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to a point some fifteen miles on the other side of the Rockies.

The situation of a terminus on the coast was a matter of almost as much deliberation as that of the route through the Rockies. The original choice was Port Simpson, an old Hudson's Bay Company trading-post well up to the Alaska boundary; but a much better endof-the-line will be the point now definitely selected at Kaien Island, somewhat to the south and about half-way between Vancouver and Skagway. Nature has provided admirable terminal facilities here for both railway and steamship lines, and the work of building a town, which will be the great new port of the North, and

to which the name of Prince Rupert has been given, has already begun.

Between the Prince Rupert that is to be and the Yellowhead, through which the transcontinental crosses the Rockies, is a tangled wilderness as yet unopened to settlement. It has been thoroughly surveyed, however, and in February preliminary plans were filed for the Pacific grade of the railway route. On the map the new Grand Trunk Pacific will show an almost straight line from Winnipeg, save for its deflection on entering the Pass, where it turns slightly to the south, crosses the mountains, and then goes north again toward the Fraser River and the coast terminus. The road is under

THE LONG STRAIGHT LINE ACROSS THE FRAIRIE-A ROAD THAT IS TO BE.

contract to build across British Columbia in four years.

But the Yellowhead is the objective point of two other roads now building across the prairies. The race which the Grand Trunk Pacific won by reaching that point first was with the Canadian Northern, whose line is already built and running be

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A CUTTING ON THE GRAND TRUNK PACIFIC, WEST OF LAKE SUPERIOR.

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THE CRUEL TRAIL OF THE FORTUNE SEEKER.

Dead Horse Gulch, where so much suffering was encountered in the early days. The gulch is seen far below the winding railway.

Mackenzie and Mann, a line from Toronto to Sudbury, in northern Ontario, is built, and there lacks only the link between that point and Port Arthur to give a third road covering more than half the continent.

Apparently with the intention of going into every field touched by its rival lines, the Canadian Pacific, first of Canadian transcontinentals, is now building a new main line northwest from Winnipeg, the logical motive of which is an extension to and across the Rockies to the coast by way of the Yellowhead, the pass first proposed by the Canadian Pacific twentyeight years ago, but then abandoned in favor of the southern route. For the time has come now when all the railways

almost its entire distance a grade of three-tenths of one per cent, with only a few miles at one per cent.

Some of the largest engineering undertakings in the West are proposed on lines already in operation. The Canadian Pacific has planned an extensive betterment scheme this year, which involves the construction of one of the largest railway bridges in the world and the reduction of the grade in the Rockies by tunnelling. In the Crow's Nest section, among the foothills of the Rockies, a viaduct of a mile in length, carried on steel towers three hundred feet high, will straighten and shorten the road and will cut out a number of trestle bridges. Farther into the Rockies proper, the sec

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IN WHITE PASS ON THE YUKON RAILWAY, NEAR WHITEHORN, ITS NORTHERN TERMINUS.

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tion between Field and Hector, the most difficult section on the whole 3,000-mile system, is to be reduced from a hardpulling grade of 4.5 per cent to one of 2.2 per cent by the construction of two tunnels under that portion of the mountain which now stands in the way.

More like pioneer farming than engineering is another railway enterprise that is being undertaken by the Cana

dian Pacific on Vancouver Island, but its proportions entitle it to a place with the rest. It is the largest land-clearing contract in western America. A tract of 150,000 acres of railway land, which now is forests and stumps and dreary emptiness, is to be cleared and made into farms at the rate of 10,000 acres a year and at a total cost of $15,000,000. A stump-jerking campaign of much the same order as those by which parts of Washington State have been cleared will be under way for the next fifteen years, and the result will be a new industrial territory on the very edge of the continent. This reclamation enterprise is the second undertaken by the Canadian Pacific, its irriga

A BIT OF ROAD IN THE MOUNTAINS.

tion works in southern Alberta having been begun some years ago.

By purchasing and unifying numerous short lines already built, and by filling in the gaps with new road of their own, the Hill, or Great Northern, interests are building up a through route from Winnipeg to the Coast, connecting along the way with the eleven branch lines with which this far-reaching system already taps the Canadian wheat fields from the south. The apparent purpose of such a road is to carry a portion of the Canadian harvest by an American route, Mr. Hill claiming that the development of the northern country will give to all prospective lines as much business as they

THE TECHNICAL WORLD MAGAZINE

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A MILLION FEET OF TIMBER IN A SINGLE TRESTLE.

On the Grand Trunk Pacific,

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