As they later rejoined the party, Morton, the Chief Justice, and Mariette returned from a saunter in the course of which they too had been chatting to the engine-drivers.
"I know the part of the country those men want," the American was saying. "I was all over Alberta last fall--part of it in a motor car. We jumped about those stubble-fields in a way to make a leopard jealous! Every bone in my body was sore for weeks afterwards. But it was worth while. That's a country!"--he threw up his hands. "I was at Edmonton on the day when the last Government lands, the odd numbers, were thrown open. I saw the siege of the land offices, the rush of the new population. Ah, well, of course, we're used to such scenes in the States. There's a great trek going on now in our own Southwest. But when that's over, our free land is done. Canada will have the handling of the last batch on this planet."
"If Canada by that time is not America," said Mariette, drily.
The American digested the remark.
"Well," he said, at last, with a smile, "if I were a Canadian, perhaps I should be a bit nervous."
Thereupon, Mariette with great animation developed his theme of the "American invasion." Winnipeg was one danger spot, British Columbia another. The "peaceful penetration," both of men and capital, was going on so rapidly that a movement for annexation, were it once started in certain districts of Canada, might be irresistible. The harsh and powerful face of the speaker became transfigured; one divined in him some hidden motive which was driving him to contest and belittle the main currents and sympathies about him. He spoke as a prophet, but the faith which envenomed the prophecy lay far out of sight.
Anderson took it quietly. The Chief Justice smiled.
"It might have been," he said, "it might have been! This railroad has made the difference." He stretched out his hand towards the line and the pass. "Twenty years ago, I came over this ground with the first party that ever pushed through Rogers Pass and down the Illecillewaet Valley to the Pacific. We camped just about here for the night. And in the evening I was sitting by myself on the slopes of that mountain opposite"--he raised his hand--"looking at the railway camps below me, and the first rough line that had been cut through the forests. And I thought of the day when the trains would be going backwards and forwards, and these nameless valleys and peaks would become the playground of Canada and America. But what I didn't see was the shade of England looking on!--England, whose greater destiny was being decided by those gangs of workmen below me, and the thousands of workmen behind me, busy night and day in bridging the gap between east and west. Traffic from north and south"--he turned towards the American--"that meant, for your Northwest, fusion with our Northwest; traffic from east to west--that meant England, and the English Sisterhood of States! And that, for the moment, I didn't see."
"Shall I quote you something I found in an Edmonton paper the other day?" said Anderson, raising his head from where he lay, looking down into the grass. And with his smiling, intent gaze fixed on the American, he recited:
Land of the sweeping eagle, your goal is not our goal!
For the ages have taught that the North and the South breed
difference of soul.
We toiled for years in the snow and the night, because we
believed in the spring,
And the mother who cheered us first, shall be first at the
banquetting!
The grey old mother, the dear old mother, who taught us the
note we sing!