We again land three miles above Maple ridge, and walk that distance over the half-constructed railway, crossing Kanaka bridge. We owed our dinner at Maple Ridge to Mrs. Sinclair’s culinary art. We come to the site of the land slide of four years back. A surface of twenty-four acres was carried into the river, bearing along with it the forest trees with which it was covered. A large extent of the mass was thrown across the River Fraser, fully a quarter of a mile on to the opposite shore, uprooting many acres of forest and for a time damming back the stream. Its traces are still visible, to show what the consequences are of these minor convulsions of nature which on a great scale effect such wonderful changes. We are again in the canoe. The water of this great river is as calm as a canal in Venice, and our quiet progress partakes no little of the motion of the gondola. The air conveys the idea that it is full of smoke, while the temperature recalls the season of Indian summer. The banks of the river, even at a short distance, are scarcely discernible. We now reach the tidal waters of the Pacific. There is no great rise where we now are, and the water is still fresh for some distance, but at flood there is no current and the surface looks like a placid lake. The air is pleasant. The three Indians keep paddling with marvellous regularity. Two sit in front, side by side, and the third is at the stern steering as he paddles. The men work as if they were pieces of mechanism, in perfect silence; not a word is spoken. We leave the main stream at the mouth of Pitt River, where we paddle up to the new railway bridge, spanning 1850 feet of a deep inlet, at one spot sixty feet below high water. We return to the Fraser, where we were about thirty-four miles from the starting point of the morning. We pass on our right the mouth of the River Coquitlum and on the left is the salmon cannery of that name, consisting of a large number of scattered buildings, the centre of one of the chief industries of the Province. We meet a number of boats manned by Indians, drawing in or laying down salmon nets. The river is nearly half a mile wide with deep water. The Fraser is a noble stream, but it is only at intervals, as the fog lifts, that you can see the opposite shore. So thick is the fog that the sun itself is obscured, and it was in weather of this character, bringing back to my mind the November fogs of the world’s emporium on the banks of the Thames, that we made our landing at New Westminster, on the Pacific ocean. CHAPTER XX. _ON PACIFIC WATERS._ New Westminster--Enormous Forest Trees--English Broom--Port Moody--Down Burrard Inlet--Sea Fog--Navigation by Echo--Straits of Georgia--The St. Juan Archipelago--Seamanship--Victoria.