But though all this was of course unknown, enough was still visible in the foreground of the future to make even the swift-moving paddles seem laggards as they beat to foam the long reaches of the darkening Cataraqui.  “We must leave matters to yourself, I think,” said the General, when I saw him for the last time in Montreal, “you will be best judge of how to get on when you know and see the ground.  I will not ask you to visit Fort Garry, but if you find it feasible, it would be well if you could drop down the Red River and join Wolseley before he gets to the place.  You know what I want, but how to do it, I will leave altogether to yourself.  For the rest, you can draw on us for any money you require.  Take care of those northern fellows.  Good-bye, and success.”

This was on the 12th June, and on the morning of the 13th I started by the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada for the West.  On that morning the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada was in a high state of excitement.  It was about to attempt, for the first time, the despatch of a Lightning Express for Toronto; and it was to carry from Montreal, on his way to Quebec, one of the Royal Princes of England, whose sojourn in the Canadian capital was drawing to a close.  The Lightning Express was not attended with the glowing success predicted for it by its originators.  At some thirty or forty miles from Montreal it came heavily to grief, owing to some misfortune having attended the progress of a preceding train over the rough uneven track.  A delay of two hours having supervened, the Lightning Express got into motion again, and jolted along with tolerable celerity to Kingston.  When darkness set in it worked itself up to a high pitch of fury, and rushed along the low shores of Lake Ontario with a velocity which promised disaster.  The car in which I travelled was one belonging to the director of the Northern Railroad of Canada, Mr. Cumberland, and we had in it a minister of fisheries, one of education, a governor of a province, a speaker of a house of commons, and a colonel of a distinguished rifle regiment.  Being the last car of the train, the vibration caused by the unusual rate of speed over the very rough rails was excessive; it was, however, consolatory to feel that any little unpleasantness which might occur through the fact of the car leaving the track would be attended with some sense of alleviation.  The rook is said to have thought he was paying dear for good company when he was put into the pigeon pie, but it by no means follows that a leap from an embankment, or an upset into a river, would be as disastrous as is usually supposed, if taken in the society of such pillars of the state as those I have already mentioned.  Whether a speaker of a house of commons and a governor of a large province, to say nothing of a minister of fisheries, would tend in reality to mitigate the unpleasantness of being “telescoped through colliding,” I cannot decide, for we reached Toronto without accident, at midnight, and I saw no more of my distinguished fellow-travellers.