303

CROFUTT’S NEW OVERLAND TOURIST

 

safe plan of security, and this could not be accom-
plished without swifter, surer, aud cheaper means
of transporting the poor, who would gladly avail
themselves of the Creo to possess a free
farm, or reach the gold fields of the West. The
railroad and telegraph—twin sisters of civilization
were talked of, but old fogies shook their heads
in the plentitude of their wisdom, piously crossed
themselves, and clasped with a firmer grasp their
money bags, when Young America dared broach
the subject, ‘‘No, sir, no; the thing is totally
absurd; impracticable,sir; don’t talk any more of
such nonsense tome,” they would reply, as they
turned away to go to their church or to their stock
gambling in Wall street—probably the latter occu-
pation. But Young America did not give up to
this theory or accept the dictum of Moneybags;
and as the counties of the West grew and ex-
panded under the mighty tide of immigration,
they clamored for a safe and speedy transit be-
tween them and their “Fatherland.” Government
with its usual red-tape delays and scientific way of
how not to do it, heeded not the appeal, until the
red hand of War—of Rebelion—pointed out to it the
stern necessity of securing, by iron bands, the fair
eons of the West from foreign or domes-

c foe,

Notwithstanding that Benton, Clark, and others
had long urged the necessity and practicability of
the scheme, the wealth and power which would
accrue tothe country from its realization, the idea
found favor with but few of our wise legislators
until they awoke to the knowledge that even the
loyal State of California was in danger of being
abandoned by those in command, and turned over
to the insurgents; that arebel force was forming
in Texas with the Pacific coast as its objective
point; that foreign and domestic mechinations
threatened the dismemberment of the Union into
three divisions; not until all this stared them in
the face could our national Solons see the practica-
bility ofthe scheme so earnestly and ably advocated
by Sargent of Californiaand his able coadjutors in
thenoble work. To this threatened invasion of
our Western possessions, what had Government to
offer for successful defense? Nothing but a few
half-finished and illy-manned forts around the bay,
and the untaught militia of the Pacific coast. Un-
der this pressure was the charter granted; and it
may truly be said that the road was inaugurated
by the grandest carnival of blood the world has
ever known; for, without the pressure of the re-
bellion, the road would probably be in embryo to-
day. Although the American people had been
keenly alive to the importance of a speedy transit
between the two extremes of the Continent ever
since the discovery of fue on the Pacific slope,
up to this time the old, vague rumors of barren
deserts, dark, deep, and gloomy gorges, tremend-
ous, rugged, snow-clad mountains, and the wild
Savage, made the ideaseem preposterous. Hven
the reports of the emigrants could not convince
them to the contrary; nor yet the reports of the
Mormons who marked and mapped a feasible route
to Salt Lake City. And it is worthy of remark,
that, for over 700 miles the road follows very closely
their survey.

Practical, earnest men, disabused the minds of
the people regarding the impracticability of the
scheme, after the road had became a national ne-
cessity—a question of life and unity of the Repub-
lic. The great work has been accomplished, and

to-day the locomotive whirls its long train, filled
with emigrants or pleasure seekers, through that
region which, only a few years ago, was but a dim,
undefined, mythical land, composed of chaos, and
the last faint efforts of nature to render that cha-

 

otic State still more inhospitable and uninviting.
How great the change from the ideal to the rea:!
For three hundred miles afterleaving Omaha, that
vague ‘‘ Great American Desert’? proves to be as
beautiful and fertile a succession of valleys as can
be found elsewhere, under like geographical posi-
tions. Great is the change indeed; still greater
the changes through which our country has passed
during the period from the commencement to the
ending of our proudest national civil record, save
one. e livein a fast age; the gentle breeze of
to-day was the tornado ot fifty years ago.

In noting the history of the Continental railroad
we must speak of the attempts in that direction
which had been made by otherparties, Missouri,
through her able and liberal legislature, was the
first State to move in the construction of a na-
tional or continental railroad. The Legislature of
that State granted a charter, under which was in-
corporated the Missouri and Pacific Railroad Co.,
who were to build a road, diverging at Franklin,
southwest, via Rollo, Springfield, Neosho (the
Galena district), and along the line of the thirty-
sixth parallel to Santa Fe, New Mexico. From
Santa Fe, to San Francisco preliminary surveys
were made, and had it not been for the rebellion,
this road would undoubtedly have been completed
lous ere this; good authorities placing the limit
at 1864. The cause which compelled the construc-
tion of the Union and Central roads, destroyed the
Southern. Passing, as it did, mostly through
Southern, hostile territory, Government could not
aid or protect it in its construction, and conse-
quently the work was suspended. The States of
Arkansas and Tennessee, by their legislatures,
proposed to assist the work, by constructing a
railroad from Little Rock, to connect with the M.
& P., somewhere between the ninety-eighth and
one hundred and second degree of longitude, and
for that purpose a charter was ted.

Organization of the Pacific Rail-
road—The evident; and we might add, the im-
perative necessity of connecting the East and
West, and the intervening Territories, encouraged
the corporators of the great trans-continental Ifne
to apply to the Government for aid. Many meas-
ures were devised and laid before the people, butthe
supposed impregnability of the Rocky Mountains,
and other natural obstacles to be encountered,
caused a hesitancy even then on the part of our
energetic people to commence the great work. To
attempt to lay the iron rail through vast tracts of
unknown country, inhabited by wandering, hostile
tribes of savage nomads; to scale the snow-clad
peaks of the Rocky Mountains with the fiery lo-
comotive, seemed an undertaking too vast for
even the American people to accomplish. Butthe
absolute impoRTANCE, the wrgent NEcEssiIry of
such a work, overcame all objections to the
scheme, and in 1862 Congress passed an act, which
was approyed by President Lincoln on the first day
of July of that year, by which the Government
sanctioned the undertaking, and promised the use
of its credit1o aid in its speedy completion. The
act was entitled ‘‘An act to aid in the consiruc-
tion of a railroad and telegraph line from the Mis-
souri River to the Pacific Ocean, and to secure to
the Government the use of the same for postal,
military, and other purposes.”

Land Gramt—The Government grant of
lands to the great national highway, as amended,
was, every alternate section of land for 20 mileson
each side of the road, or 20 sections, equaling 12,-
800 acres for each mile of the road. By the Com-

pany’s table, the road, as completed, is 1,776 18-
100 miles long from Omaha to Sacramento. This
would give the companies 22,'735,104 acres, divided