The grounds comprised over 600 acres, with a water-front of two and a half miles, on San Francisco Bay, just east of the Golden Gate. On the other three sides they were partly enclosed by hills, thus forming a natural amphitheatre. There were eleven colossal palaces with many lesser buildings. These palaces were grouped in a series of rectangles connected by courts and arcades with an Andalusian charm. The courts fascinated the eye by their colonnades, arches, domes, and glittering minarets. They were adorned by mural paintings of symbolic significance, by fountains, sunken gardens, and sculptured art, with niches and restful seats. Festival Hall, with its superb organ, where a concert was held every day, contained an auditorium seating three thousand people, and there were also ten smaller halls. The National Government staged its own special exhibit on a ten-acre space, appropriating two million dollars for this purpose, and this exhibit included a representation of the building of the Panama Canal. In all this imposing world-panorama of twentieth-century exhibits, Canada led the procession. Whatever the enthralling nature of spectacles offered by other nations, it was the Dominion that set the pace. Canada, an entrancing, garlanded figure, {234} aglow with her abounding enthusiasms; her resistless energy; her dreams of a future that crystallise themselves in her all-conquering empire building--Canada the Spellbinder assumed her place as if by divine right, and certainly by common consent, as the very Winged Victory flying on into a golden future. The Canadian Building, whose classic beauty would have done no discredit to the Parthenon had it also occupied a place on the "Holy Hill" that overlooks all Attica; this structure, so simple yet so rich in architectural effect, her main portal guarded by great lions sculptured on either side, was one of the most impressive creations of the entire Exposition. With a singular comprehensiveness of grouping, the exhibits in this building represented the Dominion in her completeness. It was no one province that engaged the attention to the exclusion of another; it was the Dominion herself, in the unity of her vast empire, rather than any merely tributary feature of the country. In the inscrutable magic that wrought this effect lay the secret of its spellbinding quality. It was a power that enthralled every visitor who crossed the threshold, and brought him back to study it again.