The Southern Pacific Railroad [pp. 247-268]

THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD.
prefer the latter, but the great interest of the people will be promoted by the former. What does the North, it has well been asked, want with a road to the north? "No one can suppose that
the people of Iowa would exchange flour and pork with the people
of Oregon, or swap horses or cattle with them. But let them
look to the South, and how different the prospect! Along the
Mississippi river, at every remove, they would find the condition
of barter existing all the way to New Orleans, and throughout the
West Indies and eastern slope of South America. Or, if they preferred to take the railroad at Memphis, they would daily and hourly find a market through southern climes, and, when they had
reached San Diego, if any thing remained to be so sold or purchased, there would be China, at last, quite as convenient as if
they were at Francisco or Astoria. More convenient would be
Australasia, and Polynesia with its thousand isles; and still more
convenient, and in a climate still more different from their own
than any yet mentioned, the western coasts of Central and South
America."
From the earliest periods the problem of reaching the East by
shorter means of communication has engaged the attention of
statesmen and of nations. In the search our continent was discovered. The northern coast of Europe, the western coasts of
America, have been explored times without number, with the
same end. Every nook and corner of the continent has been examined. The Spaniards were among the most active of these explorers, and Cortez even went so far as to write to the home government, "If. we should so hit upon this strait, (in the vicinity of
the isthmus,) the distance to the Indies would be two-thirds less
than the present navigation." Soon after was invented the fiction
of the straits of Anian, or of Fuca, on the northwest of America.
McKenzie and Carver traversed the British dominions from Canada to the river of Oregon and the Arctic sea. La Salle proposed
to the French a possible communication from the sources of the
Mississippi to those of the Oregon, and Mr. Jefferson dispatched
Lewis and Clarke to these regions in search of a "route of commercial communication with the Pacific."
NOTE 1.-Akn-p DnIx.-The following was prepared about the same time
as the above report, and will also be found interesting:
MEIPHIS RATLROAD.-By this we mean the road which our fellow-citizens
of Tennessee and Arkansas are now advocating, and which they propose to
submit to a convention of the southwestern states. The road would leave
the Arkansas shore, opposite Memphis, and strike across the country, per haps to Van Buren, with branches to Little Rock, &c. From here it would
follow the valley of the Arkansas river* and into the Indian territory along
the Canadian branch of the same river. Having left the valley of the Canadian, the route would be almost due west to Santa Fe, should there be
found a mountain pass that will answer, which is nearly in the same parallel
of latitude as Memphis. We know with no exactness the distance from
* The inundated lands of Arkansas, five millions of acres, according to Mr. Borland's report
in the United States Senate, one-seventh of the State, can be readily reclaimed.
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