“But what would the Germans have called them?”
“Perhaps they’d call them ‘Bluchers’ or ‘Hindenburgers.’”
Apropos of Bluchers—in the first Canadian village we visited the cobbler for repairs. He was an old man, and explained to us just exactly what “Blucher shoes” were. He pronounced the name to rhyme with “butcher,” and he called them shoes in the American fashion. In America boots are shoes, and shoes are boots.
“They call them Bluchers,” said the cobbler in a quavering voice, “because Blucher came up on both sides, and Bony did not know on which side he’d turn up. So the upper of the Bluchers are equally high on both sides of the shoe.”
That is, however, to go some days ahead. We are in the Rockies still, and beside a wonderful stretch of water blown by mountain winds into myriads of running waves. We bathed on its shallow shores; we did not venture far from the bank. For Waterton is a mysterious lake. It has often been sounded, but there are parts of it where no bottom has been found. It is the hole out of which these Rocky Mountains have been scooped, and it goes down, down, down, to the very depths of the earth.
At last we came to a Canadian camping-ground and a group of people clustered around a Ford touring car. A Ford car used for touring. Here there happened to be on holiday a professor of English, and he recognised Lindsay at first sight—such is the fame of the poet in American universities and schools.
This camping-group told us we were in a land predominantly inhabited by Mennonites, Mormons, and Dukhobors, and they whetted our curiosity considerably regarding our new neighbours. We had arrived in a part of Canada which was rather obscure and certainly little visited by either Americans or Englishmen.
We came to a ramshackle inn and a village and a dance-hall, and it was the last dance of the season. The Mormon, German, and Russian belles checked in their corsets at the cloakroom, and prepared for fun. It was a log-cabin hall, but the floor was waxed, and from the beams hung coloured-paper lanterns. There were a score or so of black bear-skins hung on the walls all the way round. On the bear-skins were white sashes with these words printed on them: I do love to cuddle; and on the main beam of the ceiling was written: Patrons are respectfully requested to park their gum outside. The whole front of the piano was taken out so that there should be more noise. Splotches on the floor showed how in the past, patrons had surreptitiously brought in their gum and had accidents. Many couples assembled, and we saw the human species, though not at its best.