Great Western, to Dayton, Ohio; thence, over the Cincinnati, Hamilton,
and Dayton Road, to Cincinnati; and finally, by the Ohio and Mississippi
Road, to St. Louis. The first excursion-train accomplished the whole
distance in forty-four hours. We understand that the regular
express-trains of the line will be required to make equally good
time,--ultimately, perhaps, to reduce the time to forty hours.

This valuable connection has been mainly effected by the energy and
talents of two men. Mr. James McHenry, a Pennsylvanian by birth, but of
late years resident abroad, has raised twenty million dollars for the
project in the money-markets of England, Spain, and Germany, the bonds
of the Company obtaining ready sale upon the guaranty of his personal
high character for uprightness and financial ability. Mr. Thomas W.
Kennard, an engineer and capitalist of large views, discretion, and
experience, has managed the interests of the project here at home,
securing the hearty cooperation and good-will of all the roads now made
continuous, and bringing the enterprise to a successful issue with a
skill possible only to first-class commercial genius. The former of
these gentlemen is Financial Director and Contractor, the latter,
Engineer-in-Chief, Vice-President, and General Manager of the line. At
any other period than this their success would have been widely talked
of as a great national benefit. Even now let us not forget the
public-spirited men whose hopeful hands, in the midst of blood and din,
have been sowing seeds of commercial prosperity to glorify with their
perfected harvest the day of our National triumph and reunion.

This work is the first instalment of the greatest popular enterprise in
the world, the initial fulfilment of a promise which America has made to
herself and all the other nations,--one which shall be completely
fulfilled only when an iron highway stretches across her entire breadth,
from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. As a people we have grudged
neither time nor money to the accomplishment of this end. We have dared
the fiery desert and the frozen mountaintop, the demons of thirst,
starvation, and savage warfare. Our foremost scientific men, for the
sake of the great national enterprise, have taken their lives in their
hands, going out to meet peril and privation with the cheerful constancy
of apostles and martyrs. The record of expeditions bearing either
directly or indirectly on the subject of the Pacif