1890,] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 77 



men. These, while marshaling forces for the field and 

 providing materials of war, devised plans and instituted 

 measures in the way of quick and easy communication to 

 connect these scattered peoples, and to make their varied 

 interests one, in the protection of, and benefits to be re- 

 ceived from, the central government. At that time the 

 railroad systems of the Eastern States were developed west- 

 w^ard to and beyond the Mississippi. Our engineers had 

 become expert and fertile in resources for overcoming, so 

 far as then encountered, the obstacles presented by nature 

 to railroad construction ; and capital had been encouraged 

 by success to make great expenditures for grand achieve- 

 ments. Impelled by these three forces, — the necessity, the 

 skill and the courage, — the great continental railway sys- 

 tem developed. The arid plains, the broad rivers with 

 treacherous quicksands and shifting channels, the towering 

 mountains with their perpendicularly walled gorges and 

 canons, were passed, and a continuous track extended from 

 the Atlantic to the Pacific, binding the Union together with 

 a cable of steel. Other similar efforts and successes fol- 

 lowed, which with their laterals have given easy access to 

 more territory than can be fully and wisely utilized during 

 a century to come, and made ou7' West to be almost any 

 and every spot between the "great father of waters " and 

 the Pacific, and between Canada and the republic of Mexico. 

 In the manifold obstacles to be encountered and overcome, 

 the countless expense to be incurred, the grandeur and 

 magnitude of the whole conception, the rapidity of its 

 execution, — the world's history furnishes no parallel; and, 

 for one, I am proud of the fact, that the sagacity, the in- 

 domitable, unyielding pluck, reeded to complete the first 

 line, was furnished l)y a son and citizen of Massachusetts. 



But there is one phase of this matter which should be here 

 noted, because of its influence on the West and its people. 

 Notwithstanding the fact that the conception and plan of a 

 Pacific railroad was by private individuals, acting in a private 

 capacity, it was of national importance ; essential to the 

 government for the proper administration of the affairs of 

 its vast area, and the expense of construction would be 

 national in magnitude. In its own interest it should aid this 



