_A prairie resident, A dweller in a tent, A White House resident, A good man for President! To White House from white tent. O excellent precedent! A precedent for a President. An unprecedented President!_ [Illustration: We’ve seen your line of difference and viewed it with indifference.] XXXIV. CROSSING THE CANADIAN LINE “AS we approach the British Empire,” says Vachel facetiously, “the huckleberries grow more plentiful, the raspberry bushes larger, the trees loftier, the air purer.” In the poet’s mind politics and hymns gave way to desire of huckleberries. I luxuriated in raspberries. He was Huckleberry Finn. I was a character in Russian folk-lore--the hare with the raspberry-coloured whiskers. “When we get to a Canadian hotel let us register as H. Finn and R. C. W. Hare,” said the poet. We had slept on the hoar-frosted grass of mountain meadows near the sky; we had slept among the beavers on the banks of the Kootenai; we tramped in the radiant upper air; we tramped in the gloom of ancient forests. Mount Cleveland lifted its dome of snow high o’er the lesser mountains. Trapper Mountain receded. We listened one night to the coyotes caterwauling in their loneliness. Their superfluous lugubrious laments reminded me of modern West of Ireland poetry. Vachel laughed at the comparison. We came to a deserted cabin, once the habitation of a ranger, now littered with Alberta whisky bottles, and here we read a pencilled remark written years ago: “Slept here last night. Visited by a bare who came into cabin and et two sides of bacon.” Another pencilled notice, apparently by the same hand, said: “Don’t leave garbig lying about but put it in the Garbig Holl.” An Indian came and offered to lead us to a boat on Lake Waterton and give us a ferry to Canada. We preferred to walk, but it occurred to me afterwards that he was not so much interested in boating as in bottles. I don’t doubt he could have got us a drink. Then a grand mounted party came past us with guides and pack-horses, coming from over Brown Pass, going over Indian Pass. This was a rich American family on holiday: here were father and mother, grown children, young children, cousins, and in the midst of them Aunt Jemima, looking very proud and stiff, with an expression on her face which signified “_Never again!_” They had been twenty-eight days in the mountains, camping out all the time. * * * * * VACHEL’S ankle was rather weak, and he much preferred sitting to walking. He called himself “the slow train through Arkansas.” We stopped at stations, half-stations, and halts. “All I lack, Stephen, is steam,” said he. But every now and then he would take courage and say, “Lots of walk in me to-day--Canada to-night!”