AMERICAN RAILROADS. [From the Times, Nov. 14.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VI, Issue 490, 13 April 1850, Page 4

AMERICAN RAILROADS. [From the Times, Nov. 14.]

"Continental" travel will soon come to have a very literal signification. Within a period of time which the reader will presently find himself qualified to estimate, the tourist is to be enabled to traverse bis 2000 or 3000 miles on a single journey, and to see his progress bounded by nothing short of the ocean itself. There are no people like those of the United States for gigantic conceptions. When the three mile panorama of the Mississippi was exhibited in Londou, it was happily observed that life indeed was short, but that American art was very long. The sober truth is, that art must always conform to nature, and when nature is on such a scale, that counties are as large as kingdoms, a trunk line of railway must needs be rather extensive. Still, even with this preliminary explanation, perhaps the prospectus which we are now going to subjoin may exceed the grasp of ordinary English comprehension. We need do no more than allude to the schemes which have been long in agitation for connecting the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans by means of a passage across some point of Central America. One of the three routes suggested for this purpose, viz., that of a railroad across the isthmus of Panama, is described in the metaphorical language of a transatlantic journal, as being already " under way," and in less than two years' time this critical transit is to be so far simplified that, according to the report before us, " a passenger lighting his cigar as he leaves the steamer in the Atlantic, may smoke it until he reaches the ship's side in the Pacific, thus reducing the distance between the two oceans to less than the length of a cigar." The Nicaraguan route, by the great lake of that name and the San Juan river, is not in so forward a state ; though the committees of the Geneneral Peace Congress will be pleased to learn that, in the opinion of the projectors, "no difficulty whatever is apprehended with the British Government on this subject." The line by the Isthmus of Tehuantepec is in a still more rudimentary form, though it is confidently predicted that, within "a very few years," all these three routes will be simultaneously open — the first for the expeditious transport of mails and passengers ; the second for heavy laden, through-going vessels ; and the last for the especial and peculiar traffic of the United States. Not all these three lines together can satisfy the American craving for speedy and continuous locomotion, and plans are now under serious discussion in popular " conventions " for the construction of a "Direct Atlantic and Pacific " line which is to start from some eligible point on the banks of the Mississippi and to find its termination on the western seaboard of the States. In the prospectus of this undertaking it is ingenuously admitted that the shortest cut to be found must exceed 1,500 miles ; that the route, in any direction, must be across mountains and deserts, uninhabited except by wild Indians and buffaloes, and unprovided with any kind of materials except rocks and sand. The estimated expense of the work is "the spare capital of

the whale country," which is to be invested in the labour of 100,000 men for a minimum period of 15 years. This invitation is candid at any rate, and perhaps such a programme is preferable to the luxuriant descriptions which used to be issued in our country some little time back, when every projected line had the easiest gradients, the softest curves, the greatest facilities, the largest traffic, and the cleverest directory that ever was known. If, however, our friends should really get from the Mississippi to Oregon, it will be a thousand pities that they should stop there. A tubular bridge across Behring's Strait would literally put a girdle about the earth, and then the predelictiona of American citizens might be gratified by the establishment of a perpetual circulation. After all, the project, gigantic as it is, is not wholly so impossible as it appears. The capital, we are pleased to see, is to be raised at home, so that the pretexts for repudiation gravely discovered in the very vastness of the undertakings by which the funds formerly borrowed were absorbed, will not be a second time employed against unfortunate bondholders. Even the utter solitude and sterility of the track through which the line is to pass are not without their advantages, for the land would of course be charge-free, or comparatively so, and the term "facilities" has a very different sense in a backwoodman's ear from that assigned to it in the estimate of an English contractor. The fact is that railroads in the United States correspond to " corduroy roads " in Northern America, and to the old-horse-tracts in this country. They are the first and the rudest kind of road struck out to connect one point with another. An American now never thinks of any other kind of communication. A good public highway, according to our notions, is almost unknown in the States, and, indeed, the road leading from Baltimore westward, is, we believe, the only specimen of such constructions. A railway therefore, in American phraseology, means less the perfection than the establishment of communication, and it is executed upon a corresponding scale. The timber from the clearings supplies the sleepers for the rails and the fuel for the engines. Even the rails themselves — that essentially metallic feature — are there mainly composed of wood, being shod only with an iron " ribbon" on the inner edge. This ribbon is fastened to the wood by means of large iron spikes, which not (infrequently get loose, and protrude themselves after a fashion exactly analagous to the famous " sawyers" of the Mississippi. Beside the "facilities" resulting from such arrangements, it must be considered that American lines maintain no patrols of police, are rarely even enclosed by side railings, and are constructed for such light work that even between the most important stations there are seldom more than two traini in the day. As regards the length, too, of the projected line, prodigious as it may appear to us, it scarcely exceeds what the Americans can already see in operation. From Boston to the central town of Georgia — Macon — there is now a railway communication of nearly 1 100 miles with scarcely a break, and when this line is continued to New Orleans, as is intended, the actual extent will exceed that allotted to the Direct Atlantic and Pacific. The results of this characteristic development suggest edifying subjects of speculation. The downfall of British power is of course occasionally mingled with less invidious anticipations, but upon the whole, the ruling passion seems to be the gratification of that irrepressible spirit of progress and locomotion by which our brethren are so eminently distinguished. A New York journalist cannot contain his emotions at the prospect. " When this railroad," says he, "is completed, with New Jerusalem as the halfway station, its results cannot stop short of the millennium." Amidst all the theories by which the advent and character of this final consummation have been attempted to be determined, we believe that no person ever hit upon the peculiar instrumentality now suggested. It is certainly impossible to quarrel with a prediction so'philanthropically based, and we may perhaps venture further to hope, that the actual realization of a terminus on the uttermost point of the Pacific coast may finally content even those restless citizens, of whom " not one," says Mr. Fenimore Cooper, " would ever be satisfied with Heaven, if h* heard of a place further west."