But the first touch of dry land makes the sea and all upon it unreal.  Five minutes after the traveller is on the C.P.R, train at Vancouver there is no romance of blue water, but another kind—­the life of the train into which he comes to grow as into life aboard ship.  A week on wheels turns a man into a part of the machine.  He knows when the train will stop to water, wait for news of the trestle ahead, drop the dining-car, slip into a siding to let the West-bound mail go by, or yell through the thick night for an engine to help push up the bank.  The snort, the snap and whine of the air-brakes have a meaning for him, and he learns to distinguish between noises—­between the rattle of a loose lamp and the ugly rattle of small stones on a scarped embankment—­between the ‘Hoot! toot!’ that scares wandering cows from the line, and the dry roar of the engine at the distance-signal.  In England the railway came late into a settled country fenced round with the terrors of the law, and it has remained ever since just a little outside daily life—­a thing to be respected.  Here it strolls along, with its hands in its pockets and a straw in its mouth, on the heels of the rough-hewn trail or log road—­a platformless, regulationless necessity; and it is treated even by sick persons and young children with a familiarity that sometimes affects the death-rate.  There was a small maiden aged seven, who honoured our smoking compartment with her presence when other excitements failed, and it was she that said to the conductor, ’When do we change crews?  I want to pick water-lilies—­yellow ones.’  A mere halt she knew would not suffice for her needs; but the regular fifteen-minute stop, when the red-painted tool-chest was taken off the rear car and a new gang came aboard.  The big man bent down to little Impudence—­’Want to pick lilies, eh?  What would you do if the cars went on and took mama away, Sis?’ ‘Take the, next train,’ she replied, ‘and tell the conductor to send me to Brooklyn.  I live there.’  ‘But s’pose he wouldn’t?’ ‘He’d have to,’ said Young America.  ’I’d be a lost child.’

Now, from the province of Alberta to Brooklyn, U.S.A., may be three thousand miles.  A great stretch of that distance is as new as the day before yesterday, and strewn with townships in every stage of growth from the city of one round house, two log huts, and a Chinese camp somewhere in the foot-hills of the Selkirks, to Winnipeg with her league-long main street and her warring newspapers.  Just at present there is an epidemic of politics in Manitoba, and brass bands and notices of committee meetings are splashed about the towns.  By reason of their closeness to the Stages they have caught the contagion of foul-mouthedness, and accusations of bribery, corruption, and evil-living are many.  It is sweet to find a little baby-city, with only three men in it who can handle type, cursing and swearing across the illimitable levels for all the world as though it were a grown-up Christian centre.