Eighty miles across the Strait of Georgia from Vancouver is Victoria, British Columbia’s capital, noted for the architectural beauty of the provincial government buildings. It lies at the southern end of Vancouver Island, overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the snow-capped Olympic Mountains on the mainland. It is considered one of the most English of Canadian cities, not only in climate and aspect, but in the customs and traditions of its residents. It is the site of the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, one of the largest of its kind in the world. CHAPTER XXX PRINCE RUPERT I am at the north terminal of the Canadian National Railways and the port of the shortest Pacific route to the Orient. Prince Rupert is located on an island in a beautiful bay five hundred miles north of Vancouver and only thirty miles south of our Alaskan boundary. Its harbour is open all the year round. It is fourteen miles long, is sheltered by the mountains and islands about it, and large enough for all the demands of travel. The town reminds me of Jaffa, the port of Jerusalem. It is right on the sea, and the buildings climb up and down the mountains of rock close to the shore. The chief difference is that the hills of Jaffa are bleak and bare, while those of Prince Rupert are wooded and clad in perpetual green. Until 1912, when the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, now a part of the Canadian National lines, chose this point for its western terminus, this place was a forest. Pines and cedars covered the mountains above, and the stumps still rising out of the vacant lots look like the black bristles of an unshaven chin. The town has several thousand people, and I venture it has thousands of stumps. They are rooted in the crevices of the rock, and the ground between them is matted with muskeg, which holds water like a sponge and makes it impossible to go across country without thick boots or rubbers. [Illustration: Southern British Columbia is a land of winding rivers and lakes, towering mountains and sheltered valleys. Many of the little cities along the Columbia and the Kootenay have been settled largely by Britishers.] [Illustration: Apples from the irrigated orchards of the Pacific slope are sold in eastern Canada, three thousand miles away, in competition with the famous Nova Scotia fruit. British Columbia often ships a million boxes of apples a season.] [Illustration: Victoria, in its appearance, its climate, and its people, is like a section of the south of England transplanted to Vancouver Island. It is noted for the beauty of its location and for its handsome provincial parliament buildings.]