The energy of the Canadian people has within a few years linked together the Pacific and Atlantic frontages of the Dominion by a great railway system. The new line has the advantage of being shorter than any other transcontinental route, and crosses the Rocky Mountains at a level 1500 feet below any line further south. The anticipated obstacle of snow blockade in the mountain district has been effectually overcome; in the Eastern or Intercolonial section, where alone this difficulty recurs from drifting snow, it is being reduced to a minimum. Practically it now amounts to the possibility of one or two days' delay twice or thrice during the winter months, and apparently even this might be obviated by the more liberal use of snow-sheds. A winter often passes without any obstruction worth mentioning. The line is unquestionably the most effective among those which cross the American continent. It has enabled English letters to reach Japan in twenty-one days instead of the forty required by the old routes. Military authorities pronounce it a valuable addition to the Empire's means of communication with the East. Its climatic advantage over the Cape of Good Hope and Suez Canal routes at some seasons of the year may yet add strength to its other recommendations. Compared with these routes it is also the safest, since furthest removed from the possibility of European attack. Of its military efficiency there can be no reasonable doubt. The manager of the Canada Pacific Railway told me that his company had made representations {121} to the Imperial Government that it would undertake to transport men in blocks of 5000 from troop-ships at Halifax to troop-ships at Vancouver within seven days. His statement is justified by the fact that a single train has already carried 600 marines and blue-jackets with their officers from the Pacific to the Atlantic within that time. Such trains can be indefinitely multiplied. Thus a squadron at Vancouver could be reinforced from Portsmouth in about a fortnight by this route, a squadron in the China Seas in a little more than three weeks. A fifty days' voyage in the first case by Cape Horn, a forty days' voyage in the latter by the Suez Canal, has hitherto been the rule. Such facts illustrate the greatness of the changes which are taking place in the conditions of our naval defence. The swift steamships which complete the Eastern connection are constructed for immediate transformation in case of necessity into armed cruisers for the transport of troops and for the protection of the commerce which they are themselves creating. Supplemented by ships of a corresponding character on the Atlantic, such a route might in a national emergency prove an immense addition to the military resources of the Empire, and especially for the defence of India. The mere fact of its existence adds to the nation's military prestige, and the consequent hesitation of any other power in making attack.