young engineers, tell me the peculiarity
of each cut and grade and the difficulties they encountered. They do
not speak of stations but of "Mile 48" or "Mile 60," by which they mean
48 miles from Wolf Creek. The railway, when completed, will measure
3,556 miles. They talked of other matters mathematical, much to my
bewilderment, but from which I, for myself, ultimately deducted that
while the genie who built Aladdin's palace in a night was the champion
contractor of fairy-tale countries, he is not to be mentioned in the
same breath as these master-men who blaze out this metal highway
towards the sea.

Each engineer lives on a residency which is twelve miles long, and it
is his duty to supervise the work of grading in his division. This
duty occupies about eighteen months, when he is moved on to another
residency.

The men placed in a residency camp are an engineer, an instrument man,
a rod man, two chain men and a cook. Over these camps, there are
placed the chief engineer at Winnipeg; the divisional engineer at the
End of Steel; and assistant divisional engineers, who may locate at
different points from fifty or sixty miles apart.

The grading itself is built by contractors, and sub-contractors, down
to station men, who with the aid of spades, picks and wheelbarrows,
built a hundred feet. All these are paid by the yard and according to
the nature of the soil or rock. The station men work from five in the
morning until nine or ten at night, and make from five to ten dollars a
day each. The blasters are known by the uneuphemistic title of
"rock-hogs."

The first engineers who scouted had a hard time in their unsplendid
isolation, but now that the rails are catching up, life on the
residencies is more pleasant than one might imagine. The shack is
fairly warm and comfortable and the Powers that Be supply to the men an
abundance of the best food procurable, with a reasonable portion of
dainties. The Powers doubtless recognize the distant advisability of
keeping the engineers and their assistants in health and temper, for
after all, nothing is so expensive as sickness. Still, the men are by
no means petted. It is true that one engineer has a pair of sheets,
but these are the talk, and possibly the envy, of all the residence's
on the line. When visitors come to his residency they sleep between
the sheets, while their chivalric host betakes himself to the long desk
that is built for map work.

Each residen