rails dragged over the mountains by teams of oxen. The chief engineer, who organized the force of labourers, laid out the road, designed the necessary structures, and successfully grappled with the novel problem of running trains over such a line in all seasons, was Mr. S. S. Montague. The requirements of the traffic necessitate not only solidly constructed iron-covered snow-sheds, but massive snow-ploughs to throw off the track the deep snow which could in no other way be prevented from interrupting the working of the line. These snow-ploughs are sometimes urged forward with the united power of eight heavy locomotives. Fig. 55 represents one of these ploughs cleaning the line, by throwing off the snow on to the sides of the track. The cutting apparatus varies in its arrangements, some forms being designed to push the snow off on one side, some on the other, and to fling it down the precipices; and others, like the one represented, are intended merely to throw it off the track. [Illustration: FIG. 56.—_The first Steam Railroad Train in America._ ] Sacramento is 1,775 miles from Omaha, and is connected with San Francisco by a line 139 miles long. At San Francisco, or rather at Oakland, 1,911 miles from Omaha and 3,212 miles from New York, is the terminus of the great system of lines connecting the opposite shores of the vast North American continent. San Francisco, situated on the western shore of a bay, is connected with Oakland by a ferry; but the railway company have recently constructed a pier, which carries the trains out into the bay for 2¼ miles. This pier is strongly built, and is provided with a double set of rails and a carriage-road, and with slips at which ships land and embark passengers, so that ships trading to China, Japan, and Australia can load and unload directly into the trains, which may pass without change from the shores of the Pacific to those of the Atlantic Ocean. San Francisco is a marvellous example of rapid increase, for the population now numbers 170,000, yet a quarter of a century ago 500 white settlers could not be found in as many miles around its site. The first house was erected in 1846, and in 1847 not a ship visited the bay, but now forty large steamships ply regularly, carrying mails to China, Japan, Panama, South America, Australia, &c., and there are, of course, hundreds of other steamers and ships.