A SECOND PACIFIC RAILWAY.

Colonist, Volume XII, Issue 1244, 27 August 1869, Page 3

A SECOND PACIFIC RAILWAY.

(From The Australasian)

Eapid as is the extension of railways in Ameiina, aud great as is the stream of immigration, more railways and more of Europe's spare labor is now the cry. To secure these objects a "Commercial Convention," attended by no fewer than 1100 delegates, has been sitting in the town of Memphis in Tennessee. The great continental railroad connecting San Francisco with the ports of the Northern Atlantic States ha 3 just been finished, and already a second work of the same character is proposed. The second line, parallel to the existing one, is to do for the South what the other will do for the North. It is to connect San Diego on the Californian coast with the port of Norfolk in Carolina. It is "to throw open to the world" the rich territories which occupy the interior of that part of the continent, and which are at present almost entirely in the hands of the wild nomad tribes— Arizona and Sonora, with their varied mineral resources, scarcely touched as yet, and the vast pastoral plains of New Mexico and "Upper Texas. For this " Southern Pacific Railroad" the gradients are said to be easy and the face of the country convenient, and it is recommended that the establishment of a steamship line between Norfolk and Liverpool be encouraged by subscription. The other southern ports of the Atlantic coast, New Orleans, Mobile, Charleston, and Savannah, each set forward claims for being chosen the terminus, but Norfolk was preferred as the best geographical point. There is verylittle doubt that the entire scheme, gigantic as it is, will be carried out ere long. A convention so numerously attended from all parts, and influentially representing capital and energy,' is a guarantee that the project will not be, slept over. By opening easy communication with the Pacific and with the interior, and encouraging immigration and a direct trade with Europe, it cannot fail to rouse the Southern States from their present torpor.