The Western people apparently think no more of throwing down a railroad, if they want to go anywhere, than a conservative Easterner does of taking an unaccustomed walk across country; and the railway constructors and managers are a little amused at the Eastern slowness and want of facility in construction and management. One hears that the East is antiquated, and does not know anything about railroad building. Shovels, carts, and wheelbarrows are of a past age; the big wheel-scraper does the business. It is a common remark that a contractor accustomed to Eastern work is not desired on a Western job. On Friday afternoon, November 18th, the news was flashed that the last rail was laid, and at 6 p.m. a special train was on the way from St. Paul with a double complement of engineers and train-men. For the first 500 miles there was more or less delay in avoiding the long and frequent freight trains, but after that not much except the necessary stops for cleaning the engine. Great Falls, about 1100 miles, was reached Sunday noon, in thirty-six hours, an average of over thirty miles an hour. A part of the time the speed was as much as fifty miles an hour. The track was solid, evenly graded, heavily tied, well aligned, and the cars ran over it with no more swing and bounce than on an old road. The only exception to this is the piece from Great Falls to Helena, which had not been surfaced all the way. It is excellent railway construction, and it is necessary to emphasize this when we consider the rapidity with which it was built. The company has built this road without land grant or subsidy of any kind. The Montana extension, from Minot, Dakota, to Great Falls, runs mostly through Indian and military reservations, permission to pass through being given by special Act of Congress, and the company buying 200 feet road-way. Little of it, therefore, is open to settlement. These reservations, naming them in order westward, are as follows: The Fort Berthold Indian reservation, Dakota, the eastern boundary of which is twenty-seven miles west of Minot, has an area of 4550 square miles (about as large as Connecticut), or 2,912,000 acres. The Fort Buford military reservation, lying in Dakota and Montana, has an area of 900 square miles, or 576,000 acres. The Blackfeet Indian reserve has an area of 34,000 square miles (the State of New York has 46,000), or 21,760,000 acres. The Fort Assiniboin military reserve has an area of 869.82 square miles, or 556,684 acres.