Progress of the Pacific Railroad.
THE following facts relative to the progress of this nation in the development of its resources, and the rapidity with which it is rising to the most important position among the nations of the globe, will be of interest to those who regard it as a subject of prophecy. We quote from the Scientific American of Oct. 6, 1866:— On the first of September the Pacific Railroad was completed from Omaha City to beyond Fort Kearney, in Nebraska, a distance of over two hundred miles. The rate of progression is from forty-five to fifty miles a month, so that it is believed that another year will stretch the road to the Rocky Mountains. The route is from Omaha City, along the banks of the Platte river, the same course traveled by the pony express. The surface of the country is highly favorable to the work, being smooth, hard, dry, and almost level. A better road-bed could not be desired. The graders are at work along the third hundred miles, and will finish the fourth this fall. At the other end the work is progressing rapidly—a work that will be considered one of the monuments of man's perseverance and industry. We have before alluded to the immense difficulties to be overcome in the construction of the road through and over the Sierras, and the success in surmounting them. To exaggerate the importance of this trans-continental highway is almost impossible. To a certain extent it will change the relative positions of this country, Europe, and Asia. The track of an army is a track of desolation. Its passage impoverishes and scorches the country through which it moves. Not so the track of commerce. That country which stands between the place of production and the mart of sale, which is the highway over which the wealth of nations must travel, enjoys a Danaean shower. This was the secret of the prosperity of Palmyra, the city over which the proud Zenobia reigned—it built Alexandria, sustained Carthage, and made Venice the strongest republic of the world. With the completion of the Pacific Railroad, instead of receiving our goods from India, China, Japan, and the “Isles of the Sea,” by way of London and Liverpool, we shall bring them direct by way of the Sandwich Islands and the railroad, and become the carriers, to a great extent, for Europe. But this is but a portion of the advantages of this work. Our western mountains are almost literally mountains of gold and silver. In them the Arabian fable of Aladdin is realized. To-day it costs almost a competence to reach them, and live among them for a year or two, until the labors of those weary months begin to make a visible return. Food, clothing, machinery, implements, and all other necessaries are costly in the mining regions of Colorado, Nevada, and Arizona. This cost is largely that of transportation. Let the road be completed, and the comforts as well as the necessaries furnished by Asia, the manufactures of Europe, and the productions of the States, can be brought by the iron horse almost to the miner’s door, and in the production and possession of the precious metals, the blood of commerce, we shall be the richest nation on the globe. But the substantial wealth created by the improvement of the soil and the development of the resources of the country, is a still more important element in the results of this vast work. Ease of access, facility of intercommunication, and encouragement to travel, will invite thousands of the crowded inhabitants of Europe and our Eastern cities, and build up towns and cities, and make luxuriant farms where now nature exists in almost undisturbed wildness.