ss lands she is or may be wealthy. No bill
can pass Congress, only by affording equal aid in lands to the
Northern, Central and Southern routes, each standing on their
commercial merits before capitalists.

"The chance for us thus to enlist them, is but for a limited time.
Soon they will become committed to the North Canada Pacific Road,
north of Lake Superior, when they will not help ours, and thus
protract ours for want of means and competing road. At present, two of
the most important Canada roads can be enlisted in the above views,
because if the Canada road north of Lake Superior is made, it will
divert the trade from them, they being too far south to be benefited.
But by going to the Straits of Mackinaw, they secure a division of the
Western trade--among the three roads. The road through the mineral
regions will develop that country and afford a good market for the
produce of the country west of it.

"Chicago is no more on the direct route from the East to Iowa, than is
Mackinaw city on the direct route to the northwest from New York.

"Lake Michigan naturally forces such a division of the Western and
Northwestern trade, and the Strait of Mackinaw is most favorably
situated for crossing. Cars can be transferred by ferry boat from
point to point, without delay or cost of train shipment.

"That country is nearer to market than any other Western State;
cheaper lands and good soil, and healthy climate, and a superior wheat
country, affording employment in lumbering, fishing, mining,
manufacturing, &c., offering great inducements to foreigners, and of
interest to New York, to be settled."

The history of the West has presented some remarkable facts, contrary
to the ordinary experience of human progress. It is assumed, as an
historical fact, in European or Asiatic progress, that the growth of
towns and states must be slow. It requires generations to bring them
to maturity, and even imperial power has failed to create cities,
without the aid of time and gradual increase. But, this has been
reversed in America. We cannot take it for granted that because the
natural site of a town is now clothed with the forest, and remote from
habitations, that it will not become a prosperous city, within a
half-dozen years. For, we know that in the Northwest, cities have
arisen on a substantial basis, to a numerous population, in a space so
brief that history has no record of their existence, and the school
maps no name for the pla