341 



Whilst abundance of coal sufficiently good for locomotives lias been found 

 in several localities near the railroad, none has been found between the Great 

 Salt Lake and the Pacific coast. 



To enumerate the subjects of great interest connected with this marvellous 

 undertaking, would occupy moi'e time than can now be spared. Suffice it to 

 say that the net of railways, to which the Pacific railroad will be a backbone, 

 may have considerable influence on New Zealand. By the railroad London 

 could be reached from Wellington in thirty-seven days ; as San Francisco is 

 600 miles nearer Wellington than Wellington to Panama : thus, London to 

 New York, ten days ; New York to San Francisco, six days ; San Francisco 

 to Wellington, twenty-one days. It is but a question of time when our mails 

 will be carried along that line. The cost, first-class from New York to San 

 Francisco, is £28 sterling. 



I beg leave to close this brief account of the Pacific railway with an 

 extract from a report of the Senate Committee on Pacific Railroads, dated 19th 

 February, 1869 ; and I presume that no better authority could be obtained. 

 By its text we learn that whilst immigration is actually being opposed in some of 

 our colonies, the Americans are demanding with greater force than ever more 

 hands and more brains. 



" It can be shown by official records," says this rejDort, " that Kansas 

 Pacific, the Union Pacific, and the Central Pacific, have been instrumental in 

 adding hundreds of thousands to the population of the states of Kansas, Colorado, 

 Iowa, Nebraska, California and Nevada. Minnesota owes to the rapidity and 

 cheapness of transportation by rail, her best immigrants — over 100,000 Germans, 

 Norwegians, and Swedes. Every foreign labourer landed on our shores is 

 economically valued at 1500 dollars. He rarely comes empty handed. The 

 Superintendent of the Castle Garden Emigration Depot in New York has 

 stated that a careful enquiry gave an average of 100 dollars, almost entirely in 

 coin, as the money property of each man, woman, and child landed in New 

 York. From 1830, the commencement of our railway building, to 1860, the 

 number of foreign immigrants was 4,787,924. At that ratio of coin wealth 

 possessed by each, the total addition to the stock of money in the United 

 States made by this increase to its population, was 478,792,400 dollars." Well 

 might Dr. Engel, the Prussian statistician, say : — " Estimated in money the 

 Prussian state has lost during sixteen years, by emigrants, a sum of more than 

 180,000,000 of thalers. It must be added that those who are resolved to try 

 their strength abroad are by no means our weakest elements ; their continuous 

 stream may be compared to a well-equipped army, which, leaving the country 

 annually, is lost to it for ever. A ship loaded with emigrants is often looked 

 upon as an object of compassion ; it is nevertheless in a political economical 

 point of view generally more valuable than the richest cargo of gold dust." 



