The San Francisco division teemed with complex and highly troublesome perplexities, but one and all arose from the resistance of Nature. Yet they were slight in comparison with those which the engineers experienced as they pushed forwards from the Missouri River. Here it was the hostility of man which harassed them. The Indians, driven from the eastern States by the march of civilisation, resisted its further approach into their domain. Fierce opposition was anticipated, but the results proved far more serious than the most gloomy forebodings. At every turn the savages swept down upon the little band toiling in the solitude of the wilderness, and these organised onslaughts became fiercer and fiercer as the base of operations was left farther and farther to the rear. For every spike that was driven, clinching a rail to its wooden cushion beneath, an arrow sped from an Indian bow, to be answered by the sharp crack of a rifle from the railway building forces. History does not record how many navvies fell victims to the noiseless weapon of the savages, or how many Indians entered the Happy Hunting Ground by way of a bullet. Yet the total of lives would outnumber the spikes driven to secure the metals for the 1,800 miles between the Missouri River and the Golden Horn. A conclave with the Red Men was urgent before the engineers stirred from the bank of the Missouri. Council Bluffs is a famous spot in the history of the New World, because here the Indians were wont for centuries to meet to settle tribal disputes. It was here that Collis P. Huntington and his colleagues met the Red Men to discuss the terms and treaty for the acquisition of the necessary land to found the city of Omaha. At that day the nearest point to which the railway had advanced towards the river from the east was Des Moines. The first locomotive required for constructional purposes upon the Central Pacific, and which weighed some 60 tons, had to be hauled across country on the deck of a trolley by teams of horses. When the trans-continental railway was taken in hand, however, the eastern railways were pushed forward with great speed to reach Council Bluffs, in order to carry the thousands of tons of supplies of every description requisite for building purposes. The scarcity of one commodity was felt severely. In this country one may travel for miles and not see a single tree. This hit the railway hard. Every baulk of timber, whether it was required for a fire, a shack, or a sleeper, had to be brought over enormous distances. By the time a sleeper was laid it often cost as much as $2.50, or ten shillings!