e, seemed to defy the skill of our boldest engineers. Overland
travellers reported depths of snow varying from twenty to fifty feet.
Fearful stories were narrated of luckless wagon-trains caught in the
narrow defiles by sudden mountain storms, and perishing helplessly amid
these Alpine rigors. It was surely a legitimate question whether a
railroad were possible in the face of such embarrassments; and it is
fair to attribute the adverse action of Congress to these
considerations, rather than to occult and scarcely explicable sectional
motives.

At the commencement of the next decade, all this, however, was changed.
California had developed into a rich grape-producing country. Its
cereals were beyond the demands of local consumption. A considerable
trade had sprung up with Oregon, the Sandwich Islands, and latterly with
China. The production of quicksilver was on the increase. Valuable
copper mines had recently been opened. Moreover, the immense gold seams
of Colorado, the vast silver deposits in Nevada, and the auriferous
quartz of Idaho, were disclosed almost simultaneously, diverting
population to the interior table-lands, and calling loudly for an
economical method of transit. Upon the Pacific shore, the desire for a
through road suddenly became intensified, while the profitableness of a
railway, at least to the Humboldt Sink, became more and more apparent.
If only the Sierra might be pierced! That appalling obstacle still threw
its shadow over the enterprise. Fortunately, at this very crisis there
wandered down from the mountain, in the pleasant summer days, a railway
surveyor and engineer, Theodore D. Judah, who had had extensive Eastern
experiences, and Californian as well. He was a thin, short,
light-haired Massachusetts man, enthusiastic, conscientious, cautious,
and with a quick eye for discovering the opportunities of science amid
the obstacles of nature,--a trait which in an engineer is rightly named
genius. While engaged in the survey of private claims, he had worked out
what appeared, on a hurried examination, to be a perfectly feasible
route through the hills. At Sacramento he modestly stated this belief;
and in a resident merchant, Mr. C. P. Huntington, he found a willing
listener. Mr. Huntington, who is to the California end of the Pacific
Railroad what Durant is to the co-operating Nebraska branch, describes
in graphic language the earnest consultations, prolonged for several
weeks, which he and a few ot