* 240 NEW TRACKS IN NORTH AMERICA. 
St. Louis Park) along the spine was easily crossed; but { 
muscles on the other side, and the furrows or gorges betw@ 
the ribs made this route quite impracticable. 
4th. Near the 35th parallel from Fort Smith, on ¢ 
Arkansas River, to the harbour of San Pedro (Los Angel 
on the Pacific coast. This route, with the important modi 
cation of changing the starting-point to Kansas City on ch 
Missouri, and the Pacific terminus to San Francisco, is th 
one proposed by the Kansas Pacific, which stands in the samé 
relation to St. Louis that the Omaha line does to Chicago. 
5th. Near the 32nd parallel, uniting Preston on the Ree 
River in Eastern Texas with the Pacific at San Diego, Sat 
Pedro, or San Francisco. 1 
When all these surveys had been completed, and 
-Dayis had carefully weighed and examined the results, 
last route was the one to which he gave the preferen Oy, 
strongly urging its adoption by Congress. It was said with 
perfect truth, that if the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were ' 7 
rise to the height of 4,000 feet they would meet about the 
32nd parallel of latitude over the vast plateau south of the 
Rocky Mountains—the Madre Plateau; while the greater 
part of the continent to the northward, as well as the lofty 
plateaux of Mexico to the south, would form two huge 
islands, separated by this strait. Although the surveys across 
other sections of the continent had almost swept away the 
conventional idea of the Alpine grandeur of the Rocky 
Mountains, yet they were too rapidly conducted, and the 
task was too great to remove minor obstacles, which swelled 
the estimates of the cost of a trans-continental railway to sums | 
which made such an undertaking appear all but hopeless. 
= The level route by the 32nd parallel shone out in striking 
— economic contrast to all the rest, and the result was that 
