a smaller scale, the excitement and the rascality which had
marked the beginning of the great railway eras in the United Kingdom
and the United States were reproduced in Canada.

Of the other roads completed in this period, the two which had been
aided by Hincks's first Guarantee Act were most important.

The Great Western had a promising outlook. It ran through a rich
country and had assured prospects of through western traffic. The road
was completed from Suspension Bridge to Windsor in January 1854. An
extension from Hamilton to Toronto was built in 1856, and a
semi-independent line from Galt to Guelph absorbed in 1860. The Great
Western came nearest of any early road to being a financial success;
alone of the guaranteed roads it repaid the government loan, nearly in
full. But after a brief burst of prosperity, from 1854 to 1856, it,
too, was continually in difficulties. In 1856 it paid a dividend of 8
1/2 per cent, but three years later it paid nothing, and in the next
decade averaged less than three per cent.

The troubles of the Great Western came {87} chiefly from competition,
actual and threatened, and uncertain traffic connections. To the
north, the chartering of the Toronto, Guelph and Sarnia, amalgamated
later with the Grand Trunk, cut into its best territory. An endeavour
was made in 1854 to divide the remaining area, but two years later the
battle was renewed, the Great Western building to Sarnia and the Grand
Trunk tapping London and Detroit. Between the Great Western and Lake
Erie a rival road direct from Buffalo to Detroit was threatened time
and again, but was not built until after Confederation. South of Lake
Erie the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern was built shortly afterwards
by interests connected with the New York Central, thus threatening the
traffic connections of the Great Western both east and west. To avert
loss of its western trade, the Great Western sunk large sums in aiding
the construction of a road from Detroit to Grand Haven, with ferry
connections to Milwaukee; but this experiment did not prove a success
and caused serious embarrassment.

The Northern Railway, whose promoters, as we have seen, naively
recognized that railways and lotteries were close akin, was opened as
far as Allandale in 1853, and to Collingwood {88} in 1855. It was
scamped by the contractors, poorly built, and overloaded with debt.
The sanguine policy of building up a through traffic from the America