[Illustration: Scene before Driving the Last Spike—Promontory Point, Utah, May 10, 1869. John Duff in front, immediately beneath engine. Sidney Dillon at his left. The Reverend Doctor Todd asking a blessing. Photograph by C. R. Savage for the Union Pacific Railway.] But these savages were little worse than those who composed a large part of the population of each terminus. They had different methods, that was all. Whiskey flowed free and drunkenness was, as usual with our European race, the great recreation. Gambling dives and grog shops made up a large part of the mushroom town that grew up at each official end of the track. All manner of people, like birds of prey, flocked to these places to secure a share of the money paid to the workers, who were numbered by thousands. Some buildings were fairly substantial, but there were many that were merely board sides with a canvas roof. Others were "dugouts," that is, holes in the ground roofed over with sticks and earth; in a side hill if possible. There were large numbers of tents. Where there were vertical clay banks along a dry water course, or a stream, these were burrowed into near the top, a square chamber being made seven or eight feet long, five or six high, and four or five deep, the outer side being closed by a blanket or canvas hung from the upper edge. Rents were high and any shelter at all was valuable. [Illustration: The Ames Monument—Union Pacific Railway. Photograph by F. S. Dellenbaugh.] From time to time, as progress of the line demanded, the official terminus was moved on. From Grand Island it jumped to North Platte, then to Julesburg, then to Cheyenne, and so on, in some cases leaving a permanent town of considerable proportions behind. In the case of Cheyenne a city of five thousand sprang out of nothing, and there were three newspapers; but in some instances the advance left behind only a wreck looking as if a tornado had swept that way. Remnants of old clothes, boards, straw, broken furniture, thousands of tin cans, empty bottles, etc., strewed the ground in all directions. At Green River a number of adobe houses were built, the ruins of which were still standing at the time of my first visit to that locality in 1871. Even two or three miles up the track I found dugouts and a large amount of wreckage to remind one of the late "prosperity." The life at these places had all the most vicious qualities of our civilization, and few of its good ones. There were no policemen, and the state of disorder may be imagined. It was a feverish nightmare of horrors, in striking contrast to the sobriety of the life the Mormons brought to the Wilderness. [Illustration: Driving the Last Spike, 3.05 P.M., New York Time, May 10, 1869. Locomotive "Jupiter" of the Central Pacific, and "119" of the Union Pacific, about to meet when last spike is driven. Photograph by C. R. Savage for the Union Pacific Railway.] [Illustration: The Last Tie.