EXPEDITIONS TO PACIFIC. 141 



commander from Cabot iu the fifteenth to Franklin in the nineteenth century, has not been 

 found ; but if it be not possible for a ship to pass from the Atlantic to the Pacific within 

 the limits of the northern hemisphere, the means are now provided for speedily transport- 

 ing the cargoes of any number of ships from one ocean to the other. The railway journey 

 described from a shipping port on the St. Lawrence to Pacific tide-water, testifies to the 

 fact that the long desired communication is at length established ; and if further evidence 

 be needed, it may be found in the circumstance that a consignment of naval stores 

 follows by the next train from the dockyard at Halifax for the use of the Pacific fleet at 

 Esqxiimault. It would indeed have astonished the illustrious navigators, Drake, Cook and 

 Vancouver, when in this part of the world, to have been told that the time would come 

 when ships on the Pacific coast could have their stores replenished from a naval station 

 on the north Atlantic within a few days interval from the hour of making the requisition. 

 The members of the party who had made the transcontinental journey remained in 

 Victoria a few days. They left on the return trip on November 12th, and reached 

 Winnipeg on the 1.5th ; after a short delay, they continued the journey to Montreal. 



The narrative of the passage of the first train from Montreal to the Pacific completes 

 the record of the expeditions which the wn-iter has endeavoured to describe. It would 

 have exceeded the scope of the enquiry to have referred at any length to the travels of the 

 pioneers who in the early days of French rule were the first to penetrate the unknown 

 western wilderness. A long list of illustrious names in connection with these explora- 

 tions and adventures will ever be associated with the history of North America ; but 

 the briefest outline of their travels would have carried the narrative far beyond the limits 

 of this paper. The writer's object, especially in the second part of the paper, has been to 

 place side by side the several complete journeys which have been made overland between 

 the waters of the two oceans. He ventures to affirm that few more important events 

 are recorded in our history than the first and last of these journeys, between which there 

 is an interval of nearly a centiiry. 



On the roll of famous travellers there is no grander figure than the intrepid Scotchman 

 who was the first to cross the continent north of the Gulf of Mexico. Can there be a 

 more fitting subject for an historical jDainting for the National Gallery of the Dominion, 

 than the incident of his mixing some vermilion with melted grease, and inscribing on 

 the face of the rock on which he had slept his first sleep by the shores of the Pacific, 

 this brief memorial : " Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada by land, the twenty-second 

 of July, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three " ? 



Equally appropriate for a painting to hang by its side, is the scene at Craigel- 

 lachie on the morning of November *7th, 1885, when Sir Donald Smith, spike hammer in 

 hand, is giving the last blow to finish the work of the railway. It marked the close 

 of a long series of events interwoven wnth the annals of the northern portion of the 

 continent. Can we doubt that the future historian will regard the occurrence, as a turning 

 point in the history of the Dominion, as the beginning of a new page in the life and 

 destiny of the British colonial empire ? 



