Year: 1873

Kronprinz and the corvette Augusta have been
ordered to be made ready to sail for the
Sooloo at q moments notice. The fiery Dons
are getting themselves into hot water all round
Exploration i'm North America as


Proscc cutcd by the United states


Government.


President Grant states no more salient fact
in his Message than that twenty-five thousand
miles of railway have been built in the last
four years. The locomotive is the mercury in
the glass tube the advancement of the rail
marks the approach of the Union to health
full political and commercial temperature.
When we consider that these four years-and
four years almost Immediately following an
exhausting war-have been signalized by the
construction of more than one-third of all the
railways on the Continent-for the sum total
is less than seventy five thousand milestone
of the principal causes of the recent panic
comes to the surface We have been building
railways too fast. We have shown incon-
siderate haste. Yet they are fact and the
fact is not displeasing, that, ig the forty-two
years that railways have been an insti-
tuition in the Western Hemisphere, we
have in fourteen years achieved the
progress previously accomplished during
the lifetime of one administration. When the
dark cloud of our late financial disaster
first descended on the country we were told
that all grand enterprises must cease-that we
should turn around and put our backs against
westward the course of empire takes it's
way" and concentrate our industrial and
commercial forces for grand armistice.
We believe that President Grant touched the
truth when he declared that the recent crisis
was a 'blessing in disguise;' and further
more, the evidences are about us that what we
took for fierce storm has expended its force
in an empty squall There is no reason, then,
why we should abandon the developments
of the Continent so wildly portrayed in the
brief paragraph of the Executive Message.
During the same period -four years. =
the population of the country has largely in
creased; more than twenty-five thousand
miles of railway have been built, requiring
the active use of capital to operate them.
Millions of acres of land have been opened to
cultivation, requiring capital to move the prod
ucts. Manufactures have multiplied beyond
all precedent in the same period Of time.
To what we may inquire, has all
this advancement been due? The
answer is simple. Among the few
objects long successfully carried out, and
which have distinguished our government
above all others, has been the employment of
the army in exploring our unknown Western
country, in delineating it's topography, in
surveying for the laying out of geological
maps, in using the navy for the exploration
of the bed of the ocean and the accurate
cartography of our harbor and coast lines;
and no less need we add the invaluable SER
vices performed by the army in exploring the
air-in determining air currents for our daily
use at our breakfast tables. We do not be-
lieve in Fourth of July rhetoric; but when we
remember that England has not respectable
map of her own little island we can look to
these labors with pride. Exploration, then,
is the avdnt courier of the rail and telegraph,
of the harbor and marine station, and, there
AoAo, VI oiVAiHauoA IL 10 AiSucot typo Vo
no longer find it necessary to rely upon
the citizen traveller starting out with
dictionary of the Indian Dialects
belt of gold around his waist and
generous supply Of fire water in his
kit, for our knowledge of the Western
wilds That day has gone by, thanks to the
departments and Congress. Expeditions are
now equipped in scientific style, with all the
latest instruments used by savans acquainted,
not alone with their use, but with ''roughing
it, in the field. The close of the year 1873
finds the ablest body of explorers our country
has ever known gathered at Washington,
busily engaged in condensing their observa-
tons and elaborating their notes for the eluci-
dation of the physical geography of the West
ern States and Territories We do not propose
now to notice especially the results accom-
plished, but simply to bring to the notice of
Congress and the people the fact that, while
we are living among Cuban agitations, fnan-
cial disasters and sad episodes like that of the
Vile du Havre, silent corps is doing work,
the value of which will not be vitiated CEN
turies hence.


New Role.


Buenaventura Baez Is on hand again. sup
ported by his three faithful Ministers, Del
monte, Santier and Curiel, TO dispose of ST.