ritories round her have produced one thousand millions of dollars in
gold in twenty years. Sixty-one million dollars was the largest annual
gold yield ever made in Australia. California has several times produced
ninety millions of gold in a year." (Townsend, p. 384.) "The area of
workable coal beds in all the world outside the United States is
estimated at 26,000 square miles. That of the United States, not
including Alaska, is estimated at over 200,000 square miles, or _eight
times as large as the available coal area of all the rest of the
globe!_" (American Year Book for 1869, p. 655.) "The iron product and
manufacture of the United States has increased enormously within the
last few years, and the vast beds of iron convenient to coal in various
parts of the Union, are destined to make America the chief source of
supply for the world." "Three mountains of solid iron [in Missouri],
known as Iron Mountain, Pilot Knob, and Shepherd's Mountain, are among
the most remarkable natural curiosities on our continent." (_Id._ p.
654.)

And the people have taken hold to lay out their work on the grand scale
that nature has indicated. Excepting only the Houses of Parliament in
London, our national capitol at Washington is the most spacious and
imposing national edifice in the world. By the unparalleled feat of a
subterranean tunnel two miles out under the bottom of the lake, Chicago
obtains her water. The work of constructing a railroad tunnel across the
Detroit river is already commenced, and the traveler will soon pass, in
his steam palace, under the bed of that river, while the immense
commerce of the lakes is floating upon its bosom over his head. Chicago
is the most extensive grain and lumber market in the world; and
Philadelphia and New York contain the largest and best furnished
printing establishments now in existence. The submarine cable, running
like a thread of light through the depths of the broad Atlantic from the
United States to England, a conception of American genius, is the
greatest achievement in the telegraphic line. The Pacific Railroad, that
iron highway from the Atlantic to the Pacific, stands at the head of all
monuments of engineering skill in modern times. Following the first
Atlantic cable, soon came a second almost as a matter of course; and
following the Central Pacific R.R., a northern line is now in process of
rapid construction. And what results are expected to flow from these
mighty enterprises? T