like Hampton Roads, Richmond, Cincinnati and Chicago, but the railroads are finished from San Francisco to New Orleans, and the only continental railroad system from ocean to ocean under a single management, does not pass by Chicago, but by New Orleans. The Americans originally stimulated by the governmental credit to build from the Missouri River to San Francisco, have upon their own credit and earnings stretched a railroad through California nearly to the gulf of that name, and then across the deserts and Texas, until New Orleans is at this moment the Atlantic seaport of California. Mr. Gould, who succeeded Colonel Thomas A. Scott, has stretched another railroad system parallel to Mr. Huntington’s from the desert through Northern Texas and down the Red River to New Orleans. Near the close of the past year another important railroad was built from Memphis directly to New Orleans. A little earlier last year the Cincinnati Southern Railroad was extended directly to New Orleans by the great syndicate which had leased it. Therefore, there now run into New Orleans four lines of rail east of the Mississippi River, and two great lines west of the Mississippi. Contrast this with the railroad facilities which existed there only fourteen years ago. At that time New Orleans had only one railroad to the north, and that had certain connections, and was under no consolidated sway. It was not even connected with its adjacent city of Mobile by rail. It had no railroad facilities whatever to reach Texas, except a little piece of road which ran to the Gulf near the mouth of the Atchafalaya, and there found steamships for Galveston. While other cities in the South have shown a cheerful energy to revive themselves, and while new cities have started up at many points, and have become respectable centers of trade, New Orleans has retained all that imperial promise under freedom which she had in the palmiest days of slavery. Perhaps no city in the South, or in the world, has so thoroughly changed its ideas, political and social, in spite of sharp contests for party supremacy there. The great exhibition of the present year is the best instance that New Orleans means to lead the industrial spirit of the South, and to become no longer the great filibuster in the tropics, but the energetic merchant and projector there. No lawless impulse guided the erection of the great buildings which are now crowded with the productions of America and Mexico. The attempt to let the sugar interests of Louisiana and Mississippi go in favor of the productions of Cuba and the East Indies, distinctly points the people at the mouth of the Mississippi to the fact that their alliance is probably to be with the Northern states, not merely in politics, but in commerce.