But These Promises Are Little Better Than
Political Baits, And Were They Carried Out Into Acts Of Congress,
Financial Disturbance
Would delay, if not prevent, their final
realization; and, even if realized, they would not serve the great
wants of
The East and the West, still less would they satisfy England
and Europe. We, therefore, cannot look for the early execution of this
gigantic work at the hands of the United States.
"Such a work, however, is too costly and too difficult for the grasp of
unaided private enterprise. To accomplish it out of hand, the whole
help of both the Local and Imperial Parliaments must be given. That
help once offered, by guarantee or by grant, private enterprise would
flock to the undertaking, and people would go to colonise on the broad
tracts laid open to their industry."
My subsequent and semi-official inquiries induced me to modify many of
the conclusions of the article quoted above. On the essential question
of the pass in the Rocky Mountains, in British territory, most adapted
by Nature for the passage of a road or a railway, all the evidence
which I collected tended to show that the passage by the "Tete-jaune
Cache," or "Yellow-head," Pass, was the best. The Canadian Pacific
Company have adopted the "Kicking Horse" Pass, much to the southward of
the "Yellow-head" Pass. Again, it became clear to me that the whole
Rocky Mountain range was rather a series of high mountain peaks,
standing on the summit of gradual slopes, rising almost imperceptibly
from the plains and prairies on the eastern side, and dropping
suddenly, in most cases, towards the sea-level on the western or
Pacific side, than a great wall barring the country for hundreds of
miles, as some had dreamed.
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