Taken together these letters, written by matter-of-fact men, are great tributes paid to the men of the Mounted Police for the part they played in those critical periods of the history of the pioneer railway. In such masses of railway men of all kinds and nationalities thrown together in construction times, there was constant danger of disorder under certain conditions. There were amongst these men, many adventurous agitators who cared nothing for the ultimate success of the railway. Had the whiskey-peddlers who always hover around such camps been allowed to ply their nefarious trade, there would have been constant danger to the men themselves from high explosives carelessly handled. And there would have been the ever-present menace of unreasonable outbreaks causing delay and damage to a great and necessary undertaking. No wonder that such highly practical and observant men as Van Horne and Egan understood and gladly acknowledged the co-operation of the Mounted Police in a vast national enterprise. People have often wondered how this road, traversing some three thousand miles across lonely prairie and lonelier mountains, escaped having its trains held up by robbers, as was common in some other similarly situated countries. In an official report some years after the road opened Superintendent Deane of the Mounted Police at Calgary refers to an effort at train-robbing that year and starts out with the following revealing statement: “It has for years been an open secret that the train-robbing fraternity in the United States had seriously considered the propriety of trying conclusions with the Mounted Police, but had decided that the risks were too great and the game not worth the candle. After the object lesson they received last May, it may be reasonably supposed that railway passengers will be spared further anxiety during the life of the present generation at least.”