The after fortunes of the road, which ten years later expanded into the Great Northern of to-day, do not concern us here. It is only necessary to recount that the harvest reaped {138} by the adventurers[3] put the tales of El Dorado to shame. A few days after control of the railway had been assured, the grasshoppers had risen in flight, and Minnesota knew them no more. Settlers swarmed in, the railroad platforms were jammed with land-seekers, and between the land-buyers of to-day and the wheat-shippers of to-morrow the owners of the once discredited railway saw their coffers fill to overflowing. In 1879 they divided among themselves the whole fifteen millions of stock issued, floating sixteen millions of bonds for extension and equipment. For three years they took no dividends, letting the profits go to further building. Then in 1882 another $2,000,000 stock was issued, and in 1883 a deferred dividend came in the shape of a $9,000,000 issue of bonds, or, rather, the stockholders sold to themselves a $10,000,000 issue for ten cents on the dollar. Aside entirely from interest and dividends, the stockholders of the Great Northern in the seventeen years following 1889 were presented with over $300,000,000 of interest-bearing securities. {139} All the railway annals of the United States cannot present a duplicate of the startling success attained by these four or five Canadians and their associates.[4] These were the men to whom the Canadian government turned when the minister of Railways, Sir Charles Tupper, urged them to unload upon a private company the burden of completing the road to the Pacific. 'Catch them before they invest their profits,' was the advice of Sir John's most intimate adviser, that shrewd Eastern Townships politician, John Henry Pope. Probably they came half-way. They knew the West as well as any men, and with their road built to the Canadian boundary and with a traffic arrangement beyond to Winnipeg, they were already in the field. Of all the group Stephen was most reluctant to undertake the new enterprise, but he was assured by his associates that the burdens of management would be shared by all. The government had also approached Duncan M'Intyre, a Montreal capitalist who controlled the Canada Central, running from Brockville by way of Ottawa to Pembroke, {140} and under construction from that point to Callender, the eastern end of the Canadian Pacific main line. He was more than willing to link up this railway with the larger project, and the group was formed. [Illustration: Lord Mount Stephen. From a photograph by Wood and Henry, Dufftown. By courtesy of Sir William Van Horne]