THE GREATEST RAILWAY IN THE WORLD.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 13, Issue 678, 3 May 1869, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE GREATEST RAILWAY IN THE WORLD.

An event of more than ordinary moment is announced by the American papers to take place this summer. The Great Pacific Railway will be completed by July, and there will then be opened an unbroken communication over the iron highway from the Atlantic to the other sule of the continent. Travellers will leave London or Liverpool and be set down in San Francisco in fifteen or sixteen days, and may pass thence, in swift steamers, to Yokohama, in Japan, or to Shanghai, in China, in nineteen days, the whole journej thus taking only thirty-four or thirty live days, instead of sixty, as at present by the quickest route. Tne results of such a triumph of enterprise and skill as this unites two oceans divided by a vast continent, will, in all probability exceed any anticipations. Some years ago, Secretary Seward startled us by saying, that America must henceforth look westward to the Pacific for her commercial future, rather than eastward, over the Atlantic. The vast trade of China and India, brought to the shores of California, was the prize for which she must strive. The question is, how far she will secure it by this surpassing effort of her energy and fore* sight. The carrying trade of all Europe is seriously threatened. Hitherto, Russia has had a large share of the transport of some lauds of Eastern productions especially for the consumption of her owu empire, by the overland route across Asia, but it is so imperilled by the Pacific Railroad that, already, Russian officers have been sent to study the construction of the American line, and to report whether it would be praticable to construct one iu a similar way across the vast steppes of Siberia from China to St. Petersburg. The staples of the great English carrying trade from China and ludia are so costly, in proportion to their bulk, and are so much atfected by the quickness of delivery in British and and continental markets, that the

greater cheapness of sea freight, compared with that of railroads, is of less moment than might be thought. To get the first tea or silk in London would be amply worth paying the difference. Even now it repays the Russians to bring the finer kinds on camels from the wall of China to the Baltic, The trains of San Francisco may therefore, be expected to drag long shiploads both of tea and silk to the Atlantic and thus leave our splendid clippers, which now race from the Thames or the Mersey to the furthest East and back, helplessly behind. Nor is there any likelihood that this new channel of trade will show all its capacity at once. Improvements and developements are certain; nor can we as yet conjecture the final result. The rise and deeline of cities and territories has always depended, except in peculiar cases, on their enjoyment of the fertilising currents of commerce. Palmyra flourished while the trade to India passed through it from the Euphrates. Alexandria has been marked by prosperity or decay as the transit trade came or left it. Venice flourished while the overland route coutiuued, and sank with the discovery of the route to India round the Cape of Good Hope; and when Cromwell destroyed the carrying trade of the Dutch by his navigation laws, the grass began to grow in the cities of the Republic. England has no need to fear any fatal injury from the new American rivalry; but assuredly one of the great feeders of her mercantile marine is in great danger. The opening of the Pacific Railroad will have immense effects even on th» internal commerce of the continent, and on the developement of the vast regions through which it passes. How great these are may be partly realised from the remembrance that it is 3,300 miles from New York to San Francisco by way of Chicago. If a train run at a rate of 20 miles an hour, including stoppage, which is a fair average for American railways, it will take seven days to pass from sea to sea. The energy with which the works are being pushed to an end is amazing. No less than 517 miles on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, from Omaka to Cheyeuue, of which but 40 miles were completed in May, 1866, had been laid down at the end of 1867. These 517 miles pass over the rich plains and valley of the Platte river, where the rising villages and towns, oad active business and prosperity, show the future influence of the undertaking. Already the public lands of the interior have been opened out by it, up to the Rocky Mountains, on the east, while 10,000 Chinese laborers on the western, or Pacific side of that great mountain chain, have carried the road over the Sierra Nevada, or continuation of the Andes, wbich runs from Mexico, at- a varying distance from the coast, to the Polar Ocean, forming, in California, the background to the huge and fertile plain which constitutes that state. They have had to carry the line over a height of 7000 feet above the sea-level to pass these snowy barriers ; but it is accomplished, and they are new pushing on to meet the workmen on the Atlantic slope. As many as 793 freight-cars, 20 passengers and mail cars, and 53 locomotives are employed, and sent forward as the rails are laid. Rockcutting machines are busy where they are needed, and a mile and a third of rail is finished even in hard parts, working in a day. Where there is level ground, suitable for the ties, they advance at the rate of 4 miles a day. A bridge 3,000 feet long has been thrown over the North Plattie, besides other substantial works. The houses of the workmen, with shops for the sale of what they may need, are moved on trucks continually, as the works leave them behind, Six months more, and the traffiic of China, India, the Sandwich Islands, Japan, and Australia will be startling regions which were vast and well-nigh inaccessible sotitudes, known only to the trapper and mysteriously spoken of as the Far West in the youth of men still young.