The Sun.
London, England, 1865-12-16 00:00:00

a..h.....•

RAILWAY INTELLIGENCE:

The products of the North-West aro now taxed beyond
all reason for the want of more means of transit to the
Atlantic seaboard. Freights are so high that but a small
margin is left for the producer. Hence every object which
is likely to afford increased facilities for our grain, beef,
and pork to reach the seaboard will be regarded with
special favor by the Western public.
Our readers will perhaps notice that Sir Morton Peto
and the managers of the Atlantic and Great Western Rail-
way have leased the Morris and Essex Railroad in New
Jersey,. and the Catawissa and connecting roads in Penn-
sylvanfa,.and that they will as soon as possible relay
these roads, make the gauge six feet, and form a direct
line from St. Louis to New York. It is part of the pro-
gramme of Sir Morton and his friends to extend their six-
feet gauge from Cleveland or from some other point in
Ohio to Chicago. This scheme will doubtless be realized
within two or three years, and we shall have a new and
magnificent line to New York. Our products will go to
that city without change of cars,
thus avoiding all cause
for delay and the expense and trouble of transship-
ment.
The opening of this through line will force the conso-
lidation of competing lines, and thereby increase their
facilities for doing the business of the West. Every-
body knows th:it the petty exactions and the disgusting
meanness of railway managers increase in the direct ratio
of the smallness of the interests which they unfortunately
for the public may be atle to control. As soon as and
' even before Sir Morton Peto's road reaches this city, the
Michigan Southern will be obliged to buy out or consoli-
date with the several short lines between Toledo and Buf-
falo, and if this cannot be done, to extend its line along
the south shore till it unites its interest with the Erie
and the New York Central Railways. This, thing
is inevitable, and a very few years will see it accom-
plished.
There is now a sort of arrangement by which a line
of freight cars is tun directly, through by the South Shore
to Boston and New York. To meet this competition the
Canada Great Western Road have ordered the iron to lay
an extra rail between Detroit and Niagara Bridge, and
will make their gauge, now live feet, correspond with that
of the Michigan and New York Central Roads within
the next twelve or eighteen months. This arrangement,
by which cars can be loaded with freight and sent through
to the seaboard without breaking bulk, will greatly in-
crease the capacity and efficiency of this always popular
line.

But if possible the most important work soon, we trust,
to be accomplished is the extension of the Grand Trunk
Railway of Canada from Sarnia to this city. The leading
managers of this road are doing all they can to open
their great line, at the earliest possible day to this city.
Practically the road is of little advantage to the West, for,
in the winter especially, it must rely upon two of our
Eastern lines for all the freight the road gets, and they
have usually more than they can do. For the shipment
of provisions directly to Europe, the opening of the Grand
Trunk, with its five feet gauge, to this city will be of
the greatest possible importance. The English capitalists
who own it have ample means to put on all the rolling
stock the trade may at any time demand, and extending
directly to Portland, the amount of business it can do and
the relief it will furnish to the trade of the city are prac-
tically without limit. Let, therefore, our merchants and
producers take courage. The rail ways Eastward will
soon add largely to their facilities of transit. The next
thing in order will be the building of the Ontario and
Georgia Bay and the Niagara ship canals. Speed the
day.

We extract the following from the Missouri Democrat
of Nov. 28th _ _

"We hail with satisfaction the advent of every new enter-
prise for developing the commerce and productions of the
West, and harmonizing the interests of our people both
East and West. We are for a liberal system of internal
improvements—the building of a network of railroads
centring at St. Louis, and diverging toward all points of
the compass. We want easy and cheap transportation for
our goods, wares, and merchandise, and every movement
looking to this result should be sustained and encouraged.
"In this connection we would commend the Atlantic and
Great Western Railroad. As a through line to New York
it forms a desideratum the importance of which has long
been felt. Travellers from Cincinnati eastward are enthu-
siastic in their commendations of this railway. Scarcely
a traveller returns from the East since its establishment
who is not loud in praising it as the most expeditious
and comfortable means of getting from Cincinnati to New
York. If our readers adopt this route eastward they will
undoubtedly avail themselves of it in returning. The road-
bed itself is in splendid condition, giving a smooth and
easy motion to the cars ; the rolling stock is all new, and
the spacious cars are built with every modern appliance
for safety and comfort. The sleeping-cars are models of
luxurious ease, rivalling in their elegant finish, perfect ven-
tilation, superb curtains, and sofas by day and finer
couches by night, the best drawing-rooms in the country.
Better than all these mechanical contrivances to make
travel easy and pleasant, the Company have been either
very fortunate or very provident in securing first-class
conductors and employes, who seem to be very vigilant
and faithful in their duties, and courteous to all classes of
passengers. The line of the road from Salamanca to Cin-
cinnati, in Western New Yolk, is through one of the
finest districts of country in America, and the whole
journey from Cincinnati to New York by this route, taking
the Erie Railway at Salamanca, is a pleasant recreation,
instead of weariness and toilsome endurance."

COURSE OF EXOJIANGE-Last Evening.

Amsterdam Short. 11 17 11 18
Ditto 3 Months. 12 li 12 2
Rotterdam
Antwerp — 25 45 25 55
Brussels

Hamburg
Paris
Ditto
Marseilles
Frankfort on the Maine
Vienna,
Trieste
Petersburgh
Berlin
Madrid
Cadiz
Leghorn
Milan

13 9i 13 9f
Short 25 10 25 17*
3 Months. 25 37f 25 47*
25 40 25 474
1201 121
10 00 10 95
10 90 10 95
30 304
6 28 6 284
464 47*
474 48
25 60 25 65
25 60 25 65

Genoa
Naples
Palermo
Messina

25 57i 25 62t
25 60 25 65
25 60 25 65
25 60 25 65

Oporto

Lisbon

QUEEN EMMA.—A little volume has been pub-
lished by Messrs. Day and Son under the title of
" Queen Emma : a Narrative of the Object of her Mission
to England," the style of which, says the Reader, is amus-
ingly grandiloquent, approaching to bathos, in passages
like the following : "It is no mere wish to stare at a royal
personage that impels such crowds of Queen Victoria's
subjects to go and see this other Queen." Dr. Frapff, the
African missionary, in the published Gorman text of his
book of travels, is fond of introducing his readers to " their
majesties and the princesses" of the queer places governed
by sovereigns who show their affinity to Adam by never
having changed the style of their dress from that which
he and Eve adopted.
THE BURNING OF COLUMBIA.—Mr. John S. Pres-
ton writes from Fenton's Hotel to the Times to vindicate
the truthfulness of the Times correspondent's story of the
burning of Columbia by Gen. Sherman's army. He says :

—" I could fill your columns with details of atrocities un-
paralleled in Christian history, which of my own know-
ledge were perpetrated in Columbia and its neighbourhood
by the soldiery of Sherman, with his knowledge, and under
the orders of his officers ; but I cannot ask you to publish
things which the delicacy of your correspondent forbade
his writing, They are known to a God of truth and jus-
tice, and will be judged of in His day of vengeance. lam
constrained to ask you to publish this note and the ex-
tracts' solely by a desire that some truth may be preserved
in the records of my suffering country ; and, further, to
refute an imputation against General Hampton, who is my
friend and kinsman, and was my superior officer." "An
Englishwoman," writing to the same paper, and who states
that she lived in Georgia at the time of General Sherman's
visit to Columbia, says her friends' house in Columbia
" Was set on fire three times during the night, and
was saved by being taken as the head-quarters of General
Howard. He caused the drunken soldiers to be turned out
the ground-floor ou
the nflo
arrivalor
of the
the house,
General
they had snatched the watch from her side, and robbed her
of all plate, spirits, and everything they could find upon
h e d-
ci s
aNN.v- ee
dr e
the going
family
from upstairs
w
further insult. The kitchens, negro houses, dre., in the
yard were burnt down, and mules stolen. General Sherman
and his officers advised several of the Savannah ladies not
to go into South Carolina. They had treated Georgia
leniently, they said, but their instructions respecting South
Carolina were very different. Those persons who have
seen North Georgia since the war may learn what is
meant by being treated leniently. From Macon to Chat-
tanooga, in the track of Sherman's army, hardly a house
is standing. Every two or three miles you come upon a
burnt homestead ; generally the brick chimney-stacks re-
main, and you see traces of fences round what were for-
merly cultivated fields. I noticed that wo travelled 35
miles from Atlanta before we came upon a single sign of
cultivation
; it was a small even patch, and we travelled
far before we saw another; all was utter desolation. I
say nothing of the accounts I have heard from the re-
fugees, often turned out without time to save even their
clothing and necessaries—helpless women and children,
for the men were away in the service. There is also in
the families of the planters of Georgia the same feeling of
excessive depression that your correspondent observes in
South Carolina. I have beard them say often since the
surrender, What we have undergone hitherto is nothing;
our sufferings have now to begin.' I must say that the
circumstances which occurred each week, from Lee's sur-
render in April until August, when I left Georgia, were
calculated to increase that depression, and underlying all
was the strong conviction that the ne groes have concerted
an insurrection to take place early in 1866. Those only
who understand the negro character can fully appreciate
the horrors of such an anticipation."
THE ATLANTIC -CABLE.—Several hundred miles
of the core, or interior portion, of the new Atlantic tele-
graph cable aro now fully completed. The Great Eastern
is chartered to go to sea in June of 1866, for the double
purpose of laying an entirely new cable and of raising the
broken end to the 1,100 miles of cable laid this year, so as
to splice additional cables thereto, and thus, if successful,
furnish to the public a second means of communication.
This. 1,100 miles of submerged cable is ascertained to be
in the most perfect order by daily tests taken from the
time it broke, and still continued "daily. The buoys at
the end of it are washed away. But this," writes Mr.
Saward, "is of no consequence, as they were intended
only for a temporary purpose, the spot for graPnelling
have been laid down for solar observations, so that a good
navigator can at any time sail to within half a mile of the
broken cable."
The total assessed valuation of -New Orleans is
$98,788,335—a decrease of four and a half mullions since
last year.