more complex and more comprehensive. By railroads we have connected, or are in the act of connecting, together all the principal sea-ports on the Atlantic coast and on the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico, namely: Portland, Boston, New-York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Norfolk, Charleston, Mobile, and New-Orleans. Again, railroads from each or most of these ports proceed inland through important towns, to great depots on the St. Lawrence, the lakes, the Ohio, and the Mississippi, namely: Quebec, Montreal, Ogdensburgh, Oswego, Rochester, Buffalo, Erie, Cleveland, Sandusky, Toledo, Monroe, Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, Cairo, and Memphis. Again, there are tributaries which search out agricultural and mineral productions and fabrics, accumulated at less notable points; and so a complete system is perfected, which leaves no inhabited region unexplored, while it has for its base the long line of seaboard. The aggregate length of these railroads is sixteen thousand miles, and the total cost is six hundred millions of dollars. Immediately after the purchase of Louisiana, President Jefferson having conceived the idea of a national establishment on the Pacific coast, an exploration of the intervening wastes was made. An American navigator about the same time visited the coast itself, and thus laid the foundation of a title by discovery. A commercial settlement, afterward planted on the Columbia river by the late John Jacob Astor, perished in the war of 1812. Ten years ago, the great thought of Pacific colonization revived, under the influences of the commercial activity resulting from the successful progress of the system of Internal Improvements. Oregon was settled. Two years afterward, its boundaries were defined, and it was politically organised, and now it constitutes two prosperous Territories.
The social, military, and ecclesiastical institutions of Mexico proved unfavorable to an immediate success of the republican system. Revolution became a chronic disease there. Texas separated, and practically became independent, although Mexico refused to recognize her separation. After some years, Texas was admitted as a State into our Federal Union. A war which ensued, resulted not only in the relinquishment of Mexican claims upon Texas, but in the extension of her coast-frontier to the Rio Grande, and also in the
