Some Spanish soldiers of the California Column, however, grew weary of such open disloyalty, and one night, when off duty, captured two of the Southern ranchmen and proposed to hang them to the oaks in the pasture near where the city of Pasadena now stands. The American officers of the troops, hearing of the affair, hurried out from Los Angeles and begged their men to give up so disorderly and unsoldier-like an idea. “Yes, sirs, it is true, all that you say; but they are rebels, they talk too much; why suffer them to cumber Union ground?” This seemed the only reply they could obtain; but finally the captives were liberated, though advised in the future to guard well their tongues and actions. The desire for war news from the Eastern states led to the completion of a telegraph line between the Missouri River and San Francisco, and on all sides the need of an overland railroad was also being recognized. Plans for such a road had been frequently presented to Congress, but straightway slavery entered into the question. The South wanted the road, but it must be through Southern territory, while the North favored the middle or northern route; and they could not agree. On one such occasion Senator Benton spoke in favor of a line that had just been surveyed by Captain Fremont. He was told by those who had other plans that his route was not possible, that only scientific men could lay out a railroad and determine the most practicable ways and easiest passes. But Senator Benton’s answer is worth remembering. “There is,” said he, “a class of scientific engineers older than the schools and more unerring than mathematics. They are the wild animals--the buffalo, elk, deer, antelope, and bear--which traverse the forest, not by compass, but by an instinct which leads them always the right way to the lowest passes in the mountains, the shallowest fords in the rivers, the richest pastures in the forest, the best salt springs, the shortest practicable route between two distant points. They are the first engineers to lay out a road; the Indian follows. Hence the buffalo road becomes the war path. The white hunter follows the same trail in the pursuit of game; after that the buffalo road becomes the wagon road of the emigrant, and, lastly, the railroad of the scientific man.” Through her senators and representatives California spent several years in pushing this matter. In vain they called attention to the fact that the distance from Washington to San Francisco by the way of Cape Horn was 19,000 miles, or more than the entire distance round the earth in the latitude of San Francisco; and that by Panama it was as far as from Washington to Peking in a direct line.