Public Ledger

THE CHESAPEAKE & OHIO R.R.

Will Reach Through to Memphis About July Fourth.

[Ripley News, 11th.]

Mr. O. H. Piper, the general contractor for all the piling, trestling, bridge building, etc., between Covington and Dyersburg, passed through our town Tuesday on his way from the South Fork of the Forked Deer to Hatchie. He was seized upon by our irrepressible reporter, who succeeded in securing the following extracts: Work had been resumed on these two streams and was progressing finely until the Friday and Saturday rains. Another rise was the consequence, causing the work to stop for a while. They are now falling rapidly, and work will soon begin and be pushed forward with the utmost rapidity. For the present a Howe Truss fifty feet span will be put across the Forked Deer. As to the Hatchie river crossing, the late freshet is interfering considerably with getting out timbers in the contiguous bottoms. If by the time the piling is completed from the south bank to the pier in the stream, the water is sufficiently low to operate the cofferdam, the pier will be built in the first instance. But, on the other hand, if the waters have not sufficiently receded by that time, then a viaduct similar to the one across the Forked Deer will be temporarily constructed and the contemplated permanent iron bridge not put up until some time during the summer or fall. That the company will take the chances of some little impecunious steamboat captain coming in and demanding a passage up and above the bridge, in order to black mail the road. They may not do it, but he thinks the chances are that it will be done. That this hasty work, and temporary structure will be executed in obedience to peremptory orders from President Huntington, lately issued to the Chief Engineer Dr. Hillhouse, who is directed to have the trains running through to Memphis at the earliest moment practicable. He thinks the trains from both ends will meet in the neighborhood of Ripley. That owing to the many casualties already encountered in the way of washing down embankments, filling in excavations, the high waters preventing the getting out of timbers, building bridges, trestling, etc., and the many more that it is highly probable will have to be met and overcome, he says we need not expect the road completed earlier than the first of July. But then that is only two and a half months off.