42 HOW TO GET A FAKM, 



the eastern division between the Missouri and the Atlantic, 

 at Portland, 25 of our total territorial breadth of 53 of 

 longitude. 



&quot; It has been the principal work and office of the Amer 

 ican people, since the foundation of their government, to 

 carry the machinery of civilization westward&quot; from the At 

 lantic to the Missouri, the great confluent of the Mississippi. 

 So far as the means of rapid intercommunication are con 

 cerned, the work may be said to be accomplished, for a 

 locomotive engine can now run without interruption from 

 Portland to the Missouri, striking it at St. Joseph, just be 

 low the fortieth parallel of latitude. In the twenty years 

 preceding 1860, a network of railways 31,196 miles in 

 length was constructed, having the terminus of the most 

 western link on the Missouri river. The total cost was 

 $1,151,560,829, of which $850,900,681 was expended in 

 the decade between 1850 and 1860. The American Gov 

 ernment and people had become aware of the great pecuni 

 ary, commercial, and political results of connecting the 

 ocean with the food-producing interior by adequate steam 

 communications. But the higher and more difficult problem 

 was then presented of repeating the effort on a scale still 

 more grand and continental ; of winning victories still more 

 arduous over nature ; of encountering and subduing the 

 massive mountain ranges interposed by the prolongation of 

 the Cordilleras of our sister continent through the centre of 

 North America, rising, even at their lowest points of de 

 pression, far above the highest peaks of the Atlantic States. 



&quot; The Government, feeling the vital, national importance 

 of closely connecting the States of the Atlantic and of the 

 Mississippi with the Pacific with all practicable dispatch, 

 has vigorously exerted its power. On the 1st of July, 1862, 

 nearly fifteen months after the outbreak of the existing in 

 surrection, and notwithstanding the necessity of calling into 



