The chief engineer in charge of the construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific was Mr. J. B. Kelliher. With him went a party of gentlemen to make the preliminary exploration after the surveyors had made their pioneer report on the possibilities of the route. While they had secured a general impression of the topography, the problems that remained were intricate and manifold.
[Illustration: Hudson Bay Mountain and Lake Kathlyn, Bulkley Valley]
"In order to obtain a faint idea of the prospect that confronted those entrusted with the reconnaissance," writes Frederick A. Talbot,[1] "conceive a vast country rolling away in humps, towering ridges, and wide-yawning valleys as far as the eye can see, and with the knowledge that the horizon can be moved onward for hundreds of miles without bringing any welcome break in the outlook. On every hand is the interminable forest, a verdant sea, except where here and there jagged splashes of black betoken that the fire fiend has been at work. The trees swinging wave-like before the breeze conceal dangers untold beneath their heavy, blanket-like branches.... Here is a swamp whose treacherous { 182} mass stretches for mile after mile.... There is a litter of jagged rock ... here a maze of fallen tree trunks, levelled by wind, water, and fire, piled up beneath the trees to a height of ten, fifteen, and twenty feet in an inextricable mass, over which one has to make one's way...." Mr. Talbot graphically describes that silence of the trackless solitudes: "Not a sound beyond the sighing of the wind through the trees, the rifle-like crack of a dead, gaunt monarch as it crashes to the ground, or the howl of a wolf." At night the party slept in sleeping-bags; they had scant provisions, too, because to carry an adequate supply would have been an impediment to progress; and after the quicksands, the impenetrable forests, they would suddenly encounter some mad river or vast lake; and at one cache where they arrived, famished and weary, they found that wild animals had broken in and destroyed the store of dried fruits, fish, and canned food they had expected to find. What a story is this record of pioneer work for the selection of the route and the discovery of the most favourable Pass for the construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific! There were many possible Passes investigated before the decision was gradually arrived at, by the process of elimination, to choose that of the Yellowhead. The number was first reduced to four; the Wapiti, Pine River, Yellowhead, and Peace River, and then Mr. Hays decided on that of the Yellowhead.