Southern shield., 1854-11-11


 mile 1t is built in the lake, the inside line being four hundred feet from the east side of Michigan Avenue. The Michigan Central enters the city upon the same track.
 The rolling stock now on the road cost six hundred thousand dollars. It is composed of twenty-five locomo- tives, nineteen of which are new and elegant machines. The company have six others beyond Erie. The locomo- tives cost $10,OOO each. There are also twenty-four first class passenger cars, each costing $2,285; one hun dred and ffty-eight covered freight cars, costing $685; three hundred and ffty-seven platform cars, costing $595; eight baggage cars, costing $1, ,258; and thirty-four gravel cars, costing $358. When the road is completed, 1t will require at least one hundred To- cOmotives; one hundred first class pas senger cars; five hundred platform, and one thousand covered freight cars. This amount of stock is already under contract, and is to be finished as fast as the wants of the road require.
 The active force now engaged in the construction of the work consists. of seven thousand men and two thousand teams; and four hundred men are em- ployed in engineering, and on the two hundred and forty-fye miles of the road which are now done and in opera tion. The grading, including the DOT tions of the road on which the cars are running, is completed on five hun dred and seventy-two miles of the line; and we might as well here repeat, that the entire work is to be finished and in operation on or before the first of February, 1855. The road will steadily employ more than five thous- and men in its several departments, when it is completed.
 In order that persons at distance may be able to trace out this splendid road upon the map-for it is not laiC down on those in ordinary use-wt mention several of the principal towns and cities through which 1t passes
 Starting from Chicago, 1t runs in near. ! ly direct line to Urbana, in Cham paign county; thence on a pretty di rect line to point a few miles south east of Salem, in Marion county; thence 1t runs south within a few miles of tht third principal meridian, to Cairo.- Starting from Cairo and coming nortl to Centrala, the new town referred tC few miles south-east of Salem, il Marion county, the main trunk runs thence north to Vandalia; thence tC Decatur, in Macon county; thence tc Clinton, in Dewitt county; thence tC Bloomington, in Mclean county; thence through Lasalle, Dixon, Freeport anC Galena, to point opposite to Dubuque in the State of Iowa. By following the line indicated on the map, stran. gers will be enabled to form some def mite idea of the magnitude of this splendid work. It is by far the long. est line of railroad owned by any ont company in the Union. The country is settling very rapidly along the whole line of the road. Great numbers O villages are constantly springing up and when completed there will be some seventy stations along the line. w look for an immense emigration to th' region bordering on the road during the next Summer. The finest of land in any quantity, can be purchased a from three to ten dollars per acre, il its vicinity. No better opportunit, will ever be offered to the enterprisiny young men of New England and tn Middle States, who wish to escape iron the barren hills and rugged mountain
 among which they were reared, to fin
 a home upon the magnificent and fer tile prairies of Illinois.
 The road runs through thirty-tw counties, and of the quality of tn
 soil and its agricultural resources it hardly necessary to speak. We shoul ; only repeat what we have said so ofte in reference to other roads. The min eral resources of this section of tn State should not be forgotten in ma , king an estimate of its business, an the benefits 1t is to confer upon ou citizens. It runs directly across tn largest coal field in the world, an with our magnificent canal and the oth ! CT roads we have mentioned runnin
 south west, will furnish us fuel not or ly for domestic purposes, but for th immense manufactures which will located through every part of the cit, It will bring us the products of tf sunny South in a few hours; and i construction will be worth a doze ' compromise measures in binding tc gether the North and the South . bonds of friendship and mutual inter . est for all time to come.
 [The foregoing article first appear l ed in the Democratic Press, in Janr