FAR AND NEAR 



For two days Vancouver Island is on our left 

 with hardly a break in its dark spruce forests, cov- 

 ering mountain and vale. On our right is British 

 Columbia, presenting the same endless spruce 

 forests, with peaks of the Coast Range, eight or ten 

 thousand feet high, in the background, and only 

 an occasional sign of human Ufe on shore. I recall 

 a lone farmhouse in a stumpy clearing that drew 

 our eyes. How remote and secluded it looked ! The 

 dark forests, with a fringe of dead trees where the 

 pioneer's fire had raged, encompassed it. The grass 

 and grain looked green among the stumps, and near 

 the house, which was a well-built, painted struc- 

 ture, we could see fruit-trees and a garden. There 

 was not much wild life about us; now and then a 

 duck or two, an occasional bald eagle, a small 

 flock of phalaropes, which the sailors call " sea 

 geese," as they sit on the water like miniature 

 geese. 



Our first dangerous passage was Seymour Nar- 

 rows, which we reached at the right stage of the tide. 

 Cautiously the ship felt her way through the con- 

 torted currents that surged above the sunken rocks. 

 Fog clouds clung to the white peaks that rose above 

 the dark forests about us and partly veiled them. 

 At times we were so near them that with a glass one 

 could see where little snow-balls had detached them- 

 selves and made straight lines down the smooth 

 white surface. It was the 2d of June, but the wind 

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