In the summer of 1861, the project of a trans-continental railway connecting our Pacific communities with the older population of the East first assumed a practical aspect. For nearly three decades the nation had been dreaming of the scheme, but it had done little more than dream. Almost with the earliest track-laying in America, a visionary New-Yorker startled a sceptical generation by proclaiming the age of steam, and pointing at the locomotive as the instrument whereby men should yet penetrate the mysterious depths of the Far West, and secure for our growing commerce the prize of Asiatic wealth. Curious readers will find in the New York Courier and Enquirer of 1837 an article by Dr. Hartley Carver, advocating a Pacific Railroad; and in view of how little was known at this time of the country beyond the Alleghanies,--so little, indeed, that the Territories of the extreme West had no definite outline, but were measured from the crest of the Rocky Mountains,--the audacity of the proposition might justly have inspired suspicions of the sanity of its author. But if Dr. Carver was chimerical, he was at least courageous in his persistence. Ten years later, this lineal descendant of old John Carver transferred the question from the arena of newspaper discussion, and boldly memorialized Congress. Here he found a rival advocate in Asa Whitney, whose brain throbbed with the glowing possibilities of the Chinese trade, while his specious statistics and contagious eloquence arrested public attention. Neither of these projectors, however, found the atmosphere of Washington propitious. Failing there, they once more had recourse to the press. The discovery of gold in California gave fresh vigor to the agitation. In 1850, that notable railroad king, William B. Ogden, lent his name to the enterprise, and by his cogent and well-considered appeals excited confidence in statesmen and capitalists. Three years after, Congress yielded to the popular pressure, and ordered those surveys, the result of which lies in eleven bulky departmental volumes, and bears the name of "Pacific Railroad Reports." Then came the Fremont campaign, with its burning enthusiasm, the Pacific Railroad plank in the Republican platform, and the defeat which was almost a victory. The succeeding year a strong effort was made to secure a national charter; but though supported by the Senate, the measure failed to carry in the Lower House.