By an act passed in July, 1866, Congress did much to accelerate the construction of the road. Heretofore the junction point had been in the Nevada Desert, a hundred and fifty miles east of the California line. It was now provided that each road might build until it met the other. Since the mountain section, with the highest accompanying subsidies, was at hand, each of the companies was spurred on by its desire to get as much land and as many bonds as possible. The race which began in the autumn of 1866 ended only with the completion of the track in 1869. A mile a day had seemed like quick work at the start; seven or eight a day were laid before the end. The English traveller, Bell, who published his _New Tracks in North America_ in 1869, found somewhere an enthusiastic quotation admirably descriptive of the process. "Track-laying on the Union Pacific is a science," it read, "and we pundits of the Far East stood upon that embankment, only about a thousand miles this side of sunset, and backed westward before that hurrying corps of sturdy operatives with mingled feelings of amusement, curiosity, and profound respect. On they came. A light car, drawn by a single horse, gallops up to the front with its load of rails. Two men seize the end of a rail and start forward, the rest of the gang taking hold by twos until it is clear of the car. They come forward at a run. At the word of command, the rail is dropped in its place, right side up, with care, while the same process goes on at the other side of the car. Less than thirty seconds to a rail for each gang, and so four rails go down to the minute! Quick work, you say, but the fellows on the U. P. are tremendously in earnest. The moment the car is empty it is tipped over on the side of the track to let the next loaded car pass it, and then it is tipped back again; and it is a sight to see it go flying back for another load, propelled by a horse at full gallop at the end of 60 or 80 feet of rope, ridden by a young Jehu, who drives furiously. Close behind the first gang come the gaugers, spikers, and bolters, and a lively time they make of it. It is a grand Anvil Chorus that these sturdy sledges are playing across the plains. It is in a triple time, three strokes to a spike. There are ten spikes to a rail, four hundred rails to a mile, eighteen hundred miles to San Francisco. That's the sum, what is the quotient? Twenty-one million times are those sledges to be swung--twenty-one million times are they to come down with their sharp punctuation, before the great work of modern America is complete!"