The Sun.
London, England, 1865-11-28 00:00:00

An American Railway.

A correspondent of the Anglo-American Times
writes as follows :

Away up in the Alleghanies a little rill gushes forth, so
small that an ox could drink it dry ; trickling down the
rocks it increases as it travels on, till finally it spreads
itself out into a mighty river which rolls its treasures into
the lap of Old Ocean and becomes a part of it. So, I re-
member, the Atlantic and Great Western Railway was com-
menced, four years ago, at Salamanca, in the State of
New York. It was a feeble line when I first knew it, but
twenty-seven miles in length, and ran but one passenger
train a day. But under the exhilarating influence of British
gold, aided by the far-seeing sagacity of a PETO and a
3111Esnir, and the engineering skill of a KINNAIRD, it has
been rapidly extended, until now it is one of the great
leading railways of America, forming an important link in
that iron chain of railways which already stretches half-
way across the Continent, and which, when the Great
Pacific Road is completed, will bind indissolubly together
the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. A road destined to
play so important a part in the future is surely entitled to
a history by itself.
In my last article I reviewed the Erie and Illinois
Central Railways. I propose this week to trespass on your
space with a brief account of the Atlantic and Great
Western. Although no road in the United States
was so quickly built, no road is more substantially made.
No expense has been spared in tho construction of cars,
station houses, machine shops, or in the grading of its
broad bed ; but to the traveller its elegant passenger cars,
palatial dining halls—unequalled in any part of the world
—and the promptness and speed of the trains, render it a
most pleasant road to ride over, and so well is this fact
becoming known in America that many go out of their
way, and are actually put to extra expense in order to en-
joy the luxury of the superior accommodations of this rail-
way. But to particulars. The Atlantic and Great Western
Railway leaves Salamanca, where it connects with
the Erie by an unbroken six-foot gauge, 412 miles from
New York as its eastern terminus, and passes through the
heavily-timbered countyof Cattaraugus, thence through rich
pasture and dairy lands to Jamestown, New York. Leaving
this enterprising and growing town of 5,000 inhabitants,it
passes along the banks of that beautiful lake, which lies a
sparkling jewel set in between the green hills of the ever
fertile Western New York—Lake Chatanqua, I mean—
the highest sheet of navigable water on the face of the globe,
anda sight well worth a trip across the Atlantic to see. Pro-
ceeding westward, we cross the State line, which divides
the Empire State from Pennsylvania, 60 miles from Sala-
manca, and arrive at Corry, the first place of any note in
the last-named State. Like Minerva, who jumped from
the head of Jove, this town sprang into existence almost
in an instant. Four years ago a dense forest stood, and
not a home was to be seen, where now there is a young
city of 10,000 inhabitants, with a mayor, an opera house,
a daily newspaper, and all the institutions pertaining to
cities. What has wrought this change ? Simply the mar-
riage of three railroads, which were made to intersecteach
other at this particular point, some three years ago, viz., the
Oil Creek, the Philadelphia and Erie, and the Atlantic and
Great Western Railways. Corry is but 25 miles from the
celebrated Oil Wells, and the principal business of the
roads connecting at thispoint is the transportation of petro-
leum. Leaving Corry, and proceeding 40 'miles further
on into the heart of Western Pennsylvania, we come to
Meadville, a thrifty town of 8,000 inhabitants. Here are
located the extensive locomotive and machine shops of the
Atlantic and Great Western Railway ; also its principal
offices, and the celebrated M'Henry House, owned by the
railway company, and one of the finest hotels in the
country. Here also the Franklin and Oil Creek branch
of the Atlantic and Great Western commences, and at
the distance of 33 miles taps the great oil region of Oil
Creek and Pitt Hole, where oil is spouted up out of the
ground at the rate of 10,000b1s. a clay, to be barrelled
and sent off fur the illumination of the world. The rail-
way of which I am speaking has the monopoly of the
carrying business of petroleum. But leaving the oil
regions at Meadville, we soon enter the granary of Autealc,t,
the noble State of Ohio. Hero, travelling for 200 miles
through countless wheat fields, and alongside or in sight
of scores of pretty villages, surrounded by a thickly-settled
agricultural people, the Atlantic and Great Western Rail-
way proceeds westward, at different points forming
important connections with no less than thirteen other rail-
roads, till its western terminus is reached at Dayton, Ohio
—a populous city of 40,000 inhabitants, having the best
water-power in the State, and being the seat of extensive
flouring mills. From Dayton the Atlantic and Great
Western Railway connects by other roads with Cleveland,
on lake Erie, Toledo, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, and
all the great cities in the north-west; while by e. broad gauge
track of 60 miles, south-west from Dayton, is the splendid
city of Cincinnati with her 200,000 inhabitants. Here con-
nections are made with the Kentucky Central, which pene-
trates into the heart of that beautiful country—the
garden-spot of America—viz., the Blue Grass regions of
Kentucky. At Cincinnati, also, important connections
are made with the fast steamers that incessantly plough
the Ohio and the Mississippi from New Orleans to Pitts-
burgh. But by far the most important connection the
Atlantic and Groat Western Railway makes at-Cincinnati
is with the Olin and Mississippi Railway, which connects
St. Louis on the Mississippi with Cincinnati on the Ohio,
and which will soon connect the last-named city with San
Francisco via the Groat Pacific Railway, which has its
eastern terminus at St. Louis.

It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of the
Pacific Road. Under Government patronage, it is being
rapidly pushed forward, opening up as it advances those
inexhaustible gold and silver fields, and those almost
boundless prai►ies and timber lands, which stretch for
twenty-eight hundred miles over a region now com-
paratively luninhabited. But infinitely more important
than these developments, the Pacific Road, when com-
pleted, will give to America the monopoly of the carrying
business between China and Europe, the rich commerce of
the 400 millions who inhabit the celestial land. Already
a gigantic line of Ocean steamers has been started between
Pekin and California. The route to Europe from China
and the Indies is Several thousand miles nearer this way
than by any other. And when the Great Pacific Road is
completed, who can estimate the business that must
naturally come to it? The commerce of all Europe as well
as America with China will soon be changed to this new
route. But, asks some one, What has China to do with
the Atlantic and Great Western Railway ? It has every-
thing to do with it. The Atlantic and Great Western Rail-
way is the most important link in that grand chain of rail-
roads which is destined to connect New York and Liver-
pool and London and Paris with California on the Pacific,
and the far distant China and Inches of the East.

Here we have, then, a road which, with its branches,
is over 600 miles in length, built in the short space of
four years, and doing a business already of £7O por mile a
week (earnings unprecedented in a road so young), costing
only about one-=fifth as much as railways in England'of
the same length (but a trifle has to be paid for the right
of way in America), and earning almost as much per mile
as some of the best English railways. But what will its
earnings be in that glorious future now opening up in that
great and expanding country in which it is located ? The
Atlantic and Great Western Railway runs through
a rich and prosperous country, constantly increasing in
population—a population whose business alone would
support a road built so cheaply as this. But, in addi-
tion, the road is intersected by no loss than twenty other
important railways, all of which bring business to the
roads loading into New York.
New York city may be said to be the lungs of America
—it draws in and sends out the blood of the nation. It is
the great money centre—the shipping centre—the foun-
tain-head of commerce. The centre of gravity in America
is in New York. The business of all the States, north,
east, south, and west gravitate to and from, and is regu-
lated by this great centre. When the metropolis is agi-
tated its throbs are heard and felt in every hamlet in the
land. And those railroads that have direct connections
with Now York, like the Atlantic and Great Western
Railway, the Erie, and New York Central, can never fail
to have ull the business they desire. The Atlantic and
Great Western is a great and a noble monument to the
sagacious Englishmen who built it. With a grand track
of 400 miles there are a score of feeders to the main line
—each feeder a powerful arm in the service. With one arm
she draws in the rich freight from a thousand gushing oil-
wells in Petrolia ; with another she soon will reach
across the International Bridge over Niagara, and shake
hands with the Canadas, supplying them with the coal
that cold country so much needs ; with another a:rm she
gathers in the copper and other ores of Lake Superior;
with another she touches the five-fold chain of northern
lakes—lakes covered with the white birds of commerce.
She stretches out another arm, and millions of corn and
wheat are transported eastward ; and still another pierces
the coal beds and iron mines of the Keystone State. The
cattle from a thousand hills are transported over this road.
Her ramifications extend to the lordly Mississippi and the
swelling Ohio ; and her long arms draw in business from
all over the great West.
To conclude, Mr. Editor, the time is not far distant

when the traveller, seated in an Atlantic and Great
Western carriage, can cross the Continent from the Atlantic
to the Pacific without change of cars I drawn by the great
pioneer of the age, the Iron Horse, with his tramp of
thunder and breath of fire.