Читать книгу Westward with the Prince of Wales - W. Douglas Newton - Страница 16

The streets of St. John lead out at right-angles from this central group of square and street, for this is the West, where the parallel road-making of efficient town-planning reigns. Some of these streets are carved out of the grim, grey, slaty rock, that even now crops out in the midst of the stone and brick and wood of human effort, to show upon what stubborn stuff the first founders had to build.

In the residential streets, and particularly in the suburbs, the homes are planned charmingly. The houses are of brick or wood, most of them built in the Colonial style, and all pleasantly gabled, and of a bright and attractive colour, while every one has the deep and comely porch, upon which are scattered rocking and easy chairs, and even settees.

The houses are surrounded by the greenest lawns, and these lawns are not marred by walls or fences, but run right down to the curb, with but a strip of sidewalk for pedestrians. This elimination of railings is a thing that might well be imitated in our country; it gives the residential districts a pretty and park-like air that is altogether delightful.

We passed through miles of such homes in a journey round the deep bay of the harbour to the place where the Dauntless, dwarfed by the high lock walls, lay alongside the quay. There is a steam ferry connecting the two peninsulas that landlock the harbour, but our automobile driver, no doubt, had the civic spirit and wanted to show us both the beauties of suburban St. John, the great cantilever bridge across the St. John river and the famous Reversible Falls.

The Reversible Falls are at the mouth of the St. John river, where it pushes through the high limestone cliffs into the harbour. At low tide there is the authentic fall, as the river cascades over the rock in a drop of fifteen feet, but the extraordinarily tide of the Bay of Fundy, rising ten feet above the river level, actually reverses things, and forces back the flood along the channel with some turbulence.

Our journey to the Dauntless was for the melancholy business of collecting our luggage. It was here we left the cheery comfort of the ward room for the definite adventure by railway across the Continent. Our miraculously erected cabins, the one amidships, and the two that sat snugly in the aeroplane hangar beneath the bridge, and kept company with the song of the siren on foggy nights, were needed to accommodate the Canadians who were to accompany the Prince by sea to Halifax, then on to Prince Edward Island, and finally up the St. Lawrence to Quebec.

It was a reluctant farewell to a ship we had found so companionable and keen. But there was a ray of comfort when the baggage master at the Canadian Railway "Dee-po" handed us a little bundle of luggage checks for the mixed assortment of trunks and bags we had dumped into his room.

It had been an endless pile of luggage, and we apologized for it, and continued to say, "There's another piece, or two, or more, outside on the sloven...."

But the length of that luggage queue did not dismay the baggage master. He counted the big pieces calmly, fixed a little tag on each piece, tore off half of each tag and presented it to us.

"Through to Halifax," he said dispassionately.

"We'll be along this evening, when the special comes in, to look after it——"

"Look after it in the baggage-room at Halifax," he said, without excitement.

"It'll be all right?" we asked, in our English way.

"It's checked through to Halifax," he insisted evenly, as though that explained everything, which, of course, it did.

"And our suit-cases over there? We want them on the train."

"They'll be on the train," he told us, with his splendid calm. "Your car porter will take them on the train."

"We'll want them for tonight, so we don't want anything to go astray, you know."

"They'll be under the seats of your section, waiting for you tonight. The porter will see to that."

It was only then that we realized that we had been taken under control by Canadian Railways, and that the business of Canadian Railways is to make that control thorough, and to eliminate all worries, of which baggage is the worst, for their passengers from the outset to the end of the journey.

Our baggage being checked through to Halifax, awaited our arrival serenely at Halifax. If it had been checked through to Vancouver or Japan, it would have awaited our arrival with equal certainty. Our suit-cases were under our seats when we arrived at the car.

Canadian railways do not let passengers down on little everyday details like that.