Page:The Tourist's California by Wood, Ruth Kedzie.djvu/29

 GENERAL INFORMATION 13 Routes. A law of compensation has ordained that those routes which span with greatest fleetness the leagues between California and the rest of North America shall present for the most part but level desolations to the eye, while northern routes, re- tarded by mountain pass and gorge, deal profli- gately in sights that beguile the longer way. If travellers to California begin their westward journey in Canada they may choose between the Grand Trunk and the Canadian Pacific systems. The former offers a route from eastern ports to Prince Rupert, which opens to the tourist a primal track through a region of mountains, for- ests and lakes, innocent as yet of axe and survey- or's tape, of spoon or fly. The way to California from Prince Rupert, a made-to-order city planned by a Boston firm of architects and gardeners, con- tinues by way of the luxurious steamers of the Grand Trunk Pacific to Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle. At the latter city, both rail and water facilities are available for the trip down the coast. Some of the Pacific Coast Steamship Company's boats call at Prince Rupert on the way from Alaska to Seattle. The Canadian Pacific, the first road to breach the distance between the Atlantic and the Pacific on its own rails, affords unsurpassed and unsur- passable views on its way through Alberta and