the temple of our country’s fame. Mr. Fleming was very enthusiastic over this memorial, and presented it to the Hon. John Sandfield Macdonald, then Premier of the Canadian Government. He accompanied it by a strong appeal in writing to Mr. Macdonald, in which he visioned the great importance of the road across the continent. Immediately thereafter, Mr. Fleming, at the request of the Red River people, proceeded to the Old Country, where he presented the memorial to the Duke of Newcastle, then Colonial Secretary. From his visit to Canada three years before, with the Prince of Wales, the Duke was familiar with the situation and discussed it with Mr. Fleming with great interest and freedom. This visit to the Duke of Newcastle in 1863, while not productive of immediate results, was, according to the opinion of Mr. Lawrence J. Burpee, who writes an excellent biography of Mr. Fleming, the turning-point in Fleming’s career. It made him an Empire figure and intensified his worthy ambition to aid in building and consolidating into one vast commonwealth the scattered colonies under the red cross flag. Mr. Fleming’s later achievements in this regard are known to history. They brought him the esteem of his generation, the appreciation of his sovereign and the well-won and worthily-borne honour of knighthood. Mr. Fleming had barely returned to Toronto from his visit to the Colonial Secretary in the interests of a transcontinental roadway, when he was summoned by the Premier, John Sandfield Macdonald, to come to Quebec, then the Canadian capital. The result of that visit was that Mr. Fleming, with the cordial support of all the governments concerned, including the Imperial Government, represented by the Duke of Newcastle, was placed in charge of the surveys for the projected Intercolonial Railways in 1864. With his work on that important undertaking, till its completion, we cannot deal in this story. But we have traced the connection from the old Red River colony in the West to Mr. Fleming’s visit abroad on its behalf—a visit that led in large measure to his work on the Intercolonial, which, in turn, led to his being appointed in 1871 to the gigantic position of engineer-in-chief of the proposed transcontinental, the Canadian Pacific Railway. All this was preliminary and was part of Canada’s approach to a colossal task. In the next chapter we shall look more closely into the inception of an enterprise which now belts the globe. CHAPTER III Giants in Action