Calgary, July 19.—We were aboard No. 1, the C.P.R. westbound, and it was the 4th of July. We pulled into Medicine Hat long after twilight, and were informed by the porter that there was a washout ahead, and we were to lie in the siding all night. The Americans aboard fired their last bunch of firecrackers, and the porter, after the manner of his kind, bundled us all into our berths, and the following morning the C.P.R. did a great and memorable thing. It pulled us one hundred and twenty-five miles west, then tied us up for forty-eight hours at Gleichen, in the heart of the Blackfoot Indian reserve.
No spot on the entire system of the great transcontinental highway could have been of so intense interest, and few more beautiful. We had come out of the east and its wheat lands of Manitoba, out of the drenching rains and unseasonable storms, into a perfect July day, with the prairie swelling away to the north; westward, a horizon fringed with a glory of glistening white peaks, where the royal old Rockies swept irregularly across the sky; southward the lonely habitations of an erstwhile powerful tribe of redmen.
We had not halted very long when the pride and delight of the true Canadian's heart—the “Imperial Limited”—roared up abaft, and in another twelve hours a second “No. 1” stood in to harbor, and then we learned the truth—two bridges down, one east, one west, of Calgary. No. 2 is stuck at Banff; the Imperial Limited, eastbound, tied up the gods alone knew where. Never in the history of the C.P.R. has traffic been so congested, never has the great Imperial Limited ceased its ninety-seven hour career across continent. That criminal little Bow River has done what saint nor satan, fiend nor fairy, could never dare to do; it has brought the great panting transcontinental flyer to a standstill. What a solace it must be to officials to learn that some of the great American railroads are also swamped in the recent storms; that miles of their tracks and roadbeds are swept away; that Pacific coast tourists are howling through the western States far louder than Canucks are in the usually glorious sunshine of the territory of Alberta. But at Gleichen what a holiday we had, and what a cosmopolitan gathering it was. Perhaps never in all the history of railroading has such a forty-eight hour community been established as we, the “Good Fellows of Gleichen.”
I suppose I ought to begin the list with the English Lord and Lady aboard the Imperial Limited, but I won't. I head the list with a small “contingent” of our own gallant Northwest Mounted Police, eight of them, under command of Corporal Adams of Regina, bound for the Yukon. What a “bully” lot of boys they were, and what a rare good fellow was the corporal. When the American passengers learned we were “tied up” in the heart of the country of the Blackfoots they shuddered—but they did not know the meaning of the scarlet tunic of the N.W.M. Police. We had to tell them that old, old story we never tire of telling a Yankee, of the days subsequent to our 1885 rebellion, when six hundred Canadian Indians invited themselves to sojourn “across the border,” and found scant welcome in a country that had, according to “the great white father at Washington,” “quite enough Indians of their own.” Ottawa and Washington held conclave, and arrived at the decision that “Canada would care for her own Indians if Yankeeland would please escort them to the border.” Yankeeland did—gladly. Six hundred not too friendly, discontented, quietly wild Indians were escorted to the boundary line by a “bunch” of American cavalry three hundred strong. At the boundary were two British soldiers, astride two handsome horses, a corporal and a private of the Northwest Mounted Police. The American Colonel and the Canadian corporal held speech.
“Where,” demanded the American officer, “is your escort for these six hundred unruly redskins?”
“We are here,” replied Corporal “Canuck.”
“Yes, yes, I see,” was the answer, “but where is your regiment?”
“We are the regiment,” said Corporal “Canuck.”
“But there are only two of you,” gasped the American Colonel.
“Yes, but we wear the British scarlet,” said Corporal “Canuck.”
It was enough.
The six hundred unruly Indians marched silently across the border. The two Mounted Policemen fell quietly to the rear and conducted the “hostiles” a hundred miles northward, where they would fret Uncle Sam no more. It is on record that the American officer in command of that cavalry three hundred strong lifted his voice and swore. The incident was recorded and discussed at Washington, D.C. The cost of the affair to Uncle Sam was the pay and “living” of three hundred men and officers. The cost to Canada was one dollar a day for three days to two mounted policemen. Corporal “Canuck” made history when he said, “Yes, but we wear British scarlet.” And so our American fellow-passengers fell asleep like children, knowing well that Corporal Adams and his eight Yukon-bound men would
“Keep the peace of the people,
And the honor of British law.”
Lord and Lady Beven were on the “Imperial.” I caught sight of her several times, a sweet-faced young English aristocrat, with the glad, wide eyes with which English women look on new countries, and the utter appreciation of the least detail, be it cloud or sun, flower or food or custom that is novel or rare to them. Then we had a huge contingent of American sightseers and holiday-makers, who deported themselves with the utmost good-nature, and regarded the tie-up as a joke; two Japanese gentlemen, handsome and courteous, who had just completed their course at an eastern university—(I heard it was Queen's)—a great supply of Canadians, anxious and jealous for the honor of their transcontinental railroad, that seemed to be “going back” on them for the moment, and in the second-class cars Doukhobors, Galacians, and 150 Chinamen, Swedes, Italians, and poor, city-bred Londoners. The glory of the prairie must have been a new birth for them.
Traffic had congested but 24 hours when the C.P.R. took us over as its guests. For a week it has “boarded” thousands of transients at the very best hotels, the dining cars, the cafes. The company has spared no pains, no money, so long as their patrons could be royally treated. At Gleichen more than six hundred of us were the guests of the C.P.R. for two days. At Calgary 800, at Banff and at Field another five or six hundred—all treated like Princes at the expense of the road that is hourly dropping unestimated thousands. One million dollars will hardly cover the loss, and yet every official smiles through it all, and the public are treated with a consideration open-handed enough to almost border on extravagance, and even the ever-exacting American tourist remarked loudly that after “free meals” had been declared to the traveling colony at Gleichen neither service nor menu in the two dining cars, “St. Cloud” and “Frogmore,” fell off one jot.
But just here a delightful surprise awaited us all, an indefatigable Detroiter who wandered up prairie trails, ever searching for information, discovered mushrooms, of that large, luscious, shell-pink variety that only comes from wild stretches of field, and that have a flavor far more delicate and appetizing than those found in the city markets. Buckets, baskets and even hats were requisitioned, and we supplied the dining cars for every meal with these delicacies. The Detroiter gave us impromptu lectures on edible fungi. He was a man of most extensive information, had travelled the world over and kept his eyes open, but he told us he had never seen such quantities of mushrooms together as these. We gathered bushels of them daily. I hardly think the Indians eat these fungi, or else the enormous camp of Blackfoots would have been up betimes and secured our breakfasts while we yet dozed in comfortable berths, for their tepees arose, smoke-tipped and conical, not 500 yards from the siding where we lay.
The Indians made a good thing out of the C.P.R. mishaps, for the tourists hired horses from them at “a dollar a ride,” and even the tenderfoot would vault into the Mexican saddle and ride away across prairie. The sturdy, shaggy inappi laying back his ears and loping away with the long, clean, rocking motion never seen except in the prairie-bred animal. Only one lamentable accident occurred, in the evening, when we had baseball and horse races. In the latter a fine grey pony, the property of a splendidly handsome blanket and buckskin clad Blackfoot, plunged into a badger hole, fell, and instantly expired with a broken neck. And just here it is time to refute an aspersion too frequently laid upon our wilder Indian tribes of the great west. The prejudiced white man will tell you that the Indians will eat anything, animals that die of disease, unclean portions of meat, etc. The retractors of the redman, and there were plenty of them aboard, assured the crowd that “the Indians will have a great pow-pow, and the feast of the dead horse” over the unlucky animal that lay near the track. But the next morning and the next night, and yet another morning came and waned, and the horse lay where it had fallen, and the Blackfoot braves shook their heads when asked about a “feast.” A goodly collection was taken up for the owner, which reward he deserved, as his steed had expired in making “a white man's holiday.”
This identical brave exhibited great appreciation of class distinctions. A curious Chinaman came forth from his car, and a tourist asked the Blackfoot, “Is this your brother?” indicating the Mongolian. Such scorn and hauteur as the reply “No” expressed, such a lifting of the red chin, and indignant glance. It amazed some, but I was proud of my color-cousin of the prairie, and of his fine old aristocratic red blood, that has come down through the centuries to pulse in his conservative veins. We visited the camp; a group of some dozen tepees, neat, orderly and picturesque, were bunched against the southern rim of the prairie. Great herds of fat cattle and excellent ponies grazed near by, for the Blackfoot is a thrifty person, and his wife is a marvel of dexterity in needlework. Beside every tepee was a travois, the peculiar vehicle that supplies the place of a cart. It is a fixture like two shafts, fastened at the lower end by a horizontal pole, firmly lashed in place by deer sinew. An immense amount of duffle can be stowed on this contrivance, and when the band “treks” the clothing, utensils, tepees and the smaller children are all packed atop the travois, a horse or dog is harnessed between the shafts, and the cavalcade starts up the trail.
The interior of the tepees was a delight. A fire burned in the centre, the smoke ascending through the apex of the canvas. Beautiful beadwork, buckskin garments, fringed and ornamented elaborately, hung about in profusion. Well-blanketed women cared for tiny children, whose painted cheeks glowed vermillion and yellow in the fire and sunshine. The gay coloring of the tepees, the silently-moving, graceful figures of the red folk, the sleek, fat herds, the camp fires, and the glorious carpet of coral-colored prairie flowers, the overhanging blue of the wide territorial skies, the far-off Rockies, with their snowy coronets, made a picture beyond the limitations of the artist's brush or pen, and always and ever the vivid scarlet of the tunics of the Mounted Police. We sighed a keen regret when the engineer sounded a long series of whistles to get us aboard, for word had been flashed that the Bow River had been conquered and that our 48 hour blockade was broken.
The afternoon saw our three trains stalled on the eastern bank of the Bow. The taut steel bridge was shattered, crooked and disjointed; no train could pass across it for days to come. We detrained, about 600 strong, our luggage, the express goods and the mails were wheeled across by a perfect army of employees. The Divisional Superintendent from Calgary, Mr. J. Niblock, met us and personally handed us one by one in Indian file across the cobwebby structure that was temporarily erected above the ties for transferring purposes. We boarded another train, and in a half-hour we swelled the dense crowd at the station platform in Calgary. Traffic was completely congested. At the four points of the compass the tracks and bridges were washed away; the unprecedented rains, cloudbursts and prolonged storms had done their worst. Every hotel, Pullman car, boarding house and even sample room was crowded; people boarded together under any and every roof possible, and all of them “guests” of the railroad. It was one vast free-lunch counter for an entire week.
I took a run out to see the collapsed bridge nine miles west of the city; it is one of the two splendid steel structures known as “the twins.” Its mate escaped, but the western “twin” is down, standing, as it were, on its head. The people transferred on foot, over a solid planking laid across its upheaved ties. You go down a steep hill, then up a great bluff—and you land on the far side—though you have but crossed the wrecked bridge which two days ago was level as a floor and the pride of a clever engineer's heart. The far shore was a sight never to be forgotten. Two trains waited to pull out for the Pacific coast, a “No. 1” and an “Imperial Limited.” The baggage covered about 200 yards of sidetrack, the express goods and his Majesty's mails another 50 yards—through mails for the Yukon, for all points west and south and for trans-Pacific countries. Just at this point in the road, to give a fair idea of the enormous difficulties the officials have to deal with, one might mention that a gang of sectionmen were working with a piledriver in the storm when the bridge gave out. The piledriver was on the opposite bank from the gang and the roadmaster had to go 430 miles around via Medicine Hat, Lethbridge and Fort Macleod to reach the piledriver, just fifty yards from where he stood. With almost incredible speed a trestle bridge is being constructed across the Bow where the “twin” bridge is down. In twelve hours the piles were a quarter way across the river, and the supports and sleepers laid and tracks bolted.
The work going on is little short of miraculous, and not only the C.P.R. but all Canada has reason to be vastly proud of the despatch which the officials on the Calgary division have shown in loosening up the congestion that threatened to blockade traffic for the whole season. What these officials have had to contend with no human soul can understand who has not been on the spot and seen traffic cease and the great transcontinental highway tied up for days together. Mails and express and the public pouring in from every point and no way of egress—miles and miles of rolling stock, perishable goods and impatient people all huddled together. The world ceased revolving upon its axis, and none to blame except the tragedy of storm and rain that would have utterly demolished a system less sturdy than the great Canadian highway. Officials, pestered by thousands of questions daily, aye, hourly, have shown nothing but the greatest courtesy, the utmost patience, and our American cousins have not ceased to praise the splendid system that worked out those difficulties that seem to have dissolved under the master hand as snows before an April sun, for the great blockade has lifted and as I write traffic is resumed once more.