The Dominion in 1983, Ralph Centennius [short books to read TXT] 📗

trips of 50 to 100 miles between stations, seldom travel more than 500 feet from the earth, but for long distances about 1,500 feet is usual. The broad metal slides for receiving the cars and for their departure, which extend for a mile on each side of all our stations, are the only portions of the rocket system which much resemble anything connected with railroads. It is said that great skill and long practice on the conductor's part are required to cause the cars to alight well on the slides and draw up at the stations. The slides at many stations are nearly level with the ground, but ascend in opposite directions, till at the distance of a mile, where they end, they are 100 feet high. The cars are now made quite cylindrical, tapering off abruptly at the closed end. The outside is entirely of metal, very highly polished, and showing no projections except a flange on each side, two broad runners underneath, and a 40 foot rear flange or vane. The dimensions are usually—diameter of cylinder, 20 feet; length, 45 feet. The high polish is necessary to avoid heating when the highest speed is attained. Passengers are seated in a luxurious chamber in the interior of the cylinder, which is suspended like the compass of a vessel, and therefore always retains an upright position whatever may be the position of the car when travelling. About fifty passengers can be accommodated at one time. The tube emerging a little beyond the mouth of the cylinder, through which the expanding gases are expelled, can be slightly deviated from its axial position in any direction, and thus what little steering is required is easily effected. The long projecting 40 foot vane or tail which steadies the motion of the whole machine is, in the newest patents, made to assist it in alighting on the slides easily and without jarring. Such is the splendid apparatus, briefly described, which brings all the ends of the earth together and makes the whole world a public park, the most distant parts of which can be visited and returned from in the course of a day. Long tedious voyages of a week or a month belong to the forgotten past, for Paris, Calcutta or Hong Kong can be reached in a fraction of the time formerly occupied in going from Toronto to Montreal. No passenger traffic is ever carried on now in dangerous vessels upon the treacherous ocean, but solely in the safe and comfortable rocket-car through the air a thousand feet or more above the cruel waters. Steamships, electric ships and sailing vessels are still common round our coasts engaged in transporting heavy freight, but they only cross the ocean to convey some bulky produce which cannot be divided and go by car.

Private vehicles and travelling have also undergone wonderful changes. The much-abused horse has vanished from cities entirely, and is not permitted to enter them, greatly to the preservation of health and cleanliness. All our vehicles have the automatic electric attachment and move along briskly through the clean wide streets. The handsome electric tricycles we are so familiar with, were hardly thought of a hundred years ago; now there are few men who do not possess a single or a double one.

How dismal must night have been in the times when only gas lamps or a few electric lights were used in the streets, although our great-grandfathers appear to have extracted a good deal of merriment from the dimly lighted hours after sundown. Our domestic lighting is now done almost entirely by electricity, or the brilliant little phosphorescent lamps, gas having long been banished from dwelling-houses; and our method of lighting the streets is a grand advance, indeed, upon the flickering yellow gas lamps of old. The great glass globes, which we see suspended from the beautiful Gothic metal framework at the intersections of streets, contain a smaller hollow globe, about eighteen inches in diameter, of hard lime, or some other refractory material, which is kept at white heat by a powerful oxyhydrogen flame inside. In this way our cities are illuminated by a number of miniature suns, making all the principal streets as light by night as by day.

One of our most interesting cities, and one to adopt all the newest improvements as soon as they come out, is Churchill, Hudson Bay, that most charming of northern sea-side resorts. Churchill's population is already 200,000, and is rapidly increasing. Here are the celebrated conservatories which help to make the long winter as pleasant to the citizens as summer. These famous promenades, or rather parks under cover, have a frontage of a mile and a half along the quay, with a depth of nearly 500 feet. They contain two splendid hotels and a sanitarium, the latter being surrounded by a grove of medicinal and health-giving plants and trees from all parts of the globe. A summer temperature is kept up through the vast building by utilising the heat from the depths of the earth, and by natural hot springs which flow from deep bores. Another fine city of which we may well be proud is Electropolis, on Lake Athabaska. Electropolis can boast of 100,000 inhabitants, and most enterprising citizens they are. Their great idea is to work everything by electricity, and to them belongs the credit of all the latest discoveries in electrical science. Their beautiful city is a great centre of attraction for scientific men, and many European electricians make a practice of coming over every Saturday to stay till Monday. Here are the colossal thermo-electric batteries which work throughout the year by there being stored up in immense solid blocks of aluminium the heat of summer and the cold of winter. The hot blocks, which are protected in winter, are exposed to the sun in summer, and are heated nearly to red heat by the rays concentrated upon them by a series of large mirrors. The cold blocks are simply exposed to the intensest cold of winter and protected from the heat of summer. Thus two permanent extremes of temperature are provided during the whole year, and the batteries only require to be placed in suitable positions with regard to the blocks to work continuously.

While speaking of cities in the far north, that of Bearville, on the shores of Great Bear Lake, in latitude 65 degrees, must not be passed over. Bearville is the metropolis of one of the finest mineral districts in the world, but had it not been for the inexhaustible deposits of all the useful metals in its vicinity, it is probable a city would never have sprung up in such an inhospitable region. Between the Coppermine and Mackenzie Rivers gold and silver are abundant. Platinum and iridium are also common, and are exported from here to all parts of the world; they are in great demand by chemists and electricians. A rough population from all quarters has been attracted to the district, of which Bearville is the centre, and it would astonish people who seldom come to the North to see how the ingenuity of man has made life not only tolerable, but enjoyable, in the neighborhood of the Arctic Circle. Coal seams crop up above the ground in many places, and wherever this is the case, large frame conservatories are built which are lighted, not from the roof, but by wide double windows reaching from the eaves to the ground, and heated by numerous stoves into which the coal just taken from the ground is thrown. Electric lights, magnesium lights and lime lights help to make the long nights of winter as cheerful as day elsewhere.

In this region wonderful blasting operations are performed by charges of solidified oxygen and hydrogen. The charges are placed at the bottom of a 40 foot bore and exploded by a powerful electric spark. The effect is very different from that of other explosives which usually rend the rock into large fragments that have to be blasted again in detail before a clearance is made, for the oxyhydrogen charge has such terrible force that it completely pulverizes the rock, scooping out, even in granite, a deep wide pit of parabolic section of which the spot where the charge was is the focus. The dust is blown out in a cloud high in the air.

Our finest and largest cities are Halifax, St. John's, Rimouski, Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Hamilton, Saulte Ste Marie, Port Arthur, Winnipeg, Brandon, Edmonton, New Westminster and Victoria. Toronto, Montreal and Winnipeg each contain more than 2,000,000 inhabitants, while the others range between 500,000 and a little over 1,000,000. At Halifax is one of the greatest car depots in the world, and here the traveller can step on board a car for London, Rome, Jerusalem, Bombay, Cape Town, Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, etc. St. John's, Fredericton and Campbelltown are large cities, the latter being a great rendezvous for pleasure-seekers in summer. Rimouski is a manufacturing centre and a large car depot. Cars spring from here to Tadousac, Lake St. John's, Lake Mistassinie and Hudson Bay ports. Quebec retains much of its old-world picturesqueness while keeping up well with the times; its inhabitants number about 700,000. Montreal and Toronto are without doubt the most magnificent cities in the Dominion, perhaps in the world. They are both famous for the grandeur of their buildings. In them, for the most part, each block is a complete structure and not a conglomeration of little buildings of all shapes and sizes, a two-storey house next to a four-storey one, and so on. Thus, among a number of blocks a pleasing harmony in architectural styles is obtained, which is a golden mean between the rigid uniformity of some new cities and the antique irregularity of old ones. Winnipeg is generally reckoned to contain the finest brick buildings to be seen anywhere; many blocks in brick may be seen of eight and nine storeys in the grandly decorated modern style. Victoria has grown into fame by its immense trade with the old Asiatic countries. The ancient Orient and the modern West here combine. The broad busy streets are thronged with a motley crowd, in which representatives of Asiatic races mingle with Anglo-Saxons and representatives of European nations, all speaking the universal English language. New Westminster increases its attractions every year. It contains the noted observatory with the splendid telescope through which living beings have been observed in the countries in Mars and Jupiter. In its Hall of Science is the great microscope which magnifies many million times, and shows the atomic structure of almost any substance. Its College of Inventors and Physical Institute are the most perfect establishments. From its extensive Botanical Gardens, where the Dominion Botanical Society make their experiments with plants and trees from all countries, great national benefits have been derived. Here are grown specimens of herbs and shrubs which prevent or cure every human disease. On one side is seen the plant, before the smoke of whose leaves when inhaled, consumption succumbs; on another, the shrub whose berries eradicate scrofula from the system, and thus through all the catalogue of ills. New Westminster also boasts a fine University, a College of Physicians and a Sanitarium; the two latter cause the city to be the resort of invalids from far and near. No diseases are here called incurable. At Mingan harbour, on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, are situated the great works where all the rocket-cars for the Dominion are built. The site was chosen on account of the large tract of desolate country to the north of it. The cars as soon as built are tested, first at short flights, then at longer ones, and conductors are trained to manage them. There are no regular lines of cars through or over Labrador, and so there is no risk of collision in the trial trips. Considerable difficulty is experienced at first in taking a car a flight of 100 miles, but by practice flights of over 1,000 miles are managed with perfect safety.

The contrast between the present and past might be drawn out to any extent, but enough has been said to enable the dullest mind to realize the truly marvellous development of our great Dominion. And if the development and advance have been great industrially and commercially, so have they been great, almost greater, socially; for socially we have set examples which the whole world has not been slow to follow.

III.

  "But Heaven hath a hand in these events."
                      —Richard II, Act V.

The state of society in the nineteenth century would have but few attractions for us of the twentieth, were we able to return along the vista of a hundred years. Our manners and customs are so vastly different from those of our great-grandfathers that we should feel out of place indeed had we to go back, even for a short time, to their uncouth and imperfect ways. Their extraordinarily complex method of governing themselves, and their intricate political machinery would be very distressing to us, and are calculated to make one