In the _de luxe_ conditions of travel through all these regions to-day, it is as difficult to realise the conditions that prevailed there before the arrival of the railway line as it was for the little lad at school to transport himself into the pre-historic days before the telephone had established its universal sway. Reproved by his instructor for not knowing the date on which Columbus discovered America, he replied that he could not find it. "Not find it!" {317} replied the irate master, "there it is, right before your eyes, 1492!" The lad looked at it. "Why, I thought that was his telephone number," he rejoined. It is quite as difficult for the traveller to-day to project himself backward, even into the environment of only a past century. The world into which we are born seems to have existed forever. It is a curious fact, but one that seems borne out by experience, that any event which just preceded one's own consciousness and memory is practically as remote as if it were many centuries away. This truth regarding the phenomena of consciousness might well enlist the scrutiny of that analyst of Time and Memory, the brilliant Henri Bergson. Is it amid all the transcendent beauty, all the scenic glory of the great North-West that one shall listen for the call and watch for the beckoning to the Promised Land? Its prairies and valleys provide every resource for the support of life, its forests offer the most incalculable yield in lumber, its lakes and rivers teem with fish, its mountains are rich in mineral wealth, it has water power to be utilised in manufactures, lighting, and traction to an extent that defies prediction; there is every contributing cause for great cities to arise, with universities, with their laboratories and observatories for science, while, with such a port as that of Prince Rupert, the commerce of the world will be brought to these shores; nor does it require any undue effort {318} of imagination to see, as in a vision, the libraries, the conservatories of music, the museums of art that will arise, the splendour of cities "with room in their streets for the soul." The Call of the North-West is to art, to science, to poetry, to religion. It is the call to the great spiritual realities of the spiritualised life, "the power of conduct, the power of intellect and knowledge, the power of beauty, and the power of social life and manners." The real task of man is that of the discerner of spiritual truth. "The universe is the externalisation of the soul." And in this eternal quest man shall press forward "without haste, without rest," consoled by his divination of spiritual ideals; a dweller in the atmosphere of spiritual splendour expressed in those immortal lines: "I will wait heaven's perfect hour Through the innumerable years!" {319} INDEX Agriculture, 293, 315 _Alaska, the Great Country_ (Ella Higginson), 204 Allandale, 117 Alpine Club of Canada, 170 Archives (Ottawa), 80 Arlette, George, 231