heel can push her through a six-foot shallow or deep water with
equal dispatch. And a delightfully comfortable boat into the bargain,
with well-sheltered and spacious decks, cosy cabins and bath-rooms, and
a big dining saloon, which, placed in the very centre of the ship with
the various galleries of the decks rising around it, has an air of
belonging to one of those attractive old Dickensian inns.

On this vessel the Prince was carried the whole length of Okanagan
Lake, which winds like a blue fillet between mountains for seventy
miles. On the ledges and in the tight valleys of these heights he saw
the formal ranks of a multitude of orchards.

A short distance along the lake the _Sicamous_ pulled in to the toy
quay of Summerland, a town born of and existing for fruit, and linked
up with the outer world by the C.P.R. Lake Service that owned our own
vessel.

All the children of Summerland had collected on the quayside to sing to
and to cheer the Prince, and, as he stood on the upper deck and waved
his hat cheerfully at them, they cheered a good deal more. When he
went ashore and was taken by the grown-up Olympians to examine the
grading and packing sheds, where the fruits of all the orchards are
handled and graded by mechanical means, prepared for the market, and
sold on the co-operative plan, the kiddies exchanged sallies with those
waiting on the vessel, flipped big apples up at them, and cheered or
jeered as they were caught or missed.

The _Sicamous_ went close inshore at Peachland, another daughter town
of Mother Fruit, to salute the crowd of people who had come out from
the pretty bungalow houses that nestle among the green trees on a low
and pretty shore, and who stood on the quay in a mass to send a cheer
to him.

At Okanagan Landing, at the end of the lake, he took car to Vernon, a
purposeful and attractive town which is the commercial heart of the
apple industry. Indeed, there was no need to ask the reason for
Vernon's being. Even the decorations were wrought out of apples, and
under an arch of bright, cherry-red apples the Prince passed on to the
sports ground, and on to a platform the corner posts of which were
crowned with pyramids of apples, and in the centre of which was a model
apple large enough to suit the appetite of Gargantua.

In front of this platform was a grand stand crowded with children of
all races from Scandinavian to Oriental, and these sang with the
resistless heartiness of Canad