America, which in California is known as the Sierras, but which in Oregon changes its name to the Cascades.  Nature has thus provided a pathway for the Northern Pacific Road through these mountains, the scaling of which, on the other line, at an elevation of over seven thousand feet (a most wonderful triumph of engineering), cost the Central Pacific millions of dollars, and compelled them for seventy miles to maintain a grade of over one hundred feet to the mile—­twice the maximum of the Northern Pacific at the most difficult points on its entire route.

“It is fortunate, also, in its terminus on the Pacific coast.  No one who has not been there can realize the beauty of Puget’s Sound and its surroundings.  One hundred miles long, but so full of inlets and straits that its navigable shore line measures one thousand seven hundred and sixty miles, dotted with lovely islets, with gigantic trees almost to the water’s edge, with safe anchorage everywhere, and stretching southward, without shoals or bars, from the Straits of Fuca to the capital and centre of Washington Territory, it will be a magnificent entrepot for the commerce of that grandest ocean of the world, the Pacific.”

One of the chief districts to be opened to trade and commerce by the construction of this road is that known as Prince Rupert’s Land, in British America.  This region of country has been recently organized under the name of Manitoba, and embraces the rich and extensive valleys of the Red, Assiniboine, and Saskatchewan Rivers.  A population of several thousands already inhabit this section, and a branch railway is to be constructed along the valley of the Red River from the point of crossing by the Northern Pacific Road, and under its immediate auspices.  The influence on this people, whose interests will then be almost wholly identified with those of our own, cannot be doubtful.  It requires no prophecy to determine their ultimate destiny.  The time is not distant when all of British America must become “one and indivisible” with us, and the knell of parting government is likely to be sooner sounded in the region of the Red River than elsewhere along the line of our frontier.

An additional advantage inheres in this Northern Pacific line of prime importance, and that is in the fact of its offering to commerce a shorter route by several hundred miles to the Pacific coast than that which now exists.  To Japan and China, from Puget Sound, is likewise, by more than half a thousand miles, less than from the port of San Francisco.  This difference is sufficient to give, eventually, to this route the carrying trade of those countries.

Who can question the greatness and power which lies slumbering along the line of this royal road, through which, as through a great, pulsing artery, the life,—­even now already dawning,—­will soon throb with a force which shall vitalize this Territory, vast as an empire, and richer than the fabled realms of an Arabian tale.