My life, therefore, spans the entire railway building of the world. The first railway was built the year I was born, and since that time, in a space of seventy-three years, more than 200,000 miles of railway have been constructed in the United States alone. In much of this great work I have had some share. I suggested the railway that connects Melbourne with its port, and mapped out the present railway system in Australia thirty-nine years ago; I organized the line that connects the Eastern States with the great Middle West--the Atlantic and Great Western Railway; and I organized and built the first railway that pierced the great American desert, and brought the Atlantic and Pacific coasts into close touch and led to the development of the far West. I may mention here, also, that I built a street-railway in Geneva, Switzerland, which is still in use; and one in Copenhagen, which proved that there was at least something sound in "the state of Denmark." Other railways, as in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, suggested by me, have been changed from horse to trolley lines. I also suggested the road in Bombay, India, which was the first railway in all Asia, now extended. It may be of interest to record that when I began building street-railways, I sent to the United States and got the plans of the Philadelphia roads and of the New York Third Avenue line. It was therefore upon the models of American roads that these foreign railways were constructed. It is sometimes said that it is remarkable that little is known of my connection with these great enterprises--for they were great, and epoch-making. But my achievements in England, in the pioneer work of building street-railways, is a matter of recorded history. An account of my work there will be found in a book by Dr. Albert Shaw, editor of the Review of Reviews, Municipal Government in Great Britain, as well as in other books that deal with the industrial life of the period. CHAPTER XXII ENGLAND AND OUR CIVIL WAR--BLOCKADE RUNNING I have referred already to the antagonism felt toward me in certain English quarters because of my speeches in favor of the Federal American Union in the hour of its danger. Love of country was always stronger in me than love of money, and I let slip no opportunity to defend the cause of the Union and to prove to the English of the upper classes that they were mistaken in supposing that the Confederacy could succeed. Those who were not in England at this period, when the South was in the first flush of its success, and when it seemed likely that England and France would go to the assistance of the South, merely to strengthen themselves by weakening the power of the United States, can not appreciate the extent or the power of British sympathy for the Confederacy. The element in England that took sides with the South was tremendously influential. I had already felt its power in a personal way through the defeat of my street-railway projects.