74 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

slope of the Sierra Nevada, which was planted in 1859, which has
grown straight and almost of a uniform size, and measured thirteen
inches in circumference for ten feet from the ground. Its yield of
fruit that year was estimated at eight hundred pounds.

The quicksilver mines of California extend from Mendocina county,
north of San Francisco, along the Coast Range, all the way to the
Colorado river, and on the northeastern slope; consequently this road
will run near to them for a distance of over four hundred miles.
This is an interest the extent and importance of which it is yet im-
possible to estimate, as these mines have been but imperfectly devel-
oped thus far,

Such is the region through which the line of this road will run from
Aubry, on the Colorado, to San Francisco. When this great valley
shall be occupied — as it soon would be were this road made through
it—no part of the route, not even Kansas, would furnish more local
business both in freight and passengers.

 

LETTER XVIII.— Length of the respective Routes. — Latitude and
Longitude of the principal Points.
ALLEGHENY City, August 3, 1867.
LENGTH OF THE RESPECTIVE ROUTES,

Tux length of any route for a railroad from the Missouri to San
Francisco is not yet known. The best that has been done has been
to make proximate estimates, To keep down the gradients of a road
through an extensive mountain region to what is required on a rail.
road, necessarily extends the length greatly beyond that of ordinary
wagon roads through the same region, Across plains, such as those
which stretch between the Missouri and the mountains, on both the
Kansas and the Platte routes, the difference is not much between the
wagon road and the railroad.

The enterprising gentlemen who are pushing forward the Union
Pacific Railroad of the Platte with a rapidity without example, pro-
pose to run directly across the mountain region which begins a little
beyond where they now are at work, and ends only on the banks of
the Sacramento, while those who, with no less spirit and energy, are
urging forward the Union Pacific Railway of the Kansas, propose—
and I think very wisely—to bear a little southward, and thus avoid
all the formidable mountain ranges, It is certain that by so doing
they will greatly reduce their gradients. They will avoid the tremen-
dous snow-drifts of the route through the mountains, and find a far