cing its ability to carry out the bargain.
The contract was finally executed at Ottawa on October 21, 1880.
Parliament was then summoned in order to ratify what the Government had
done.

The contract was fiercely opposed. The Opposition denounced the terms
as extravagant, as beyond the resources of the country, {120} and as
certain to involve financial disaster. Blake affirmed that the road
would never pay for the grease for the wheels of the engines that would
pass over it, and appealed to his fellow-members not to throw the
hard-earned money of the people of Canada 'down the gorges of British
Columbia.' A rival company was hurriedly got up which offered to build
the railway on much more moderate terms. The _bona fides_ of this
opposition company or 'syndicate' was much doubted, and, in any event,
the proposal came too late. The Government was bound to stand by its
bargain, which was defended with great power by Sir John Macdonald, Sir
Charles Tupper, and others. At length, by a vote of 128 to 49, the
House of Commons ratified the contract, which passed the Senate a few
days later, and became incorporated in an Act of Parliament assented to
on February 15, 1881.

Then began a period of railway construction hitherto unparalleled. At
the date of the signing of the contract the only portions of the main
line built were 152 miles from Fort William westward (the track was
laid, but the line was not completed) and 112 miles from Keewatin to
Selkirk--that is 264 miles. Mackenzie had declared the building of the
road {121} within ten years to be a physical impossibility for Canada.
He even went so far as to affirm that the whole resources of the
British Empire could not construct the railway in ten years.[18] As a
matter of fact, it was built by Canada in less than five years. On
November 7, 1885, Donald Smith drove the last spike at Craigellachie,
twenty-eight miles west of Revelstoke, British Columbia; and on the
24th of the following July, just fifteen years (including the five lost
years of the Mackenzie regime) after the engagement with British
Columbia was made, Sir John Macdonald {122} arrived at Port Moody in
the car in which he had left Ottawa a few days before.

This marvellous feat was not accomplished without great exertions, much
anxiety, and the exercise of the highest arts of statesmanship. The
opposition to the granting of the charter had been so keen, the
arguments against the whole scheme had be