It is not generally understood that the summit of the Union Pacific is in the Black Hills, which are the first foothill range of the Rockies, rather than in the mountain crest beyond. The Black Hills have always been a baffling proposition, with their short, steep slopes. The engineers wrinkled their brows at the thought of correcting the old line through there, but Harriman simply said that they must, that the board--which meant E. H. Harriman himself--had directed that 247 feet be cut from the road's crest there; and 247 feet, almost to the inch, was cut. It took giant fills and embankments and an army of men but the grades were brought to a minimum for a Rocky Mountain stretch. Wooden trestles, old and affording a constant fire-risk, were swallowed up in embankments; a single slice through a hill-top, a quarter of a mile long and eighty feet deep, did its part in reducing the grades; antiquated cars disappeared before equipment of the modern class; dilapidated shanties were supplanted by fine, permanent railroad stations. The new Union Pacific is a monument to the reconstruction engineer--and to E. H. Harriman. The Canadian Pacific Railway, while traversing but one small northeastern corner of the United States, is essentially an American railroad, both in equipment and in operation. It forms an important half of that all-British Red Line encircling the globe, of which any Englishman is so very proud. When the Canadian Pacific Railway was completing its last link in this unbroken line of rails from St. John, N. B., and Montreal, to Vancouver, the question of grades was indeed a secondary one. The vital thing was to cut the line through, and to that end great sacrifices of grade efficiency were made. So that when the line was through, and the first Imperial Limited was making its way from the Atlantic to the Pacific over a single railroad system, it was indeed a line with structural defects. At one point--the famous Big Hill, near Field, Alta.--in order to overcome the steep Rocky Mountain climbs, it was necessary to use from four to six engines for comparatively light freight and passenger trains. And at that, it was difficult to attain a speed of more than four or five miles an hour. Within the last three years, this fearful grade has been corrected by the very first spiral tunnels ever built upon the American continent. Spiral tunnel construction of this kind is not new. It has been used with remarkable success by the railroads of Continental Europe, in piercing the High-Alpine boundaries between France, Germany, Austria, and Italy.