he men
of Forty-nine, who in such lofty spirit and with such high hope laid
the foundation of this empire on the Pacific. Distance did not disturb
them, nor difficulties discourage. There sits on your platform to-day a
man who started from New York to California by what he thought the
quickest route in December, 1848; went south from the Isthmus as the
only means of catching a ship for the north, and finally entered this
harbor, by the way of Chile, in June, 1849. He could go now to Manila
thrice over and back in less time. And yet there are Californians of
this day who profess to shrink in alarm from the remoteness and
inaccessibility of our new possessions! Has the race shriveled under
these summer skies? Has it grown old before its time; is its natural
strength abated? Are the old energy and the old courage gone? Has the
soul of this people shrunk within them? Or is it only that there are
strident voices from California, sounding across the Sierras and the
Rockies, that misrepresent and shame a State whose sons are not
unworthy of their fathers?

The arm of the Californian has not been shortened, that he cannot reach
out. The salt has not left him, that he cannot occupy and possess the
great ocean that the Lord has given him. Nor has he forgotten the
lesson taught by the history of his own race (and of the greatest
nations of the world), that oceans no longer separate--they unite.
There are no protracted and painful struggles to build a Pacific
railroad for your next great step. The right of way is assured, the
grading is done, the rails are laid. You have but to buy your
rolling-stock at the Union Iron Works, draw up your time-table, and
begin business. Or do you think it better that your Pacific railroad
should end in the air? Is a six-thousand-mile extension to a through
line worthless? Can your Scott shipyards only turn out men-of-war? Can
your Senator Perkins only run ships that creep along the coast? Is the
broad ocean too deep for him or too wide?

[Sidenote: New Fields and the Need for them.]

Contiguous land gives a nation cohesion; but it is the water that
brings other nations near. The continent divides you from customers
beyond the mountains; but the ocean unites you with the whole
boundless, mysterious Orient. There you find a population of over six
hundred millions of souls, between one fourth and one third of the
inhabitants of the globe. You are not at a disadvantage in trading with
them because t