At Montreal, my old friend and aforetime collaborateur, Mr. Joseph Hickson, met me and took me home with him; and in his house, under the kind and generous care of Mrs. Hickson, I spent three delightful days, and renewed acquaintance with many old friends of times long passed. It was on the 28th December, 1861, that Mr. Hickson first went to Canada in the Cunard steamer "Canada" from Liverpool. He was accompanied by Mr. Watkin, our only son, a youth of 15, anxious to see the bigger England. Mr. Watkin afterwards entered the service (Grand Trunk), in the locomotive department, at Montreal, and deservedly gained the respect of his superior officer, who had to delegate to Mr. Watkin, then under 18, the charge of a thousand men. There were, also, Howson, Wright, Wainwright, and Barker; subsequently, Wallis. Mr. John Taylor, who acted as my private secretary in my previous visit, I had left behind, much to his distress at the time, much for his good afterwards. Mr. Barker is now the able manager of the Buenos Ayres Great Southern Railway, a most prosperous undertaking; and poor dear, big, valiant, hard-working Wallis is, alas! no more: struck down two years ago by fever. These old friends, still left in Canada, are leading honorable, useful, and successful lives, respected by the community. To see them again made it seem as if the world had stood still for a quarter of a century. Then, again, there was my old friend and once colleague, the Honble. James Ferrier, a young-minded and vigorous man of 86: who, on my return to Montreal, walked down to the grand new offices of the Grand Trunk, near Point St. Charles--offices very much unlike the old wooden things I left behind, and which were burnt down--to see me and walked back again. Next day I had the advantage of visiting the extensive workshops and vast stock yards of the Canadian Pacific, at Hochelaga, to the eastward of Montreal, and of renewing my acquaintance with the able solicitor of the Company, Mr. Abbot, and with the secretary, an old Manchester man, Mr. Drinkwater. Then on the following day Mr. Peterson, the engineer of this section of the Canadian Pacific Company, drove me out to Lachine, and took me by his boat, manned by the chief and a crew of Indians, to see the finished piers and also the coffer-dams and works of the new bridge over the St. Lawrence, by means of which his Company are to reach the Eastern Railways of the United States, without having to use the great Victoria Bridge at Montreal. This bridge, of 1,000 yards, or 3,000 feet, in length, is a remarkable structure. It was commenced in May and intended to be finished in November. But the foundations of the central pier, in deep and doubtful water, were not begun, though about to begin, and this, as it appeared to me, might delay the work somewhat. The work is a fine specimen of engineering, by which I mean the adoption of the simplest and cheapest mode of doing what is wanted. All the traffic purposes required are