The Railway Conquest of the World

by Frederick Arthur Ambrose Talbot

The surveyor must be a man not to be daunted very easily in his enterprise, not to be cast down by heart-breaking failures, and who has the capacity to gather tangible assistance from apparently insignificant trifles. The search for a rift through a frowning mountain wall often is galling in its hopelessness. When the first Canadian trans-continental line was being forced towards the Pacific coast, the crossing of the Rocky, Selkirk and Gold ranges puzzled the surveyors acutely. Walter Moberly, a surveyor to the manner born, was deputed to complete the conquest of the Gold or Columbia Range. The obvious path to follow was along the bank of the mighty Columbia River, and this was taken by Moberly. Yet the Gold Range had to be threaded somewhere and somehow, though it appeared to defy penetration. He spent months wandering up and down the river, enduring hardships indescribable, seeking for the slightest breach through that terrible wall, wide enough to carry a pair of metals, but no gateway could he find.

BUILDING THE LOFTIEST BRIDGE IN THE WORLD

The Fades Viaduct spanning the Sioule River in France, 1,526 feet long. The two masonry towers are each 304 feet in height. The central span, 472 feet in length, was built out from each tower. The railway line in the centre of the bridge is 440 feet above the river.

Weary and sick at heart at the fruitlessness of his endeavours, he was one day returning despondently to camp. He was compelled well-nigh to admit failure. Suddenly he espied an eagle wheeling over his head. He followed its movements somewhat nonchalantly, until he saw it make directly for the Columbia mountains. Then his heart gave a thump! Would the bird rise and clear their lofty summits or would it sweep through a rift? Following its flight through the air, he saw the bird give a majestic dip downwards towards the chain. He turned the head of his jaded horse, and digging his spurs into its flanks, sped in the wake of the bird. Onward it flew as straight as an arrow towards a projecting crest, where it made a sharp turn and was lost to sight.

DRIVING A CUTTING 100 FEET DEEP BY THE AID OF DYNAMITE AND STEAM SHOVELS THROUGH SLATE ON THE DELAWARE, LACKAWANNA AND WESTERN RAILWAY, U.S.A.

Moberly galloped madly forward with his eyes glued to that crag. He never turned his head, fearing his sight might play him false, and was oblivious to stumbles and lurches as his steed fell over logs and slipped among boulders in its mad career. He swung round the crest, and there before his eyes the peaks were rolled back on either side, leaving a broad canyon, and of such a character that Nature appeared to have fashioned it expressly for the advance of the steel highway. The Columbia range was conquered. It was by pure accident that it had been found, but it was an accident which culminated a prolonged industrious quest. Indebted to his success to the monarch of the air Moberly christened the break in the rocky wall “Eagle Pass,” and it is through that gulch to-day that the Canadian Pacific makes its way to the western sea. As one sweeps between the massive ice-crowned teeth of the mountains one may see the site of the oldest cabin in the mountains, where the indefatigable Moberly passed the winter of 1871–2 completing the preliminary surveys for the line among the fastnesses of the Columbia Mountains.

The task of planning the location through such broken country is attended with the gravest dangers, relieved with exciting adventures. At places among the peaks a foothold on terra firma for the manipulation of the survey instruments is impossible. Then massive tree-logs are lowered into the gulch a few feet above the raging foam of a wicked mountain torrent, and along this slender staging the surveyor has to crawl to carry out his task.

Life often hangs upon the veritable thread. It may be that logs cannot be thrown over the cliff face. Then the surveyor has to don a leathern waist-belt fitted with a heavy swivel to which a rope is attached. In this way he is swung over the edge of a cliff to operate his level and transit along the face of a precipice where no foothold exists. Sometimes it becomes imperative to have recourse to dynamite to blast out a ledge along which to advance. Many a promising young engineer has gone to his last account in work of such a desperate character. In the survey of what is now the Denver and Rio Grande through one of Colorado’s yawning canyons, a young assistant had to be lowered in this manner. Half-a-dozen labourers grasped the end of the rope and steadied the surveyor in his descent over the perilous edge. From the brink to the bottom of the canyon was a matter of 200 feet or so straight down. In a few seconds the young fellow was dangling betwixt earth and sky, steadying his descent as best he could down the face of the cliff.