ther line was run from Philadelphia to
Baltimore by Mr. Henry O'Reilly, of Rochester, N.Y., an acute pioneer
of the telegraph. In the course of ten years the Atlantic States were
covered by a straggling web of lines under the control of thirty or
forty rival companies working different apparatus, such as that of
Morse, Bain, House, and Hughes, but owing to various causes only one or
two were paying a dividend. It was a fit moment for amalgamation, and
this was accomplished in 1856 by Mr. Hiram Sibley. 'This Western Union,'
says one in speaking of the united corporation, 'seems to me very like
collecting all the paupers in the State and arranging them into a union
so as to make rich men of them.' But 'Sibley's crazy scheme' proved the
salvation of the competing companies. In 1857, after the first stage
coach had crossed the plains to California, Mr. Henry O'Reilly proposed
to build a line of telegraph, and Mr. Sibley urged the Western Union to
undertake it. He encountered a strong opposition. The explorations
of Fremont were still fresh in the public mind, and the country was
regarded as a howling wilderness. It was objected that no poles could
be obtained on the prairies, that the Indians or the buffaloes would
destroy the line, and that the traffic would not pay. 'Well, gentlemen,'
said Sibley, 'if you won't join hands with me in the thing, I'll go
it alone.' He procured a subsidy from the Government, who realised the
value of the line from a national point of view, the money was raised
under the auspices of the Western Union, and the route by Omaha, Fort
Laramie, and Salt Lake City to San Francisco was fixed upon. The work
began on July 4, 1861, and though it was expected to occupy two years,
it was completed in four months and eleven days. The traffic soon became
lucrative, and the Indians, except in time of war, protected the line
out of friendship for Mr. Sibley. A black-tailed buck, the gift of White
Cloud, spent its last years in the park of his home at Rochester.

The success of the overland wire induced the Company to embark on a
still greater scheme, the project of Mr. Perry MacDonough Collins, for
a trunk line between America and Europe by way of British Columbia,
Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, and Siberia. A line already existed
between European Russia and Irkutsk, in Siberia, and it was to be
extended to the mouth of the Amoor, where the American lines were to
join it. Two cables, one across Behring Sea and a