here the sandy bathing beaches make it one of the best
sea-side resorts in the world as well. At all points of the drive
there were crowds. And while most of those on the sidewalks were
Canadian, there was also, as at "Soo," a good sprinkling of Americans.
They had come up from Seattle and Washington county to have a
first-hand look at the Prince, and perhaps to "jump" New York and the
eastern Washington in a racial desire to get in first.

In this long drive, as well as during the visit we paid to Vancouver on
our return from Victoria, there was a considerable amount of that mist
which the inhabitants call "smoke," because it is said to be the result
of forest fires along the coast, in the air. Yet in spite of the mist
we had a definite impression of a fine, spacious city, beautifully
situated and well planned, with distinguished buildings. And an
impression of people who occupy themselves with the arts of business,
progress and living as becomes a port not merely great now, but
ordained to be greater tomorrow.

It is a city of very definite attraction, as perhaps one imagined it
would be, from a place that links directly with the magical Orient, and
trades in silks and tea and rice, and all the romantic things of those
lands, as well as in lumber and grain with all the colourful towns that
fringe the wonderful Pacific Coast.

Vancouver has been the victim of the "boom years." Under the spell of
that "get-rich-quick" impulse, it outgrew its strength. It is getting
over that debility now (and perhaps, after all, the "boomsters" were
right, if their method was anticipatory) and a fine strength is coming
to it. When conditions ease and requisitioned shipping returns to its
wharves, and its own building yards make up the lacking keels, it
should climb steadily to its right position as one of the greatest
ports in the British Empire.

II

Vancouver, as it is today, is a peculiarly British town. Its climate
is rather British, for its winter season has a great deal of rain where
other parts of Canada have snow, and its climate is Britishly warm and
soft. It attracts, too, a great many settlers from home, its
newspapers print more British news than one usually finds in Canadian
papers (excepting such great Eastern papers as, for instance, _The
Montreal Gazette_), and its atmosphere, while genuinely Canadian, has
an English tone.

There is not a little of America, too, in its air, for great American
towns lik