Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/363

Rh (I hope I have not made a mistake of a couple of hundred in the number,) travelling about in Missouri advocating the laying down of a railway from St. Louis through Missouri to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, and exhorting them to give in their adherence to the scheme. And he has been extremely successful; in St. Louis alone names are given in to the amount of two millions of dollars for the carrying out of the undertaking. It is true that they will have to tunnel through and to blast the solid walls of the Rocky Mountains, but what does that signify to an American?

The city of St. Louis was founded by rich traders. Dealers in furs and Catholic priests were the first who penetrated the wildernesses of the West, and ventured life to win, the former wealth, the latter souls.

Trade and religion are still at this moment the pioneers of civilisation in the Western country.

One of the most important branches of speculation and trade in and around St. Louis, is at the present time, the sale of land. The earlier emigrants hither who purchased land, now sell it by the foot at several thousand dollars a square foot. The exorbitant prices at which I have been told land sells here seem almost incredible to me. Certain it is that many people are now making great fortunes merely by the sale of their plots of ground. One German, formerly in low circumstances, has lately sold his plot, and has now returned to his native land with wealth to the amount of one hundred thousand dollars.

Mr. A., who is one of the “self-made men” of the great West, and who began his career at thirteen, by publishing a Penny Magazine, is now a land proprietor, and sells also