Seeds of Pine. Emily F. Murphy
the builders of the highway, that skirt the canyon's brink,
To the men that bind the roadbed fast,
To the high, the low, the first and last,
I raise my glass and drink!—EVELYN GUNNE.
As yet, there is no passenger service from Edson to the End of Steel. Several day coaches are run, but they are chiefly for the use of the engineers and workmen. This is how I happen to be the only woman aboard pulling out for the mountains across this newly-made trail.
Do not misunderstand me; it is the railroad that is new. The trail that runs by its side was an old one when Columbus discovered America, and beaten deep with feet, and also it is a long trail, for it leads through to the Pacific Ocean. For centuries, it was the only mark of human interference in this waste that is world-old. It is a trail of lean hunger and bleeding feet, one that has ever been prodigal of promise, but wary of accomplishment. Surely this is so, for once over it stumbled and swore those half-mad men known as the Caribou Stampeders—these, and other unwept, unhonoured fellows who fared into the wilderness for what reasons even the wise Lord knoweth not. If the bones of the red and white folk who have travelled this long, long street were stood upright, I doubt not they would make a fence of pickets for us all the way.
I have no sooner thought this thing than it happens there is a dry stirring and, in an eye-wink of time, the dead men have taken on flesh and colour. They must have been keenly near. Grim, plainish fellows are they, not unlike the gang around me, but rougher-clad and more hairy. They are powerful and full-lifed men, I can see that, and the rough-necked one with the trail stride and mop of curly hair is Alexander MacKenzie, a Scotchman from Inverness, but late of Messrs. Gregory & Co.'s counting-house. He is "down North" endeavouring to open out a trade with the Indians, obtaining a foothold they doubtless call it; his masters, the Nor'-West Fur Company—for monopolists are always sensitive to terms. His is a continental errand (mark this well), for he is the first white man to cross the Rockies, and to tell us what lies over and beyond the hills where the sun goes down. Honour to Alexander MacKenzie, Esq., of Inverness, say I! Some day, when Messrs. the Publishers give me fuller royalties, I shall surely build a cairn to him on the height of land e'er it falls away to the Western Sea.
This man lived more than a century ago, and yet, as his figure fades back into nothingness, we see this other figure close by. It is David Thompson, the Welshman, who has recently discovered a river, and has called it by his own name. Also, he has captured the Astoria fur-trade, and has established a trading post, which future generations will know as Kamloops.
And here is Sir George Simpson, Resident Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company. He likes to travel with pipers who go before him, piping as he enters a fort in order that Lo, the Red Man, may be properly impressed.
The ugly person with the harshly aggressive features is Sir James Douglas. He looks as fully open to convincement as a stone pavement. This spalpeen near by is none other than young Lieutenant Butler of Ireland. He is gathering material for a volume he proposes to call The Great Lone Land. I like the way he carries his head. Who runs may read him for a fighter with a fighter's build.
But on they go, and on, this long procession of pioneers, till we can only call out their names as they file by—Dr. Hector, Daniel Harmon, Viscount Milton, Alexander Henry, Dr. Cheadle, and other lean, laborious fellows, long since passed into the shadows. Dead men do tell tales. You may hear if you care to listen.
And what a strange thing has come to pass in these latter months! The tenuous, twisting trail—that very old trail—has been superseded by a clean white road that is like to a long bowstring. Its impotent, creeping life has given way before the gallant onslaught of pick and spade, chain and transit, and before monstrous lifting machines which have other names, but which are really leviathans.
Hitherto, it may be said of this land what was once said of Rome, that the memory sees more than the eye. This is no longer true. Before we realize it, Baedeker will be setting down a star opposite the name of a fashionable hotel in the Athabaska Valley, and the whole of this morning world, from end to end, will be spotted with a black canker of towns. Right glad am I to go through it this day with a construction party, and for my own satisfaction to mentally tie together the threads of the Past and Present. And who knows but in a century from now some curious boy in one of these towns may find this record in an attic rubbish-heap, and may rejoice with me over the knotted threads. (I love you, boy! you must know this.)
My fellows of the Way, who are young engineers, tell me the peculiarity of each cut and grade and the difficulties they encountered. They do not speak of stations but of "Mile 48" or "Mile 60," by which they mean 48 miles from Wolf Creek. The railway, when completed, will measure 3,556 miles. They talked of other matters mathematical, much to my bewilderment, but from which I, for myself, ultimately deducted that while the genie who built Aladdin's palace in a night was the champion contractor of fairy-tale countries, he is not to be mentioned in the same breath as these master-men who blaze out this metal highway towards the sea.
Each engineer lives on a residency which is twelve miles long, and it is his duty to supervise the work of grading in his division. This duty occupies about eighteen months, when he is moved on to another residency.
The men placed in a residency camp are an engineer, an instrument man, a rod man, two chain men and a cook. Over these camps, there are placed the chief engineer at Winnipeg; the divisional engineer at the End of Steel; and assistant divisional engineers, who may locate at different points from fifty or sixty miles apart.
The grading itself is built by contractors, and sub-contractors, down to station men, who with the aid of spades, picks and wheelbarrows, built a hundred feet. All these are paid by the yard and according to the nature of the soil or rock. The station men work from five in the morning until nine or ten at night, and make from five to ten dollars a day each. The blasters are known by the uneuphemistic title of "rock-hogs."
The first engineers who scouted had a hard time in their unsplendid isolation, but now that the rails are catching up, life on the residencies is more pleasant than one might imagine. The shack is fairly warm and comfortable and the Powers that Be supply to the men an abundance of the best food procurable, with a reasonable portion of dainties. The Powers doubtless recognize the distant advisability of keeping the engineers and their assistants in health and temper, for after all, nothing is so expensive as sickness. Still, the men are by no means petted. It is true that one engineer has a pair of sheets, but these are the talk, and possibly the envy, of all the residence's on the line. When visitors come to his residency they sleep between the sheets, while their chivalric host betakes himself to the long desk that is built for map work.
Each residency has a gramophone, and some of them have small menageries, including pet bears. In the summer, after hours, the men have outdoor games such as baseball and tennis. They have been able on several occasions to secure a sufficiently large attendance of women to have a dance. It may happen that the engineer is married and that his wife has girl-visitors, which party may be augmented by a visiting contingency from the residency twelve miles further down the grade, or some such fortunate happening as this. It is a heyday, I can tell you, when this happens.
They do not quarrel in the residencies as missionaries do at their posts, although a man sometimes gets moody. All through the winter they talk over everything they did when last in town, and what every one else did. Between times, they can watch the married engineers and declare how much better the bachelors are situated. Purple grapes were ever sour. They told me about other things, but I forget them; besides, they are secrets.
One of the engineers gathers me some flowers at a wayside station, concerning which the others, with full-throated laughter, propounded riddles.
"When did he ast-er?" "How much did the rose raise?" "Who gave Susan her black eye?" These, and other problems of peculiar interest to young bloods, the solution of which we shall never know till flowers learn to speak plainer.
The riddle, "Why does the willow weep?" elicits a discussion on music, and on the sound of the wind in the pines. One man says he has read somewhere that violin makers construct their instruments out of the north sides of trees. He does not know if this