238 NEW TRACKS IN NORTH AMERICA. 
came the cry of gold, which sent thousands of miners frg 
every quarter of the globe, by every route, to California qf 
the Pacific coast. Whilst the greater number went by | 
around the Cape and across Panama, thousands boldly set 
from the Eastern States by land into the unknown regions} 
the Far West, and crossed the continent by different rouf 
on different parallels of latitude. 
Under the stimulus of this fresh necessity for a traut 
continental highway, the Pacific Railroad enterprise could m 
longer be kept out of Congress; and early in the decade ¢ 
1850 it received the cordial support of both branches of the 
legislature. By an Act passed March 31st, 1853, the Wa 
railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, and 
the necessary appropriations were duly granted. The Secre« 
tary of War at that time was none other than Mr. Jeffersot 
Davis, and the result of the explorations made under his 
direction between 1854 and 1857 are comprised in the thirtee a 
bulky volumes of Pacific Railroad Reports, which are as well 
known to botanists, naturalists, and geologists as to geo, 4 
phers and engineers. — ; 
Two-thirds of the territory of the United States lies to he 
west of the Mississippi, and crouched along the centre of th is 
vast tract, barring off as was supposed the westward wave” 
of population, stretch the Rocky Mountains—that great 
Grisly Bear, over whose body it was thought impossible to 
step; but these Pacific surveys threw great light upon the 
anatomy of the Grisly Bear. They proved that his back. 
___Was very broad, that the slope up his sides was very gradual, 
that his spine did not extrude unpleasantly in the centre, but 
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