THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH. 



and ice on the northern route, by the way of the South Pass, 

 crossing the Sierra Nevada Mountains in latitude 39. The whole 

 distance from the Mississippi to San Francisco will be about 

 2400 miles. 



" In a commercial point of view, the line in question assumes a 

 gigantic importance, and presents itself not only in the attitude 

 of a means of communication between the opposite extremes of a 

 single country, however great, but as a channel for imparting 

 knowledge between distant parts of the earth. "With the existing 

 facilities, it requires months to convey information from the sunny 

 climes of the East to the less favoured, in point of climate, but 

 not less important regions of the "West, teeming as they do with 

 the products of art and enterprise. Let this line of wires be 

 established, and the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans become as one, 

 and intelligence will be conveyed from London to India in a shorter 

 time than was required ten years since to transmit a letter from 

 New York to Liverpool. 



" Nor does the importance of the undertaking claim less interest, 

 when regarded in a social point of view. California is being 

 peopled daily and hourly by our friends, our kindred, and our 

 political brethren. The little bands that a few centuries since 

 landed on the western shores of the Atlantic, have now become a 

 mighty nation. The tide of population has been rolling onward, 

 increasing as it approached the setting sun, until at length our 

 people look abroad upon the Pacific, and have their homes almost 

 within sight of the spice groves of Japan. Although separated 

 from us by thousands of miles of distance, they will be again 

 restored to us in feeling, and still present to our affections, through 

 the help of this noiseless tenant of the wilderness." 



A company is stated to be organised for carrying out this vast 

 project, with a capital of 5,000000 dollars. 



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