340 



The chief clauses of the Government grant are these, and worthy of notice 

 in the future of New Zealand : — Congress confers upo n the three companies 

 mentioned the right of way through all their territories ; an absolute grant of 

 12,800 acres per mile of the public lands through which the lines run, i.e., 

 alternate sections of one by twenty miles on each side of the line ; the right to 

 use the coal, iron, timber, etc., thereon ; and authorises a special issue of 

 United States bonds bearing 6 per cent, interest, proportionate in amount to 

 the length and difficulty of the lines, to be delivered to the companies as the 

 works progress, and as short sections of the road (usually twenty miles in 

 length) are passed by the Government inspector. The cost of the railroad west 

 of Chicago, a distance of 2000 miles, may be said to have amounted in round 

 numbers to .£35,000,000 sterling, besides the 14,080,000 acres of land lying 

 contiguous to the line in its whole length, worth six millions more. 



The description of the whole line would perhaps be tedious ; but there is 

 one portion of it, 721 miles long, that is worthy of attention. This is the inland 

 or great basin region of North America, extending from the dividing ridge 

 of the. Wahsatch mountains to the summit of the Sierra Nevada. It is a vast 

 desert considerably larger than France, covered with short volcanic mountain 

 ranges ; it possesses a fertile soil, but suffers from an insufficient rainfall ; none 

 of its scanty streams enter the sea, but each discharges its waters into a little 

 lake, and remains shut up within its own independent basin. Rich silver 

 mines are being discovered year by year all over the basin region, and the yield 

 from them already equals in value that of the goldfields of California. 



The difficulties of the construction of such a railroad can only be imagined 

 by those who have never seen a similar country. The Central Pacific Rail- 

 way, starting from Sacramento, fifty-six feet above the level of the sea, reaches 

 the summit of a mountain ridge exceeding 7000 feet in height, in 105 miles. 

 Here the engineering difficulties of the line centre. 



Most of the heavy grading averages 95 feet per mile ; but for only 

 three and a half miles is 116 feet (or what in England we should call 45^ to 1), 

 the maximum grade allowed by Congress, resorted to. 



There are thirteen short tunnels, the longest being 1700 feet in length. 

 It is a very hard strain upon two powerful engines to drag ten passenger cars 

 with luggage up so steep an ascent, and the carriage of heavy freight is neces- 

 sarily costly. During the whole of the summer of 1868, 3000 teams and 10,000 

 Chinamen were employed to gr*ade and lay the track across the basin region. 

 During the previous winter long lines of sledges were used for transporting 

 iron rails and ties across the simnnit to the valleys of the Truckee and the 

 Humboldt. When the snow had sufficiently thawed to allow of the tunnels 

 being completed, an average of 500 tons of ties, 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 in a day, each two miles requiring 500 tons of 

 materials for their construction. The rails used weighed from fifty-six to 

 sixty-four pounds per yard. 



For thirty miles across the mountain the snows of winter appeared insur- 

 mountable ; but by the 1st of January in this year the Californians had 

 roofed in twenty miles with strong wooden sheds wherever the snow was likely 

 to impede the traffic. 



During 1868, 866 miles were added to the railway by the united 

 companies, being an average of two and two-thirds of a mile a day, Sunday 

 excepted. In the history of railway construction this rapidity has no precedent; 

 and when it is remembered that for 1600 miles, wood for ties could only be 

 obtained at three points accessible to the road, and that the country is mostly 

 an uninhabited desert, the result appears stiil more marvellous. 



