maximum grade of eighty
feet per mile, and involving temporary grading of one hundred and
sixteen feet at several points of the route. A later survey, made under
the supervision of Colonel Seymour, demonstrated the existence of a far
better line with forty-feet grades and but nine miles longer. Placed
upon abstract grounds, there was no question of the relative advantage
of the two routes. The combined opinion of several of the most skilful
railroad managers in the country was unanimous for the lower grade, as
essential to rapid and economical transportation. But there was another
element in the case which gave a different aspect to the affair. Dey's
line terminated at Omaha; Seymour's, at Bellevue. If the new route were
selected, all the magnificent dreams of the Omaha land speculators would
be summarily dispelled. The territorial population caught the alarm.
Public meetings were called. A committee was sent post to Washington. It
was asserted, on grounds that were not destitute of plausibility, that
the change was attributable quite as much to motives of a stock-jobbing
order, as to economic considerations. To this charge Dr. Durant
indignantly replied, but this did not appease the clamor. Nor was the
dispute ended until after five months of tedious investigation, and a
guaranteed promise on the part of the company, that, in adopting the new
line, there should be no alteration of terminus.

While Omaha was still in the white-heat of excitement, the contractors
had been steadily employed in collecting material for a grand industrial
campaign. Distant, in the line of travel then open to them, more than
sixteen hundred miles from New York, with the Missouri River as their
main avenue for the transportation of rolling stock and machinery west
of St. Louis, the men who had undertaken to build the road bent
themselves to the task with a vigor and celerity heretofore
unequalled in railroad history. Iron from New England, shipped in
coasting-vessels, and working its slow way through the Gulf of Mexico
and up the knotted bends of the Mississippi; iron, from Pennsylvania by
the lower route, and from New York by upper lines; iron in all
conditions and shapes, from rails, chains, and spikes, to car-wheels and
steam-engines,--came pouring in week by week, a tonnage beyond all
estimate or comparison, and involving, from the want of rail
connections, unparalleled expenditures. The transportation of one class
of freight alone cost th