The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-05-15
FROM OCEAN
Rudyard Kipling's Il.
the Canadian Pacii.
THE PRAiRlES IN VIM
sudden Change From the Mountain SNOW
Vancouver Grown Out of Memory.
Copyright, 1897. by Rudyard Kipling.

Copyright, 1897. by Rudyard KipliRg.
NAsCoUvER, May Especial Core
spondence. Five days ago there wasn't
foot of earth to see. IL was just natur-
ally covered with snow" says the con-
ductor standing in the rear car Of the Great
Northern train. He speaks AS though the
snow had hid something priceless. Here
Is the view: One railway track and = line
of staggering telegraph poles ending In I
dot and blur on the horizon. To the
left and right sweep as it were of the sea
one huge PLAIN of corn land wailing for
the spring, dotted at rare intervals with
wooden farm houses patent self reapers
and binders almost as big as the houses,
ricks left over from last years abundant
harvest ana notified here and there
with black patches to show that the early
blowing had begun. The snow lies in
last few streaks and whirls by the track;
from skyline to skyline is black loan
prairie grass SO dead that it seems as
though no one years sun would waken it.
This is the granary of the land where the
farmer who bears the burdens of the state,
and who therefore ascribes last years
bumper crop to the direct action of the
Mckinley bill, has also to bear the CHASTITY
monotony of earth and sky. He keeps his
head. having many things to attend to, but
his wife sometimes goes mad as the women
do in Vermont. There is little variety in
natures big wheat field. They say that
when the corn is in the ear the wind
chasing shadow-waves across it for mile
on mile, breeds as it were a vertigo
in those who must look and cannot turn
their eyes away. And they tell night
mare story OF woman who lived with her
H.
post III Just such a land as this. Then
they were transferred 10 West Point among
the hills over the Hudson and she came to
New York, but the terrors of the tall
houses grew upon her and grew till she
went down with brain fever, and the dread
OF her deiirium was that the terrible things
would topple down and crush her. This
Is a true story.
They work for harvest with steam plows
here; how could mere horses face the end
less furrowsP And they attack tho earth
with toothed, cogged and spiked engines
that would be monstrous in the shops,
but here are only speckles on the yellow
grass. a tram of freight cars is passing
! along line that comes out of the blue and
goes on till 1t meets the blue again.
Elsewhere the train would move OFT with
joyous, vibrant roar. Here it steals
away down the vista of the telegraph
| poles with an awed whisper, steals away
| and sinks into the soil. Then comes q
! town deep in black mud straggly
| inch-thlck plank town with dull-red grain
| elevators. The open country refuses to-
| be subdued even for few score rods. Each
| street ends in the illimitable open, and it
| is as though the whole houseless outside
| earth were racing through II. Towards
q SIX " nv an
| framed picture of desolation. In the fore
ground farm wagon almost axle deep in
| mud, the mire dripping from the slow
| turning wheels as the man tiogs the horses.
| Behind him on a knoll of sodden. soggy
| grass fenced Oft by raw rails from the land
| scape at large, are knot of utterly uninter-
| ested citizens who have logged horses and
| raised wheat in their time, but today lie
| under Clipped and weather-worn wooden
headstones. Surely, burial here must be
| more awful to the newly made ghost than
| burial at sea.
| There is more snow as we go North. and
| nature is hard at work breaking up the
| ground for the spring. The thaw has
| filled every depression with sullen gray
| black spate, and out on the levels the
| water lies six inches deep in stretch upon
| stretch as far as the eye can reach. Every
| culvert is full, and the broken ice clicks
| against the wooden pier guards of the
| bridges. Somewhere in this fatness
| there is a refreshing jingle of spurs along
| the cars, and man of the Canadian
mounted police swaggers through with
| his black fur cap and the yellow
| tab aside, his well-htting overalls
| and his better set up back. One wants to
| shake hands with him because he is clean
| and does not slouch or spit. trims his hair
| and walks as a man should. Then a Gus
/ ton-house officer wants To know too much
| about cigars, whisky and Florida water.
| Her majesty, the queen of England and
| the empress of India, has us in her keep
| ing. Nothing has happened to the land
scape, and Winnipeg, which is, as it were,
| center Of distribution for emigrants
| stands up to her knees in the water of the
| thaw. The year has turned in earnest,
| and somebody Is talking about the first
ice shove" at Montreal, 800 or !, 400
| miles east.
They will not run trains on Sunday at
! Montreal and this is Wednesday. There
! fore the Canadian Pacific makes up train
| TO Vancouver at Winnipeg. This is worth
remembering because few people travel in
| that train and you escape any rush of
| tourists running westward to catch the
| Yokohama boat. The car is your own
and with it the services of the porter.
| our porter, seeing things were slack,
! beguiled himself with guitar which gave
| a triumphal and festive touch to
the Journey ridiculousy out of keeping
| with the view. For eight and twenty long
| hours did the bored locomotive trail
! as through q fat and hairy land, pow
! dered ribbed and speckied with snow,
! small snow that drives like dust shot III
| the wind-the land Of Assinaboia. Now
! and again. for no obvious reason To the
outside mind there was q town. Then
/ the towns gave place TO Section So and So;
then there we're trails Of the buffalo, where
/ he once walked in his pride then there
! was a mound Of white bones supposed to
/ belong to the said buffalo. and then the
! wilderness took up the tale. Some of it
was good ground-yery good ground--but
! the most of il seemed TO have fallen by the
| wayside and the tedium of it was eternal.
At twilight--an unearthly sort Of twi-
I light-there came another curious picture.
| Thus: i wooden town shut IN among
/ low, treeiess, rolling ground; calling
| river that ran unseen between scarped
! banks: barracks OF q detachment OF
| mounted police Il little CEN etery where
/ ex-troopers rested q painfully formal pub
| lie garden with pebble paths and iOot-high
| fir trees, few lines of railway buildings,
| white women walking up and down III ths
/ bitter cold with their bOnuets oil; some
| Indians in red blanketing with buffalo
| horns tor sale trailing along the
| platform; and, not ten yards from
! the track, cinnamon bear
| and young grizzly standing up with ex-
| tended arms in their pens begging Tor food.
! 1t was strange beyond anything that this
i bald telling can suggest; opening u door
| into q new worid. Tnc only common
| Mace thing about he spot was its name
| Medicine iiat-Whlch struck one instantly
/ as the only possible name sueh Town
| could carry.
ft.,o nov. ,r,~pi Jrate9ht the Ca