for a Pacific railroad are all matters of official report, long since published and open to all.  They were the basis for the future explorations of all the transcontinental lines, except the Union Pacific, then known as that of the forty-second parallel of latitude.  That line, and the country from the Arkansas to the Yellowstone, was explored and developed mainly by private enterprise, and it is by far the most practicable line crossing the continent —­the shortest and quickest, of lightest curvature, and lowest grades and summits.  It is not, in an engineering point of view, the true line from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but in a commercial point of view it is.

In an engineering point of view we demonstrated, before the year 1860, that the true line was up the Platte to its forks, to which point the Union Pacific is now built, then up (where the Oregon Short Line now runs) to the Columbia, and then to tide-water at Portland.  The Union and Central were built for commercial value, and to obtain the shortest and quickest line from ocean to ocean.  The line of the Central was controlled almost entirely by the development of the mining industries in California and Nevada until it reached the Humboldt; then its natural course would be to reach Salt Lake and the Mormon settlements.  The Union Pacific objective point was the Pacific Coast by way of the Great Platte Valley and Salt Lake. . . .

When we reached the mountains a series of questions arose as to how this base should be determined.  The eastern base was determined by Mr. Blickensderfer, who was appointed by the government.  After examining the country he declared it to be right at the foot of the mountains, where the heavy grades to overcome the first range, the Black Hills, were made necessary —­a very proper decision.  The west base of the Sierra was located near Sacramento, where the drift of the mountains reached into the valley, or where, you might say, the first approach to the mountains begins, but long before the heavy grades commenced.

A good story is told, the truth of which I will not undertake to vouch for, in relation to the fixing of the base.  By the original railroad act, as we have noticed, the President was to fix the point where the Sacramento Valley ended and the foot-hills of the Sierra Nevada began.  Chief Engineer Judah, in his report, had designated Barmore’s, thirty-one miles from Sacramento, as the beginning of the mountains.  This corresponded with a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, made in April, 1864, in the case of the Liedsdorff grant.  The contestants of the grant attempted to fix the eastern boundaries at Alder Creek, eighty miles nearer Sacramento.  This grant, by Mexican authority, was bounded by the foot-hills on the east.  The Supreme Court decided that the foot-hills commenced about thirty miles from that city.  Several attempts were made by Mr. Sargent, then a member of Congress,