It was to this group of men, who were doubtless ready to be approached, that Sir John A. Macdonald, after having tried in vain in Europe, turned, when even Sir Charles Tupper, who was never disposed to be afraid of anybody or anything, called the Premier’s attention to the prodigious task ahead if the Government itself attempted to build and operate a railway across Canada from sea to sea. By these financial men and a few more, as we shall see, the project that had terrified Governments of both political shades was undertaken, and by them it was ultimately, and after terrific struggle, carried to completion. Even Mr. J. J. Hill came in at the outset, but, differing from the rest on the policy of building over the North Shore of Lake Superior and thus having an all-Canadian route, and finding it impossible to serve two masters in two railways that would clash somewhat, he retired soon after the Canadian Pacific Board was organized. But we are not to forget “Jim” Hill, a Canadian abroad, for it was through him that the great triumvirate, Stephen, Smith and Angus, got a taste for railroading and a certain training therein which stood them and Canada in good stead in the stormy days that lay ahead. It was, in a sense, natural that the men we have mentioned should take hold of the Canadian Pacific undertaking. Some of them, at least, knew the great West-land by actual observation. The others would bank on the statements of those who knew the country. Stephen was the most cautious and so the least inclined to take risks in regard to such a colossal enterprise. But once he entered upon it, we are probably safe in saying that, though he had his hours of depression, he became the mainstay of the Board in the dark storms of difficulty that were at times to settle down on the project during the desperate days that were ahead. All three, Stephen, Smith and Angus, hailed from the land where there is a saying, “A stout heart to a stey bræ.” And these men and their associates were to face, in every sense of the word, “steep hills” in the financial world as well as in actual rock-ribbed obstacles to railway building, greater than any contemplated by the originator of the inspiring saying quoted above. There was to be a time, as we shall see later, when Stephen’s famous cablegram to Smith, in the single Gælic word “Craigellachie” (stand fast), would be needed as a ringing admonition to men in Canada whose resources became so completely exhausted that failure seemed practically inevitable.