WASHINGTONIA WELLINGTONIA HINDENBURGERXXXV. THE DIFFERENCE
WASHINGTONIA WELLINGTONIA HINDENBURGER
Sowe entered the Dominion National Park of Waterton Lakes. We climbed the next mountain after Mount Bertha and saw on every hand the pinnacled and pillared tops of the Canadian mountains, crags surmounted by mighty teeth of stone blackly silhouetted against a radiant sky. Some Dominion officials came into these parts last year, cancelled the old names of the mountains, and gave them a new set—Mount Joffre, Mount Foch, and the rest,as if they were No. 1 and No. 2 of Great War villas. I see by old maps that Mount Cleveland used to be called Kaiser Peak. How war changes the names of places! It changed St. Petersburg to Petrograd, Pressburg to Bratislavl; it has even changed the names of the Rocky Mountains.
“Luckily the Germans did not win,” I said to Vachel, “or New York might have become ‘Zeppelindorf.’”
We were walking down a slope which Nature had planted out with pompous trees called “Wellingtonias.”
“What do you call them?” asked the poet.
“Wellingtonias.”
“Not in America. We call them ‘Washingtonias.’”
“You forget you’ve crossed the line—Washingtonias this morning, but Wellingtonias this afternoon.”
The poet submitted.
“But what would the Germans have called them?”
“Perhaps they’d call them ‘Bluchers’ or ‘Hindenburgers.’”
Apropos of Bluchers—in the first Canadianvillage we visited the cobbler for repairs. He was an old man, and explained to us just exactly what “Blucher shoes” were. He pronounced the name to rhyme with “butcher,” and he called them shoes in the American fashion. In America boots are shoes, and shoes are boots.
“They call them Bluchers,” said the cobbler in a quavering voice, “because Blucher came up on both sides, and Bony did not know on which side he’d turn up. So the upper of the Bluchers are equally high on both sides of the shoe.”
Thatis, however, to go some days ahead. We are in the Rockies still, and beside a wonderful stretch of water blown by mountain winds into myriads of running waves. We bathed on its shallow shores; we did not venture far from the bank. For Waterton is a mysterious lake. It has often been sounded, but there are parts of it where no bottom has been found. It is the hole out of which these Rocky Mountains have been scooped, and it goes down, down, down, to the very depths of the earth.
At last we came to a Canadian camping-groundand a group of people clustered around a Ford touring car. A Ford car used for touring. Here there happened to be on holiday a professor of English, and he recognised Lindsay at first sight—such is the fame of the poet in American universities and schools.
This camping-group told us we were in a land predominantly inhabited by Mennonites, Mormons, and Dukhobors, and they whetted our curiosity considerably regarding our new neighbours. We had arrived in a part of Canada which was rather obscure and certainly little visited by either Americans or Englishmen.
We came to a ramshackle inn and a village and a dance-hall, and it was the last dance of the season. The Mormon, German, and Russian belles checked in their corsets at the cloakroom, and prepared for fun. It was a log-cabin hall, but the floor was waxed, and from the beams hung coloured-paper lanterns. There were a score or so of black bear-skins hung on the walls all the way round. On the bear-skins were white sashes with these words printed on them:I do love to cuddle; and on the main beam of the ceiling was written:Patrons arerespectfully requested to park their gum outside. The whole front of the piano was taken out so that there should be more noise. Splotches on the floor showed how in the past, patrons had surreptitiously brought in their gum and had accidents. Many couples assembled, and we saw the human species, though not at its best.
Weissued from the mountains on to the southern Alberta plain, and then looking back, saw every great mountain we had ever crossed. “We’ve found the real sky-scrapers,” said Vachel. “Instead of the Times Building, Heaven’s Peak; instead of the Flatiron, Flat Top Mountain; instead of the World Building, Going-to-the-Sun; and instead of the building raised by dimes, the temple not made by hands. The way to these wonders is not by Broadway, but by primitive trails.” The poet conducted the orchestra of the universe with the long blossoming stem of a basket-flower—“instead of the Stock Exchange, the Star Granary over Waterton Lake,” he murmured. We named the beautiful grouping of mountains about the lake as the Star Granary. For at night, with stars above and star-reflectionsbelow, it was as if the barns were full of Heaven’s harvest.
We tramped away northward toward the Crow’s Nest, where a great forest fire was raging, and we came to the “cow-town” of Pincer Creek. The Canadian Wild West seemed much wilder than the Wild West south of the line—or rather, the population seemed wilder. One missed the gentleness and playfulness of the United States. The men were harder than down south, and they looked at us with a contempt only modified by the thought that we might be potential harvest hands. The Canadian-English looked more askance at Vachel than they did at me. He looked poetical. They couldn’t have put a name to it, but that is what it was. But whatever it was, I could feel their aversion. They disapproved of tramps, but preferred them to poets. I could see also they didn’t care for Vachel’s accent, but they rejoiced in mine and spoke to me just to get me to reply so that they could hear once more the voice of the Old Country. We were clearly in the Empire and not in the Republic. The Union Jacks in the little log-cabins were wreathed with flowers.The Stars and Stripes had disappeared. We were so struck with the change of feeling in the air that we bought ourselves a school-history of Canada and read it assiduously. The very way of man looking to man was different. Then the first popular song which sounded in our ears was:
We never get up until the sergeantBrings our breakfast up to bed.O it’s a lovely war!
We never get up until the sergeantBrings our breakfast up to bed.O it’s a lovely war!
We never get up until the sergeant
Brings our breakfast up to bed.
O it’s a lovely war!
which is a purely British army song. The Englishman in Alberta is an overman in the midst of a miscellaneous foreign under-population. The Englishman’s word is law. He is stronger, rougher in his language and his ways—not educated. But this sort of fibre is best suited for the outposts of Empire.
“We Americans are just a bunch of playful kittens,” said Vachel.
There was nothing very playful about the Alberta pioneers.
“Did you light that fire on the side of the road a mile back? Well, you dam well go back and put it out.”
“We did put it out.”
“I tell ye, ye didn’t. I won’t waste my breath talking to you. If you set the prairie afire I’ll have you both in jail by sundown.”
“All right, we’ll go back.”
We’re on the same continent.Well, I don’t know. Smells different somehow.Same air; people speak the same language.But I don’t see that bird about,That old eagle of yours.Smells as if a lion had been here.You don’t know the lion’s smell?Well, smell that Union Jack!That’s it.
We’re on the same continent.Well, I don’t know. Smells different somehow.Same air; people speak the same language.But I don’t see that bird about,That old eagle of yours.Smells as if a lion had been here.You don’t know the lion’s smell?Well, smell that Union Jack!That’s it.
We’re on the same continent.
Well, I don’t know. Smells different somehow.
Same air; people speak the same language.
But I don’t see that bird about,
That old eagle of yours.
Smells as if a lion had been here.
You don’t know the lion’s smell?
Well, smell that Union Jack!
That’s it.