THE PACIFIC RAILROAD.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 13, Issue 1086, 24 September 1869, Page 3

THE PACIFIC RAILROAD.

(From " All the Year Bound.")

The science of railway engineering, which has made so wonderful a progress in 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 Eailroad 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 to 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 thriving system, to be the product of their labours, and to be built on the foundations of their faith. Now, the Pacific Eailroad has not only approached, but has reached, their very doors ; bringing the tide of Gentile civilization, and the hubbub of the un-Mormon world, straight in upon them. Whatever obstacle they can raise they will 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 guerillp onslaughts of the Indian tribes. True, the Indian is slowly . disappearing from liis, .traditional hunting grounds ; but the tribes that still survive, have in no degree lost the old Indian dread of civilization, 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»unseen, and suddenly occurring dangers that the "great through train" must pass to and from Sacramento. The evil can only diminish by the westward tide of empire. Cities and commonwealths must and will grow up all along the line; at first they will be fortifications ; they will eventually drive back the savage into the northern wilds of Dakota and Montana, into Texas and Upper Mexico.

The rapid growth of the west of America has yet to be realised by the Americans themselves, as well as by Europeans. On some days the emigrant waggons which cross the Missouri river on their way to Colorado, Utah, and Nevada, are counted by thousands.. These emigrants rumble with difficulty at the rate of four miles an hour over those vast plains and ravines ; how will it be when steam will waft them there with tenfold swiftness? Chicago has ceased to be called a western city ; St. Louis looks round and finds to her surprise, that people are talking of her as standing on the frontier of the west. Omaha, with her wonderful growth, is already a city with lyceums and insurance houses, and has ten times doubled tha price of her land. The results flowingto the commerce of the world, when the Pacific railroad shall be finally opened for traffic, it is hard to estimate. That it will modify to a great extent the courses between the four continents, there seems little doubt. The route by which the merchants of .England — to cite a single example — now carry on the everincreasing trade with China and Japan, is along and difficult one. By the Suez Canal the quickest route from England to the Orient, British vessels travel some fourteen thousand miles ; when the Paoific Railway begins to carry on through traffic, the route via New York and San Francisco will not only be shorter, but railway travel being substituted across the American continent for water locomotion, it will be proportionally more rapid. A journey from New York to Yokohama will then occupy about one month, and from London to Yokohama six weeks ! It does not seem improbable that the whole, or nearly the whole, of the great European trade with China, Japan, Australia, and Batavia will pass by the Pacific Eailroad across the American continent, and go through New York to London and Havre.

The stimulus which this increased^ propinquity with civilized nations will give to the hitherto exclusive and gelf-satisfied races of the Orient, may have results as important in moral and political, as in commercial directions. At San Francisco, there is already a considerable section of the city, exclusively inhabited by emigrant Chinese, called the Chinese quarter; this is but the nucleus of a wide-spread and fast increasing Oriental colony. On the western slopes of the Eocky Mountains and the magnificent valleys and spurs of Sierra Nevada, may be found suddenly grown hamlets, villages, towns, of emigrant Chinese; and the tide from the East (it is the West, however, there) which is constantly replenishing those novel settlements of the oldest race on the youngest soil in the world, is constantly increasing m its volume., . The Japanese, though more backward, are following the example of their neighbours ; the trade between the colonists and the home traders is growing and extending to a cosmopolitan importance. Besides a vast swelling in the current of European and American trade with the Orient, we may readily imagine that the settlement of the Par West on either side of its line will bring to light undiscovered mines of gold and silver, and copper and coal, yet lying in the bosom of untrodden fields, and beneath the sands and pebbles of unknown streams. As it is, the route passes directly through the region of central Colorado, where gold mines of great value are now being worked.

In the science of making railway travelling not only comfortable, but luxurious, the Americans have recently made great strides ; and all the latest improvements are to be adopted on the Pacific railroad line. It is intended, that the traveller shall be provided with every convenience for a week's continuous travel. If you journey from St. Louis to San Francisco, you will enter the train at St. Louis, and you need not leave it until you can see the Pacific rolling at your feet. You may sleej) in luxurious state-rooms, your feet cushioned with the best Brussells carpets, your water service complete, your linen of the finest, your toilet conveniences without a want. By day you will have drawing rooms, where, on the most yielding of sofas and fauteuils, you may lounge the daylight hours away, over books. When hunger calls you may repair to a sumptuous salle-ii-mangei', and at a fixed tariff regale yourself with > the choicest viands of the season — especially the rich wild game of the western forests — made yet more palatable by genuine Chateau Margeaux or Ohablis, or the pure young wines of the Oalifornian hill sides. JNo comfort to be found in the best" American hotels is to be absent ; if you emerge] from your carriage at a quiet far western station, it will be rather to admire the primeval landscape, and take a glimpse at the recent settlements, than to gobble down a halfi-cooked dinner in a quarter the time required for consumption. You ( will have all the delights of the Atlantic voyage without its distresses ; and you may actually write your great work of travel, which is to give Europe new light on the Western world, en route. And the expense of travelling thus luxuriously,; will be less than it < now costs the poor emigrant to make his weary way across the seemingly boundless plains. , No man can say what colossal fortunes lie along the line of the Pacific Railroad. The speculators are there in thousands already ; the prophecies of fiituro cities everywhere meet the eye ; the old story will again and again be told, of the lucky few and the beggared many. But bright and high above all shines the hope, that the products of a now scarcely half-filled continent will, ere long ameliorate the condition of the poor who are with us always.