Another part of the road now runs farther north to Pittsburg and leads on to Chicago, while yet another passes south to Cincinnati and St. Louis. Eastward the main line runs to Philadelphia and stops at the Whitehall terminal in New York City. These long lines, with many spurs and side lines, make up the Baltimore and Ohio Railway system, which, like the Pennsylvania and the New York Central, joins the seaports of the Atlantic coast with the fields and cities of the Mississippi, and carries in either direction the rich mineral products of the intervening mountains. Like her neighbors on the Atlantic, Baltimore stretches out her hands to sea and land. The city was begun in 1730, at which time a Mr. Carroll sold the land for it at forty shillings an acre. When Washington first went to the Ohio there were only twenty-five houses in Baltimore, but in 1770 there were twenty thousand people, and the new city was drawing trade from Philadelphia. In 1826, when the Erie canal was building, Baltimore had become a city of sixty thousand inhabitants. Now it has more than half a million people, and is the sixth American city. In foreign trade, however, it stands third, and its docks are busy places. The Hamburg-American, the North-German Lloyd, and the Red Star lines all send regular steamers between Baltimore and Europe, and hundreds of others sail to ports on our own coast, to the West Indies, and to South America. Baltimore builds ships as well as sails them, to carry the corn, flour, and meat of the prairies and the great plains to foreign lands, and to bring back their products in exchange. Where there are railways and ships there are always merchants and factories. Out of the gains of trade a Baltimore merchant built one of the most famous of our schools, the Johns Hopkins University. [Illustration: FIG. 42. COKE OVENS AT MEYERSDALE, PENNSYLVANIA] There has been no more important factor in the development of the United States than is found in the great railway systems, which, by linking all sections together, give unity and strength to the whole fabric of our government. Washington’s dreams of his country’s future are already overtopped by her actual achievements, and the most hopeful among those who first saw the advantages of steam engines could hardly have looked forward to the swift transportation of to-day.