Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/470

454 revenues, or with a heavy provincial subsidy, from Winnipeg to Fort Churchill.

When this railway has been completed, and a line of steamers placed upon the route from Fort Churchill to Liverpool, it is not difficult to foresee that within a comparatively short time a very large proportion of the wheat of the Canadian northwest available for export will gravitate toward this route; and it would not even be too much to predict that a considerable portion of wheat from Minnesota and the Dakotas would also find its way to Europe viâ Hudson's Bay. A very small difference in cost of transportation is sufficient to swing wheat from one route to another; the difference depending partly upon distances, and partly upon rail or water routes, water transportation being of course cheaper than rail. The following table will show at a glance the advantages of the Hudson's Bay route over existing routes to the Atlantic seaboard, so far as distances are concerned:

It will be seen that the advantage in favor of the Hudson's Bay route amounts to 600 miles in the case of Winnipeg, nearly 500 miles in the case of Duluth; and 150 miles in the case of St. Paul. When you add to this the fact that the Hudson's Bay route involves only a comparatively short haul by rail, as compared with the existing routes, it will be seen that the advantage is overwhelmingly in favor of the former.

Reverting to the proposition first laid down—that the main Canadian rail and water routes run east and west, it will be seen that this is substantially correct. The only exceptions of any importance are likely to be more in the nature of subsidiary lines than main arteries of transportation. The proposed line from Winnipeg to Fort Churchill is a case in point; another is the suggested branch from Edmonton north and northwest to Dawson. Probably the most important of all will be a line from Vancouver, the western terminus of the Canadian Pacific, viâ Port Simpson, the western terminus of the Grand Trunk Pacific, to Dawson and the Yukon. One other possibility of the future is a railway from the city of Quebec, along the north shore of the St. Lawrence, to the strait of Belle Isle; thence across the strait to Newfoundland, where connection would be made with the existing Newfoundland railway to St. Johns. This would give the shortest possible ocean voyage for Canadian and American passengers to England and Europe, and would be of immense advantage for the transport of the mails and of freight, where time is an important object.