idges of the Sierra.

In hard-currency times, and with the labor and iron market easy, these
terms might have been sufficient to invite the ready aid of capital. But
the close of 1862 and the year succeeding were the darkest periods of
the war. Gold vibrated from 140 to 180. Iron, which in 1859, sold for
$35 a ton, was now selling for $130. Moreover, while money was tight,
labor was also scarce. The two great agencies on which a vast public
work like this must inevitably depend proved utterly inadequate to the
emergency. Nevertheless, both the companies which had already an organic
existence bent themselves with no inconsiderable vigor to their task.
The Central Pacific accepted the responsibilities and obligations of the
charter six months after its passage, and commenced the work of grading
in the succeeding February. Rails, chairs, and rolling stock were
forwarded by sea, involving heavy expenditures for freightage, and a ten
per cent war risk on insurance. The company endured further
embarrassments from the lack of capital, and the fact that in California
a metallic currency formed the only circulating medium. Nor was it the
least of its difficulties that the enterprise met with an ambiguous
reception in many portions of the State, San Francisco especially
regarding it with cold indifference. The zeal with which the road was
pushed amid these embarrassments is a striking evidence of the thorough
faith of its projectors. Although it soon became apparent that further
legislation would be needed to relieve them from the disabilities
inherent in the meagreness of the government subsidy, they nevertheless
succeeded by the 6th of June, 1864, in cutting their line through to
New Castle, and in laying thereon a solid and continuous track.

In Kansas, the Leavenworth, Pawnee, and Western Railroad Company or, as
they were beginning to style themselves the Union Pacific Railway,
Eastern Division, had contracted for an immediate and rapid construction
of their line as early as September 30th. By the spring of 1863, the
contractors, Messrs. Ross, Steele, & Co., had involved themselves to the
extent of five millions, of dollars, and were in full operation with an
adequate corps of laborers, grading, quarrying stone, building culverts,
etc. Suddenly, however, all this busy movement ceased. By one of those
strange revolutions that occasionally occur in the management of
corporations, a man notorious throughout the whole border, fam