Excerpt from The Cosmopolitan Railway, Compacting and Fusing Together All the World's Continents My studies of the configuration and climates of the North American continent began by personal observation over half a century ago, when the western part was a primeval wilderness wholly unknown to civilization. The idea forced itself more and more upon my mind of a widely extended railway system. This system should not only traverse the continent from sea to sea, but should continue its course north and west across the strait of Bering; and across Siberia, to connect with the railways of Europe, and of all the world. The more I investigated, the more practicable the plan appeared, until the certainty of its consummation at no far distant day became with me a settled conviction. Since the time when first these ideas began to occupy my mind, many thousands of miles have been added to the world's system of railways; many thousands of leagues have been reclaimed from the wilderness and added to the domain of civilization. Already an Asiatic railway across Siberia is approaching actuality; while the several systems in America are drawing nearer and nearer toward the narrow strait which separates the oldest continent known to history from the so-called newest continent. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.