the Secretary of the Interior, and by his direction the lands have been allotted to the company. The charter is liberal in all its provisions, and contains no restrictions as to the rate of tolls, speed, the mode or manner of connections with other roads, &c., and requires no taxes to be paid; but in lieu thereof, three per cent. of the gross earnings of the road (deducting running expenses) is to be paid to the State annually. In other respects it is all that could be desired. It will greatly facilitate the object of this publication if the reader will consult recent maps of Minnesota and North America: The great object proposed by the St. Paul and Pacific RailRoad Company, and for which the grant of lands held by them will be a munificent endowment, is to connect, by railroad, the navigation of the Mississippi River, and its tributaries, at St. Paul, near the Falls of St. Anthony, and at Stillwater, on the River St. Croix, with the Red River of the North, and other navigable streams of northwest British America. While the road across this isthmus, between extensive river systems, is in course of construction, one arm of the rail-road will, unquestionably, be extended to the head of Lake Superior, and another communication will reach an agricultural district west of Minneapolis of great natural advantages, and which is a favorite destination of emigrants. Perhaps nowhere on the American continent will such important commercial results follow as will be witnessed in Minnesota, when 6,000 miles of steamboat navigation on the Mississippi and St. Lawrence rivers, and 3,000 miles of similar navigation on the rivers of Central British America are joined together, mostly by the proposed routes of the St. Paul and Pacific Rail-Road, and with a comparatively small investment of capital. Fortunately for the accomplishment of this result, great inducements exist for the construction of the first eighty miles northwest of St. Paul. When completed, the loveliest and most fertile region of Minnesota, extending from St. Cloud to the Red River, will be tributary to its business. The valley of the Sauk River, already settled and producing large crops of grain; the beautiful lake region, of which Otter Tail Lake is the centre, as large as Massachusetts, and which, under the "Homestead Act," presents great attractions to the immigrant; and the valley of the Red River of the North, lying still further to the northwest, will depend exclusively upon the rail-road communication, from St. Paul to St. Cloud, as their avenue to market. An intelligent observer of the map and of the progress of western settlements, can readily appreciate the probable extent of travel and transportation over the proposed line, looking solely to the internal movement of northern Minnesota. But this is far from a complete statement of the case. What may be called the freights, &c., through Minnesota to the English settlements of Selkirk and the Saskatchewan, constitute an equally important fact for our consideration. Selkirk settlement, north of Minnesota, and dependent on the route of the St. Paul and Pacific Road for their best and cheapest communication with the world, is a community of 10,000 souls, which will soon be the seat of government for a new crown colony of England, extending between Canada and British Columbia. For the present, Fort Garry, in this settlement, is the North American head-quarters of the Hudson Bay Company, the most powerful and sagacious commercial organization in the British dependencies. The posts of this company, more than fifty in number, occupy every commanding situation over the immense area bounded by Hudson's Bay and Lake Superior on the east, the Rocky Mountains on the west, and the Arctic Ocean on the north, with their admirable system of administration, now perfected during upwards of a century; the Indians are in complete subjection, and the fur trade of the immense interior of British America concentrates its annual product on the Red River of the North, at Fort Garry, from which point, by the annual voyages of brigades of batteaux, merchandise and supplies are distributed to the most distant posts. Prior to 1858, the imports and exports of the Hudson Bay Company were transported by the difficult and dangerous route of Hudson's Bay and Nelson River, or over the numerous obstacles intervening from Lake Superior to Red River, on the British side of the international line. In 1858, however, citizens of Minnesota interested themselves to transport material and construct a steamer on the Red River of the North, and now, in 1862, two such vessels navigate that stream. The trade previously existing between St. Paul and Selkirk has been greatly increased in consequence. The business of the Red River steamer, during the years 1860 and 1861, will illustrate this increase: It will be observed that the transportation to Fort Garry has nearly doubled, while the number of passengers has increased 150 per cent. during the past year. Besides this, about 60,000 pounds were carried down the river in barges during 1861, making in all, 886,483 pounds, or 443 tons of merchandise carried to the settlement, and 46 tons brought from there. The imports from that country are almost wholly furs. When it is considered, what no intelligent man now denies, that northwest of Minnesota the country, reaching from the Selkirk settlements to the Rocky Mountains, and from latitudes 49° to 55°, is as favorable to grain and animal production as Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota-that the mean temperature for spring, summer and autumn, observed on the 42d and 43d parallels in New-York, Ohio and Michigan, has been accurately traced through Fort Snelling and the valley of the Saskatchewan to latitude 55° on the Pacific coastand that from the northwest boundary of Minnesota, this whole district of Central British America is threaded in all directions by the navigable water-lines which converge from the south and west to Lake Winnepeg-no reasonable doubt remains that the colonization of the continent, even in its ordinary progress of agricultural settlement, will extend over the region here delineated. With such an extension of English policy and development, the rail-road system of northern Minnesota will connect near Pembina. These events of the near future will powerfully contribute to the construction of the line of the St. Paul and Pacific Rail-Road from St. Paul, by way of St. Cloud and Otter Tail Lake, to the international frontier. A new event-a new and most influential element-has lately occurred to hasten a progress which might otherwise seem remote and speculative. The discovery of gold, in 1858, upon the Frazer River and its tributaries, was followed by the organization of British Columbia; and the fact is now fully ascertained, that the richest and most extensive gold field of Northwest British America-the Cariboo mines-is so far within the Rocky Mountains-so far up to the utmost sources of Frazer River-as to be practically more accessible from Minnesota and Selkirk than from the coast of Puget's Sound. A propeller upon Lake Winnepeg, and two small river steamers on the Saskatchewan, combining with the steamboats now navigating the Red River, would constitute a line from Quebec, by way of St. Paul, which could accomplish the journey to the Cariboo district in thirty days, at an expense of $150. The summer of 1862 will doubtless witness the establishment of such a line of continental transit. An expenditure of $100,000, with present facilities, is more than would be necessary for the purpose. Once in successful operation, an overland emigration from England and the British Provinces alone would reach thousands annually. As it is, during the month of May, 1862, three hundred Canadians have passed through St. Paul to Fort Garry, expecting thence to make the journey overland to the Cariboo mines, prospecting at the sources of the Saskatchewan, where rumor indicates a counterpart of the surface diggings which have brought the Cariboo region, immediately over the dividing summits of the Rocky Mountains, so prominently before the world. The Hudson Bay Company, with great sagacity, declines any struggle with such a march of events. The successor of Sir George Simpson, as governor of the company, Governor Dallas, is understood to have proceeded to Fort Garry in the spring of 1862, fully authorized by the London directors to coöperate in every possible way for the speedy colonization of Central British America. It would not be surprising if the additional steamers required in the speedy transmission of mails, freight and passengers, to the gold region of British Columbia, were immediately constructed under the direction of the Hudson Bay Company. Their transportation on Lake Winnepeg and the Saskatchewan has reached a bulk which would fully justify the necessary investment. The St. Paul and Pacific Rail-Road is indispensable to the development of Central British America. Its line from St. Paul to St. Cloud, and thence to the Red River, will be the trunk of transportation to the vast Northwest, now revealing itself in such magnificent proportions. No prospect so favorable attended the first rail-road project west of Chicago as now encourages the pioneer Minnesota Rail-Road from St. Paul, by way of St. Anthony's Falls, northwestwardly toward the Red River of the North. The first division of the road, from Saint Paul to Watab, a distance of eighty miles, has been placed under contract, and most of the right of way obtained; ten miles of which, to Saint Anthony, is in operation, and the balance will be completed as soon as the material can be delivered upon the ground. About sixty-five miles are already graded and bridged, and the balance will be graded by the time the iron is laid upon the portion already graded. The company have executed a mortgage upon the first division of the road to Russell Sage, of the City of Troy, and Samuel J. Tilden, of the City of New-York, trustees, to secure the payment of its first mortgage bonds, for seven hundred thousand dollars; and also its mortgage upon 307,200 acres of land, for the sum of $1,200,000, to Samuel J. Tilden, of the City of New-York, and Edmund Rice and Horace Thompson, of Saint Paul, trustees; about $1,600,000 will be issued to pay for the completion of the eighty miles under contract, with the necessary buildings and machinery. The present population adjacent to these eighty miles of road is estimated at 67,000. During the three years prior to 1858 it had increased tenfold. In Wisconsin, as appears by the then last census, the increase of population had been at the rate of eighty-seven per cent. per annum; and taking this as a basis, the population upon these eighty miles of our road will be, in two years, 200,000. Emigration to Minnesota is rapidly increasing, and there is now every indication that in another year it will be greater than ever before; thus furnishing additional business for the road, and increasing the value of, and creating a new demand for the company's lands. Saint Paul has a population of 16,000; St. Anthony and Minneapolis, (divided by the river only,) 10,000; and the valley of the Mississippi to Crow Wing (128 miles) is lined with thriving villages and towns, and has business sufficient to sustain the road handsomely, if constructed at the present moment. |