How was it accomplished? The pathfinder followed the easiest path open to him. Distances between points might have been shortened, but time was money. The builders had urged this emphatically upon Judah, so that opportunity to indulge in stupendous engineering feats was denied him. Yet the very conditions which were imposed enabled the pathfinder to display some master-strokes of genius unconsciously. So long as a natural path for the metals was available, he followed it. If his advance were disputed by an obstacle he either removed or ran round it. The hump was levelled and the depression was filled. The rivers were followed so far as practicable along their puzzling meanderings. He lifted the track several thousand feet towards the clouds to gain the railway summit of the range, and then dropped over the other side. In one place among the snow-clad peaks he had to hew a narrow shelf out of the solid rocky mass to wind round the huge shoulder of a mountain. The wall of rock sheered up on one side to a dizzy height; on the other way it dropped for over a thousand feet into the river surging below.
The San Francisco division teemed with complex and highly troublesome perplexities, but one and all arose from the resistance of Nature. Yet they were slight in comparison with those which the engineers experienced as they pushed forwards from the Missouri River. Here it was the hostility of man which harassed them. The Indians, driven from the eastern States by the march of civilisation, resisted its further approach into their domain. Fierce opposition was anticipated, but the results proved far more serious than the most gloomy forebodings. At every turn the savages swept down upon the little band toiling in the solitude of the wilderness, and these organised onslaughts became fiercer and fiercer as the base of operations was left farther and farther to the rear. For every spike that was driven, clinching a rail to its wooden cushion beneath, an arrow sped from an Indian bow, to be answered by the sharp crack of a rifle from the railway building forces. History does not record how many navvies fell victims to the noiseless weapon of the savages, or how many Indians entered the Happy Hunting Ground by way of a bullet. Yet the total of lives would outnumber the spikes driven to secure the metals for the 1,800 miles between the Missouri River and the Golden Horn.
A conclave with the Red Men was urgent before the engineers stirred from the bank of the Missouri. Council Bluffs is a famous spot in the history of the New World, because here the Indians were wont for centuries to meet to settle tribal disputes. It was here that Collis P. Huntington and his colleagues met the Red Men to discuss the terms and treaty for the acquisition of the necessary land to found the city of Omaha.
At that day the nearest point to which the railway had advanced towards the river from the east was Des Moines. The first locomotive required for constructional purposes upon the Central Pacific, and which weighed some 60 tons, had to be hauled across country on the deck of a trolley by teams of horses. When the trans-continental railway was taken in hand, however, the eastern railways were pushed forward with great speed to reach Council Bluffs, in order to carry the thousands of tons of supplies of every description requisite for building purposes.
The scarcity of one commodity was felt severely. In this country one may travel for miles and not see a single tree. This hit the railway hard. Every baulk of timber, whether it was required for a fire, a shack, or a sleeper, had to be brought over enormous distances. By the time a sleeper was laid it often cost as much as $2.50, or ten shillings!
The route between east and west is popularly known as the “Overland Route.” How it received this name is a little story in itself. Among those who arrived at San Francisco in the glorious days of ’47 to make money out of the gold-rush was a Dutchman, whose topsy-turvy English was characteristic of a foreigner possessing only an imperfect acquaintance with our tongue. He opened a saloon, which became a most popular resort. Whenever a stranger entered the rendezvous, Boniface’s curiosity was aroused. The new arrival was asked inevitably by which of the three routes he had gained the Golden Gate. “Did you come the Horn around, the Isthmus across, or the land over?” the Dutchman inquired. “The land-over” signifying the wagon-trail across the States, so appealed to the fancy of the railway-builders that they always referred to the trans-continental as “the land-over route,” which in course of time became twisted into the more correct designation under which it is known to this day.
The level character of the country west of the Missouri River lent itself favourably to rapid construction, as well as easy alignment. At one place it was found possible to lay the track as straight as an arrow for 41 miles. The grade grew quickly, and the rails advanced in a continuous black-grey line across the prairie with striking rapidity, when the Indians refrained from endeavouring to arrest its progress. However, the raids of the Red Men became so devastating eventually that it appeared as if work must be brought to a standstill.
At the critical moment another man appeared on the scene, and his efforts contributed very materially to the completion of the line. This was Major Frank J. North, one of the most daring frontiersmen that those troublous times with the Indians produced in America. He was Fenimore Cooper’s mythical “Pathfinder” in the flesh, and he came to be just as greatly feared by the Red Men. When the railway engineers failed to make headway against the Indians, he offered his services, which, needless to say, were accepted gladly. From that moment the protection of the grade became his one object in life, and his capture became the one absorbing ambition of the Indians. He had roamed the plains for years, leading a rough-and-ready frontier life, had become familiarised with the Indians, their habits, customs and ways; could anticipate their every movement and knew how to counteract their subterfuges. He was versed thoroughly in their ways of warfare, was a born fighter, and was possessed of indomitable energy and pluck.
In order to protect the railway-builders he raised four companies of friendly Pawnee Indians. With these trusty scouts he would creep out stealthily at night from the constructional camp, make his way with impunity to the tepees of the Cheyennes or Sioux, and ascertain their projected operations. Sometimes he would surprise an Indian camp, and scatter the inmates who were on the warpath to the four winds. His marauding expeditions became so audacious that the natives were compelled to withdraw a respectable distance from the grade. He became so universally detested among the foe that the mention of North’s name was sufficient to provoke the most dismal howls of execration and vicious snarls of vengeance.
At times he was absent so many days from the railhead camp that the engineers wondered gravely whether or not he had met an untimely end. Then when they were on the point of giving up hope of seeing him again, he would trot unconcernedly into camp, with his Pawnee shadows, as if returning from a hunt, but his general appearance and self-satisfied air told the navvies that he “had been at the Indians again.” He provoked the hostile Red Men to such an extreme pitch that they turned out in tremendous force sworn to his capture or death. Four times a pitched battle was fought, with tremendous losses; four times the Indians drew off, leaving North flushed with victory. At last the enemy became so disheartened that it withdrew, retreated for miles from the line, and there was a sullen interval in the conflict.