way of
easy grade, which would enable them to haul the necessary supplies for
constructing the tunnels, cuts and bridges. Accordingly a survey was
made up to Truckee, over the Nevada line into Reno and Virginia City,
securing the best possible grade for a wagon road, and this was rushed
to a hasty completion.

Naturally, they were anxious to gain all the paying traffic possible,
and especially under the adverse conditions under which they were
laboring. But, needless to say, this caused the fiercest hostility
on the part of their competitors, laid them open to serious charges,
which, later, were made, and that for a time threatened desperate
consequences, as I will now proceed to relate.

In the late fall of 1864 the Sacramento Valley Railroad (the rival of
the Central Pacific) arranged to make a record trip from Freeport
to Virginia City by the Placerville route. Though the officials
endeavored to keep the matter secret, it leaked out and immediately
the Central Pacific planned to circumvent their aim. They stationed
relays along their own line to compete, and Nature and Fate seemed to
come to their aid. A fierce storm arose the day before the start was
to be made, and it fell heavier on the Placerville than on the other
route. Though the drivers of each line did their utmost, feeling their
own personal honor, as well as that of their company at stake, the
heavy rains at Strawberry arrested the Placerville stage and made
further progress impossible, while the other route was enabled
to complete its trip on record time. Mr. L.L. Robinson, the
Superintendent of the Sacramento Valley Railroad, who himself
accompanied the stage, wired from Strawberry, "Heavy rains, heavy
roads, slow time"--reluctant to own a possible defeat. But the
Sacramento _Union_, the organ of the Central Pacific, came out
the next morning with glowing accounts of the successful run of
the stages over the Emigrant Gap route and ridiculed Mr. Robinson's
telegram, ironically comparing it with Caesar's classic message to the
Roman Senate: "Veni, Vidi, Vici."

It was such struggles for local business as this that led the San
Francisco _Alta California_, a paper bitterly opposed to the
Central Pacific, to denounce the railway, in 1866, as the "Dutch Flat
Swindle." It claimed that the railway would never be built further
than Alta and that it was built so far only for the purpose of
controlling passenger and freight traffic over their wagon road to
Vir