Half-way up a hill, where a bridge of wood jumps across the stream that winds amid the pleasant gardens of the houses, the Prince's car was held up. A mob of militants rushed down upon it, and neither chauffeur, nor Chief of Staff, nor suite could resist.
It was an attack not by Bolshevists, but by Boy Scouts. They flung themselves across the road in a mass, and would take no nonsense from any one. They insisted that the engine should take a holiday, and that they should hitch themselves to the car. They won their point and hitched. The car, under some hundred boy-power, went up the long hill--and a gruelling hill it is--through the club gates, and down a longer hill, to where, in a deep cup, the house stands.
At the club the visit was entirely formal. The Prince became an ordinary member and chatted to other men and women members in a thoroughly club-like manner.
"He is so easy to get on with," said one lady. "I found it was I who was the more reserved for the first few minutes, and it was I who had to become more human.
"He is a young man who has something to say, and who has ears to listen to things worth while. He has no use for preliminaries or any other nonsense that wastes time in 'getting together.'"
He lunched at the club and drifted about among the people gathered on the lawns before going for a hard walk over the hills.
The real day of functions was on Monday, when the Prince drove through the streets, visiting many places, and, later, speaking impressively at a citizens' lunch in the Palliser Hotel.
His passage through the streets was cheered by big crowds, but crowds of a definite Western quality. Here the crowns of hats climbed high, sometimes reaching monstrous peaks that rise as samples of the Rockies from curly brims as monstrous. Under these still white felt altitudes are the vague eyes and lean, contemplative faces of the cattlemen from the stock country around. Here and there were other prairie types who linger while the tide of modernity rushes past them. They are the Indians, brown, lined and forward stooping, whose reticent eyes looking out from between their braided hair seem to be dwelling on their long yesterday.
At the citizens' lunch the Prince departed from his usual trend of speech-making to voice some of the impressions that this new land had brought to him. He once more spoke of the sense of spaciousness and possibility the vast prairies of the West had given him, but today he went further and dwelt upon the need of making those possibilities assured. The foundation that had made the future as well as the present possible, was the work of the great pioneers and railway men who had mastered the country in their stupendous labours, and made it fit for a great race to grow in.