It is delightful after the stifling atmosphere of the cars to get out and stroll in the station garden, which is full of old-fashioned English flowers, stocks, geraniums, verbenas, floxes, and mignonette. There are a picturesque party of Indians with their squaws and papooses on the platform. We have seen some at all the stations selling polished buffalo horns, mocassins and bead work; but try and "kodak" them as we often did—and the instant they saw the small black box, the men turned away and the women put their shawls over their heads.
On leaving Medicine Hat, we ascended the valley above the river and passed on to a more fertile prairie. There was just here a great meeting-place for the buffaloes, and the ground is full of their "wallows" or hollows made by the weight of their unwieldly bodies. Alas, that the law against their slaughter came four years after they had all been wantonly killed!
We reach Calgary at the atrocious hour of two a.m., and turn out of a warm berth into a cold bed at the hotel.
Sunday, August 30th.—We attended morning service at the pretty little wooden church, the Bishop of Saskatchawan officiating.
Calgary is the capital of Alberta and is in the centre of a great ranche country. Like all these towns out west it is an unfinished conglomeration of houses, laid out in imaginary streets at right angles, in which there are few houses and more gaps. The whole is held together by a principal street, in which there are two or three pretentious new stone buildings. From here the houses straggle away into the country, the unoccupied lots being joined to them by a boarded foot-path. These towns have no depth, they are all surface and length. Laid down on the prairie there are no trees near them and they have a bare unfinished ugliness, peculiar to their new growth.
You are reminded at every turn of the reason for Calgary's existence, for its shops indicate the ranchers' wants. There are many saddlers, displaying Californian saddles, stock whips and lassoos; others have camp bedding and furniture; canned goods, that stand-by of the rancher, are evidently in great demand. The dry-goods stores are full of flannel shirts, slouching broad-brimmed hats and "chaps," or the cowboy's leather leggings reaching to the thigh. Nearly everyone you meet is English, there are few born Canadians.
The streets are full of cowboys riding their long-tailed, half-groomed bronchos at a hand gallop, or of sulkies with the unmistakable rancher, with shirt open at the throat, slouch hat, and tanned face. The chief subject of conversation is the dimensions of the ranches, the number of head of cattle and horses on each.
In the afternoon a Police team came with Mrs. McIllree, to drive us out to see one of these ranches. Out here anything from a single horse to a four-in-hand is called a "team," but this was one in our sense of the term.
We galloped across a trail on the prairie, and then wound through a "coolie," as they call the little valleys lying in between the rolling hills, and which are so frequent in this country. There are hundreds of gophers popping out of their holes, and as we see them close, sitting up with their long bodies, they look like tiny kangaroos. We espy coveys of prairie chickens, which are like our grouse.