We were awakened early by bells ringing, and I thought we had landed in a city of churches, but it was the bells on the engines in the railway yard; we had found our train overnight and had got in it to sleep. These bells on the engines were something new to me, as they are not used in England (footnote 1). Then we had to get our money changed for Canadian coin, and of course we had to pay for that; we did not know what we ought to get, and took what was given to us. Well, they whisked us along at a very fast rate; I know, as I [164 : XV] was near the engine at one of our stops, and an official came up to the engineer with an order to go faster, and the engineer said he was going at 60 miles an hour, and would try and get more out of the engine.
We seemed to go through hundreds of miles of desolate country for hours on end; then they slipped us into Ottawa and cleaned out the cars, and off we went again through more miles and miles, leagues and leagues of desolate country until we arrived at Winnipeg, where we had to leave the Canadian Pacific railway and get on to the C N (footnote 2) to get to Invermay where my brother Sam had taken up a quarter section for me, 160 acres. So I got a car-man and loaded my cases and got them transported to the other railway; had I known, it would have been done without my intervention and saved me the expense.
Transcriber’s footnotes:
1. English steam trains used whistles and hooters; modern diesel and electric trains have horns.
2. Presumably “Canadian National Railway”?
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