The Prince of Wales and his cruiser escort left Halifax on the night of Monday, August 18th, for Prince Edward Island, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, arriving at the capital of that province the next morning.
Owing to the difficulty of getting across country, the Press correspondents were unable to be present at this visit, and went direct by train to Quebec to await the Prince's arrival.
We were sorry not to visit this tiny, self-contained province of the Dominion, for we had heard much concerning its charm and individuality in character. It is a fertile little island, rich in agriculture, sport and fishing. It is an island of bright red beaches and green downs set in a clear sea, an Eden for bathers and holiday-makers.
It is also one of the last rallying-points of the silver fox, which is bred by the islanders for the fur market. This is a pocket industry unique in Canada. The animals are tended with the care given to prize fowls, each having its own kennel and wire run. Such domesticity renders them neither hardy nor prolific, and the breeding is an exacting pursuit.
At the capital, Charlottetown, His Royal Highness had a real Canadian welcome, tinged not a little with excitement. While he was on the racecourse one of the stands took fire, and there was the beginning of a panic, men and women starting to clamber wildly out of it and dropping from its sides. The Prince, however, kept his place and continued to watch the races. His presence on the stand quieted the nervous and checked what might have been an ugly rush, while the fire was very quickly got under.
Off Charlottetown the Prince transferred again to the battle-cruiser Renown, and finished the last section of his sea voyage up the great St. Lawrence on her.
II
Our disappointment at not seeing Prince Edward Island was mitigated by the glimpses we had from our train of the country of New Brunswick and the great area of the habitants that surrounds Quebec.
On the morning of August 19th we woke to the broken country of New Brunswick. The forests of spruce, pine, maple and poplar made walls on the very fringe of the single-line railway track for miles, giving way abruptly to broad and placid lakes, or to sharp narrow valleys, in which shallow streams pressed forward over beds of white stone and rock. At this time the streams were narrowed down to a slim channel, but the broad area of white shingle—frequently scored by many subsidiary thin channels of water—gave an idea of what these streams were like in flood.
There was a great deal of unfriendly black rock in the land pushing itself boldly up in hills, or cropping out from the thin covering soil. Here and there were the clearings of homesteaders, who lived sometimes in pretty plank houses, sometimes in the low shacks of rough logs that seemed to be put in the clearings—some of them not yet free of the high tree stumps—in order to give the land its authentic local colour.