Page 282 - La Société canadienne d'histoire de l'Église catholique - Rapport 1961

278 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS.

begun in 1863, and has been pushed with a spirit and success
that has been surprising to all. The Milwaukee and Horicon,
begun in 1854, has quietly pushed its way to the northward,
until it rests upon the Pox River, and thus connccts with the
great water way with which that river blends. The Lake Shore
road was commenced in 1854, and completed in 1855. In all,
say 700 miles of road. Their aggregate cost cannot be less than
$25,000,000. Their construction, at a low estimate, has added
to the common wealth of the State, above the value of the roads,
more than $67,000,000.
Our city has borne an important part in the construction of
these great works, by the issue of her bonds. These have been
taken in good faith by capitalists, and must, in like good faith,
be met by our people, lest our honor become sullied, in which
event our loss is greater than our gain.
I must leave the consideration of these historical reminiscen-
ces, which have been incidents along the way of our commercial
growth and prosperity, and consider more cerefully some of the
causes which have produced a city of fifty thousand inhabitants
in the brief period of twenty years.
If the cities of the Nile, the Bosphorus, and those along the
shores of the Mediterranean sea, on account of their position,
had great natural advantages, not less have the cities which are
planted and are to be planted along the shores of the lakes and
rivers which make up the magnificent basin of the St. Law-
rence. If you take the shore upon either side of this great
water-way, and pass along, as the old Canadian voyagers did,
through its entire circuit, from the time you have left Quebec,
at the head of the Gulf, until your return, you have made a
journey of more than four thousand miles, and if you consider
the natural elements of wealth, which a benificent Creator has
placed in this valley, to wit : climate, soil, timber and miner-
als, and judging of the value of these by the best standards
which human experience has wrought out, where, I ask, upon
this broad continent, and I had almost said upon this round