James Francis Hogan, The Sister Dominions: Through Canada to Australia by the New Imperial Highway (London: Ward and Downey, 1896), pp. 91–96

From Regina to Calgary, a stretch of about 500 miles, the Canadian Pacific Railway runs through a splendid ranching country, great heaps of buffaloes’ skulls and skeletons, visible at intervals from the carriage windows, telling of the success and completeness with which the great animal monarch of North America has been practically exterminated in order to make room for horses, sheep, and cattle. The ranches continue in almost unbroken succession right up to the base of the Rocky Mountains, covering the foothills, and occupying the intervening valleys. The scriptural allusion to cattle grazing on a thousand hills is at once recalled to the memory and realized with literal accuracy as the train commences its long and arduous climb to the summit of the great dividing range. At Calgary, a handsome and go-ahead town of 5000 inhabitants, called into being by the requirements of the numerous ranches for hundreds of miles around, the ascent of the Rockies may be said to begin, although their snow-clad peaks and serrated lines, stretching away as far as the eye can travel along the southern and western horizon, are by no means so close at hand as they look. The iron horse has to puff and pant for several hours yet before the Rockies are strictly and actually reached. Another engine is there in readiness to assist the train up the steepest sections of the formidable series of mountain barriers that seem to set all engineering skill and science at defiance. But here, as elsewhere, man has proved himself more than a match for the most Titanic forces of Nature. Tremendous yawning abysses have been successfully bridged, pathways for the passage of the locomotive have been hewn and blasted out of the sides of appalling precipices; long, narrow, and sinuous gorges, environed by walls that shoot up straight for hundreds, and in some places thousands, of feet, have been compelled to pay a sufficient tribute of territory to the conquering engineer; and the host of obstacles thrown in the way of his advance by rushing rivers, foaming cataracts, snow, ice, and colossal rocks have been overcome and removed by patience, perseverance, and scientific ingenuity. 274 The scenery throughout these 500 miles of mountain locomotion is indescribably grand and impressive—snow-clad ranges, sun-illumined glaciers, beautifully-wooded mountain-sides, awe-inspiring canons, fantastically-shaped peaks, raging torrents, and charming cascades succeeding each other in panoramic variety and interest. To enable the passengers to enjoy this glorious scenic banquet to the full, an “observation car,” or carriage open on all sides, is attached to the train, and affords facilities for an unobstructed and satisfying view. The stations in this Alpine region represent either spots of special attractiveness, where hotels have been erected for the accommodation of excursionists, or mining townships that have sprung up in the vicinity of gold, silver, or coal deposits, for the Rocky Mountains constitute a rich and still largely undeveloped mineral region, as well as a theatre of unsurpassable scenic wonders and delights.

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