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- 72 VICTORIA ILLUSTRATED.
main Wellington road ; the E. & N. Railway track being on one side of the property and the New Vancouver Coal Company's line to
Departure Bay on the other. Here are manufactured large quantities of blasting powder, the apparatus, which is of the latest and best,
having a capacity of 15o twenty-five pound kegs during the twenty-four hours. The buildings are necessarily of the most substantial
description, some of the machinery being very ponderous. It is the intention to enter largely into the production of sporting powder. At
Departure Bay, on property secured from the Messrs. Dunsmuir, the company have works for the production of dynamite and other high
explosives, the demand for which is very considerable. The general manager in British Columbia for this influential company is Mr. H. J.
Scott, whose office is on Wharf Street, Victoria.
TRANSPORTATION FACILITIES.
Although Victoria is situated upon an island, and by those processes which are peculiar to diplomats has been separated by a considerable
distance from the Mainland of the Province of which the Island of Vancouver forms a part, no one can fail to be impressed with the
commanding position which she occupies at the junction of the Straits of Fuca with those of Georgia, the one the entrance to the Puget
Sound country, the other the approach to the most westerly British possession on the North American continent. All vessels passing in
either direction are obliged to sail within sight of her, on which account the Queen City is the most eligible point for the handling
and distribution of cargoes for a very consider-able distance on the Northern Pacific Coast. Heavy ocean craft have neither to traverse
the tortuous Haro Canal, nor the equally difficult Rosario Strait, to reach Victoria, while under more satisfactory commercial and shipping
arrangements it could not fail to be more advantageous, and much more safe, to tranship cargoes at some point such as this, and lighten
them to and from the different points of distribution along Admiralty Inlet, and from one end of the Sound to the other. Indeed, the
Americans have fully recognized this, and leading citizens have not been slow to declare that, but for the accident of geographical,
or rather territorial, location, Victoria would be the most important sea port on the; Pacific, north of San Francisco. Failing of this
pre-requisite, there are many patriotic citizens of the adjoining Republic who have fixed their eyes upon Anacortes and Port Gardner,
while others have turned their attention to Port Angeles, on the Straits.
E. G. PRIOR AND CO., HARDWARE AND FARMING IMPLEMENTS.
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