The entrance of the two light cruisers from the drenched, brown-grey Bay of Fundy, past the rather militaristic looking Partridge Island, was the signal for immediate attention.
The inevitable motor launches came out by scores, and with them high-backed tugs; launches and tugs were covered with flags and people bearing flags, both flags and people being damp but enthusiastic.
The long harbour itself gives a sense of pit-like depth. Not only are the black quay walls extremely high, to accommodate a tide that has a drop of twenty-five feet, but on the quays themselves are piled immense grain elevators, with "Welcome" written in giant letters on their towering sides, coal-loading sheds with their lattice derrick arms that always seem to have been constructed by Mr. Wells's Martians, and great freight buildings.
Round this huge, black amphitheatre of welcome, on whose sea-floor was the Dragon and ourselves, people collected thickly, and everywhere there was the glint of flags through the rain.
But even the crowds about the harbour did not give a hint of the vast throng waiting on the landing-stage. Hidden away from the water by sheds, this very cheery crush filled the wide, free space of the harbour approach. Their numbers and eagerness had already proved the mutability of the police force, and volunteers in khaki were enrolled by the score in order to keep them back.
Almost as imposing as the throng were the photographers; not a few photographers, but a battalion of them, running about with that feverish energy Press-photographers alone possess, and climbing on to walls and roofs as though impelled by some divine, inner instinct towards positions from which the Prince of Wales could be shown to the world at unique and astounding angles.
Movie men and "stills" men, the former the real workers of the world, for they carry their heavy machines with all the energy of Lewis gunners, nipped about, formed in groups ready to shoot notabilities, mixed themselves up in the guard of honour until chased away by sergeants, and in the end forming up in a solid phalanx that almost obliterated Canada, to snap His Royal Highness as he came up the covered way from the wharf.
He had been received on the wharf by the Governor-General of Canada, the Duke of Devonshire, a heavy figure, whose very top hat seemed to have an air of brooding meditation in keeping with his personality; the Premier of Canada, Sir Robert Borden, an individuality of almost active reticence, a man who somehow seemed to get all the mass and weight of Canada into a mere "How d'y' do?" And with these were many of the leaders, political, commercial and social, of the Dominion, come together to join in Canada's first greeting.
It was raining, but there was no dampening that magnificent welcome. The meeting with Dominion leaders down by the waterside had been formal. The meeting between the Prince and the mass of people in the big, open space was the real welcome. Here, as in every other town in the Dominion, the formal side of the visit was entirely swamped by the human. The people themselves made this welcome splendid and overwhelming, elevating it to that plane of intimacy and affection that made the tour different from anything that had been conceived before.
After facing this superb welcome, which obviously moved him a great deal, the Prince passed to another side of the square, to where St. John had added a touch of youth, prettiness and novelty to the loyalty of her greeting.