response to Bishop Butler's heart-moving appeals were now taken from the savings bank and subscribed for bonds of the Mexican Central and Sonora—Railways the one to open up the great tableland of Mexico from El Paso to Mexico City and the other to carry the Atchison development of the Southwest to the beautiful mountain-locked port of Guaymas on the Gulf of California. Here opened vistas for New England capital and California enterprise down the Pacific Coast and through the heart of Mexico.
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA AND MEXICO
In conjunction with Thomas Nickerson, the great pioneer builder of the Atchison and the railroads of Mexico, I journeyed to California; and at San Diego listened to one of the best addresses I ever heard, and from a man who never made addresses. Thomas Nickerson told the Chamber of Commerce at San Diego that he was not in agreement with the Southern and Central Pacific people whom he had visited in San Francisco and who had declared that there was nothing in San Diego or Southern California except invalids, "one-lungers," and bees, and that the only prospective traffic from the harbor of San Diego was a few boxes of honey in the comb. Nicker-
