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- all of them national - all to be derived from the new countries to which the highways are to go - and amply sufficient in my opinion for the speedy accomplishment of the work. The lands set apart in the three slips will be about one hundred and fifty millions of acres, or the one tenth part of the public lands belonging to the Federal Government; in which, after deducting for the tracts of the highways, and for donations to first settlers, and for private claims, and gold mines, and for that which may be unfit for sale, it is probable that one third, or fifty millions of acres, may be made available at the present minimum price for constructing the roads. That would be about sixty millions of dollars. The income from the customs would be considerable and immediate. San Francisco alone would probably yield $2,000,000 the ensuing fiscal year; and increase forever. The public lands to be sold in California and the three Territories, after all deductions for liberal donations to first settlers, will still be large, amounting in a few years to some millions of dollars per annum. The proceeds of the whole - the reserved slips, the custom-house revenue, and the income from the land sales - will soon be eight or ten millions per annum; which, with loans in anticipation of these avails, will yield enough to have the system of roads commenced at all points - both ends and the middle, and all along - at the same time; and with men enough at work upon every section to finish the whole in as short a time as any one section of it could be finished.
     These are the leading features of the bill, every, one fulfilling the condition of nationality, and preserving to this highway the exalted, beneficent, and disinterested character of a public work. No tolls, or local jurisdictions, or private interests to debase or injure it; none such should ever be allowed to degrade the character, impede the use, or diminish the utility of such a work.
     Practicability, and upon the parallels indicated, is the only question; and that the concurrent voice of experienced men enables me to answer. The men of the mountains - the men who have spent their fifteen, twenty, or thirty years in the region of the Rocky Mountains, and in the regions beyond - they answer the question, and say that the loaded wagon can now go upon that route, with a little assistance at a few points - some axes and pickaxes - to remove some obstructions. These men say there is a way for a straight road across the continent; and they can show it, and mark it out, and that about as

fast as a horse can trot. There is an idea become current of late - a new-born idea - that none but a man of science, bred in a school, can lay off a road. That is a mistake. There is a class of topographical engineers older than the schools, and more unerring than the mathematics. They are the wild animals buffalo, elk, deer, antelope, bears, which traverse the forest, not by compass, but by an instinct which leads them always the right way - to the lowest passes in the mountains, the shallowest fords in the rivers, the richest pastures in the forests, the best salt springs, and the shortest practicable lines between remote points. They travel thousands of miles, have their annual migrations backwards and forwards, and never miss the best and shortest route. These are the first engineers to lay out a road in a new country; the Indians follow them, and hence a buffalo road becomes a war-path. The first white hunters follow the same trails in pursuing their game; and after that the buffalo road becomes the wagon road of the white man, and finally the macadamized or railroad of the scientific man. It all resolves itself into the same thing - into the same buffalo road; and thence the buffalo becomes the first and safest engineer. Thus it has been here, in the countries which we inhabit, and the history of which is so familiar. The present national road from Cumberland over the Alleghanies was the military road of General Braddock, which had been the buffalo path of the wild animals. So of the two roads from Western Virginia to Kentucky - one through the gap in the Cumberland Mountains, the other down the valley of the Kenhawa. They were both the war-path of the Indians and the traveling route of the buffalo, and their first white acquaintances the early hunters. Buffaloes made them in going from the salt springs on the Holston to the rich pastures and salt springs of Kentucky; Indians followed them first, white hunters afterwards and that is the way Kentucky was discovered. In more than an hundred years no nearer or better routes have been found; and science now makes her improved roads exactly where the buffalo's foot first marked the way, and the hunter's foot afterwards followed him. So all over Kentucky and the West; and so in the Rocky Mountains. The famous South Pass was no scientific discovery. Some people think Fremont discovered it. It had been discovered forty years before - long before be was born. He only described it, and confirmed what the hunters and traders had reported, and what they showed

him. It was discovered - or rather first seen by white people - in 1808, two years after the return of Lewis and Clark, and by the first company of hunters and traders that went out after their report laid open the prospect of the fur trade in the Rocky Mountains.
     An enterprising Spaniard of St. Louis, Manuel Lisa, sent out the party; an acquaintance, and old friend of the Senator from Wisconsin, who sits on my left, [General Henry Dodge,] led the party - his name Andrew Henry. He was the first white man that saw that pass; and he found it in the prosecution of his business, that of a hunter and trader, and by following the game, and the road which they had made. And that is the way all passes are found. But these traders do not write books and make maps, but they enable other people to do it. There are plenty of these men in the Great West at present - men who know every pass in the mountains, every ford in the rivers, every spot fit for cultivation, and the best and shortest way from any one point to another - who know every buffalo road and every Indian war trail, between the Mississippi and the Pacific ocean - and these men can go and mark out a road from the frontier of Missouri to the bay of San Francisco, as fast as a horse can trot. And they can cut out a common road, passable for wagons and carriages, with the aid of some axemen and some pickaxes, in the course of next summer, and upon the parallels which I have mentioned, with occasional slight deflections. There is a good route for the system of roads which should constitute the national central highway from the Mississippi to the Bay of San Francisco - a good way and central - a better way than any one not central that can be found in the United States. It is up the main branch of the Kansas, along the Upper Arkansas, along the Huerfano river, the Utah Pass, out at the head of the Del Norte, through Roubidoux's Pass, and thence across the valley of the Upper Colorado, and through the Great Basin, crossing the Sierra Nevada near its middle, or turning it on the south; the whole way nearly free from obstructions, a great part of it fertile, with wood and water fit for inhabitation, and brushing the present settlements of New Mexico and Utah. I have the map, and the description of the country, but cannot use it because the author is not here. I know what I say, and stake myself upon it. It will cross the Rocky Mountains between three and four degrees south of the South Pass, (now a misnomer, so called at the time because it was south of Lewis &

Clark's route,) and can be traveled earlier in the Spring, and later in the Fall, on account of grass, and easier all the Winter. This route, besides fulfilling all the requisites of a national highway, fulfills another condition of high and national treaty obligation. It traverses the ground which the protection and defence of the country requires to be occupied - to be garrisoned - that country which lies about the heads of the Arkansas and Del Norte - the hunting ground and war ground of the Utahs, Arapahoes, Navahoes, and other tribes which make war upon New Mexico and upon us. We are bound by treaty stipulations to protect Mexico against these Indians, and are bound by duty to protect our own people against them. A line of military posts is necessary through their country to give that protection: and this bill provides for it as a part of the road system, and also provides for the settlements which are to support the posts.
     I have demonstrated the nationality of this work - its practicability - and the means in our bands for making it; I do not expatiate upon its importance. When finished it will be the American road to Asia, and will turn the Asiatic commerce of Europe through the heart of our America. It will make us the mistress of that trade - rich at home and powerful abroad - and reviving a line of oriental and almost fabulous cities to stretch across our continent - Tyres, Sidons, Palmyras, Balbecs. Do we need any stimulus for the undertaking? Any other nation, upon half a pretext, would go to war for the right of making it, and tax unborn generations for its completion. We have it without war, without tax, without treaty with any power; and when we make it all nations must travel it - with our permission - and behave themselves to receive permission. Besides riches and power, it will give us a hold upon the good behavior of nations by the possession which it will give us of the short, safe, and cheap road to India.
     The work is great, but nothing compared to our means, and to the magnitude of the object, or to what was done by the Incas of Peru before the New World was discovered. Their two roads from Quito to Cuzco (to say nothing of many shorter ones) were each nearly as long, both over more difficult ground, equal in amount of labor required, and more commodious than the proposed system of roads from the Mississippi to the Pacific ocean. One of our classic historians (Prescott) thus describes them:

     "There were many of these roads traversing different parts of the kingdom; but the most considerable were the two which extended from Quito to Cuzco, and, again diverging from the capital, continued in a southern direction towards Chili. One of these roads passed over the grand plateau, and the other along the lowlands on the borders of the ocean. The former was much the most difficult achievement, from the character of the country. It was conducted over pathless sierras buried in snow; galleries were cut for leagues through the living rock; rivers were crossed by means of bridges that swung suspended in the air; precipices were scaled by stair-ways hewn out of the native bed; ravines of hideous depth were filled up with solid masonry; in short, all the difficulties that beset a wild and mountainous region, and which might appal the most courageous engineers of modern times, were encountered and successfully overcome. The length of the road, of which scattered fragments only remain, is variously estimated, from fifteen hundred to two thousand miles; and some pillars, in the manner of European milestones, were erected at stated intervals of somewhat more than a league, all along the route. Its breadth scarcely exceeded twenty feet. It was built of heavy flags of freestone, and, in some parts at least, covered with a bituminous cement, which time has made harder than the stone itself. In some places where the ravines had been filled up with masonry, the mountain torrents, wearing it for ages, have gradually eaten a way through the base, and left the superincumbent mass - such is the cohesion of the materials - still spanning the valley like an arch. Over some of the boldest streams it was necessary to construct suspension bridges, as they are termed, made of the tough fibers of the maguey, or of the osier of the country, which has an extraordinary degree of tenacity and strength. These osiers were woven into cables of the thickness of a man's body. The huge ropes, then stretched across the water, were conducted through rings or holes cut in immense buttresses of stone raised on the opposite banks of the river, and there secured to heavy pieces of timber. Several of these enormous cables, bound together, formed a bridge, which, covered with planks, well secured and defended by a railing of the same osier materials on the sides, afforded a safe passage for the traveler.
     "The other road of the Incas lay through the level country between the Andes and the ocean. It was constructed in a different manner,

as demanded by the nature of the ground, which was for the most part low, and much of it sandy. The causeway was raised on a high embankment of earth, and defended on either side by a parapet, or wall of clay; and trees and odoriferous shrubs were planted along the margin, regaling the sense of the traveler with their perfumes, and refreshing him by their shades, so grateful under the burning sky of the tropics. All along these highways, caravansaries were erected at the distance of ten or twelve miles for the accommodation of travelers, militarily constructed for security, and supplied with water brought in aqueducts when not found at the place. Couriers, in relieves, and running swiftly, carried dispatches the whole extent of these long routes at the rate of one hundred and fifty miles a day; and, besides dispatches, often carried fish from the distant ocean, and fruits and game from the hot regions on the coast, to be served up fresh at the Inca's table in the imperial capitals."
     The Baron Humboldt, "the Nestor of Scientific Travelers," thus speaks of the remains of the same roads from his own personal observation:
     "As we were leading our heavily-laden mules with great difficulty through the marshy ground on the elevated plain del Pullal, our eyes meanwhile were continually dwelling on the grand remains of the Inca's road, which, with a breadth of twenty-one English feet, was there remaining by our side. It had a deep understructure, and was paved with well cut blocks of blackish trap-porphyry. Nothing that I had seen of the remains of Roman roads in Italy, in the South of France, and in Spain, was more imposing than those works of the ancient Peruvians, which are situated, according to my barometric measurements, 13,258 English feet above the level of the sea - or more than a thousand feet higher than the summit of the Peak of Teneriffe. There are two great artificial paved roads, or systems of roads, covered with flat stones, or sometimes even with cemented gravel; one passes through the wide and and plain, between the Pacific ocean and the chain of the Andes, and the other over the ridges of the Cordilleras. Milestones, or stones marking the distances, are often placed at equal intervals. The road was conducted across rivers and deep ravines by three kinds of bridges-stone, wood, and rope bridges; and there were also aqueducts for bringing water to the resting places (caravansaries) and to the fortresses. Both systems of roads

ABELARD GUTHRIE.

were directed to the central point, Cuzco, the seat of government of the great empire, in 13^o 31' south latitude, and which is placed, according to Pentland's map of Bolivia, 13,378 English feet above the level of the sea. The two important capitals of the empire, Cuzco and Quito, thus connected by two different systems of roads, are 1,000 English geographical miles apart, in a straight line - (S. S. E. N. N. W.) - without reckoning the many windings of the way; and, including the windings, the distance is estimated by Garcilasso de la Vega and other conquistadores at 500 leagues."
     Such were the roads constructed on our own continent before the discovery of the New World, and by a people whom we consider uncivilized, and who certainly had but few of the helps of civilization knowledge of iron - no mechanical powers - no beast of burden but a sort of sheep - the lama - too light for the draught, and too weak for the burden-only carrying an hundred pounds ten miles in a day; and yet a people who constructed two such roads, each near about as long as from the Missouri to the Pacific - one at a mountainous elevation only about a thousand feet lower than the summit of Mont Blanc, and the other in the arid sands of the lowlands, under a tropical heat, and both in a direction to cross successive mountains or rivers, and both executed in a style of accommodation that we do not pretend to rival: military protection, safe lodging, water, shade, baths, the perfume of odoriferous shrubs! and mails, messages, and -small burdens transported upon them at the rate of one hundred and fifty miles a day, without horses and without steam, by men running on foot alone. After seeing such a system of roads on our own continent, devised and established by such a people, what is there to prevent us, the vanguard of the Anglo-Saxon race, and the descendants of the elite of Europe, to open the system of roads which my bill proposes - a common road, on which the mail stage is to run one hundred miles in twenty-four hours, and a letter horse mail two hundred Miles in the same time - a railway on which the cars are to fly, like the express trains in England, forty-two miles to the hour - an electric line along which, and across the continent, people are to communicate as they would hold converse across a room ?
     Mr. President, if there ever was a time when nationality and centrality, should pre-eminently govern the action of Congress in great

8

measures, this is that time; and the system of roads I propose is one of those measures.

     I now ask leave to bring in the bill.
     Leave was granted, and the bill was read.

A BILL to provide for the location and construction of a central na-
     tional highway from the Mississippi river, at St. Louis, to the
     Bay of San Francisco, on the Pacific ocean.

     Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
     That a district of territory one hundred miles wide, and extending from the western frontier of Missouri to the Pacific ocean, and corresponding as nearly as may be to the central latitudes of the United States, together with the revenue from lands and customs in California, Oregon, New Mexico, and Utah, so far as not required for expenditures therein, shall be set apart and reserved for opening communications with California, Oregon, New Mexico, and Utah, by means of a central national highway from St. Louis to the Bay of San Francisco, to connect with ocean navigation in that bay; with a branch of said highway to Santa Fe, in New Mexico; and a branch to the tide-water region of the Columbia river, so as to connect with Ocean navigation at that point; and also a branch to the city of the Great Salt Lake, if said central highway should not in its proper course pass that city; and a breadth of fifty miles shall be set apart and reserved for the location and construction of said branch roads respectively.
     SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That the said central national highway shall consist of a system of parallel roads adapted to different modes of travel and transportation, and a margin for lines of electro-telegraphic wires, whereof one common road and one iron railroad shall be immediately opened and constructed; and much other roads shall be hereafter opened and constructed as Congress from time to time may authorize; and in order that the said national central highway may be constructed on a scale commensurate to its importance, and adapted to the wants of present and future time, and in order to allow convenient space for all the parallel lines of road which commerce and travel may require thereon, a breadth of one mile shall be allowed through the reserve of one hundred miles; and the said branch roads shall equally consist of a common road and a railway, and such other roads as Congress may from time to time authorize and direct, with a margin for a line of electro-telegraph wires, and a breadth of one thousand feet shall be allowed through the reserve of fifty miles for such branch roads each, respectively; and each track for a road shall be entitled to a space of one hundred feet wide,

and when finished the said iron railway, or ways, shall never be subject to any toll or tax beyond that which may be necessary to provide repairs; and the said common roads shall be forever free from any toll or tax, and shall be kept in traveling order by the care and expense of the Federal Government,
     SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, That the President be authorized and requested to cause all the authentic information in possession of the Government, or in its power to procure, necessary to show the practicability of a route for said central highway, to be collected and digested into brief memoirs, illustrated by topographical and profile maps, to be laid before Congress as soon as possible; also, that be be authorized and requested to cause further surveys and examinations to be made, and the results to be laid before Congress as soon as possible; and for that purpose to employ as many citizen civil engineers as may be necessary.
     SEC. 4. And be it further enacted, That as soon as Congress shall fix upon the routes of said central highway and branches, the President shall be and hereby is authorized and requested to cause the Indian title to be extinguished upon a breadth of one hundred miles, to cover the route of said central highway; and also to extinguish the Indian title upon suitable breadths of fifty miles each, covering the said branch roads; and the location and construction of the central highway shall immediately be commenced, both for the common road and the railway, and with a force calculated to finish the common road in one year, so as to be passable for wagons and carriages, and the railway in ten years.
     SEC. 5. And be it further enacted, That as soon as the said common road is finished, the same shall be a post road, and a daily mail carried thereon in wagons, or coaches, or sleighs, when necessary, at the rate of at least one hundred miles in twenty-four hours; and a daily horse mail for light letters and printed slips, at the rate of at least two hundred miles in twenty-four hours.
     SEC. 6. And be it further enacted, That as soon as said railway, or any sufficient part thereof, shall be completed and fit for use, the use thereof shall be granted, for a limited time, to such individuals or companies as shall, by contract with the Government, agree to transport persons, mails, munitions of war, and freight of all kinds, public and private, in vehicles furnished by themselves, over the same, at such reasonable rates as shall be agreed upon: Provided, That if other roads shall hereafter be constructed on the ground reserved for roads by this act, the same company or persons shall not be allowed to have the contract for transportation, or any interest in more than one road at the same time.
     SEC. 7. And be it further enacted, That military stations shall be established on the line of the central highway and its branches, at such places as the President shall direct.

     SEC. 8. And be it further enacted, That donations of land, to the extent of one hundred and sixty acres, shall be made to each head of a family, widow, or single man over eighteen years of age, who shall be settled on the line of said central highway and branches, and within the bounds of the extinguished Indian claim, within twelve months after the time of such extinction of title; and pre-emption rights, to the same extent, shall be allowed to all similar settlers after twelve months; and the residue of said reserved districts, except gold mines and placers, and private claims, or donations or pre-emption rights, shall be sold, and the proceeds applied to the construction of the roads.
     SEC. 9. And be it further enacted, That the sum of three hundred thousand dollars, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, shall be and the same hereby is appropriated, and placed at the disposition of the President, to defray the expenses of carrying into effect the third and fourth sections of this act, for the collection and preparation of information and the extinction of Indian titles necessary to the selection and location of the route for said central national highway and branches.
     SEC. 10. And be it further enacted, That it shall and may be lawful for the President of the United States to contract with the Mississippi and Pacific railroad Company for their interest in so much of said road as shall be within the State of Missouri, and to purchase the same at a price not exceeding their actual expenditures, the said purchase to be subject to the ratification of Congress.

     The bill was read a first and second time by its title, and referred to the Committee on Roads and Canals, and ordered to be printed.

     [From the Congressional Globe, 2d Session, 31st Congress, 1851, page 66.]

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