THE CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY SURVEY.
ACCORDING to the terms upon which British Columbia entered the Dominion of Canada, it became necessary to construct a railway through to the Pacific Coast, from some point which would form a junction with the existing railway system in the Provinces of Ontario and Quebec. In other words, to do for Ottawa and the Far West what the Americans have done for New York and San Francisco ; and the first important step to that end, the Canadian Parliament having made a grant of money for the process, was to survey the territory. This territory forms a portion of that " Great Lone Land " which has lately been described, in connection with the Red River Expeditions, and a report of the survey, which extended to a distance of 5,900 miles west of Fort Garry, has recently been presented to the Hon. IL L. Langevin, the Minister of Public Works, by Mr. Sandford Fleming, the Engineer-in-Chief. This report, apart from its practical and technical importance, presents many features of in- terest, belonging to those gigantic sections of the task of girdling the earth which our age has imposed upon itself, and lays hold of the imaginative side of our minds even more strongly than the plan of the great Pacific Railway laid hold of them, in the days when Messrs. Dixon and Dilke escorted the mail across the sunflower-bearing prairies, and through the stony, salt desert. It brings before us spaces as vast, but where there is no monotony ; difficulties as great, bat much grander ; effort as persistent, but more dashing and more daring ; deeper soli- tudes, aspects of nature more sublime and many-voiced. From Fort Garry to the base of the Rocky Mountains the country is remarkable for the simplicity of its "physical and engineering features," but the rivers of the great plains westward of Fort Garry flow in beds of great width, suggestive of bridging on a gigantic scale. The chief survey had therefore to be directed to the central plains as much as possible. The survey in British Columbia was divided into districts, quite intelligible on the map which accompanies the Report, engineers were appointed to each, and six parties were organised. The details of the organisation are most interesting, when we think of the uninhabited, trackless, seemingly impenetrable nature of the country to be explored, the enormous difficulty and responsibility of the commissariat department, the need for maintaining communications, the ignor- ance prevalent concerning the Indian tribes, and the excessive toil of the service. The success of the Expedition, the number and importance of the results obtained, are very satisfactory ; admirable courage and endurance have been displayed by the explorers, most of whom were out for ten consecutive months, embracing the whole of the frightfully severe winter. None of them were actually starved or frozen to death, .but they must have been fre- quently very close upon starvation-point, and rarely much above it, and their sufferings from cold must have been necessarily and constantly terrible. It is strange to read of the sudden, swift danger (in seven cases destruction) which came upon one of the parties from a great forest fire. In a moment, in the heart of the Snow-King's realm, the rival red banner is flaunted, and the great woods glow with miles of cruel, eager flame.
The general information, carefully gathered from different sources, upon which the Expedition had to act in the first instance, indicated that of all the passes through the Rocky Mountains, those named the Howse and the Yellow Head (Tete Jaune) would prove the most eligible for the railway ; but after the pass would come the serious obstacles presented by the province of British Columbia, and the selection of a terminal point on the coast. So great was the progress made by the Survey between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Coast, that in last April (less than a year from the commencement of the operations) the Canadian Government was able to decide on the adoption of the Yellow Head Pass as the gate to British Columbia from the East. Thus, the Survey is greatly simplified, and now the efforts of the whole staff in British Columbia are concentrated on lines leading to this one point. The Harbour of Esquimault, near Victoria, on Vancouver's Island, is strongly advocated as a terminal station. To reach this without break, it would be necessary to bridge the Straits of
Georgia in the neighbourhood of Valdes Island, where the channel is narrowest, and careful surveys have been ordered with that object. A portion of the Report is devoted to a comparison of the pro- jacted Canadian line with the Union and Central Pacific lines.
'Comparison with the Northern Pacific Railway projected through the United States' territories to Puget Sound is not possible. No reliable information concerning that vast undertaking is to be had, except on that portion of the route which lies east of the Red River. These tables of comparison, sup- posing the engineering difficulties to be no greater than the survey at its present stage reveals, give advantages over its predecessors to the Canadian line, even beyond its lower altitudes and its more favourable gradients, in point of the distance to be traversed, and its value as directly shortening the passage between Liverpool and China by more than one thousand miles. How strange such a calculation seems, in the face of the vast solitude, arrived at by men camped out in the primeval, snow-laden forest, or by the side of the great, wide rivers, on which they launch their fragile canoes, infinitely insignificant little clusters of human beings, hard put to it to satisfy their troublesome animal needs?—a calculation involving visions of busy crowds, great commercial interests, and the passing by, through those waste places, of the wealth and gorgeousness of the thronged, artificial East. Strange company must have sat by the camp fires, at least with the leaders of these pioneers of a work which will probably go on so rapidly that they will all see the fruit of their toil.
The Report is, of course, very strong in figures ; but the following is the most striking general result, with the comment of the Engineer-in-Chief :—
" The distance from San Francisco to New York, by the Union Pacific Railway, is 3,863 miles ; while from New Westminster to Montreal it is only 2,730, or 633 miles in favour of the Canadian route. A closer examination of the table will show that by the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, even New York, Boston, and Portland will be brought from 300 to 500 miles nearer the Pacific Coast than they are at present. When the remarkable engineering advantages which appear to be obtainable on the Canadian line, and the very great reduc- tion in mileage above referred to are taken into consideration, it is evident that the Canadian Pacific Railway, in entering into competition for the through traffic between the two oceans, will possess in a very -high degree the essential elements of success."
Several of the collateral reports from the various expeditions, received before the formal statement of the Engineer-in-Chief was made, are appended to his blue-book, and each of them contains a story, simply told in plain official style, but full of food for thought and imagination, whether it be furnished by the details of the achievements and the endurance of the men, or the revela- tions of Nature, made to them in their studies of her in her great diversified solitudes. We learn from one report that enormous tracts of rich pasture land lie westward of the North Saskatchewan river ; that coal in large quantities is reported as far up the river as the Rocky Mountain House ; that great bodies of silver
ore exist in the Cascade Range, through which the line would pass ; that the valley of the Fraser, from the vicinity of Fort Hope to the Pacific Coast, contains an extensive tract of rich agricultural 'land, covered with a heavy growth of valuable timber. Thus, throughout nearly the whole length of the great railway, either
agricultural or mineral resources will always serve to create a large and profitable way-traffic. To Mr. Moberley's most interest- ing report, he adds the important statement of his belief that there is no reason to apprehend snow blockades on the line from the Pacific Coast to the Valley of the North Saskatchewan ; and it is to be borne in mind that this belief is founded on experiences gained during a winter of quite unexampled severity.
Keeping the map before us, and referring to the successive sections of each report, we find strangely picturesque and sugges- tive little bits of narrative attached to certain points upon the 'dotted lines. From Bear Lake to Dominion Pass, for instance, is not much of a distance upon the map ; but here is the story of how the survey party made it:—
"The difficulties of track-making between these points" says Mr. McLennan, "were very great ; the greater part of the distance was -through a dense forest ; in some places the track had to be corduroyed, in other places a passage for the animals had to be made by pick and shovel in the rocky hill-sides ; mountain torrents and ravines bad to be spanned by bridges. Pushing along, despite the innumerable difficulties that beset the way, the party reached the hoped-for pass, which, high and glacier-capped, towered up in front of them, as if to crush out hope and defy further progress. For the animals a passage over it bad to be out with picks and axes ; and after much severe labour the party emerged 'from Dominion Pass. At this point the packers became afraid of being 'cat off by snow, and threatened to desert the stores and return to
Cariboo. Fortunately they were persuaded to remain, otherwise the effort to reach the valley of the Fraser River must have been abandoned. The progress of the party was now much impeded by snowstorms, which were almost continuous-from the 5th to the 10th of October. The Primer River was eventually reached on the 20th of November, and the party encamped for the winter."
Very simple words, but containing an amount of risk, privation, and labour which it would be very difficult to exaggerate, and which all the survey parties had to undergo, with only slight variation of degree. A strange, tragical incident connected with the frequent forest fires finds a place in Mr. Rowan's report of the proceedings of the party (the list is alphabetically arranged) appointed to the survey from Long Lake to Red Rock, at the mouth of Nepigon River :— " A party of seven men, two whites and five Indians, were detailed to bring forward supplies from one depot to another (and for this pur- pose had cut a track by a shorter route than that followed by the sur- veyed line), while the main party were proceeding with the exploration. Notwithstanding their having been repeatedly urged by Mr. Johnston to push ahead and keep up with the rest of the party, they lagged behind. Their non-appearance, after some days, excited anxiety on the part of Mr. Johnston, who thought they had deserted and returned to Nepigon ; he therefore proceeded there himself in search of them, but found they had not returned ; then having fears for their safety, as the whole party had had on several occasions very narrow escapes from the fires, he immediately returned to the main party, and sent his second in command with a number of men to search for the others. After an absence of five days they returned, having made an extensive search, and found one Indian in a portion of the woods which had been burned over. He was lying on his face, with his shirt, which he had taken off, between it and the ground, placed in that position to exclude the smoke from his lungs ; he was not burned, but had evidently died of suffocation. In a swamp near were found six holes which had been excavated by the others in ordor that by getting into them they might escape the fire ; but the smoke, becoming too dense, had driven them away, and no farther trace of them could be found. The most extraordinary point in the whole sad event was that all the supplies, together with their blankets and clothes, were found at the depot untouched by the fire."
All subsequent search for the missing men proved vain. Their fate remains one of the secrets of a land which is destined soon to lose its mysteriousness.
The first wonder and novelty of so great an undertaking have been taken off by the United States and Central Pacific Railways, but all its interest, all its suggestiveness remain fresh and un- diminished, and can only increase as we watch the development of the huge undertaking of which this report records the first costly, dangerous, all-important steps.
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