THE QUESTION OF ROUTES. 23

important a member of this Union New Mexico may yet become, or to
calculate the vastness of its various resources. Neither can the value
of its trade be calculated—the enormous amount of machinery, of
agricultural implements, and in short, everything that a civilized
people need.

There is a strong desire on the part of the people on this side of the
Mississippi that the Union Pacific Railway Company shall at once
extend their route into New Mexico, whether they go to Denver and
thence via Salt Lake City to California or not. They contend that
the route through New Mexico and Arizona will do infinitely more
to develop the resources of our great interior, as well as be a better
route to California, than the more direct but more mountainous line
by way of Salt Lake, and across the Sierra Nevada, far north of San
Francisco—that both the high mountain grades and the tremendous
snows of the other route will be avoided. They argue that, although
the road to San Francisco may be lengthened some hundreds of miles,
this will be more than compensated by the diminution of grade, the
avoidance of the snow, and by the fact that the road will touch the tide-
water of the Pacific at at least two important points before San Francisco is
reached —the head of the Gulf of California and San Diego, a good port
on the coast of Southern California, more than four hundred miles
south of San Francisco. And when to these considerations the supe-
rior value of the intermediate country is added, it is insisted that
there ought to be no hesitation. Will the reader please refer to a
map and trace the routes here indicated, and judge for himself of the
soundness of these arguments?

One thing is very certain: Hither the Government, aided by a com-
pany such as this, of able and energetic capitalists, must push a rail-
way through these vast regions, from the Missouri to the Pacific, or
they must lie undeveloped and unimproved from generation to gen-
eration. Individual energy and enterprise can never accomplish the
work. The locomotive must precede the plow, and the town the
farm. No farmer, however bold, but would recoil from the task of
going forward, as the farmers of the States east of the Mississippi
did, in advance of these mighty fordes of civilized life. The old pro-
cesses must be reversed, as indeed they have been. I wish that all
the people who may read these words could see, as I have seen, the
strong and healthy stream of civilization following the line of this
road up through this most beautiful of valleys, and see and enjoy, as I
have seen and enjoyed, as high a civilization, as many of the elegant
creature comforts of life, and as pleasant and intelligent people, as are ~
to be found anywhere. The right plan of human progress has been
hit upon at last.