Towards the end of an afternoon in September, rounds being done, I stood with Mr. George Lyon (who is a kind of John Ball of the Dominion of Canada, having won the championship of his country seven times) on the heights where stands the club-house of the Lambton Golf and Country Club in Ontario, and we looked across the valley along which the course is traced to the woods on the opposite side where there were some fiery crimson spots to be seen as if burning amid the mass of foliage that was olive or tinting down to brown. They were the maple leaves of Canada, the emblem of the new land, of which it is prophesied that it shall be the greatest country of the earth. In early days the Canadians dabbled with the lacrosse which the Indians played, and some of the invaders, too, brought their cricket with them and taught it to others whom they found there. Then the people who are near to the borders of the United States, and are somewhat impressed with the American ways of doing things, have been cultivating an interest in baseball for its spectacular properties. Rounders revised is well enough for those who are within shouting distance of Buffalo and for places like Toronto, but I could never believe that such a game or pastime, whatever its merits - and I know that it has many - could suit such a very serious, contemplative, cold, and earnest people as the Canadians are. I regard the nature of these people, as I have had the opportunity of considering it, as more serious and intense than that of any other, and I know only one recreation beyond those that are the simplest and most essential, as of roaming in the untamed country, fishing, shooting, and hunting, that is agreeable to such a nature. They also know it; they have declared for a national game.

There is this to be said at the beginning for Canadian golf and its courses, that the general atmosphere of the game in this great country, rough and often bare and primitive as still it is, seems to be much nearer the atmosphere of golf in Britain than that of any other country different from us. One misses the sea-coast links, courses are long distances apart, fine players are comparatively few, for the men of Canada are still so busy and so earnest that they have not even time to play, but yet there is a fine chain of the game all the way from St. John's to Vancouver. There is more of the peculiarity of British sporting instinct in the Canadian than in any other person out of the British Isles; he likes what we like, and he likes it in the same way and for the same reasons. Except that the coldness, like that of the Scot, is sometimes too much exhibited in him, and that even on suitable occasions he is reluctant to demonstrate his enthusiasms, so serious he is, so deep he looks, I have found him to be a splendid opponent with an agreeable persistency, and a most desirable partner in a foursome. Here in Canada there are trestle tee-boxes, a few - but only a few - of the clubhouses are built and equipped in the manner of the Americans, betokening an existing prosperity and a provision for that greater one which is felt to be as sure as the fruit and the corn of the following season; but otherwise golf seems much like what it is at home, and especially do we feel like that when we reach the old places where the game first took root out there. There is a Canadian Golf Association to rule the affairs of the game in the country with a certain subservience to home and St. Andrews as the Dominion holds to Westminster, and such a ruling authority is necessary in a new and wide country like this where so much pioneering is being done, just as it is necessary in the United States and in Australia. The chief function of such an authority is to keep the game together, hold it compact and maintain it in even uniformity with the game elsewhere. There is no blame to the Canadians because they have not associated themselves with the subtle and insoluble mysteries of the British handicapping system, but have followed the American lead in this matter and put their best champions at scratch. Otherwise they are full British still, and even if they have their doubts upon the wisdom of the edict of St. Andrews which banned centre-shafted clubs and the Schenectady putter of American origin, they have remained loyal to the law without dissenting as the Americans did. So in Canada you may not use the Schenectady. You may putt with it on one side of the Niagara Falls but not on the other side.

It is fortunate that a ball cannot be played across the Falls, or over those whirling Rapids, or some puzzling international complications might arise. The adventures are called to mind of two great scientists, the late Professor John Milne, who made such a fine study of earthquakes and could feel them in the Isle of Wight when they were taking place in Asia, and Professor Sims Woodhead, the eminent Cambridge pathologist, when they went to the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science when it was held in South Africa. They travelled to the Victoria Falls on the Zambezi River, and there they contemplated a mighty carry of a hundred and sixty yards over roaring, foaming water. The keen golfer is always prepared, for the emergencies of the game are constant and attractive, and Mr. Milne produced driver and ball, and, with a fine nerve and eyes that were controlled most marvellously, delivered a golf ball from one side to the other tor the first time since the world began. The pathologist admired the achievement and emulated it. He also carried the Falls of the Zambezi. It were better that these greedy men had left it at that and been well satisfied. However, they came to think they might go on with this majestic carry continually, and generous Fortune chided them. Crocodiles took the balls that they drove into the Zambezi.

Let us take a look at Lambton. From my room in Toronto I rang up Lyon, whom I had met several times in England, and asked him to guess the name of the caller; he gave the name without hesitation, though he had no more reason to know that I was in Canada than in Tasmania. So quite in a matter-of-fact way we met on the following day in a Grand Trunk car starting from the Union station, and inquired of each other as to the ball that each was using. The journey from Toronto is one of only a few minutes, and soon after the stopping of the train the feet may tread on some of the nicest golfing turf that is to be found out of England, and the reason is palpable, for here are the big bunkers of the proper kind made of real yellow sand, which is natural to the place. When they need new sand bunkers at Lambton they cut them open and there they are. So sandy is the place that sometimes they have a difficulty in making the grass grow properly, and one result of these favourable natural conditions is that the course is better bunkered than most others on the American continent. Tee shots and approaches must be played well, and at the very first green the hint is given that the short game must be well done. The fourth hole is one of the jewels of Canadian golf. The teeing ground is on a height, and below it is a series of descending plateaux like giants' steps until the level is reached. When he has made a very passable drive the player is called upon with a very proper second to carry the Black Creek which guards the green and is coiled like a snake about it. The shot must have fair length and it must be very straight as well. Normally the hole is 365 yards long, so that in mere distance it is not a terrible thing, but when medals are being played for its length is stretched out to the four hundred yards. At the sixth the stream which they call Humber comes into the reckoning. It is a nice two-shot hole, and the seventh is an excellent short one with the inky creek here again. With the stump of a tree protruding from the water, large leafy growths upon the surface, a general sleepiness and the green in a sequestered corner beneath a shading hill, this is quite one of the most attractive of water holes. It is a strong hole, too, with fear about it, for the carry is one of 165 yards, and I was told that when Miss Rhona Adair, now Mrs. Cut hell, several times lady champion, was in these parts some years ago she twice did the carry and a third time her ball skimmed the water and reached the green after all. This was good work for a lady, especially as I rather fancy she must have been using the gutty ball at that time.