CONCLUSION OF INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
23 
Sections of this narrow strip of valuable territory should be reserved for the growth of timber 
for the use of the road. 
The company building this road, and encountering the risk of testing this first step of an 
experiment, should be admitted to the single legitimate speculation of having donation and 
pre-emption fee of a limited quantity of land at station-grounds, but not to interfere with actual 
settlers. 
All speculations should be brought to the best engineering line for the road. The road should 
not be carried from its 'proper engineering position to further any speculation whatever. 
In the present instance, the engineering line is that which will best favor the most rapid 
extension of the iron rail to the mountains. The summit-ridge between the mouth of the Kan¬ 
sas and the Platte is an obstacle to be encountered by a junction line, but not by the prelimi- 
inary road. 
The favorable features presented in the above plan would be in the competition of the ablest 
actual railroad-builders in the nation to construct this road under the scientific direction of 
individuals educated and trained at the expense of government for the service of military 
defence. 
In event of war, this country will rely on her system of railroads for defence. By the revolu¬ 
tions of human progress, the Pacific railroad is especially an arm of national defence. 
The military engineers of the country should have practice in this new branch of service; and 
as government is to furnish a portion of the means for extending this road, the scientific depart¬ 
ment to which is intrusted the erection of military works should not be debarred from partici¬ 
pation in its construction. 
The practical energy of the civil engineers of the nation will at once turn toward the con¬ 
sideration of this project, and appear among contracting parties ; and the basis of the plan of 
construction offered, however modified, will serve to blend these important branches of an emi¬ 
nent profession in the solution of a national undertaking. 
• CONCLUSION OF INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
Making no excuses for the many repetitions and the desultory character of these introductory 
remarks, which I have conceived necessary for placing this subject where it may be treated as a 
practical and scientific problem, I will now apologize for having sometimes been betrayed into 
a style of more earnestness than should properly appear in the statement of an engineering 
question. 
Having devoted time, health, and pecuniary means, for over three years, to the furtherance 
of this great object, it requires the discretion of a caution not always within the powers of self- 
denial to apply to it only the defined terms of lucid demonstration. 
Here, on this soil, the great masses of the people, once “ hewers of wood and drawers of wa¬ 
ter” to lords and emperors, are erecting an empire of grandeur, the more comprehensive from 
being grounded on the broad basis of popular rights. 
They are making deeper foot-prints on the path of civilization than any nation of the globe. 
They are true to their own destiny, to the claims of human progress, and to the example 
they have become to the toiling white men of the earth. 
They are inspired by the first sounds of approaching danger, and they have seen the neces¬ 
sities of an occasion. 
They have beheld the surface of the Pacific whitened by a commerce which takes its de¬ 
parture from the rude cob-wharves of a city risen from the sea. 
They are true to the claims of that far-off, moving, and practical population which is a part 
of their union, and from which they are divided by sterile deserts and snowy mountains. 
They know that, by the simple triumphs of human ingenuity, these obstacles may be spanned 
by a Pacific railroad. 
