unseen, and suddenly occurring dangers that the
"great through trains" 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 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 around 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 the price of her
land. The results flowing to 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 large 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
ever increasing trade with China and Japan, is a
long and difficult one. By the Suez Canal, the
quickest route from England to the Orient,
British vessels traverse some fourteen thousand
miles; when the Pacific Railroad begins to carry
on through traffic, the route viâ 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 proportionably more rapid. A journey
from New York to Yokohama will then
occupy about a month, and from London to
Yokohama about 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 Railroad across the American
continent, and go, through New York, to
London and Havre.

The stimulus which this increased
propinquity with civilised nations will give to the
hitherto exclusive and self-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 Rocky 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
these novel settlements of the oldest race
on the youngest soil in the world, is
constantly increasing in 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 Far 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 many 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 sleep in
luxurious state-rooms, your feet cushioned with
the best Brussels 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-à-
manger, 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
Margaux or Chablis, or the pure young
wines of the California hill sides. No 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 of the recent settlements,
than to gobble down a half cooked dinner in
a quarter of the time necessary to its 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 future 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