SECTION LIFE IN THE NORTH-WEST.

SOME few years since I formed one of a gang of men employed on a section of the Canadian Pacific Railway; and, that line being one of the world's greatest thoroughfares, the public may be interested to hear something of the mode of life of those who help to keep it in repair. A section, I must explain, is a stretch of railway, or track,' presided over by a ganger, in Western parlance boss,' who has under him a complement of men. I will confine my remarks to the section I belonged to, which was on the lonely prairie, within clear view of the Rockies, blue and snowcapped, to the west.

We lived in one of the frame-built houses which, all on the same model, are stationed along the track at intervals of twenty miles or less. In each are lodged two gangs, one keeping the line in repair ten miles east, the other ten miles west. The head of one of them having the additional duty of keeping the sectionhouse and boarding the men. Our boarding-boss was an Englishman, a frank, straightforward fellow, whose buxom wife, besides her maternal duties, did the cooking for both gangs; her work, moreover, being often increased by the quartering upon us of the 'surface-gang,' a large roving detachment which worked sometimes on one section, sometimes on another, as their services might be required.

Our pay was a dollar and a half a day, but our fellow-gang received two dollars; not owing to any difference in their work, but to its lying west of ours, labour being of more value in that direction, and the line having been drawn, as ill-luck would have it, at our section. Four dollars a week was deducted from our wages for board, and, considering the excellence of the fare, the charge was moderate. Beefsteak and potatoes, beans and bacon, porridge, or 'mush' as it was called, bread and butter, sweets, pies, &c., with the unvarying accompaniment of tea, figured abundantly at the three square meals' to which we sat down daily; Sunday's bill of fare being extra good. We were certainly fortunate in our boarding-boss and his wife; but as far as my experience went the other sections fared equally well, with some few exceptions.

VOL. X.-NO. 57, N.S.

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At six a.m. we rose, awakened by the stentorian cry, 'Come, arouse!' of the boarding-boss, Breakfast followed, and at seven nominally, for it was often later, our boss, a genial, burly Austrian, yclept for shortness 'Joe,' would summon us to our duties with a 'Now, poys, all aboord!'-in allusion to the hand-car on which, when we had placed it on the rails, we drove to the scene of our labours, which was sometimes close by, at others several miles distant. In the latter case we would occasionally take our dinner with us, when the excursion would be facetiously spoken of as a picnic.

A word as to the hand-car which figured so prominently in our work. It was nothing more than a flat open truck on wheels, which raised it about a couple of feet above the rails, on and off which it could be lifted by four men, two at each end. It afforded comfortable standing-room for six, though more were often crowded on it, the men standing up to 'pump,' as working the handles by means of which it was propelled was called. To the genuine old railroad man this little machine is an object of much interest and care. There is a sort of dirge-like chant concerning it, the only line I can recall being that with which each verse concludes

And, Jerry, go ile the car!

a duty which, however the said Jerry may have attended to it, was always most conscientiously performed by Joe.

Our gang was a strange mixture, headed by the good-natured Austrian, our boss-whose knowledge of English, by the way, was very limited. Under him were two young Prussians, brothers, who, having been prospecting in the Rockies, had lost their outfit in attempting to cross the Bow River; an old Irish-Canadian, whose chief characteristic was a strong disinclination for any sort of exertion, save that of talking; a young Chicagoan, who was something of a dude, and evidently greatly dependent on the toothbrush which ostentatiously protruded from the outside breastpocket of his coat; and two Englishmen, of whom I was one. An old army-pensioner was with us for a time, a native of Dublin, and overflowing with amusing reminiscences of his soldier-life in India. But section work was not congenial to him, and one fine day, with his little bundle slung over his shoulder, he bade us good-bye, and tramped down East. I had wellnigh forgotten our Birmingham man, who, cut adrift as he was from civilisation, clung desperately to his last vestige of it in the shape of a dingy linen collar, which

he persisted in wearing long after it had ceased to be anything of an ornament.

The sections, indeed, are made up of all sorts and conditions of men, including almost every nationality. The gang who boarded with us was no less curiously composed than our own, the most noticeable member of it being a young Creole, a somewhat mysterious subject to our old Irish-Canadian, who would allude to him indiscriminately, yet not without a touch of awe, as that Kamtchatkan,' 'Norwegian,' or by any other out-of-the-way designation which might occur to him at the moment; expressing his belief, moreover, that quiet though 'the nigger' now appeared, he only wanted opportunity, and to be backed up by some of his own people, to work havoc in our little commonwealth, and perhaps murder the whole lot of us.

On a section not far from ours was an old man, a quondam London clerk, who had come over to the States to better his fortunes, and, failing in this, had drifted out here into section life, for which, notwithstanding the indomitable spirit that possessed him, his previous habits and shattered health rendered him wholly unfit. It must not be supposed, however, that the work was particularly hard, for to the ordinary British navvy it was nothing. I once heard such an one, who had been a section hand for some months, assert that during all that time he had not done one good day's work. Seeing me, as he considered, putting too much weight on my shovel, this easy soul advised me not to exert myself, for 'section men were not supposed to work '—appealing for corroboration of his statement to none other than the boss, who turned off the question with a half-deprecatory chuckle.

The work consisted in keeping the track in good level order, for which purpose we used a jack to raise the sunken rails, shovelling earth beneath the ties to keep them in their place. It would sometimes happen that after we had raised a length of track and had not finished tamping it,' as the latter operation was called, a train would come thundering along over the shaky spot, making the ties heave up and down in a manner remarkable to behold, and necessitating our doing the work all over again.

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A piece of work having been satisfactorily accomplished, and there being scarcely time to finish off another, Joe, regarding the job with a critical eye, would remark, Dot's pooty goot; leetle rest now.' And, reloading the pipe, which was rarely out of his mouth, he would bring himself comfortably to anchor, an example

we were not slow to follow, only arising on the stereotyped call, 'Shoofels on de car!'-which, being interpreted, meant that we were to gather up our tools and prepare for our homeward journey.

Joe, though a thorough and conscientious worker, was yet of an easy-going disposition, and most of his gang were ready enough to impose upon him. This state of things was not peculiar to our section, there being an almost entire absence of supervision in these parts, the roadmaster (ours, by the way, was an Englishman, and had risen from the ranks) only occasionally traversing the line. Retribution, however, is nearly sure to overtake the habitual idler. The boss on the section adjoining ours was reported to spend working hours playing cards with his gang. This young man ultimately got his dismissal.

The monotony of our work was now and then enlivened by some incident of prairie life, such as a party of Indians coming up to us and gravely shaking hands all round, after a gruff but cordial salutation, consisting of the one word 'Nichee' (good man) -and which, with admirable impartiality, they bestowed on all alike. I remember a young buck-far above work on his own account being greatly interested in the mechanism of our jack, handling it with much guarded curiosity, as not knowing what dangerous properties it might conceal. Totally unlike are these representatives of the noble savage from the spruced-up specimens one sees in shows-their faces thickly bedaubed with red and yellow, their gay-coloured, but usually grimy blankets wrapped around them, and their stony glare, which we would back any day against that of Tennyson's Britisher.

Once, but this was in the section-house, we were honoured by a visit from no less a personage than the ex-chief of the Crowfeet -a splendid and savage old man, such as Walt Whitman would have delighted in, yet not unused apparently to the ways of society, judging from his courtly bow in shaking hands with us. showed us an exquisitely finished rifle, a gift of former days, allowing us in turn to examine it, he looking on the while much as a mother might who had consigned her offspring into strange hands.

He

Those of us who were sportingly inclined took our guns with us on the car in autumn, and many a shot did we have at the prairiechickens, as they were called-though no chickens in size. Wild ducks and geese also abounded in the marshy pools with which the prairie around was studded; but they did not seek us out, as did the chickens. Wonderfully tame birds these, or else weary

of life, for they seemed absolutely to enjoy being shot at. Approaching to within a distance of a dozen paces or so, they would come to a dead stop, watching us stolidly. One of them once took its stand close to the telegraph-operator's shanty-or depôt, to give it its proper designation-and it was ludicrous to observe that gentleman potting away at it with his revolver, the bird regarding him with contemptuous indifference. At each shot, the operator, a tall, grave-looking man with a stoop, stealthily advanced a step, and there is no saying but that he might eventually have accomplished his purpose had not one of the young Prussians, whose ardour had been kindled by the sounds of firing, rushed, shot-gun in hand, upon the scene, and dropping on one knee to ensure his aim, put an end to the Englishman's little game and the suicidal fowl at one and the same moment; gleefully making off with the 'ploonder,' as he would have called it.

When there was nothing in particular to be done on the section, we would drive the car to a spring several miles off and fetch home a barrel of good water. Not far from the section-house was a small pool, or 'sluice,' from which all the water used for cooking and drinking purposes was ordinarily obtained. But when I mention that in ladling it out we had to exercise some care to avoid taking up any of the tadpoles and other small fry with which it was stocked, it will be seen that our sallies after a purer supply were not quite labour lost-so far at least as our own comfort was concerned.

Pleasant it was, this car-driving over the track, in the fine autumn mornings, when the oppressive heat with its swarms of mosquitoes was over. Around us stretched the prairie, illimitable on every side, its air of loneliness relieved perhaps by a cavalcade of Indians on their ponies, moving slowly over the plain, accompanied by their squaws and papooses, the latter attached in some ingenious fashion, along with the rest of their household-gods, to the trailing ends of the tepee-poles, their yelping dogs bringing up the rear. Failing this spectacle, there was never wanting the smaller game of the prairie to divert our gaze. Now we would scare a gopher out of the track, where it had been burrowing to itself a hole; anon a badger would be spied making along as fast as its unwieldy body would permit, this latter apparition never failing to cause intense excitement amongst the gang, most of whom, armed with shovels, would jump off the car, and haste to the massacre of the unoffending beast, towards whose