Because the Nation in several eminent instances saw the former question answered affirmatively and the latter negatively, it centralized a certain amount of authority for the construction of fortresses and the maintenance of a military force. These matters vitally concerned the entire people, yet the ordinary stimuli to private enterprise were quite inadequate to securing their accomplishment.
The Pacific Railroad stands on precisely the same grounds. It concerns the entire population of the United States, but no ordinary business-organization of citizens will ever accomplish it alone. The mere cost of its construction might stagger the most audacious financier; but that is a minor obstacle. No doubt the city of New York and the State of California contain capital enough for the completion of the entire road,—would subscribe to it, too, upon sufficient guaranties. But who is to give those guaranties? Whose credit is broad enough to secure them? Our Atlantic capitalists have too often been defrauded by stock-companies of moderate liabilities and immediately under their own eyes, to feel quite comfortable about putting millions into the hands of private operators, who shall presently have the Rocky Mountains between them and their bondholders. In the case of almost any other railroad-enterprise this objection might be answered by the proposal to build the line with the subscriptions of people living on its route. But this line must take a route without people, and bring people to the route. Certain other roads are guarantied by the pledge of their way-freight business. This road must be completed before such a business exists; the business must be the product of the road. The ordinary principle of demand and supply is reversed in its application to this case. Supply must precede demand. Furnish the Pacific Railroad to the continent, and the continent in ten years will give it all the business it can do. Wait fifty years for the continent to take the initiative, and there will not yet be enough business to build the road.
This enterprise must be looked at in the light of a cash-advance from California and the Eastern States to the Plains, the Mountains, and the Desert, secured by a pledge of all the mineral and agricultural wealth of the party of the second part, guarantied by the prospective myriads of settlers whom the road shall bring to tracts now lying waste through the mere lack of its existence. In the course of the present article we shall endeavor to show the solidity of this security, the responsibility of these indorsers. While we counsel confidence to the capital which must build the road, we feel it imperative upon the National Government to enforce its position as that capital's trustee. That capital for the most part lies east of the Missouri and west of the Sierra Nevada. Between these two boundaries the road must run for eighteen hundred miles through a region where capital may well be cautious of intrusting its life to any less potent authority than that of the Nation itself.
The claims of the Pacific Railroad have usually been urged upon the ground of its benefit to its termini. This ground is adequate to justify any advance of capital by the cities of New York and San Francisco. With the completion of the road, San Francisco necessarily becomes a depot for the entire China trade of the United States, and an entrepot for much of that between China and Western Europe. With the development of our Japanese relations, still another stream of wealth, now incalculable, must flow in through the Golden Gate. In the reverse current of Asiatic commerce, New York's position at the eastern terminus of the continental belt gives her a similar share. The gold-transport and the entire fast-freight business of New York and San Francisco, now transacted at an enormous expense by Wells and Fargo's Express, must be transferred en masse to the Pacific Road; while the passenger-carriage, now devolving on Isthmus steamers and overland stages, may be passed, practically entire, to the credit of the new line. Certainly, no traveller who has once purchased bitter experience with his ticket on Mr. Vanderbilt's line will ever again patronize that enterprising capitalist, unless he sells his ships and becomes a stockholder in the Pacific Railroad. The most enthusiastic lover of the sea must abjure his predilections, when brought to the ordeal of the steamer Champion. Crowded like rabbits in a hutch or captives in the Libby into such indecent propinquity with his kind that the third day out makes him a misanthrope,—fed on the putrid remains of the last trip's commissariat, turkeys which drop out of their skins while the cook is larding them in the galley, beef which maybe eaten as spoon-meat, and tea apparently made with bilge-water,—sleeping or vainly trying to sleep in an unventilated dungeon which should be called death instead of berth, where the reek of the aforesaid putridities awakes him to breakfast without aid of gong,—propelled by a second-hand engine, whose every wheeze threatens the terrors of dissolution,—morally certain, that, if his floating sty from any cause ceases to float, there are not boats enough to save an eighth of the passengers,—he must admire the ocean with a true poet's enthusiasm, if he can brave the Champion a second time.
The considerations we have mentioned should be sufficiently operative with the capitalists of New York and California, and, as such, are those most prominently urged by the friends of the road. It would, however, be a great mistake to regard the through-business an all-comprehensive, in enumerating the sources of profit to be relied on by the enterprise. For a better understanding of that immense way-trade which lies between the oceans, waiting only for the whistle of the steam-genie to wake it into vigorous life, let us treat the entire line as already continuous from New York to San Francisco, and make an excursion to the Pacific on its prophetic rails. We will suppose the track a uniform broad gauge, as it ought to be,—the Pacific Road connecting at St. Louis with the Atlantic and Great Western by powerful boats, like those in use at Havre de Grace, capable of ferrying the heaviest cars between the Illinois and Missouri shores. We will take the liberty of constructing for ourselves the remainder of the still undecided route to the Pacific. We run our ideal broad gauge as follows:—
From St. Louis to Jefferson City; thence by the shortest line to the Kansas-River crossing; thence to Leavenworth (where St. Joseph, makes connection by a branch-track); thence to that bend of the Republican Fork which nearest approaches the Little Blue; thence along the bottoms of the Republican to the foot of the high divide out of which it is believed to rise, and which also serves for the water-shed between the Platte and Arkansas; and thence skirting the bluffs a distance of about one hundred miles to Denver. At Denver we find two branches making junctions with our line: one connects us with Central City, the great mining-town of Colorado, by a series of grades which might appall the Pennsylvania Central; the other threads the foot-hills and mesas between Denver and the Fontaine-qui-Bouille Spa at Colorado City, with the possibility of its being extended in time to Cañon City on the Arkansas. From Denver we strike for the nearest point on the Cache-la-Poudre, follow its bed as far as practicable, and rise from that level to the grand plateau of the Laramie Plains. Running through these Plains, we cross the Big and the Little Laramie Rivers, here shallow streams, crystal clear, and scarcely wider than the Housatonic at Pittsfield. Just after leaving the Plains, we cross Medicine Bow,—a mere brook,—and a few hours later the North Fork of the Platte, which eccentrically turns up in this most unexpected quarter, running nearly due north from a source which cannot be very far off. The rope-ferry by which the writer last crossed this picturesque and rapid stream we have replaced by a strong iron bridge. Leaving the west end of that bridge, we look out of the rear car and send our final message to the Atlantic by the last stream which we shall find going thither. A stupendous, but not impracticable, system of grades next carries us over the axial water-shed of the continent, by the way of Bridger's Pass. One hundred and fifty miles of tortuous descent brings us to Green River,—the stream which farther down becomes the mysterious Colorado, and seeks the Pacific by the Gulf of California. After crossing the Green by another iron bridge substituted for rope-ferriage, our first important station will be Fort Bridger. Leaving there, we almost immediately enter the galleries of the Wahsatch Range, which form a continuous pass across Bear River and into the tremendous cañons conducting down to Salt-Lake City. From Salt Lake we pursue the shortest practicable route through the Desert to the Ruby-Valley Pass of the Humboldt Mountains; we cross that range to enter another desert, descend to the Sink of Carson, and reascend to Carson City, thence going nearly due north till we strike the line of the Truckee Pass, (where a branch connects us with the principal Washoe mines,) and thence to Sacramento by the long-projected California section of the Pacific Railroad. Another proposed, but still ideal, road completes our connection with the Western Ocean by way of Stockton, San José, and San Francisco.
We do not pretend to assert that the route indicated is in all respects the most economical and practicable; a good deal more surveying must be done before that can be said of any entire route, though we think it may fairly be claimed for our ideal section between St. Louis and Denver. We have chosen this route because along its course are more completely represented the natural features to which in any case the Pacific Railroad must look for all its primary obstacles and part of its subsequent profits.
To complete the conception as its reality must in time be completed, let us unite our Trans-Missouri portion with the Atlantic and Great Western Railway, under the all-inclusive title of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad. It will not be very far out of the way to regard thirty-eight hundred miles as the entire length of the line. On the Atlantic and Great Western section express-trains will run at a speed of twenty-seven miles an hour, including stops; but to provide against every detention, let us slow our through-express to twenty-five miles. At this rate we shall traverse the continent in six days and eight hours. In other words, the San-Francisco gentleman who left the Jersey depot by the five o'clock Atlantic and Pacific express-train on Monday morning may reasonably expect (allowing for difference of longitude) to be in the bosom of his family just in time to accompany them to morning service on the following Sunday.
We will suppose our packing accomplished the day before we set out. During the evening we send our watches to get the exact Washington time. The schedule of the entire road is based upon that time; and a thousand inconveniences, once endured by the traveller between New York and St. Louis, are thereby avoided. It is not necessary to alter one's watch with every new conductor. We no longer grow dizzy with a horrible uncertainty on the subject of what-'s-o'clock,—ignorant whether we are running on New-York time, Dayton time, Cincinnati time, or St. Louis time,—whether, indeed, all time be not a pure subjective notion, and any o'clock at all a mere popular delusion. For the introduction of a uniform standard we have originally to thank the Atlantic and Great Western Railway.
In comfort and elegance the second-class cars of the Atlantic and Pacific Road correspond to the omnivorous cars in use on our railroads generally. But we are a family-party, have nearly a week of travel before us, and prefer to sacrifice our money rather than our comfort. It costs a third, perhaps one-half more, to take first-class tickets; but these secure us a compartment entirely to ourselves,—fitted up with all the luxury of a lady's boudoir. We have comfortable arm-chairs to sit in all day, the latest improvement in folding-beds to sleep in at night. Our mirror, water-tank, basin, and all our toilet-arrangements are independent of the rest of the train. We have a table in the centre of our compartment for cards or luncheon. If we are wise, we have also brought along three or four Champagne-baskets stocked with private commissariat-stores, which make us quite independent of that black-art known as Western cookery. These contain sardines (half-boxes are the most practically useful size for a small party); chow-chow; pâtés-de-foie-gras; a selection of various potted meats; a few hundred Zwiebacks from our Berlin baker, and as many sticks of Italian bread from our Milanese; a dozen pounds of hard-tack, and a half-dozen of soda-crackers; an assortment of canned fruits, including, as absolute essentials, peaches and the Shaker apple-butter; a pot of anchovy-paste; a dozen half-pint boxes of concentrated coffee, and as many of condensed milk, both, as the writer has abundantly tested, prepared with unrivalled excellence by an establishment in Boston; a tin box containing ten pounds of lump-sugar; a kettle and gas-stove, to be attached by a flexible tube to one of the burners lighting the compartment; a dozen bottles of lemon-syrup; and whatever stores, in the way of wines, liquors, and cigars, may strike the fancy of the party. This may seem an ambitious outfit, but for the first year of the Pacific Railroad it will be an absolutely necessary one. As civilization spreads westward along the grand iron conductor of the continent, our national gastronomy will develop itself in company with all the other arts; but for the present it is safe to assume that outside of our private stores we shall not find a good cup of coffee after we leave St. Louis, or decent bread of any kind between Denver and Sacramento.