To the east, sombre forest shut the sheltered basin in, its black ridge serrated by the ragged spires of taller pines, and blurred in places by the drifting smoke of mills.

Between them and the water stood long lines of loaded cars, with huge locomotives snorting in the midst of them, and where the metal road which commenced at Quebec ended, the white shape of an Empress liner rose above the wharf, the clasp of the new steel girdle which bound England to the East.

Above the pines which shrouded the narrows shone the topsails of a timber-laden barque, and a crawling cloud of smoke betokened a steamer coming up out of the wastes of the Pacific, while four-masted ships lay two deep beneath the humming mills.

Then, rising ridge on ridge, jumbled in picturesque confusion, and flanked by towering telegraph poles, store and bank and office climbed the slope of the hill.

It was a new stone city which had sprung, as by enchantment, from the ashes of a wooden one, and would, purging itself of its raw crudity, rise to beauty and greatness yet.
Alton glanced towards it with a comprehensive gesture.