THE ALL-RED ROUTE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2509, 16 April 1902, Page 72

THE ALL-RED ROUTE.

Bt the Ret. J. Gibb.

V.— THE LAST STRETCH OF THE PACIFIC. On a sea voyage it is disappointing that your ship does not stay in the ports of call long enough to enable yon to see all that may be seen of places of which you are getting your first glimpse. But business is not philanthropy, and steamers are run to pay, not to gratify the curiosity of wayfaring men. In less than 24 hours after mooring at the Honolulu wharf we were once more breasting the long Pacific swell. There was consolation, however, in the cooler weather into which we presently ran, and in the fresh fruit with which the larder had been replenished. Curiously enough, one of these fruits was the strawberry. The climate of Honolulu must have all the merits that are claimed for it when it can produce in perfection the fruits of the tropics and at least a fair quality of the fruits usually grown in more temperate latitudes. These J particular berries were of a good and rather piquant flavour. Possibly they were stored in the refrigerator, which, as I have heard, serves rather to improve the taste of some fruits. The refrigerator seems to affect different substances in curiously different ways. Beef and mutton lose little or none of their properties : fish, on the other hand, is simply spoiled. When you catch sight on the breakfast menu of the item "salmon" or " fresh herrings,"' savoury recollections arise of meals of which you have partaken in lands whose streams and neighbouring seas produce the dainties going by these names. Alas ! in this instance the only pleasure is that of memory. Professor Drummond, in his " Tropical Africa," 6ays that every form of food is to be had in tins, but that after two or three months you learn that this tempting semblance of variety is a gigantic imposition. "The sole difference," he eayp, " between the various articles lies in the label on the tins. Plum pudding or kippered herring taste just the same." So with refrigerated fish at sea. It does not matter what name they go by on the bill of fare : they all taste the same, and ab nearly as 1 can come at it, is that of sawdust. APPROACHING VANCOUVER. Seven days is the time usually occupied in the run from Honolulu to Victoria, which is the first port of call in Canadian terri- ! tory. As we ran up towards the northern forties one could not complain any more of heat, but neither was it very cold. The season was mid-winter, but, contrary to all my j expectations, mid-winter weet of the Rockies | is not a thing to dread so far as cold is concerned. The temperature of the ocean and the land west of the mountains is a very j different thing from the temperature of the land cast of these mighty hills. The mildness of the climate of Western Canada is attributed to the influence of the Kuro Sivo current from the Japanese seas, which does for the North-western coasts of America what the Gulf Stream does for the British Islands. The two climates of Canada are sufficiently distinct to have received separate names, the one being termed the Maritime, the other the Continental. But if the Western seaboard weather does not drive the mercury zerowards in winter, it is often wet and foggy to a degree to which we in New Zealand are quite unaccustomed. Happily, the day on which we made the land, though misty, was not densely so, and as we opened out the straits of Juan do Fuca a magnificent prospect greeted our eager eyes>. In some respects it reminded me of our own West Coast Sounds, only the waterway was much wider, and the hills higher than in the Sounds. Some of the- peaks wei-e manifestly of great elevation, their upper slopes and summits clothed with a dazzling mantle of ice and snow, whose splendour made one think of the " great white throne and the glory tha-t excelleth." It was a memorable eight. A few hours of this and we were moored to the wharf at Victoria. It is strange how little people in one part of the Empire know about the people of the other parts, and still more hazy are our notions concerning the localities in which our kinsfolk live I found the Canadians whom I met in a condition of deplorable ignorance about New Zealand. They had heard that it was a beautiful country, that it had advanced labour legislation, and that it possessed at least one inhabitant — .Mr Seddon, to wit. But this, especially the last, is not surprising. It is on record that a certain King of France uted to say, " The State — what is the State? The State is myself." MIGHT NOT OUR GREAT MAN say of Now Zealand, "The people — what is the people? I am the people." But if Canadians do not know much about New Zealand, New Zealanders do not know much about Canada. I had to go there to learn, for example, that the city of Vancouver, whose name at least is familiar to us all, is not in the island of Vancouver, but on the mainland. The island is separated from the continent by a channel which in one part ie called the Straits of Juan De Fuca, in another the Gulf of Georgia. The island in part lies opposite the State of Washington (U.S.A.) and in part opposite the Canadian province of British Columbia, with which it is politically connected. Vancouver Island has for its chief town Victoria, which is also the capital of the province. It seems a curious arrangement that the capital of the huge territory known as British Columbia should be situated on a comparatively small island, and I ascertained that the good folk of the city of Vancouver and other folk still further inland are even more impressed than their j visitors by the etrange situation of their capital town. But it is hardly necessary to say that the equally good folk of Victoria ccc nothing anomalous i« the situation, and to ensure that they shall be left in undisturbed possession of their rights and pri\ilegcs as the capital city of the province, they have had erected — so it is said — within recent yeara a magnificent pile of parliamentary buildings — very much finr-r than any public buildings in New Zealand, and as the Victorians proudly claim, not much behind the structures in which the Dominion Parliament and offices are housed in Ottawa. The two sights of Victoria are those Houses of Parliament and the view of the straits, which m the dim southern distance penetrate the territory of Washington (U.S.A.) and form Puget Sound, and eastward form the path to the city of Vancouver, some 70 or £0 miles away. The btraits, as seen from an eminence in the Beacon Hill Pnrk, are both beautiful and grand Indeed, when you turn to the north-west and catch sight PL tke hujc ice-cJAiLWMUJILKauAt BaJo£

overlooking like a solemn sentinel the whole 6cene, the prospect has some reason to be termed sublime. Near at hand the surroimdings were perhaps a little bleak, bufc that was to be expected. It was the deptbj of winter. But. the great pine trees in the park and which greet your eye everywhere in this part of Canada, had a subtle charm< for me. Nature has produced nothing in. the shape of a tree that has more power to> stir the heart of some of us than the pine tree ; but their fascination was in part due to the thick-crowding memories of tho etories of Mayne Reid and Feunimore Cooper and such like which entranced one's boyhood. So strong were those memories that I should not have been greatly surprised to find myself peering among the branches for the lurking form of the wild red man. I suppose in a little time the pines would grow commonplace in one's sight — a misfortune for which not the trees but the eyes that look at them, would be responsible. But surely no man with a particle of imagination in his composition can see a Canadian forest for the first time without a thrill of the heart.