The other distinguished public man, as above noted, who travelled to Vancouver over the Canadian Pacific a few years later, was the Hon. Edward Blake. He had steadfastly, consistently and, no doubt, conscientiously, opposed the construction of the road as involving what he called “ruinous expenditure” for a young and sparsely settled country. Mr. Blake’s memory remains as that of one of the ablest and most high-minded statesman in the public life of Canada and, by general consent, the most outstanding intellectual force this country has produced. But, as observed in a preceding chapter, he had never been West before the famous railway debates took place, and therefore underestimated the country and its possibilities. When he did come, in 1891, he made a notable speech in Vancouver. In that speech he not only accepted the situation in a frank and manly way, but, calling on his large vocabulary and his somewhat unsuspected sense of humour, he gave a remarkable description of the country by putting everything in words opposite to the reality. Mr. Blake said: “As I approached this country I was struck by the remarkable change from the rugged and upheaved territory of the plains of the North-West to the smooth and level slope of the Rockies; as I ascended the slope and came upon the somewhat level and monotonous flats of British Columbia; as I travelled by the languid Bow and descended again through the valley of the tranquil Kicking Horse; as I crossed the calm Columbia and travelled down the dead waters of the Beaver and along the placid Illecillewaet and by the drowsy Skuzzy; as I passed by the slow Thompson and last of all by the banks between which the Fraser meanders its sluggish way, I turned to the fertile resources of your shores and viewed the horizon where it spanned the meadows of the Selkirks, the fertile level plains of the Gold Range and the broad plains of the Coast Range, and I reached here converted.” For a while the audience, thinking that Mr. Blake was getting things mixed because this first swift trip was confusing him as to locality, preserved a well-bred, silent attitude, as if much puzzled. In a little while, as he proceeded, they saw that he was purposely and skilfully putting everything in the converse way, and the house simply rocked with delighted laughter in peal after peal. When people are enjoying an uproarious laugh, they cannot cherish resentment. And so when Mr. Blake, dropping the jocular vein, went on to say, “When the railroad was built and finished I felt myself that it was useless to continue the controversy longer, in deference to this whole country which Canada has risked so much to retain,” the people in British Columbia forgave him for calling their Province “a sea of mountains,” and, like true Westerners, declared that he was playing the game in a sportsmanlike way and they would call off their feud.