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      THE Union Pacific Railroad begins at Omaha. How to reach Omaha is therefore the tourist's first difficulty, But as at this important point numerous railroads converge, he need but consult their Time-tables to fix upon the route most agreeable or convenient to him. One fact, however, he must bear in mind—namely, that from Boston or New York he must make his way to COUNCIL BLUFFS.

      Now, Council Bluffs is the principal city of Pottawattomie County, Iowa, and lies on the eastern side of the Missouri River, exactly opposite Omaha. It derives its name from the bold heights at whose base it is situated; is about three miles east of the great Missouri, and four miles from Omaha; and contains about 13,500 inhabitants. It is described as one of the oldest towns in Western Iowa. But American notions of antiquity do not correspond with European, and the Englishman will be astonished to find that it does not date from a more remote epoch than 1845 or 1846, when it was a Mormon settlement, and known as Kanesville. In 1853 it obtained a charter and the prouder designation of the "City of Council Bluffs," the latter referring to a council held here by the explorers Lewis and Clark, with the Indians, in 1804.

      Council Bluffs will soon be connected with Omaha by a bridge, the work of the Union Pacific Railroad. Communication was formerly maintained by steam ferry boats.

      The town includes within her limits twenty-four square miles—extending north and south four miles, east and

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      west six miles. It boasts of four newspapers (1871)—the Bugle, the Nonpareil, the Council Bluffs Times, and the German Post; of numerous schools; of fifteen hotels; and of a court-house, built at an expense of $75,000, and described as a very fine structure. The churches are solid and spacious, but not architecturally beautiful. A "mammoth hotel" was "building" in September 1870; probably by this time it is "built."

      The "change" of passengers and baggage which takes place at Council Bluffs, and must continue to take place until the bridge is erected, is one of the inconveniences a traveller grumbles at, but endures. The change, however, being safely accomplished, and the ferry crossed, the traveller finds himself in the flourishing city of OMAHA, and, within about forty yards from the quay, at the eastern terminus of the Union Pacific Railroad.

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     Utah Central Railroad, 36 miles long, to Salt Lake City.

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      The Act authorizing the construction of this monster traject across the continent was passed in 1862, and sanctioned by President Lincoln on the 1st day of July of that year. The Government granted to the companies that undertook its construction a section of land equalling 12,800 acres for each mile of the railroad; or, taking the total length of the line as 1775 miles from Omaha to Sacramento, a total of 22,720,000 acres. The Trans-Continental Railroad, as it may more appropriately be called, has been laid down by two companies; the Union Pacific, which goes as far as Ogden, and the Central Pacific Railroad of California, which effects a junction with the former at Ogden, and now completes the through communication to San Francisco.

      In addition to the grant of lands and right of way, Government agreed to issue its thirty year six per cent. bonds in aid of the work, on the following scale:—For the Plains portion of the road, $16,000 per mile; for the next most difficult portion, $32,000 per mile; for the mountains, $48,000 per mile.

      The Union Pacific Railroad Company laid down 526 miles of rail, and received $16,000 per mile; 408 miles at $32,000 per mile; 150 miles at $48,000 per mile,making a total of $28,456,000.

      The Central Pacific Railroad Company laid down 12 miles at $16,000 per mile; 522 miles at $32,000 per mile; and 156 miles at $48,000 per mile,—making a total of $24,386,000. Total amount of subsidies for both roads, $52,840,000.

      The following details, which are necessarily on official authority, may be of interest to the reader:—

      In the construction of the whole line were used about 300,000 tons of iron rails; 1,700,000 fisb-plates; 6,800,000 iron bolts; 6,126,376 cross-ties; and 23,505,500 spokes.

      Estimating the cost of the road complete by that of other first-class (American) railroads—viz., $105,000 per

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      mile—we arrive at a total of $181,650,000 for the whole work.

      The railroad was begun on the 5th of November 1865, and completed to its junction-point with the Central Pacific on May 30, 1869. The rolling stock now employed upon it is very large, as may be seen from the following enumeration, which, however, from the rapid increase constantly taking place, will soon be out of date:—

      We need hardly say that not only the Sleeping Cars, but all the rolling stock, is equal in finish and appointments to that of the best railways in any part of the world.

      These include a series of machine shops, on the low land fronting the Missouri. They are built of brick, and cover 30 acres of ground. The round-house contains twenty stalls; the principal machine shop is 60 feet by 120 feet in size, and contains all the machinery necessary for constructing or repairing cars and locomotives; the blacksmith shop measures 80 by 200 feet; the storeroom, 76 by 80 feet; the car shop, 75 feet by 150, with a wing, 40 by 100 feet; the paint shop, 30 by 121 feet. The engine which sets in motion the various machines found in these departments is of 70 horse-power; and the number of men regularly employed in the maintenance of the line is about 4000.

      A few words may here be said in reference to the great western prairies, which are traversed by the Pacific Railroad, and which form so striking a feature of the Missouri-Mississippi basin.

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CROSSING THE PRARIES.

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      Southward, an open and sandy waste, about 450 miles in width, skirts the base of the Rocky Mountains as far south as the 41st parallel of north latitude. The dry plains of Texas, and the upper region of the Arkansas, possess all the characteristics of the Asiatic table-lands; further to the north, the lifeless, treeless steppes on the high grounds of the far West are scorched and scathed in summer, and frozen in winter by keen, harsh blasts from the Rocky Mountains. Towards the Mississippi the condition of the land improves; but at its delta extends a labyrinth of lagoons, and creeks, and shallow lakes, intersected with jungles of dense brushwood. "There are also large tracts," says Mrs. Somerville, "of forest and saline ground, especially the Grand Saline between the rivers Arkansas and Neseikelongo, which is often covered two or three inches deep with salt, like a fall of snow. All the cultivation on the right bank of the river is along the Gulf of Mexico and in the adjacent provinces, and is entirely Tropical, consisting of sugar-cane, cotton, and indigo. The prairies, so characteristic of North America, then begin."

      And what are these prairies?

      Leagues upon leagues of undulating meadow-land, sometimes as level as a verdant pasture—sometimes broken up by considerable ridges or valleys—nearly always, to the eye, as boundless as the sea. Almost the entire area—we are here speaking in general terms—is covered with long rank grass of tender green, and lighted up by flowers of the liliaceous tribe, which charm with their beauty, and fill the air with fragrance. Occasionally, the more monotonous breadths of the grassy plain are relieved by the sparkle of a brook; and animation is given to the landscape by the frequent appearance of herds of bison, deer, and antelope. At times, in the remote districts, the prairie wolves may be observed in their leafy coverts on the watch for prey; or flights of birds darken the air, and tempt the traveller with the promise of an abundant provision; or large tracts are covered with sage-brush.

      Travellers soon learn, it has been remarked, when making estimates of a country's value, to despise no feature of the landscape; that of the plains is full of life, full of charm—lonely, indeed, but never wearisome. Now great waving uplands of enormous sweep, now boundless grassy plains; there is all the grandeur of monotony, and yet continual change. Sometimes the dis-

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      tances are broken by blue buttes or rugged bluffs. Over all there is a sparkling atmosphere and never-failing breeze; the air is bracing even when most hot; the sky is cloudless, and no rain falls. A solitude which no words can paint, and the boundless prairie swell, convey an idea of vastness which is the overpowering feature of the plains.

      It may even be affirmed that maps do not remove the impression produced by the eye. The Arkansas River, which is born and dies within the limit of the plains, is two thousand miles in length, and is navigable for eight hundred miles. The Platte and Yellowstone is each of them as long. Into the plains and plateau you could put all India twice. The impression is not merely one of size. There is perfect beauty, wondrous fertility, in the lonely steppe; no patriotism, no love of home, can prevent the traveller wishing here to end his days.

      It has justly been remarked that a double charm exists in the prairies for those who love the sea. Their "roll," or undulating sweep, is not inferior in grandeur to that of the Atlantic; while the freshness of the wind, the want of trees, the multitude of tiny blossoms on the sod, all combine to impress us with a feeling of nearness to the ocean, until we fully expect to behold its grand expanse from the next hillock.

      The abundance of flowers is a marked feature—in summer the colour of the landscape is green and flowers; in fall-time yellow and flowers; but flowers ever.

      Occasionally, however, we come upon barren tracts of sand, only relieved by the grassy borders of the streams which traverse them, and filled with the dogtowns, or settlements of the prairie dogs. According to the late Fitz Hugh Ludlow, their burrows are frequently inhabited by owls. It may be merely a coincidence, he says, that owls and dogs are found so constantly about the same burrows; it may be that their burrows are contiguous, but not shared. I am only repeating, be says, what my eyes saw, or thought they saw, a great many times. When the sun had departed, and a purple gray was spreading over hill, and sky, and river, the prairie dogs who bad been babbling their lively good-night for an hour or so, whisked their last tail within their burrows, and became silent all at once. Then, to all appearance out of the same burrows, came one by one a host of little grayish owls, who, with the low furtive

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PRAIRIE DOG CITY.

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      flight of all the nocturnal species, stole about the sandbanks and down to the river-side. Every now and then one of them returned to the dog-town, dropped down at the entrance to some burrow, and vanished from the most curious gaze.

      Another noticeable characteristic of these plains is, that they can receive and swallow up millions of human inhabitants, and yet are always waiting open-mouthed for more. Vast and silent, fertile yet waste, field-like yet untilled, they have room for the Huns, the Goths, the Vandals—for all the teeming hosts that have poured in and can pour from the great plains of Asia and the overstocked granary of Central Europe. Twice as large as Hindostan, more temperate, more habitable, Nature has placed them here hedgeless, gateless, free to all—a green field for the support of half the human race, unclaimed, untouched, and awaiting, smiling, both hands and plough.

      And now, before beginning our long journey across the continent, we would attempt to gather up some experiences of former tourists. We will suppose that the forenoon train is preparing to start on its run of upwards of one thousand miles from the terminus at Omaha to the western one at Ogden, which is also the eastern terminus of the Central Pacific. Here, as at most American and British railroad stations, a great confusion prevails. These passengers who are always in a hurry, and always losing their baggage, are hurrying to and fro, to their own confusion and to the confusion of all who become involved with them. Others, having cleared themselves of all mental agitation in reference to this matter, proceed to the office and secure berths in Pullmann's Sleeping Car. As the number of these berths is limited, the disappointment of many applicants is very bitter, for the prospect of spending several nights in an ordinary car is sufficient to depress the mind and daunt the courage of the ordinary traveller.

      There is much instruction to be obtained from a study of the passengers. Some, with long beards and bronzed faces, we take to be old Californians, returning home after a visit to their native place somewhere on the eastern border. Others going to San Francisco, determined to make their fortunes; and not a few are Americans or Europeans, bound on a journey of pleasure, to test the capabilities of the new route, to survey a new

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      country, to enjoy the wonders of California. Many are timid, others are confident and easy. Some find a delight in stimulating the fears of the former by tales of peril, and of possible obstructions from the musket or tomahawk of wild Indians. Have these tales any thing to do with the sale of insurance tickets, which is vigorously promoted by the fluent tongues of the agents of railroad insurance companies? At all events, it is a prudent precaution to take one. As we read in "Appleton's Handbook of American Travel," the last piece of advice given in the introduction is, "Having laid in your necessary supplies, it only remains for you to insure yourself against accident by sea or land." But, taken as a whole, we are not much troubled by thoughts of accident by sea or land. We wanted to cross the continent, and we have done it.