great
commander is said to have left behind him at Waterloo.

With the junction of the two lines, it became possible to make safely in
one week an overland journey that not many years before required months
in its execution, and was attended by many hardships and dangers. It
was, however, a route better known even in the days when the legend of
the pilgrims over it was "Pike's Peak or bust!" than is the region
crossed by the new southern line. This line opens up what is practically
an undiscovered and an unsettled country, but the region traversed has
been ascertained to be so rich in resources as to fully justify the heavy
expenditure involved in the construction of the line. In another year
the line will become a powerful agent in the development of the Union,
for it will then be connected with the lines that run through Texas into
Louisiana, and New Orleans and San Francisco will be brought into direct
communication with each other. This, in fact, has been a prominent
object in the undertaking. The effect of it will be to cheapen the
tariff on goods from the Pacific Coast to Europe, and will, it is
believed, have the effect of controlling a large share of the Asiatic
trade.

--_Leeds Mercury_, April 23rd, 1881.

MARRIAGE AND RAILWAY DIVIDENDS.

Marriage would not seem to have any close connection with railroad
traffic, but we find an officer of an East Indian railroad company
explaining a falling off in the passenger receipts of the year (1874) by
the fact that it was a "twelfth year," which is regarded by the Hindoos
as so unfavourable to marriage that no one, or scarcely any one, is
married. And, as weddings are the great occasions in Hindoo life when
there is great pomp and a general gathering together of friends, they
cause a great deal of travelling.

SECURITY FOR TRAVELLING.

A civil engineer, of long experience in connection with railways, gives
some reassuring statements as to the precautions taken in keeping the
lines in order. The majority of accidents occur, not from defects in the
line, but from imperfections in the living agents who have charge of the
signals and other arrangements of trains in transit. The engineer
says:--"To begin at the bottom, we have the ganger of the 'beat,' a man
selected from the waymen after several years' service for his aptitude
and steadiness, whose duty it is to patrol his length of two or three
miles every