Chapter III
British Columbia
It was in 1874 when the first regular large survey parties were sent out to British Columbia. It was also the ambition of most of us to be ordered to that unknown country, and a place on the staff of a B.C. division was considered quite an honour.
Very few people appreciate the enormous distance we had to travel before arriving at the starting point of our work, and to give my readers an idea of this, I will relate my experience in 1874. It was my good fortune to be appointed first officer or transit man under H. P. Bell, M.I.C.E., (another Inter-Colonial Engineer), on Division W, bound for the wilds of British Columbia to run an exploratory line from the vicinity of Fort George towards Tete Jaune Cache, on the Upper waters of the Great Fraser River.
In those days we had to travel over the Grand Trunk to Chicago, then by the Union Pacific and Central Pacific to San Francisco, via Omaha and Salt Lake City, a delightful journey, with ever varying scenery and climate.
The distance would be approximately as follows:—
Ottawa to San Francisco - 3000 miles. San Francisco to Victoria, B.C. 800 " Victoria to New Westminster - 100 " New Westminster to Yale - 100 " Yale to Quesnelle - - 300 " Quesnelle to Fort George - 100 " Copyright/Licence: The author or authors of this work died in 1964 or earlier, and this work was first published no later than 1964. Therefore, this work is in the public domain in Canada per sections 6 and 7 of the Copyright Act. See disclaimers.