POLITICAL INHERENCY OF GEOLOGY 329 
less than five feasible routes were located by these Pacific Rail¬ 
road Surveys, as they were called. Under the cloak of the War 
Department their political aspects seemed never to have been re¬ 
vealed. Their ulterior purpose seemed to escape notice. Incentive 
of their initiation was cunningly hidden. The personal selfishness 
of their proposal never reached the light of day. Their sectional 
advantages were subtilely camouflaged. In the excitement of the 
rebellion which followed so closely, their real significance was 
never unearthed. After the close of the War, when their ultimate 
design was no longer in need of support, their supposed object 
was soon forgotten, so far as the general public was concerned. 
It may be doubted whether to the latter suspicion ever did really 
arise as to their larger functions and national bearings. 
Of these five Pacific Railroad Surveys, three were located 
in the South and two in the North. They were carried out mainly 
under the supervision of Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War. 
This fact, doubtless, had much to do with the course of railroad 
building events and the political welfare of the country. For 
some reason never explained only the surveys of the southern 
routes were reported. The thirteen sumptuous quarto volumes, 
entitled the “Pacific Railroad Reports,” were mainly devoted to 
the advertising of the vast resources of the country traversed by 
these southern lines. 
Nevertheless, the southern routes could not be made to attract 
capital. The long stretches of waterless, verdureless desert 
through which they passed were not spanned until long after the 
northern line was completed and operated. Southern money failed 
to respond to the proposal for their construction. Southern dream 
of boundless new slave territory was dissolved. 
Concerning the two northern lines little was ever divulged by 
Davis to the public. All the notes, maps, reports, and other in¬ 
formation of the northernmost route, since followed by the Great 
Northern Railway, were suppressed. It was claimed that they 
were lost in transit between the Pacific Coast and Washington. At 
any rate, nothing more was ever heard of them, and no attempt 
was ever made even to bring the main facts to light. 
The official reports of the other northern route, along the forty- 
first parallel, were also slighted. But this line proved commer- 
