Fortunately for me the examination was not very strict, and I passed by parting with a small coin or two. I would surely obtain a British passport if I were again travelling in regions where passports are needed in order to get along easily and without detentions. Americans when abroad on the Continent very frequently call upon their consul, and would return to the hotel, telling us of the delightful hour spent in genial talk with their consul, and the information obtained from him, and letters of admission to galleries, museums, etc. Consistently I cannot pass myself off as a Yankee and go with them, but determine to visit the British consul, who ought perforce to be my own; and I call on him, and he looks at my passport, which he deliberately folds, and hands back to me. He is too well bred to treat me positively rudely, but the general air of his demeanor instantly makes me feel that he considers me “only a colonist” and a person of no account in particular, and not really worth very much of his consideration. One experience of this kind suffices usually, and hereafter I let the consuls alone. To be “only a colonist” at home does not seem to weigh one down very much, but abroad to be told that a few times makes it beyond human nature to not feel a spirit of resentment. As to being a colonist it is quite right, and I am proud of the fact and do not wish to change my position. If they would leave off the small word “only” before “a colonist” it would take away all the sting, and make the Canadian traveller feel that he is just as good as our British brothers at home, our forefathers and relatives. When this “only a colonist” was said to me, I generally felt it like the greeting accorded a son of some obscure man; the son being exceedingly worthy, and having risen by his talents, but “he’s only old Jones’s son,” and of course he can’t be anybody. Canada is usually spoken of by foreign writers as a part of the “frozen north.” This is really too bad when Ontario, which contains very nearly one-half of the entire population of the Dominion, possesses a climate far milder than the New England States, and quite as mild as that of the great State of New York, just south of us. In an article on “Acclimatization,” in the _Popular Science Monthly_, by so eminent an author as Professor Virchow, is this sentence, “No one has, for example, seen a people of the white race become black under the tropics, or negroes transplanted to the polar regions, or to Canada, metamorphosed into whites.” This coupling of us by implication with the frozen north, coming from so eminent a man as Virchow, cuts. It is true that Canada runs far to the north, but at the same time it would be just as fair to speak of the United States as in the polar regions, since it has Alaska, which is veritably in the Arctic zone, but at the same time, and just the same as with us, but a very small part of their population is there.