All cars were decorated with masses of spruce and maple leaf, now
beautiful in autumn tints of crimson and gold. And Peace and
Britannia, of course, were there with attendant angels and nations,
comely girls whose celestial and symbolical garments did not seem to be
the right fashion for a day with more than a touch of chill in the air.

Through this avenue of fantasy, colour and cheery humanity the Prince
drove through the town, which seems to have the air of brooding over
its past, to the exhibition ground, which he opened, and where he
presented medals to many soldiers.

II

From New Westminster the Royal train struck upward through the Rocky
Mountains by way of the Kettle Valley. It passed through a land of
terrific and magnificent scenery. It equalled anything we had seen in
the more famous beauty spots, but it was more savage. The valleys
appeared closer knit and deeper, and the sharp and steep mountains
pinched the railway and river gorges together until we seemed to be
creeping along the floor of a mighty passage-way of the dark,
aboriginal gods.

Again and again the train was hanging over the deep, misted cauldron of
the valley, again and again it slipped delicately over the span of
cobweb across the sky that is a Canadian bridge. In this land of steep
gradients, sharp curves and lattice bridges, the train was divided into
two sections, and each, with two engines to pull it, climbed through
the mountain passes.

This tract of country has only within the last few years been tapped by
a railway that seems even yet to have to fight its way forward against
Nature, barbarous, splendid and untamed. It was built to the usual
ideal of Canada, that vision which ignores the handicaps of today for
the promise of tomorrow. Yet even today it taps the rich lake valleys
where mining and general farming is carried on, and where there are
miles of orchards already growing some of the finest apples and peaches
in Canada.

On the morning of Tuesday, September 30th, the train climbed down from
the higher and rougher levels to Penticton, a small, bright, growing
town that stands as focus for the immense fruit-growing district about
Okanagan Lake.

Here, after a short ceremony, the Prince boarded the steamer
_Sicamous_, a lake boat of real Canadian brand; a long white vessel
built up in an extraordinary number of tiers, so that it looked like an
elaborate wedding-cake, but a useful craft whose humpy stern
paddle-w