s--what a grand
spanging music of labor rang from under their hammers! Three strokes to
a spike for most spikers! Only two strokes for such as Casey or Neale!
Ten spikes to a rail--four hundred rails to a mile! ... How many million
times had brawny arms swung and sledges clanged!

Forward every day the work-trains crept westward, closer and closer to
that great hour when they would meet the work-trains coming east.

The momentum now of the road-laying was tremendous. The spirit that
nothing could stop had become embodied in a scientific army of toilers,
a mass, a machine, ponderous, irresistible, moving on to the meeting of
the rails.

Every day the criss-cross of ties lengthened out along the winding
road-bed, and the lines of glistening rails kept pace with them. The
sun beat down hot--the dust flew in sheets and puffs--the smoky veils
floated up from the desert. Red-shirted toilers, blue-shirted toilers,
half-naked toilers, sweat and bled, and laughed grimly, and sucked at
their pipes, and bent their broad backs. The pace had quickened to the
limit of human endurance. Fury of sound filled the air. Its rhythmical
pace was the mighty gathering impetus of a last heave, a last swing.

Promontory Point was the place destined to be famous as the meeting of
the rails.

On that summer day in 1869, which was to complete the work, special
trains arrived from west and east. The Governor of California, who was
also president of the western end of the line, met the Vice-President of
the United States and the directors of the Union Pacific. Mormons from
Utah were there in force. The Government was represented by officers
and soldiers in uniform; and these, with their military band, lent the
familiar martial air to the last scene of the great enterprise. Here
mingled the Irish and Negro laborers from the east with the Chinese and
Mexican from the west. Then the eastern paddies laid the last rails on
one end, while the western coolies laid those on the other. The rails
joined. Spikes were driven, until the last one remained.

The Territory of Arizona had presented a spike of gold, silver, and
iron; Nevada had given one of silver, and a railroad tie of laurel wood;
and the last spike of all--of solid gold--was presented by California.

The driving of the last spike was to be heard all over the United
States. Omaha was the telegraphic center. The operator here had informed
all inquirers, "When the last spike is driven at Promon