n
charge there had received a reply that the relief engine had started,
and it ought to have arrived by then, but there was no sign of it. The
line is a single one you notice, all the way, except at certain places,
where there are loops to allow trains to pass each other in the same way
as on some tram-lines. After waiting some time the engine-driver steamed
slowly ahead. He climbed on and up, and went very slowly, expecting at
every turn to meet the relief engine, or find it waiting for him, held
up at a bridge. But no, there was no sign of it, and yet every
bridge-keeper gave him the same message--it had been sent out and should
have been here by now. At last he reached the depot itself, but there
was no engine! What had happened to it? It had been dispatched on the
single line, full steam up, into that stormy night, and it had vanished
completely! A search-party was sent out in the morning, and found at one
of the loops a slight fracture in the line; close to it the ground had
been ploughed up, and there, far below, lay a shattered mass of iron
and steel in the narrow valley, with the torrent plunging over it. For
some unexplained reason the engine had left the rails and pitched
straight over the precipice, carrying with her the two men in charge,
who were, of course, killed outright.

Beside the bridges there are tunnels and snow-sheds frequently on this
line. Our puny tunnels in England are nothing to these; a new one which
is just being bored through the Selkirks and fitted with electric light,
is five miles in length! The snow-sheds are very peculiar; they are
built out over the line with sloping roofs, so that when the avalanches
of snow and stones and ice come flying down as the grip of winter
relaxes, they are carried off right over any train that may happen to be
passing, and thunder on into the valley below. For the line is for the
most part laid on a mere shelf hewn out of the rock, with a precipice on
the one side and the towering wall of the mountain on the other. We are
not likely to get avalanches or snow-slides now, but in the spring it is
an extraordinary experience to be in the train and hear the roar and
rattle, as of big guns, followed by a hail of bullets, as tons of stuff
come down, and most of it goes shooting into space, though a good deal
is left on the sheds.

These deep narrow valleys through which the rivers foam are called
canyons, and the narrowest point we pass through is called Hell's