The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1866-01-25
The Pacific Railroad.

THE American people have decided to build
great iron highway across the continent,
That It Is needed, no one who has studied the
interests of the world can doubt. Years ago
Colonel BENTON, the earliest commender
the project, intelligently discussed the ques-
tion, both in the Senate of the United States
and wherever he could find an audience pre-
pared to listen to his argument He may be
said TO have been the father OF the enterprise;
and never did man work more faithfully to
further the ends he had in view. We all re-
collect his theory that the iron bond which
was to follow the track of the buffalo through
the Rocky Mountains, was the link which
would eventually combine the race into
common brotherhood. In the very midst of
his herculean labors he was called to his rest,
but his soul-stirring words are handed down
to after generations, and what he has sown is
rapidly ripening into the arvest.
The necessity for great railway across the
continent is no longer questioned The i'm
mutable laws of commerce and trade have
decided this fact. The most brilliant of modern
English historians has said that the day is not
far distant when Europe and Asia will clasp
hands over the American Continent. The
enormous metallic deposits of the great West
are loudly clamoring for access to markets.
The great need at present is backbone
running uninterruptedly from the Atlantic to
the Pacific, with diverging lines tapping,
and making productive that vast area Of
the country that has only been withheld
from culture because it was impossi-
bic to transport the productions to
the market. A vast agricultural and metal
bearing region has just been opened under
the shadows of our western mountain ranges.
found in rich abundance in nearly all our
recently developed territory. California, Ne
vada, Colorado, and Montana glitter with
shining dust. Beyond all doubt the western
slope of the American Continent is the long
lost Ophir. Its sands, arid and parched
though they be, sparkle and coruscate as if
clad in sunbeams. Through this vast waste
the iron horse will inevitably thunder, devour-
ing time and space, and putting a girdle
round the earth almost as soon as the mythical
'Arel" promised to accomplish the feat The
grown man is now living who, taking his
seat in the train of the Central Pennsyl-
vania Railroad Company, at their depot
in West Philadelphia, will find no Interrupt
ton between that point and the Gulf OF
California. Meanwhile lie will have
tunnelled the Alleghanies, dashed by the
busy trip-hammers of Pittsburg, across the
Grand orain.nrOdunin0 rapions Of Ohio Tn
diana, and Illinois, bridging the Father OF
Waters at some convenient point, dashing
along the muddy torrents of the Missouri to
the mouth of the Yellowstone, and thence
across the vast basin between the Mississippi
and the Cordlleras to "the City of the Saints, I,
the modern Sodom awaiting the vengeance Of
outraged law, thence through passes watched
over by eternal SHOWS to the "Golden Gate
where the wearied tourist will drop off at the
station at the foot of Kearney street, with the
grand diapason of the Pacific chanting his
song OF welcome to the occidental shore.
This is no dream, but simply one of the
exhibitions of manifest destiny. The people
have willed it, and when the energetic Yankee
nation decide to do thing, it is DONE We
need the road; the nation has intimated iii
willingness to invest its capital in the scheme
and nothing is now wanting to render it al
accomplished fact but the strong arms anC
brawny muscles of delivers and diggers ant
the earnest support of those in authority anC
the men who control the capital and influence
of the country.
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