The other class of steamers, used for towing the commerce of the river, corresponds to the goods trains on railways. No spectacle can be more remarkable than this class of locomotive machines, dragging their enormous load up the Hudson. They may be seen in the midst of this vast stream, surrounded by a cluster of twenty or thirty loaded craft of various magnitudes. Three or four tiers are lashed to them at each side, and as many more at their bow and at their stern. The steamer is almost lost to the eye in the midst of this crowd of vessels which cling around it, and the moving mass is seen to proceed up the river, no apparent agent of propulsion being visible, for the steamer and its propellers are literally buried in the midst of the cluster which clings to it and floats round and near it.
As this water-goods train, for so it may be called, ascends the river, it drops off its load, vessel by vessel, at the towns which it passes. One or two are left at Newburgh, another at Poughkeepsie, two or three more at Hudson, one or two at Fishkill, and, finally, the tug arrives with a residuum of some half-dozen vessels at Albany.
The steam navigation of the Mississippi and the other western rivers is conducted in a manner entirely different from that of the Hudson. Every one must be familiar with the lamentable accidents which happen from time to time, and the loss of life from explosion which continually takes place on those rivers. Such catastrophes, instead of diminishing with the improvement of art, seem rather to have increased. Engineers have done literally nothing to check the evil.
In a Mississippi steamboat the cabins and saloons are erected on a flooring six or eight feet above the deck, upon which and under them the engines are placed, which are of the coarsest and most inartificial structure. They are invariably worked with high-pressure steam, and in order to obtain that effect which in the Hudson steamers is due to a vacuum, the steam is worked at an extraordinary pressure. We have ourselves actually witnessed boilers of this kind, on the western rivers, working under a full pressure of 120lb. per square inch above the atmosphere, and we have been assured that this pressure has been recently considerably increased, so that it is not unfrequent now to find them working with a bursting pressure of 200lb. per square inch!
As might naturally be expected, the chief theatre of railway enterprise in America is the Atlantic States. The Mississippi and its tributaries have served the purposes of commerce and intercommunication to the comparatively thinly scattered population of the Western States so efficiently that many years will probably elapse, notwithstanding the extraordinary enterprise of the people, before any considerable extent of railway communication will be established in this part of the States. Nevertheless, the traveller in these distant regions encounters occasionally detached examples of railways even in the valley of the Mississippi. In the State of Mississippi there are five short lines, ten or twelve in Louisiana, and a limited number scattered over Florida, Alabama, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. These, however, are generally detached and single lines, unconnected with the vast network which we shall presently notice. To the traveller in these wild regions the aspect of such artificial agents of transport in the midst of a country, a great portion of which is still in the state of native forest, is most remarkable, and strongly characteristic of the irrepressible spirit of enterprise of its people. Travelling in the back woods of Mississippi, through native forests, where till within a few years human foot never trod, through solitudes, the silence of which was never broken, even by the red man, we have been sometimes filled with wonder to find ourselves transported by an engine constructed at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and driven by an artisan from Liverpool, at the rate of twenty miles an hour. It is not easy to describe the impression produced by the juxtaposition of these refinements of art and science with the wildness of the country, where one sees the frightened deer start from its lair at the snorting of the ponderous machine and the appearance of the snakelike train which follows it.
The first American railway was opened for passengers on the last day of 1829. According to the reports collected and given in detail in the work already quoted, it appears that in 1849, after an interval of just twenty years, there were in actual operation 6,565 miles of railway in the States. The cost of construction and plant of this system of railways appears by the same authority to have been 53,386,885l., being at the average rate of 8,129l. per mile.
The reports collected in Dr. Lardner's work come up to the middle of 1849. We have, however, before us documents which supply data to a more recent period, and have computed from them the following table, exhibiting the number of miles of railway in actual operation in the United States, the capital expended in their construction and plant, and the length of the lines which are in process of construction, but not yet completed:—
| Railways in operation. | Cost of Building and Plant. | Projected and in progress. | Cost per Mile. | |
| Miles. | £ | Miles. | £ | |
| Eastern States, including Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut | 2,845 | 23,100,987 | 567 | 8,123 |
| Atlantic States, including New-York, the Jerseys, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland | 3,503 | 27,952,500 | 2,020 | 7,979 |
| Southern States, including Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, and Alabama | 2,103 | 8,253,130 | 1,283 | 3,919 |
| Western States, including Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, and Wisconsin | 1,835 | 7,338,290 | 5,762 | 3,999 |
| Totals and averages | 10,289 | 66,653,907 | 9,632 | 6,478 |
It must be admitted that the results here exhibited present a somewhat astonishing spectacle. It appears from this statement that there are in actual operation in the United States 10,289 miles of railway, and that there are 9,632 projected and in process of execution. So that when a few years more shall have rolled away, this extraordinary people will actually have 20,000 miles of iron road in operation.
It appears from the above report, compared with the previous report quoted from Dr. Lardner, that the average cost of construction has been diminished as the operations progressed. According to Dr. Lardner, the average cost of construction of the 6,500 miles of railway in operation in 1849 was 8,129l. per mile whereas, it appears from the preceding table that the actual cost of 10,289 miles now in operation has been at the average rate of 6,478l. per mile. On examining the analysis of the distribution of these railways among the States, it appears that this discordance of the two statements is apparent rather than real, and proceeds from the fact that the railways opened since Dr. Lardner's report, being chiefly in the southern and western States, are cheaply constructed lines, in which the landed proprietors have given to a great extent their gratuitous co-operation, and in which the plant and working stock is of very small amount, so that their average cost per mile is a little under 4,000l.—the average cost per mile in the eastern and northern States corresponding almost to a fraction with Dr. Lardner's estimate. It is also worthy of observation that the distribution of this network of railways is extremely unequal, not only in quantity, but in its capability, as indicated by its expense of construction. Thus, in the populous and wealthy States of Massachusetts, New-Jersey, and New-York, the proportion of railways to surface is considerable, while in the southern and western States it is trifling. In the following table is given the number of miles of surface for each mile of railway in some of the principal States:—