APPENDIX.
Nearlytwenty years ago we began to talk of building a railroad across the continent of North America to lie wholly within British territory, and we are still talking about it.
Meantime our cousins have built their inter-oceanic road, and having opened it and run upon it for six years: they are also talking much about their work. But of such things it is, perhaps, better to speak after the work has been accomplished than before it has been begun.
The line which thus connects the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans bears the name of the Union Pacific Railroad. It crosses the continent nearly through the centre of the United States, following, with slight deviation, the 42nd parallel of latitude. Two other lines have been projected south, and one north of this Union Pacific road, all lying within the United States; but all have come to untimely ends, stopping midway in their career across the sandy plains of the West.
There was the Southern Pacific Railroad to follow the 30th parallel; there was the Kansas Pacific line following the Republican valley, and stopping short at the city of Denver in Colorado; and there was the Northern Pacific Railroad, the most ambitious of all the later lines, which, starting from the city of Duluth on the western extremityof Lake Superior, traversed the northern half of the State of Minnesota, crossed the sandy wastes of Dakota, and has just now come heavily to grief at the Big Bend of the Missouri River, on the borders of the “Bad Lands” of the Yellowstone.
In an early chapter of this book it has been remarked that the continent of North America, east of the Rocky Mountains, sloped from south to north. This slope, which is observable from Mexico to the Arctic Ocean, has an important bearing on the practical working of railroad lines across the continent. The Union Pacific road, taken in connexion with the Central Pacific, attains at its maximum elevation an altitude of over 8000 feet above the sea-level, and runs far over 900 miles at an average height of about 4500 feet; the Northern Pacific reaches over 5000 feet, and fully half its projected course lies through a country 3000 to 4000 feet above ocean-level; the line of the Kansas Pacific is still more elevated, and the great plateau of the Colorado River is more than 7000 feet above the sea. Continuing northward, into British territory, the next projected line is that of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and it is with this road that our business chiefly lies in these few pages of Appendix.
The depression, or slope, of the prairie level towards the north continues, with marked regularity, throughout the whole of British America; thus at the 49th parallel (the boundary-line between the United States), the mean elevation of the plains is about 4000 feet. Two hundred and fifty miles north, or in the 53rd parallel, it is about 3000 feet; and 300 miles still farther north, or about the entrance to the Peace River Pass, it has fallen to something like 1700 feet above the sea-level.
But these elevations have reference only to the prairies at the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains. We mustnow glance at the mountains themselves, which form the real obstacle to inter-oceanic lines of railroad.
It might be inferred from this gradual slope of the plains northwards, that the mountain-ranges followed the same law, and decreased in a corresponding degree after they passed the 49th parallel, but such is not the case; so far from it, they only attain their maximum elevation in 52° N. latitude, where, from an altitude of 16,000 feet, the summits of Mounts Brown and Hooker look down on the fertile plains at the sources of the Saskatchewan River.
As may be supposed, it is only here that the Rocky Mountains present themselves in their grandest form. Rising from a base only 3000 feet above the ocean, their full magnitude strikes at once upon the eye of the beholder; whereas, when looked at in the American States from a standpoint already elevated 6000 or 7000 feet above the sea, and rising only to an altitude of 10,000 or 12,000 feet, they appear insignificant, and the traveller experiences a sense of disappointment as he looks at their peaks thus slightly elevated above the plain. But though the summits of the range increase in height as we go north, the levels of the valleys or passes, decrease in a most remarkable degree.
Let us look for a moment at these gaps which Nature has formed through this mighty barrier. Twenty miles north of the boundary-line the Kootanie Pass traverses the Rocky Mountains.
The waters of the Belly River upon the east, and those of the Wigwam River on the west, have their sources in this valley, the highest point of which is more than 6000 feet above sea-level.
Fifty miles north of the Kootanie, the Kananaskiss Pass cuts the three parallel ranges which here form the Rocky Mountains; the height of land is here 5700 feet. Thirtymiles more to the north the Vermilion Pass finds its highest level at 4903; twenty miles again to the north the Kicking Horse Pass reaches 5210 feet; then comes the House Pass, 4500 feet; and, lastly, the pass variously known by the names of Jasper’s House, Tête Jeune, and Leather Pass, the highest point of which is 3400 feet.
From the House Pass to the Tête Jeune is a little more than sixty miles, and it is a singular fact that these two lowest passes in the range have lying between them the loftiest summits of the Rocky Mountains from Mexico to the Arctic Ocean.
The outflow from all these passes, with the exception of the one last named, seeks on the east the river systems of the Saskatchewan, and on the west the Columbia and its tributaries. The Tête Jeune, on the other hand, sheds its dividing waters into the Athabasca River on the east, and into the Frazer River on the west.
So far we have followed the mountains to the 53° of N. latitude, and here we must pause a moment to glance back at the long-projected line of the Canadian Pacific Railroad. As we have already stated, it is now nearly twenty years since the idea of a railroad through British America was first entertained. A few years later a well-equipped expedition was sent out by the British Government for the purpose of thoroughly exploring the prairie region lying between Red River and the Rocky Mountains, and also reporting upon the nature of the passes traversing the range, with a view to the practicability of running a railroad across the continent. Of this expedition it will be sufficient to observe, that while the details of survey were carried out with minute attention and much labour, the graver question, whether it was possible to carry a railroad through British territory to the Pacific, appears to have been imperfectly examined and, after a survey extendingus far north as the Jasper’s House Pass, but not including that remarkable valley, the project was unfavourably reported upon by the leader of the expedition.
The reasons adduced in support of this view were strong ones. Not only had the unfortunate selection of an astronomical boundary-line (the 49th parallel) shut us out from the western extreme of Lake Superior, and left us the Laurentian wilderness lying north of that lake, as a threshold to the fertile lands of the Saskatchewan and the Red River; but far away to the west of the Rocky Mountains, and extending to the very shores of the Pacific, there lay a land of rugged mountains almost insurmountable to railroad enterprise.
Such was the substance of the Report of the expedition. It would be a long, long story now to enter into the details involved in this question; but one fact connected with “this unfortunate selection of an astronomical line” may here be pertinently alluded to, as evincing the spirit of candour, and the tendency to sharp practice which the Great Republic early developed in its dealings with its discarded mother. By the treaty of 1783, the northern limit of the United States was defined as running from the north-west angle of the Lake of the Woods to the river Mississippi along the 49th parallel; but as we have before stated, the 49th parallel did not touch the north-west angle of the Lake of the Woods or the river Mississippi; the former lay north of it, the latter south. Here was clearly a case for a new arrangement. As matters stood we had unquestionably the best of the mistake; for, whereas the angle of the Lake of the Woods lay only a few miles north of the parallel, the extreme source of the Mississippi lay a long, long way south of it: so that if we lost ten miles at the beginning of the line, we would gain 100 or more at the end of it.
All this did not escape the eyes of the fur-hunters in theearly days of the century. Mackenzie and Thompson both noticed it and both concluded that the objective point being the river Mississippi, the line would eventually be run with a view to its terminal definitions, the Lake of the Woods and the Mississippi. In 1806, the United States Government sent out two Exploring Expeditions into its newly-acquired territory of Louisiana; one of them, in charge of a Mr. Zebulon Pike of the American army, ascended the Mississippi, and crossed from thence to Lake Superior. Here are his remarks upon the boundary-line. “The admission of this pretension” (the terminal point at the river Mississippi) “will throw out of our territory the upper portion of Red River, and nearly two-fifths of the territory of Louisiana; whereas if the line is run due west from the head of the Lake of the Woods, it will cross Red River nearly at the centre, and strike the Western Ocean at Queen Charlotte’s Sound. This difference of opinion, it is presumed, might be easily adjusted between the two Governments at the present day; but delay,by unfolding the true value of the country, may produce difficulties which do not now exist.”
The italics are mine.
Zebulon Pike has long passed to his Puritan fathers. Twelve years after he had visited the shores of Lake Superior, and long before our Government knew “the value of the country” of which it was discoursing, the matter was arranged to the entire satisfaction of Pike and his countrymen. They held tenaciously to their end, the Lake of the Woods; we hastened to abandon ours, the Mississippi River. All this is past and gone; but if to-day we write Fish, or Sumner, or any other of the many names which figure in boundary commissions or consequential claims, instead of that of Zebulon Pike, the change of signature will but slightly affect the character of the document.
But we must return to the Rocky Mountains. It has ever been the habit of explorers in the north-west of America, to imagine that beyond the farthest extreme to which they penetrate, there lay a region of utter worthlessness. One hundred years ago, Niagara lay on the confines of the habitable earth; fifty years ago a man travelling in what are now the States of Wisconsin and Minnesota, would have been far beyond the faintest echo of civilization. So each one thought, as in after-time fresh regions were brought within the limits of the settler. The Government Exploring Expedition of sixteen years since, deemed that it had exhausted the regions fit for settlement when it reached the northern boundary of the Saskatchewan valley. The project of a railroad through British territory was judged upon the merits of the mountains lying west of the sources of the Saskatchewan, and the labyrinth of rock and peak stretching between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific. Even to-day, with the knowledge of further exploration in its possessions, the Government of the Dominion of Canada seems bent upon making a similar error. A line has been projected across the continent, which, if followed, must entail ruin upon the persons who would attempt to settle along it upon the bleak treeless prairies east of the mountains, and lead to an expenditure west of the range, in crossing the multitudinous ranges of Middle and Southern British Columbia, which must ever prevent its being a remunerative enterprise.
The Tête Jeune Pass is at present the one selected for the passage of the Rocky Mountains. This pass has many things to recommend it, so far as it is immediately connected with the range which it traverses; but unfortunately the real obstacles become only apparent when its western extremity is reached, and the impassable “divide” between the Frazer, the Columbia, and the Thompson Rivers loomsup before the traveller. It is true that the cañon valley of the North Thompson lies open, but to follow this outlet, is to face still more imposing obstacles where the Thompson River unites with the Frazer at Lytton, some 250 miles nearer to the south-west; here, along the Frazer, the Cascade Mountains lift their rugged heads, and the river for full sixty miles flows at the bottom of a vast angle cut by nature through the heart of the mountains, whose steep sides rise abruptly from the water’s edge: in many places a wall of rock.
In fact, it is useless to disguise that the Frazer River affords the sole outlet from that portion of the Rocky Mountains lying between the boundary-line, the 53rd parallel of latitude and the Pacific Ocean; and that the Frazer River valley is one so singularly formed, that it would seem as though some superhuman sword had at a single stroke cut through a labyrinth of mountains for 300 miles, down deep into the bowels of the land.
Let us suppose that the mass of mountains lying west of the Tête Jeune has been found practicable for a line, and that the Frazer River has been finally reached on any part of its course between Quesnelle and the Cascade range at Lytton.
What then would be the result?
Simply this: to turn south along the valley of the river, would be to face the cañons of the Cascades, between Lytton and Yale. To hold west, would be to cross the Frazer River itself, and by following the Chilcotin River, reach the Pacific Ocean at a point about 200 miles north of the estuary of the Frazer. But to cross this Frazer River would be a work of enormous magnitude,—a work greater, I believe, than any at present existing on the earth; for at no point of its course from Quesnelle to Lytton is the Frazer River less than 1200 feet below the level of the landlying at either side of it, and from one steep scarped bank to the other is a distance of a mile or more than a mile.
How, I ask, is this mighty fissure, extending right down the country from north to south, to be crossed, and a passage gained to the Pacific? I answer that thetrue passage to the Pacific lies far north of the Frazer River, and thatthe true passage of the Rocky Mountains lies far north of the Tête Jeune Pass.
And now it will be necessary to travel north from this Tête Jeune Pass, along the range of the Rocky Mountains.
One hundred miles north of the Tête Jeune, on the east, or Saskatchewan side of the Rocky Mountains, there lies a beautiful land. It is some of the richest prairie land in the entire range of the north-west. It has wood and water in abundance. On its western side the mountains rise with an ascent so gradual that horses can be ridden to the summits of the outer range, and into the valley lying between that range and the Central Mountain.
To the north of this prairie country, lies the Peace River; south, the Lesser Slave Lake; east, a land of wood and muskeg and trackless forest. The Smoking River flows almost through its centre, rising near Jasper’s House, and flowing north and east until it passes into the Peace River, fifty miles below Dunveyan. From the most northerly point of the fertile land of the Saskatchewan, to the most southerly point of this Smoking River country, is about 100 or 120 miles. The intervening land is forest or muskeg, and partly open.
The average elevation of this prairie above sea level would be under 2000 feet. In the mountains lying west and north-west there are two passes; one is the Peace River, with which we are already acquainted; the other is a pass lying some thirty or forty miles south of the Peace River, known at present only to the Indians, but well worththe trouble and expense of a thorough exploration, ere Canada hastily decides upon the best route across its wide Dominion.
And here I may allude to the exploratory surveys which the Canadian Government has already inaugurated. A great amount of work has without doubt been accomplished, by the several parties sent out over the long line from Ottawa to New Westminster; but the results have not been, so far, equal to the expenditure of the surveys, or to the means placed at the disposal of the various parties. In all these matters, the strength of an Executive Government resting for a term of years independent of political parties, as in the case of the United States, becomes vividly apparent; and it is not necessary for us in England to seek in Canada for an exemplification of the evils which militate against a great national undertaking, where an Executive has to frame a budget, or produce a report, to suit the delicate digestions of evenly balanced parties.
It would be invidious to particularize individuals, where many men have worked well and earnestly; but I cannot refrain from paying a passing tribute to the energy and earnestness displayed by the gentlemen who, during the close of the summer of 1872, crossed the mountains by the Peace River Pass, and reached the coast at Fort Simpson, near the mouth of the Skeena River.
But to return to the Indian Pass, lying west of the Smoking River prairies. As I have already stated, this pass is known only to the Indians; yet their report of it is one of great moment. They say (and who has found an Indian wrong in matters of practical engineering?) that they can go in three or four days’ journey from the Hope of Hudson to the fort on Lake Macleod, across the Rocky Mountains; they further assert that they can in summer take horses to the central range, and that they could take them all theway across to the west side, but for the fallen timber which encumbers the western slope.
Now when it is borne in mind that this Lake Macleod is situated near the height of land between the Arctic and Pacific Oceans; that it stands at the head of the Parsnip River (the south branch of the Peace); and that further, a level or rolling plateau extends from the fort to the coast range of mountains at Dean’s Inlet, or the Bentinck arm on the coast of British Columbia, nearly opposite the northern extreme of Vancouver’s Island; the full importance of this Indian Pass, as a highway to the Pacific through the Rocky Mountains, will be easily understood.
But should this Indian Pass at the head of the Pine River prove to be, on examination, unfit to carry a railroad across, I am still of opinion that in that case the Peace River affords a passage to the Western Ocean vastly superior to any of the known passes lying south of it. What are the advantages which I claim for it? They can be briefly stated.
It is level throughout its entire course; it has a wide, deep, and navigable river flowing through it; its highest elevation in the main range of the Rocky Mountains is about 1800 feet; the average depth of its winter fall of snow is aboutthree feet; by the first week of May this year the snow (unusually deep during the winter) had entirely disappeared from the north shore of the river, and vegetation was already forward in the woods along the mountain base.
But though these are important advantages for this mountain pass, the most important of all remains to be stated. From the western end of the pass to the coast range of mountains, a distance of 300 miles across British Columbia, there does not exist one single formidable impediment to a railroad. By following the valley of theParsnip River from “the Forks” to Lake Macleod, the Ominica range is left to the north, and the rolling plateau land of Stuart’s Lake is reached without a single mountain intervening; from thence the valley of the Nacharcole can be attained, as we have seen in my story, without the slightest difficulty, and a line of country followed to within twenty miles of the ocean, at the head of Dean’s Inlet.
I claim, moreover, for this route that it is shorter than any projected line at present under consideration; that it would develope a land as rich, if not richer, than any portion of the Saskatchewan territory; that it altogether avoids the tremendous mountain ranges of Southern British Columbia, and the great gorge of the Frazer River; and, finally, that along the Nacharcole River there will be found a country admirably suited to settlement, and possessing prairie land of a kind nowhere else to be found in British Columbia.
With regard to the climate of the country lying east of the mountains, those who have followed me through my journey will remember the state in which I found the prairies of Chimeroo on the 22nd and 23rd of April, snow all gone and mosquitoes already at work. Canadians will understand these items. I have looked from the ramparts of Quebec on the second last day of April, and seen the wide landscape still white with the winter’s snow.
In the foregoing sentences I have briefly pointed out the advantages of the Peace River Pass, the absence of mountain-ranges in the valleys of the Parsnip and Nacharcole Rivers, and the fertile nature of the country between the Lesser Slave Lake and the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains. It only remains to speak of the connecting line between the Saskatchewan territory and the Smoking River prairies.
The present projected line through the Saskatchewan is eminently unsuited to the settlement; it crosses the bleak, poor prairies of the Eagle Hills, the country where, as described in an earlier chapter, we hunted the buffalo during the month of November in the preceding year. For all purposes of settlement it may be said to lie fully 80 miles too far south during a course of some 300 or 400 miles.
The experience of those most intimately acquainted with the territory points to a linenorthof the North Saskatchewan as one best calculated to reach the country really fitted for immediate settlement; a country where rich soil, good water, and abundant wood for fuel and building can be easily obtained. All of these essentials are almost wholly wanting along the present projected route throughout some 350 miles of its course.
Now if we take a line from the neighbourhood of the Mission of Prince Albert, and continue it through the very rich and fertile country lying 20 or 30 miles to the north of Carlton, and follow it still further to a point 15 or 20 miles north of Fort Pitt, we will be about the centre of thetrueFertile Belt of this portion of the continent. Continuing north-west for another 60 miles, we would reach the neighbourhood of the Lac la Biche (a French mission, where all crops have been most successfully cultivated for many years), and be on the water-shed of the Northern Ocean.
Crossing the Athabasca, near the point where it receives the Rivière la Biche, a region ofpresumedmuskeg or swamp would be encountered, but one neither so extensive nor of as serious a character as that which occurs on the line at present projected between the Saskatchewan and Jasper’s House.
The opinions thus briefly stated regarding the bestroute for a Canadian-Pacific Railroad across the continent result from no inconsiderable experience in the North-West Territory, nor are they held solely by myself. I could quote, if necessary, very much evidence in support of them from the testimony of those who have seen portions of the route indicated.
In the deed of surrender, by which the Hudson’s Bay Company transferred to the Government of Canada the territory of the North-West, the Fertile Belt was defined as being bounded on the north by the North Saskatchewan River. It will yet be found that there are ten acres of fertile land lyingnorthof the North Saskatchewan for every one acre lying south of it.
* * * * *
These few pages of Appendix must here end. There yet remain many subjects connected with the settlement of Indian tribes of the West and their protection against the inevitable injustice of the incoming settler, and to these I would like to call attention, but there is not time to do so.
Already the low surf-beat shores of West Africa have been visible for days, and ’midst the sultry atmosphere of the Tropics it has become no easy task to fling back one’s thoughts into the cold solitudes of the northern wilds.
Sierra Leone,October 15th, 1873.