’Thank you.  And you don’t think any attempt to bring in white immigration would succeed?’

’Not if it didn’t suit Labour.  You can try it if you like, and see what happens.’

On that hint I made an experiment in another city.  There were three men of position, and importance, and affluence, each keenly interested in the development of their land, each asserting that what the land needed was white immigrants.  And we four talked for two hours on the matter—­up and down and in circles.  The one point on which those three men were unanimous was, that whatever steps were taken to bring people into British Columbia from England, by private recruiting or otherwise, should be taken secretly.  Otherwise the business of the people concerned in the scheme would suffer.

At which point I dropped the Great Question of Asiatic Exclusion which is Agitating all our Community; and I leave it to you, especially in Australia and the Cape, to draw your own conclusions.

Externally, British Columbia appears to be the richest and the loveliest section of the Continent.  Over and above her own resources she has a fair chance to secure an immense Asiatic trade, which she urgently desires.  Her land, in many places over large areas, is peculiarly fitted for the small former and fruit-grower, who can send his truck to the cities.  On every hand I heard a demand for labour of all kinds.  At the same time, in no other part of the Continent did I meet so many men who insistently decried the value and possibilities of their country, or who dwelt more fluently on the hardships and privations to be endured by the white immigrant.  I believe that one or two gentlemen have gone to England to explain the drawbacks viva voce.  It is possible that they incur a great responsibility in the present, and even a terrible one for the future.

THE FORTUNATE TOWNS

After Politics, let us return to the Prairie which is the High Veldt, plus Hope, Activity, and Reward.  Winnipeg is the door to it—­a great city in a great plain, comparing herself, innocently enough, to other cities of her acquaintance, but quite unlike any other city.

When one meets, in her own house, a woman not seen since girlhood she is all a stranger till some remembered tone or gesture links up to the past, and one cries:  ‘It is you after all.’  But, indeed, the child has gone; the woman with her influences has taken her place.  I tried vainly to recover the gawky, graceless city I had known, so unformed and so insistent on her shy self.  I even ventured to remind a man of it.  ’I remember,’ he said, smiling, ‘but we were young then.  This thing,’ indicating an immense perspective of asphalted avenue that dipped under thirty railway tracks, ’only came up in the last ten years—­practically the last five.  We’ve had to enlarge all those warehouses yonder by adding two or three stories to ’em, and we’ve hardly begun to go ahead yet.  We’re just beginning.’