CONCLUSION. 



city of Havannah and the centre of the island. This is an excel- 

 lently constructed road, and capitally worked by British engines, 

 British engineers, and British coals. The impressions produced 

 in passing along this line of railway, though different from those 

 already noticed in the forests of the far west, is not less remark- 

 able. We are here transported at thirty miles an hour by an 

 engine from Newcastle, driven by an engineer from Manchester, 

 and propelled by fuel from Liverpool, through fields yellow with 

 pine-apples, through groves of plantain and cocoa-nut, and along 

 roads inclosed by hedge-rows of ripe oranges. 



17. To what extent this extraordinary rapidity of advancement 

 made by the United States in its inland communications is observ- 

 able in other departments will be seen by the following table, 

 exhibiting a comparative statement of those data, derived from 

 official sources, which indicate the social and commercial condition 

 of a people through a period which forms but a small stage in the 

 life of a nation : 



If they were not founded on the most incontestable statistical 

 data, the results assigned to the above table would appear to 

 belong to fable rather than history. In an interval of little more 

 than half a century it appears that this extraordinary people have 

 increased above 500 per cent, in numbers ; their national revenue 

 has augmented nearly 700 per cent., while their public expendi- 

 ture has increased little more than 400 per cent. The prodigious 

 extension of their commerce is indicated by an increase of nearly 

 500 per cent, in their imports and exports, and 600 per cent, in 



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