The Henson Journals

[104]

Friday, July 2nd, 1909.

Vancouver: A brilliant morning. After breakfast we took the "Tally–Ho" coach, and saw Stanley Park. The trees are not on the "mammoth" scale, but they fairly merit the title "big trees" which is commonly given them. Many of the biggest are dead at the top. Our enjoyment was much diminished by the presence on the coach of some clamourous American women, whose harsh, mirthless laughter and pert incessant chatter were a continuous desecration. I don't think they saw anything, for they were wholly given up to merely personal word–play. "Having eyes they see not". We must in justice remember that of this "middle–west" type of American we have in the course of our tour seen but little. What a whole community of such people must be beggars imagination!

After lunch we visited New Westminster. The tram car ran for an hour through partially cleared forest, in which homesteads were rising. The charred stumps of the big trees have a pathetic & even bizarre aspect. I suppose they have been deliberately burned by the settlers. Some of these great monuments of vanished greatness have been put to base uses – being plastered over with advertisements. New Westminster itself is a modest little town, with an air of quiet prosperity & a Carnegie Library!

[105]

The various Orientals are much in evidence here. Everywhere – indoors and out –

as domestic servants and as labourers – are the Chinese, generally wearing their pig–tails

bound neatly about their heads. The hotels are served by Japanese in the inferior grades.

Hindoos, conspicuous by their diversely coloured turbans are employed as labourers.

Besides the Orientals may be seen occasionally both Red Indians and negroes. The

Europeans also are very mixed. Scandinavians & Germans are numerous. What will be the

final outcome of all this mixture of ethnical types!

I wrote a "Birthday Letter" to Carissima.

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