will be nine and a half millions of pounds sterling, whereof about six millions have been already expended. The mere mention of these figures in connexion with a single enterprise in a province, the destiny of which, under the British rule, was five years ago despaired of by numbers of its intelligent inhabitants, is almost sufficient to ereate a doubt in the sanity of those who projected it. A little more acquaintance with facts will probably, however, convince most men that if there be madness in the case, it is the delirium of rapid progress developed in a young nation loosed from tutelage and revelling amid unbounded industrial resources, with full liberty to use them at its good pleasure.

The Grand Trunk Railway, as it is at present in operation, or in course of construction, commences at Trois Pistoles, a place on the south-east side of the St. Lawrence, one hundred and fifty-three miles from Quebec. It proceeds from thence along the right bank of the river to Point Levi (now dignified by the name of Versailles), opposite the city of Quebec. It then runs away from the river in a south-westerly direction for one hundred miles to Richmond, where there is a junction with one line passing to the south-eastward for one hundred and sixty-four miles to Portland, and with another running nearly due west for one hundred and twenty-six miles to Montreal. The whole of this section of the railway, from Quebec to Portland and Montreal, is now at work, and on the 4th of the last month (June), trains commenced running, in one day, from each of the Canadian cities to Boston, over a United States line continuous with the Grand Trunk at Portland. Thus a citizen of Montreal or Quebec can leave his house in the morning, and embark for England from the quay of Boston the same evening; and as Portland has a safe and capacious harbour, which is never frozen, and is moreover the largest town in the state of Maine, no more than two thousand five hundred and forty miles distant from Galway, it is in the highest degree probable that it will, at no distant period, become a regular passenger port for European traffic. At Montreal the Grand Trunk is to cross to the left bank of the St. Lawrence, and there one of the greatest wonders of either the new or old world is now in course of being wrought out.

The breadth of the river, from bank to bank, at the place of crossing, is ten thousand two hundred and eighty-four feet, or one hundred and seventy-six feet less than two English miles, over which the rails are to be carried by the Victoria Tubular Bridge, measuring between its abutments eight thousand feet in length, or more than four times as long as the gigantic structure, amazëment at the raising of which above the Menai Strait has scarcely subsided in our own minds. For the following description of this marvellous work we are indebted to an article in Hunt's New York Merchant's Magazine, an authority not to be suspected of an exaggerative partiality for the feats of Britishers:

"The bridge is to be tubular, on the plan of the celebrated Britannia Bridge over the Menai Straits in North Wales. It will consist of twenty-five spans, or spaces for navigation, between the twenty-four piers (exclusive of two abutments) for the support of the tubes. The centre span will be 330 feet wide, and each of the other spans will be 242 feet wide. The width of each of the piers next to the abutments will be fifteen feet, and the width of those approaching the two centre piers will be gradually increased, so that these two piers will each be eighteen feet wide, or three feet more than those next the abutments. Each abutment is to be 242 feet long, and ninety feet wide; and from the north shore of the St. Lawrence to the north abutment there will be a solid stone embankment (faced in rough masonry towards the current) 1,200 feet in length -the stone embankment leading from the south shore of the river to the south abutment will be 600 feet long.

"The clear distance between the ordinary summer level of the St. Lawrence and the under surface of the centre tube is to be sixty feet, and the height diminishes towards either side, with a grade at the rate of one in 130, or forty feet in the mile, so that at the outer or river edge of each abutment the height is thirty-six feet above the summer level. The summer depth of the water in the St. Lawrence varies from fourteen feet about the centre, to four feet towards the banks; and the current runs at the site of the bridge at a rate varying from seven to ten miles an hour.

"Each of the tubes will be nineteen feet in height at the end, whence they will gradually increase to twenty-two feet six inches in the centre. The width of each tube will be sixteen feet, or nine feet six inches wider than the rail-track. The total weight of iron in the tubes will be 10,400 tons, and they will be bound and riveted together precisely in the same manner, and with similar machinery

to that employed in the Britannia Bridge. The principal part of the stone used in the construction of the piers and abutments is a dense, blue limestone, found at Pointe Claire, on the Ottawa River, about eighteen miles above Montreal, about eight above the confluence of that river with the St. Lawrence. A large village has suddenly sprung up at the place: for during the last twelve months (1854) upwards of 500 quarry-men, stone-masons, and labourers have been employed there. Every contrivance that could be adopted to save manual labour has also been applied, and its extent will be judged from the fact, that the machinery at the quarry and the adjacent jetty has, including the cost of the jetty, involved an outlay of 150,000 dollars. Three powerful steam-tugs, and thirty-five barges, each capable of carrying 200 tons of stone, have been specially built for the work, at a cost of about 120,000 dollars. These are used for the conveyance of the stone to the piers; and by the end of September next a railway, on the permanent line of the Grand Trunk track, will be laid down from the quarry-close to which the permanent line will pass to the north shore of the St. Lawrence, so as to convey along it the stone required for the north embankment, and for the northern abutment.

"The piers close to the abutments will each contain about 6,000 tons of masonry-scarcely a block used in the construction of the piers will be less than seven tons weight -and many of them, especially those exposed to the force of the current, and to the breaking up of ice in the spring, will weigh fully ten tons each. As the construction of pier "No. 1" is already several feet above the bed of the river, the process of binding the blocks together can now be seen and appreciated. In addition to the abundant use of the best water-cement, each stone is clamped to its neighbours in several places by iron rivets; and the interstices between the rivets and the blocks are filled up with molten lead. If the mighty St. Lawrence conquers these combined appliances, then, indeed, is there an end to all mechanical resistances.

"In consequence of the increased height and width of the piers converging towards the centre, the weight of stone in those that will bear the centre tube will be about 8,000 tons each. The total amount of masonry in the piers will be 27,500,000 cubic feet, which, at thirteen and a-half feet to the ton, gives a total weight of about 205,000 tons.

"Mr. Robert Stephenson and Mr. A. M. Ross are the engineers of the bridge, on behalf of the Grand Trunk Railway. The former gentleman visited Canada last year, and purposes returning again when the works have made further progress. The latter is permanently located in the province, not only for the superintendence of the bridge, but also as engineer-in-chief of the railway

company. The contractors are Messrs. Peto, Brassey, Betts, and Jackson; and their representative in Canada for the Victoria Bridge, and for the railway from Montreal to Kingston, a distance of 180 miles, is Mr. James Hodges, a gentleman well known in connexion with some of the most important engineering works in England.

"The coffer-dams (entirely on a new principle, invented by Mr. Hodges) for the northern abutment, and the three first adjacent piers, have been some time successfully placed. The masonry in pier No. 1, as has already been stated, is several feet above the bed of the St. Lawrence. It is commenced in the next pier, and is ready for a beginning in the abutment. The whole of these will be raised ten feet above the winter level of the St. Lawrence, which is seventeen feet above the summer level, before the ice sets in in December, when all masonry work will have to be suspended until the spring of 1855."

By means of this stupendous struc ture the products and the inhabitants of the remotest districts of Canada and of the far western states of the Union -Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, may be transported without break of guage or of bulk, or change of car or wagon, to the Atlantic seaboard, and shipped for Europe at Portland; or, if the design be carried out to its full extent, at the British ports of New Brunswick or Nova Scotia.

From Montreal the Grand Trunk runs along the left bank of the St. Lawrence and the northern shore of Lake Ontario, south-westward, to Toronto, a distance of 345 miles, passing on its way Prescott and Kingston. At the former it receives a tributary line of sixty miles in length, now in operation, and connecting the river Ottawa, with its great timber districts, with the St. Lawrence, which separates it by its own breadth only from Ogdensburg, in the State of New York, from whence there is a line of railway to New York City. In its course onwards to Toronto it receives several tributary lines from the north, some of which are already working. At Toronto it is joined by a line of ninetytwo miles in length, now in actual operation, and communicating with Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay, a north-eastern arm of Lake Huron. the same place it joins the Great Western Railway, also at work, and running a course of 240 miles to Detroit, in the State of Michigan, where it is met, on the opposite side of the river flow

At

ing between Lakes St. Claire and Erie, by American lines leading into the far west, and by a line which, pass. ing round the southern shore of Lake Erie, brings the passengers to Buffalo in eight hours-less than half the time required by the monster steam-ships of that inland sea. By means of a short line branching off from the Great Western-and which, by the way, belongs to a private individual, Mr. Zimmerman a direct communication is established between Toronto and the Falls of Niagara, which it passes at the distance of a stone's throw, and connects with a suspension bridge crossing to the American side of the river.

From Toronto the Grand Trunk pursues a westerly course for 172 miles to Sarnia, where it touches the frontier line at the extreme southern point of Lake Huron. There it gets into connexion with the navigation of the great lakes Huron, Michigan, and Superior, and with American arterial lines stretching away to the far west and to the Mississippi. On its way it is crossed by a line which joins the eastern shore of Lake Huron with the extreme eastern point of Lake Erie at Buffalo.

A glance at a map of British North America will, as we have said, enable the reader to comprehend this brief description, and to form a general no. tion of the vast enterprise to which it refers; but the reader may well ask, how has all this been accomplished, and what are the prospects that it can - be sustained as a commercial undertaking?

The Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada is, in fact, a fusion of some five or six separate companies, the managers of which have had the rare good sense to desire an incorporation of their respective powers; and the Provincial Parliament has been foresighted enough not only to comply with their request, but to aid them effectually in carrying it into practice. During the period of Provincial dependency, it would appear that jobbing in public works taking a pull at the Exchequer," as some of our home patriots express it was a main branch of the business of the colonial legislature:

"In 1849 (says Lord Elgin) the system of making grants from the public treasury for local works, which had been, during the

earlier history of these colonies, a fertile source of waste and jobbing, was finally discontinued. Previously to that period, it had been too much the habit to expend the surplus revenues of the province on minor works of this class, and to invoke imperial aid, either in the shape of guarantees, or in some other form, for the execution of undertakings of a more comprehensive and national character. Since the resolution to which I refer was adopted, the resources and credit of the municipalities have been so much augmented by the general improvement of the country, and by judicious legislation, that local works have been prosecuted with more vigour, as well as with greater discretion and economy than before, while the provincial funds have been left free for more legitimate purposes. In my despatch which accompanied the Blue Book for 1851, I dwelt at some length on the results of this change of system, and I advert to it now in passing, because I believe that it has materially contributed to the recent industrial progress of the province."

The resolution here referred to by Lord Elgin was embodied in a provincial act, which sanctioned the assumption of pecuniary responsibilities by the province in order to promote railway undertakings, with a restrictive provision that the public credit should not be pledged beyond one half the amount actually expended on the works, and that the whole resources and property of the companies should be liable for the amount of any sums that might be so advanced or guaranteed. Under this arrangement a provincial guarantee for £1,811,500 was assented to in favour of the Grand Trunk; and so good was the colonial credit esteemed, that the capital of nine and a-half millions was, with the exception of a small investment of Canadian money, freely subscribed in England. So far, we believe, there has been no lack of funds for this or for other guaranteed speculations, and thus a colony which, half-a-dozen years ago, when in its pupa state of dependency, could not boast of fiveand-twenty miles of railway, has, now that it has been metamorphosed into a nation, been able to encounter a railway expenditure of ten millions of pounds. The question, how? being thus shortly but satisfactorily answered, we may turn to the examination of the question, why? and fortunately the solution is not altogether dependent upon the sanguine estimates of a prospectus :

"On the occasion (says Lord Elgin) of a visit to the western section of the province which I made a few weeks ago, in the autumn of 1854) to attend the annual exhibition of the Upper Canadian Agricultural Association, which was held this year in the town of London, I saw enough of the effect produced by the railways already in operation, to be able to form some estimate of the results which may be expected to follow when the great schemes now in course of execution shall have been completed. It is indeed hardly possible for any one but an eyewitness, to form an adequate conception of the impulse which is given to these new countries which contain a vast amount of undeveloped resources, and are accessible to European emigration, by the introduction of such facilities for intercommunication, and the transport of commodities, as railways afford. I was the better able to appreciate these effects in the present case, as I had visited portions of the same district of country on a similar errand in 1847."

This is the general testimony of an observer whose intelligence and good faith do not admit of doubt; a few of the details that composed the broad picture seen by Lord Elgin, we shall take the liberty of extracting from a very able report, addressed by Sir Cusack Roney, the managing director of the Grand Trunk Railway, to the London Board of Directors, and dated in May of the present year:

"Previous (says Sir Cusack) to the opening of the line between Montreal and Portland, in July, 1853, those two cities were as much separated from one another by ranges of hills and dense forests, as if they had been three thousand instead of three hundred miles apart. The country, in the centre one hundred and fifty miles, was totally unknown, and part of it had only a short time previously been surveyed by the United States government. The first population brought into these one hundred and fifty miles, was to make the railway, and at its opening there were not upon them more than about two hundred settlers.

"The following are the traffic receipts, in sterling, for the three past half-years :

Half-year ending 31st Dec.,

good ground for expecting that the sections of this great line as yet untried in actual work, will be at least equally successful. The combined population of Quebec, Montreal, and Portland, now in direct railway communication with each other, amounts to 120,000 persons, independent of those resident along the line. From the 4th of June trains were to run between Quebec and Boston in fifteen hours-a journey which last summer it required, by the then existing routes, thirty-seven hours to perform. At present it takes forty-seven hours to go by water from Montreal to the western extremity of Lake Ontario; on the opening through of the Grand Trunk the same journey will be accomplished in fourteen or fifteen hours. It has, hitherto, in summer required forty-one hours to travel from Quebec to Brockville, and there is only one opportunity for this journey in each twenty-four hours. Next autumn the same distance will be completed twice each day in about twelve hours. The most expeditious route at present from Montreal to Toronto, and places west of it, is to make a circuit of 592 miles by railway through the United States, with several changes of carriages. When the Grand Trunk shall be completed to Toronto, the total distance from Montreal will be 335 miles, which will be traversed in twelve or thirteen hours. We might multiply examples of such cheatings of time and space, which, it cannot be doubted, will produce their effect upon traffic pleasureable and profitable:

"There is no feature (proceeds Sir Cusack Roney) more remarkable, in connexion with the habits of the citizens of the United States, than their universal desire for travelling. During the summer of 1853, in consequence of the opening of railways, which gave facility of access through all parts of the United States, and to the Falls of Niagara, a large number of those who were attracted there proceeded through Canada by the river Saint Lawrence to Montreal, and thence to Quebec. The unfortunate prevalence of cholera in the provinces during the summer of 1854 put almost a total stop to this traffic.

"Another important source of the pleasure traffic of the Grand Trunk Railway will be the Victoria Bridge, the knowledge of which has now spread all over America, where its progress is beginning to be watched with deep interest.

"The average contribution of each resi