Vancouver, where forty years ago scarce an axe had broken the silence of the forest, is a great city now, and likely to be the greatest sea-port on the west coast of America. This Province, by the way, owns 1,900 ships—more than any other Province in the Dominion.
Over the verdant coastal plain we fly, with its rich berry farms and dairy farms, and away up the narrow sea, beloved of tourists, between numberless islands and the mainland pierced by many a mountain fjord. Hundreds of fishermen are out in their little boats, catching halibut, which in a few days will appear on the dining tables of St. Paul or Chicago. British Columbia catches $20,000,000 worth of fish in a year, with salmon heading the list and halibut next. No other Province comes near that total.
Those mighty forests on our right, too, furnish $30,000,000 worth of wood, which means nearly 450,000,000 cubic feet of standing timber cut down. Quite as much as that probably goes up in smoke. Are we so gorged and bloated with riches that we must burn up our possessions to get rid of them? By the careless act of a moment we destroy wholesale the gifts that nature has taken centuries to grow for our use.
Sweeping into a picturesque fjord, we see a little town clinging to a steep hillside, with a huge mill covering the shore: a paper town, sending out shipload after shipload of transformed forest to be covered with printer’s ink.
Another arm of the sea brings us to a famous silver mine. In gold and silver mining, and in mineral production as a whole, this Province is second only to Ontario. In lead and zinc the score is “British Columbia first and the rest nowhere.” At Prince Rupert, the ocean terminus of the Canadian National Railway, we strike inland and follow the track for hundreds of miles. The land is neither mountainous nor so heavily timbered: open spaces appear.
The sound of hammering comes up from a pioneer settlement. A farmer is building a new barn. Now he stops. Mrs. Settler is just home with the wagon, from the creamery. “They were asking if we couldn’t send in more cream,” she says. “I’ll buy another cow,” says Mr. Settler, “while the buying’s good. And half that $300 I made trapping last winter is in the bank yet.”