the ordeal of the
steamer Champion. Crowded like rabbits in a hutch or captives in the
Libby into such indecent propinquity with his kind that the third day
out makes him a misanthrope,--fed on the putrid remains of the last
trip's commissariat, turkeys which drop out of their skins while the
cook is larding them in the galley, beef which maybe eaten as
spoon-meat, and tea apparently made with bilge-water,--sleeping or
vainly trying to sleep in an unventilated dungeon which should be called
death instead of berth, where the reek of the aforesaid putridities
awakes him to breakfast without aid of gong,--propelled by a
second-hand engine, whose every wheeze threatens the terrors of
dissolution,--morally certain, that, if his floating sty from any cause
ceases to float, there are not boats enough to save an eighth of the
passengers,--he must admire the ocean with a true poet's enthusiasm, if
he can brave the Champion a second time.

The considerations we have mentioned should be sufficiently operative
with the capitalists of New York and California, and, as such, are those
most prominently urged by the friends of the road. It would, however, be
a great mistake to regard the through-business an all-comprehensive, in
enumerating the sources of profit to be relied on by the enterprise. For
a better understanding of that immense way-trade which lies between the
oceans, waiting only for the whistle of the steam-genie to wake it into
vigorous life, let us treat the entire line as already continuous from
New York to San Francisco, and make an excursion to the Pacific on its
prophetic rails. We will suppose the track a uniform broad gauge, as it
ought to be,--the Pacific Road connecting at St. Louis with the Atlantic
and Great Western by powerful boats, like those in use at Havre de
Grace, capable of ferrying the heaviest cars between the Illinois and
Missouri shores. We will take the liberty of constructing for ourselves
the remainder of the still undecided route to the Pacific. We run our
ideal broad gauge as follows:--

From St. Louis to Jefferson City; thence by the shortest line to the
Kansas-River crossing; thence to Leavenworth (where St. Joseph, makes
connection by a branch-track); thence to that bend of the Republican
Fork which nearest approaches the Little Blue; thence along the bottoms
of the Republican to the foot of the high divide out of which it is
believed to rise, and which also serves for the water-shed between