RESOURCES OF THE NORTHERN ROUTE. 265 
that of Hlinois. It is the winter-wheat region of this conti- 
nent. It is a region of alternate prairies and pine forests. 
Tt is a region rich in coal, iron, gold, silver, and copper. It 
. $s a region the salubrity of whose climate has made it the 
Sanatarium for consumptives from the Atlantic slopes. It is 
a region whose Rocky Mountain section, broken down in its 
en 80 as to be passable by loaded ponies, is blessed 
with a temperature so mild that countless herds of cattle 
Tange and fatten through the winter upon the natural grasses 
within ten miles of the summit of the continental water- 
: parting. It is a region in all whose valleys peaches, apples, 
_ pears, plums, cherries, grapes, and sweet potatoes have rapid 
_ growth and complete maturity. It is a region so rich in grass, 
| and so blessed in climate, that it has ever been the home, in 
_ winter as well as summer, of the buffalo, the elk, and the 
antelope. It has timber, water-power, and stone. It has a 
population of 1,410,000 people. Illinois possessed no such 
endowments. Her inheritance, so amazingly developed by 
 Tailroads, was a garden soil, deeply underlaid with a thin 
| seam of coal and a deposit of friable sandstone. She had 
; nothing else. But every element of wealth, every condition 
| of social growth and prosperity exist in superabundance and 
, beyond exhaustion in the territory between Lake Superior 
| and Puget Sound. For this immense region, embracing 
j Minnesota, Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, 
) and a part of Wisconsin, railroads can do more than they have 
done for Illinois.” 
_ The statement made in the aboye quotation as to climate 
_ may appear strange to those who are unacquainted with the 
great bend northward which the isothermal lines make west of 
_ the Mississippi. The winters are long and severe in Min- 
nesota, but a little farther west, the proposed railroad enters a 
