The 200-miles section along the north shore of Lake Superior cost £2,400,000, a path having to be blasted through granite and flint, in which process £420,000 worth of dynamite was used. At Pic River stone piers had to be built to carry an iron truss bridge at an elevation of one hundred and ten feet above the water level. At Jackfish Bay three miles of winding track were necessary to accomplish half a mile of progress, the bridges, tunnels and galleries on that section costing £300,000. In 1882 four thousand men, having 3,400 horses and 1,700 four-wheeled wagons, were at work on the road, fixing rails, sleepers, spikes, fishplates and bolts. In fifteen months 677 miles of main track and 48 miles of sidings were constructed, ten million cubic yards of earth being moved in the process. Between Calgary and the Bow River Pass from two to three miles of bridges had to be made. Between Port Moody and Kamloops—213 miles—the engineers had to cut twenty tunnels, representing a total length of one mile and three-quarters, through granite and crystalline limestone. In the mountain district of the west the line had to reach a height of 5,321 feet above sea level. Kicking Horse Pass presented engineering problems which could only be successfully surmounted by protracted toil; but British Columbia was impatient for the railway, and so at that point a temporary section was constructed which sacrificed the easy gradient elsewhere secured, and for years afterwards several powerful locomotives were required to pull each train up the consequent “Big Hill.” That formidable incline has since been superseded by an alternative section, costing £300,000, and being seven miles of winding track, which embraces two spiral tunnels through the mountain, and two steel bridges (separated by only a few hundred yards) over the Kicking Horse River, which, by the way, is crossed nine times by the C.P.R., six of the bridges being within a distance of twelve miles. Another zig-zagging piece of work occurs in the Illecillewaet Valley, where the line turns south, crosses a high bridge and curves back almost to the starting-point, but at a lower level, then forms another great curve across a ravine, being 120 feet lower down on its return, afterwards doubling upon itself and crossing and recrossing the river; so that a spectator on one of the neighbouring heights can see a sinuous railway that reveals six tracks running almost parallel to one another, each on a different level and each supported largely by huge trestle bridges. Miles upon miles of the line, where precipitous mountains are skirted, had to be protected by timber corridors roofed at an angle to deflect avalanches. [Illustration: ENCAMPMENT OF CHIEF MOSKOWEKUM OF THE CREE TRIBE]