the opening and development of the rich mining, grazing, and agricultural regions of this Switzerland of America.

These rates are applicable to the tools of the miner and of the farmer; to the sugar, flour, salt, and other articles of food not yet produced in the territory; the clothes they wear; the iron and steel needed in every occupation of life; to the books and periodicals which, with our educated population, are also necessaries of daily life.

The Oregon Steam Navigation Company, with most commendable enterprise and foresight, have placed steamers upon the Columbia river and its branches, built short railroads at the several portages, and are now constructing steamers on Pend d'Oreille, and other lakes, and upon the Upper Snake river.

They open a route to the interior regions from the Pacific coast, and by their route the gold and furs—the only exports of the country at this time-reach the Pacific, and supplies are sent to the miners.

But the great reservoir from which man and all his necessary supplies are drawn, is yet, and for years to come must be, the Mississippi Valley and the Atlantic coast. The Territories of the Pacific coast are to be filled by emigration; they have, as yet, no great manufactories and no redundant population. The route needed for the opening and improvement of the country is the route from the east.

The grants of land made by Congress for this object are liberal, and are sufficient in time, probably, to construct the road. But men die-nations live-men cannot take their capital, the accumulated fruit of years of industry, and devote it to the construction of a great public improvement, and wait years for the returns. They prefer enjoying the present use of their fortunes, to investing their means in enterprises which will make large returns only after their death.

The nation is lasting. The opening of every new route, the enclosure and cultivation of every acre of wild land, contribute immediately to the revenue and resources of the nation; and no means of improving the great national domain, of increasing by its products the national revenue and pros

perity, can compare in cheapness and efficacy with the opening of rapid communication by railway with these distant, healthful and productive regions.

The country is one fitted to be the home of a hardy race, one in which the principles of liberty and the spirit of enterprise and industry will live and bear their natural fruits.

The rivers Missouri and Columbia-though the Missouri is closed by ice and low water for a large portion of every year -will be of great value in hastening and cheapening the construction of the railroad. By these rivers, supplies of men and materials can be dispatched to the vicinity of the most costly and distant portions of the route.

The road should be commenced at many points, especially those which can be reached by either of the rivers. The time needed for construction in a mountain district is much greater than on the level and open prairies.

While its eastern portion should be early begun and pushed forward in advance of settlement, which, however, will rapidly follow, if it does not accompany the road, there are sections in the mountains which, operated in connection with the lines of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company's boats upon the Columbia and its tributaries, would, immediately upon their completion, enjoy considerable trade, and aid in developing the country.

To construct these portions of the road, supplies and materials can be sent by the Columbia and by the Missouri rivers.

For the mode of construction, I am of opinion, after the experience of the Quartermaster's Department during the war in reconstructing, stocking, and operating over 1,700 miles of railroad, that it will prove to be true economy of time and money to send by the river, to the most advantageous points of the mountain-mineral districts, the workmen, the machinery, and the tools to open mines of coal and iron, to establish saw mills, rolling mills, and factories, in which the lumber, the iron, and probably a portion of the rolling stock of the road can be manufactured.

Near these establishments, of course, agricultural settle

ments would spring up, and in a year or two the cost of transporting, at five or six hundred dollars per ton, iron and food to the workmen on the railroad, and to the railroad itself, would cease.

The Quartermaster's Department during the war built at Chattanooga a rolling miH for the purpose of re-rolling the rails of the southern railroads burned and bent by the contending armies, and found great advantage in the operation.

Large quanties of iron go to the construction of bridges and of the railroad track in simple forms. For the manufacture of this, at least the rude machinery of the rolling mill should be provided in order to save the heavy expense of transportation from the East.

This would accelerate the opening of the road, avoiding the necessity of building it only from each end.

The increase of wealth and of revenue to be derived from every year, by which the opening of the road can be hastened, may be judged of by the comparison of the revenue of the United States and of the several new States, as effected by the opening of free and rapid communication within their boundaries.

The enterprise is one worthy of the nation. As a military measure, contributing to national security and defence alone, it is worthy the cost of effectual assistance from the Government.

The Central Railroad to San Francisco will secure that admirable harbor and its trade, and the rich State of California, against all serious danger from a foreign foe.

But our communication with the harbors of the Northwest coast, Puget Sound, the mouth of the Columbia and with the growing population of Oregon and Washington, by sea from San Francisco, will be liable from interruption by a hostile fleet. With the Northern Pacific Railroad in operation, troops and materials of war could be rapidly sent from the East to succor and defend our rising empire in the Northwest.

But the construction of the road will make the now wild and waste regions through which it is to pass, centers of

national wealth and production, and military strength, and from the mountains themselves a hardy population will pour down to the coast at every hostile demonstration.

For the mode in which aid can be granted to the construction of this road, none appears to me so effectual and speedy, none to impose so light a burden upon the Treasury as the guarantee of a sufficient rate of interest upon a portion at least of the actual cost of construction. While I should rejoice to see the Government itself undertake the construction of the road, with the intention to lease it when completed to a company for a term of years, on condition of its cost being gradually repaid to the Government, and have no doubt that such an enterprise would amply repay the people of the country, yet I presume that, at this time, the public mind is hardly ripe for such an undertaking.

A guarantee of a fixed rate of interest upon the cost of construction, to be repaid in a term of years, is a mode of assistance to their great enterprises, now common in the highly developed and heavily taxed countries of Europe. If those governments, burdened with the immense annual expenditure of standing armies, almost as large in time of peace as we have been compelled to support in time of war, find it in the interest of their revenues thus to aid free travel and transport through countries already provided with navigable rivers and excellent wagon roads, we may confidently assume that our country will find ample reward for any such expenditure in opening up a highway for fraternal intercourse between our older communities on the Atlantic and the rising settlements on the Pacific-a highway, too, to which the inevitable laws of commerce will attract the trade of the East-the trade of China, Japan, and India-a trade along whose slow and painful track, when it was conducted by beasts of burden, and by oars and sails, instead of by the iron horse and the ocean steamship, great cities sprung up in the desert sands of Asia, and on the coasts of the Mediterranean.

Babylon, Ninevah, Palmyra, Bagdad, Damascus, Constan

tinople, Alexandria, Rome, Venice, Genoa, and London, are the outgrowths of this trade in former centuries.

The lines of Pacific railway will found such cities in the new, healthful, and inviting regions through which its eastern flow is destined to enrich the world, and Oregon as well as California, Montana as well as Utah, will hereafter have their San Franciscos, Chicagoes, St. Louises, Cincinnatis, and New Yorks, great emporia of an internal commerce heretofore unknown, as well as of the world-encircling commerce of the Indies.

I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

M. C. MEIGS, Quartermaster General, Brevet Major Gen. U. S. Army.

The foregoing communication from General Meigs having been submitted to Lieutenant General Grant, was returned with the following endorsement:

HEAD-QUARTERS ARMIES OF THE UNITED STATES,

April 20, 1866.

The construction of a railroad by the proposed route would be of very great advantage to the Government pecuniarily, by saving in the cost of transportation to supply troops whose presence in the country through which it is proposed to pass is made necessary by the great amount of emigration to the gold-bearing regions of the Rocky mountains. In my opinion, too, the United States would receive an additional pecuniary benefit in the construction of this road, by the settlement it would induce along the line of the road, and consequently the less number of troops necessary to secure order and safety. How far these benefits should be compensated by the General Government beyond the grant of land already awarded by Congress, I would not pretend to say. I would merely give it as my opinion that the enterprise of constructing the Northern Pacific Railroad is one well worth fostering