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Railways ; Ten Years After. 39 
Canada and South Africa, before we reject it. Whether the Government can 
afford to build a railway and can do so on terms more favourable to the colony 
can be ascertained at the same time. But the will 0’ the wisp of a false 
economy must not be followed. A railway projected to end in the bush would 
be a disastrous failure and a hopeless surrender of the natural ambitions of 
the colony. No piece-meal scheme has any chance of success. It would be 
aline from nowhere to nowhere like the Surinam railway (only now beginning 
to pay working expenses). Following Lord Salisbury’s advice we must use 
largemaps. We are part of the South American continent or we are nothing 
at all. 
A few words as to the experience and practice of other colonies may not be 
out of place. From a recent sketch of the progress of our great Northern 
sister in the Westminster Gazette we quote the following :— 
“ How clearly impossible it is to keep, pace with Canadian growth is, per- 
“haps, best indicated by the statement that during 1911 no fewer than 203 
“new towns were established on the main lines and branches of the Canadian 
“ Pacific, Canadian Northern, and Grand Trunk Pacific Railways. Two hun- 
“dred and thirteen new towns in three hundred working-days ! Of those 203 
* 130 OWE THEIR FOUNDATION TO THE CANADIAN NORTHERN ; 
‘“ 4] WERE BROUGHT INTO EXISTENCE BY THE CANADIAN PACIFIC, AND 
<¢ 32 BY THE GRAND TRUNK Paciric.” ) 
On the refusal of the Grand Trunk Railway Co. to undertake the 
project of building a line to the Pacific the Dominion Government 
eunstructed 700 miles of track. The motive force at the moment 
was British Columbia which threatened to withdraw from the Con- 
federation unless the undertaking by which she had been induced 
to enter it was fulfilled. In 1881, the Dominion Government con- 
cluded an agreement with the founders cf the Canadian Pacific. As a 
result they handeua over the existing 700 miles which had cost  thirty- 
one million dollars. They paid the Syndicate twenty-five million dollars 
in cash and made them a loan of twenty-nine million dollars (since repaid). 
They granted them twenty-five million acres of land and agreed to allow 
no construction south of the new line for twenty-five years. This last 
coneession was repurchased later owing to the opposition of Manitoba. 
The population of Canada at the time was only four millions but the 
first trans-continental train left Montreal for the Pacific on June 28th, 
1886. As an engineering achievement it had never been equalled. It 
crussed unknown and unpopulated regions, the thousand miles of bleak 
rock and cold dark forest west of Montreal and north of Lake Superior, 
the solitudes of the vast and lonely prairiesand the snow-capped Canadian 
Rockies. It has recreated Canada and made the fortunes of multitudes. It has 
made the names of Strathcona, Mountstephen and Van Horne those of imperial 
heroes. It is largely responsible for the inflow of population to the Dominion 
by its active campaign to attract settlers of every nationality to its lands and 
consequently an increase of traffic to its line. It is a great steamboat-owning= 
corporation both in the Pacific, the Atlantic and the Great Lakes and rivers. 
