Missouri on the south-west side, 1310 miles from its mouth; White River, 300 yards wide, enters it on the south-west side, 1130 miles from its mouth; Big Sioux River, 110 yards wide, enters it 853 miles from its mouth, on the north-east side; Platte River, 600 yards wide, enters it on the south-west side, 600 miles from its mouth; Kanzas River, 233 yards wide, enters it on the south-west side, 340 miles from its mouth; Grand River, 190 yards wide, enters it the north-east side, 240 miles from its mouth; La Mine River, 70 yards wide, enters it 200 miles from its mouth; Osage River, 397 yards wide, enters it on the south-west side, 133 miles from its mouth; and Gasconade River enters it on the south-west side, 100 miles from its mouth. The largest of these tributaries are navigable from 100 to 800 miles. Through the whole course of the Missouri there is no serious obstruction to the navigation, except, perhaps, from the shallowness of the water, during the season of the greatest drought, before arriving at Great Falls, about 260 miles from the Mississippi. The Missouri is over half a mile wide at its mouth, and through the greater part of its course it is wider than this. It is a rapid and turbid stream, and generally carries along a powerful volume of water; but owing to its passing through a dry and open country, and being subject to extensive evaporation, it becomes low at certain seasons, hardly affording sufficient water for steamboat navigation. From much greater relative elevation, from higher latitudes, and from the peculiar courses of some of its tributaries, the flood in the Missouri is the latest in order, and does not reach the Mississippi proper until after the flood in that river, the Ohio, Arkansas, and Red Rivers, have in great part subsided. At the Great Falls, distant about 2600 miles from the Mississippi, the river descends, by a succession of rapids and falls, 375 feet in about 16 miles. The lower and greatest of these falls has a perpendicular pitch of 87 feet, the second of 19 feet, the third of 47 feet, and the fourth of 26 feet. These falls, next to those of Niagara, are the grandest on the continent. At the distance of 110 miles above these falls is a remarkable passage of the river through the mountains, denominated the Gates of the Rocky Mountains. The scenery at this place is exceedingly grand. For a distance of about 6 miles, the rocks rise perpendicularly from the margin of the river to an elevation of 1200 feet. The river is compressed to the width of 150 yards, and for the first three miles there is only one spot, and that only of a few yards, on which a man could stand between the water and these perpendicular walls of the mountain. Nothing can be imagined more gloomy and impressive than the passage through this deep chasm. PACIFIC RAILROAD. SPEECH OF HON. THOMAS H. BENTON, IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JANUARY 16, 1855, On the Physical Geography of the Country between the States of Missouri and California, with a View to show its Adaptation to Settlement, and to the Construction of a Railroad. The House being in the Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union, on the Pacific Railroad Bill Mr. BENTON said: MR. CHAIRMAN: I have desired for some time past to change the plan of making this road to withdraw it from legislative authority, where political and sectional interests must always interpose and leave it to a company of business men, where business considerations could only prevail; for this is a case in which private interest and public interest would go hand in hand, that which would be best for one being best for the other; and so insuring the selection of a route which would be most national, because most suitable to the greatest number. With this view I have turned my attention to private enterprise, and have found solid men who are willing to take the preliminary steps now, preparatory to the final assumption of the work Congress granting the necessary authority, and conferring the right of way through its territories, one mile wide on each side of the road. No military protection -no alternate sections no gift of money—no aid but the right of way, and payment for transportation of mails, troops, and munitions, according to a plan not yet matured. Telegraphic lines to be established or permitted, and transportation to begin before the road is finished, by using stage coaches for the remainder, according to a plan which may be agreed upon. No exclusive privilege, except in two degrees on each side of the road, to keep off competition, leaving all the rest of the country open to other roads. The substitute bill which I propose contains the names of some of these citizens, and with whom other solid men will deem it a privilege to be associated—not that all will be expected to be millionnaires, but only good for what they promise; for it is not intended that straw men or wind men shall get control of this undertaking. The consent of those in the bill will be necessary to the admission of every new associate; but after the act shall be accepted, books of subscription are to be opened in every state of the Union, and the stock divided into convenient shares, to suit short as well as long purses. Congress has ordered surveys of routes: they are not ready; but that is no impediment to the adoption of my substitute, which fixes no route, but leaves it to the company to choose their own; and no company, using their own money, will act upon any surveys but their own. Such a company will look before it leaps; and if it did not, it would not leap long. It will send out its own surveyors - practical engineers and road makers to report upon every mile of the way, and under every aspect of cost and feasibility. To such a company the government surveys are not wanted, even if ready, and made properly, in winter as well as summer; and, in fact, they were not intended for a company, but for Congressintended to enable Congress to fix the route itself-a consummation which it is now found to be impossible to attain. I would have preferred that Congress should have made the road, as a national work, on a scale commensurate to its grandeur, and let out the use of it to companies, who would fetch and carry on the best terms for the people and the gov ernment. But that hope has vanished, and the organization of Kanzas having opened up the country to settlement, and placed it under law, and carried it into conjunction with Utah and New Mexico, a private company has become the resource and the preference. I embrace it as such, utterly scouting all plans for making private roads at national expense of paying for the use of roads built with our land and money of bargaining with corporators or individuals for the use of what we give them -a species of bargaining in which my observation informs me that the government gets about as badly cheated as Moses Primrose was when he sold the colt which had been in the family nine years; and as much worse as his father was when he undertook to help out the matter by selling Blackberry. I presume every member knows how that was: for I would be sorry to suppose that any one, possessed of the English language, had lived to man's estate without enjoying the luxury of reading the Vicar of Wakefield. For my part, I have been reading it since I was five years old, and with augmented enjoyment every time, and especially since they have got to putting pictures in it, and above all, that picture of Moses selling the colt for a gross of green spectacles with silver rims and shagreen cases; a picture for which the United States sit every time Congress undertakes to make a bargain for the public. I eschew all such bargains, and all private roads made at public expense, but am willing to have as many as any one pleases upon the same terms as contained in my substiand there will be room for several such; but I do not think another will be built in our day. tute I prefer the central route; the administration eschews that route, and lays out its strength in favor of frontier routes, by Canada and Mexico. It sent a surveying party on the central, but only to go a part of the way and turn round leaving the essential section between the Little Salt Lake and the valley of the San Joaquin unexamined. Mr. Fremont supplied that omission last winter, exploring a new and direct route between those points, and through the Sierra Nevada - completing all that was wanting in that quarter. This new route cut off the elbow to the - south-west made by the old Los Angeles trail, avoided the desert which it crossed, and left far to the south those excitable sand fields, in which no number of horses can leave a track - in which what is a hillock today is a hole in the ground to-morrow-where, under a gentle breeze, the sands creep like an army of insects - where the traveller who lies down to sleep during the night in a light wind must rise and shake himself often to avoid being buried in the sand; and where, during a high wind, the air is filled with a driving tempest of silicious particles, very cutting to the skin and eyes, very suffocating to the throat, very dangerous to men who are not tall and swift- where men and animals fly for their lives when they feel the wind rising, and where this administration would carry the road. Fremont's new discovery avoided all that, but without conciliating our administration. Frontier and foreign routes monopolize their affection and engross their cares, involving, in my opinion, at least in one instance, a misapplication of the appropriation for the survey of routes. I allude to the Puget Sound route, skirting the British line all the way, going where nobody travels, where nobody lives, and where nobody can now want a road except the British fur company, and a certain chartered company, of which Mr. Robert J. Walker and Mr. James Duane Doty are the heads, and which route the debates in Congress show was not within the contemplation of the law when the appropriation was made. I nominated it a British road from the time the survey was ordered, but did not expect to have any other evidence of it than what the case itself afforded; but I now have other evidence, and produce it. Here it is! (holding up a document,) and I proceed to read from it; and, first, of the title, which runs thus: "CANADA, 1st session, 5th Parliament, 18th Victoria, 1854. Petition of the Hon. Augustus N. Morin, and others, praying for a charter by the name of the Northern Pacific Railway Company,' &c., &c. Ordered by the Legislative Assembly to be printed, November 30, 1854. Presented by the Hon. Mr. Young, Quebec: Printed by Lovell & Lamoreux, Mountain Street. Reprinted by Ira Berry, Portland, Maine." I give the whole title, but only a part of the contents, beginning at page 4, thus: "From information furnished by the report of his excellency Governor Stevens, we entertain no doubt, not only that a practicable route exists in this direction, from the head of Lake Superior to Puget's Sound, and the mouth of the Columbia River, but that this is by far the best, if not the only possible, route for a railway to the Pacific, north of El Paso, near the thirty-second parallel of north latitude. It is also believed that, after crossing the Rocky Mountain summit, a favorable and direct route may be found to San Francisco. Assuming the correctness of the foregoing propositions, it will be perceived at a glance that at some point or place in the valley of the Missouri River, not far from the great bend of that river, there will be found a focal point to which all the railways of the continent, east of the Rocky Mountains, reaching westward towards the Pacific, will naturally converge, as to a common point of junction and intersection." Thus it was Governor Stevens's survey which put this Canadian company on the scent of a North Pacific Railway, by the head of Lake Superior, to Puget's Sound; and, as the administration sent this governor on that survey, ergo the administration put this company on that scent. All that is clear enough. We see where the impulsion comes from. But not quite so visible the source of the next proposition, which outlaws all the country for a road north of El Paso, in latitude 32°, clear out to the Puget Sound route, in (near) latitude 49°. They do not tell where |