252 NEW TRACKS IN NORTH AMERICA. 
line centre. Most of the heavy grading averages 95 Teel 
per mile; for three and a half miles only is 116 feet, th 
maximum grade allowed by Congress, resorted to; there a e 
thirteen short tunnels, making altogether a fenigeth of 6,262 
feet. The longest is 1,700 feet. It is a very hard straim 
upon two powerful engines to drag ten passengers’ cars with 
luggage up so steep an ascent, and the carriage of heavy 
freight is necessarily costly. : 
This bold undertaking has been carried out with an amou ount. 
of energy beyond all praise. The road has been built, not 
by a staff formed of scientific engineers—they might have 
shrunk from so reckless a venture—but by a few go- -ahead 
merchants of San Francisco, who left their counting-houses - 
to become railway contractors. All last summer ten thousand 
Chinamen and about three thousand teams, were employed to 
grade and lay the track across the basin region. During the : 
previous winter I saw them transporting long lines of sledge, _ 
laden with iron rails and ties, across the summit to the valley — 
of the Truckee and the Humboldt. When the snow had — 
sufficiently thawed to enable them to complete the tunnels, a0 — 
average of 500 tons of ties, rails, spikes, bolts, and chairs — 
were carried over the sierra, in fifty cars drawn by ten - 
locomotives every day, and were sent from 300 to 400 
miles to the scene of operations. Here two miles, and 
sometimes more, were laid per day, and each two miles 
required 500 tons of material for its construction. The rails 
usually weigh from 56 Ibs. to 64 Ibs. per yard. 
For thirty miles across the mountains the snows of winter 
presented an obstacle which at first seemed to be insurmount- 
able, but these Californians would not give in; they have 
covered the line with strong wooden sheds over the entire 
__ distance in which snows are likely to stop the traffic, and had 
