Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

THE CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY. 271 three ranges of mountains (Gold, Selkirk, and Rocky) to the prairies. On April 29, 1881, Major Rogers and his nephew, A. L. Rogers, set out from Kamloops with ten Indian guides, engaged with the assistance of a Jesuit mission on the understanding that, if any came back without a letter of good report, his wages were to go to the church, and his chief was to give him a hundred lashes on the bare back ! The Eagle Pass over the Gold Range had already been discovered by engineers who had fol- lowed an eagle’s flight, but the far- thest point reached in the direct route over the Selkirks across the Columbia River was at the forks of the Illecille- waet. Walter “ Crawling along this ridge, TYPES OF RAILWAY WORKERS. Moberly, the Government engineer who had reached this point, had only had time enough to find that the northern fork had no practicable outlet. Major Rogers resolved to try the southern fork, and, after superhuman efforts, climbed to a point of vantage which showed him that the pass was practicable. No better evidence of the tremendous task accomplished by the railroad builders could be given than in extracts from Mr. A. L. Rogers’s description of this first survey :— “ Being gaunt as greyhounds, with lungs and muscles of the best, we soon reached the timber-line, where the climbing became very difficult. We crawled along the ledges, get- ting a toe-hold here and a finger-hold there, keeping in the shade as much as possible and kicking toe-holes in the snow-crust. When several hundred feet above the timber-line, we followed a nar- row ledge around a point that was exposed to the sun. (Here four Indians fell over the ledge.) It was late in the evening when we reached the summit, very much exhausted. Rogers’s Exploratory Survey. we came to a small ledge protected from the wind by a great per- p e ndicular rock. Here we decided to wait until the crust again formed on the snow and the morning light enabled us to travel. At ten o’clock it was still twi- light on the peaks, but the valleys below were filled, with th© deepest gloom. AV© wrapped, ourselves in our blankets and nibbled at our dry meat and bannock, stamping our feet in the snow to keep them from freezing, and taking turns at whipping each other with our pack-straps to keep up circulation. “ Only four hours we waited, but it seemed as if those four hours outran all time. At two o’clock dawn began to glimmer in the east, and as soon as we were able to distin- guish objects we were only too glad to crawl back to the ridge. Coming to the foot of the great triangular peak we had named Syndi- cates we traced the valley to the upper south fork of the Illecillewaet, and found that it