and a curve in this manner, and
a trestle so; and behold, the line went on. It is in this place that we
heard the story of the Canadian Pacific Railway told as men tell a
many-times-repeated tale, with exaggerations and omissions, but an
imposing tale, none the less. In the beginning, when they would federate
the Dominion of Canada, it was British Columbia who saw objections to
coming in, and the Prime Minister of those days promised it for a bribe,
an iron band between tidewater and tidewater that should not break. Then
everybody laughed, which seems necessary to the health of most big
enterprises, and while they were laughing, things were being done. The
Canadian Pacific Railway was given a bit of a line here and a bit of a
line there and almost as much land as it wanted, and the laughter was
still going on when the last spike was driven between east and west, at
the very place where the drunken man sprawled behind the engine, and the
iron band ran from tideway to tideway as the Premier said, and people in
England said 'How interesting,' and proceeded to talk about the 'bloated
Army estimates.' Incidentally, the man who told us--he had nothing to do
with the Canadian Pacific Railway--explained how it paid the line to
encourage immigration, and told of the arrival at Winnipeg of a
train-load of Scotch crofters on a Sunday. They wanted to stop then and
there for the Sabbath--they and all the little stock they had brought
with them. It was the Winnipeg agent who had to go among them arguing
(he was Scotch too, and they could not quite understand it) on the
impropriety of dislocating the company's traffic. So their own minister
held a service in the station, and the agent gave them a good dinner,
cheering them in Gaelic, at which they wept, and they went on to settle
at Moosomin, where they lived happily ever afterwards. Of the manager,
the head of the line from Montreal to Vancouver, our companion spoke
with reverence that was almost awe. That manager lived in a palace at
Montreal, but from time to time he would sally forth in his special car
and whirl over his 3000 miles at 50 miles an hour. The regulation pace
is twenty-two, but he sells his neck with his head. Few drivers cared
for the honour of taking him over the road. A mysterious man he was, who
'carried the profile of the line in his head,' and, more than that, knew
intimately the possibilities of back country which he had never seen nor
travelled over. There is al