guaranteed promise on the part of the company, that, in adopting the new line, there should be no alteration of terminus. While Omaha was still in the white-heat of excitement, the contractors had been steadily employed in collecting material for a grand industrial campaign. Distant, in the line of travel then open to them, more than sixteen hundred miles from New York, with the Missouri River as their main avenue for the transportation of rolling stock and machinery west of St. Louis, the men who had undertaken to build the road bent themselves to the task with a vigor and celerity heretofore unequalled in railroad history. Iron from New England, shipped in coasting-vessels, and working its slow way through the Gulf of Mexico and up the knotted bends of the Mississippi; iron, from Pennsylvania by the lower route, and from New York by upper lines; iron in all conditions and shapes, from rails, chains, and spikes, to car-wheels and steam-engines,--came pouring in week by week, a tonnage beyond all estimate or comparison, and involving, from the want of rail connections, unparalleled expenditures. The transportation of one class of freight alone cost thirteen hundred thousand dollars. All other expenses were upon the same magnificent scale. Nebraska, though admirably adapted for agriculture, is singularly destitute of woodland. The lumber for building, and the cross-ties for track-laying, could only be obtained in small quantities and at great distances. Many of the sleepers travelled two hundred miles before they found repose on the road-bed. The labor market also was but scantily supplied, and agents for procuring navvies were despatched east, west, and south. But the splendid energy of the contractors had been fruitful of success. A vast aggregate of forces stood ready at the melting of the winter's snow and the click of the telegraph key to spring into enormous activity.