The funds thus secured were soon exhausted in rapid and costly construction in the mountain and Lake Superior sections. The government's blanket mortgage on the road made it impossible to borrow elsewhere. So, after the Riel episode, to be noted later, a new arrangement was made with the government by which the $35,000,000 stock unsold was cancelled and an equal amount of first mortgage bonds issued. Twenty millions of this issue and the unsold lands were substituted for the government's security, and the remainder of the bonds {159} sold at 95. This put the company once more in funds. The relief came none too soon. In one fateful day in July, when the final passing of the bill was being tensely awaited, the Canadian Pacific, which now borrows fifty millions any day before breakfast, was within three hours of bankruptcy for lack of a few hundred thousand dollars. But by March 1886 every cent of the company's obligations to the government was paid off, twenty millions in cash and the remainder in land at $1.50 an acre. The men behind the Canadian Pacific proved themselves possessed of courage and determination such as will always win them honour. At more than one critical stage they staked their all to keep the work going. But the fact remains that the bulk of the resources utilized in the original building of the road were provided or advanced by the people of Canada. The Canadian Pacific is as truly a monument of public as of private faith. Meanwhile, the work of construction had been going ahead. Under William Van Horne's masterful methods the leisurely pace of government construction quickened into the most rapid achievement on record. A time-schedule, {160} carefully made out in advance, was adhered to with remarkably little variation.