British Columbia felt this isolation keenly. All traffic had to be carried round the southern extremity of the American continent. To travel from London to Vancouver in the ’fifties was an heroic undertaking, involving a journey more than half-way round the globe. Some of the trade, however, was maintained overland. For instance, the provisions for the Hudson’s Bay post at Vancouver were dispatched from Montreal over a trail some 3000 miles in length. But it was a tremendous task, occupying several weeks. The pack train left Montreal in May, and the water route was followed so far as practicable to Fort Garry, where Winnipeg now stands. Here the rivers were abandoned in favour of horses, mules and wagons which trekked slowly across the prairies--the voyageurs living on the buffalo which roamed the plains in their thousands--threaded the terrible mountain rifts, and dropped down to the coast, reaching Vancouver about the end of September. The trail was ill-defined and the journey bristled with exciting incidents and adventures. The disadvantages of this means of communication between the opposite sides of the continent were realised only too fully, so when the railway had become established in Eastern Canada and had demonstrated its tremendous possibilities, an iron link across the Dominion was advocated strenuously. But the vastness of the undertaking was deemed to be beyond the possibilities of the country; the cost was contemplated to be so huge that capitalists would not venture to commit themselves to the fulfilment of such a project. One of the advocates of the enterprise suggested that it should be built by convict-labour in order to reduce the expense of construction, and curiously enough he suggested that the line should be carried through the Kicking Horse Pass, through which the Canadian Pacific makes its way to the Pacific to-day. It was in 1851 that the idea of a trans-continental railway first crystallised into a tangible project; but as it eclipsed in conception anything attempted in railway building up to that time, there was considerable timidity in launching out upon a line some 3000 miles in length. So matters drifted until the first trans-continental railway was thrown across the United States, and San Francisco was brought within a few days’ travel of New York. The agitation then broke out anew for a trans-Canadian line, and Sir Hugh Allan approached the Government with a definite scheme. However, he failed to enlist the practical assistance of financiers, and so the theme ranked as a perennial topic of discussion until the ratification of a project supported by the Government in 1881.