The Ice-Castle erected by the Municipality was really a joy to the eye.  It was rather larger than, say, the Westminster Guildhall, and had a tower eighty feet high.  It was an admirable reproduction of a Gothic castle, designed and built by a competent architect, with barbican, battlements, and machiocolaions all complete, the whole of gleaming, transparent ice-blocks, a genuine thing of beauty.  One of the principal events of the Carnival was the storming of the Ice-Castle by the snow-shoe clubs of Montreal.  Hundreds of snow-shoers, in their rainbow-hued blanket suits, advanced in line on the castle and fired thousands of Roman candles at their objective, which returned the fire with rockets innumerable, and an elaborate display of fireworks, burning continually Bengal lights of various colours within its translucent walls, and spouting gold and silver rain on its assailants.  It really was a gorgeous feast of colour for the eye, a most entrancing spectacle, with all this polychrome glow seen against the dead-white field of snow which covered Dominion Square, in the crystal clearness of a Canadian winter night, with the thermometer down anywhere.

Another annual feature of the Carnival was the great fancy-dress skating fete in the covered rink.  The Victoria Rink at Montreal is a huge building, and was profusely decorated for the occasion with the usual flags, wreaths of artificial foliage, and coloured lamps.  An American sculptor had modelled six colossal groups of statuary out of wet snow, and these were ranged down either side of the rink.  As they froze, they took on the appearance and texture of white marble, and were very effective.  Round a cluster of arc-lights in the roof there was a sort of revolving cage of different coloured panes of glass; these threw variegated beams of light over the brilliant kaleidoscopic crowd below.  Previous Governors-General had, in opening the fete shuffled shamefacedly down the centre of the rink in overshoes and fur coats to the dais, but Lord and Lady Lansdowne, being both expert skaters, determined to do the thing in proper Carnival style, and arrived in fancy dress, he in black as a Duke of Brunswick, she as Mary Queen of Scots, attended by her two boys, then twelve and fourteen years old, as pages, resplendent in crimson tights and crimson velvet.  The band struck up “God Save the Queen,” and down the cleared space in the centre skimmed, hand-in-hand, the Duke of Brunswick and Mary Queen of Scots, with the two pages carrying her train, all four executing a “Dutch roll” in the most workman-like manner.  It was really a very effective entrance, and was immensely appreciated by the crowd of skaters present.  I represented a Shakespearean character, and had occasion to note what very inadequate protection is afforded by blue silk tights, with nothing under them, against the cold of a Canadian February.  One of the Aides-de-Camp had arrayed himself in white silk as Romeo; being only just out from England, he was anything but firm