Before leaving Canadian soil, there are several things to mention, which we have observed in travelling across the continent. Canada is in many ways quite as much American as English. They have the American system at hotels of making a fixed and inclusive charge of from three to four dollars per day. They also have the varied ménu, which I counted at one hotel to include fifty items. True, Oolong, Ceylon, besides English breakfast, tea, and fancy bread of all sorts, is put down to swell the items. Still we have often wished that the assortment of food was smaller, but better served. The Canadians use as much ice water, and consume as largely of fruit at all meals, as the Americans. Carriages are as expensive as in America, the reason being that tramways and electric cars are universally used as means of locomotion. Their railway system of drawing-room cars, sleepers, and dining cars are identical. Nor can their mode of speech be wholly excepted, for true born and bred Canadian often speaks with an equally pronounced accent as any American, and makes use of many of their expressions, such as "on such a street, a dry-goods store," etc.
In the universal and domestic use of electric light, Canada, like America, is twenty years ahead of us. Each little city has it, but then this is a new country and there are no great monopolies as in England to be considered. It is the same with the telephone. All public buildings, offices, shops, and almost every private house in a city has its telephone. A great amount of business is transacted through it, and ladies use it for their daily orders to tradesmen. The convenience is great, but the incessant tinkling of the bell invades the sanctity of home, viz. privacy. A lady recently arrived from England rightly called it "the scourge of the country."
As in America, domestic servants are scarcely obtainable. I found most Canadian ladies thought themselves lucky with one servant, and in luxury with two. A nurse is an unknown necessity to many mothers, who tend their children entirely. This accounts for the number of children travelling (we counted nineteen in two cars on one journey) and in hotels. There is no one to leave them with at home. If unavoidable, they are none the less a noisy nuisance.
Canada, if she is to be developed, requires a better line of steamers than the Allan to compete in speed and luxury with the great New York liners. She must be populated, and so long as the White Star and other lines offer such far superior accommodation for the same rates (four pounds) so long will the emigrants select that route. Every trip the 1000 emigrants landed at New York, are 1000 able-bodied English, Scotch, or Irish men lost to Canada. A strong government should initiate a large immigration scheme, vote a handsome subsidy and ask the Imperial Government to contribute a similar one. As we have travelled from the Atlantic to the Pacific, we have passed through thousands of miles abounding in natural resources, of mineral wealth and lumber, lying in their primeval state, undeveloped and unpopulated, whilst her rivals across the border are increasing rapidly the wealth and prosperity of their country by a free immigration, only wisely refusing to be made, like England, the "dumping" ground for the paupers of other nations.
Canada languishes for the want of population and capital. Give them to her, and she will become the finest country in the world, and our most prosperous as well as most loyal colony—British to the heart.
CHAPTER V.
TO THE LAND OF THE RISING SUN.
On Wednesday, September 9th, 1891, we embarked on board the Pacific s.s. Empress of Japan. We congratulate ourselves upon having a roomy cabin exactly amidships on the main deck, and the unprecedented luxury of two drawers and two cupboards. Otherwise our voyage does not promise well. The C.P.R. thoroughly understands its opportunities, and their putting on three new steamships, the Empresses of Japan, India, and China, is justified by the large number of saloon passengers. Thirty passengers have been their average up to the last voyage, when it was sixty, and this time it is 130. We hope that the resources of the ship will not break down under this strain, but consider it doubtful. The stewards are all Chinese, and excellent they appear, especially our table steward, who boasted the aristocratic name of "Guy."
It was a miserable day, the rain coming down in torrents, and under the wet awnings we dawdled about until the mails, five hours late, arrived. At six o'clock we left the wharf and went "forward" to see this ship of 4000 tons pass through the confined channel of "The Narrows." We could almost have touched the overhanging branches of the trees in the park, so closely did the ship hug the bank. At midnight we stopped opposite to Victoria to take on board some more passengers. They were in a sorry plight, for they had been sitting on an open barge in pitch darkness, and in pouring rain, for six hours.