with some anxiety.  We knew they could not obtain so good a line, but we were in doubt whether, with the aid of the Mormon Church, and the fact that the line south of the lake passed through Salt Lake City, the only commercial capital between the Missouri River and Sacramento, they might decide to take the long and undulating line; and then the question as to which (the one built south, the other built north, and it would fall to the government to decide) should receive the bonds and become the transcontinental line.  However, the engineers of the Central Pacific, Clements and Ives, took as strong ground, or stronger than we, in favour of the north line, and located almost exactly on the same ground the Union Pacific had occupied a year before; and this brought the Mormon forces to the Union Pacific, their first love.

The location of the Union Pacific was extended to the California state line, and that of the Central Pacific to the mouth of the Weber Canyon.  The Union Pacific work hastened, and most of the line graded to Humboldt Wells, two hundred and nineteen miles west of Ogden, and the Union Pacific met the track of the Central Pacific at Promontory Summit, one thousand one hundred and eighty-six miles west of the Missouri River, and six hundred and thirty-eight miles east of Sacramento, on May 9, 1869, to the wonder of America, and the utter astonishment of the whole world, completing the entire line seven years before the limit of time allowed by the government. . . .

In 1863 and 1864 surveys were inaugurated, but in 1866 the country was systematically occupied; and day and night, summer and winter, the explorations were pushed forward through dangers and hardships that very few at this day appreciate; as every mile had to be within range of the musket, there was not a moment’s security.  In making the surveys, numbers of our men, some of them the ablest and most promising, were killed; and during the construction our stock was run off by the hundred, I might say by the thousand.  As one difficulty after another arose and was overcome, both in the engineering and construction departments, a new era in railroad building was inaugurated.

Each day taught us lessons by which we profited for the next, and our advances and improvements in the art of railway construction were marked by the progress of the work; forty miles of track having been laid in 1865, two hundred and sixty in 1866, two hundred and forty in 1867, including the ascent to the summit of the Rocky Mountains, at an elevation of eight thousand two hundred and forty feet above the ocean; and during 1868 and to May 10, 1869, five hundred and fifty-five miles, all exclusive of side and temporary tracks, of which over one hundred and eighty miles were built in addition.

The first grading was done in the autumn of 1864, and the first rail laid in July, 1865.  When you look back to the beginning