e Carson River
susceptible of cultivation. The foot-hills of the Sierra Nevada
gradually shut us round, and at Carson we begin penetrating the main
system through a series of magnificent galleries between precipices of
porphyritic granite, leading nearly northward to the Truckee Pass. The
grades we now encounter are as tremendous as any in the Rocky-Mountain
system. Just before entering the main pass we come to the junction of a
branch-road from Virginia City. The train which stops at the fork to let
us go ahead is carrying down several tons of silver "bricks" from the
Washoe mines to Kellogg and Hewston's, the great assay and refining firm
of San Francisco. The pass takes us across the summit-line of the range,
but not out of the environment of its mountains. We penetrate granite
fastnesses and descend blood-chilling inclines, span roaring chasms and
glide under solemn roofs of lofty mountain-pine, until in the
neighborhood of Centralia we begin for the first time to see the
agricultural tract of the Golden State.

Between ranches, placer-diggings, and small settlements, we now thread
our comparatively level way to Sacramento. Here we are met by the chief
affluent of this end of the Pacific Road,--the long-projected, greatly
needed, and now finally accomplished line between Sacramento and
Portland. This enterprise has done for the Sacramento and Willamette
valleys the same good offices of development performed by our grand line
for all the central continent. The noble orchards, pastures,
grain-lands, and gardens of Northern California and Oregon are now
provided with a market. Their wastes are brought under cultivation,
their mines are opened, their entire area is settled by a class of men
who work under the stimulus of certain profit. The Northern
freight-trains waiting at Sacramento to make a junction with our road
are loaded with the produce of one of the richest agricultural regions
in the world, now flowing to its first remunerative market. All this
must pay toll to our road, and here is another source of profit.

Crossing a number of tributaries to the Sacramento, and intersecting
mines, ranches, and settlements, as before, we follow a nearly straight
level to Stockton. Then turning westerly, we cross the San Joaquin, pass
almost beneath the shadow of grand old Monte Diablo, glide among the
vines and olives of San Jose Mission, and curve round the southern bend
of the lovely bay to the queenly city of San Franci