The line from Omaha to California shows that for nine hundred miles the
road has an average height above the sea of over five thousand feet, the
lowest point in that stretch being over four thousand; while the
corresponding distance, embracing the mountain ranges, along this
Northern Pacific line, is near two thousand feet lower than the other,
giving, in this difference in elevation, according to the usual
estimate, over nine degrees advantage in temperature. This becomes
important in an agricultural view, as well as in the immediate and
constant benefit in the increased facility for operating a railway.

In addition, the curvature of the thermal lines of the continent bear
away to the northward of the surveyed route of this great enterprise,
insuring almost entire freedom from snow obstructions other than is
common to any of the principal railway lines in the States themselves.

The extent of country tributary to this road is entirely unparalleled by
that of any other. Along the present finished continental line an
uninhabitable alkaline desert stands across and along its pathway for
many miles, while the Northern line leaps from valley to valley, all
more or less productive, and in which large supplies of coal and timber
are found sufficient for ages to come.

Of this region, and the general line of this road, the Hon. Schuyler
Colfax writes as follows:--

"Along the line of the Northern Pacific Railroad, as it follows up the
water-courses, the Missouri and the Yellowstone on this side, and
descends by the Valley of the Columbia on the other, a vast body of
agricultural land is waiting for the plow, with a climate almost exactly
the same as that of New York, except that, with less snow, cattle in the
larger portion of it can subsist on the open range in winter. Here, if
climate and fertility of soil produce their natural result, when
railroad facilities open this now isolated region to settlement, will
soon be seen waving grain-fields, and happy homes, and growing towns,
while ultimately a cordon of prosperous States, teeming with population,
and rich in industry and consequent wealth, will occupy that now
undeveloped and almost inaccessible portion of our continental area.

"But this road is also fortunate in its pathway across the two ranges of
mountains which tested so severely the Pacific Railroads built on the
central line, and the overcoming of which reflected such well-deserved
honor on their energetic b