As I paced up and down, enjoying the beauties of the fast narrowing firth, I no longer felt in doubt as to my ultimate destination. My subconscious self, aided and abetted by the Irish steward, had already decided that for me:--it was Canada, the West, the Pacific. Soon after I had breakfasted, we reached the Tail of the Bank, and so impatient was I to be on my long journey that I bade good-bye to my little Irishman at Greenock, leaving him grinning and happy in the knowledge that I was taking his advice and was bound for the Pacific Coast. In forty minutes more, I left the train at Glasgow and started in to a hurried and moderate replenishing of my wardrobe, finishing up with the purchase of a travelling bag, a good second-hand rifle and a little ammunition. I dispensed with my knapsack by presenting it to a newsboy, who held it up in disgust as if it had been a dead cat. Despite the fact that I was now on my own resources and would have to work, nothing could induce me to part with my golf clubs. They were old and valued friends. Little did I imagine then how useful they would ultimately prove. At the head office of the steamship company, I inquired as to the best class of travelling when the traveller wished to combine cheapness with rough comfort; and I was treated to the cheering news that there was a rate war on between the rival Trans-Atlantic Steamship Companies and I could purchase a second-cabin steamboat ticket for six pounds, while a further eight pounds, thirteen shillings and four-pence would carry me by Colonist, or third class, three thousand miles, from the East to the Far West of Canada. I paid for my ticket and booked my berth then and there, counted out my remaining wealth,--ten pounds and a few coppers,--and my destiny was settled. With so much to tell of what befell me later, I have neither the time nor the inclination to detail the pleasures and the discomforts of a twelve days' trip by slow steamer across a storm-swept Atlantic, battened down for days on end, like cattle in the hold of a cross-channel tramp; of a six days' journey across prairie lands, in a railway car with its dreadful monotony of unupholstered wooden seats and sleeping boards, its stuffiness, its hourly disturbances in the night-time in the shape of noisy conductors demanding tickets, incoming and outgoing travellers and shrieking engines; its dollar meals in the dining car, which I envied but could not afford; its well-nigh unlightable cooking stoves and the canned beef and pork and beans with which I had to regale myself en route. Jaded, travel-weary and grimy, I reached the end of my journey. It was late in the evening. I tumbled out of the train and into the first hotel bus that yawned for me, and not once did I look out of the window to see what kind of a city I had arrived at.