This disastrous rebuff at Washington produced a profound indignation throughout wide sections; yet it may be questioned whether the arguments on which the railway scheme was based were sufficiently solid to justify such encouragement to the investment of floating capital as the passage of the bill would have implied. Beyond the Missouri River, even on the line of Western travel, population was as sparsely scattered as in an Indian reservation. Neither the gold reaches of Colorado nor the silver-bearing "leads" of the Washoe district had as yet been discovered. California was known only as a region of placer-digging, and its agricultural capacities were very inadequately comprehended. Nor had the Pacific Steamship Company ventured to create its China line. A railroad certain to cost one hundred and forty millions, as the War Department asserted, had in prospect for an immediate revenue only the meagre trade of Salt Lake City, and the freightage of bullion from the Pacific shore. Indeed, the prevailing faith in the enterprise almost passes belief, when it is remembered that no satisfactory survey had been made of the Sierra Nevada. That terrible pile of snow-crowned peaks, of deep-sunk ravines, of jagged ridges and perilous chasms, where the winding bridle-track scarcely permits a driver to walk beside his mule, seemed to defy the skill of our boldest engineers. Overland travellers reported depths of snow varying from twenty to fifty feet. Fearful stories were narrated of luckless wagon-trains caught in the narrow defiles by sudden mountain storms, and perishing helplessly amid these Alpine rigors. It was surely a legitimate question whether a railroad were possible in the face of such embarrassments; and it is fair to attribute the adverse action of Congress to these considerations, rather than to occult and scarcely explicable sectional motives.