Alton of Somasco by Harold Bindloss

Autumn was merging into winter when one morning Alton and his comrade strolled along the water-front at Vancouver. It was still early, and the store and office clerks were just hastening to their occupations, but Alton had spent an hour already in a great sawmill. His face was thoughtful, and he seemed to be repeating details of machines and engines half aloud. Presently he stood still and gazed about him, and Seaforth, who followed his gaze, knew there was something working in his comrade's mind. The scene was also inspiriting and suggestive.

Across the wide inlet, mountain beyond mountain towered against the blueness of the north. 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.