We write this article in September. Within a few days, and without much
heralding, has occurred an event of prime importance to our country's
future. This is the opening from New York to St. Louis of a continuous
broad-gauge line under the title of the Atlantic and Great Western
Railway. This line is twelve hundred miles long, and pursues the
following route: By the New York and Erie Road, from New York to the
station of Salamanca; thence, by a separate road of the Atlantic and
Great Western, to Dayton, Ohio; thence, over the Cincinnati, Hamilton,
and Dayton Road, to Cincinnati; and finally, by the Ohio and Mississippi
Road, to St. Louis. The first excursion-train accomplished the whole
distance in forty-four hours. We understand that the regular
express-trains of the line will be required to make equally good
time,--ultimately, perhaps, to reduce the time to forty hours.
This valuable connection has been mainly effected by the energy and
talents of two men. Mr. James McHenry, a Pennsylvanian by birth, but of
late years resident abroad, has raised twenty million dollars for the
project in the money-markets of England, Spain, and Germany, the bonds
of the Company obtaining ready sale upon the guaranty of his personal
high character for uprightness and financial ability. Mr. Thomas W.
Kennard, an engineer and capitalist of large views, discretion, and
experience, has managed the interests of the project here at home,
securing the hearty cooperation and good-will of all the roads now made
continuous, and bringing the enterprise to a successful issue with a
skill possible only to first-class commercial genius. The former of
these gentlemen is Financial Director and Contractor, the latter,
Engineer-in-Chief, Vice-President, and General Manager of the line. At
any other period than this their success would have been widely talked
of as a great national benefit. Even now let us not forget the
public-spirited men whose hopeful hands, in the midst of blood and din,
have been sowing seeds of commercial prosperity to glorify with their
perfected harvest the day of our National triumph and reunion.
This work is the first instalment of the greatest popular enterprise in
the world, the initial fulfilment of a promise which America has made to
herself and all the other nations,--one which shall be completely
fulfilled only when an iron highway stretches across her entire breadth,
from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. As a people we have grudged
neither time nor money to the accomplishment of this end. We have dared
the fiery desert and the frozen mountaintop, the demons of thirst,
starvation, and savage warfare. Our foremost scientific men, for the
sake of the great national enterprise, have taken their lives in their
hands, going out to meet peril and privation with the cheerful constancy
of apostles and martyrs. The record of expeditions bearing either
directly or indirectly on the subject of the Pacific Railroad is one to
which every American citizen must point with a pride none the less
hearty for the fact that its route has not yet been absolutely decided.
The one curse mingled with a young republic's many blessings is the
intrusion of political influences into the dispassionate field of
national enterprise. We might have determined the line of our Pacific
Road before the breaking out of the Rebellion, and by this time its
first or Great-Plains section should have been in running order, but for
the partisan jealousies which prevailed in high places between the
advocates of the different routes. Slavery, that _enfant gate_ of our
old-school and now happily obsolete statecraft, insisted on the
expensive toy of a southern and unpractical line, until our
representatives, harassed by the problem how to gratify her without
incurring the contempt of the financial world, gave over to the drift of
events the settlement of their country's chief commercial question. We
are now in a position to decide coolly; no entangling alliances with a
dead-weight social system bias our plain judgment of practical pros and
cons; but the opportunity for decision arrives a little too late and a
little too early for action. Congress, the legitimate custodian of the
Pacific Railroad, may be said to have passed the last four years in
climbing to the level of the country's vital exigency. Till Congress
reaches that and understands it fully, there is no surplus energy to be
thrown away on the else paramount matters of a peaceful age.
But it must not be forgotten that the Pacific Railroad stands next to
the maintenance of National Unity on the docket of causes for
adjudication by our representative tribunal. The people have filed it
away till the grand appeal is settled; but they have not forgotten it.
It is none the pleasanter thought to them because they have no time to
talk about it, that the great highway of the continent has been left,
_pendente lite_, in the hands of squabbling speculators, and that
personal recriminations bar the progress of our commerce between sea and
sea. The indifference of our public trustees to the disgraceful
controversies which have embarrassed work on the eastern end of the line
is itself not a disgrace only because human power is limited to the care
of one great matter at a time. The first Congress that meets under the
olive of an honorable peace must at once take the Pacific Railroad into
the Nation's hands, and prosecute it as the Nation's matter, with a
liberal-mindedness learned from the conduct of a great war. Next to the
salvation of the Union, the completion of the Pacific Road most fully
justifies prompt action and comparative disregard of expenditure.
It is not our purpose, nor is this the place, to dictate to our
legislators either the precise line of their own action or that of the
road. It is still proper to say that the arrangements thus far entered
into with private contractors have proved inadequate to the
accomplishment and unworthy of the character of the enterprise. Whatever
may be the details of the improved plan, it must embrace a sterner
national surveillance over the execution of the project, and a direct
national assumption of its prime responsibility.
It is a mistaken notion to suppose that the Pacific-Railroad question
rests on the same principles as that of our minor internal improvements.
It calls for no reopening of the long-hushed controversy between
Democracy and Whiggism. The best thinkers of the day are universally
agreed to deprecate legislation in every case where private enterprise
will do its office. No good political economist approves the
emasculation of private effort by Government subsidy. The people are
averse to statutory crutches and go-carts, wherever it is possible for
them to walk alone. We feel distrust of the railroad which asks
monopoly-privileges. The sight of a Governmental prop under any
ostensibly commercial concern warns an American from its neighborhood.
He has learned that true prestige lies with the people,--that there is
no vital warmth in official patronage. Even within the memory of young
men a great change for the better has taken place in our commercial
manliness. Out first-class public enterprises blush to take Government
help, as their directors might blush, if at the close of an interview
Mr. Lincoln "tipped" them like school-boys with a holiday handful of
greenbacks. There is no doubt that the ideal principle of democratic
progress demands the absolute non-interference of Government in all
enterprises whose benefit accrues to a part of its citizens, or which
can be stimulated into life by the spontaneous operation of popular
interest.
But facts are not ideal, and absolute principles in their practical
application make head only by a curved line of compromise with the
facts. The philosopher cannot go faster than the people. Certain courses
are proper for certain stages of development. Few New-York Democrats now
denounce the building of "Clinton's Ditch," and the fact that a majority
approved of it as a sufficient evidence that it was a measure suited to
the period; though even an old Whig at this day could not approve of a
State canal under the auspices of Governor Seymour. Here are the two
great questions which at any time must regulate the exertion of
Governmental power: Is the enterprise vitally important? and, Will it be
accomplished by private effort?
Because the Nation in several eminent instances saw the former question
answered affirmatively and the latter negatively, it centralized a
certain amount of authority for the construction of fortresses and the
maintenance of a military force. These matters vitally concerned the
entire people, yet the ordinary _stimuli_ to private enterprise were
quite inadequate to securing their accomplishment.
The Pacific Railroad stands on precisely the same grounds. It concerns
the entire population of the United States, but no ordinary
business-organization of citizens will ever accomplish it alone. The
mere cost of its construction might stagger the most audacious
financier; but that is a minor obstacle. No doubt the city of New York
and the State of California contain capital enough for the completion of
the entire road,--would subscribe to it, too, upon sufficient
guaranties. But who is to give those guaranties? Whose credit is broad
enough to secure them? Our Atlantic capitalists have too often been
defrauded by stock-companies of moderate liabilities and immediately
under their own eyes, to feel quite comfortable about putting millions
into the hands of private operators, who shall presently have the Rocky
Mountains between them and their bondholders. In the case of almost any
other railroad-enterprise this objection might be answered by the
proposal to build the line with the subscriptions of people living on
its route. But this line must take a route without people, and bring
people to the route. Certain other roads are guarantied by the pledge of
their way-freight business. This road must be completed before such a
business exists; the business must be the product of the road. The
ordinary principle of demand and supply is reversed in its application
to this case. Supply must precede demand. Furnish the Pacific Railroad
to the continent, and the continent in ten years will give it all the
business it can do. Wait fifty years for the continent to take the
initiative, and there will not yet be enough business to build the road.
This enterprise must be looked at in the light of a cash-advance from
California and the Eastern States to the Plains, the Mountains, and the
Desert, secured by a pledge of all the mineral and agricultural wealth
of the party of the second part, guarantied by the prospective myriads
of settlers whom the road shall bring to tracts now lying waste through
the mere lack of its existence. In the course of the present article we
shall endeavor to show the solidity of this security, the responsibility
of these indorsers. While we counsel confidence to the capital which
must build the road, we feel it imperative upon the National Government
to enforce its position as that capital's trustee. That capital for the
most part lies east of the Missouri and west of the Sierra Nevada.
Between these two boundaries the road must run for eighteen hundred
miles through a region where capital may well be cautious of intrusting
its life to any less potent authority than that of the Nation itself.
The claims of the Pacific Railroad have usually been urged upon the
ground of its benefit to its _termini_. This ground is adequate to
justify any advance of capital by the cities of New York and San
Francisco. With the completion of the road, San Francisco necessarily
becomes a depot for the entire China trade of the United States, and an
entrepot for much of that between China and Western Europe. With the
development of our Japanese relations, still another stream of wealth,
now incalculable, must flow in through the Golden Gate. In the reverse
current of Asiatic commerce, New York's position at the eastern terminus
of the continental belt gives her a similar share. The gold-transport
and the entire fast-freight business of New York and San Francisco,
now transacted at an enormous expense by Wells and Fargo's Express,
must be transferred _en masse_ to the Pacific Road; while the
passenger-carriage, now devolving on Isthmus steamers and overland
stages, may be passed, practically entire, to the credit of the new
line. Certainly, no traveller who has once purchased bitter experience
with his ticket on Mr. Vanderbilt's line will ever again patronize that
enterprising capitalist, unless he sells his ships and becomes a
stockholder in the Pacific Railroad. The most enthusiastic lover of the
sea must abjure his predilections, when brought to the ordeal of the
steamer Champion. Crowded like rabbits in a hutch or captives in the
Libby into such indecent propinquity with his kind that the third day
out makes him a misanthrope,--fed on the putrid remains of the last
trip's commissariat, turkeys which drop out of their skins while the
cook is larding them in the galley, beef which maybe eaten as
spoon-meat, and tea apparently made with bilge-water,--sleeping or
vainly trying to sleep in an unventilated dungeon which should be called
death instead of berth, where the reek of the aforesaid putridities
awakes him to breakfast without aid of gong,--propelled by a
second-hand engine, whose every wheeze threatens the terrors of
dissolution,--morally certain, that, if his floating sty from any cause
ceases to float, there are not boats enough to save an eighth of the
passengers,--he must admire the ocean with a true poet's enthusiasm, if
he can brave the Champion a second time.
The considerations we have mentioned should be sufficiently operative
with the capitalists of New York and California, and, as such, are those
most prominently urged by the friends of the road. It would, however, be
a great mistake to regard the through-business an all-comprehensive, in
enumerating the sources of profit to be relied on by the enterprise. For
a better understanding of that immense way-trade which lies between the
oceans, waiting only for the whistle of the steam-genie to wake it into
vigorous life, let us treat the entire line as already continuous from
New York to San Francisco, and make an excursion to the Pacific on its
prophetic rails. We will suppose the track a uniform broad gauge, as it
ought to be,--the Pacific Road connecting at St. Louis with the Atlantic
and Great Western by powerful boats, like those in use at Havre de
Grace, capable of ferrying the heaviest cars between the Illinois and
Missouri shores. We will take the liberty of constructing for ourselves
the remainder of the still undecided route to the Pacific. We run our
ideal broad gauge as follows:--
From St. Louis to Jefferson City; thence by the shortest line to the
Kansas-River crossing; thence to Leavenworth (where St. Joseph, makes
connection by a branch-track); thence to that bend of the Republican
Fork which nearest approaches the Little Blue; thence along the bottoms
of the Republican to the foot of the high divide out of which it is
believed to rise, and which also serves for the water-shed between the
Platte and Arkansas; and thence skirting the bluffs a distance of about
one hundred miles to Denver. At Denver we find two branches making
junctions with our line: one connects us with Central City, the great
mining-town of Colorado, by a series of grades which might appall the
Pennsylvania Central; the other threads the foot-hills and _mesas_
between Denver and the Fontaine-qui-Bouille Spa at Colorado City, with
the possibility of its being extended in time to Canon City on the
Arkansas. From Denver we strike for the nearest point on the
Cache-la-Poudre, follow its bed as far as practicable, and rise from
that level to the grand plateau of the Laramie Plains. Running through
these Plains, we cross the Big and the Little Laramie Rivers, here
shallow streams, crystal clear, and scarcely wider than the Housatonic
at Pittsfield. Just after leaving the Plains, we cross Medicine Bow,--a
mere brook,--and a few hours later the North Fork of the Platte, which
eccentrically turns up in this most unexpected quarter, running nearly
due north from a source which cannot be very far off. The rope-ferry by
which the writer last crossed this picturesque and rapid stream we have
replaced by a strong iron bridge. Leaving the west end of that bridge,
we look out of the rear car and send our final message to the Atlantic
by the last stream which we shall find going thither. A stupendous, but
not impracticable, system of grades next carries us over the axial
water-shed of the continent, by the way of Bridger's Pass. One hundred
and fifty miles of tortuous descent brings us to Green River,--the
stream which farther down becomes the mysterious Colorado, and seeks the
Pacific by the Gulf of California. After crossing the Green by another
iron bridge substituted for rope-ferriage, our first important station
will be Fort Bridger. Leaving there, we almost immediately enter the
galleries of the Wahsatch Range, which form a continuous pass across
Bear River and into the tremendous _canons_ conducting down to Salt-Lake
City. From Salt Lake we pursue the shortest practicable route through
the Desert to the Ruby-Valley Pass of the Humboldt Mountains; we cross
that range to enter another desert, descend to the Sink of Carson, and
reascend to Carson City, thence going nearly due north till we strike
the line of the Truckee Pass, (where a branch connects us with the
principal Washoe mines,) and thence to Sacramento by the long-projected
California section of the Pacific Railroad. Another proposed, but still
ideal, road completes our connection with the Western Ocean by way of
Stockton, San Jose, and San Francisco.
We do not pretend to assert that the route indicated is in all respects
the most economical and practicable; a good deal more surveying must be
done before that can be said of any entire route, though we think it may
fairly be claimed for our ideal section between St. Louis and Denver. We
have chosen this route because along its course are more completely
represented the natural features to which in any case the Pacific
Railroad must look for all its primary obstacles and part of its
subsequent profits.
To complete the conception as its reality must in time be completed, let
us unite our Trans-Missouri portion with the Atlantic and Great Western
Railway, under the all-inclusive title of the Atlantic and Pacific
Railroad. It will not be very far out of the way to regard thirty-eight
hundred miles as the entire length of the line. On the Atlantic and
Great Western section express-trains will run at a speed of twenty-seven
miles an hour, including stops; but to provide against every detention,
let us slow our through-express to twenty-five miles. At this rate we
shall traverse the continent in six days and eight hours. In other
words, the San-Francisco gentleman who left the Jersey depot by the five
o'clock Atlantic and Pacific express-train on Monday morning may
reasonably expect (allowing for difference of longitude) to be in the
bosom of his family just in time to accompany them to morning service on
the following Sunday.
We will suppose our packing accomplished the day before we set out.
During the evening we send our watches to get the exact Washington time.
The schedule of the entire road is based upon that time; and a thousand
inconveniences, once endured by the traveller between New York and St.
Louis, are thereby avoided. It is not necessary to alter one's watch
with every new conductor. We no longer grow dizzy with a horrible
uncertainty on the subject of what-'s-o'clock,--ignorant whether we are
running on New-York time, Dayton time, Cincinnati time, or St. Louis
time,--whether, indeed, all time be not a pure subjective notion, and
any o'clock at all a mere popular delusion. For the introduction of a
uniform standard we have originally to thank the Atlantic and Great
Western Railway.
In comfort and elegance the second-class cars of the Atlantic and
Pacific Road correspond to the omnivorous cars in use on our railroads
generally. But we are a family-party, have nearly a week of travel
before us, and prefer to sacrifice our money rather than our comfort. It
costs a third, perhaps one-half more, to take first-class tickets; but
these secure us a compartment entirely to ourselves,--fitted up with all
the luxury of a lady's boudoir. We have comfortable arm-chairs to sit in
all day, the latest improvement in folding-beds to sleep in at night.
Our mirror, water-tank, basin, and all our toilet-arrangements are
independent of the rest of the train. We have a table in the centre of
our compartment for cards or luncheon. If we are wise, we have also
brought along three or four Champagne-baskets stocked with private
commissariat-stores, which make us quite independent of that black-art
known as Western cookery. These contain sardines (half-boxes are the
most practically useful size for a small party); chow-chow;
_pates-de-foie-gras_; a selection of various potted meats; a few hundred
_Zwiebacks_ from our Berlin baker, and as many sticks of Italian bread
from our Milanese; a dozen pounds of hard-tack, and a half-dozen of
soda-crackers; an assortment of canned fruits, including, as absolute
essentials, peaches and the Shaker apple-butter; a pot of anchovy-paste;
a dozen half-pint boxes of concentrated coffee, and as many of condensed
milk, both, as the writer has abundantly tested, prepared with
unrivalled excellence by an establishment in Boston; a tin box
containing ten pounds of lump-sugar; a kettle and gas-stove, to be
attached by a flexible tube to one of the burners lighting the
compartment; a dozen bottles of lemon-syrup; and whatever stores, in the
way of wines, liquors, and cigars, may strike the fancy of the party.
This may seem an ambitious outfit, but for the first year of the Pacific
Railroad it will be an absolutely necessary one. As civilization spreads
westward along the grand iron conductor of the continent, our national
gastronomy will develop itself in company with all the other arts; but
for the present it is safe to assume that outside of our private stores
we shall not find a good cup of coffee after we leave St. Louis, or
decent bread of any kind between Denver and Sacramento.
We seat ourselves in our comfortable arm-chairs, without the
mortification of removing single gentlemen and the trouble of reversing
seats to accommodate our party. The ladies are not compelled to sit in
isolation, by the side of passengers who use the car-floor as a
spittoon. We may chat together upon family-matters without awakening the
vivid interest of any mother-in-Israel mounting guard in front of us
over a bandbox. The gentlemen may smoke, if the ladies like it, and, so
long as they keep the windows open, nobody shall say them nay. We all
enjoy a sense of security and independence, which is like occupying a
well-provisioned Gibraltar on wheels. If we have a sick friend with us,
he need never leave his mattress till he reaches San Francisco.
Should his situation become critical _en route_, the best medical
attendance is at hand,--every through-train being obliged by statute
to carry a first-class physician and surgeon, with a well-stocked
apothecary-compartment. But our present party are all of them in fine
health and spirits; so we may dismiss the doctor's shop from our
consideration.
The whistle blows just as the ladies have hung their bonnets in the
rack, and the gentlemen exchanged their boots for slippers. We wave
adieu to the Atlantic coast and the friends who have come to see us
off. A few minutes more, and we pass through the Bergen Tunnel. The
remainder of the day is spent amid that wild mountain and forest
scenery which the Erie Railroad has made familiar to the whole
travelling-population of our Eastern States. At Salamanca we strike the
Atlantic and Great Western's separate line. On the way thence to Dayton
we shall pass a number of long trains, made up of platform-cars heavily
laden with barrels carrying East the riches of the Pennsylvania
oil-region. These have connected with our main road by a couple of
branches built especially for the accommodation of the petroleum-trade.
From Dayton to Cincinnati we shall traverse one of the finest
farming-regions of the world, meeting trains laden with beeves, swine,
packed pork, lard, grain, corn, potatoes, and every variety of produce
that bears transportation. By this time, also, Ohio vine-culture has
attained a development which justifies an occasional train entirely
devoted to pipes of still Catawba and baskets of the sparkling brands.
From Cincinnati to St. Louis by way of Vincennes, we run through the
southern portions of Indiana and Illinois, threading varied and
picturesque scenery all the way, unless we have seen the Egyptian
prairies so many times before that they pall on us before we reach the
Mississippi bluff opposite St. Louis. Till we strike the prairie, our
course is among bold, well-timbered hills, which now and then we are
obliged to tunnel, and by the side of charming pastoral streams whose
green bottom-land is shaded by noble plane-trees and cotton-woods.
Certain passages in the scenery between Cincinnati and Vincennes are
beautiful as a dream of fairy-land. Every few miles we continue to meet
freight-trains laden with all the well-known products of the Western
field and dairy. Twice, before we reach St. Louis, a splendid cortege of
passenger-carriages shall whiz by us on the southern track,--and each
time we shall have seen the daily through-express from San Francisco.
The St. Louis through-passengers will be ready, on our arrival, in cars
of their own. We shall switch them on behind us with little over
half-an-hour's detention, and strike for Leavenworth, taking Jefferson
City by the way. The country we now traverse is rolling, well watered,
and well timbered along the streams. Our road has so stimulated
production in the mines of Missouri that we frequently pass on the
switch a freight-train taking out bar and pig iron to San Francisco, or
on the other track a train laden with copper ore going to the East for
reduction. We have hitherto said nothing of the innumerable trains which
pass us or switch out of our way, carrying through-freight between New
York and San Francisco. We are still surrounded by excellent
farming-land, a fine grain, fruit, and general-produce country. Not till
we leave Leavenworth can we be said fairly to have entered the central
wilds of the continent. We are now west of the Missouri River, and for a
distance of two hundred miles farther shall traverse a country
possessing certain individual characteristics which entitle it to a name
of its own among the divisions of our physical geography. This is the
proper place for an indication of those divisions, generalized to the
broadest terms.
In passing from sea to sea, the American traveller crosses ten
well-defined regions:--