The Southern Pacific Railroad [pp. 247-268]

THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD.
Admitting the possible capacity in Oregon, California, and New
Mexico to support a population to the square mile as great as the
average now embraced in our States and Territories, there would
be an aggregate there of 10,000,000 of inhabitants. The calculation will not be regarded wild when it is reflected how sparsely
populated and almost unreclaimed are many of these States and
Territories. Not one half of Vermont, New Jersey, Virginia,
Carolina, Georgia, or Ohio, being in cultivation; not one fourth
of Maine, Maryland, Illinois; not one fifth of Texas, Wisconsin,
Iowa, etc. If but one half the country were adequate to habitation
and industry, and the present density of Pennsylvania were attained, the whole amount would then swell to 20,000,000, or to
very nearly the existing strength of the nation. The density of
Pennsylvania is but 37 to the square mile, whilst that of some of
the New England States is several times as great, and of many
European nations immensely larger.
Within what period either of these figures can be attained, or
proportionally high ones, will depend upon a variety of circumstances impossible to be taken into the calculation. In the most
favorable view, it will aid us to consider that the United States
has gained in sixty years almost the entire amount claimed upon
the highest, and the Mississippi valley in half that time upon the
lowest basis, and that within the period of almost a single year
upward of 60,000 emigrants have settled'in California.
Whatever physical or other advantages possessed by a country,
the inducements to emigration and settlement must be greatly
counteracted or controlled by the expense and difficulties of access
and of intercommunication afterward. In the case before us, the
emigrant's wagon must rattle over crags and mountains, and
through inhospitable wildernesses, for wearisome months and
with innumerable hardships, after the frontiers of the States
are passed. Or if the routes by the Isthmus or of Cape Horn
be selected, then a dangerous and protracted navigation of the
ocean for 5,000 or 18,000 miles must be compassed, equivalent to
several voyages to Europe. Nothing but the highest and most
alluring stimulants could surmount obstacles such as these. Exile, hopeless exile, and the sundering of every sacred tie are involved. Fairy dreams of treasures as precious and as inexhaustible as the lamp of Aladdin ever revealed in Eastern fiction, awaiting the hand that shall garner them without an effort, may be such
a stimulant; but are not these dreams necessarily "unreal," and
doomed, as all experience demonstrates, to be eventually dissipated? An event like this would consign the country, however
otherwise favored, to ages almost of wilderness existence.
HIistory evinces every where, in the clearest and strongest light,
the extent to which emigration and settlement are influenced by
natural and artificial facilities of intercourse. The great Mississippi valley may emphatically be said to be the creation of the
steam engine, for without its magic power, of how limited avail
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