hubert howe bancroft - Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History ...

510 INCEPTION OF RAILWAY ROUTES.
The next convention occurred at Memphis in October
1849, at which the flowery and fiery advocates of
the southern route presented their arguments." New-
Orleans and Boston had also their railroad massmeetings
and conventions in 1849.
The Boston plan was to secure means by a government
loan, and to entrust the construction to a
company. The author of this plan was P. P. T.
Degrand, who offered to build from St Louis to San
Francisco tb in four years, by employing two sets of
laborers relieving each other day and night, and at
the most difficult points a third party.
with wagons in 1840, for Cal., but left them at the Caochetopa pass, an
account of the difficulty of cutting out the timber, which would be of great
advantage to the railroad. Hayes Scraps, San Diego, ii. 122.
u
The delegates of western Texas presented an address in behalf of a
route through the San Saba valley from Memphis to San Diego. After presenting
the facts of distance, climate and topography, they say, " Within
half a century we will have a population of 25,000,000 on the Pacific slope.
That slope is now separated from us by the almost impassable barriers of a.
mountain and a desert. This mountain must be made smooth—this desert
must be made to blossom as the rose. This people, blood of our blood, flesh
of our flesh, must be brought to our doors. Social reasons urge it^political
reasons require it, commercial reasons imperatively demand it. The east,
the gorgeous east, will be opened to our commerce without a rival, a cometitor.
The east, not more celebrated in song for its perfume-bearing
E
reezes and balmy clime, for its sacred legends and mystic lore, than in
more staid and sober history for the splendor of its empires, the gorgeous
magnificence of its palaces and temples, the magnitude of its rivers, the
grandeur of its mountains, the fertility of its plains, the abundance of its
Sold and silver, and its precious stones, its gums, its teas, and its spices, the
beauty and costliness of its manufactures, the untold variety of its productions,
and for the extent and richness of its commerce—a commerce which
has been sought by all nations who have risen to commercial greatness as far
back as history reaches into the past, and which has always rewarded the
search with countless wealth and unrivalled splendor. A commerce which
in ancient times caused the cities of Tyre and Sidon, and Balbec and Palmyra,
and Alexandria, each in succession, to rise to such a height of general prosperity,
commercial greatness, and refinement in the arts as to excite, even
to this day, the wonder and admiration of the world. A commerce which
in more modern times caused Constantinople, and Venice, and Genoa, and
Lisbon, and Amsterdam, each in their turn to attain ^the very pinnacle of
commercial greatness, and caused them, single as they were, each to excel
in the splendor of its achievements in arts and in arms, all the kingdoms
and empires then upon the earth. A commerce which has caused Britain
to ' wrest the very trident from Neptune himself,' and enabled her to utter
the proud boast of 'mistress of the seas.' this commerce with all, all its
untold wealth, and its limitless future increase, may be ours—will be ours
without the fear of a competitor, if we only reach forth our hands and
clutch it." Signed by James W. Allen, T. J. Hardeman, M. Erskine, T.
Connelly, Wm £. Jones, and £. Bellenger, in behalf of the Gonzalez convention,
Oct. 10, 1849, in Railroad and Steamships, doc. viiL
14 ' I propose that a company, composed of men in whose integrity and
steadiness of purpose confidence can be reposed by the nation, be chartered