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uilders. At the Deer Lodge Pass, in Montana, where it crosses the Rocky Mountains, its altitude above the sea is three thousand five hundred feet less than the Union Pacific Railroad at Sherman, which is said to be the highest point at which a locomotive can be found in the world. And on the Pacific side of the continent it is even more fortunate. From Arizona up to the Arctic Circle the Columbia is the only river which, has torn its way through that mighty range, the Andes of North America, which in California is known as the Sierras, but which in Oregon changes its name to the Cascades. Nature has thus provided a pathway for the Northern Pacific Road through these mountains, the scaling of which, on the other line, at an elevation of over seven thousand feet (a most wonderful triumph of engineering), cost the Central Pacific millions of dollars, and compelled them for seventy miles to maintain a grade of over one hundred feet to the mile--twice the maximum of the Northern Pacific at the most difficult points on its entire route. "It is fortunate, also, in its terminus on the Pacific coast. No one who has not been there can realize the beauty of Puget's Sound and its surroundings. One hundred miles long, but so full of inlets and straits that its navigable shore line measures one thousand seven hundred and sixty miles, dotted with lovely islets, with gigantic trees almost to the water's edge, with safe anchorage everywhere, and stretching southward, without shoals or bars, from the Straits of Fuca to the capital and centre of Washington Territory, it will be a magnificent _entrepot_ for the commerce of that grandest ocean of the world, the Pacific." One of the chief districts to be opened to trade and commerce by the construction of this road is that known as Prince Rupert's Land, in British America. This region of country has been recently organized under the name of Manitoba, and embraces the rich and extensive valleys of the Red, Assiniboine, and Saskatchewan Rivers. A population of several thousands already inhabit this section, and a branch railway is to be constructed along the valley of the Red River from the point of crossing by the Northern Pacific Road, and under its immediate auspices. The influence on this people, whose interests will then be almost wholly identified with those of our own, cannot be doubtful. It requires no prophecy to determine their ultimate destiny. The time is not distant when all o
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