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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IV, Issue 139, 16 June 1869, Page 3

The Pacific Railroad. — "As we write," says the Virginia City Enterprise, of March 17, "probably not more than 150 miles, of track remains to be laicl to complete the Pacific Railroad, one of the grandest achievements of .the nineteenth century. The Union Pacific is completed to a point a few miles this side of Ogden City, while the Central Pacific is finished to within 75 or 80 miles of Monument Point, at which place the two roads will unite. The Union Pacific is within about 70 miles of Monument Point. AM the grading of both divisions is completed, or nearly so, and now the simple wor__ of laying 150 miles of track is all that remains to place us in railroad communication with Chicago and New York — all that remains to complete the connection between New York Harbor aud the Bay of San Francisco, a distance of perhaps 3300 miles. It is difficult to realise that this stupendous work is so near completion — difficult to understand that in four or five or six weeks we shall be able to take our seat in the cars, with -a single change of linen, and in time so brief as .to be conveniently expressed in hours, step off in front of the National Capitol in .a presentable condition. Especially _3 this difficult to one who in early days measured the dreary distance between the Missouri and Sacramento rivers by the dragging footsteps of an ox team — to one who toiled for months in reaching the coast over sterile plains which seemed to be boundless, and deserts terrible in their mouotony of scorching sands. Over all these, and the mountains intervening, will the railroad be completed within a few weeks. The -care will whisk past the graves of the thousands who perished by the wayside years ago, and should the early pioneer, ?in -returning, chance to brush a tear from his eye, as .the rapidly shifting -.scenes bring back to him the horrors of the past and the faces .of the comrades silently sleeping by the way, let it be attributed to the salt-laden wind that sometimes sweeps across ,the desert — and so let it pass." Very Probable. — -The correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazette in Paris is responsible .for the following anecdote: — Among the excuses put forward lately by •the Imperialist writers for the massacres of December, during the coup d'etat, one is, .that : " it was' all a mistake." General Sfc. Arnaud had a very bad .cold at the time, and when the aide-de-camp dashed up to him for instructions., "the Boulevards were upj" St. Arnaud, who could not speak for coughing, exclaimed Masacree touxl (my confounded cough), which the aide-de-camp interpreted, Massacrez tons (kill them all.) Hence the blood which stains the imperial purple.

A Parisian Engineer has recently oon": strueted a little machine for printing : address or visiting cards in ink. It ; combines the conditions of easy working, simplicity of mechanism, aud elegance of from. Its dimensions of 40 centimetres by 25 allow it to be worked on a small table or counter. The same kind of machine of large size can also be used for! letter hea&iugs in 4to.