24 The American Government and people had become aware of the great pecuniary, commercial and political results of connecting the ocean with the food-producing interior, by adequate steam communications. But the higher and more difficult problem was then presented, of repeating the effort on a scale still more grand and continental; of winning victories still more arduous over Nature; of encountering and subduing the massive, mountain ranges interposed by the prolongation of the Cordilleras of our sister continent through the centre of North America, rising, even at their lowest points of depression, far above the highest peaks of the Atlantic States. The Government, feeling the vital national importance of closely connecting the States of the Atlantic and of the Mississippi with the Pacific with all practicable despatch, has vigorously exerted its power. On the 1st of July, 1862, nearly fifteen months after the outbreak of the existing insurrection, and notwithstanding the necessity of calling into the field more than half a million of. men to enforce the national authority, Congress passed the act for incorporating “ the Union Pacific Kailway Company,” and appropriated $66,000,000 in the -bonds of the United States, with large grants of land, to aid the work, directing it to be commenced at the 100th meridian of longitude, but with four branches extending eastward to the Missouri river. The necessary surveys across the mountain ranges, are now in active progress, and the construction of the Eastern Division leading westward from the mouth of the Kansas river on the Missouri, has actually commenced. The whole of that division, including that part of the line west of the 100th meridian to the foot of the “ Rocky Mountains,” is on a nearly level plain, and is singularly easy of construction. Its western end will strike the most prominent point of the auriferous regions in the territory of Colorado, where the annual product of gold, as stated in the official message of the territorial Governor, is from five to
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