.. 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.
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