The viceroy was coming east from Victoria over the route to be taken by the C.P.R. The contractor met him on the trail that did duty for a road, and recognized him by his photograph. Since the war, dining with the marquis in London, Sir Donald was interested by his recalling that at the time of his trip across the Selkirks and Rockies, there were only 126,000 people between the Lake of the Woods and the Pacific Ocean. Of the first contact between Mackenzie and Mann, Sir Donald’s recollection is vivid: “In the summer of 1884,” he says, “we were having some trouble with our supplies at the head of construction. This was partly caused by the wish of those who had such matters in hand to compel us to buy from them. We wanted the advantage of buying direct from wholesalers and manufacturers, and hauling our own stuff from the end of steel to the front of grading. To do this teaming I had my agents farther east buy and ship a carload of mules. When we received word that they had arrived as far as the cars could bring them, I took a foreman named Dan Mahoney and two or three other men, and started out to fetch them. They were at the Summit--close to where the Great Divide is marked now. The mules had been unloaded and were with another carload in a corral. “Dan Mahoney and I were picking out what we believed to be our animals when a man with a long black beard turned up, and asked us what we were doing with the mules. I said we were getting ours from the lot. He said the mules were his, and we’d better not interfere with them. The argument livened up a good deal, and was getting warm, when Ross came along, and asked what the trouble was. We told him. He laughed and said we were both wrong and both right. A carload had come for each of us, but owing to some misunderstanding, it had been supposed that they belonged to the same party, and they had been turned into the corral together. “Ross was never at a loss for a way out of a difficulty; and he undertook to settle this one. ‘You’ll pick teams, turn and turn about, and you,’ he said, pointing to Mackenzie, ‘will have first choice, and he,’ pointing to me, ‘will have the next two, and then one each.’ That was perfectly fair, and the first difference of opinion between Mackenzie and me was over. “While Mackenzie was choosing his first team Dan Mahoney took me aside and said: ‘You let me pick them mules. I know them all, for I worked at the place they have come from. The best in the lot are them roans. This man won’t guess that; but I know it. Don’t take them in your first pick; and he won’t take them for his second. Then we’ll take them; and you’ll see they’ll turn out to be the best of the bunch.’