Strange as it may seem, the building of the Union Pacific Railroad has diminished rather than increased the local trade of the city. In overland times single houses sometimes traded as much as three million dollars' worth in a year; but the railroad has so dispersed and distributed business, that now none reach even half that amount. The city, however, does an immense manufacturing business. Within its limits is located the largest smelting works in America, employing nearly two hundred men, and doing an annual business of probably not less than five millions of dollars. One distillery alone, in 1875, the year previous to my visit, paid the government a tax of $316,000; while there are extensive breweries, linseed-oil works, steam-engine works, and pork-packing establishments. The engine shops, car-works and foundry of the Union Pacific Road occupy, with the round-house, about thirty acres of land, on the bottom adjoining the table land upon which the city is built. Over one million dollars is paid out annually in these establishments, for manual labor alone, without including payments for merchandise and supplies. A notable industry is the manufacture of brick, over five millions being turned out annually from the four brick-yards of Omaha. The city is also the headquarters of the Army of the Platte, which annually distributes nearly a million of dollars. The first postmaster of Omaha used his hat for a post office, and carried around the mail matter in that receptacle wherever he went, delivering it by chance to its owners. Twenty years later the city possessed the finest government building west of the Mississippi, while the post office receipts are to-day upwards of a million dollars annually. Hides, buffalo robes, and furs, to the value of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, are annually collected and shipped from Omaha; while two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is the extent in a single year of the sewing machine business. The Pacific Railroad ships from Omaha vast quantities of grain to the Salt Lake Valley, and brings back in return supplies of Utah fruit, fresh and dried. The first shipment of fruit, made in 1871, amounted to three hundred pounds. In four years the quantity had increased to nine hundred thousand pounds, and is still greater to-day. The Grand Central Hotel was the finest hotel between Chicago and San Francisco, having been erected in 1873, at a cost of three hundred thousand dollars; but it was destroyed by fire in 1878.