"Such a work, however, is too costly and too difficult for the grasp of unaided private enterprise. To accomplish it out of hand, the whole help of both the Local and Imperial Parliaments must be given. That help once offered, by guarantee or by grant, private enterprise would flock to the undertaking, and people would go to colonise on the broad tracts laid open to their industry." My subsequent and semi-official inquiries induced me to modify many of the conclusions of the article quoted above. On the essential question of the pass in the Rocky Mountains, in British territory, most adapted by Nature for the passage of a road or a railway, all the evidence which I collected tended to show that the passage by the "Tete-jaune Cache," or "Yellow-head," Pass, was the best. The Canadian Pacific Company have adopted the "Kicking Horse" Pass, much to the southward of the "Yellow-head" Pass. Again, it became clear to me that the whole Rocky Mountain range was rather a series of high mountain peaks, standing on the summit of gradual slopes, rising almost imperceptibly from the plains and prairies on the eastern side, and dropping suddenly, in most cases, towards the sea-level on the western or Pacific side, than a great wall barring the country for hundreds of miles, as some had dreamed. Every inquiry from trappers, traders, Indian voyageurs, missionary priests of the Jesuits, and from all sorts and conditions of men and women, made difficulty after difficulty disappear. The great work began to appear to me comparatively easy of execution between Fort Garry, or the lower town of Selkirk and British Columbia; the cost less; and, owing to facilities of transport, especially in winter, the time of execution much shorter than had been previously assumed. In addition, an examination into the physical conditions of the various routes proposed through the United States, convinced me that here again the difficulties were less, and facilities for construction greater, than I and others had first imagined. In fact, I came rightly to the conclusion that the more southerly the United States route, and the more northerly the British route--while always, in the latter case, keeping within cultivable range--the better. Still, at this time there was much to find out. As respects real knowledge of the country to be traversed, the factors of the Hudson's Bay Company knew every fact worth divulging, but they were afraid to speak; while the Catholic missionaries, accustomed to travel on foot in their sacred cause over the most distant regions, possessed a mine of personal knowledge, never, so far as I could learn, closed to the Government of Canada or to any authorized inquirer.