When the first edition of this work appeared in the beginning of 1857, the Canadian system of railways was but in its infancy. The Grand Trunk was only begun, and the Victoria Bridge--the greatest of all railway structures--was not half erected. Now, that fine colony has more than 2200 miles in active operation along the great valley of the St. Lawrence, connecting Rivière du Loup at the mouth of that river, and the harbor of Portland in the State of Maine, _via_ Montreal and Toronto, with Sarnia on Lake Huron, and with Windsor, opposite Detroit, in the State of Michigan. The Australian Colonies also have during the same time been actively engaged in providing themselves with railways, many of which are at work, and others are in course of formation. Even the Cape of Good Hope has several lines open, and others making. France also has constructed about 400 miles in Algeria, while the Pasha of Egypt is the proprietor of 360 miles in operation across the Egyptian desert. But in no country has railway construction been prosecuted with greater vigor than in the United States. There the railway furnishes not only the means of intercommunication between already established settlements, as in the Old World, but it is regarded as the pioneer of colonization, and as instrumental in opening up new and fertile territories of vast extent in the west--the food-grounds of future nations. Hence railway construction in that country was scarcely interrupted even by the great Civil War; at the commencement of which Mr. Seward publicly expressed the opinion that "physical bonds, such as highways, railroads, rivers, and canals, are vastly more powerful for holding civil communities together than any mere covenants, though written on parchment or engraved on iron."