PROCEEDINGS OF THE POLYTECHNIC ASSOCIATION. 843 



endanger its vegetation, otiier portions will escape. Full one- 

 •third of its area is adapted to the growth of wheat, one-sixth to 

 cotton, one-half to grass, and three-fourths to corn. 



Some portions of it, as the Llano Estacado of Texas, the bad 

 lauds of Nebraska, and the sand hills of Kansas and Colorado, maj 

 be said to be barren, thmigh they yield grass a large portion of 

 the 3'ear to vast lierds of bufialo, elk and antelope. Its western 

 heights are blessed with richest lodes of gold, silver, lead, copper, 

 antimony, tin, cinnabar and iron. Within its bosom are the most 

 extensive lids of bituminous coal on the face of the globe. It* 

 limestone caverns are filled with galena. Rock salt and gyjjsum 

 glisten on its plains. Brine springs and oil springs gush from its 

 sandstones. Precisely in its centre is fixed the most wonderful 

 and grandest upheave of iron that man has ever gazed npon. Its 

 navigable waters exceed those of all the rest of North America. 

 There is no timber, no grade of soil, no ore or mineral, no want 

 in man's industrial pursuits but here it can be supplied. Man has 

 no earthly want that cannot here be gratified. Here is the greatest 

 network of railroads ; here the longest bridges. Cities spring up 

 and grow Avith the rapidity of the prophet's gourd. Men here 

 become millionaires before the frosts of years has tinged their 

 whiskers. Oil to fill the lamps of mankind is drawn from its 

 rocks, and food to feed the world from its virgin soil. Where you 

 sleep to-night, to-morrow may see an embryo city. Where you 

 may have roasted ears of corn, a Commodore Foote has sailed his 

 gunboats. Twenty-one railroads touch the Hudson ; sixty-six 

 touch the Mississippi. Eleven roads centre in New York ; fifteen 

 in Chicago. This grandest valley of the globe can receive the 

 present floAv of hungry emigrants from Europe, and give them the 

 elemental conditions of civilization through one hundred and fifty- 

 years, and then not be filled to repletion. It is thirty times as 

 large as the State of New York, and seven times as large as the 

 original thirteen States. 



The steamer St. John leaves her wharf at six o'clock p. m. of a 

 summer's afternoon, and lands her refreshed passengers in Albany 

 at six o'clock of the following morning — a transit of one hundred 

 and fifty miles. Could she pursue the same rate of speed, she would 

 consume thirteen days, or twenty-six times the luunber of hours 

 in her voyage from Pittslnirgh to the Rocky mountains. Should 

 she push her prow with undiminished speed, and pausing not in 

 her course, through all the navigable waters of this valley, three 



