In 1862 President Lincoln signed the Act of Congress for “The Union Pacific Railroad Company.” Forthwith its works were commenced. Where? At two points:—The eastern, at Omaha, near the confluence of the Missouri River, with that of the Platte, or Nebraska, in the state of Nebraska, latitude 41° north, longitude 19° west, of Washington. The line follows the course of the river to the Rocky Mountains, which it climbs up until not far from the summit of the Bridger Pass, due west of Omaha. A tunnel not more than 500 yards in length carries the line into Utah. In this territory it passes by Salt Lake and Salt Lake City, head-quarters of Brigham Young and his Mormons; thence to the state of Nevada, as rich in silver-yielding mines as those in California are in supplying gold. No wonder, then, that its capital—Carson City—should now have a population of 15,000, although, seven years ago, there was not even one inhabitant to boast of. At the passage of the Sierra Nevada there will also be a tunnel 500 yards long. Thence to Sacramento, and from there, it will wend its way close to the river of the same name, and find itself at San Francisco. This is not only its extreme western, but it is also its extreme southern point, for, in coming west from the Bridger Pass, the latitude changes from 41° to 38° 20″; and it is from San Francisco that the western works commence and proceed easterly to meet, at some point as yet uncertain, those advancing in the opposite direction. They are already at the eastern foot of the Rocky Mountains, 500 miles from Omaha; and on the Pacific side, they have reached the western slopes of the Sierra. Therefore, already more than a third of the whole line is accomplished. On the plain, progress is made at a rate that would astonish the European engineer, for the Americans are satisfied with the road bed such as nature has made it; and thus it is no uncommon thing to lay 2½ miles of the railway in a single day! As the road advances, so do the locomotive and the train, but not always with the most perfect safety, for the Indians have now learned to do wholesale what they only did isolately upon the riders of the Pony Expresses,—witness the following paragraph from the _Times_ of no later date than August 31 of the present year:—