The locomotive was summoned to the aid of foreign exhibitors on the
Atlantic as on the Pacific side, though to a less striking extent, the
largest steamships being able to lie within three miles of the
exposition buildings. It stood ready on the wharves of the Delaware to
welcome these stately guests from afar, indifferent whether they came in
squadrons or alone. It received on one day, in this vestibule of the
exposition, the Labrador from France and the Donati from Brazil. Dom
Pedro's coffee, sugar and tobacco and the marbles and canvases of the
Société des Beaux-Arts were whisked off in amicable companionship to
their final destination. The solidarity of the nations is in some sort
promoted by this shaking down together of their goods and chattels. It
gives a truly international look to the exposition to see one of
Vernet's battle-pieces or Meissonier's microscopic gems of color jostled
by a package of hides from the Parana or a bale of India-rubber.

Yet more expressive was the medley upon the covered platforms for the
reception of freight. Eleven of these, each one hundred and sixty by
twenty-four feet, admitted of the unloading of fifty-five freight-cars
at once. At this rate there was not left the least room for anxiety as
to the ability of the Commission and its employés to dispose, so far as
their responsibility was concerned, of everything presented for
exhibition within a very few days. The movements of the custom-house
officials, and the arrangements of goods after the passing of that
ordeal, were less rapid, and there seemed some ground for anxiety when
it was found that in the last days of March scarce a tenth of the
catalogued exhibits were on the ground, and for the closing ten days of
the period fixed for the receipt of goods an average of one car-load per
minute of the working hours was the calculated draft on the resources of
the unloading sheds. Home exhibitors, by reason of the very completeness