HE BUILDERS

To the builders of the highway, that skirt the canyon's brink,
To the men that bind the roadbed fast,
To the high, the low, the first and last,
I raise my glass and drink!--EVELYN GUNNE.

As yet, there is no passenger service from Edson to the End of Steel.
Several day coaches are run, but they are chiefly for the use of the
engineers and workmen. This is how I happen to be the only woman
aboard pulling out for the mountains across this newly-made trail.

Do not misunderstand me; it is the railroad that is new. The trail
that runs by its side was an old one when Columbus discovered America,
and beaten deep with feet, and also it is a long trail, for it leads
through to the Pacific Ocean. For centuries, it was the only mark of
human interference in this waste that is world-old. It is a trail of
lean hunger and bleeding feet, one that has ever been prodigal of
promise, but wary of accomplishment. Surely this is so, for once over
it stumbled and swore those half-mad men known as the Caribou
Stampeders--these, and other unwept, unhonoured fellows who fared into
the wilderness for what reasons even the wise Lord knoweth not. If the
bones of the red and white folk who have travelled this long, long
street were stood upright, I doubt not they would make a fence of
pickets for us all the way.

I have no sooner thought this thing than it happens there is a dry
stirring and, in an eye-wink of time, the dead men have taken on flesh
and colour. They must have been keenly near. Grim, plainish fellows
are they, not unlike the gang around me, but rougher-clad and more
hairy. They are powerful and full-lifed men, I can see that, and the
rough-necked one with the trail stride and mop of curly hair is
Alexander MacKenzie, a Scotchman from Inverness, but late of Messrs.
Gregory & Co.'s counting-house. He is "down North" endeavouring to
open out a trade with the Indians, obtaining a foothold they doubtless
call it; his masters, the Nor'-West Fur Company--for monopolists are
always sensitive to terms. His is a continental errand (mark this
well), for he is the first white man to cross the Rockies, and to tell
us what lies over and beyond the hills where the sun goes down. Honour
to Alexander MacKenzie, Esq., of Inverness, say I! Some day, when
Messrs. the Publishers give me fuller royalties, I shall surely build a
cairn to him on the height of land e'er it falls away to the Western
Sea.

This m