will accrue to our commerce, prosperity and advaucenient, will so forcibly pre- 

 sent itself to your minds that a detailed advocacy would be superfluous. 



The proposition is: 



That the State Legislature of California, shall, by legislative act, donate in 

 fee simple to the undersigned, all the right, title and interest of the State, in 

 and to certain quarter sections of land (not to exceed five quarter sections) 

 situate between the eastern boundary of the State and the Pacific coast, as 

 stations for the encouragement of an overland immigration by means of camels 

 . and dromedaries. The undersigned purposes and agrees within twelve months 

 from and after the passage of an Act embracing the above donation, _ to place 

 trains of camels and dromedaries on a route from a point or station on the 

 Atlantic coast to a point or station ou the Pacific coast, for the purpose of 

 expediting inter-oceanic communication in a speedy and secure mauner. 



Your memorialist would respectfully call the attention of your honorable 

 body to the fact that an enterprise of this nature has been presented to the 

 consideration of our National Legislature, and met with the most favorable 

 reception. The ComraitteG to whom the whole matter was referred, would have 

 reported a most liberal appropriation from the National Treasury, to convey'' 

 the mails across this continent by means of camels and dromedaries, did not 

 some serious obstacles present themselves in our general Post Office law. 



Your memorialist would inform your honorable body that a similar requisition 

 to the above will be presented to the State Legislature of Texas, asking the 

 same donation, not so much for the value of the lands donated, as to give an 

 implied expression of opinion on this all important subject. The General Got 

 ernment will doubtless donate to the undersigned the necessary quarter sections 

 (for stations) in the Territory of New Mexico. 



From statistical facts, it is with pride your memorialist informs your honor- 

 able body that by donating this land, and thereby expressing an implied endors- 

 ment of the people of California to his enterprise, he v/ill be enabled, by the' 

 aid of capital placed at his disposal for the prosecution of his project, within a^^ 

 very few months to place a train of dromedaries on the southern route, that will' 

 make the distance from Texas or New Orleans to the Gila River, thence to San 

 Diego or Los Angeles, in from eight to ten days, an almost incredible shortj 

 time, yet nevertheless true. 



Your memorialist has it from unquestionable authority, that the dispatches 

 are constantly forwarded f*-om Cairo and Alexandria in Egypt, to Mecca in 

 Arabia, a distance of near eight hundred miles, in four days, by one of these 

 animals, thence to Aden, whose gulf forms its estuary in the Indian Ocean, a 

 distance of near six hundred miles, in sixty hours. These facts are given tq 

 show the entire practicability of the enterprise. 



So soon as this enterprise is commenced, the commercial and other intelligence 

 from India and China, will be anticipated in our own and the European monetar 

 and commercial world, hy at least twenty days. 



Your memorialist, in conclnsion, relies on the vast importance of this subject 

 as being a sufficient warranty in him asking this trifling donation of land, which 

 as before stated, he requires more as an implied expression of opinion than foi 

 the intrinsic value of the soil, and your memorialist will ever prsy. 



WILLIAM NEALE WALTON. 



