Page:Atlantis Arisen.djvu/452

 the scheme. This ill treatment by the colonial authorities for several years retarded mining in this region. The Spokane and Northern Railroad will soon be completed to Little Dalles, whence a line of steamboats will carry passengers and freight to this and other districts in British Columbia. It was the design of the Spokane and Northern to have continued its road to Kootenai on the northeast, and through the Colville Indian .Reservation to the .Rock Creek mines of British Columbia on the northwest, and finally to the Pacific coast, but the Dominion Parliament refused to grant charters for either of these branch lines, much desired by the people north and south of the boundary, the Canadian Pacific being opposed. It will not be possible much longer to prevent American enterprise from accomplishing its designs, even against the will of this governmental monopoly, in British Columbia.

, I suppose, may be pardoned for giving a rambling account of the country run over. I desire to feel that my ramblings are of some value to my readers. It is difficult to conceive, if we have not seen it, the rapid change being effected in the Northwest. But a study of the census, and the rapid growth of American cities in all the States, will be found quite as surprising. Foreign immigration has filled up the country very rapidly. I have sometimes felt, in a San Francisco street-car, or other public conveyance, that it would be a pleasure to hear my mother-tongue spoken. In the North the foreign element is not so marked, although there are colonies of Norwegians, Swedes, and Germans, with the ever ubiquitous Irishman, and a sprinkling of Canadian English, Scotch, and occasional individuals from all nations. But the prevailing and governing class is American; and it is the American whom you meet, alert, observant, ready, who controls the enterprises of this part of the Pacific coast. Washington is peculiarly New-England-American, in the Puget Sound region particularly, because the New