stockholders' meeting Stanford was elected president and Huntington vice-president of the company. It was evident, however, that an undertaking of such vast dimensions could not be completed without government help; and the Sacramento party, confident that in Mr. Judah's surveys lay the solution of the Pacific problem, repaired at once to Washington, and opened anew the railroad agitation. While the energy of the West was still engaged in penetrating the secrets of the formidable Sierra, a movement meaning work began to develop itself on the Eastern border. As a general statement, and without reference to individual routes, it may be said that in the Northern cis-Mississippi States there are two separate railroad systems, running in lines about parallel from east to west; the upper combination of routes debouching at Chicago, the lower, or central, at St. Louis. These lines are slightly entangled with the roads concentrating at Cincinnati and Indianapolis; but the division into an upper and lower route is sufficiently preserved to admit of distinct classification. The capitalists of both the great cities which form the terminal points of these systems had long been equally alive to the vast possibilities of the Pacific trade, and were eager, not only from local pride, but also from knowledge of the simplest principles of commercial policy, to secure to their respective communities the main bulk of this immense prospective traffic. With this view, Chicago had projected three lines across the State of Iowa, all of which were ultimately to converge at Council Bluffs. Thence across the coffee-colored Missouri, over rolling prairies, and up the slowly curving line of the Platte, stretched an easily rising ascent, which, engineers affirmed, had been graduated by nature as the most direct and practicable route for the interoceanic railroad. As yet no one of these Iowa lines was complete; but they all had a corporate existence, and their stockholders formed a nucleus for a distinct Pacific movement. St Louis, on the other hand, aided by the State of which it was the commercial capital, had as early as 1851 commenced the construction of the Missouri Pacific Railway, whose line shot straight as an arrow westward across the State, curving slightly to the north at its terminus, which was fixed at Kansas City. Four years later, the Territorial government of Kansas incorporated the Leavenworth, Pawnee, and Western Railroad, with privilege to build from Leavenworth to Fort Riley, and thence westerly. It is apparent that the two companies might readily connect, and thus form a rival grand trunk Pacific road.