Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/305

Charles Dickens] 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 light 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