"All hope abandon, ye who enter here!"

Some States paid, some did not pay. The sums that came in were wholly insufficient to relieve the actual pressure, and that pressure, unrelieved, grew daily more severe. They had tried the regulating of prices,—they had tried loans,—they had tried a lottery; and now they were forced back again to their earliest and most dangerous expedient, paper-money. New floods poured forth, and the parched earth drank them greedily up. One may almost fancy, as he looks at the tables, that he sees the shadowy form of sickly Credit tottering feebly forth to catch a gleam of sunshine, a breath of pure air, while myriads of little sprites, each bearing in his hand an emblazoned scroll with "Depreciation" written upon it in big yellow letters, dance merrily around him, thrusting the bitter record in his face, whichever way he turns, with gibes and taunts and demoniac laughter. But his course was almost ended: the grave was nigh, an unhonored grave; and as eager hands heaped the earth upon his faded form, a stern voice bade men remember that they who strayed from the path as he had done must sooner or later find a grave like his.

It was not without a desperate struggle that Congress saw the rapid decline and shameful death of its currency. The ground was fought manfully, foot by foot, inch by inch. The idea that money derived its value from acts of government seemed to have taken deep hold of their minds, and their policy was in perfect harmony with their belief. In January, 1776, they had solemnly resolved that everybody who refused to accept their bills, or did anything to obstruct the circulation of them, should, upon due conviction, "be deemed, published, and treated as an enemy of his country, and be precluded from all trade or intercourse with the inhabitants of these Colonies." And to enforce it there were Committees of Inspection, whose power seldom lay idle in their hands, whose eyes were never sealed in slumber. In this work, which seemed good in their eyes, the State Assemblies and Conventions and Committees of Safety joined heart and hand with Congress. Tender-laws were tried, and the relentless hunt of creditor after debtor became a flight of the recusant creditor from the debtor eager to wipe out his responsibility for gold or silver with a ream or two of paper. Limitation of prices was tried, and produced its natural results,—discontent, insufficient supplies, heavy losses. Threatening resolves were renewed, and fell powerless. It was hoped that some relief might come from the sales of confiscated property; but property changed hands, and the Treasury was none the better off: just as in France, a few years later, the whole landed property of the kingdom changed hands, and left the government assignats what it found them,—bits of waste-paper.

Meanwhile speculation ran riot. Every form of wastefulness and extravagance prevailed in town and country,—nowhere more than at Philadelphia, under the very eyes of Congress,—luxury of dress, luxury of equipage, luxury of the table. We are told of one entertainment at which eight hundred pounds were spent in pastry. As I read the private letters of those days, I sometimes feel as a man would feel who should be permitted to look down upon a foundering ship whose crew were preparing for death by breaking open the steward's room and drinking themselves into madness.

An earnest appeal was made to the States. The sober eloquence and profound statesmanship of John Jay were employed to bring the subject before the country in its true light and manifold bearings,—the state of the Treasury, the results of loans and of taxes, and the nature and amount of the obligations incurred. The natural value and wealth of the country were held to view as the foundations on which Congress had undertaken to build up a system of public finances, beginning with bills of Credit because there was no nation they could have borrowed of, coming next to loans, and thus "unavoidably creating a public debt: a debt of $159,948,880, in emissions,—$7,545,196-67/90, in money borrowed before the first of March, 1778, with the interest payable in France,—$26,188,909, money borrowed since the first of March, 1778, with interest due in America,—about $4,000,000, of money due abroad." The taxes had brought in only $3,027,560; so that all the money supplied to Congress by the people was but $36,701,665-67/90.

"Judge, then, of the necessity of emissions, and learn from whom and whence that necessity arose. We are also to inform you, that, on the first day of September instant, we resolved that we would on no account whatever emit more bills of credit than to make the whole amount of such bills two hundred million dollars; and as the sum emitted and in circulation amounted to $159,948,880, and the sum of $40,051,120 remained to complete the two hundred million above mentioned, we, on the third day of September instant, further resolved that we would emit such part only of the said sum as should be absolutely necessary for public exigencies before adequate supplies could otherwise be obtained, relying for such ratios on the exertions of the several States."

Coming to the depreciation, they reduce the causes to three kinds,—natural, or artificial, or both. The natural cause was the excess of the supply over the demands of commerce; the artificial cause was a distrust of the ability or inclination of the United States to redeem their bills; and assuming that both causes have combined in producing the depreciation of the Continental money, they proceed to prove that there can be no doubt of the ability of the United States to pay their debt, and none of their inclination. Under the head of inclination the argument is divided into three parts:—

First, Whether, and in what manner, the faith of the United States has been pledged for the redemption of their bills.

Second, Whether they have put themselves in a political capacity to redeem them.

Third, Whether, admitting the two former propositions, there is any reason to apprehend a wanton violation of the public faith. The idea that Congress can destroy the money, because Congress made it, is treated with scorn.

"A bankrupt, faithless Republic would be a novelty in the political world.... The pride of America revolts from the idea; her citizens know for what purposes these emissions were made, and have repeatedly plighted their faith for the redemption of them; they are to be found in every man's possession, and every man is interested in their being redeemed.... Provide for continuing your armies in the field till victory and peace shall lead them home, and avoid the reproach of permitting the currency to depreciate in your hands, when, by yielding a part to taxes and loans, the whole might have been appreciated and preserved. Humanity as well as justice makes this demand upon you; the complaints of ruined widows and the cries of fatherless children, whose whole support has been placed in your hands and melted away, have doubtless reached you: take care that they ascend no higher.... Determine to finish the contest as you began it, honestly and gloriously. Let it never be said that America had no sooner become independent than she became insolvent."

But it was not only the Continental money that was blocking up the channels through which a sound currency would have carried vigor and health. The States had their debts and their paper-money too,—wheel within wheel of complicated, desperate insolvency. The two hundred millions had been issued and spent. There was no money to send to Washington for his army, and he was compelled for a while to support them by seizing the articles he needed, and giving certificates in return. The States were called upon for specific supplies, beef, pork, flour, for the use of the army,—a method so expensive, irregular, and partial, that it was soon abandoned. One chance remained: to call in the old money by taxes, and burn it as soon as it was in; then to issue a new paper,—one of the new for every twenty of the old; and the whole of the old was cancelled, to issue only ten millions of the new,—four millions of it subject to the order of Congress, and the remaining six to be divided among the States: the whole redeemable in specie within six years, and bearing till then an interest of five per cent., payable in specie annually or on redemption, at the option of the holder. By this skilful change of base it was hoped that a bold front could still be presented to the enemy, and the field, which had been so long and so obstinately contested, be finally won.

But the day of expedients was past. The zeal which had blazed forth with such energy at the beginning of the war was fast sinking to a fitful, smouldering flame. Individual interests were again taking the precedence of general interests. The moral sense of the people had contracted a deadly taint from daily contact with corruption. The spirit of gambling, confined in the beginning and lost to the eye, like Le Sage's Devil, had swollen to its full proportions, and, in the garb of speculation, was undermining the foundations of society. Rogues were growing rich; the honest men who were not already poor were daily growing poor. The laws that had been made in the view of propping the currency had served only to countenance unscrupulous men in paying their debts at a discount ruinous to the creditor. The laws against forestallers and engrossers, who, it was currently believed, were leagued against both army and country, were powerless, as such laws always are. Even Washington wished for a gallows like Haman's to hang them on; but the army was kept starving none the less.

The seasons themselves—God's visible agents—seemed to combine against our cause. The years 1779 and 1780 were years of small crops. The winter of 1780 was severe far beyond the common severity even of a Northern winter. Provisions were scarce, suffering universal. Farmers, as if forgetting their dependence on rain and sunshine, had planted less than usual,—some from disaffection, some because they were irritated at having to give up their corn and cattle for worthless bills, and certificates which might prove equally worthless. Some, who were within reach of the enemy, preferred to sell to them, for they paid in silver and gold. There were riots in Philadelphia, put down at the point of the sword. There was mutiny in the army, and this, too, was put down by the strong hand,—though the fearful sufferings which had caused it justified it almost in the eye of sober reason.

It is easy to see why farmers should have been loath to raise more than they needed for their own use,—why merchants should have been unwilling to lay in stores which they might be compelled to sell at prices so truly nominal that the money which they received would often sink to half they had taken it for before they were able to pass it. But it is not so easy to see why this wretched substitute for values should have circulated so freely to the very last. Even at two hundred for one, with the knowledge that the next twenty-four hours might make that two hundred two hundred and fifty, or even more, without the slightest hope that it would ever be redeemed at its nominal value, it would still buy everything that was to be sold,—provisions, goods, houses, lands, even hard money itself. Down to its last gasp there were speculations afoot to take advantage of the differences in the degree of its worthlessness at different places, and buy it up in one place to sell it at another,—to buy it in Philadelphia at two hundred and twenty-five for one, and sell it in Boston at seventy-five for one. It was possible, if the ball passed quickly from hand to hand, that some might gain; it was very manifest that some must lose: and thus outcrops that pernicious doctrine, that true, life-giving, health-diffusing commerce consists in stripping one to clothe another.

And thus we reach the memorable year 1781, the great, decisive year of the war. While Greene was fighting Cornwallis and Rawdon, and Washington watching eagerly for an opportunity to strike at Clinton, Congress was busy making up its accounts. One circumstance told for them. There was no longer the same dearth of gold and silver which had embarrassed them so much at the beginning of the war. A gainful commerce was now opened with the West Indies. The French army and the French fleet were here, and hard money with them. Louis-d'ors and livres and Spanish dollars,—how welcome must their pleasant faces have looked, after this long, long absence! With what a thrill must the hand which had touched nothing for years but Continental bills have closed upon solid gold and silver! It is easy to conceive that a new spirit must soon have manifested itself in the wide circle of contractors and agents,—that shopkeepers must speedily have discovered that their business was shifting its ground as they obtained a reliable standard for counting their losses and gains,—that every branch of commerce must have felt a new vigor diffusing itself through its veins. But it is equally evident, that, while the gold and silver which flowed in upon them from these sources strengthened the people for the work they were to do and the burdens they were to bear, the comparisons they were daily making between fluctuating paper and steadfast metal were not of a nature to strengthen their faith in money that could be made by a turn of the printing-press and a few strokes of the pen.

Another circumstance told for them, too. The accession of Maryland had fulfilled the conditions for the acceptance of the Confederation so long held in abeyance, and the finances were taken from a board and intrusted to the hands of a skilful and energetic financier. Robert Morris, who had protested energetically against the tender-laws, made specie-payments the condition of his acceptance of office; and on the twenty-second of May, though not without a struggle, Congress resolved "that the whole debts already due by the United States be liquidated as soon as may be to their specie-value, and funded, if agreeable to the creditors, as a loan upon interest; that the States be severally informed that the calculations of the expenses of the present campaign are made in solid coin, and therefore that the requisitions from them respectively, being grounded on those calculations, must be complied with in such manner as effectually to answer the purpose designed; that, experience having evinced the inefficacy of all attempts to support the credit of paper-money by compulsory acts, it is recommended to such States, where laws making paper-bills a tender yet exist, to repeal the same."

Another public body, the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, dealt it another blow, fixing the ratio at which it was to be received in public payments at one hundred and seventy-five for one. Circulation ceased. In a short time the money that had been carted to and fro in reams disappeared from the shop, the counting-room, the market. All dealings were in hard money. Gold and silver resumed their legitimate sway, and men began to look hopefully forward to a return of economy, frugality, and an invigorating commerce.

The Superintendent of Finance set himself seriously to his task. One great obstacle had been removed; one great and decisive step had been made towards the restoration of that sense of security without which industry and enterprise are powerless. As a merchant, he was familiar with the resources of the country; as a Member of Congress, he was familiar with the wants of Government. His resources were taxes and loans; his obligations, an old debt and a daily expenditure. Opposed as he was to the irresponsible currency which had brought the country to the brink of ruin, he was a believer in banks and bills resting on a secure basis. One of his earliest measures was to prepare, with the aid of his Assistant-Superintendent, Gouverneur Morris, a plan of a bank, which soon after, with the sanction of Congress, went into operation as the Bank of North America. Small as the capital with which it started was,—only four hundred thousand dollars,—its influence was immediately felt throughout the country. It gave an impulse to legitimate enterprise which had long been wanting, and a confidence to buyer and seller which they had not felt since the first year of the war. In his public operations the Superintendent used it freely, and, using it at the same time wisely, was enabled to call upon it for aid to the full extent of its ability without impairing its strength.

Henceforth the financial history of the Revolution, although it loses none of its importance, loses much of its narrative-interest. No longer a hand-to-hand conflict between coin and paper,—no longer the melancholy spectacle of wise men doing unwise things, and honorable men doing things which, in any other form, they would have been the first to brand with dishonor,—it still continues a long, a wearisome, and often a mortifying struggle: men knowing their duty and refusing to do it, knowing consequences and yet blindly shutting their eyes to them. I will give but one example.

After a careful estimate of the operations of 1782, Congress had called upon the States for eight millions. Up to January, 1783, only four hundred and twenty thousand had come into the Treasury. Four hundred thousand Treasury-notes were almost due; the funds in Europe were overdrawn to the amount of five hundred thousand by the sale of drafts. But Morris, waiting only to cover himself by a special authorization of Congress, made fresh sales upon the hopes of the Dutch loan and the possibility of a new French loan, and still held on—as cautiously as he could, but ever boldly and skilfully—his anxious way through the rocks and shoals that menaced him on every side. He was rewarded, as such men too often are, by calumny and suspicion. But when men came to look closely at his acts, comparing his means with his wants, and the expenditure of the Treasury Board with the expenditure of the Finance Office, it was seen and acknowledged that he had saved the country thirteen millions a year in hard money.

And now, from our stand-point of the Peace,—from 1783,—let us give a parting glance at the ground over which we have passed. We see thirteen Colonies, united by interest, divided by habits, association, and tradition, engaging in a doubtful contest with one of the most powerful and energetic nations which the world had ever seen; we see them begin, as men always do, with very imperfect conceptions of the time it would last, the lengths to which it would carry them, or the sacrifices it would impose; we see them boldly adopting some measures, timidly shrinking from others,—reasoning justly about some things, reasoning falsely about things equally important,—endowed at times with singular foresight, visited at times by incomprehensible blindness: boatmen on a mighty river, strong themselves and resolute and skilful, plying their oars manfully from first to last, but borne onward by a current which no human science could measure, no human strength could resist.

They knew that the resources of the country were exhaustless; and they threw themselves upon those resources in the only way by which they could reach them. Their bills of credit were the offspring of enthusiasm and faith. The enthusiasm grew chill, the faith failed. With a little more enthusiasm, the people would cheerfully have submitted to taxation; with a little more faith, the Congress would have taxed them. In the end, the people paid for the shortcomings of their enthusiasm by seventy millions of indirect taxation,—taxation through depreciation; the Congress paid for the shortcomings of their faith by the loss of confidence and respect. The war left them with a Federal debt of seventy million dollars, and State debts of nearly twenty-six millions.

Could this have been avoided? Could they have done otherwise? It is easy, when the battle is won, to tell how victory might have been bought cheaper,—when the campaign is ended, to show what might perhaps have brought it to an earlier and more glorious close. It is easy for us, with the whole field before us, to see that from the beginning, from the very first start, although the formula was Taxation, the principle was Independence; but before we venture to pass sentence, ought we not to pause and weigh well our judgment and our words,—we who, in the fiercer contest through which we are passing, have so long failed to see, that, while the formula is Secession, the principle is Slavery?



THROUGH-TICKETS TO SAN FRANCISCO: A PROPHECY.

We write this article in September. Within a few days, and without much heralding, has occurred an event of prime importance to our country's future. This is the opening from New York to St. Louis of a continuous broad-gauge line under the title of the Atlantic and Great Western Railway. This line is twelve hundred miles long, and pursues the following route: By the New York and Erie Road, from New York to the station of Salamanca; thence, by a separate road of the Atlantic and Great Western, to Dayton, Ohio; thence, over the Cincinnati, Hamilton, and Dayton Road, to Cincinnati; and finally, by the Ohio and Mississippi Road, to St. Louis. The first excursion-train accomplished the whole distance in forty-four hours. We understand that the regular express-trains of the line will be required to make equally good time,—ultimately, perhaps, to reduce the time to forty hours.

This valuable connection has been mainly effected by the energy and talents of two men. Mr. James McHenry, a Pennsylvanian by birth, but of late years resident abroad, has raised twenty million dollars for the project in the money-markets of England, Spain, and Germany, the bonds of the Company obtaining ready sale upon the guaranty of his personal high character for uprightness and financial ability. Mr. Thomas W. Kennard, an engineer and capitalist of large views, discretion, and experience, has managed the interests of the project here at home, securing the hearty cooperation and good-will of all the roads now made continuous, and bringing the enterprise to a successful issue with a skill possible only to first-class commercial genius. The former of these gentlemen is Financial Director and Contractor, the latter, Engineer-in-Chief, Vice-President, and General Manager of the line. At any other period than this their success would have been widely talked of as a great national benefit. Even now let us not forget the public-spirited men whose hopeful hands, in the midst of blood and din, have been sowing seeds of commercial prosperity to glorify with their perfected harvest the day of our National triumph and reunion.

This work is the first instalment of the greatest popular enterprise in the world, the initial fulfilment of a promise which America has made to herself and all the other nations,—one which shall be completely fulfilled only when an iron highway stretches across her entire breadth, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. As a people we have grudged neither time nor money to the accomplishment of this end. We have dared the fiery desert and the frozen mountaintop, the demons of thirst, starvation, and savage warfare. Our foremost scientific men, for the sake of the great national enterprise, have taken their lives in their hands, going out to meet peril and privation with the cheerful constancy of apostles and martyrs. The record of expeditions bearing either directly or indirectly on the subject of the Pacific Railroad is one to which every American citizen must point with a pride none the less hearty for the fact that its route has not yet been absolutely decided. The one curse mingled with a young republic's many blessings is the intrusion of political influences into the dispassionate field of national enterprise. We might have determined the line of our Pacific Road before the breaking out of the Rebellion, and by this time its first or Great-Plains section should have been in running order, but for the partisan jealousies which prevailed in high places between the advocates of the different routes. Slavery, that enfant gate of our old-school and now happily obsolete statecraft, insisted on the expensive toy of a southern and unpractical line, until our representatives, harassed by the problem how to gratify her without incurring the contempt of the financial world, gave over to the drift of events the settlement of their country's chief commercial question. We are now in a position to decide coolly; no entangling alliances with a dead-weight social system bias our plain judgment of practical pros and cons; but the opportunity for decision arrives a little too late and a little too early for action. Congress, the legitimate custodian of the Pacific Railroad, may be said to have passed the last four years in climbing to the level of the country's vital exigency. Till Congress reaches that and understands it fully, there is no surplus energy to be thrown away on the else paramount matters of a peaceful age.

But it must not be forgotten that the Pacific Railroad stands next to the maintenance of National Unity on the docket of causes for adjudication by our representative tribunal. The people have filed it away till the grand appeal is settled; but they have not forgotten it.

It is none the pleasanter thought to them because they have no time to talk about it, that the great highway of the continent has been left, pendente lite, in the hands of squabbling speculators, and that personal recriminations bar the progress of our commerce between sea and sea. The indifference of our public trustees to the disgraceful controversies which have embarrassed work on the eastern end of the line is itself not a disgrace only because human power is limited to the care of one great matter at a time. The first Congress that meets under the olive of an honorable peace must at once take the Pacific Railroad into the Nation's hands, and prosecute it as the Nation's matter, with a liberal-mindedness learned from the conduct of a great war. Next to the salvation of the Union, the completion of the Pacific Road most fully justifies prompt action and comparative disregard of expenditure.

It is not our purpose, nor is this the place, to dictate to our legislators either the precise line of their own action or that of the road. It is still proper to say that the arrangements thus far entered into with private contractors have proved inadequate to the accomplishment and unworthy of the character of the enterprise. Whatever may be the details of the improved plan, it must embrace a sterner national surveillance over the execution of the project, and a direct national assumption of its prime responsibility.

It is a mistaken notion to suppose that the Pacific-Railroad question rests on the same principles as that of our minor internal improvements. It calls for no reopening of the long-hushed controversy between Democracy and Whiggism. The best thinkers of the day are universally agreed to deprecate legislation in every case where private enterprise will do its office. No good political economist approves the emasculation of private effort by Government subsidy. The people are averse to statutory crutches and go-carts, wherever it is possible for them to walk alone. We feel distrust of the railroad which asks monopoly-privileges. The sight of a Governmental prop under any ostensibly commercial concern warns an American from its neighborhood. He has learned that true prestige lies with the people,—that there is no vital warmth in official patronage. Even within the memory of young men a great change for the better has taken place in our commercial manliness. Out first-class public enterprises blush to take Government help, as their directors might blush, if at the close of an interview Mr. Lincoln "tipped" them like school-boys with a holiday handful of greenbacks. There is no doubt that the ideal principle of democratic progress demands the absolute non-interference of Government in all enterprises whose benefit accrues to a part of its citizens, or which can be stimulated into life by the spontaneous operation of popular interest.

But facts are not ideal, and absolute principles in their practical application make head only by a curved line of compromise with the facts. The philosopher cannot go faster than the people. Certain courses are proper for certain stages of development. Few New-York Democrats now denounce the building of "Clinton's Ditch," and the fact that a majority approved of it as a sufficient evidence that it was a measure suited to the period; though even an old Whig at this day could not approve of a State canal under the auspices of Governor Seymour. Here are the two great questions which at any time must regulate the exertion of Governmental power: Is the enterprise vitally important? and, Will it be accomplished by private effort?

Because the Nation in several eminent instances saw the former question answered affirmatively and the latter negatively, it centralized a certain amount of authority for the construction of fortresses and the maintenance of a military force. These matters vitally concerned the entire people, yet the ordinary stimuli to private enterprise were quite inadequate to securing their accomplishment.

The Pacific Railroad stands on precisely the same grounds. It concerns the entire population of the United States, but no ordinary business-organization of citizens will ever accomplish it alone. The mere cost of its construction might stagger the most audacious financier; but that is a minor obstacle. No doubt the city of New York and the State of California contain capital enough for the completion of the entire road,—would subscribe to it, too, upon sufficient guaranties. But who is to give those guaranties? Whose credit is broad enough to secure them? Our Atlantic capitalists have too often been defrauded by stock-companies of moderate liabilities and immediately under their own eyes, to feel quite comfortable about putting millions into the hands of private operators, who shall presently have the Rocky Mountains between them and their bondholders. In the case of almost any other railroad-enterprise this objection might be answered by the proposal to build the line with the subscriptions of people living on its route. But this line must take a route without people, and bring people to the route. Certain other roads are guarantied by the pledge of their way-freight business. This road must be completed before such a business exists; the business must be the product of the road. The ordinary principle of demand and supply is reversed in its application to this case. Supply must precede demand. Furnish the Pacific Railroad to the continent, and the continent in ten years will give it all the business it can do. Wait fifty years for the continent to take the initiative, and there will not yet be enough business to build the road.

This enterprise must be looked at in the light of a cash-advance from California and the Eastern States to the Plains, the Mountains, and the Desert, secured by a pledge of all the mineral and agricultural wealth of the party of the second part, guarantied by the prospective myriads of settlers whom the road shall bring to tracts now lying waste through the mere lack of its existence. In the course of the present article we shall endeavor to show the solidity of this security, the responsibility of these indorsers. While we counsel confidence to the capital which must build the road, we feel it imperative upon the National Government to enforce its position as that capital's trustee. That capital for the most part lies east of the Missouri and west of the Sierra Nevada. Between these two boundaries the road must run for eighteen hundred miles through a region where capital may well be cautious of intrusting its life to any less potent authority than that of the Nation itself.

The claims of the Pacific Railroad have usually been urged upon the ground of its benefit to its termini. This ground is adequate to justify any advance of capital by the cities of New York and San Francisco. With the completion of the road, San Francisco necessarily becomes a depot for the entire China trade of the United States, and an entrepot for much of that between China and Western Europe. With the development of our Japanese relations, still another stream of wealth, now incalculable, must flow in through the Golden Gate. In the reverse current of Asiatic commerce, New York's position at the eastern terminus of the continental belt gives her a similar share. The gold-transport and the entire fast-freight business of New York and San Francisco, now transacted at an enormous expense by Wells and Fargo's Express, must be transferred en masse to the Pacific Road; while the passenger-carriage, now devolving on Isthmus steamers and overland stages, may be passed, practically entire, to the credit of the new line. Certainly, no traveller who has once purchased bitter experience with his ticket on Mr. Vanderbilt's line will ever again patronize that enterprising capitalist, unless he sells his ships and becomes a stockholder in the Pacific Railroad. The most enthusiastic lover of the sea must abjure his predilections, when brought to the ordeal of the steamer Champion. Crowded like rabbits in a hutch or captives in the Libby into such indecent propinquity with his kind that the third day out makes him a misanthrope,—fed on the putrid remains of the last trip's commissariat, turkeys which drop out of their skins while the cook is larding them in the galley, beef which maybe eaten as spoon-meat, and tea apparently made with bilge-water,—sleeping or vainly trying to sleep in an unventilated dungeon which should be called death instead of berth, where the reek of the aforesaid putridities awakes him to breakfast without aid of gong,—propelled by a second-hand engine, whose every wheeze threatens the terrors of dissolution,—morally certain, that, if his floating sty from any cause ceases to float, there are not boats enough to save an eighth of the passengers,—he must admire the ocean with a true poet's enthusiasm, if he can brave the Champion a second time.

The considerations we have mentioned should be sufficiently operative with the capitalists of New York and California, and, as such, are those most prominently urged by the friends of the road. It would, however, be a great mistake to regard the through-business an all-comprehensive, in enumerating the sources of profit to be relied on by the enterprise. For a better understanding of that immense way-trade which lies between the oceans, waiting only for the whistle of the steam-genie to wake it into vigorous life, let us treat the entire line as already continuous from New York to San Francisco, and make an excursion to the Pacific on its prophetic rails. We will suppose the track a uniform broad gauge, as it ought to be,—the Pacific Road connecting at St. Louis with the Atlantic and Great Western by powerful boats, like those in use at Havre de Grace, capable of ferrying the heaviest cars between the Illinois and Missouri shores. We will take the liberty of constructing for ourselves the remainder of the still undecided route to the Pacific. We run our ideal broad gauge as follows:—

From St. Louis to Jefferson City; thence by the shortest line to the Kansas-River crossing; thence to Leavenworth (where St. Joseph, makes connection by a branch-track); thence to that bend of the Republican Fork which nearest approaches the Little Blue; thence along the bottoms of the Republican to the foot of the high divide out of which it is believed to rise, and which also serves for the water-shed between the Platte and Arkansas; and thence skirting the bluffs a distance of about one hundred miles to Denver. At Denver we find two branches making junctions with our line: one connects us with Central City, the great mining-town of Colorado, by a series of grades which might appall the Pennsylvania Central; the other threads the foot-hills and mesas between Denver and the Fontaine-qui-Bouille Spa at Colorado City, with the possibility of its being extended in time to Canon City on the Arkansas. From Denver we strike for the nearest point on the Cache-la-Poudre, follow its bed as far as practicable, and rise from that level to the grand plateau of the Laramie Plains. Running through these Plains, we cross the Big and the Little Laramie Rivers, here shallow streams, crystal clear, and scarcely wider than the Housatonic at Pittsfield. Just after leaving the Plains, we cross Medicine Bow,—a mere brook,—and a few hours later the North Fork of the Platte, which eccentrically turns up in this most unexpected quarter, running nearly due north from a source which cannot be very far off. The rope-ferry by which the writer last crossed this picturesque and rapid stream we have replaced by a strong iron bridge. Leaving the west end of that bridge, we look out of the rear car and send our final message to the Atlantic by the last stream which we shall find going thither. A stupendous, but not impracticable, system of grades next carries us over the axial water-shed of the continent, by the way of Bridger's Pass. One hundred and fifty miles of tortuous descent brings us to Green River,—the stream which farther down becomes the mysterious Colorado, and seeks the Pacific by the Gulf of California. After crossing the Green by another iron bridge substituted for rope-ferriage, our first important station will be Fort Bridger. Leaving there, we almost immediately enter the galleries of the Wahsatch Range, which form a continuous pass across Bear River and into the tremendous canons conducting down to Salt-Lake City. From Salt Lake we pursue the shortest practicable route through the Desert to the Ruby-Valley Pass of the Humboldt Mountains; we cross that range to enter another desert, descend to the Sink of Carson, and reascend to Carson City, thence going nearly due north till we strike the line of the Truckee Pass, (where a branch connects us with the principal Washoe mines,) and thence to Sacramento by the long-projected California section of the Pacific Railroad. Another proposed, but still ideal, road completes our connection with the Western Ocean by way of Stockton, San Jose, and San Francisco.

We do not pretend to assert that the route indicated is in all respects the most economical and practicable; a good deal more surveying must be done before that can be said of any entire route, though we think it may fairly be claimed for our ideal section between St. Louis and Denver. We have chosen this route because along its course are more completely represented the natural features to which in any case the Pacific Railroad must look for all its primary obstacles and part of its subsequent profits.

To complete the conception as its reality must in time be completed, let us unite our Trans-Missouri portion with the Atlantic and Great Western Railway, under the all-inclusive title of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad. It will not be very far out of the way to regard thirty-eight hundred miles as the entire length of the line. On the Atlantic and Great Western section express-trains will run at a speed of twenty-seven miles an hour, including stops; but to provide against every detention, let us slow our through-express to twenty-five miles. At this rate we shall traverse the continent in six days and eight hours. In other words, the San-Francisco gentleman who left the Jersey depot by the five o'clock Atlantic and Pacific express-train on Monday morning may reasonably expect (allowing for difference of longitude) to be in the bosom of his family just in time to accompany them to morning service on the following Sunday.

We will suppose our packing accomplished the day before we set out. During the evening we send our watches to get the exact Washington time. The schedule of the entire road is based upon that time; and a thousand inconveniences, once endured by the traveller between New York and St. Louis, are thereby avoided. It is not necessary to alter one's watch with every new conductor. We no longer grow dizzy with a horrible uncertainty on the subject of what-'s-o'clock,—ignorant whether we are running on New-York time, Dayton time, Cincinnati time, or St. Louis time,—whether, indeed, all time be not a pure subjective notion, and any o'clock at all a mere popular delusion. For the introduction of a uniform standard we have originally to thank the Atlantic and Great Western Railway.

In comfort and elegance the second-class cars of the Atlantic and Pacific Road correspond to the omnivorous cars in use on our railroads generally. But we are a family-party, have nearly a week of travel before us, and prefer to sacrifice our money rather than our comfort. It costs a third, perhaps one-half more, to take first-class tickets; but these secure us a compartment entirely to ourselves,—fitted up with all the luxury of a lady's boudoir. We have comfortable arm-chairs to sit in all day, the latest improvement in folding-beds to sleep in at night. Our mirror, water-tank, basin, and all our toilet-arrangements are independent of the rest of the train. We have a table in the centre of our compartment for cards or luncheon. If we are wise, we have also brought along three or four Champagne-baskets stocked with private commissariat-stores, which make us quite independent of that black-art known as Western cookery. These contain sardines (half-boxes are the most practically useful size for a small party); chow-chow; pates-de-foie-gras; a selection of various potted meats; a few hundred Zwiebacks from our Berlin baker, and as many sticks of Italian bread from our Milanese; a dozen pounds of hard-tack, and a half-dozen of soda-crackers; an assortment of canned fruits, including, as absolute essentials, peaches and the Shaker apple-butter; a pot of anchovy-paste; a dozen half-pint boxes of concentrated coffee, and as many of condensed milk, both, as the writer has abundantly tested, prepared with unrivalled excellence by an establishment in Boston; a tin box containing ten pounds of lump-sugar; a kettle and gas-stove, to be attached by a flexible tube to one of the burners lighting the compartment; a dozen bottles of lemon-syrup; and whatever stores, in the way of wines, liquors, and cigars, may strike the fancy of the party. This may seem an ambitious outfit, but for the first year of the Pacific Railroad it will be an absolutely necessary one. As civilization spreads westward along the grand iron conductor of the continent, our national gastronomy will develop itself in company with all the other arts; but for the present it is safe to assume that outside of our private stores we shall not find a good cup of coffee after we leave St. Louis, or decent bread of any kind between Denver and Sacramento.

We seat ourselves in our comfortable arm-chairs, without the mortification of removing single gentlemen and the trouble of reversing seats to accommodate our party. The ladies are not compelled to sit in isolation, by the side of passengers who use the car-floor as a spittoon. We may chat together upon family-matters without awakening the vivid interest of any mother-in-Israel mounting guard in front of us over a bandbox. The gentlemen may smoke, if the ladies like it, and, so long as they keep the windows open, nobody shall say them nay. We all enjoy a sense of security and independence, which is like occupying a well-provisioned Gibraltar on wheels. If we have a sick friend with us, he need never leave his mattress till he reaches San Francisco. Should his situation become critical en route, the best medical attendance is at hand,—every through-train being obliged by statute to carry a first-class physician and surgeon, with a well-stocked apothecary-compartment. But our present party are all of them in fine health and spirits; so we may dismiss the doctor's shop from our consideration.

The whistle blows just as the ladies have hung their bonnets in the rack, and the gentlemen exchanged their boots for slippers. We wave adieu to the Atlantic coast and the friends who have come to see us off. A few minutes more, and we pass through the Bergen Tunnel. The remainder of the day is spent amid that wild mountain and forest scenery which the Erie Railroad has made familiar to the whole travelling-population of our Eastern States. At Salamanca we strike the Atlantic and Great Western's separate line. On the way thence to Dayton we shall pass a number of long trains, made up of platform-cars heavily laden with barrels carrying East the riches of the Pennsylvania oil-region. These have connected with our main road by a couple of branches built especially for the accommodation of the petroleum-trade. From Dayton to Cincinnati we shall traverse one of the finest farming-regions of the world, meeting trains laden with beeves, swine, packed pork, lard, grain, corn, potatoes, and every variety of produce that bears transportation. By this time, also, Ohio vine-culture has attained a development which justifies an occasional train entirely devoted to pipes of still Catawba and baskets of the sparkling brands.

From Cincinnati to St. Louis by way of Vincennes, we run through the southern portions of Indiana and Illinois, threading varied and picturesque scenery all the way, unless we have seen the Egyptian prairies so many times before that they pall on us before we reach the Mississippi bluff opposite St. Louis. Till we strike the prairie, our course is among bold, well-timbered hills, which now and then we are obliged to tunnel, and by the side of charming pastoral streams whose green bottom-land is shaded by noble plane-trees and cotton-woods. Certain passages in the scenery between Cincinnati and Vincennes are beautiful as a dream of fairy-land. Every few miles we continue to meet freight-trains laden with all the well-known products of the Western field and dairy. Twice, before we reach St. Louis, a splendid cortege of passenger-carriages shall whiz by us on the southern track,—and each time we shall have seen the daily through-express from San Francisco.

The St. Louis through-passengers will be ready, on our arrival, in cars of their own. We shall switch them on behind us with little over half-an-hour's detention, and strike for Leavenworth, taking Jefferson City by the way. The country we now traverse is rolling, well watered, and well timbered along the streams. Our road has so stimulated production in the mines of Missouri that we frequently pass on the switch a freight-train taking out bar and pig iron to San Francisco, or on the other track a train laden with copper ore going to the East for reduction. We have hitherto said nothing of the innumerable trains which pass us or switch out of our way, carrying through-freight between New York and San Francisco. We are still surrounded by excellent farming-land, a fine grain, fruit, and general-produce country. Not till we leave Leavenworth can we be said fairly to have entered the central wilds of the continent. We are now west of the Missouri River, and for a distance of two hundred miles farther shall traverse a country possessing certain individual characteristics which entitle it to a name of its own among the divisions of our physical geography. This is the proper place for an indication of those divisions, generalized to the broadest terms.

In passing from sea to sea, the American traveller crosses ten well-defined regions:—

1. The Atlantic slope of the Alleghany Range.

2. The eastern incline of the Mississippi basin.

3. The high divides of the short Missouri tributaries.

4. The Great Plains proper.

5. The Rocky-Mountain system of ridges and intramontane plateaus.

6. The Great Desert, broken by frequent uplifts, and divided by the Humboldt Range.

7. The Sierra-Nevada mountain-system.

8. The basin of the Sacramento River.

9. The mountain-system of the Coast Range.

10. The narrow Pacific slope.

By attending to these distinctions with map in hand we shall gain some adequate idea of the surface of our continent. The first and second of the regions we have left behind us, and at Leavenworth are well out upon the third. It would not be just to call it prairie,—and it is equally distinct from the true Plains. As a grain and grass land, Illinois nowhere rivals it; but its surface is remarkably different from that of the prairies east of the Mississippi. It may be described as an alternation of lofty bluffs and sinuous ravines,—the former known as "divides," the latter as "draws." The top of these divides preserves one general level,—leading naturally to the hypothesis that all the draws are valleys of erosion in a tract of alluvial deposit originally uniform with the plateaus of the divides. Some of the larger draws still serve as the channels of unfailing streams; most of them carry more or less water during the rainy season; few of them are dry all the year round. The river-bottoms which traverse this region are thickly fringed with cotton-wood and elm timber; but it is a rare thing to encounter trees on the top of a divide. The fertility of the soil is boundless. Every species of grass flourishes or may flourish here, with a luxuriance unrivalled on the continent. Of the tract embraced between the Little Blue and the Republican Fork of the Kaw this is especially true. The climate is so mild and uniform that cattle may be kept at pasture the whole year round. Haymaking and the building of barns are works of supererogation. The wild grass cures spontaneously on the ground. To provide shelter against exceptional cases of climatic rigor,—an unusual "cold snap," or a fall of snow which lies more than a day or two,—the ranchero constructs for his cattle a simple corral, or, at most, a rude shed. The utmost complication which can occur in his business is a stampede; and few of our Eastern farmers' boys would hesitate to exchange their scythes, hay-cutters, corn-shellers, and mash-tubs for the saddle of his spirited Indian pony and his three days' hunt after estrays. Over this entire region the cereals thrive splendidly. The wild plum is so abundant and delicious as to suggest the most favorable adaptation to the other stone-fruits. Every vegetable that has been tried in the loam of the river-bottoms succeeds perfectly. There is just reason to think that vine-culture might reach a development along the southern slope of the Republican Bluffs not surpassed in the most favorable positions east of California. We believe it no exaggeration to say that this region needs only culture (and that of the easiest kind) to become the garden of the continent. Its mineral wealth has received scanty examination; yet we know that it contains numerous beds of tertiary coal, and easily worked iron-deposits, in the form both of hydrated oxide and black scale.

On our way through this region we strike the Republican bottom near Lat. 39 deg. 30' N., and Long. 97 deg. 20' W. We are now in the primest part of the buffalo-pasture. As we wind along the base of the steep Republican Bluffs, and the edges of those green amphitheatres made by their alternate approach and retrocession, our whistle scares a picket-line of giant bulls, guarding a divide across the stream, and with tails in air, heads at the down charge, they scour away at a lumbering cow-gallop, to tell the main herd of a progress more resistless than their own. Or, perhaps, our experience of the buffaloes is a more inconvenient one. We may find the main herd crossing our track in their migration from the Republican to the Platte. In such case, there will be a detention of several hours, as the current of a main herd is not fordable by any known human mechanism. The halt will be taken advantage of by timid spectators looking safely out of car-windows,—by bona-fide hunters, who want fresh meat, and take along the tidbits of their game to be cooked for them at the next dinner-station,—and by excited pseudo-hunters, who will bang away with their rifles at the defenceless herd, until the ground flows with useless blood, and somebody suggests to them that they might as well call it sportsmanship to fire into a farmer's cow-yard, resting over the top-rail.

Now and then we shall whirl through a village of chattering prairie-dogs, send a hen-turkey rattling off her nest in a thicket on the river's edge, or perhaps surprise even an antelope sufficiently close to point out to the ladies from our window the exquisite flight of that swiftest and most beautiful creature in our American fauna. But our road will not be in running order very long before this sight becomes the rarest of the rare. The stolid buffalo will continue to wear his old paths long after the human presence has driven every antelope into invisible fastnesses.

At intervals along the Republican bottom we shall find ranches springing up under the auspices of our road; immense grain-fields yellowing toward harvest; great herds of domestic cattle grazing haunch-deep through the boundless swales of billowing wild grass; with all the other indications of a prosperous farming settlement, which, keeping pace with the progress of the road, shall eventually become one of the richest agricultural communities in the world, and continuous for over two hundred miles. Here and there we pass a lateral excavation in the face of the bluff where some enterprising settler has opened a tertiary coal-vein, a deposit of iron-ore, or a bed of soft limestone suitable for both flux and mortar purposes. The way-freight trains that meet us now are mainly laden with the wealth of the grazier, the farmer, and the gardener, competing with their brethren of the Upper Mississippi for the markets of St. Louis and New Orleans. Iron-ore, coal, and limestone may form a portion of the cargoes,—but in process of time the mutual vicinity of these minerals will become sufficiently suggestive to induce the erection of smelting-furnaces in situ, and then their combined product will travel the road in the form of pigs.

A little to the westward of a line drawn due south from Fort Kearney to the Republican we shall find a comparatively abrupt and unexplained change taking place in the scenery. Our green river-bottoms will give way to tracts of the color and seemingly of the sterility proper to an ash-heap. Our bluffs will recede, grow higher, and exchange their flat mesa-like surfaces for a curved contour, imitating the mountainous formation on a reduced scale. For long distances the vast gray level around us will be dotted with conical sand-dunes, forever piling up and tearing down as the wind shifts, with a tendency to bestow their gritty compliments in the eyes of passengers occupying windward seats on the train. The lovely blossoms of the running-poppy no longer mat the earth with blots of crimson fire; no more does the sweet breath of eglantine and sensitive-brier float in at the window as we whirl by a sheltered recess of the divides; the countless wild varieties of bean and pea no longer charm us with a rainbow prodigality of pink, blue, scarlet, purple, white, and magenta blossoms. The very trees by the river's brink become puny and stunted; the evergreens begin to replace the deciduous growths; in the shade of dwarfed and desiccated cedars we look vainly for the snowy or azure bells of the three-petalled campanula. Gaunt, staring sunflowers, and humbler compositae of yellow tinge, stay with us a little longer than those darlings of our earlier scenery; but before we have gone many miles the last conspicuous wave of fresh vegetation breaks hopelessly on a thirsty sand-hill, and we are given over to a wilderness of cacti. Here and there occurs a sightly clump of waxen yellow blossoms, where these vegetable hedgehogs are in their holiday attire,—but it must be confessed that the view is a melancholy change from our recent affluence of beauty. With the other succulent plants, the rich herbage of the prairie has entirely disappeared. There is not a blade of anything which an Eastern grazier would recognize as grass between this boundary and the Rocky Mountains. As we whiz over these wastes at railroad-speed, we shall be apt to pronounce them absolutely sterile. When we stop at the next coaling-station, let us examine the matter more closely. The ground proves to be covered with minute gray spirals of herbage, like a crop of vegetable corkscrews, an inch or two in height, and to all appearance dry as wool. This is the "grama" or "buffalo-grass," and, despite its look of utter desiccation, is highly nutritious. It is almost the entire winter dependence of the buffalo-herds, and domestic cattle soon learn to prefer it to all other feed. Its existence, together with the wide group of changes which we have noticed, denotes that we have passed the threshold of the fourth grand continental division, and are now in the region of the Plains proper.

Ex-Governor Gilpin of Colorado, in his "Central Gold Region," very truly styles the Plains "the pastoral area of the continent." The Plains are set apart for grazing purposes by the method of exclusion. There is nothing else that can be done with them. Rain seldom falls on them. The shallow rivers, like the Platte, which wander through them, are too far apart to be used economically for their general irrigation. Only such herbage may be expected to thrive here as can live on its own condensation of water from a sensibly dry atmosphere. Manifestly, art can do nothing for the improvement of such a tract. It must be left to fulfil its natural function, as the great continental pasture. Along the banks of the rivers run narrow strips of alluvial soil, liable to yearly inundation; and these may be made amenable to the ordinary processes of agriculture. On these the herdsman may raise the grain and vegetables necessary for his own consumption. But the vast area of the region seems inevitably set apart for the one sole business of cattle-raising, and all the way-freight trains which pass us here are laden with beeves for the St. Louis market, or dairy-produce for all the markets of the world. We have never tasted grama-cheese, but have a theory that its individual piquancy must equal that of the delicious Schabzieger.

Far off on the gray level we shall still see the antelope. His tribe is coextensive with three-fourths of the continent. No sterility discourages him. He seems as thrifty on the wiry grama as among the most succulent grasses of the Republican. The sneaking coyote and a number of larger wolves put in an occasional appearance. Birds of the hawk and raven families are common. The waters swarm with numerous varieties of duck. It surprises us at this utmost distance from the maritime border to see flocks of Arctic gulls circling around the low sand-hills, and sickle-bill curlews wheeling high in air above their broods. Before we get far into this region we shall notice that one of its most typical features is the alkali-pool. Every few miles we come to a shallow basin of stagnant water saturated with salts of soda and potash. Still another characteristic of the Plains is their tremendous rainless thunder-storms. If we are fortunate enough to encounter one of these, we shall witness in one hour more atmospheric perturbation than has occurred within our whole previous experience on the Atlantic slope. The lightning for half a night will light the sky with an almost continuous glare, brighter than noonday; all the parks of artillery on earth could not make such a constant deafening roar as those iron clouds in the heaven; and though the wind will not be able to blow the train backward, as we have seen it treat a four-mule stage, it will be likely to do its next best thing, heaping sand on the track till the engine has to slow and send men ahead with shovels.

Entering the Denver depot, we shall find a busy scene. All that immense freight-business between the Missouri and the Colorado mining-towns, which formerly strung the overland road with wagons drawn by six yoke of oxen each, has now been transferred to the railroad. The switches are crowded with cars getting unloaded, or waiting their turn to be. What is their freight? Rather ask what it is not. For the present, Colorado imports everything except the most perishable commodities,—and that which pays for all. If you would see that, ask the express-messenger on the train going East in five minutes to lift the lid of one of those heavy iron trunks in his car. Your eyes are dazzled by the yellow gleam of a king's ransom. It is a day's harvest of ingots from the stamps of Central City, on its way to square accounts with New York for the contents of one of those freight-trains.

At Denver we reach the edge of the Rocky-Mountain foot-hills; the grand snow-peak of Mount Rosalie, rivalling Mont Blanc in height and majesty, though forty miles away, seems to rise just behind the town; thence southerly toward Pike's and northerly toward Long's Peak, the billowing ridges stretch away brown and bare, save where the climbing lines of sombre green mark their pine-fringed gorges, or the everlasting ice pencils their crests with an edge of opal. Still we do not leave the Plains region. We glide through the thronged streets of the growing city, cross the South Platte by a short bridge, and strike nearly due north along the edge of the mountain-range, over a broad plateau which still bears the characteristic grama. Not until we enter the canon of the Cache-la-Poudre, a hundred miles from Denver by the road, can we consider ourselves fairly out of the Plains, and in the fifth great region of the continent, the Rocky-Mountain system of ridges and intramontane plateaus.

Before we begin this portion of our journey, let us examine, in the light of that already accomplished, an assertion made early in this article to the effect that the Pacific Railroad must precede and create the business which shall support it. The consideration shall be brief as a mathematical process.

The river-bottoms and divides along the Lower Republican are peculiarly suited to the raising of farm-produce. But so long as they had no avenue to a market, they might have been fertile as Paradise without alluring settlers to cultivate them. The natural advantages of a country are developed not as a matter of taste, but as a matter of profit. The crops which can be raised to best advantage in this region are the crops which without a railroad must rot on the ground. No man can be expected to settle in a new country from pure Quixotism,—and nothing but the railroad would make anything else of his expenditure of energies beyond the needs of self-support. The Plains are the natural pasture of the continent; but they have no natural fascination for the white man which can induce him to take up his residence there for cattle-breeding en amateur. The greatest enthusiast in butter and cheese would scarcely care to accumulate mountains of rancid firkins and boxes for the mere gratification of fancy. Access to a market is his only justification for spending a nomadic lifetime among herds, or a fortune on churns and presses. The settlement of the country must precede the birth of its industries, and the Pacific Road is the absolutely essential stimulus to such settlement.

As we converse, we are beginning our climb toward the snow. A series of steep grades, mainly following the bed of that wildly picturesque and roaring torrent, the Cache-la-Poudre, take us up through the Cheyenne Pass to the Laramie Plains. In reaching the head of the Cache-la-Poudre we have familiarized ourselves with the ridges of the system; we are now to learn what is meant by the intramontane plateaus. The Laramie Plains form the most remarkable plateau of the Rocky Range,—one of the most remarkable anywhere in the known world. Through a series of savage canons we enter what appears to us a reproduction of the prairies east of the Mississippi,—a level and luxuriantly grassy plain, bright with unknown flowers, alive with startled antelope, threaded by the clear currents of both the Laramie Rivers, and rejoicing in an atmosphere which exhilarates like the fresh-brewed nectar of Olympus. Bounded on the east by the great ridge we have just passed, northerly by a continuation of the Wind-River Range and Laramie Peak, southerly by a magnificent transverse bar of naked mountains running parallel with the Wind-River Range, and westward by a staircase of sterile divides which we must climb to reach the base of Elk Mountain and find its giant mass towering into the eternal snows three thousand feet farther above our heads,—this plateau is a prairie fifty miles square, lifted bodily eight thousand feet into the air. It is difficult for us to roll over this Elysian mead walled in by these tremendous ranges, and think of the commercial uses to which the level might be put; but from its elevation and its natural crop we may pronounce it a grazing tract of splendid capabilities, unsuited to artificial culture.

Another series of grades takes us past the base of Elk Mountain to a broad and sandy cactus-plain, whence we descend among curious trap and sandstone formations, simulating human architecture, to the crossing of the North Platte. A little farther on, so close to the snow-line that we shiver under the white ridges with a reflected chill, we cross the axial ridge of the continent, and begin our descent toward Salt Lake by the noble gallery of Bridger's Pass. The springs along our way become tinctured with sulphur, alkali, and salt. We know, when we stop at a station to drink, that we are drawing near the primeval basin of a stagnant sea, now shrunk to its final pool in Salt Lake, but once in size a rival of the Mediterranean. We pass over an alternation of mountain-grades and sandy levels, cross the Green or Upper Colorado River, stop for five minutes at the Fort-Bridger station, thread the sinuous galleries of the Wahsatch, and come down from a savage wilderness of sage-brush, granite, and red sandstone, into the luxuriant green pastures of Mormondom, heavy with crops and irrigated from the snow-peaks. Thence, one of the numerous canons—Emigrant or Parley's most likely—conducts us to the mountain-walled level of Salt-Lake City.

We have now traversed the most difficult part of our road. Its Rocky-Mountain section has cost more capital, labor, and engineering skill than all the rest together. The return for this vast expenditure must be no less vast,—but it will be rendered slowly. It does not lie on the surface or just beneath the surface, as in the pastoral and agricultural regions. It is almost entirely mineral, and must be mined by the hardest work. But it ranges through all the metallic wealth of Nature, from gold to iron, and no conceivable stimulus short of a Pacific Railroad could ever have been adequate to bring it forth.

We shall find the import trade of Salt Lake by the railroad to consist chiefly of emigrants and their chattels. If Brigham Young be still living, his favorite policy of non-intercourse with the Gentiles may also somewhat diminish the export business of the road. But human nature cannot forever resist the currents of commercial interest; and the Mormon settlements possess so many advantages for the economical production of certain staples, that we need not be surprised to find trains leaving Salt-Lake City with sorghum and cotton for San Francisco, and raw silk for all the markets of the East.

From Salt-Lake City to the Humboldt Mountains, we pass between isolated uplifts of trap and granite, over a comparatively level desert of sand and snowy alkali. The terrors of this journey, as performed by horse-carriage, have been fully depicted in our last April number. We may laugh at them now. The question which principally interests us, after we have blunted the first edge of our wonder at the sublime sterility of the Desert, is what conceivable use this waste can be made to subserve. Before the railroad, that question had but a single answer,—the inculcation of contentment, by contrast with the most disagreeable surroundings in which one might anywhere else be placed. Perhaps it is over-sanguine to conceive of a further answer even now. If there be any, it is this: In its crudest state the alkaline earth of the Desert is sufficiently pure to make violent effervesence with acids. No elaborate process is required to turn it into commercial soda and potash. Coal has been already found in Utah. Silex exists abundantly in all the Desert uplifts. Why should not the greatest glass-works in the world be reared along the Desert section of the Pacific Road? and why should not the entire market of the Pacific Coast be supplied with refined alkalies from the same tract? Given the completed railroad, and neither of these projects exceeds commercial possibility.

We cross the Humboldt Mountains by a series of grades shorter than that which conducts us over the Rocky system, but full as difficult in proportion. We descend into a second instalment of Desert on the other side; but the general sterility is now occasionally broken by oases, moist green canons, and living springs. A hundred miles west of the Humboldt Pass we come to the mining-settlements of Reese River, gaining a new increment to the business of the road in the transportation of silver to San Francisco, and every conceivable necessary of life to the mines.—Within the last eighteen months eleven hundred dollars in gold have been paid for the carriage by wagon of a single set of amalgamating-apparatus from Virginia City to Reese, a distance of two hundred miles. The price of the commonest necessaries at the Reese-River mines has reached the highest point of the old California markets in '49,—and no attainable means of transport have been adequate to supply the demand.

From Reese River to Carson we traverse a broken, rocky, and sterile tract, with occasional fertile patches and a belt along the Carson River susceptible of cultivation. The foot-hills of the Sierra Nevada gradually shut us round, and at Carson we begin penetrating the main system through a series of magnificent galleries between precipices of porphyritic granite, leading nearly northward to the Truckee Pass. The grades we now encounter are as tremendous as any in the Rocky-Mountain system. Just before entering the main pass we come to the junction of a branch-road from Virginia City. The train which stops at the fork to let us go ahead is carrying down several tons of silver "bricks" from the Washoe mines to Kellogg and Hewston's, the great assay and refining firm of San Francisco. The pass takes us across the summit-line of the range, but not out of the environment of its mountains. We penetrate granite fastnesses and descend blood-chilling inclines, span roaring chasms and glide under solemn roofs of lofty mountain-pine, until in the neighborhood of Centralia we begin for the first time to see the agricultural tract of the Golden State.

Between ranches, placer-diggings, and small settlements, we now thread our comparatively level way to Sacramento. Here we are met by the chief affluent of this end of the Pacific Road,—the long-projected, greatly needed, and now finally accomplished line between Sacramento and Portland. This enterprise has done for the Sacramento and Willamette valleys the same good offices of development performed by our grand line for all the central continent. The noble orchards, pastures, grain-lands, and gardens of Northern California and Oregon are now provided with a market. Their wastes are brought under cultivation, their mines are opened, their entire area is settled by a class of men who work under the stimulus of certain profit. The Northern freight-trains waiting at Sacramento to make a junction with our road are loaded with the produce of one of the richest agricultural regions in the world, now flowing to its first remunerative market. All this must pay toll to our road, and here is another source of profit.

Crossing a number of tributaries to the Sacramento, and intersecting mines, ranches, and settlements, as before, we follow a nearly straight level to Stockton. Then turning westerly, we cross the San Joaquin, pass almost beneath the shadow of grand old Monte Diablo, glide among the vines and olives of San Jose Mission, and curve round the southern bend of the lovely bay to the queenly city of San Francisco. One of Leland's carriages awaits us at the terminus. We are driven to the most delightful hotel on the continent, and find our old friend, the Occidental, altered in no respect save size, which the growing demands of the Pacific New York, since the completion of our inter-oceanic line, have compelled Leland to quadruple. We are on time,—six days and eight hours exactly. Or, assuming the San-Francisco standard, we have gained three hours on the sun, and, instead of taking a two-o'clock lunch, as our friends are doing in New York, sit down to an eleven-o'clock breakfast crowned with melons, grapes, and strawberries, in the sweet seclusion of the Ladies' Ordinary.

Is not all this worth doing in reality?



SEA-HOURS WITH A DYSPEPTIC.

BY HIS SATELLITE.

I.—PRELUSIVE.

There are a good many fictions in the world. I will mention one:—the propeller Markerstown. The bulletins and placards of her owners soar high in the realms of fancy; like Sirens, they sing delightful songs,—and all about "the A 1 fast-sailing, commodious, first-class steam-packet Markerstown." Such is the soaring fiction: now let us look at the sore fact. The "A 1" is, I take it, simply the "Ai!" of the Greek chorus new-vamped for modern wear,—a drear wail well suited to the victims of the Markerstown. As to sailing qualities:—we know, of course, that all speed is relative. For a sea-comet, the Markerstown would be somewhat leisurely, though answering well for an oceanic fixed star, having no perceptible motion. One man on board—the Captain—was accommodated: the kidnapped all suffered. Whether the Markerstown should be reckoned as first-class or last-class is a question depending simply on where the counting begins, and which way it runs. "Steam-packet" she was indeed, though not in the most desirable way. Her steam was "packit" (Scottice) too close for safety, but lay quite too loose for speed. The kidnapped were all "packit," and "weel packit." How I came to be one of them, and how by this mystic union I halved my joys and doubled my griefs, as the naughty ones say of wedlock, will soon appear.

One brilliant fancy-flight I forgot to mention. The craft in question was boldly proclaimed as "new." New, indeed, she might have been: so were once the Ark, the Argo, the Old Temeraire, the Constitution, and sundry other hulks of celebrity. Yet it is not mere rhetoric to say, that, if the eyes of the second and third Presidents of these United States never, in their declining years, beheld the good ship Markerstown, it was only from lack of wholesome curiosity.

This pleasing list of attractions was wont to make an occasional trip—should I not rather say saunter?—to the New-World Levant, the Yankee Eoethen. The time consumed was theoretically a day and a half, but practically a day or two longer. Tired as I was of the sluttish land, the clean sea had an inviting look. Dusty car and ringing rail wore no Circean graces, when the long-haired mermaid, decked in robes of comely green, looked out from her bower beneath the waves, and beckoned me to come. What more welcome than her sea-green home? What sight finer than the myriad diamond-sparkles in her eye? What sound sweeter than the murmurs of her soothing, never-ceasing voice? What perfume so rare as the crisp fragrance breathing from her robes? What so thrilling, so magnetically ecstatic, as her tumultuous heaving, and the lithe, undulating buoyancy of her mazy footfalls?

It is proper to state here, as an act of justice to others, and to save myself from the charge of lunacy, that the Markerstown was a mere interloper. Our covetous, good old uncle had set his eye on the regular steamer of the line, and his greedy fingers had taken her away to Dixie, where her decks were now swarming with blue coats and black heels. The peaceful Markerstown, being exempt by reason of physical disqualifications, tarried behind as home-guard substitute for her warlike sister. Ignorant of the change, I secured my passage, paid for my ticket, sent down my trunks, and presented myself at the gangway one sweltering afternoon in the latter part of June, a few minutes before the hour set for sailing. There was nothing in the aspect of things to indicate a speedy departure. On the contrary, the tardy craft had just arrived, and was intensely busy in letting off steam and discharging cargo. The mate was quite sure—and so was I—that she wouldn't weigh anchor before early next morning. The prospect was not enrapturing. Confusion, dirt, pandemoniac noise, long delay, and over all a blistering sun, were ill suited to bring peace to the embezzled seeker after pleasure.

As a relief from the horrid din on deck, I made my way to the cabin. It was a place well named, being cabined, cribbed, confined, in quite an unprecedented degree. It was then and there that I first saw the subject of this sketch,—the Peptic Martyr. Unknowingly, I was face to face with my Man of Destiny. Shipmate, Philosopher, Martyr, Rhapsodist, Mentor, Bon-Vivant, Duespeptos,—these are but a few of the various disks which I came at last to see in this gem of first water. Even now, in memory, the subject looms vast before me, and the freighted pen halts. Bear with me: let us pause for one moment. Matter like this asks a new strophe.

II.—THE BURDEN OF THE SONG.

Duespeptos was sitting on a common mohair sofa, surrounded by some half-dozen or more of his fellow-victims. It is stated that Themistocles, before his ocean-raid at Salamis, sacrificed three young men to Bacchus the Devourer. The Markerstown, in sailing out upon the great deep, immolated at least twelve, old and young, as a festive holocaust to Neptune the Nauseator. Here in their sacrificial crate were the luckless scapegoats, sad-eyed prey of the propeller. It was easy to see, at the first glance, that the Martyr was the central sun round which clustered the planets of propitiation. Born king, he asserted his kingship, and all yielded from the beginning to his sway. Ears and mouths opened toward him the liege. Upon the magnet of his voice hung the eager atoms. There was a filmy, distant look in the eyes of the listeners, as of men rapt with the mystic utterances of a seer. My entrance unheralded broke up the monologue, whatever it was. But seeing the true sacrificial look on my brow, all at once, from chief to sutler, confessed a brother. To me then turning, Duespeptos, king of men, spoke winged words:—

"'Pears t' me, stranger, you look kind o' streaked. Ken I do anythin' for ye? Wal, I s'pose th' old tub's caught you too, so we ken jest count y' in along o' this 'ere crowd. Reg'lar fix, now, a'n't it? 'T's wut I call pooty kinky. Dern'd 'f I'd 'a' come, 'f I'd 'a' known th' old butter-box was goin' to be s' frisky. Lively's a young colt now, a'n't she? Kicks up her heels, an' scampers off te'ble smart, don't she? 'S never seen an ekul yit for punctooality an' speed. When she doos tech the loocifer, an' cooks up her steam in her high old pepper-box, jest you mind me, boys, there'll be a high old time. Wun't say much, but there'll be fizzin', sure,—mebby suthin' more,—mebby reg'lar snorter, a jo-fired jolly good bust-up. Mebby th' wun't be no weepin' an' gahnishin' o' teeth about these parts along towards mornin'. Who knows? Natur' will work. Th' old scow's got to go accordin' to law,—that's one sahtisfahction, sartin. 'S a cause for all these things. An' ef she doos kind o' rip an' tear, she's got to go b' Gunter. She's bound to foller her constitootion as she understan's it, an' to stan' up for the great principal of ekul freedom for all. Hope they'll be keerful to save some o' the pieces. 'S a good deal o' comfort 'n these loose fragments. 'S nuthin' like the raael odds an' ends—the Simon-pure, ginooine article—to bind up the broken heart an' make the mourners joyful. No tellin' how much good they do in restorin' gratitood to Providence, an' smoothin' things over,—kind o' make matters easy, you know. Interestin', too, to hev in the house,—pleasin' ornaments on the mantel-piece to show to friends an' vis'ters. They allers like to hear the story 'n connection with the native specimens, an' everybody feels happified an' thankful. Yes, after all, th'r' is a master lot of solid comfort in a raael substantial accident right in the buzzum of a family,—none o' your three-cent fizzles, but a true-blue afflictin' dispensation. 'S a heap o' pleasin' an' valooable associations a-clusterin' round."

Here the vocal one paused for an instant, to draw breath, and rally for another raid. Feeling his little army now well in hand, he burned for fresh conquests. In glancing triumphantly around, his eye fell on a certain benign smile then flitting over the face of his predestined Satellite. Complacently nodding thereto, straightway the Peptic spoke:—

"I s'pose this 'ere group 's all insured, everythin' right an' tight an' all square up t' the hub. Suthin' hahnsum for the widders an' orphans. These little nest-eggs allers sort o' handy,—grease the ways, an' slick things up ship-shape. Survivors bless the rod, an' fix up everythin' round the house in apple-pie order. I hev known men that was so te'ble pertickler allers to save the Company, that nuthin' ever did, n' ever could happen. An' the despairin' friends kep' waitin' an' waitin', but 't was no sort o' use; they never got a red. 'T's wut I call bein' desput keerful, an' sailin' pooty consid'able close to the wind. 'T's like old Deacon Skillins's hoss, down to Mudville, that was so dreffle conscientious he couldn't eat oats. No accountin' for tastes. Free country, anyhow. Ef anybody likes to be fussy an' ructious 'n little things, why, there's nuthin' to hender him from hevin' his own way. But it don't exackly hev an hon'able look to common-sense folks.

"Ef the clipper's a free-agent, she'll blow up, sure, jest to git out o' sin an' misery. But ef so be she's bonyfihd predestined, she'll hev to travel in the vale o' puhbation a spell longer, 'cause her cup a'n't full yit, not by a long chalk. S'posin' she doos start out mellifloous, what then? Don't imagine, my feller-sinners, that the danger's all over,—no, it's only jest begun. Things ahead 's a good deal wuss. Steam 's pooty bad, but 't a'n't a circumstahnce to the blamed grease. 'T's the grease that doos the mischief, an' plays the dickens with human natur'. Down in th' army, they say, biscuits kills more'n bullets; an' it's gospil truth, every word on 't, perticklerly ef the biscuits is hot, an' pooty wal fried up in grease. Fryin' 's the great mortal sin, the parient of all misery. The hull world's full of it, but the sea 's a master sight fuller 'n the land. Somehow 'nother, grease takes kind o' easy to salt water,—sailors wun't hev nothin' but a fry. Jest you give 'em plenty o' fat, an' they wun't ask no favors o' nobody. These 'ere puhpellers 's the wust sinners of 'em all, an' somehow hev a good deal more 'n their own share o' fat. They kind o' borrer from mackerellers an' side-wheelers both together, an' mix 't all up 't oncet. My friends, ef you a'n't desput anxious to see glory from this 'ere deck, be virtoous, an' observe the golden rule: Don't tech, don't g' nigh the p'is'n upus-tree of gravy; beware o' the dorg called hot biscuits; take keer o' the grease, an' the stomach'll take keer of itself. Fact is, my beloved brethren, I've ben a fust-chop dyspeptic for the best part o' my life, an' I'm pooty wal posted in what I'm talkin' about. What I don't know on this 'ere subjick a'n't wuth knowin'."

III.—RECITATIVE

How much farther the Martyr's appeal might have gone can never be known, as the height of his great argument was cut short at this point by the appearance of the Pontifex Maximus in person on the stage of action. The fated victims were to be made ready for the coming sacrifice. The oracle, it seems, had declared that Neptune would not smile, unless two were cribbed together in one pen,—that the arrangement of these pairs should be left with the lot of the bean,—and that as the beans went, so must go the victims. Inexorable Fate would allow no reversal of her decrees. Soon the beans were rattling in the hat of the Pontifex, and, mirabile! pen No. 1 fell to Duespeptos and his Satellite elect.