124 WESTERN INCIDENTS.

THE GREAT PACIFIC RAILROAD.

Norra Puarre Starton, Union Pactric pATnOAD, |
Nesraska, December 24th, 1866.

Editor of the Washington Chronicle :-—

I address you from this station on the world’s great highway, the
Union Pacific Railroad. The distance from Omaha is two hundred
and ninety-three miles, and it is short of the west end of the com-
pleted track twelve miles, making the total number of miles of track in
running condition, west from Omaha, three hundred and five miles.
When we consider that two hundred and sixty miles of this road have
been constructed during the present year in this out-of-the-way country,
to which the iron, rolling stock, pine lumber, and many other essen-
tials of the road had to he transported from St. Louis and St. Joseph
by water, on account of the railroad connection being incomplete over
Towa, with Chicago, we are struck with amazement and delight at the
boldness, enterprise, and energy with which this great undertaking
has been carried forward by the Company constructing the road.

A road constructed with such celerity naturally conveys the idea
that it has been caused by the level character of the Platte Valley,
through which it runs, and must have been accomplished at the ex-
pense of the good character of the track. But one has only to
traverse it, as the writer has done, to assure him that this has not
been the fact.

I know no road in the country, except it may be the great railroads
in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan, which have been
perfecting for a score or more of years, that can compare with this
read in the general good character of its embankments, cuts, ditches,
station houses, water tanks, depots, round houses, machine and car-
shops, and all the other adjuncts which are essential to the construc-
tion of a first class railroad.

To ride over the road and through the almost limitless valley of
the Platte, with a speed equal to that experienced in the great rail-
roads of the States I have mentioned, is to start within you ideas of
the greatness, power, and progress of our country, which you cannot
get in any other way in connection with the arts of peace. The power
of the Government was shown in suppressing the late rebellion
against the rightful authority of the nation, but equally is it now
shown in the peaceful, happy, and yet powerful manner in which itis