as important to the commerce and the interests of mankind; and it is but fair to the capitalists and the contractors who, acting under the authority of Maxmilian, have achieved this result, that some notice should be taken in foreign countries of the resolution and the skill with which they are pushing forward to completion the first grand steamhighway of Mexico.

The "Imperial Mexican Railway Company" was formed in September, 1864, for the purpose of carrying out the project of a direct communication by steam between Vera Cruz and the capital, originally conceived, many years ago, by one of the few really enterprising natives of Modern Mexico, the late Don Manuel Escandon. The project of Escandon was arrested in its development by the fearful political condition of the country. Since five Presidents during the ephemeral rule offered the project a support which they never made good; and when the present company was formed, under the auspices of the Empire, there existed in Mexico only about fifty miles of railway, divided between the State line, which running out of Vera Cruz terminated at La Soledad, at which place the famous convention of 1862 was signed between Juarez and the European Allies, and the still shorter line which, running out of the City of Mexico, terminated at Guadalope, the "sacred mount of Mexican Catholics in the Loretto of the Indian populations in and around the capital. A beginning had thus been made at both ends, but between there intervened a vast distance of nearly 300 miles, over which the most important traffic of the country, between its chief city and its most flourishing seaport, had to be carried on over an ancient and dilapidated Spanish road, climbing mountains and sinking into gullies, and so tremendously difficult of travel, even by the heavy wagons and the indefatigable mules of Mexico, that the average cost of transportation from Mexico City to Vera Cruz has long ranged in the neighborhood of forty dollars per ton. That, in spite of these difficulties and the enormous consequent expense, a constant demand existed at the City of Mexico for the costliest and most varied cargoes of European and American goods which could be imported into Vera Cruz, was a sufficient argument of the results possible to be achieved by the construction of a through line of railway. This, with other arguments, being urged in London by the leading capitalists of Mexico, the "Imperial Mexican Company" was finally formed at the time we have mentioned above; the Government of Maximilian offering protection to the roads, and a handsome contribution towards defraying their cost. The contracts for building the road, 300 miles in length, were given out originally to Smith, Knight & Co., of London, by whom they were afterwards transferred to Crawley & Co., another well-known English firm. The line of the proposed road was surveyed and laid out throughout its entire length by one of the most distinguished of American railway engineers, Col. Andrew Talcott, and on the 13th of February, 1865, Mr. Wm. Lloyd, the experienced constructor of the most difficult mountain railways of South America, acting as Director-in-Chief under the contract with Messrs. Crawley & Co., made a commencement of the railway at the point of greatest difficulty, near the Cumbres, or mountains of Boca del Monte.

The road at that time had been carried on from La Soledad to Paso

del Macho, a point 65 miles distant from Vera Cruz, at which, during the last year, a small town of more than 2,000 inhabitants has sprung up, with schools, hotels, a railway station, and all the other evidences of a state of progress and civilization which we find germinating along the path of the railway in the expanding regions of our own Western domain.

To appreciate fully the progress made since that date, of which progress the opening of the line between Mexico and Apizaco is the immediate and striking proof, it is necessary for the reader to bear with us while we sketch out for him hastily the enormous, the literally enormous difficulties in the way of this gigantic railway enterprise.

As the crow flies, Mexico City lies at a distance of about 200 miles from Vera Cruz. But while Vera Cruz is seated on the edge of the ocean, Mexico City is situated on a height of no less than 7,340 feet above the sea-level. Had it been found practicable to build a railway of uniform ascent from Vera Cruz to Mexico, therefore, it would have been necessary to give that railway an ascending incline of no less than 36 feet per mile, a piece of engineering work which might well appal the inexperienced and give the most experienced "pause." But even this was not practicable. Between Vera Cruz and Mexico a point must he passed much higher than the elevation of Mexico itself. The country which intervenes between the two may be described as made up of two great plateaux, united by an inclined plane-the lower plateau averaging about 700 feet, and the upper about 8,000 feet in elevation above the sea-level. Between these two plateaux is a distance of about fifty-five miles, which distance is broken up into lofty and rugged chains of mountains called in the country Cumbres, which form the eastern flank of the upper plateau. The width of the lower plateau itself is just about equal to that of this intervening space, orfifty-five miles; and consequently, the ascent to the level of the upper plateau had to be accomplished within a distance of 110 miles from the coast, a feat absolutely without paraellel in railway experience, and the proportions of which will be more fully comprehended when we remember that in traversing the lower plateau which takes the road over one-half this distance, or fifty-five miles, the engineers reach an elevation of only 1,500 feet, leaving them to master a further elevation of nearly 7,000 feet within the succeeding 55 miles to the crest of the Cumbres above spoken of.

Here, then, was the problem of the railway, to accomplish an ascent of 6,540 feet in 55 miles, corresponding to 119 feet per mile, or two feet in 44 feet throughout the whole distance.

The following table of the severest ascents heretofore known in railway engineering will give the most accurate idea possible of the task imposed upon Colonel Talcott and M. Lloyd.

But even these figures do not fully set forth the extraordinary nature of these great works in Mexico; until we take into the account that whereas the most abrupt ascent ever before achieved, that of the

Chanarcillo on the Copiapo line in Chili, is of 196 feet in 13 miles, the chief incline of the Imperial Mexican Railway at Maltrata near Orizaba will overcome 211 feet per mile in a distance of 23 miles. In achieving this part of the works, the engineers have been called upon to construct over the river Metlac, midway between the cities of Orizaba and Cordova, a viaduct which, when completed, will surpass any structure of the kind now existing in the world, and will, of itself, be well worth a trip to Mexico to see. This viaduct, to consist of an iron bridge, now constructing and nearly completed in England, will carry the road over the Barranca de Metlac, at the enormous height of 380 English feet being nearly 150 feet higher than any such work now extant, so that it, would be possible to pile upon the spire of Trinity Church the spire of Grace without reaching the roadway sustained upon its magnificent

arches.

Some notion of the strictly engineering difficulties of the work undertaken by the Imperial Mexican Company, and to be completed, according to the terms of its contract with Crawley & Co., before the 30th April, 1869, may be derived even from these brief statistical notes. But when the reader reflects further that all the most important materials, the rails, the working tools, many of the supplies for the great bodies of workmen to be employed on the line, not only up to these heights of the Cumbres, but far beyond them upon he upper plateau, stretching from the Cumbres by Puebla to Mexico, must be imported from Europe and America, and tansported hundreds of miles on the backs of mules, or in the wide broad-wheeled wagons of the country over the most execrable roads on earth, he will readily agree with us, that when the Imperial Company in June, 1866, can point to more than 160 miles, or over half their whole line opened to commerce, they may fairly claim to have accomplished as handsome a year's work as men need be called upon to do. In accomplishing this, the Company have expended, for example, more than a million of dollars upon the transportation of rails alone from the coast to the line on the upper plateau. They have employed, and now employ, a total force in all departments of about 10,000 persons; they are receiving rails and other materials in the port of Vera Cruz at the rate of about 2,000 tons per month. England having recognized the de facto Imperial Government at Mexico, the vast business connected with this enterprise, which naturally and under ordinary cir cumstances would have inured to the benefit of American industry and capital, has, of course, been chiefly carried on the profit of Great Britain. American engineers are, however, employed under Col. Talcott on all parts of the walls, the difficult section of the Chiquihuite, on the edge of the tierra caliente, or tropical region, being under the charge of Mr. Deckert, of Pennsylvania, an engineer who has learned in Cuba to make light of the vomito, and to keep a cool brain under the hottest suns.

The opening of the upper sections between Mexico and Otumba, and Otumba and Apizaco, will give an immediate impulse to the intercourse between the two great cities of Puebla and Mexico, and to the development of the extensive intervening country. In conjunction with the lower section, already in operation between Vera Cruz and Paso del Macho, passengers from Vera Cruz to Mexico will thus be enabled to make their journey in two days, instead of three, and light goods,

which now require three weeks in the transport, will be forwarded in six days. Such a consummation may truly be regarded as a great and glorious victory won for civilization and true progress in Mexico. Whether under the banner of an Empire or the banner of a Republic, the "road-maker" is the true benefactor of nations, the true precursor and prophet of liberty, and all good things which come with liberty, wisely understood and wisely practiced.

SYSTEME METRIQUE.

MODERN Commerce has encountered no greater obstacle to its progress than the multiplicity of weights, measures and moneys used in its prosecution. Not alone the great nations of the world, but every petty principality and power, until recently had their own denominations and values, differing greatly from one another and only translatable through the aid of voluminous dictionaries compiled from elaborate comparisons. Such a condition of affairs might be tolerated in the primitive eras of nations, before travel and national interchanges of products became the great business of the human race; but in the present era, when the railroad and steamship carry passengers and freight with the swallow's pace, and when the commingling of nations makes the world as a single brotherhood, something more simple and universal in its functions is demanded, which the denizens of each and every nation, however foreign to each other in language, can easily comprehend. The great want has been and still continues in a measure to be a universal system, with a nomenclature, founded on the ancient Greek and Latin, languages in universal use. The adoption of such a system was one of the first acts of the French Revolutionary government, which in 1799 proclaimed the Systeme Metrique. It has since boen adopted either wholly or partially, and its use become permissive or obligatory in almost every civilized country. We ourselves have for many years used it in scientific processes, and are now about to bring it into general use. A bill to this effect is before Congress, and has already been sanctioned by the Representatives; and there appears to be little doubt but that the bill will finally become a law, and the system in a short time be popularized throughout the Union. The change demanded by the new system will come easier to ourselves than to nations wholly accustomed to multiply and divide by the binary process. We have learned the decimal mode of proceeding from our own money system, and hence to carry its application to weights and measures will soon become familiar. Otherwise than this, the change contemplated by the present law is without complexity, being simply the substitution of one unit of value for another. What follows will explain the whole subject.

HARMONY OF THE FRENCH SYSTEM.

Though decimal weights and measures will be new to this conntry, they are not new to the world. They originated in France three quarters of a century ago, where they have been fully tested in the crucible of commerce; and the system there adopted has been proved to be the best that it is possible for man, aided by science, to devise. In France it has had the best trial it is possible that it could have; for it is only in a country where

the monetary and metrical systems are both decimalized that it could be thoroughly tested. When the United States created its decimal currency, and left its weights and measures unaltered, it did not even carry out a Lalf measure of reform. Sterne's proverbial dictum, that “ they do these things better in France," was never a greater truism than in the matter of her change to a decimal system. She did not pull down and rebuild the half of an edifice, and present a structure, one half of which did not accord with the other, but tore down the entire of the old fabric, and erected a new one that harmonized in all its parts.

THE ADVANTAGE OF ADOPTING THE FRENCH SYSTEM.

It is the French system of weights and measures that we are about to introduce. By adopting its units, which are founded on scientific data, there is no placing an additional clog in the wheels of commerce, which would undoubtedly be the case if a new system were introduced with other units, although that system were a decimal one.

It is evident that the French system must, in the course of time, become universal, and the sooner we thoroughly adopt it-that is, make its use compulsory-the sooner we shall place ourselves on the smooth road upon which all nations must eventually travel. The nomenclature, too, being derived from the Greek and Latin, renders it applicable to every modern tongue, and thus prevents the necessity of each country drawing from its own lingual store names for new weights and measures which would not be understood beyond its boundaries. The advantage in commercial transactions of a universal system with a universal nomenclature is obvious.

THE ORIGIN OF THE DECIMAL SYSTEM,

The history of the inception and introduction of the metric system is a matter of much interest. It imparts to us a knowledge of the substantial foundation upon which it rests, and the care which was bestowed to arrive at a system in strict accordance with the laws of science. We have no space, however, to enter into a detailed account of the difficulties that beset the path of those who were engaged in reducing the theory into practice ; but when we state that the requisite surveys and experiments were carried on in the most exciting period of French history, the result proves how successfully earnest and intelligent men are able to overcome, what to others would be insurmountable, obstacles. Their labors began a year or two before the commencement of the revolutionary struggle, and did not terminate until the last year of the century.

The ancient French system of weights and measures presented no uniformity; there was no relation between the pied, used as the unit of the measure of length, and the liore, as that of weight; and even although those measures bore the same denominations in all provinces, they were very different in their proportions in particular districts-the diversity being, to use the epithet of Delambre, scandalous. Local consumers did not feel the whole disadvantage which arose, but merchants often experienced great difficulties in converting to their own local standard the quali ties expressed according to another rule.

One of the first objects which engaged the attention of the general States in 1788, was to find a remedy for this defect. It was then agreed