His visit to
America with the Prince of Wales, already alluded to more than once,
had rendered him familiar
With the Northern Continent, and its many
interests, in a way which a personal study on the spot can alone bring
about; and he declared his conviction that the impression made upon the
mind of the Prince was so deep and grateful, that in anything great and
out of the ordinary rut of our rule at home, he would always find an
earnest advocate and helper in the Prince, to whom he said he "felt
endeared with the affection of a father to a son." I called the Duke's
special attention to the position and attitude of the Hudson's Bay
authorities. How they were always crying down their territory as unfit
for settlement; repelling all attempts from the other side to open up
the land by roads, and use steamers on such grand rivers as, for
instance, the Assiniboin and the Saskatchewan. He said Sir Frederick
Rogers, the chief permanent official at the Colonial Office, whose
wife's settlement was in Hudson's Bay shares, and who, in consequence,
was expected to be well informed, had expressed to him grave doubts of
the vast territory in question being ever settled, unless in small
spots here and there. The Duke fully recognized, however, the
difficulty I had put my finger upon. I never spent an hour with a man
who more impressed me with his full knowledge of a great imperial
question, and his earnest determination to carry it out successfully
and speedily. The Intercolonial Railway, to connect Halifax on the
Atlantic with the Grand Trunk Railway at Riviere du Loup, 106 miles
below Quebec, he described as "the preliminary necessity." The
completion of an iron-road, onwards to the Pacific, was, "to his mind,
a grand conception." The union of all the provinces and territories
into "one great British America," was the necessary, the logical,
result of completing the Intercolonial Railway and laying broad
foundations for the completion, as a condition of such union, of a
railway to the Pacific. He authorized me to say; in Canada, that the
Colonial Office would pay part of the cost of surveys; that these works
must be carried out in the greatest interests of the nation, and that
he would give his cordial help. This he did throughout.
In bidding me good-bye, and with the greatest kindness of manner, he
added: "Well, my dear Watkin, go out and inquire. Master these
questions, and, as soon as you return, come to me, and impart to me the
information you have gained for me." Just as I was leaving, he added,
"By the way, I have heard that the State of Maine wants to be annexed
to our territory." I made no reply, but I doubted the correctness of
the Duke's information. Still, with civil war just commencing, who
could tell? "Sir," said old Gordon Bennett to me one day, while walking
in his garden, beyond New York, "here everything is new, and nothing is
settled." Failing health, brought on by grievous troubles, compelled
the Duke to retire from office in the course of 1864, and on the 18th
of October of that year he died; on the 18th October, 1865, he was
followed by his friend, staunch and true, Lord Palmerston, who left his
work and the world, with equal suddenness, on that day.
But from that 17th July, 1861, I regarded myself as the Duke's
unofficial, unpaid, never-tiring agent in these great enterprises, and,
undoubtedly, in these three years, ending by his retirement and death,
the seeds were sown.
CHAPTER VI.
Port Moody - Victoria - San Francisco to Chicago.
At "Port Moody," and even at the new "Vancouver City," I felt some
disappointment that the original idea of crossing amongst the islands
to the north-east of Vancouver's Island, traversing that island, and
making the Grand Pacific terminus at the fine harbour of Esquimalt, had
not been realized. Halifax to Esquimalt was our old, well-worn plan.
The "Tete Jaune" was our favoured pass. This plan, I believe, met the
views both of Sir James Douglas and the Honorable Mr. Trutch. But I
consoled myself with the reflection, that if we had not gained the
best, we had secured the next best, grand scheme - a scheme which, as
time goes on, will be extended and improved, as the original Pacific
Railways of the United States have been.
The sea service between "Port Moody" and "Victoria," Vancouver's
Island, is well performed; and Victoria itself is an English town, with
better paved streets, better electric lighting, and better in many
other ways that might be named, than many bigger American and English
towns I know of. I spent four delightful days in and about it,
including an experimental trip, through the kindness of Mr. Dunsmuir
- the proprietor of the Wellington Collieries, a few miles north of
Nanaimo - over the new railway from Victoria to Nanaimo, constructed,
with Government aid, by himself and Mr. Crocker, of San Francisco. I
had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Sir Mathew Begbie, the
Chief Justice of British Columbia, to whose undaunted courage
Vancouver's Island and British Columbia owed law and order in the
dangerous and difficult times of the gold discoveries.
Upon the question of relative distances, engineering, and generally
what I saw between Port Moody and Chicago, I again take advantage of
Mr. Edward Wragge's excellent notes.
"Table of Distances between Liverpool and China and
Japan, via the Canadian Pacific Railway, through Canadian
territory, and via New York and San Francisco, through United
States territory: -
"ROUTE THROUGH CANADIAN TERRITORY.
"Summer Route MILES.
Liverpool to Quebec, via Belle Isle 2,661
Quebec to Montreal 172
Montreal to Port Moody 2,892
Port Moody to Vancouver 12
Vancouver to Victoria 78
Vancouver to Yokohama 4,334
Vancouver to Hongkong 5,936
"Winter Route MILES.
Liverpool to Halifax 2,530
Halifax to Quebec 678
Other points as in summer.
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