Weary and sick at heart at the fruitlessness of his endeavours, he was one day returning despondently to camp. He was compelled well-nigh to admit failure. Suddenly he espied an eagle wheeling over his head. He followed its movements somewhat nonchalantly, until he saw it make directly for the Columbia mountains. Then his heart gave a thump! Would the bird rise and clear their lofty summits or would it sweep through a rift? Following its flight through the air, he saw the bird give a majestic dip downwards towards the chain. He turned the head of his jaded horse, and digging his spurs into its flanks, sped in the wake of the bird. Onward it flew as straight as an arrow towards a projecting crest, where it made a sharp turn and was lost to sight. [Illustration: DRIVING A CUTTING 100 FEET DEEP BY THE AID OF DYNAMITE AND STEAM SHOVELS THROUGH SLATE ON THE DELAWARE, LACKAWANNA AND WESTERN RAILWAY, U.S.A.] Moberly galloped madly forward with his eyes glued to that crag. He never turned his head, fearing his sight might play him false, and was oblivious to stumbles and lurches as his steed fell over logs and slipped among boulders in its mad career. He swung round the crest, and there before his eyes the peaks were rolled back on either side, leaving a broad canyon, and of such a character that Nature appeared to have fashioned it expressly for the advance of the steel highway. The Columbia range was conquered. It was by pure accident that it had been found, but it was an accident which culminated a prolonged industrious quest. Indebted to his success to the monarch of the air Moberly christened the break in the rocky wall “Eagle Pass,” and it is through that gulch to-day that the Canadian Pacific makes its way to the western sea. As one sweeps between the massive ice-crowned teeth of the mountains one may see the site of the oldest cabin in the mountains, where the indefatigable Moberly passed the winter of 1871–2 completing the preliminary surveys for the line among the fastnesses of the Columbia Mountains. The task of planning the location through such broken country is attended with the gravest dangers, relieved with exciting adventures. At places among the peaks a foothold on _terra firma_ for the manipulation of the survey instruments is impossible. Then massive tree-logs are lowered into the gulch a few feet above the raging foam of a wicked mountain torrent, and along this slender staging the surveyor has to crawl to carry out his task.