Canada and the States Part 3

"At 8 p.m. Chapleau, another divisional terminus, was reached, and the schedule running time during the night from that point to Heron Bay, reached at 5.15 a.m. the following morning, is 20 miles an hour. At Heron Bay (802 miles from Montreal) the north sh.o.r.e of Lake Superior is first touched, and the line runs along it to Port Arthur, a distance of 993 miles from Montreal. The scenery here is very wild and picturesque.

At one time the line runs along the face of the rock, with the lake from 50 to 100 feet below, the road-bed being benched out on the cliff, and at another time is away back among barren hills and rocks, crossing several large streams (with either bridges of iron and masonry or timber trestle work), which streams flow into the lake at the north end of deep indentations or arms of the lake. The line through this district is winding, having many sharp curves and steep grades. There are several short tunnels, all of them through rock, and not lined. The schedule time for trains on this portion of the line is 16 miles per hour. We were detained some little time near Jack Fish, owing to a slight land slide coming down in one of the cuttings.

"The Nepigon River is crossed at a high level with a steel trussed bridge, masonry piers and abutments, and there is an old Hudson's Bay settlement on the river a short distance above the bridge. Between Nepigon and Port Arthur the line runs through a country much more accessible for railways, and the schedule time here is at the rate of 24 miles an hour. We reached Port Arthur at 4 p.m. on the 17th. This is a flourishing town, situated at the head of Thunder Bay, a large bay on the north sh.o.r.e of Lake Superior, and has a population of four or five thousand at the present time. From the north sh.o.r.e of Lake Nip.i.s.sing to this point, however, a distance of over 600 miles, the country may be said to be almost without inhabitants, except those connected with the working of the railway, squatters, and Hudson's Bay trappers and traders. The weather was chilly during the evening of this day, and a heavy sleet storm arose before arriving at Port Arthur. At night a fire had to be lighted in the car, as there was a sharp frost. During the night the train was detained for some little time east of Rat Portage, in consequence of a trestle having given way while being pulled in, and the train arrived at Rat Portage at 7.30 a.m., four hours, behind time.

"From Port Arthur the line westward is run upon the 24 o'clock system, commencing from midnight; 1 p.m. being 13 o'clock, 2 p.m. being 14 o'clock, and so on. The train arrived at Winnipeg at 12.45 on the 18th (1,423 miles from Montreal), and time was allowed to drive round the town, the train leaving again for the west at 13.30 o'clock. From Winnipeg westward the line runs through a prairie country, which extends without intermission to Calgary, a distance of 838 miles, and 2,261 from Montreal. At Winnipeg the Company have good machine shops, round houses, &c., and a large yard, and has acquired 132 acres of land for these purposes of working and repair and renewal.

"The country for three or four hundred miles from Winnipeg west is more or less settled; in some parts farms are quite numerous, and the land good and well cultivated. At Portage la Prairie the Manitoba and North- Western Line leaves the Canadian Pacific. It is being rapidly pushed forward, and 120 miles of it have already been completed through the 'Fertile belt.' It should have been mentioned that the line between Port Arthur and Winnipeg, a length of 430 miles, was constructed by the Government of Canada and given to the Canadian Pacific Railway Company free as a portion of their system. This part of the line is laid with 57 lbs. steel rails, and is well ballasted. The line is also ballasted east of Port Arthur, though in some places the ballast is of poor quality, and in others there is not sufficient of it. West of Winnipeg, however, there is no ballast across the prairie, except where the excavations through which the line goes afford ballast, it being simply surfaced up from side ditches with whatever the material may happen to be; but it is in good condition for a line of such a character, and the schedule time is 24 miles an hour, including stoppages.

"The train ran through Qu'Appelle, Regina, and Moose Jaw during the night of the 18th, and reached Dunmore (650 miles from Winnipeg) at 15.30 o'clock on the 19th. At this point there is a branch, 3-feet gauge line, 110 miles in length, to the Lethbridge mines, belonging to Sir Alexander Galt & Company. His son, Mr. Galt, met us at Dunmore, and invited us to go and inspect the mines, but as it would have made a delay of at least one day, the idea had regretfully to be abandoned.

The train reached Ba.s.sano (750 miles from Winnipeg) at 19 o'clock, our time, having made up 3 hours and 20 minutes since leaving Winnipeg, which was the time late leaving there. The train was then exactly 97 hours since leaving Montreal, having travelled 2,180 miles, an average speed, including all stoppages and delays, of 22-1/2 miles an hour.

"During the night of the 19th and the early morning of the 20th, the train ran through Calgary, at the foothills of the Atlantic slope of the Rocky Mountains; and at 5.30 on the 20th arrived at the summit of the Rocky Mountains. As it was just daylight we were enabled to see the scenery at that point and Kicking Horse Pa.s.s. From the summit of the Rocky Mountains, for some nine miles, the line is considered to be merely a temporary one, though permanently and strongly constructed, there being a grade for two or three miles of it of 4-1/2 feet per hundred, say 1 in 22-1/2. There are several catch sidings on this grade, running upwards on the slopes of the mountains, for trains or cars to be turned into, in the event of a break loose or run away, and a man is always in attendance at the switches leading to these sidings.

All this day the train ran through mountains, the Rocky Mountains, the Selkirk Range, and Eagle Pa.s.s. With the exception of the steep grade mentioned, the ruling ones are 116 feet to the mile, and there are numerous sharp curves, usually to save short tunnels. The line, however, is in some parts well ballasted, and work is still going on in this direction. The rails are of steel, 70 lbs. to the yard, and the locomotives, of the "Consolidation" pattern, with eight driving wheels, are able, Mr. Marpole, the able divisional superintendent, stated, to take a train of 12 loaded cars over the ruling grades, two of them being required for the same load on the steep grade already mentioned at Kicking Horse Pa.s.s. Mr. Marpole stopped the train at the Stony Creek Bridge, a large timber structure 296 feet high, and said to be the highest wooden bridge in America. The scenery through the Selkirks is magnificent, the mountain peaks being six and seven thousand feet above the level of the railway, many of them even at this season of the year covered with snow, and there being several large glaciers.

"During last year, before the line was opened for traffic, observations were taken with the view of ascertaining what trouble might be antic.i.p.ated from avalanches, the avalanch paths through the Selkirks being very numerous. Several large avalanches occurred, the largest covering the track for a length of 1,300 feet, with a depth in one place of 50 feet of snow, and containing, as was estimated, a quarter of a million cubic yards of snow and earth. The result of these observations caused the Company to construct during this season four- and-a-half miles of snow sheds, at a cost of $900,000, or $200,000 a mile.

"The sheds are constructed as follows:--On the high side of the mountain slope a timber crib filled with stones is constructed. Along the entire length of the shed, and on the opposite side of the track, a timber trestle is erected, strong timber beams are laid from the top of the cribwork to the top of the trestle, 4 feet apart and at an angle representing the slope of the mountain, as nearly as possible. These are covered over with 4-inch planking, and the beams are strutted on either side from the trestle and from the crib. The covering is placed at such a height as to give 21 feet headway from the under side of the beam to the centre of the track. The longest of these sheds is 3,700 feet, and is near the Glacier Hotel.

"Over the Selkirk Range the schedule time for trains from Donald to Revelstoke, that is, from the first to the second crossing of the Columbia River, a distance of 79 miles, is only eleven miles an hour; but this time table was made before there was much ballast on this portion of the line, and better time can now be made. On the 21st September the Fraser River was crossed early in the morning over a steel cantilever bridge, and the line runs down the gorge of the Fraser River to Port Moody, reached at noon. The train had thus been travelling from 8 p.m. on the 15th September to 12 noon on the 21st, apparently a total of 136 hours; but, allowing for the gain of three hours in time, an actual total of 139 hours. During this time the train travelled 2,892 miles, or an average speed made throughout the journey, including all stoppages, of 20-1/2 miles per hour, and this is the regular schedule time for pa.s.senger trains at the present time.

"Port Moody is the present terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway, but the line has been partially graded for 12 miles further to Vancouver. Owing, however, to the hostile att.i.tude of some landowners, the Company have not been able to complete this work, as the contention has been made that, although the Company have power to build branches, an extension of the main line is not a branch, and the Company will have to obtain legislation before this can be done. Vancouver at the present time is said to have a population of about 3,000. It is situated at Burrard Inlet, a mile or so inside what are called the First Narrows, but the neck of land on which it is situate is only about a mile across; and in the future, when the town grows, English Bay, which is outside the Narrows, can easily be made the harbour in preference to the present one, as it is fairly well sheltered, and affords good anchorage.

"The trip down Burrard Inlet, the Straits of Georgia, and through the San Juan Archipelago to Victoria, a distance of about 90 miles from Port Moody, occupied 9-1/2 hours, and Victoria was reached at 10.30 on the night of the 21st September."

To this memorandum I may add a few words. First, in praise of the excellent rolling stock; secondly, of the good discipline and smartness of the service; and, thirdly, of the wonderful energy, boldness, and success of the whole engineering features of this grand work of modern times. I should be ungrateful if I did not thank the chief officers of the Canadian Pacific, whose acquaintance I had great pleasure in making, for their exceeding kindness, for the full information they afforded to me, and for showing me many cheap, short, and ready plans of construction, which might well be adopted in Europe. These gentlemen have looked at difficulties merely in respect to the most summary way of surmounting them; and, certainly, the great and bold works around the head of Lake Superior, the many river and ravine crossings of unusual span and height, and, especially, the works of the 600 miles of mountain country between Calgary and the last summit of British Columbia, so successfully traversed, would make the reputation of a dozen Great George Streets.

CHAPTER IV.

_Canadian Pacific Railways_.

The pioneer suggestion of a railway across British territory to the Pacific has been claimed by many. To my mind, all valuable credit attaches to those who have completed the work. The christening of "La Chine"--the town seven miles from Montreal, where the ca.n.a.ls which go round the rapids end, and the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa rivers join their differently coloured streams--contained the prophecy of a future great high road to the then mysterious East, to China, to j.a.pan, to Australia; and it is to the Sieur de la Salle, who, 200 years ago, bought lands above the rapids from the Sulpician Fathers of Montreal, and began his many attempts to reach the lands of the "setting sun,"

that we owe the name; while the resolution of Sir Charles Tupper, carried in the Dominion Parliament, finally embodied in an Act which received the Royal a.s.sent on the 17th February, 1881, and was opposed throughout by the "Grit" party, was really the practical start. It would be inadequate to write of the Great Canadian Pacific Railway without some reference to the history of railways in Canada itself.

In the interesting book, "Rambles on Railways," published in 1868, it is remarked that great as has been the progress of Canada, in no respect has the growth of the country shown itself in a more marked manner than in the development of its railway system. It was in 1848, or almost immediately after the completion of the magnificent ca.n.a.l system of Canada proper, and by which vessels of 800 tons could pa.s.s from the ocean to Lake Ontario, and _vice versa_ (ships now pa.s.s from Chicago to Liverpool of over 1,500 tons burthen), that the Canadians discovered it was necessary, notwithstanding their unrivalled inland navigation, to combine with it an equally good railway communication; and accordingly, in 1849, an Act was pa.s.sed by the Canadian Government pledging a six per cent. guarantee on one-half the cost of all railways made under its provisions. In 1852, however, the Government, fearing the effect of an indiscriminate guarantee, repealed the law of 1849, and pa.s.sed an Act guaranteeing one-half of the cost of one main Trunk line of railway throughout the Province, and it was under this Act that the Grand Trunk Railway was projected.

These terms were subsequently modified, by granting a fixed sum of 3,000_l_. per mile of railway forming part of the main Trunk line.

It is true that prior to these dates railways existed in Canada. There was, for example, the horse railway from La Prairie, nine miles above Montreal, to St. John's on the Richelieu River, opened in July, 1836, and first worked with locomotives in 1837; there was also a horse railway between Queenstown and Chippewa, pa.s.sing Niagara, opened in 1839, and over which I travelled in 1851; but with these exceptions, and the Lachine Railway, a line running from Montreal for seven miles to the westward, the railway system of Canada cannot be said to have commenced until after the pa.s.sing of the Railway Act in 1849, and even then, it was not for about a year that any progress was made. Soon after that date, however, the works of several lines were pushed forward, and in 1854 the section between Montreal and Quebec was opened, the first train having carried Lord Elgin, who was then _en route_ to England to confer with the home authorities respecting the future Reciprocity Treaty with the United States Government. So, whilst in 1852, Canada could only boast of about 30 miles of railway, she has now over 10,000 miles. The population of the Dominion is estimated roughly at 5,000,000, so that this mileage gives something over two miles of railway for every thousand inhabitants, a greater railway mileage system per head of population than, perhaps, is possessed by any other country in the world.

The old Grand Trunk proprietors feel that their early pioneer services to Canada, and their heavy sacrifices, have rather been ignored in compet.i.tion, than recognized, by the Canadian Pacific not being an extension of the Grand Trunk system. Had I remained in office as President of the Grand Trunk, undoubtedly I should have laboured hard to bring about such a consummation, which undoubtedly would have economised capital and hastened the completion of the great Inter- oceanic work. But the London agents of Canada, who were, and are, responsible for launching the Grand Trunk and for its many issues of capital to British shareholders, have undoubtedly aided the compet.i.tion and rivalry complained of; for in July, 1885, they floated--when other great financial houses were unable--3,000,000_l_. sterling, not for the Pacific line itself, but to complete other extensions of the Pacific Company's system of a directly compet.i.tive character with the Grand Trunk, and which could never have been finished but for this British money, so raised. While I do not enter into the controversy, it still seems to me that blame lies nearer home than in Canada, if blame be deserved at all. Great financiers seem sometimes ready to devour their own industrial children.

The Canadian Pacific Railway from Quebec to Port Moody is a mixture of the new and the old. The first section, from Quebec to Montreal, is an old friend, the North Sh.o.r.e Railway, once possessed by the Grand Trunk Company, and sold back to the Canadian Government for purposes of extending the Pacific route to tide-water at Quebec, and making one, throughout, management. From Montreal to Ottawa, and beyond, is another section of older-made line. The piece from Port Arthur to Winnipeg is an older railway, made by the Canadian Government. Again, on the Pacific there is the British Columbia Government Railway. All the rest, round the head of Lake Superior up to Port Arthur, from Winnipeg across the Great Prairies to Calgary, and on to, and across, the Rocky Mountains, the crossings of the Selkirk and other Columbian Ranges, is new Railway--with works daring and wonderful.

Pioneer railways are not like works at home. The lines are single, with crossing places every five, ten, or twenty miles; ballast is not always used, the lines on prairies being laid for long stretches on the earth formation; rivers, chasms, canons and cataracts are crossed by timber trestle bridges. The rails, of steel, are flat bottomed, fastened by spikes, 60 lbs. to the yard, except through the mountains, where they are 70 lbs.

Begun as pioneer works, they undergo, as traffic progresses, many improvements. Ballast is laid down. Iron or steel bridges are subst.i.tuted for timber. The gorges spanned by trestles are, one by one, filled up, by the use of the steam digger to fill, and the ballast plough to push out, the stuff from the flat bottomed wagons on each side and through the interstices of, the trestles. Sometimes the timber is left in; sometimes it is drawn out and used elsewhere. This trestle bridge plan of expediting the completion, and cheapening the construction, of new railways, wants more study, at home. Whenever there are gorges and valleys to pa.s.s in a timbered country, the facility they give of getting "through" is enormous. The Canadian Pacific would not be open now, but for this facility.

All these lines across the Continent have very similar features. They each have prairies to pa.s.s, with long straight lines and horizons which seem ever vanishing and never reached; mountain ranges of vast alt.i.tudes to cross, alkaline lands, hitherto uncultivable, hot sulphur springs, prairie-dogs, gophyrs, and other animals not usually seen. The buffalo has retired from the neighbourhood of these iron-roads and of the "fire-wagons," as the Indians call the locomotives. Here and there on all the prairies on all the lines, heaps of whitened bones, of buffalo, elk, and stag, are piled up at stations, to be taken away for agricultural purposes. The railways resemble each other in their ambitious extensions. The Canadian Pacific Railway, from Quebec to Port Moody, is above 3,000 miles in length, but the total mileage of the Company is already 4,600 miles, and no one knows where it is to stop, while Messrs. Baring and Glyn will, and can, raise money from English people; the Union Pacific possesses 4,500 miles in the United States; the Southern Pacific nearly 5,000; and the newest of the three, the Northern Pacific, has about 3,000 miles, and is "marching on" to a junction with Grand Trunk extensions at the southern end of Lake Superior, in order to complete a second Atlantic and Pacific route, through favoured Canada. Each of these great lines has found the necessity of supplementing the through, with as much local traffic, as it can command. Some of this is new, such as the coal traffic from Sir Alexander Galt's mines, situated on a branch line of 110 miles, running out of the Canadian Pacific at Dunmore, and the mineral traffic in the territory of Wyoming on the Union Pacific. But, again, some of it is the result of compet.i.tion. Let us hope that the development of both Canada and the United States may quickly give trade enough for all. It seems to me, however, that the Ocean to Ocean traffic, alone, cannot, at present at least, find a good return for so many railways.

Canada has been unusually generous to the promoters of the Canadian Pacific Railway. A free gift of five millions sterling: a free gift of 713 miles of, completed, railway: a free gift of twenty-five millions of acres of land: all materials admitted free of duty: the lands given to be free of taxation for twenty years: the Company's, property to be free of taxation: the Company to have absolute control in fixing its rates and charges until it should pay 10 per cent. dividend on its Ordinary Stock: and for twenty years no compet.i.tive Railway to be sanctioned;--summarize the liberality of the Dominion of Canada, in her efforts to bind together her Ocean coasts. The work is essentially an Imperial work. What is the duty of the Empire?

CHAPTER V.

_A British Railway from the Atlantic to the Pacific_.

("ILl.u.s.tRATED LONDON NEWS," 1861.)

My letter of the 15th November, 1860, to a friend of Mr. Thomas Baring, then President of the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, gives concisely my general notions of opening up the British portion of the Great Continent of America. A while later a leading article written by me appeared in the "Ill.u.s.trated London News" of the 16th February, 1861.

The article was headed, "A British Railway from the Atlantic to the Pacific." I will here quote a portion of it:--

"'I hope,' said her Majesty, on proroguing Parliament in 1858, 'that the new Colony on the Pacific (British Columbia) may be but one step in the career of steady progress by which my dominions in North America may be ultimately peopled in an unbroken chain, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, by a loyal and industrious population.' The aspiration, so strikingly expressed, found a fervent echo in the national heart, and it continues to engage the earnest attention of England; for it speaks of a great outspread of solid prosperity and of rational liberty, of the diffusion of our civilization, and of the extension of our moral empire.

"Since the Royal Speech, Governments have done something, and events have done more, to ripen public opinion into action. The Governments at home and in Canada have organized and explored. The more perfect discoveries of our new gold fields on the Pacific, the Indian Mutiny, the completion of great works in Canada, the treaties with j.a.pan and with China, the visit of the Prince of Wales to the American Continent, and, at the moment, the sad dissensions in the United States, combine to interest us in the question, and to make us ask, 'How is this hope to be realized; not a century hence, but in our time?'

"Our augmenting interests in the East, demand, for reasons both of Empire and of trade, access to Asia less dangerous than by Cape Horn, less circuitous even than by Panama, less dependent than by Suez and the Red Sea. Our emigration, imperilled by the dissensions of the United States, must fall back upon colonization. And, commercially, the countries of the East must supply the raw materials and provide the markets, which probable contests between the free man and the slave may diminish, or may close, elsewhere. Again, a great nation like ours cannot stand still. It must either march on triumphantly in the van, or fall hopelessly into the rear. The measure of its accomplishment must, century by century, rise higher and higher in the compet.i.tion of nations. Its great works in this generation can alone perpetuate its greatness in the next.

"Let us look at the map: there we see, coloured as 'British America,' a tract washed by the great Atlantic on the East, and by the Pacific Ocean on the West, and containing 4,000,000 square miles, or one-ninth of the whole terrestrial surface of the globe. Part of this vast domain, upon the East, is Upper and Lower Canada; part, upon the West, is the new Colony of British Columbia, with Vancouver's Island (the Madeira of the Pacific); while the largest portion is held, as one great preserve, by the fur-trading Hudson's Bay Company, who, in right of a charter given by Charles II., in 1670, kill vermin for skins, and monopolise the trade with the Native Indians over a surface many times as big again as Great Britain and Ireland. Still, all this land is ours, for it owes allegiance to the sceptre of Victoria. Between the magnificent harbour of Halifax, on the Atlantic, open throughout the year for ships of the largest cla.s.s, to the Straits of Fuca, opposite Vancouver's Island, with its n.o.ble Esquimault inlet, intervene some 3,200 miles of road line. For 1,400 or 1,500 miles of this distance, the Nova Scotian, the Habitan, and the Upper Canadian have spread, more or less in lines and patches over the ground, until the population of 60,000 of 1759 amounts to 2,500,000 in 1860. The remainder is peopled only by the Indian and the hunter, save that at the southern end of Lake Winnipeg there still exists the hardy and struggling Red River Settlement, now called 'Fort Garry:' and dotted all over the Continent, as lights of progress, are trading posts of the Hudson's Bay Company.

"The combination of recent discoveries places it at least beyond all doubt that the best, though, perhaps, not the only, thoroughly efficient route for a great highway for peoples and for commerce, between the Atlantic and the Pacific, is to be found through this British territory. Beyond that, it is alleged that while few, if any, practicable pa.s.ses for a wagon-road, still less for a railway, can be found through the Rocky Mountains across the United States' territory, north-west of the Missouri, there have been discovered already no less than three eligible openings in the British ranges of these mountains, once considered as inaccessible to man. While Captain Palliser prefers the 'Kananaskakis,' Captain Blakiston and Governor Douglas, the 'Kootanie,' and Dr. Hector the 'Vermilion' Pa.s.s, all agree that each is perfectly practicable, if not easy, and that even better openings may probably yet be found as exploration progresses. Again, while British Columbia, on the Pacific, possesses a fine climate, an open country, and every natural advantage of soil and mineral, it has been also discovered that the doubtful region from the Rocky Mountains eastward up to the Lake of the Woods, contains, with here and there some exceptions, a 'continuous belt' of the finest land.

"Professor Hind says:--

"'It is a physical reality of the highest importance to the interests of British North America that this continuous belt can be settled and cultivated from a few miles west of the Lake of the Woods, to the pa.s.ses of the Rocky Mountains; and any line of communication, whether by wagon, road, or railroad, pa.s.sing through it, will eventually enjoy the great advantage of being fed by an agricultural population from one extremity to the other.'

"Although the lakes and the St. Lawrence give an unbroken navigation of 2,000 miles, right to the sea, for ships of 300 tons burden, yet if there is to be a continuous line, along which, and all the year round, the travel and the traffic of the Western and Eastern worlds can pa.s.s without interruption, railway communication with Halifax must be perfected, and a new line of iron road, pa.s.sing through Ottawa, the Red River Settlement, and this 'continuous belt,' must be constructed. This new line is a work of above 2,300 miles, and would cost probably 20,000,000_l_., if not 25,000,000_l_., sterling.

"The sum, though so large, is still little more than we voluntarily paid to extinguish slavery in our West Indian dominions; it does not much exceed the amount which a Royal Commission, some little time ago, proposed to expend in erecting fortifications and sea-works to defend our sh.o.r.es. It is but six per cent, of the amount we have laid out on completing our own railway system in this little country at home. It is equal to but two and a-half per cent. of our National Debt, and the annual interest upon it is much less than the British Pension List.

"We say, then, 'Establish an unbroken line of road and railway from the Atlantic to the Pacific through British territory.'

"Such a great highway would give shorter distances by both sea and land, with an immense saving of time.

"As regards the great bugbear of the general traveller--sea distance-- it would, to and from Liverpool, save, as compared with the Panama route, a tossing, wearying navigation of 6,000 miles to j.a.pan, of 5,000 miles to Canton, and of 3,000 miles to Sydney. For j.a.pan, for China, for the whole Asiatic Archipelago, and for Australia, such a route must become the great highway to and from Europe; and whatever nation possesses that highway, must wield of necessity the commercial sceptre of the world.

"In the United States, the project of a Railway to the Pacific to cross the Rocky Mountains has ebbed and flowed in public opinion, and has been made the battle-cry of parties for years past, but nothing has yet been done. Such a project, in order to answer its purpose, requires something more than a practicable surface, or convenient mountain pa.s.ses. Fine harbours on both Oceans, facilities for colonization on the route, and the authority of one single Power over the whole of the wild regions traversed, are all essential to success. As regards the United States, these conditions are wanting. While there are harbours enough on the Atlantic, though none equal to Halifax, there is no available harbour at all fit for the great Pacific trade, from Acapulco to our harbour of Esquimault, on Vancouver's Island, except San Francisco--and that is in the wrong place, and is, in many states of the wind, unsafe and inconvenient. The country north-west of the Missouri is found to be sterile, and at least one-third of the whole United States territory, and situated in this region, is now known as the 'Great American Desert.' Again, the conflicting interests of separate and sovereign States present an almost insuperable bar to agreement as to route, or as to future 'operations' or control. It is true that Mr. Seward, possibly as the exponent of the policy of the new President, promises to support _two_ Pacific Railways--one for the South, another for the North. But these promises are little better than political baits, and were they carried out into Acts of Congress, financial disturbance would delay, if not prevent, their final realization; and, even if realized, they would not serve the great wants of the East and the West, still less would they satisfy England and Europe. We, therefore, cannot look for the early execution of this gigantic work at the hands of the United States.

"Such a work, however, is too costly and too difficult for the grasp of unaided private enterprise. To accomplish it out of hand, the whole help of both the Local and Imperial Parliaments must be given. That help once offered, by guarantee or by grant, private enterprise would flock to the undertaking, and people would go to colonise on the broad tracts laid open to their industry."

My subsequent and semi-official inquiries induced me to modify many of the conclusions of the article quoted above. On the essential question of the pa.s.s in the Rocky Mountains, in British territory, most adapted by Nature for the pa.s.sage of a road or a railway, all the evidence which I collected tended to show that the pa.s.sage by the "Tete-jaune Cache," or "Yellow-head," Pa.s.s, was the best. The Canadian Pacific Company have adopted the "Kicking Horse" Pa.s.s, much to the southward of the "Yellow-head" Pa.s.s. Again, it became clear to me that the whole Rocky Mountain range was rather a series of high mountain peaks, standing on the summit of gradual slopes, rising almost imperceptibly from the plains and prairies on the eastern side, and dropping suddenly, in most cases, towards the sea-level on the western or Pacific side, than a great wall barring the country for hundreds of miles, as some had dreamed. Every inquiry from trappers, traders, Indian voyageurs, missionary priests of the Jesuits, and from all sorts and conditions of men and women, made difficulty after difficulty disappear. The great work began to appear to me comparatively easy of execution between Fort Garry, or the lower town of Selkirk and British Columbia; the cost less; and, owing to facilities of transport, especially in winter, the time of execution much shorter than had been previously a.s.sumed. In addition, an examination into the physical conditions of the various routes proposed through the United States, convinced me that here again the difficulties were less, and facilities for construction greater, than I and others had first imagined. In fact, I came rightly to the conclusion that the more southerly the United States route, and the more northerly the British route--while always, in the latter case, keeping within cultivable range--the better. Still, at this time there was much to find out. As respects real knowledge of the country to be traversed, the factors of the Hudson's Bay Company knew every fact worth divulging, but they were afraid to speak; while the Catholic missionaries, accustomed to travel on foot in their sacred cause over the most distant regions, possessed a mine of personal knowledge, never, so far as I could learn, closed to the Government of Canada or to any authorized inquirer.