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THE CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY.*

BY GENERAL HEWSON, C.E., TORONTO.

THE "Thirteen Colonies' of North America possessed little or no original force of unity. Strung out in a thin line along the vast extent of coast between New Brunswick and Florida, if they had been given independence freely and separately, they would, in all likelihood, have failed to find any internal ground for confederation. The union which arose between them was a product of common danger. Their subsequent consolidation into a nationality followed from the impetus of that force after it had ceased to operate, on the declaration of peace. If the passions of the American revolution had been allowed to pass away previously, that consolidation would probably have been found impossible, because of the differences of habits and sympathies between the Puritans of New England and the Southern cavaliers. But a controlling element presented itself to give their union of a convenience already satisfied, perman ence. From the day at which the Thirteen Colonies had expanded in thought and feeling to the dimensions of the common inheritance which extended in their rear, they felt the instinct of a common destiny, the principle of a national life, in a sense of Empire-in such a fraternity of ambi

Reports on the Canadian Pacific Railway. By SANDFORD FLEMING, C.M.G., Engineer-in-Chief, Ottawa, 1879.

Notes on the Canadian Pacific Railway. By General M. BUTT HEWSON, formerly Originator and Promoter of the Memphis and Louisville Railroad; Chief Engineer (under Commission from the State of Mississippi) on the Memphis and Charleston Railroad; Chief Engineer of the Mississippi Central Railroad; Chief Engineer of the Arkansas Midland Railroad; Consulting Engineer of the Mississippi, Ouachita and Red River Railroad, &c., &c., &c.

tion as that which found voice in the exclamation:

'No pent-up Utica confines our powers;
But the whole boundless Continent is ours!'

The Provinces of this Dominion have not been moved towards each other by lasting forces of internal attraction. Having a seaboard nearer home, the farmers of Ontario are not bound by any original reciprocity of convenience to the fishers and shippers of New Brunswick, Prince Edward, Nova Scotia. The Maritime Provinces are drawn by their interests less powerfully towards the carrying trade of this poor Dominion than they are towards the Transatlantic and the coasting traffic of the great and rich Union across the border. Outside the area of country whose material interests follow for six months of the year the line of navigation and the line of railway discharging at Montreal upon ships of the sea, there does not exist to-day a fixed ground of reason to sustain, after the British sympathies of the people shall have cooled, the present promise of Canadian nationality.

"Commerce is King." Acts of Parliament creating embryo nations operate in new societies subject to his veto. They become sooner or later a dead-letter unless they shall have received from him previously the quickening of material life. Mr. Goldwin Smith spoke thoughtfully when he said that the forces of ultimate preponderance which act with political effect in this Dominion of to day, favour annexation to the United States. Instead of hiding our heads, as the os

trich hides his, from the pursuit of that unwelcome conclusion, we are told by the practical instinct of this population of architects of their own fortunes, to look the conclusion in the face with the manful determination that it shall be reversed! For that reversal the country relies on the Pacific Railway. The Province-creators look to the Nation-creators to carry out that great enterprise so as to illuminate with fixed life the black letter of the latter's work, so as to set this embryo Dominion going throughout its several parts, in the developIment of all that is within it of the elements of vitality. The Pacific Railway may be used for the realisation of that popular expectation if it be carried out with breadth and courage. It can certainly be so located as to make New Brunswick and Nova Scotia the factors and carriers; Quebec and Ontario the bankers and manufacturers, of the millions of agriculturists who may be planted on the rich lands of the North-West, to supply to these scattered Provinces, as the millions of agriculturists who have been planted on the rich lands of the Mississippi Valley have supplied to the scattered communities along the seaboard of the United States, a centripetal attraction of ample grasp to bind around a common core all the outlying parts of a great American empire.

The location of the Canadian Pacific has been made in disregard of its power to fasten life in' the Dominion. Delivering the business of the North-West so far in the interior as the neutral waters of Lake Superior, it gives that business over at the first opportunity on its transit, to foreign rivalry. It ignores, thus, the National Policy which would have taken pains to exclude, as far as possible, the intervention of the ample capital and dashing enterprise of the people of the United States between the carrying and the manufacturing interests of Ontario and Quebec, and a vast do

mestic market of supply and demand whose exclusive possession would give so much ground of permanence to our political union. Further: the location of the Pacific Railway has been made to rest on a system of eastern connections which give the winter commerce of the country to a port of the United States. If only because of its political complexion, that fact is highly objectionable even where it is unavoidable; but where it may be avoided with actual economy, it ought not to be submitted to by the country. Now the location of what ought to be the national highway, not only gives the commerce of our future to Portland for the time, but that highway being the arterial outlet of the transportation of the future, the giving now establishes that subordination of CanaIt supdian independence for ever. presses thus, and as the pamphlet, Notes on the Canadian Pacific Railway,' shows, does so in wantonness, a vast development of reciprocal interests available in the hands of statesmanship for bringing into play the powerful attraction which may be set into operation, with the effect of binding together around the North-Western core, the inland and the outlying Provinces of what is little other than a union of black-letter.

Since its inception, the Pacific Railway has been treated by the Government of Ottawa in a narrow spirit. The pamphlet, 'Notes on the Pacific Railway,' says:

'One Ministry felt free to yield to local pressure in restricting the route of the road through the Province of Ontario to the south of Lake Nipissing.

Again, the road, designed though it is to connect the two oceans and to discharge 'Asiatic commerce on the St. Lawrence, has been made to 'begin in the woods!' Its ultimate connection with tide-water was, it is true, provided for at the same time by an Order in Council,' one declaring that connection to lie over two sides of a triangle whose base is perfectly available for making the connection in about half the mileage of the sides! The general purpose of the

railway was compromised for some local consideration in order to build a branch whose only supposable uses had been already discharged elsewhere; and was again compromised when the influence of local interests was allowed to determine the site of a river-crossing!

'Some struggling settlements exist on the northern border of Georgian Bay. Others battle on to crops on the northern shore of Lake Superior. These insignificant facts have been, seemingly, allowed to fix one part of this great line of inter-oceanic commerce! A few dozen of town-lot speculators had cast their fortunes at a port of Lake Superior; and made good their determination to control the route of this vast undertaking in order to give value, by a short branch, to their ‘landing !

Forty or fifty thousand people in Manitoba constitute an influence which has been permitted to determine a vital point-the general question of routein the design of a great project whose capabilities go to the creation of an empire! Ten thousand inhabitants in the southern part of Vancouver Island and the southern mainland of British Columbia, represent another consideration dominating the grand practicabilities of that creative enterprise-committing it to an extravagant project of marine ferriage, or placing its existence as an agency of British commeree, subject to the foreign guns of San Juan. All this dragging-down of the Pacific Railway below its proper level being, it may be feared, unavoidable so long as its execution is left in Colonial hands, the intervention of the Imperial Authorities in that execution is a very necessity of things if it is to be held on the high ground of Imperial interests.

'The surveyed line of the Canadian Pacific is open to objection on grounds which may be glanced at in the following summary :

"That from the Valley of the Ottawa to Manitoba-about 900 miles-it traverses a country which contains but insignificent areas fit for cultivation, a country whose rocky and broken surfaces involve lines needlessly unfavourable and works needlessly heavy;

"That it is exposed for 150 miles to seizure in the event of war, by parties from American ships dominating Lake Superior; and that it is again exposed to seizure by troops penetrating from

the boundary of the United States into Manitoba from two days' march to four, at any point of the track for a length of 400 miles;\

'That for 200 miles west of Selkirk it runs through a district in which facilities of settlement exist already, in the navigation of Lakes Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Winnipegosis;

"That of the 800 miles between Winnipegosis and the mountains, 500 miles go through a region unsuited to agricultural settlement;

"That the pass selected for the crossing the Rockies is twice as high as that of Peace River, and probably one-third higher than any* that is likely to be found necessary in crossing from Peace River by way of the central plateau into the slopes of the Pacific.'

The people of Canada must be supposed not to have intended that the Pacific Railway should be subordinated to local or sectional interests. They may be regarded as submitting to its burdens, not to please Manitoba, not to please British Columbia, not to give value to lots at Kamanistiquia or at Prince Arthur's Landing; but to consolidate and to develop their political unity, and to place its maintenance under the safe-guard of a great line of defence. Scattered settlers extending in a thin front along the frontier of a great nation, and receiving at all points of 1,500 miles of that front the pressure of that nation's expanding population, the practical intelligence of the Canadian people sees that their control of their own political destiny demands that they shall have, not only a frontier, but also an interior; not only a front, but also a rear. 'Notes on the Canadian Pacific Railway' suggests, for the National line, a route which promises to meet these necessities, and to give the political union of the country the fullest obtainable base in reciprocating interests. It says:

'A prima facie case presenting itself

* This rests on speculation as to the continental summit of a route up the Omineca and, passing the Fraser-Skeena "divide," descending to the Pacific by the Sabine and Skeena.

thus in support of this conclusion, the Peace River Pass taken in conjunction with the extraordinary richness and adaptation to settlement of the Peace River country, seems to determine one point on the true route for the Cana lian Pacific Railway.

'Portland cannot be accepted forever as the winter outlet of Canada. If dependence on a foreign power in that case is to be stopped at all, the stoppage must govern the location in reference to the Atlantic Ocean of the great arterial line of this nursling Empire. Halifax, or St. John, or both, offering an escape from holding the trans-continental commerce of Canada subject to the good pleasure of the United States, the summer port of the Canadian Pacific should be selected in reference to these harbours as its winter ports. At or near Quebec is the lowest point at which the St. Lawrence can be regarded bridgeable.

About 40 miles farther than Montreal, on a straight line, from Peace River Pass, it is now nearer by railway than Montreal to Halifax by from 150 to 170 miles. Saving ultimately a railway transportation of over 90 miles to St. John, and over 330 miles to Halifax, the true point for discharge of the Pacific Railway upon summer-tide-water would seem, on these grounds, to be Quebec.

'If Quebec be accepted as a fixed point in the East, and the Peace River Pass as a fixed point in the West, a question arises as to the intermediate route. To follow the line now contemplated by way of Montreal, Nipissing, Selkirk, etc., would involve an unnecessary length of track, which would aggregate a total excess, between tide-water and tidewater, of probably not less than 240 miles. With even six trains each way per day, the working-expenses over that distance would cost a million of dollars per annum. It is needless to add to that reason, if Quebec be accepted as the summer port, other proof of the conclusion that the route which has been surveyed should not have been considered until a thorough investigation had been made of the direct route.

'The straight line between Quebec and Hudson's Hope cannot be followed otherwise than generally. Special considerations demand modification in that basis of experimental examinations. What these are can be determined but by those who are in possession of access to official reports and maps of the coun

try to be traversed. A few may be suggested here, at a venture by way of illustration. The broken country back of Quebec demands, probably, that the route be thrown as soon as may be into the valley of the St. Maurice. Passing out of that into the rainshed of Hudson Bay-at a maximum elevation of, perhaps, 1,400 feet-it should be directed upon the Abbittibi and the Moose with a view to connection without any considerable increase in length of track, with navigation by ships or steamers from Hudson Bay. Proceeding, tapping on its way the Albany River, the Weemisk River, the Wastick wa River, etc., it would tap the na vigation of Lake Winnipeg from the south, and of Nelson River from the north, at Jack River-crossing the latter at, say where it is said to be but 200 yards wide, Norway House.

'Continuing westwardly from Norway House, the deviations from the straight line suggested by great special considerations would take the railway to, suppose Big Bend, so as to tap the navigation of the Saskatchewan above the Grand Rapid. Proceeding into the valley of the River Lac la Ronge, it would go on to tap the Beaver River and the Athabasca; and tapping the Peace River near the mouth of the Sm key, might continue thence to Hudson's Hope as it entered Peace River Pass.

"The line sketched out here is sketched as but a basis of experimental work subject to modification, or, as facts may demand, rejection. It may prove, on investigation, to be unsuited totally. It involves some assumptions which do not rest on a sufficient breadth of information, and other assumptions that are little better as a ground for grave decision, than conjecture. But Peace River Pass being once accepted as a point on the route of the Canadian Pacific, and Quebec as its point of discharge upon summer-tide-water, the circuit by way of Lake Nippissing, Lake Superior, and Manitoba, involves so great an excess of length that it ought to be held inadmissible until all facts, physical and agricultural, shall have been first brought out in reference to the line from Quebec by way of Norway House.'

In giving local application to the line indicated thus on general considerations, the pamphlet says:

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