We go out of Summit Valley through what I call Lake Pass, while Fremont’s route, or the old Emigrant road, goes over Truckee Pass, which is about 700 feet higher, and a few miles off my route. We strike the foot of Truckee Lake, or the cabins of the Donner party, nine miles from the summit, and from there it is an easy grade down the Truckee River, descending about 40 feet per mile, over a smooth country. The elevation of the pass is 6,690 feet. There are two other passes leading out of Summit Valley, which I had not time to explore, but either of them are practicable, although a little higher. This route is at least 150 miles shorter than the Beckwourth route; crosses the state at the narrowest point, and is on a direct line to the Washoe mines. I will undertake to build a railroad over this route in two years, for $70,000 per mile, from Sacramento City to the state line or Washoe. Thus the question of crossing the Sierra Nevada, I consider solved. After the tentative organization of his proposed railroad, and the publication of the news of his discoveries in the newspapers, Judah went to San Francisco. He managed to get in touch with some capitalists, but was unable to secure their support. If Congress did not pass a Pacific Railroad bill, they said, no railroad could be built; if a bill was passed, the road still could not be completed for ten or twenty years. They had other interests, and were disinclined to consider a scheme of this sort, however technically feasible. If we may believe the newspapers of the time, no inconsiderable reason for the reluctance of the men approached was the provision of the constitution of California making stockholders liable for their proportion of all the debts and liabilities of any company in which they held stock.[9] Sacramento Meetings When he failed to secure support in San Francisco, Judah went to Sacramento. The city of the plains, as it was then affectionately called by its inhabitants, was less wealthy than San Francisco, but for that very reason might be expected to take an interest in a project which promised her, for some years at least, a position of relative advantage with respect to the trade of the interior. The leading newspaper in that city, the _Sacramento Union_, could be counted on to support any plausible Pacific railroad scheme for political reasons. The citizens had further the advantage of first-hand experience with the workings of the Sacramento Valley Railroad, which had been opened from Sacramento to Folsom in 1856, and was still the only railroad in the state.