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Excerpt from Reports of Explorations and Surveys, to Ascertain the Most Practicable and Economical Route, 1856 Explorations of the wild interior, for the purpose of ascertaining the most economical and practicable route for a railroad to the Pacific, are reconnaissances* rather than surveys. They are engineering studies of routes, or belts of country, often of two hundred miles in breadth, of two thousand miles in length, extending from the verge Of the eastern border to the Pacific, Of which the characteristics are to be known regarding railroad construction. Routes are not lines; several lines might occupy relative positions on a single route. The lineal section, rapidly placed by the labors of a single season, and presented as the result of a Pacific railroad exploration, must not always be presumed to be a profile of the preferable or the very best trace for location, existing upon the division examined. From the limited time prescribed for making these examinations, and from the vast extent of country explored, the first line Of barometric levels does not always occupy the best position of the route to which applied. The engineering features of the whole broad division passed over are connected with this base line, and stated in the form of opinions or convictions forced upon the mind of the engineer by former experience Of the necessities of location in all varieties of country. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections