It has been the host of generations of great seamen from
Cook, who navigated Wolfe's fleet up the St. Lawrence, to Nelson. It
housed the survivors of the _Titanic_, and was the refuge of the
_Mauretania_ when the beginning of the Great War found her on the high
seas. It has had German submarines lying off the Narrows, so close
that it saw torpedoed crews return to its quays only an hour or so
after their ships had sailed.

III

The Prince of Wales was himself a link in Halifax's history. Not
merely had his great-great grandfather, the Duke of Kent, commanded at
the Citadel, but when he landed he stepped over the inscribed stone
commemorating the landing on that spot of his grandfather on July 30th,
1860, and his father in 1901.

His Royal Highness made his official landing in the Naval Dockyard on
the morning of Monday, August 18th. As he landed he was saluted by the
guns of three nations, for two French war sloops and the fine Italian
battleship _Cavour_, which had come to Halifax to be present during his
visit, joined in when the guns on shore and on the British warship
saluted.

At the landing stage the reception was a quiet one, only notabilities
and guards of honour occupying the Navy Yard, but this quietness was
only the prelude to a day of sheer hustle.

The crowd thickened steadily until he arrived in the heart of the city,
when it resolved itself into a jam of people that the narrow streets
failed to accommodate. This crowd, as in most towns of Canada,
believed in a "close up" view. Even when there is plenty of space the
onlookers move up to the centre of the street, allowing a passageway of
very little more than the breadth of a motor-car. Policemen of broad
and indulgent mind are present to keep the crowd in order, and when
policemen give out, war veterans in khaki or "civvies" and boy scouts
string the line, but all--policemen, veterans and scouts--so mixing
with the crowd that they become an indistinguishable part of it, so
that it is all crowd, cheery and friendly and most intimate in its
greeting. That was the air of the Halifax crowd.

It always seemed to me that after the roaring greeting of the streets
the formal civic addresses of welcome were acts of supererogation. Yet
there is no doubt as to the dignity and colour of these functions.

From the packed street the Prince passed into the great chamber of the
Provincial Parliament Building, where there seemed an air of soft, red
twi