speeches, and besieged members of Congress
at the national capital: all, apparently, in vain.
Soon after, the Mexican war broke out,
public attention became absorbed in it, and it
seemed that even the slight headway which
Whitney and his little band of coadjutors had
made, would be lost. But the cause grew in
silence, as many great causes in this world do
grow. In 1850, the war being then finished,
and the gold mines of California just discovered,
the subject of a Pacific Railroad came, to all
appearance, very suddenly, to maturity.
Californian gold was a wondrous attraction
westward; might we not reach it, travelling by
steam, at the rate of forty miles an hour
instead of four? Early in this important year
1850, a convention—the inevitable resort of
Americans when anything of a public nature
is to be done—assembled at Philadelphia to
debate the subject of a Pacific Railroad, and
if considered feasible, to organise a plan for
carrying the project into effect. This gave
an authority to, and elicited an interest in the
matter, which attracted the attention of
Congress. And now came the era of expeditions and
surveys. General Fremont won the nomination
to the Presidency, mainly by the indefatigable
zeal of his journey across the Rocky
Mountains. Books began to multiply, bearing
on the subject. Congress published, at the
national expense, huge folios giving descriptions
and charts of the official surveys. After repeated
attempts to form a practical project—the
difficulties in the way thereof being many, and not
the least, the difficulty of choosing a route which
should be acceptable to both North and South—
a bill was finally passed through Congress in
1862 which indicated the route over which
the road has now been built. It passes from
Omaha up the valley of the Platte, and so
crossing Colorado and Utah, reaches the foot
of the Rocky Mountains on the Eastern side.
On the other side it starts from Sacramento,
the second city of California (which lies some
seventy-five miles north-west of San Francisco),
and thence crosses California and Nevada in
a north-westerly direction. It being evident
that neither the government alone, nor a
private company alone, could accomplish the
design, both were joined together in it. The
government gave authority to the company to
issue heavy mortgage bonds; made the necessary
grants of western public lands; provided for
the building of convenient branches, connecting
the chief settlements of Kansas and southern
Colorado with the main line; and reserved for
itself postal and military rights on the road.
It granted also certain subsidies to the company;
agreed to provide sixteen thousand dollars for
each mile laid down between the Missouri to the
mountains; and, when the construction became
more difficult. by reason of the necessity of
ascending the spurs and penetrating the passes,
thirty-two thousand dollars and forty-eight
thousand dollars per mile. These subsidies
paid in United States six per cent
bonds.

The four hundred miles of railway remaining
to be completed are by far the most formidable of
all. Each end of the railway has reached the base
of the Rocky Mountains; it remains to conquer
the mountains themselves. Still, nature does
not, even in that hitherto untraversed region,
show herself all unkindly; in some places,
according to one of the surveyors, she seems
even to have "prepared the way for the
locomotive." The authorities of the company
promise that the grade in only one locality shall
exceed ninety feet to the mile, and that such
grades as these shall extend but a short distance.
The ascent on both sides proves to be much
more gradual than had been supposed. The
abruptest and steepest part is on the western
slope, in the passes of the famous Sierra
Nevada; here there is a rise, within the limit of
one hundred miles, of something over seven
thousand feet. The highest grade necessary
in the whole route—the exception exceeding
ninety feet — will be about one hundred
and sixteen feet to the mile, and it is but
three miles long; in England itself there are
higher comparative grades than this; and
we think the railway over Mont Cenis far
exceeds it.

The science of railway engineering, which
has made so wonderful a progress within
the past few years, appears to be acquiring
a power which no obstructions of nature can
successfully oppose; and as far as the construction
of the Pacific Railroad is concerned, its
entire practicability is demonstrated. But,
although the beauties and advantages of
the completed railway are commonly painted
couleur de rose, it is not probable that
completion will put an end to the difficulties of
the route. The Mormons, whose colony is now
flourishing and increasing in the heart of far
western Utah, had begun to flatter themselves
that they were established in a solitude, which
neither gentile, nor heathen, would reach.
They had tilled the land, and brought it under
cultivation, and had revelled in the idea of a
great and thriving system, to be the product
of their labours, and to be built on the
foundations of their faith. Now, the Pacific
Railroad has not only approached, but has
reached, their very doors; bringing the tide of
gentile civilisation, and the hubbub of the un-
Mormon world, straight in upon them. Whatever
obstacles they can raise against the railway
they will surely raise. It will be no Iight
difficulty in the way of the future railway to
encounter the grim hostility of so large and
fanatical a community.

It will not be easy to protect a line of
railway passing through two thousand
consecutive miles of wild solitudes, from the
guerilla onslaughts of the Indian tribes. True,
the Indian is slowly disappearing from his
traditional hunting grounds; but the tribes
that still survive, have in no degree lost the
old Indian dread of civilisation, the old Indian
ferocity against the white man. They may
still come down upon the railway, in the heart
of those stupendous forests; and it must be, in
the first few years at least, through varied, and