San Andreas independent., 1857-10-31
The Prospects for Future immigration.
California, while she has furnished

The Prospects for Future immigration.
California, while she has furnished
from her rivers and her mountains, gold
sufficient to build half dozen railroads
from her commercial mart to her sister
States in the east is not furnished with
single safe and commodious route by
which immigration can reach her shores.
As to the conveniences for the increase
of useful population, she is in a much
worse situation than she was seven years
ago and as far as we can discover, there
is no prospect that there will be change
for the better within any reasonable time
notwithstanding the appeals of her citi-
2ens and the exertions of her press to
bring about better state of affairs in this
respect, the conveniences for immigration
have constantly decreased. Our fellow
citizens have been murdered upon the
lsthmus others have found a watery
grave; our fellow countrymen seeking a
home In our genial climate, with their
wives, their children and their herds,
have been wantonly butchered upon the
plains by savages. Whichever way we
look the corpses of the dead rise to con-
front our gaze where e'er we turn, the
wall OF sorrow, and the lamentation of
grief from the friends of the murdered
rise, ringing in our ears, and this, too,
while the governments is engaged in patch
ing up an unsatisfactory peace with New
Granada, and marshaling troops in Kan
sas for the purpose of settling the question
of slavery or no slavery, leaving Califor-
MIA to her fate, till she has become, in a
manner, isolated from her sister States,
and almost detached portion of the con-
federacy. True, the United States Mail
Company and the Pacific Mail Company
form connecting link between this and
the older States, and answer the purpose
of carrying off our millions of treasure,
but any real benefit that they are to this
State, they might as well be scuttled in
the middle of the Pacific Ocean. We
want an increase of population, composed
of the hardy sons of toll; but the present
Steam Ship Company, instead of holding
ont inducements for such Having the
entire control of the route-haye estab-
lished the price of passage at such an ex-
horbitant figure, that the man of moder-
ate means is debarred the opportunity of
migrating to the Pacific The consequence
is, by the ocean route we are gaining
nothing in point of numbers, nor is there
any appearance, either present or pro-
spective, of our doing so. The fact is,
we must look to a different channel for
immigration. We must look to the over
land route, by which the western farmer
may come with his family and settle upon
our agricultural lands, and help build up
the prosperity of the State to a perma-
ncnt condition. But we must appeal to
the government for assistance which it
should have rendered long ago-to estab-
lish chain of military posts from the
western States to the Pacific. Let it not
be said by those partizans who truckle to
the "powers that be-" that the govern
ment has been providing for our wants
by sending out troops to be stationed on
the Southern Mail route, for everybody
knows that that is of no benefit to Cali
fornia, and will not be in ten, perhaps in
twenty years. 1t answers as a semi
monthly connecting link between an OBJ
scure town in Texas and an equally OBJ |
scure one in California. Emigration has
never taken that route, nor will they be
induced to do so in any great numbers.
If the government has any particular OBJ
ject in forming southern roads, let her
construct dozen if she choose-but let
her, at the same time, provide means for
protecting the route by way of the South
Pass, through which four-ffths of the
overland emigration has heretofore passed,
and which fact has abundantly established
its superiority. This route being more
direct and more convenient than any
other, to those States from which we may
reasonably expect to receive the greater
proportion of our permanent population,
should be protected at any cost; that those
who seek our shores will not have to run
the gauntlet to save their lives from Nor
mon revenge and savage cruelty.
The Utah expedition about which SO
much has been said, so far as we are able |
to discover, has proven curse rather
than blessing, as it has only served to
~