But the
train is out on a trestle, into a tunnel, and out on a trestle again.
It
was here that every one began to despair of the line when it was under
construction, because there seemed to be no outlet. But a man came, as a
man always will, and put a descent thus 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.
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