ial towns of great importance. But, this is
not all. The road from Grand Haven to Port Huron will intersect the
Amboy and Lansing line about midway, and then a railroad will at once
be made in the direction of the Canada lines and Buffalo--completing
the _radii_ from the far northwest through Mackinaw, to the eastern
Atlantic. The natural point of termini for the Northern Pacific and
Canada Railroads is also at the Straits of Mackinaw. The one giving
financial strength and business to the other, connecting Portland with
the mouth of Columbia by the nearest possible route.

Canada has already granted four million acres of land to railroads
running to Saut St. Mary. Those having the management of the Northern
Pacific railroad will do well to consider the propriety of
co-operating and uniting with the Canada and Pacific Railroad at the
Straits.

The following from the New York Daily News is valuable in this
connection. It is from the pen of E. Conkling, Esq.:--

"You will please excuse me for calling your attention, not to the
importance of a Pacific railroad, for that is conceded, and our
country is suffering from want of it, but to the mode of getting the
means to construct the Northern Pacific railroad. I don't remember to
have noticed as yet any allusion to this method, or any other
practical one, and I trust you will consider the suggestions, and add
thereto any other methods.

"The railroads now provided for and made to St. Paul, and Crow Wing
from Chicago and Milwaukee will have exhausted local means, State aid
and available land grants. However desirable it may be to sustain
those roads by a business beyond that, and to the country beyond that,
by extending the Northern Pacific Railroad, yet for want of means it
cannot be done, unless foreign capitalists can be induced by land
grants, at least to invest sufficient to make the road finally, and be
made to see that their present large unproductive investments in
Canada railroads can be made productive in the use of more of their
capital.

"Canada railroads lie _too far North_ to receive any benefit in
business from railroads terminating from the northwest as far south as
Chicago, and but little from the railroads terminating at Milwaukee,
as the cost of transhipment and delay to cross by steam ferry eight
months yearly at Milwaukee with eighty-five miles ferriage, must
divert the trade and travel either to the north or south end of Lake
Michigan, and every yea