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Show GREAT PROJECTED RAILROADS. The bill for the construction of the Northern Pacific Railway, which received re-ceived the signature of President Grant on Wednesday last, grants to the company probably fifty millions of acres of land variously estimated at from forty millions to eighty millions. The road must run from Lake Superior to Puget Sound and will be somewhere about 2,000 miles in length. It can bo made 15 000 and yet be kept inside the bounds prescribed within which it has to be built, and these heavy land grants are a strong temptation to make a round-about instead of a straight line. The Government will perhaps find cut some day that by far the rich' est portion of the Republic lies in the west, which many eastern people still seem to associate with the exploded epithet of ''Deseit" that was once applied ap-plied to the country lying west of the Missouri. If it everde.es find out this truth, it will lament the acion of congress in so freely pla -itv' such vast resources in the hands of private corporations, cor-porations, for much as railways aid in developing a country tiierc is a possibility possi-bility that the country could buy that d ivelopment too dear. However the Northern Pacific Railroad is to be built, and work is to be promptly commenced com-menced on it. Lengthy branch lines to connect with it are already talked of, one being projected from Omaha, running noith-wj-t. which wou'd be about a thou-an.l mil iu 'jnrth. Tiie Southern P:i-.-:.;io Railway will alo undoubted! bj bull:, and the Central Pacific company has a liee ,-. rejected to run from their road through Nevada and connect with it somewhere in the neighb'u 'mo 1 of the Col uij i. I- Ls ja-; as hke'y that our own homj Ibij will be run south through this rang-i.f vaibys x connect con-nect with the '..ttilivm Pacific, and the prec j 'te.l line iV.stu iUv .v tli of Salt Lake to J'us-'t S v.rs t :;'.'.'. ;-!.v u; a ..t:-': V f-- f c. .1 r Meantime the Union Pacific eastern divi.-ion is being pushed on to Denver, which with the Denver branch line completed, will give St. Louis a much director route to the west, 1'r-t, with lines projected north and south, cast ; anl west of us. a glance at the map i wiil show that Salt Lake City is the j geographical an l natural' centre for them all, and nature in her rocky bai-riers bai-riers has declared it cannot be otherwise. other-wise. If any one doubts it, wait a few years and see. Tim is J on the high way of nation.-; and all the world will be here. |