Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1869-08-19
THE TWO GREAT PARALLEL
ne

The connection OF Hopeneld Win
Belmont-Iron Mountain and St.
Louis with Memphis-by rail, will re-
suit in advantages to this city almost
in~calculable. The very means used in
securing the intervention of foreign
capitalists ensures the greatest posi-
BILE good results. These railway build
ers become landed proprietors and are
thus forced to induce immigration.
They not only connect us with St.
Louis, but practically become cultiva-
tors of every possible acre between
this city and Belmont. AS the road
is a Ievee to protect the country
against overflows, so it must burden
every tillable acre with blooming cot
ton and ripening wheat and corn.
1t happens that the richest area OF
cotton growing land in the valley OF
the Mississippi, where the boil worm
was never known, and the cotton crop
never failed, lies along the line of this
road. Heretofore it has been subject
ed TO disastrous floods. The sur
charged Mississippi has emptied its
superintendent waters over the richest
lands and into lakes and bayous con-
Meeting, in flood time, the Mississippi
and st. Francis rivers. Large por-
tons of Crittenden, and of counties
north of Crittenden, are annually sub
merged. From this fact resulted the
necessity for the elevation of the
trackway of the Memphis and Little
Rock Road between this city and the
st. Francis river, a distance of forty
miles. The construction of Col. PoR-
TER's Road not only redeems a cOun-
Try capable of building and enriehing
a more populous city than Memphis,
but makes the Little Rock Road wor-
thy of being part and parcel of the
great highway to the Pa
cifc. Not only is the city OF
st. Louis made accessible, but the
Mobile and Ohio Road, which has
done this city infinite detriment, is, to
a great extent, shorn of capacity for
evil. Since the Mississippi Valley
Road will give direct and the shortest
route to Chicago and Eastern cities,
crossing the bridge at Paducah, so the
Belmont and Hopefield line viii give
Memphis direct connection with st.
Louis. Goods and travellers from that
city will come hither, whence rail-
ways diverge in all directions, rather
than to Columbus, KY, for distribu-
ton.
These two parallel roads, on oppo-
site shores of the Mississippi, are both
indispensable, as they both assure the
commercial greatness of Memphis.
The one DEVELOPS and controls abso-
lutely the wealth of the western and
the other of the eastern shore of the
great river. Col. PoRTER's Belmont
Road prevents the traffic and travel
between st. Louis and the South con-
fning itself to the Mobile and Ohio
Road, while the Mississippi River
Railway draws through Memphis the
trade and travel between New Orleans
and Eastern cities.
The Importance of the Belmont and
Hopeield Railway, to which Col.
PORTER has devoted many years of
unremitting toll, has hardly been APP
preciated. fit accomplished no more
than the redemption of adjacent coun-
ties just across the Mississippi, it
would have achieved enough to be
deemed invaluable. If its builders,
owners of millions of acres of land
along the route, can only realize enor-
nous profits by causing the country to
be densely populated, we may rest as
sured that money and labor will be
lavishly expended in achieving the
end most desired by this city. In
truth no one can survey the whole
field of Memphis railway operations
without reaching the conclusion that
the system is almost perfect, and
when in operation it viii become a
splendid imperial metropolis, worthy
of its name, borne by the chiefest city
of another land of exhaustless wealth.