81
WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1858
the conveniences necessary for the construction of the road. The supplies necessary for the subsistence of the hands engaged in it will all be supplied on this route. ·Not only that; but it is well ascertained that after leaving El Paso, by a short divergence through Arizona to San Diego, you can very soon have all neces- sary supplies, for emigration will soon produce them. Agriculture is prosperous in some sections through which that route would . pass. But, if you make the road through a. sterile, wilderness region far north, you will never return to the Treasury the $25,000,000 proposed to be expended; and I should like to know from the Senator from California if it would not be taking $25,000,000 from the Treasury, without the prospect of being reimbursed for ages? He says it is to be returned by the conveyance of the mails. How long will it take to construct a railway for the conveyance of the mails to California-a length of some nineteen hundred miles, I believe, on the northern routes? When you complete one hundred miles, are you to take the mail there, and leave it to be carried as best it may the residue of the distance, through the mountains, impassable for conveyance, and where it will take months to accomplish it? What would be the use of sending a mail there, when, by the isthmus transit-route, it would 1·each Cali- fornia much more readily? You are to use the cars to transport the mail to an impassable wilderness, and there you are to leave it, and you are to pay $250 a mile for that. You are to take it from the settlements of Missouri into the wilderness, and there it must stop, until you have accomplished the largest portion of the road, where the mail cannot be transported in the same time it now is from San Antonio, in Texas, to San Diego, in California, in coaches. Twenty-one days now is all the time that is required for the accomplishment of that trip. There is demonstration con- clusive that nature has established conveniences on that route; so that, with comparatively little aid from this Government, if you really desire on this great occasion to accomplish all that is necessary and desirable in connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific possessions of the United States, it can be accomplished. Mr. President, I contend that the construction of a railway to the Pacific is a great national measure, and I will advocate it strenuously. Whenever you divest it of all appearance of section"' alism, and of selfishness, and make it purely a national measure, I will go heart and hand for it. I will submit to heavier taxation for it than for any imaginable purpose that I can conceive of.
Powered by FlippingBook