In this 150th anniversary of the creation of sa国际传媒, we are looking back at editorials published in our predecessor newspaper in 1867.
This week, the editors pondered the potential benefits of a railway across the United States 鈥� and mused about one from our coast to the North Saskatchewan River.
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The eyes of the civilized world are directed toward the commercial revolution that is going on in America through the exertions of companies of capitalists who are preparing to span the continent with 鈥渂ands of iron and hooks of steel鈥� and divert a great part of the traffic of China and Japan from the Old to the New World.
After years spent in discussing its feasibility, the American people have begun in earnest to build a great central railway; and the contractors have bound themselves to place California, on the first of January next, within 10 days鈥� travel of the Atlantic ocean, and in less than 18 months thereafter to roll cars over the road from seaboard to seaboard.
Several lines of railroad are projected through American territory, but only two appear to have assumed a degree of tangibility that entitles them to public confidence.
Upon the Central Line, which runs across the Plains via Salt Lake and Nevada, active operations are in progress, and the road, in less than one year and a half, will, in all human probability, be completed.
A liberal subsidy has been granted it by the American government, but in the opinion of many, it can never prove profitable, because for hundreds of miles the country through which it passes is destitute of fuel, and this destitution necessitates the hauling of wood to different stations on the line from remote stations at great, and as the meagre supply of fuel near the line of road becomes exhausted, increasing expense.
The distance by this line, it is also claimed, is several hundred miles greater than by the proposed route via Seattle, which is assuming a reality and creating a public interest that promises to make it a powerful rival of its more southern competitor for the transcontinental carrying trade.
The route via Seattle possesses a splendid natural grade for a road and leads through a well-wooded country where fuel is always accessible and consequently cheap.
Should the report of the engineers now out surveying the passes through the Cascade and Rocky Mountain ranges confirm the opinions already formed as to the advantage of distance and easy grade, no doubt is entertained that Congress will grant a sufficient subsidy, and that ere many years have elapsed, the iron-horse, laden with the products of two continents, will make regular trips from Puget Sound to the Atlantic seaboard, 鈥渃arrying freight and passengers at prices greatly reduced鈥� from these charged by its southern rival for public favour.
But before the time arrives for this great change, we confidently believe that should proper means be taken to advance our own claim and to represent the natural advantages our colony possesses for the construction of a railway through British territory, we shall experience little or no difficulty in procuring an imperial guarantee or subsidy or in inducing capitalists to turn their attention hitherward, and to at least commence the construction of a road through British Columbia to the headwaters of the Saskatchewan River.
Persons who have travelled over both routes freely acknowledge that the topographical advantages of British Columbia for a railway are superior to either those of California or Washington Territory.
Fuel is obtained in inexhaustible abundance the length and breadth of the route, and when we reflect that after the Saskatchewan is reached there is uninterrupted water communication to the sea, it will be seen that nature has dealt kindly with us and has afforded us facilities for transporting freight at a much lower rate and in quite as brief a space of time as that required by the American road.
We do not, of course, put forth these advantages to damp the ardour of the gentlemen who have taken the Northern Pacific Railroad in hand. It is to our own interest to wish that enterprise complete success and to hope that within four years the scream of the first overland locomotive will awaken the echoes of the hills and valleys of Puget Sound.
Nothing would conduce more to the advancement of Victoria, and through her to the prosperity of the colony at large, than the presence of a large market at her very doors. Our merchants, who already enjoy a limited trade with Puget Sound, acknowledge its value, and would regard with satisfaction any movement that may tend to increase that trade.
They are as pleased to know that a surveying corps is already in the field engaged in surveying a route for the Northern Pacific Railway, as they would be were they told a corps of competent British officers are engaged in laying out a railway from Bute Inlet to the headwaters of the Saskatchewan River.
The Daily British Colonist and Victoria Chronicle
Aug. 7, 1867
