possibilities; it will populate the West in a few years; and along its lines will spring up a hundred cities, which will advance in the swift march of national progress just in proportion to their opportunities for rapid communication with the older centres of opulence and culture. The Indians also, whose sad plaint against the inevitable civilization of the locomotive is still ringing in all ears, must succumb before the presence of this new power. When we reflect that a single regiment of soldiers costs a million a year, we must see that the railroad as a peace instrument will render more than an equivalent for all government assistance given to it. Moreover, our frontier posts must soon be rendered unnecessary by the operation of commerce. The same influence will also dissipate the power which the Mormons have gained solely by their isolation. But beyond these immediate considerations arise the magnificent commercial certainties which the logic of history reveals. Space fails us at this point of fruitful speculation; but it will suffice to say that the corollary of the Pacific railroads is the transfer of the world's commerce to America, and the substitution of New York for Paris and London as the world's exchange. In the train of these immeasurable events must come the wealth and the culture which have hitherto been limited to Europe. With the year 1866 began the _rapid_ work of this revolutionizing enterprise. The year of grace 1870 will witness its completion. The four years' civil war is followed by the four years' victory of peace. Already the Western cities are tremulous with the aspirations which it excites; and the metropolis of the East, with its new steamship lines to Brazil, its Cuban cable, and its hundred prospective enterprises, awaits the moment which shall lift it to imperial importance. FOOTNOTES: [B] The use of this phrase requires explanation. It has been previously stated that Council Bluffs was the point on which the Chicago lines were concentrating. It is now to be added, that beyond this growing settlement, across the Missouri River, lies Nebraska, and the proposed route would necessarily pass through the whole length of this State. At the rival roads are connected to a greater or less degree with the interests of the States in which are their respective eastern termini, and as the legal titles of the two roads are at once ambiguous and disagreeably long, we have preferred to designate them simply as the Kansas and Nebraska lines.