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We had covered one hundred and forty miles in twelve hours, including all stops, delays, and difficulties. It was the Old Sarnia Gravel which helped us on our journey that day. At Flint another new chain was put on, and also a rear sprocket with new differential gears. The old sprocket was badly worn and the teeth of the gears showed traces of hard usage.
However we followed it, and almost before we were aware we found ourselves out of the bush and standing on a broad clay road, and at length we arrived at Forest Station in good time for the cars to Sarnia. After this we visited Kettle Point every fortnight, and many were the amusing incidents connected with those trips.
The result of mature consideration, reasoning carefully upon all the facts I had collected, was, that, at that time, 1863, the best route for a Railway to the Pacific was, to commence at Halifax, to strike across to the Grand Trunk Railway at Riviere du Loup, 106 miles east of Quebec, then to follow the Grand Trunk system to Sarnia; to extend that system to Chicago; to use, under a treaty of neutralization, the United States lines from Chicago to St.
Long ere the east became purple with the morning light and the pinnacles of Sarnia were bathed, one by one, in the glory of its burning, we departed from the pleasant city, and the white sea-bird "Marguerite" spread her light wings over the surface of Lake Huron, whose waves although the wind was quite fresh did not run as high as I anticipated; for I had been informed that on the previous day the tide from the lake into Detroit River amounted to eight miles an hour.
The scene on board the boat beggars description. The other steamers being still ice-bound on Lake Superior, the Manitoba was obliged to take as much freight and as many passengers as she could carry, many of the latter having been waiting in Sarnia upwards of ten days for her departure.
And as incessant, as inevitable, and as unavailing as the spray that hangs over the Falls, is the white cloud of human crying.... With some such thoughts does the platitudinous heart win from the confusion and thunder of Niagara a peace that the quietest plains or most stable hills can never give. The boats that run from Sarnia the whole length of Lake Huron and Lake Superior are not comfortable.
The superintendent of the railway threatened to prosecute Edison, who was thoroughly frightened, and returned home without his baggage. During this vacation at Port Huron his ingenuity showed itself in a more creditable guise. An 'ice-jam' occurred on the St. Clair, and broke the telegraph cable between Port Huron and Sarnia, on the opposite shore.
After a long day's journey on the Grand Trunk Railway, without even the eccentricities of fellow-passengers in our Pullman car to amuse us, we were all glad to reach Sarnia. The monotony of the scenery through which we passed had been unbroken, except by a prettily situated cemetery, and the tasteful architecture of a hillside church, surrounded by trees just putting on their spring foliage.
"It was during the time young Edison was employed at Port Huron," the radio continued, "that the cable under River St. Clair between that city and Port Sarnia was severed by an ice jam. The river at that point is three quarters of a mile wide.
That Railway, projected half a century ago, was part of the great scheme of 1851, of which the Grand Trunk system from Portland, on the Atlantic, to Richmond; and from Riviere du Loup, by Quebec and Richmond, to Montreal, and then on to Kingston, Toronto, Sarnia, and Detroit had been completed and opened when I, thus, visited Canada, as Commissioner, in the autumn of 1861. I found Mr.
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