When the train arrived, of course there was no room. This is the working season, and the C.P.R., as everyone calls it in Canada, is hurrying on men to the front as fast as they can be got. However, I was permitted to get inside the mail van, in company with a contractor, his wife, and a baby, which behaved itself as well as could be expected under the circumstances; a lady who was going to visit her husband, one of the contractors on the line; and an invalid from Pennsylvania, who did not seem much to enjoy that rough mode of travelling. We reached Holt City about eleven, when it was quite dark, and the only bed I could find was a shelf in the van, on which I was glad to lie down—but not, alas! to sleep. Had I got out, I should have been lost, or run over by an engine—that is positive, as there is no road, only divers rails, as, for instance, the Continental Hotel at Newhaven. I am now writing in the post-office, which seems the great social centre of the place, though the mail only leaves twice a week. It is a decent-sized tent, with a desk and counter in the middle for the sale of stamps and cigars and the delivery of letters. Behind it are a couple of beds on which men are reposing in a way that I envy, and covered with buffalo skins—the possession of which I envy them still more. In front is a table, fitted up with old papers and a couple of uncommonly uncomfortable benches, whereon are sitting various loafers, smoking and talking, and warming themselves as best they can at the big stove—one of which you now see in every Canadian house, and which but feebly keeps out the raw cold of the morning. [Picture: Mount Stephen in the Rocky Mountains on the Line of the Canadian Pacific Railway] Holt City is admirably located, to use an American phrase which I heartily detest. It is a clearance in the forest, bordered by the Bow River, which dashes foaming along. There is a shed, which does duty for a railway station; a collection of tents, in which the _employés_ of the company dwell, or which hold the large stores it collects here; a large shed for meals, a railway car, in which Mr. John Ross, the able administrator of the C.P.R. in these parts, resides with his accomplished wife; and further off are other tents, which do duty as hotels, billiard-rooms, and shops. Up here, I see little to remind me of the Old Country, except bottles of Stephens’ inks, of Aldersgate Street, London, which, says the head accountant, are the only inks on which they can rely.