With the junction of the two lines, it became possible to make safely in one week an overland journey that not many years before required months in its execution, and was attended by many hardships and dangers. It was, however, a route better known even in the days when the legend of the pilgrims over it was “Pike’s Peak or bust!” than is the region crossed by the new southern line. This line opens up what is practically an undiscovered and an unsettled country, but the region traversed has been ascertained to be so rich in resources as to fully justify the heavy expenditure involved in the construction of the line. In another year the line will become a powerful agent in the development of the Union, for it will then be connected with the lines that run through Texas into Louisiana, and New Orleans and San Francisco will be brought into direct communication with each other. This, in fact, has been a prominent object in the undertaking. The effect of it will be to cheapen the tariff on goods from the Pacific Coast to Europe, and will, it is believed, have the effect of controlling a large share of the Asiatic trade. —_Leeds Mercury_, April 23rd, 1881. MARRIAGE AND RAILWAY DIVIDENDS. Marriage would not seem to have any close connection with railroad traffic, but we find an officer of an East Indian railroad company explaining a falling off in the passenger receipts of the year (1874) by the fact that it was a “twelfth year,” which is regarded by the Hindoos as so unfavourable to marriage that no one, or scarcely any one, is married. And, as weddings are the great occasions in Hindoo life when there is great pomp and a general gathering together of friends, they cause a great deal of travelling. SECURITY FOR TRAVELLING.