proposed to carry the road across the Rocky Mountains by the route the emigrating parties were taking, through South Pass, to the Columbia. From the Columbia, near its junction with Snake River, the road was to cross the Cascades to Puget Sound. Whitney had proposed either the mouth of the Columbia or Puget Sound as the terminus of his road, though his views were sufficiently elastic to allow him to substitute San Francisco Bay should such a course prove more agreeable to Congress.
The rival plans of Whitney and Wilkes were pressed with so much zeal, and divided support so evenly, that neither plan was able to command the approval of Congress. However, the contest provoked a vast amount of railway discussion, it called out resolutions of state and territorial legislatures, and it led directly to the holding of railway conventions which fed the rising flame of public interest and served to focus attention more and more upon the practical aspects of the problem.
Connection with Fremont's third journey. In my opinion, this discussion probably constituted one reason for the government's action in sending Lieutenant John C. Fremont west on a new exploring expedition in the summer of 1845. He crossed from the upper Arkansas through the then Mexican territory lying south of the forty-second parallel, and emerged at Sutter's Fort on the Sacramento. In his further efforts to carry out his explorations he encountered the hostility of the Mexican officials in California and
