ocean that has lost its way runs up against a Sierra peak, and there is a cloudburst. One such visited Sierra Madre in 1894. It dropped in for five minutes, and by that time the Stain stret was a foaming torrent flowing breast high. One man told me that lie had not seen such an active movement in real estate since the boom. Moun- tain property that even the boom could not sell was carried down and turned into town lots. He himself had every- thing clean washed off his land except the mortgage, and that, he said, he had to liquidate himself. The canons were roaring sluices, filled to the brim with whirling whitecaps that bore down every- thing before them, even vast trees and huge boulders, and ploughed across the country rords, cutting deep trenches. And to make matters worse, the \ oet of the Los Angeles 'Times' came out 116 In Arcadia. simultaneously with a, poem in blank verse, beginning- Drop, gentle dews, from heaven till the mlrth- Ful earth la moved with an ecstatic thrill. He who imagines that because two nations speak the same language, they must of necessity go hand in hand, like loving children, through the world has never read the history of Greece, and ki»ows nothing of the real feeling which the United States entertains towards England and Canada. We were in Cali- fornia during the Venezuelan trouble. and the best I can say for the spirit of the United Statesians is that those who do not hate us, have no more love for us than they have for Germans, Turks or Fiji Islanders. Our one terror was that the editor of the Los Angeles 'Times/ a mild mannered, kindly gentleman in pri- vate life, would leave his sub-editor to attend to the ferocious editorials against all things British, and girding on his sword again, make a descent upon Sierra lit A Canuck down South. Madre, and butcher us one and all. He would have had some difficulty, how- ever, for the Canadians were in pretty- strong force there, while the entire state could, and would, have afforded a battalion to defend the flag that for a thousand years has braved the battle and the breeze. There is not, in fact, a Caiiforndan in California, or, at least, they are very scarce. Bees gather where there is honey, and the state is full of shrewd dow r n-easters, canny Scotchmen, stalwart Chinese, quaint Japanese, Eng- lishmen and Canadians. If the flood were repeated, and California spared, the races of man would not lack representa- tion. One cannot throw a stone any- where in California without hitting a Canadian. A Canadian has been mayor of Los Angeles, a Canadian lias been president of the Chamber of Commerce in the same city, a Canadian is at the head of several railways, and he has Canadian brakemen and conductors un- der him. There are Canadian physi- C4MU, engineers and ranchers. I hare met Canadian cowboys. I < I'ritiA vice-consul is a Torontonian. Ontario, the model colouy of the state, was I ed by Canadians, they thron, and Riverside, and in one town they elected a Canadian mayor and board of aldermen, as a protest against the tail- twisters. The only place I did not fed a Canadian was in gaol, but I think Diogenes will rectify that if he keeps on. They do not really speak English in California. When people go there first, they call a burro a donkey, but when they have resided there a while they call a donkey a burro, realizing the \alue of foreign words in *##&#*##&# &&&&&&#&&#&&&»-•£&& CHAPTER V. In the Sierra. 'Nineteen of the Sierra peaks rise to a height of ten thousand feet, and seven of them rise still higher, until Mount Whitney wears the crown, rising to the heavens to the height of 14,900 feet. Some of these summits are still warm with volcanic heat. There they stand, white-hooded, with glaciers moving along their flanks, as if a thousand years were but as yesterday, letting loose the moun- tain strer.ms that go singing down to the sea. There is the divine sculpture of the rocks, the lakes that mirror those sternal ramparts, the great forests that sing in the storm and «igh in the sum- mer breeze and the groups of sequoia overmatching in height and circumfer- 124 In the Sierra. e&ee any other conifers on the gfofee. I the clouds come down and kiss the mountains, and the lesson is renewed every day of eternal repose and majesty and strength. The mountains are not solitary, hut arc rich in floral and ani- mal lifr. There hutterflies flit and risjg sad huge grizzly bears come out of caves and caverns. There the mariposa lily unfolds its petals and the snow plant, red as blood, springs in a day mysteriously out of the margin of receding banks of snow. And there the lakes rejMJse in bowls with the moan- tains for rims.' These words of Senator Perkins are very pretty and very true, but one has to run almost throughout the state to see all tliat he depicts. On a more moderate scale, however, almost any por- tion of the mountain region affords such beauty and even approximately such gran- deur, and no small portion of our plea- sure while at Sierra Madre was derived fr< .in watching the ever-changing a s pe ct A Canuck dotm South. of the hills and wandering among their verdant canons and upon their lofty heights. When we arrived at our cottage home in Sierra Madre the children were no sooner out of the carriage before they clamored to be taken up the mountains that seemed to rise out of our back yard. It was almost impossible to con- vince ourselves, much less them, that the first outlier of the range was quite half a mile away, and it was still more diffi- cult to believe that those rock masses were towering up four, five and six thou- sand feet. The only occasion when a proper estimate of the height of the range could be formed was upon a cloudy day, when the mists would ebb and flow. Then, while the upper part of the range would be wholly hidden, some magnifi- cent knoll that on fine days we mistook for a gentle elevation would stand out against the background of fleecy white, towering up to twice the height of our own Mount Royal. Ten minutes later ISC tbc clouds would part, and that would sink into insignificance and be- come merged once more in the general contour of the range. Morning, noon and night, the hills seemed instinct with life. Even in the sunshine and hask'ng under a cloudless sky, they changed from hour to hour ; and in the monotony of our California life we grew to love them and to watch their every- mood. On them alone was to be seen any semblance of the green robe to which we were ac- customed and for which we vainly yearned in the general landscape of the more level valley. Sometimes, too, a careless hand would start a fire, and all night long it would seethe and billow far up among the stars, sometimes creeping like a fiery serpent around a projecting crag and sometimes rushing up a piny canon, which at dawn gleamed, a black- ened ruin, in the rising sun. Among these hills and upon their very summits are to be found sanitoriums where the consumptive flees from the A Canuck down South. great flood of death which is constantly- rising about the race of man. Mount Lowe and Wilson's Peak are two such, adjacent to Sierra Madre, both attainable by trails and the former reached also by a mountain railway rivalling the Rigi. On the tradls, especially that to Wilson's Peak, the burro is used, an animal which has done as much for the development of California as the railway itself, for with- out the burro to bear the pioneer and his pack over and among the mountains Cali- fornia had hardly even yet stood in need of the iron horse. The burro is not quite a donkey, though T doubt whether his own mother could explain the difference. He is a kind of »hetland pony run to ears, or more cor- rectly a mongrel or poor relation of every member of the equine race. He is cot described in Dr. Goldsmith's 'Animated Nature/ for obvious reasons. His move- ments are so slow that phyBicians pre- scribe burro riding as a sedative. It is impossible to catch any disease on feurro In (hr gffl back, not even locomotor ataxia, lie has a voice nearly as big aa his ear* and as musical as a boiler factory. On the other hand, if the burro is not fat>t, he is safe. His aurefootedness in narrow places is the envy of politicians, and when we decided that it would be a pleas- ant departure to celebrate Christmas Day by an open-air picnic among the moun- tains, we decided also that we would make the excursion on burro back. on's Peak is reached by two trails, one a waggon road from Pasadena, which concerns us no farther, and one the old trail from Sierra Madre, on which two counterfeit bills could scarcely pass one another. When in a generous mood this latter is about six feet wide, but it fre- quently narrows to less than three. A yard is enough for a burro, since he al- ways finds four feet to walk on. but the accommodation seems unduly limited where there is a rise of some thousands of feet on the one side and a sheer fall of other thousands on the outer edge. c. m A Canuck down South. •specially if the burro pauses absent- mindedly and reaches out after a spray of leaves, while the ground begins to slip from under him. In such a case the rider wishes for the wings o£ a dove or for a parachute. The road to the foot of the trail skirts the flank of the Sierra, under majestic uplifts, in contour rot unlike the triangu- lar folds of silk shopkeepers display in their windows. At evening the depart- ing rays of the sun light up and mellow these peaks until they resemble silk in texture also, but in . The heir to my debt*, aged three, who sat tt my saddle added to my delight at interval* by asking me what I would do were tihe burro to fall down this or that abyss, at the bottom of which thr pine trees look- ed like grass and the rushing torrent like a silver thread. At times, one foot was contracting rheumatism from the draught of some unfathonable gorge over which it hung, while its fellow had difficulty iu avoiding a squire league of mountain. Once the child leaned over to plu^k some blossoms growing on the edge of a precipice. He did not get them, and I got only half a breath, while the burro cast a reproachful glance at both of us as he swung suddenly in towards safety. 1 gave him no sympathy, however, as for some time he had been displaying a sav- age joy in walking upon the outermost edge of the trail, heedless of my nerves and of the interest of the company which carries an insurance upon my life. I had fi'vjuently heard of thif peculiarly A Canuck down South. of the burro and never thought of the explanation of it until I saw Diogenes on one. It is a mistake to say the burro takes the outer edge of the trail because he is accustomed to carrying packs, he does so either to get room for his own or his rider's ears. We reached a height from which we could look down upon San Gabriel Val- ley, and what a sight that was! The or- ange and lemon trees looked like those pigmy plants the Chinese excel i in culti- vating. The scattered cottages looked "like dolls' houses, the orchards like checker- boards, the waste lands showed their dry watercourses which give them the local name of washes, hills once respectable became mere ant hiSls, and Pomona and Los Angeles seemed near enough to one another to have the one board of alder- men. And beyond, through a gap in the distant mountains, gleamed the Pa- cific, a broad sheet of silver, with Santa Catalina Island set in its midst, like a sapphire. J3« In (he There b one loop on the trail, sci- on the face of a perpendicular cliff, from which we looked across a canon and saw where our burros were about to carry as. It was not a soothing prospect. A cloud or two hid the view, somewhat, but, all the same, we noted the sheer rae from base to summit certainly not less than three thousand feet, and up the face of that magnificent uplift winds the trail, a mere line in the sky, enough to make one dizzy merely to look it it. We had a camera with us and a picture of one of us on that cliff now adorns my library. I wanted to get a companion picture of Diogenes falling down the canon, but he very selfishly declined to- accommodate me. He could have done it just as easy as not, since the trail is only two feet wide at one of the most dangerous places. Montreal readers will get some idea of this trail if I ask them to pfle several French Church towers one upon the other and then ride round the top-most coping, till they have accom- A Canuck down South. plished a few miles. Nay, this is below the truth, for there are places where we skirted precipices at whose base the French Church towers could scarcely have been distinguished. And yet we were not half-way up that tower of Ba- bel of mountains, giant reared to heaven, beyond the reach of fl-cod, silent, desert- ed, awful in their titanic majesty. After an eternity of this tight-rope business the scene changed. We were still creeping skyward, but were now so deep among the hills that the ravines began to grow shallower. And then, amtid the shifting shadows of that golden day, flung from aromatic pines, steeping the soul in memories of Canadian woods, I drew one easy breath at last. We were not at the summit, for we contem- plated returning the same day to close our Christmas in Canadian fashion with a heavy dinner and an evening round a roaring grate fire. But we were so high that we feared our burros' ears would dis- turb the astral maps, and had St. Peter 138 Ttf. appeared to ask for our passport* we would scarcely have been surprised, al- though Diogenes would certainly hive been embarrassed for once. Our picnic was a success, and none of us will ever forget that Christmas mesi the shifting shadows of the upon a golden, glowii a purling sfa vataJ clear, ice cold. Our ride h h rilling, but un- eventful. The burros actually trotted at titi.es. and the rattle of stones loosened by their dainty feet to bound and re- bound into the sullen gorges was not the sweetest nor the most reassuring I in a timid ear. That was my first venture among the Sierra, but their spell was upon me, and many a diy thereafter I used to roam on foot upon the sanir i siting canons and crags, at times with rifle or revolver, at times trusting entirely to the charm of nature for entertainment. One deserted shack, I shall not say where, •ar of reprisals, once tempted me to A Canuck down South. incvestigate. Below stairs it was innocent enough, but venturing further, into the attic, to which early gymnastic training alone enabled me to hoist myself, I found that I was among the haunts of 'moon- shiners.' There was no liquor, but there was ease upon case of little flasks, dry as myself, awaiting the night, when stealthily through the gloom to that lonely spot some desperate law-breaking private distiller, with revolver at his belt, would steal from some still more lonely recess among the mountains with a sus- picious barrel upon the back of a secre- tive burro and make those particles of blf wn glass capable of administering to the joys and sorrows of his fellow-men. Some- times I would, when pining for the snows of Canada, pluck a rose in our garden, stack it in my button hole and breast the trail, to luxuriate within the half hour in banks of snow. Once when I had been thus engaged I found on my return, within a few hours, that a friend had been wrestling with the angel of 140 Iii the Sitrni. God and secured the bleating of in by so slender a hair U I that land of invalids. lie had been scarce half an hour dead when I arrived, ye* \>f that time his body was on the road ts Pasadena in an undertaker's van, and all the world ytls changed for those who loved him. Some people have presenti- ments of such things, but I never have. Nothing important can happen to those the Princess loves but what she feels it. Once she hurried me upon a railway journey on what I thought was but a wild-goose chase, upon one such presenti- ment and we arrived as though in re- sponse to the U-lccram we had never re- ceived. And she knows by intuition whether I have been delayed by business or a friend at the club, which renders her a somewhat embarrassing wife, or would do so if I were not the saint I am. Psychologists may explain this as they will, the fact remains, as I can at- test. Perhaps one must truly live in and for others before such a gift is vouch- safed. Th* selfish are beneath it. HI A Canuck down South. It was my good fortune to form one of a party invited to dedicate a new tiail through the Sierra. A number of ladies had decided to be the first whose skirts would flutter at that high alti- tude, and the officials of the trail invited a number of men to accompany them in self-defence. We formed a gay caval- cade, and all the ladies rode astride (the Princess was not with us). A temporary trail, corkscrewing up a dreadful slope, almost made some of us slip over our burro's tail, a possibility which was, however, partly robbed of its terrors by the fact that, in such an event, we knew we would land in the lap of some of the opposite sex behind us, the cavalcade being in such manner arranged. The completed trail was not different from any other except that na- ture was still virgin about us. No van- dal hand had cut down the tawny ma- drcna or still more swarthy and snaky manzanita. The holly berries flashed their scarlet glow upon us, the bay tree In the Siena. fanned us and the live oak scattered its shelly leaves and tremulous shadows everywhere. Graceful ferns and starry pleased the eye, and we needed no warning to avoid that slender- ied, dark-leaved skulker among the heavier wood, for we knew the poison oak of old. So, on and up we mounted, now looking across a canon to the sheer sides of Monrovia mountain towering 4,410 feet into the air, now looking down to catch a glimpse of tapering pines and to hear the murmur of some mountain stream. When the trail became too narow for our burros we advanced on foot. The line of the road had only been marked out, and we had some training in true mountaineering. At one point it was necessary to step from one spur of roi-k to another with a gorge seven h feet in depth yawning hungrily be*ow. The ladies were more indefatigable than the men, and it shortly transpired that their enthusiasm arose from the fact that A Canuck down South. a few hundred yards in advance on the line of the trail was a mountain stream upon whose brick no woman had ever stood, and they were determined to visit and christen it. The chosen sponsor was a charming young lady, whose Chris- tian name was Oline, and after her the stream was to be named, with the pre- fix 'Saint/ 'all places and things being saints hereabouts, if Oline isn't/ as a maiden friend remarked. The ceremony was short and simple. Standing on the femy margin of the pool, which mur- mured down a shady and rocky canon, the slender, girlish figure bent, and in the hollow of her hand took up a sunny wavelet with which she performed the mystic rite. It was my privilege as poet laureate to record the christening in simple verse, as follows : — Hi In the Sierra. Ere yet the Spanish cavalier For this new world set sail, Ere yet the Padres came anear San Gabriel's sunny vale, Ere yet the thirst for gold drew men Across the western hills, I rippled down this rocky glen, The happiest of rills. The shadows of the spreading oak Oft lay upon my breast ; < HI through the brown modronas broke The bear upon his quest. Past starry yuccas to my brink nany a crimson dawn The mountain lion came to drink, and oft a timid fawn. The golden moments came and went Of many a sunny year, And still I rippled on, content And solitary here. At times a weary miner earns I •luaffed my cooling stream, .csl saw the camp fire flame Of hardy hunters gleam. 11 Ufl A Canuck down South. Though oft I paused to hear some bird Trill in the leaves above, A maid I never saw nor heard, Nor knew the name of love. Oh, there was never rivulet So merry in a glen ; But now I never can forget, Nor happy be again. She came in thoughtless girlish mood, The dizzy trail along. Upon my ferny marge she stood And listened to my song. I saw her and I leapt for glee In many a lucent wave, And when she stooped to drink from me My very heart I gave. She passed, and now no more I sing Among the granite bills ; Instead, my ceaseless murmuring The sombre canon tills . Oh, ye to whom that maid divine Hath also heartless been, Come join your mournful plaint with mine, The pool of Sant' Oline. 14G MM! joooc ROUGHING IT. The luxuries of to-day are the neces- saries of to-morrow. We had been M ess ed in Canada with a comfortable, well-built and well-furnished home, and had followed our own habits and cus- toms. But in California we, in company with thousands of other winterers, found ourselves obliged to conform to new cus- toms, adopt new habits and rough it somewhat disagreeably in a house lack- ing many conveniences, and which, while said to be furnished, resembled nothing else to much as a Canadian home after seizure for rent, inasmuch as it contained only the bare necessaries which cold- 147 A. Canuck dawn South. hearted justice deems imperatively requi- site for the existence of even a bank- rupt. One rents a furnished house in Sierra Madre without the formality of am in- ventory, but one has 'to pay renit in ad- vance, the landlord taking no risks of one's death before the month is up; and as the first month's rent would pay for the entire furniture, making an inven- tory would be too much like work for the average Sierra Madran. We could probably have taken away the house at the expiry of our six months' term with- out any questions being asked— ait ail events, we thought we had paid about all that it was worth. In our case, however, we heard long after that there had been an inventory. The house agent from whom we had tak- en the cottage knew nothing of it, and no tenant ever saw it, but it reposed in the charge of a friend of our estimable landlady, our landlady being an absen- ts Roughing It. tee, and afforded the lady who held it the congenial pleasure of privately in- vestigating the damage done by each out- going vandal, and retailing it to her croniea over a cup of tea. No official complaint had ever been lodged, but by this merciful dispensation of providence a certain stratum of society was enter- tained and occupied at a very small ex- pense. I imagine the inventory ran about as follows. It will do for many a cottage in the place, and, indeed, Dio- genes says theft at least two invalids lay down and died of sheer chagrin when they heard how luxuriously we lived. KNTOBT. Best bedroom— The usual hard- wood set found in seaside hotels, bureau mir- ror making a hat on the left ear appear to be on straight, carpet made by Noah after he had trodden the wine-press. Worst bedroom— One cheap folding- bed, variegated with a chintz front, war- Hi A Canuck down South. ranted better than an alarm clock at daybreak, one enamelled chair, formerly white. The occupant of 'this room might use the kitchen sink for a wash- stand and finish dressing at the mirror in the other room. The floor had a straw matting on parts of it. Dining-room — Hardwood table and four chairs. There wouldn't (have been room for any more, anyway. When we had guests, we moved the table into the par- lor. This room also contained a diminu- tive stove, called a 'Ohromo/ and it was one. It was spavined in the off hind leg, and was rarely on speaking terms with the cihimney. Parlor— One antique rug (antique sounds better than antiquated), eked out with pieces of straw matting, an in- toxicated bamboo easel warranted to fall upon the nearest person, a visitor for choice, in order to afford a theme for conversation. (' How horrid ! I do hope it did mot hurt you. No ? How 150 Roughing It. fortunate. It didn't injure your bon- net ? No ? I'm glad. It's auch a beautiful bonne* ; laat year's atylea were charming, weren't they ?') There wae a bamboo lounge in the parlor, the only comfortable piece of furniture in the house, and there were six chairs, no two alike, none upholstered, and three were rockers. There were two small tables. Cutlery, kitchen utensils, china (no, I mean crockery), and linen to match. We had napkins on Sunday, till our own supplies turned up. Tn ff* to give a man a delirium. No, when we began to have dreams like that, we knew it was our reason or the incubator that would have to go. would have gone into market gardening but that seemed overdone. Vegetables were a drug on the market. When I first dealt with John Wee Chen Yen, and asked him for tyenty-five cents worth, he apt down, phlegmatically, and began to unharness his team. 'What's the matter?' I said. keep horses; you beep rest/ he said, and John's vegetable waggon was larger than a hay cart. But they can not grow a vegetable in California to compare, for taste, witfi those of the East. They are like the climate, mono- tonously alike. Of what use is a pump- kin that cannot be moved without a der- 159 A Canuck down South. rick and a team of horses, if it will not make a New England pumpkin pie? Calif ornians will say we didn't know how to cook them. Out butcher used that excuse. Ho had sold us the last hen in the state, one wfhdch had been brought in by the early missionaries, and of course I broke my carver on it, and sub- sequently splintered the axe-handle. Then I complained to him. 'How long did you cook it?' he asked. 'An hour/ 'You should have cooked it three.' And when I told him that with fuel as expensive as it was he would have to bring me a government contract with each hen, he merely laughed at me. After our unfortunate experience with the chicken corral, Diogenes and I cast about for some other occupation. At first our inclinations were towards some- thing involving brain work, something which we could do while sitting on the verandah smoking and discussing plana. But after a while we realized that there ieo Roughing It. is no labor bo dignified a* manual labor. We would become horny banded eons of toil, and after a few years maybe we mdght become walking delegates and Na- poleonic leaders of a strike. We asked the Princess what she thought. She told us she thought that 'was about tihe kind of workmen we would be and of course, that compliment from her settled the matter. So we went out to see if there was any job to be had washing orange?. In some localities, apparently, where the fogs reach, oranges get touched with a kind of smut, which is scrubbed off after plucking, and laborers get about three cents per box of two hundred. W made six cents each that day, enough to make a Mexican feel like a nabob. We would have made more only we fell into a discussion as to what bank we would put our savings into, and, of course, our discussion was so bright that the other workers crowded round till die rancher came and said he would save us the trouble of quarrelling on the subject. 161 A Canuck down South. We decided after that one experience of the grasping mature of capitalists that we would be our own masters, and with our wealth buy up the mortgage on that man's estate and squeeze him. I am glad now that we did not, for we might have found ourselves like many others in the region, tied for eternity to a ranch that barely paid expenses. There was an old mine tunnel in the hills nearby, and we decided that where there was a mine shaft there was sure to be gold and silver. We had not read mine prospectuses for nothing. The mine was deserted, but we knew that the general thing is that the poor fellows who dig in and blast and get 'busted/ on a mine, leave off about six inches from the blind lead, or the hanging wall, or the maitrix; so we determined to open up that half-foot. But there seemed to be a hitch siomewhere, and after boring a hole and examining the rock we went back home and spent the afternoon 162 I It. pleasantly and instructively studying Mark Twain and Bret Hart. With renewed courage we decided to prospect, especially as the guide books declared that the Sierra/ of Southern Cali- fornia have never been thoroughly pros- pected, and ought to contain untold mineral wealth. For a few days we wan- dered among the canyons and peaks, oc- casionally forgetting our object in the charm of the scenes. On the lower slopes the soft glow of the purple penste- mon and the deep indigo of the lark- spur diversified the scene, *.vith an occa- sional flash of the scarlet larkspur, which is indigenous to California. The lavender tulips nodded across the plains, and in the washes the white petals of the tall bush poppy shone around a golden cen- tre. Here and there among the rocks the mimuluB was wreathing its orange and red, and the soft purple of the nightshade lighted up its deeper hues. The open slopes were thronged with sun- flowers, and with the advent of spring 163 A Canuck down South. the poppies bad sprung up, like high- landers from the correi, and their fiery cross was blazing far and wide, viable even to the wondering sailors far out at sea for the color of the poppy is a land- mark to the mariner upon that dreamy ocean. On the higher levels or slopes the ohap- arrel robed the hills in shaggy green, the mountain streams sang as they leaped from cliff to cliff. The white sage uplift- ed its tall spires, the yerba santa attract- ed the eye and the fragrance of the white and bluish bloctm of the mountain ma- hogany was upon the air. Here the yucca lifted its lilies, the bunch grass grew and the vetches trailed their gar- lands of purple and green over the rusty white of the wild buckwheat. Willows and cottonwioods, sycamores and live oaks deepened the shadows, ferns de- pended from moist banks, and far aloft, thousands of feet above us we could see the sunlight silvering giigamtic masses of granite, and hear the breezes whispering 164 • It. pines that wound ably upwards around the flanks of the Sierra, until lost amid ihe azure clouds where tthe condor was wheeling upon motionless wings. That was the kind of day labor Diogenes and I delighted in, but we found no gold. One day Diogenes came to me and said wc had been a pair of fools. I asked him to explain. 1, we haven't gone the right way about our prospecting. Listen to this. It's an account of the discovery of one of the richest veins in Colorado. 'Two prospectors who were grub staked 1 Tabor (bince Senator), chanced to be crossing Fryer Hill and sat down to im- bibe casual refreshment from a jug of whiskey. By the time they had become satisfactorily refreshed all kinds of ground looked alike to them, and wH the slightest justification they began to dig where they had been sitting. They uncovered the ore body of the famous Uttle Pittsburg mine/ 165 A Canuck down South. There was silence for a few moments. Then I leaned forward. 'Did you say whiskey?' 'Yes.' 'Do you think it was United States whiskey?' Diogenes did not say a word for a few mdnutes. Then his face lengthened. 'Because/ I continued, 'if it has to be United States whiskey, I am a pnohibi- tiorisit/ I have always felt proud that when the choice stood between a gold mine wdJbh (United States) whiskey and a poor but honest life with prohibition principles, I chose the better part. Di- ogenes has not yet discovered a gold mine, but I have my suspicions that he has tried to. Throughout southern California, as in- deed throughout any other country dis- trict where the residents are not them- selves producers of their own food, the tradespeople call at the house for orders. The procession used to begin about seven 166 Roughing It. in the morning in my time, when the g rocer y boy would pound on the door un- ceasingly until I roae from my beauty sleep to chide him. On the banks of the lower St. Lawrence they are more courteous. They don't knock; they just come right into the bedroom. I have known a bowing and gesticulating butch- er enter the room of an astonished cus- tomer, with a leg of mutton in his hand, and expatiate on its merits while the mistress of tie house said naughty words afcoot him with her head under the bed- clothes. After the grocer's boy would go away, happy for having ruined my rest, the milkman would drive up, deposit his self-sealing jars and rumble down the avenue. Then there would be a breath- ing spell for bath and breakfast. When I say bath I speak with a men- tal reservation. There was one bath in Sierra Madre, and when H was being brought in ^t frightened the horses worse than a steam roller, and the Mexicans couldn't be got to go near i oz he Wl > Bunker street 1 tell you he looked quite pert, But his eye had Its old time glare that ant "some feller will be h\p The Editor of the Bugle Horn was the first to come his way, And Dick he owed him a little grudge Ctwas all Dick would ever pay). He caught the editor In the back— Dick's gearing was seventy-four— And the editor of the Bugle Horn won't go to press no more. Tt tickled the soul of Derringer Dick as he heard the jury say, "The editor of the Bugle Horn hadn't orter bin in the way." Fur that was the selfsame verdict Dirk had passed on many a cop Bs stopped a Derringer bullet when the other chap got the drop. He filed a nick on his sprocket wheel and mounted his bike again, And that afternoon another foe was re- moved from this world of pain. A Canuck Down South. So day by day es he scorched along, some citizen would be missed, And Richard rose into high repute es a masterly bicyclist. Sez Dick to the coroner over their drinks when the last inquest was done, " Human natur's forever the same. Though you've called in the gun, Fur lording it high and ruling the roost and settling on the spot, A bicycle rough is twice ez tough ez the chap that hacked and shot. The code's the same with another name. It's just 'git outer my light, Don't cross my path, I'm a man of wrath, I'll do you up on sight.' That's how I felt in the olden time, that's how I'll allers feel, But a feller don't hev no need fur a gun ez long ez he rides a wheel." 182