WESTERN INCIDENTS. 129

account of cold weather, and the want of materials.
The grading is completed about fifty miles, and the ties
are provided for more than one hundred miles west of
that point. A sufficient quantity of iron rails has been
purchased to extend the track to the Laramie river, a
distance of two hundred and seventy-one miles from the
end of the present track; and if an excursion party
should start for the end of the track, just one year from
the time that the late excursion party left New York, it
will be quite sure to make its last camping ground as far
west as the Laramie Plains.

The Great connecting link has been completed from
Chicago to the Missouri River opposite Omaha; and
preparations are now being made to construct a bridge
over the Missouri during the coming season; when this
is done, and the track of the Union Pacific Railroad is
extended to the Laramie Plains, the traveller may ride in
the same car from New York city, a distance of nineteen
hundred and sixty-seven miles, on his way westward
across the Continent—and he must not be surprised if,
during the year 1869, he can continue in the same car to
Great Salt Lake City, a distance of two thousand four
hundred and twenty-eight miles from New York.

So MOTE IT BE.