Thus is the entire route one of exceptional beauty and never-failing interest. From the first to the last there is not a dull moment. And in crossing the {178} wonderful bridge that connects Kaien Island (on which Prince Rupert stands) with the mainland, the traveller finds something to enlist his enthusiasm for science as well as that enlisted for nature. This bridge is nearly a thousand feet in length, and includes six spans, two of which are of two hundred and fifty feet each. The engineers encountered great difficulty, because of the furious racing of the water through the channel, so that at times the divers could not descend. The conditions not unfrequently reduced the working hours to little more than three out of the twenty-four. The construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific that extended the western lines of the Grand Trunk System from Winnipeg to Prince Rupert was an epic story of the Dominion. For it was really one of the determining events of British Empire history, as well as an exceptionally potent factor in the contemporary development of Canada. It has not only changed the map of the country, but also takes its place in international advancement. To open a new and vast territory whose splendour of scenery, incalculably marvellous resources, and climatic conditions are such as to invite and sustain immigration is an achievement that brings to bear a signal influence upon the peoples of the entire European continent and even upon the Orient. It was at once the opening of a new realm for human life. Education and culture are invited to enter. It is hardly possible for the mind to grasp, or for {179} the imagination to picture, all the possibilities of the future that are initiated by so great an enterprise. The Indian trail, the packhorse, the canoe, gave way to the steel tracks, the luxurious trains of vestibuled cars laden with civilisation advancing into the wilderness. A great Canadian railway is not built to meet the recognised demands of settlement. It has to act as pioneer and create the conditions that make settlement possible. Its construction is, literally, the manifestation of belief in the things not seen. It is a creative power prospecting for paths of national destiny. The story of that reconnaissance through hundreds of miles of an apparently impenetrable wilderness is one to haunt the imagination. It is a story of hardships and of heroisms. Emerson declares that "The hero is not fed on sweets." The pathfinder shares the usual experience that invests heroism.