Another difficulty the builders had to battle against was the scarcity of labour. The Californian Gold Fields were too magnetising to cause the men to stay long on the grade. They preferred to woo the fickle goddess of fortune in a scramble for the yellow metal, to a steady, daily round of toil at a regular wage. As a last resource the sheet-anchor of the railway-builder had to be called in--the Chinaman. The Orientals stuck to the work, and under their efforts the line progressed with greater speed than had been possible before their advent. At one time the rails were laid so speedily that the teams could not bring up supplies fast enough to meet the needs of the graders and track-layers. The permanent way was crude. It was a pioneer line in very truth. The earth was thrown up roughly, the sleepers were dumped on its crown, and the rails were hastily spiked to their bed. The line was little better than what one sees hastily improvised for the transportation of spoil on large engineering works. It writhed and twisted among obstructions in a fantastic manner, for the engineers, having neither funds nor time at their disposal, merely ran round or over humps, whichever method was the quicker. Speed and comfort were negligible considerations. The line, once communication with the coast was established, could be overhauled and strengthened later at leisure. Consequently, travelling was rough, the oscillation was severe, and the danger of derailment always existent. It was these conditions that prompted a phlegmatic Englishman, who essayed the journey shortly after the line was opened, to remark that “the train travelled more smoothly when it was off the rails!” Some idea of the speed with which work was prosecuted, the innumerable drawbacks notwithstanding, may be gathered from the fact that the whole 1,800 miles of line were built and opened to traffic within six years from the turning of the first spadeful of earth at Sacramento. For the greater part of this distance the monthly average was 50 miles--truly a magnificent feat. In order to maintain this high pressure, 25,000 men and 5000 cattle teams were required, and the total cost of the work was $115,000,000, or, roughly, £23,000,000. The dawn of the year 1869 saw the two advancing arms racing towards the Great Salt Lake. The Central Pacific, upon encountering this inland sea, debouched to the north and plunged into the broken Promontory Range. Here, at an altitude of 5000 feet, the two arms met, and, amid the wild huzzas of over a thousand people, the last gap was closed, and golden spikes were driven into a sleeper of polished laurel by Leland Stanford and Thomas Durant, the presidents of the respective divisions, to admit the passage of a train, waiting close by with steam up, to pass from the Central to the Union Pacific Railway. The precise point at which the opposing armies met is indicated by a board standing beside the track, the inscription on which runs--