He Was Telling Us How He And Two Other Men Spent Three
Hours Finding Names For All The New Stations Along The Line, And
Could Only Think Of Three!
The stations are placed at the distance
of eight to ten miles apart, and they are bound not to have any
name already taken up in Canada, so that for a railway extending
over three thousand miles to the Rocky Mountains names are a
difficulty.
We did him the favour of writing out a few, taking all
the villages one was interested in in the "Ould Countrie," for
which attention he seemed much obliged, and has promised a time
table of the line with the nomenclature of its stations when
opened. They are building the Canadian Pacific at the rate of
twenty-five miles a week, and every available man is pressed into
the service, so that it is not so surprising the poor farmers
cannot find labour. The wages, two dollars to two-and-a-half a
day, are more than we can pay. There has not been much engineering
required or shown on this line, as we went up and down with the
waves of the prairies, had only two small cuttings between
Winnipeg and Brandon, three hundred miles, and were raised a few
feet above the marshes; but considering how fast they work and how
short a time they have been, it is creditably smooth.
We disembarked at a city called Brandon, which last year was
unheard of, two or three shanties and a few tents being all there
was to mark the place; now it has over three thousand inhabitants,
large saw-mills, shops, and pretentious two-storied hotels. We
found our carriage, which had been sent on two days previously,
waiting for us at the station, as we were to have driven on that
night to Rapid City; but, owing to the Manager not being able to
get through all his business, and his not liking to leave the two
labourers he had with him on the loose, for fear they should be
tempted by higher wages to go off with someone else, we decided to
remain that night at Brandon, and were not sorry to retire to bed
directly after dinner, about 8.30. We were given not a very
spacious apartment, the two double-beds filling up the whole of
it. In all the hotels we have been into, they put such enormous
beds in the smallest of space, I conclude speculating on four
people doubling up at a pinch. We luckily had brought some sheets;
the ones supplied looked as if they had been used many a time
since they had last been through the wash-tub. I cannot say we
slept well, chiefly, I think, owing to lively imaginations and the
continual noise of a town after the extreme quiet of the farm; and
as there was only a canvas partition between us and the two men,
who snored a lively duet, we had many things to lay the blame to.
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