On Certain Modern Projects of Inter-Communication, and their Relation to New Zealand.

Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Volume 2, 1869, Unnumbered Page

On Certain Modern Projects of Inter-Communication, and their Relation to New Zealand. By F. Wakefield, F. L. S. [Lecture delivered at the Colonial Museum, Wellington, September 4, 1869.] There never was a time in the history of the world when such vast schemes were in progress or projected for the extension of rapid and easy communication between different parts of the earth; indeed, it appears to be the feature of the age, that nations, in whatever else they should differ, would cordially agree in forwarding every plan having for its object the shortening of time and space, and lowering the cost of transit between the most distant points of the globe; and from what has taken place, it may be safely affirmed that the results will far exceed even the dreams of the first inventors of the means employed. Electricity and steam communication appear as the appointed agents of an All-wise Providence for building up the comity of nations; —for obliterating prejudices and antipathies; —for throwing down restrictions upon free intercourse in trade, science, literature, and all the generous amenities that should bind man to man. As the liquid fire flies along the metal carrying with it the thoughts of men; or as travellers stretch across whole continents in a few days, one language will have to be adopted; the gibberish of the savage will die out before a flexible and more polished form of expression; money must bear one sovereign effigy; bad forms of government will be so keenly felt and discussed that they must give way to better; and the result will be a state of freedom and healthy progress unknown in the history of mankind. Nor is it too much to suppose that as the future of America will see one language spoken from Canada to Cape Horn; and our government of India and England's other dependencies will be made so attractive that our fellow-subjects will be numbered by hundreds of millions, “the well of English undefiled” will be the source from whence the common language of the line and rail will be drawn. The magnificent store of literature, which is the noble heritage and common property of all who speak the English language, will keep the peace, whilst the extended comfort and well-being of mankind are our common object; for should discord arise between us, the pioneers of the world's civilization, the historians, geographers, men of science, poets and orators, on each side of the Atlantic, cherishing a common idiom as their mother tongue, with Shakespeare as Marshal of the Lists, would forbid so unnatural a contention. No better instance could be adduced of the influence I fondly hope to see prevail than the appointment of a genial man of letters, like Motley, as American Minister at the Court of St. James', who is more likely to settle the Alabama claims than the most practised diplomatist, for all England enjoys his writings. Taking England as one centre, and our Southern England, New Zealand, as the other, upon the earth's surface, the projects in progress or under consideration may be classed as follows:— I. West of England. The Ocean Steam Navigation Companies connecting England with America. The Atlantic Cable connecting Ireland with Boston, and other cables being laid.

The Panama Railroad, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Canadian Canals and the St Lawrence, connecting Chicago and the Lakes with London. The Pacific Railway, connecting New York with San Francisco. II. East of England. The Indian Telegraph by Constantinople to Bombay. The Overland Route by Peninsular and Oriental Company's Steam vessels through Egypt to Galle, China, Japan, and Australasia. The Maritime Canal of Suez. The Messageries Imperiales, a company subsidized by France on the same line as that worked by the Peninsular and Oriental Company. The proposed Overland Route to India, from Belgrade to Constantinople, and Bussorah to Kurrachee. The line of large ocean steamers by the Cape of Good Hope to Melbourne. III. West of New Zealand. The steam navigation companies connecting us with Melbourne, and the P. and O. Company to England. Telegraphic communication from South Australia and Brisbane. The line of cable laid between Victoria and Tasmania. IV. East of New Zealand. The probable extension of a line of steamers from San Francisco to the Sandwich Islands, Tahiti, New Zealand, and Sydney. Every one of these projects having for its object the increase of rapid, cheap, and convenient communication, is of great importance to us, possessing as we do, taking it for all in all, one of the best fields for emigration in the world. Our goldfields can only enrich the country by attracting population; for no country was ever great or prosperous through its mines of gold and silver alone. Our unoccupied millions of acres are of no more value than so much cloud or sea, without population to reclaim them from the waste; and the accounts one reads in the English papers of the masses of people receiving public relief are the more painful to peruse, when at our own doors there is bread for all. Therefore, a cheap, humane, and well-regulated system of immigration would be a mutual benefit to England and ourselves; and every project similar to those I have enumerated, is a step in the right direction. Out of the different plans either completed, in progress or under consideration, I have selected three, the particulars of which I have endeavoured to put together as clearly and briefly as I could, and trust that the subjects will prove worthy of your attention:— I. The Maritime Canal of Suez. II. The proposed Overland Routes to India. III. The Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, connecting New York and San Francisco. The Maritime Canal of Suez. Before the Cape of Good Hope was doubled, nearly 400 years ago, and a new sea-way found to India, the trade of the East being principally carried on by caravans, a canal through the Isthmus of Suez, connecting the Red Sea with the Mediterranean, was not so important to the whole world, as an improved civilization, a vastly increased population, and a far-extended commerce render it in our own time. Yet this modern project is not without ancient example, though with a less object, on part of the same land.

About the middle of the seventh century before the Christian era, according to Herodotus, a line of canal for fresh water was commenced at Rhoda on the Nile, near the modern Cairo, and continued by the margin of the extreme eastern desert to Bubastis—thence by the Wadi Tombat, or Valley of the Seven Wells, skirting the Bitter Lakes—it reached Suez, which was then known as Clysma. It was commenced by Necho, son of Psammetichua, and completed by Darius, the son of Hystaspes. A period of one hundred years was occupied in the work, and 120,000 Egyptians perished in the labour, which was so hard, that an oracle admonished the taskmasters to desist, and for a time it ceased. The remains of this work are still to be seen; but I am not aware—though I have made diligent search amongst the authorities—that an attempt was ever made in ancient times to connect the two seas by means of a canal. The wants of the day, 2400 years ago, were met by the river Nile, 180 miles from the sea to Rhoda, and 105 miles of fresh water canal to the Red Sea. A good deal may have been due to French influence in the East that the maritime canal at Suez has become a great public question, but I still think that the project by an English engineer, Mr. Lionel Gisborne, of cutting through the Isthmus of Darien, in 1852, brought the subject of removing such obstacles to navigation more prominently before the world; and many think that it will always be a matter of regret that Mr. Gisborne's plan was not taken up by the merchants of Europe and America. Though Mr. Gisborne was not permitted to live to carry out his plan, his labours were not thrown away, and the facts which I have gathered from his report are curious. He found that the tide on the Pacific side of the Isthmus of Darien rose twenty-three feet, whilst on the Atlantic side it was scarcely appreciable—that at mid-tide the two oceans would be nearly level, and that therefore the ebb and flow of the Pacific would cause a current both ways, not exceeding a rate of three miles an hour, acting as a scour to prevent deposit, and an assistance in the transit of vessels. This would also secure the passage being effected in one tide, and prevent the passing of vessels going different ways, as the direction of the trade would be alone influenced by the ebb and flow of the Pacific tide. Mr. Gisborne also found that the material to be excavated would be chiefly rock, so that the current or the wash of passing steamers would not tear away the banks, thus reducing the cost of maintenance to a nominal sum. The canal was to be 30 feet deep at low water, 140 feet wide at bottom, widening to 160 feet at low-water surface. The rivers Savana and Lara were to be made use of for eighteen miles on the Darien side, leaving the actual breadth of the Isthmus between the tidal effect of the two oceans at thirty miles. The summit level of this lowest ridge of the Andes was found not to exceed 150 feet, formed by a narrow range of hills, having a gradually rising plain on each side. The report does not state if any prevailing winds were likely to render the two entrances periodically unsafe, so I presume that the canal would have been always easy of access and egress. Messrs. Fox and Henderson, the contractors for the great Exhibition Building in 1851, employed Mr. Gisborne, and the position they held enabled them to make that gentleman's report well-known throughout the world, particularly as they were to get up the company for the performance of the work. There can be but little doubt, as the above information became public, that Monsieur de Lesseps, in inaugurating his plan of making a canal through the Isthmus of Suez, and before he finally enlisted the late Ismail Pasha, then Viceroy of Egypt, heartily in the project, in 1854, made himself certain as to the relative height of the water at the same time in the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, where he intended to connect their waters by an open cutting without locks. Unfortunately an opinion of weight had gone forth that pre-

vailed for nearly fifty years, being the result of an investigation ordered by Napoleon when in Egypt in 1798. His chief civil engineer was ordered to report upon the practicability of a canal between the two seas; and the only result was an apparent difference of thirty-two feet between the level of the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. But, in 1846, a tripartite commission was set at work to study the relative levels and tidal amplitudes of the two seas and the Nile. In this commission Mr. Robert Stephenson represented England; France sent M. Talabot; and the Chevalier Negrelli acted for Austria. The result showed that the difference in the levels of the two seas was so slight as to be of no practical account. Thus a great difficulty was removed in making an accurate calculation for a work of such vast magnitude, as it was now made clear that if the 100 miles of intervening land were intersected by an open channel of moderate width and depth, the waters of the two seas would meet without the aid of locks or any other artificial arrangement. At the first sight of the map of Europe, the Mediterranean would appear to be higher than the Red Sea, because the former, confined as it is at its mouth, being scarcely nine miles in width between Ceuta and Gibraltar, is only the last of a chain of lakes of which the Sea of Azof, fed by the River Don, is the first. The current is strong into the Black Sea at the Straits of Yenikale, near Kertch, and still more rapid where the Black Sea flows through the Bosphorus, a distance of eighteen miles into the Sea of Marmora. There is also a strong current through the narrow passage of the Dardanelles from the Sea of Marmora into the Mediterranean. Besides this absolute fall, the waters of the Danube, the Nile, the Po, and the Rhone are received into the Mediterranean; and as the swell of the Atlantic at Gibraltar is always inwards, from the prevailing westerly winds, a head of water might be supposed to exist, that a canal through the Isthmus of Suez would, as it were, tap and let into the Red Sea. If this were the case, a current would be created useful for the passage of ships going to the eastward, but likely to damage the banks of the canal, excavated for half its length in the sand of the desert. Again, the Red Sea, being an arm of the Indian Ocean, 1200 miles long, confined at its entrance by the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, or the Gate of Tears (so called by the Arabs from the frequency of shipwrecks in taking shelter from the storms of the Indian Ocean), and the Island of Perim, would have its tides disturbed from its narrowness, from the rapid growth of coral reefs, and from the prevalence of the north-west wind, nine months out of the twelve, that would keep back the water. But all this, as we shall see, however ingenious in speculation, is not the case; for the fact has been settled, to a demonstration, that the waters of the two seas are almost level; and that the mass of water removed by evaporation under the almost constant hot sun in those parallels of latitude accounts for a fact which would otherwise appear inexplicable. The suggestion of the modern maritime Suez Canal is due to Ferdinand de Lesseps, a man of the most indomitable perseverance and energy, with a most suggestive mind, who has had to contend, and almost alone, with difficulties that would have overwhelmed men not made after the fashion of Christopher Columbus. England's jealousy of France was the first obstacle; and when that was disposed of, engineering jealousies began, and these effectually retarded M. de Lesseps' object—the forming of a company with whose funds the work might be commenced. Yet after almost as many years waiting as Columbus passed in soliciting the slender means from his Sovereign to add a new world to the Spanish Crown, M. de Lesseps has triumphed over all; and whether the canal ever pays or not, his name will always be connected with one of the greatest public works ever attempted, contrived, begun, and watched to its completion by the mind of one man.

The capital of the company is in round numbers, sixteen millions sterling. The canal, with its ports at each end, was to be the property of the company for ninety-nine years, after which it would belong to the Egyptian Government, who, in the meantime, was to receive 15 per cent. of the traffic earnings. The tolls charged for passage were always to be equal for ships of all nations; and, I think, at about the rate of £30 sterling for a vessel of 500 tons from sea to sea. The Maritime Canal extends from the newly-constructed artificial harbour of Port Said on the Pelusian Coast of the Mediterranean, about midway between Alexandria and Joppa, the port of Jerusalem, to the port of Suez at the head of the Red Sea. The length of the canal is not quite 100 miles. Its depth throughout is 26 feet; its general width is 246 feet at the base, and 328 feet at the top of the banks, except where in some places on the line it has to be cut through high ground, there the width is reduced to 190 feet at the lower part. There will be no locks in the Maritime Canal, and vessels will be able to steam through, or be towed through, in about sixteen hours from sea to sea. The ancient Pelusium was selected for the Mediterranean entrance to the canal, because at that spot, 2870 yards from the shore, there was a depth of 30 feet of water. This is now called Port Said. There a harbour has been formed by running out into the sea two breakwaters or moles, which are formed of huge blocks of concrete. Each block measures twelve cubic yards, weighs twenty-two tons, and is composed of two-thirds sand and one-third hydraulic lime. The lime is imported from France, the sand is dredged up in the harbour, and each block costs £13 sterling. They are not laid in as masonry, but thrown down loosely, and are intended to answer the double purpose of protecting vessels from heavy seas, and of arresting the alluvium brought down by the River Nile in its passage towards the Bay of Pelusus, so as to prevent its choking up the channel. The western breakwater extends from the shore 2400 yards in a straight line, N. N. E.; and then with a slight angle towards the east extends 330 yards further. The eastern breakwater leaves the shore at a point 1530 yards to the eastward of the commencement of the western one, and extends nearly north for a distance of 2070 yards, at which point it is 760 yards from the western breakwater, and this distance constitutes the width of the entrance. The portion of the harbour affording shelter to vessels is nearly 500 acres in extent; and although the depth of water is not sufficient for the largest men-of-war, it is quite sufficient for ordinary merchantmen, if the present depth be maintained. The prevailing winds being from the north-west, large quantities of mud are constantly brought along the shore from the Nile; and this has been one of the main objections to the probable success of M. Lesseps' scheme. Whilst at this point, with the map of the world before us, might I be allowed to point out why the Nile, after leaving upon all the soil of Egypt that is affected by the annual inundation, a sufficient coating of mud to render the country proverbially the most fertile in the world, can yet discharge a torrent of mud by its two mouths likely to endanger the success of a harbour 50 miles to the eastward of where the Nile meets the sea. Now that we know from Baker, Speke, Grant and others, that the Bahr al Abiad, or White Nile, has such a slight inclination from the Lake Victoria Nyanza, that if there were any deposit in the overflow of the lake, it could not proceed far; it is no longer a matter of speculation from whence the Nile proper receives the alluvium with which its waters are charged during the inundation every July, August, and September. It comes from the Bahr al Azreck, or Blue Nile, which is swollen to a resistless torrent as it rushes from the mountains of Abyssinia during the rainy season, bringing with it the rich humus formed from

the yearly decaying leaves of a rank tropical vegetation. The Blue Nile enters the Nile proper at Khartoum; and though the White Nile contributes a much larger quantity of water than the Blue tributary, it only dilutes the mud and gives the whole body of the river force to reach the sea. The quantity must be enormous; for being discharged by two mouths, a larger volume of muddy water reaches the sea than if the discharge were effected by seven small ones as in ancient times. Since visiting Egypt, and reading all I could upon the subject, I am quite confirmed in the opinion that the river finding the seven small mouths insufficient formed the two present ones as the only means of ridding itself of the wall of water coming from the South. And, again, when Egypt was governed by enlightened and beneficent monarchs, millions of acres which are now desert swarmed with people making the most of every drop of the inundation, and thus retaining perhaps all the alluvium to fertilize the land, that is now annually discharged into the sea, and threatens to block up the harbour of Port Said. On leaving Port Said, the canal enters Lake Menzaleh, through which the channel is excavated for 29 miles to Kantara, a station on the desert route of the caravans from Cairo to Syria. The course of the canal then lies through low sand-hills to Lake Ballah, which it traverses for a distance of 8 miles, and then enters a deep cutting extending from El Ferdane to Lake Timsah. Near El Guisr, 4 miles south of El Ferdane, the deepest cutting throughout the whole line occurs, and it had to be excavated varying from 60 feet to 70 feet in depth. The characteristics of the first half of the maritime canal are, that about 34 miles of the course lie through lakes, and the remainder through elevated plateaux and low sand hills. The town of Ismailia has been founded on the northern side of Lake Timsah. The second half of the canal divides into two portions: in the first the canal skirts the eastern shore of Lake Timsah, and enters the cuttings at Toussoum and Serapeum; in the second, on emerging from the Serapeum cutting, the canal pursues a central course through the Bitter Lakes for 24 miles, going through the last cutting at Chalouf, and enters the Red Sea a mile to the south-east of Suez, the last twelve miles to the Red Sea being through a continuous level plain slightly above the level of the sea. The fresh water of the Nile is brought by a canal to Ismailia from Cairo and thence to Suez, which used to be wretchedly supplied with water, giving the administration of the canal the power of growing anything under such a sun. The question of tolls can only be decided when the canal is fairly opened, for it is questionable if any vessels without at least auxiliary steam power could take advantage of the Suez Canal, on account of the baffling winds in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, as by this line all the advantages of the trade winds, the monsoons, and great circle sailing must be lost. The three objections urged by the late Robert Stephenson, after walking twice over the whole ground, and thoroughly examining the project, are still in the opinion of most practical men as patent as ever. These were— 1. The difficulty of keeping the entrance open at Port Said, for two reasons, the first of which was the shallowness of the sea for a long distance from the shore; the second was the constant flow of the sea, driven by the almost continual N. W. wind from west to east, carrying with it the mud of the Nile, from its two mouths at Damietta and Rosetta. This objection M. de Lesseps proposed to obviate in his first plan by making the piers or breakwaters six miles long. Mr. Stephenson still objected that the flow of the water heavily charged with mud would soon render the sea so shallow on the

western side of the piers, that they would have to be lengthened beyond the money power of any company to support. 2. The wash of passing steamers and the force of the wind would wear away the sides, and involve the expense of lining the bank with worked stone, while the nearest place from whence it could be obtained would be Cyprus. This expense would ruin any company however rich. 3. The sand of the desert raised by the high wind would be deposited in the canal, and a constant expense of dredging to keep the channel open would again tax the resources of the company to the utmost. An engineer, a Mr. Fowler, has lately been sent to examine the whole project, and he already recommends the large blocks of stone that M. Lesseps has thrown loosely into the sea to form the western breakwater, to be laid solid to prevent the Nile mud from choking up the channel between the two piers. Powerful dredges are also at work keeping that part of the canal open most likely to be obstructed by the drifting sand; and lastly, the practice of other canals where steam power is used as a means of traction, is in favour of Mr. Stephenson's objection that the wash of passing vessels will degrade the banks and cause endless expense in lining them with stone. It is my sincere desire that the Suez Canal may yet come up to the most confident hopes of its projectors; for if it answered it would benefit the whole world: but I cannot set my doubts at rest, however much I may wish it to succeed, when I consider the disadvantages under which nature has placed that part of the earth for successfully carrying out such an undertaking. The Overland Routes to India. There have been several routes to India proposed within the last thirty years, partly by land and partly by sea, arising from the greatly increasing importance of the trade between Europe and the East; but more particularly from the rapidly developed system of railways which now brings every part of India within an easy distance of London. The first was the present route through Egypt, proposed by Lord Ellenborough, when Governor-General of India, and carried out, against much opposition, by Lieut. Waghorn in 1845. The second was the line proposed by Colonel Chesney, from the Bay of Iskanderoon, due east 100 miles to Bir on the Euphrates, and thence by that river to Bussorah, in 1850. The third was that proposed by Sir Macdonald Stephenson in his pamphlet called “The World's Highway,” in 1857, I had a good opportunity of knowing his views upon the subject when employed by him in Asia Minor; and but for the Ministry of the day being displaced who supported the plan, I was named to organize a party to explore the line in its whole length. The proposed line was to start from Belgrade on the Danube, which even at that time was connected with Vienna and the rest of Europe. It was to run from Belgrade to Constantinople through a pass in the Balkan, by Philipolis and Adrianople, a distance of 500 miles, thus making it possible when the line should be properly organized to reach Constantinople in sixty hours from London. The line was to cross the Bosphorous about four miles above Constantinople from the Castles of Europe to the Castles of Asia; and from thence to Bussorah at the head of the Persian Gulf, a distance of 1400 miles. In this 1900 miles there was comparatively speaking no engineering difficulty to be contended with to be compared with those of the Pyrenees on the line connecting Spain and Portugal with France. The first 200 miles through Asia Minor, would cross the elevated plateau of Phrygia near Lake Van, and descend upon the great Assyrian plain watered by the Tigris and Euphrates. From Bussorah the course was to lie along the coast of Persia and Belloochistan

to Kurrachee, and on to Lahore, a distance of 1500 miles. Of course, the longest and last part of the line was anything but plain sailing. Some arrangement was proposed to be made with the government of Persia, by which an armed party could proceed with safety from Bussorah to the Indus; but Sir Macdonald Stephenson depended more than anything upon the material advantages conferred upon the country by a well-managed railroad from Belgrade, than on all the diplomacy in the world, even in a country governed by Turks. New ideas would penetrate where a somnolent despotism has prevailed for ages. Fertile land for hundreds of miles would be reclaimed from the waste, and the blessings of a popular government would be sure to follow the material improvement of the country. It was to this that he looked as a means of getting over the danger arising from the wild tribes inhabiting the countries between Bussorah and Scinde; and in support of what I say I could not cite a more apposite instance than that of Hungary at the present hour. That country was prepared for a perfectly free government through Count Secheyny devoting his useful life to the introduction of roads and steam boats on the Danube; as by these appliances the production of the country was greatly stimulated; the comfort of the people was increased; and the confines of the Austrian Dominions were brought in contact with Pesth and Vienna, by which a public opinion was created that has saved the Empire. The result of this third line was to bring Lahore within a fortnight of London; and the whole strength of Sir Macdonald's argument lay in the superiority of rail over sea passage, or in other words, of forty or fifty miles over ten or fifteen miles an hour. From the information received from the best possible sources at that time, I am not aware that is a serious engineering difficulty between Calais and the Indus; and I therefore look upon the adoption of this line as perfectly certain if once Belgrade and Bussorah are connected by rail. The last line lately proposed was to start from Hamburgh to Warsaw, and thence to Odessa, Poti on the Black Sea to Tiflis and Teheran. But I cannot see the advantage of a more northerly line through a worse climate, and through the defiles of the Caucasus, because it is straighter. Constantinople is made by nature as the centre of trade with the East. Within the same area there is no spot in the world which commands so easy a communication with the most productive parts of the earth, both by sea and land, and any line of telegraph or railroad that avoids the Bosphorus throws away the most remunerative portion of the road between Europe and India. The Pacific Railway. The origin of the Pacific Railway may be traced to the increase of territory by the United States at the close of the war with Mexico, and the finding of gold in California rather more than twenty years ago. By an Act of Congress, passed in March, 1853, the War Department was directed to ascertain the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean. Mr. Jefferson Davis was then Secretary at War, and the results of the explorations and surveys made under his directions between 1854 and 1857, are comprised in the eleven volumes of Pacific Railway Reports, which are as well known to botanists, naturalists, and geologists, as to geographers and engineers. Five different lines were surveyed and reported upon, Mr. Davis deciding upon that marked red upon the map, and strongly recommended its adoption by Congress. But between 1853 and 1860 the political horizon gradually assumed a lowering aspect. The pro-slavery question being defeated in the West, with Southern influence paramount at Washington, civil war followed as a direct consequence; and the almost matured project of constructing a

Southern Pacific Railroad by the thirty-second parallel of latitude fell through as a matter of course. In 1862, the isolated position of the Pacific States was keenly felt by statesmen at Washington, and the question was first mooted that California and her neighbours might waver in their loyalty to the Union. An iron-road should bind them to New York, and the question of a through Pacific Railroad again came prominently before Congress. In the meantime the production of gold in California had been enormous; corn was raised far in excess of the local demand; Southern California was striving to export wine, hides, and tallow; trade had sprung up with Oregon, the Sandwich Islands, and most important of all with China; quicksilver was almost flowing from the mines of Almaden; and the strong desire felt by the Californians for a Pacific railroad was brought to a climax by the discovery that a practicable route across the snow-clad Sierra did exist through Donner Pass, midway between San Francisco and Virginia City. Nevada gave a helping hand to California by the discovery of the Comstock silver mine, and the wealth that poured in from it, raised that territory into the Council of the States. Even amidst the horrors of civil war, when Washington itself was threatened, and £500,000 were leaving the Treasury daily for the support of the northern armies, still the Pacific Railroad Bill was triumphantly carried, and grants of land and subsidies were agreed upon, increasing in amount as the line advanced westward; but no definite conclusion was arrived at as to the Eastern starting point of the route. The great precedent was however established—that government aid to the extent of about half the total amount necessary would be provided out of the national treasury to assist a Pacific Railway enterprise. Finally, the following programme was adopted, and the work actually commenced: the main line was to extend from Omaha on the Missouri river, to Sacramento in California, 1721 miles. St. Louis was to be provided for by a subsidised branch line to connect with the main line on or about the hundredth meridian of longitude, east of the Rocky Mountains. Three companies were to prosecute these works, and to stand on an equal footing as regards land grants, loans, etc. Firstly, the Union Pacific Railway Company constructing the line westward from Omaha. Secondly, the Central Pacific Railway of California proceeding eastward from Sacramento. These companies were to make their lines as quickly as possible from either end, and to meet at an intermediate point not fixed. Thus it was the interest of each company to lay as much track as possible, for the amount of Government subsidy, as well as the share of influence in the management, depended on the proportion of the line laid. Immense parliamentary excitement took place, and the contest was between St. Louis and Chicago. Money was spent like water, in the Legislature, but not under its ordinary name, being called by an American journal of the period, “the element of influence.” Thirdly, the Union Pacific Railway Company, Eastern Division, obtained the Government subsidy for a distance of 400 miles west of Kansas city. Thus it is evident that Chicago had gained the day. If the civil war had not intervened, it is more than probable that, although the year 1869 might not have seen a locomotive plying between New York and the Pacific, we should never have seen the iron road laid across the Black Hills. Chicago would have built the branch line, and the main line would have been laid further South, below the barrier of winter snows; it would have passed round the Rocky Mountains, not over them; across productive valleys, instead of through worthless deserts, and along the rich central trough of California, in the place of climbing an Alpine pass more than 7000 feet above the Pacific.

The chief clauses of the Government grant are these, and worthy of notice in the future of New Zealand:—Congress confers upon the three companies mentioned the right of way through all their territories; an absolute grant of 12,800 acres per mile of the public lands through which the lines run, i. e., alternate sections of one by twenty miles on each side of the line; the right to use the coal, iron, timber, etc., thereon; and authorises a special issue of United States bonds bearing 6 per cent. interest, proportionate in amount to the length and difficulty of the lines, to be delivered to the companies as the works progress, and as short sections of the road (usually twenty miles in length) are passed by the Government inspector. The cost of the railroad west of Chicago, a £35,000,000 sterling, besides the 14,080,000 acres of land lying contiguous to the line in its whole length, worth six millions more. The description of the whole line would perhaps be tedious; but there is one portion of it, 721 miles long, that is worthy of attention. This is the inland or great basin region of North America, extending from the dividing ridge of the Wahsatch mountains to the summit of the Sierra Nevada. It is a vast desert considerably larger than France, covered with short volcanic mountain ranges; it possesses a fertile soil, but suffers from an insufficient rainfall; none of its scanty streams enter the sea, but each discharges its waters into a little lake, and remains shut up within its own independent basin. Rich silver mines are being discovered year by year all over the basin region, and the yield from them already equals in value that of the goldfields of California. The difficulties of the construction of such a railroad can only be imagined by those who have never seen a similar country. The Central Pacific Railway, starting from Sacramento, fifty-six feet above the level of the sea, reaches the summit of a mountain ridge exceeding 7000 feet in height, in 105 miles. Here the engineering difficulties of the line centre. Most of the heavy grading averages 95 feet per mile; but for only three and a half miles is 116 feet (or what in England we should call 45 ½ to 1), the maximum grade allowed by Congress, resorted to. There are thirteen short tunnels, the longest being 1700 feet in length. It is a very hard strain upon two powerful engines to drag ten passenger cars with luggage up so steep an ascent, and the carriage of heavy freight is necessarily costly. During the whole of the summer of 1868, 3000 teams and 10,000 Chinamen were employed to grade and lay the track across the basin region. During the previous winter long lines of sledges were used for transporting iron rails and ties across the summit to the valleys of the Truckee and the Humboldt. When the snow had sufficiently thawed to allow of the tunnels being completed, and average of 500 tons of ties, spikes, bolts, and chairs, were carried over the Sierra in fifty cars, drawn by ten locomotives every day, and were sent from 300 to 400 miles to the scene of operations. Here two miles, and sometimes more, were laid in a day, each two miles requiring 500 tons of materials for their construction. The rails used weighed from fifty-six to sixty-four pounds per yard. For thirty miles across the mountain the snows of winter appeared insurmountable; but by the 1st of January in this year the Californians had roofed in twenty miles with strong wooden sheds wherever the snow was likely to impede the traffic. During 1868, 866 miles were added to the railway by the united companies, being an average of two and two-thirds of a mile a day, Sunday excepted. In the history of railway construction this rapidity has no precedent; and when it is remembered that for 1600 miles, wood for ties could only be obtained at three points accessible to the road, and that the country is mostly an uninhabited desert, the result appears still more marvellous.

Whilst abundance of coal sufficiently good for locomotives has been found in several localities near the railroad, none has been found between the Great Salt Lake and the Pacific coast. To enumerate the subjects of great interest connected with this marvellous undertaking, would occupy more time than can now be spared. Suffice it to say that the net of railways, to which the Pacific railroad will be a backbone, may have considerable influence on New Zealand. By the railroad London could be reached from Wellington in thirty-seven days; as San Francisco is 600 miles nearer Wellington than Wellington to Panama: thus, London to New York, ten days; New York to San Francisco, six days; San Francisco to Wellington, twenty-one days. It is but a question of time when our mails will be carried along that line. The cost, first-class from New York to San Francisco, is £28 sterling. I beg leave to close this brief account of the Pacific railway with an extract from a report of the Senate Committee on Pacific Railroads, dated 19th February, 1869; and I presume that no better authority could be obtained. By its text we learn that whilst immigration is actually being opposed in some of our colonies, the Americans are demanding with greater force than ever more hands and more brains. “It can be shown by official records,” says this report, “that Kansas Pacific, the Union Pacific, and Central Pacific, have been instrumental in adding hundreds of thousands to the population of the states of Kansas, Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, California and Nevada. Minnesota owes to the rapidity and cheapness of transportation by rail, her best immigrants—over 100,000 Germans, Norwegians, and Swedes. Every foreign labourer landed on our shores is economically valued at 1500 dollars. He rarely comes empty handed. The Superintendent of the Castle Garden Emigration Depot in New York has stated that a careful enquiry gave an average of 100 dollars, almost entirely in coin, as the money property of each man, woman, and child landed in New York. From 1830, the commencement of our railway building, to 1860, the number of foreign immigrants was 4,787,924. At that ratio of coin wealth possessed by each, the total addition to the stock of money in the United States made by this increase to its population, was 478,792,400 dollars.” Well might Dr. Engel, the Prussian statistician, say:—“Estimated in money the Prussian state has lost during sixteen years, by emigrants, a sum of more then 180,000,000 of thalers. It must be added that those who are resolved to try their strength abroad are by no means our weakest elements; their continuous stream may be compared to a well-equipped army, which, leaving the country annually, is lost to it for ever. A ship loaded with emigrants is often looked upon as an object of compassion; it is nevertheless in a political economical point of view generally more valuable than the richest cargo of gold dust.”