Fortunately I saw no bear, black or brown, in the woods as we drove amongst them; scarcely a bird—only one, an owl I think, on the top of a tree, which never moved, though we were close upon it. ‘Do you make any difference in work on Sunday?’ I asked of one of the men. ‘Oh no; Sunday ain’t of much account here.’ This is to be regretted, if only for physical considerations. Everyone can work all the better for a day of rest. Again, I think the C.P.R. injures itself in this way, that it may lose the services of useful men who like to keep the Sabbath, either from physical or religious considerations. As a matter of fact, I found many did take a rest on Sunday, and it was amusing to see how the morning was devoted to haircutting and shaving and mending clothes in the open air. A man, I know, can spend his Sunday at honest work better than in drinking. But when we think of the wild life of the miners and navvies in the ends of the earth—a life so wild that the C.P.R. has got a law passed to forbid the sale of intoxicating drink, and people are appalled when they read, in spite of the law, whisky is supplied to men who have a large number of revolvers at their side—it seems that a little provision might be made for the religious wants of the community. The philosopher will laugh, I admit. My reply is: Men were lifted out of degradation by the Christian religion in some form or other, and as we root that out we may expect society to retrograde. These men to the front will pay for looking after. They are fine fellows mostly. At any rate, they are the pioneers of modern civilization, and should be reverenced as such. They are to be honoured for their work’s sake. They plant, we gather the fruit. They sow the seed, we reap the harvest, and their work remains a monument of perseverance, of the benefits of the Union, of enterprise, and capital and skill. That Canada has thus carried the railway and the telegraph across the Rockies shows that England and America will have to look to their industrial laurels. * * * * * I am alive, I am thankful to say; but it seems to me that I should have left my bones on the Kicking Horse Lake, which lies on the slope of the Rockies, situated in British Columbia, where the scenery becomes grander and the air balmier as it comes up laden with the soft breeze of the Pacific. You see that at once in the superior size of the trees which clothe the sides of that part of the Rockies. As far as what the navvies call the front, I had the benefit of the temporary railway by which Mr. Ross sends his labourers. It is then the great difficulties of the work commence, as the rocks are tremendous, and one of the tunnels making will be three-quarters of a mile long.