From the railway terminus in Minnesota, the
stage coach drawn by four horses with relays every twenty miles, sped
rapidly over prairies, smooth as a lawn to the site of the future city
of the plains.
Since that time well-nigh forty years has passed away. The stage coach,
the Red River cart, and the shaganappi pony are things of the past, and
several railways with richly furnished trains connect St. Paul and
Minneapolis with the City of Winnipeg. More important, the skill of the
engineer has surpassed what we then even dreamt of in his blasting of
rock cuttings and tunnels through the Archaean rocks to Fort William, and
this has been done by three main trunk lines of railway. The old
amphibious route of the fur traders and of Wolseley's Expedition has
been superseded, the tremendous cliffs of the north shore of Lake
Superior have been levelled and the chasm bridged. To the west the whole
wide prairie land has been gridironed by railways all tributary to
Winnipeg, the enormous ascent of the four Rocky Mountain ranges, rising
a mile above the sea, have been crossed by the Canadian Pacific Railway.
The giddy heights of the Fraser River Canyon are traversed, and this is
but the beginning, for three other great corporations are bending their
strength to pierce the passes of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific
Ocean.
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