Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17.djvu/348

340 This exhibit is sufficient to indicate that there need be no question of our financial ability to construct the road.

In 1856, the country had expended $776,000,000 in the construction of railroads, incurring a debt of about $300,000,000. The entire amount of stock and bonds held abroad at that time was estimated at only $81,000,000.

The desire of the people for the speedy opening of this great national highway is manifested by the action of the government, which, by act of Congress, July 2, 1864, granted the alternate sections of land for twenty miles on each side of the road in aid of the enterprise. The land thus appropriated amounts to forty-seven million acres,—more than is comprised in the States of New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and New York! If all of these lands were sold at the price fixed by government,—$2.50 per acre,—they would yield $118,000,000,—a sum sufficient to build and equip the road. But years must elapse before these lands can be put upon the market, and the government, undoubtedly, will give the same aid to this road which has already been given to the Central Pacific Road, guaranteeing the bonds or stock of the company, and taking a lien on the road for security. Such bonds would at once command the necessary capital for building the road.

Puget Sound, with its numerous inlets, is a deep indentation of the Pacific coast, one hundred miles north of the Columbia. It has spacious harbors, securely land-locked, with a surrounding country abounding in timber, with exhaustless beds of coal, rich in agricultural resources, and with numerous mill-streams. Nature has stamped it with her seal, and set it apart to be the New England of the Pacific coast.

That portion of the country is to be peopled by farmers, mechanics, and artisans. California is rich in mineral wealth. Her valleys and mountain-slopes yield abundant harvests; but she has few mill-streams, and is dependent upon Oregon and Washington for her coal and lumber. An inferior quality of coal is mined at Mount Diablo in California; but most of the coal consumed in that State is brought from Puget Sound. Hence Nature has fixed the locality of the future manufacturing industry of the Pacific. Puget Sound is nearer than San Francisco, by several hundred miles, to Japan, China, and Australia. It is therefore the natural port of entry and departure for our Pacific trade. It has advantages over San Francisco, not only in being nearer to those countries, but in having coal near at hand, which settles the question of the future steam marine of the Pacific.

Passengers, goods of high cost, and bills of exchange, move on the shortest and quickest lines of travel. No business man takes the way-train in preference to the express. Sailing vessels make the voyage from Puget Sound to Shanghai in from thirty to forty days. Steamers will make it in twenty.

Far-seeing men in England are looking forward to the time when the trade between that country and the Pacific will be carried on across this continent. Colonel Synge, of the Queen's Royal Engineers, says:—

"America is geographically a connecting link between the continents of Europe and Asia, and not a monstrous barrier between them. It lies in the track of their nearest and best connection; and this fact needs only to be fully recognized to render it in practice what it unquestionably is in the essential points of distance and direction."

Another English writer says:—

"It is believed that the amount of direct traffic which would be created between Australia, China, and Japan, and England, by a railway from Halifax to the Gulf of Georgia, would soon