A418 A GLANCE AT THE POLITICAL AND COMMERCIAL 
wilderness, as to bring the crests of the Rocky Mountains within a 
week’s travel of the Pacific seaboard. 
It is not, perhaps, unreasonable to anticipate that difficulties of a po- 
litical cbaracter will arise between the Northern and Southern States 
with reference to the American telegraph and Pacific railway, as now 
‘constructed and contemplated, on and near the 32nd parallel. The 
route offering most advantages next to that running near the 32nd. 
parallel (the one selected), is the Northern Route, or that lying be- 
tween the 47th and the 49th parallels. But since the survey of it 
was made, the passes in the Rocky Mountains have become better 
known, and there can now be little doubt that the Leather or Miette 
Pass is between 2,000 and 3,000 feet lower than the pass on the 
47th parallel. 
It is, however, the remarkable character of the country through 
which a railway or postal road from the Lake of the Woods to the 
Miette Pass would traverse, which gives this line of route an’ extraordi- 
nary prominence. The present President of the Southern States, when 
Mr. Secretary Davis, summed up the comparisons of the different 
routes in the United States, as regards the character of the country 
they traverse. The following is an abbreviation of the summary : 
MILES, 
Route near the 47th and 49th parallels, from St. Paul to Vancouver.. 1,864 
Number of miles through arable land........+.-ccccesccecccerces 374 
Number of miles through land generally uncultivable, arable soil 
being found in small areas .......0.-ceeeerceeees oouaDeobE 1,490 
The greatest number of miles of route through arable land on any 
one of the lines surveyed, is 670 miles, in a distance of 2,290 miles. 
The least number of miles of route through generally uncultivable 
soil, is 1,210, on a line of 1,618 miles in length, near the 32nd 
parallel. 
From the Lake of the Woods, or from Pembina, a line in British 
territory instead of passing through a desert incapable of supporting 
human life, would traverse a fertile belt of country, averaging one 
hundred miles in breadth,* fully able to sustain five times as many 
* The arid region of the Missouri valley commences west of the 100th degree of longitude; 
but the 100th degree of longitude divides the United States into two nearly equal parts on the 
40th parallel of latitude. The eastern halfis the present fertile and peopled part of the country. 
The western half is a comparative desert all the way to the Pacific. It is incomparison with this 
immense desert that the fertile belt at the edge of the woods, stretching in the Saskatchewan 
Valley from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains, stands out in such surprising con- 
irast, Sixty thousand square miles, of arable land in Central British America, mark out the true 
pathway across the continent, which alone is capable of sustaining an efficient means of com- 
