The impetus which Judah had given to the Central Pacific had started the western end of the system two years ahead of the eastern, but had not produced great results at first. It was hard work building east into the Sierra Nevadas, climbing the gullies, bridging, tunnelling, filling, inch by inch, to keep the grade down and the curvature out. Twenty miles a year only were completed in 1863, 1864, and 1865, thirty in 1866, and forty-six in 1867--one hundred and thirty-six miles during the first five years of work. Nature had done her best to impede the progress of the road by thrusting mountains and valleys across its route. But she had covered the mountains with timber and filled them with stone, so that materials of construction were easily accessible along all of the costliest part of the line. Bridges and trestles could be built anywhere with local material. The labor problem vexed the Central Pacific managers at the start. It was a scanty and inefficient supply of workmen that existed in California when construction began. Like all new countries, California possessed more work than workmen. Economic independence was to be had almost for the asking. Free land and fertile soil made it unnecessary for men to work for hire. The slight results of the first five years were due as much to lack of labor as to refractory roadway or political opposition. But by 1865 the employment of Chinese laborers began. Coolies imported by the thousand and ably directed by Charles Crocker, who was the most active constructor, brought a new rapidity into construction. "I used to go up and down that road in my car like a mad bull," Crocker dictated to Bancroft's stenographer, "stopping along wherever there was anything amiss, and raising Old Nick with the boys that were not up to time." With roadbed once graded new troubles began. California could manufacture no iron. Rolling stock and rails had to be imported from Europe or the East, and came to San Francisco after the costly sea voyage, _via_ Panama or the Horn. But the men directing the Central Pacific--Stanford, Crocker, Huntington, and the rest--rose to the difficulties, and once they had passed the mountains, fairly romped across the Nevada desert in the race for subsidies.