There were many weighty reasons for the building of this railway and the launching of its great ships, as well as highly important considerations which demand its continued efficiency in our times. Let us study them together in this book, which, as an eye witness of the genesis and development of the railway, though never at any time connected with it, I have written and published independently, as a humble contribution to our history as a British Dominion. Like my preceding books, it is sent out because generations arise which ought to know with what hazard and struggle on the part of the pioneers the foundations of Canada were laid. The name of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company fixes in our minds the original objects of the road. The Railway was particularly the outcome of a new national consciousness in Canada, arising out of Confederation, and it was designed with the special idea of knitting the older parts of Canada in the East with the newer provinces and territories which were growing up in the wide West, and which would some day form an integral part of a Dominion whose Western border would rest on the Pacific tide. “Westward the star of empire takes its way” is a saying which has found historical support in the descent of the centuries from the immemorial East, which is now a graveyard of ancient kingdoms. And once the prows of exploring vessels struck the Eastern shores of this new continent of America, there were unresting souls that pressed onward throughout the years till they reached the pillars of the sunset beside the alluring Western sea.