West of the deep and gently flowing northern Mississippi, I know, is a long way off from the surging waters of your eastern coasts. When you have come this distance, you are, in so far as distance only is concerned, pretty well on your way toward the Rocky Mountains, and the new land of El Dorado, the young and golden Nevada. But yet we are in fact much nearer to your golden markets than to the hidden ore of our new Territories. Time and space, whose natural demands have been so rudely disregarded by the iron progress of science and skill between you and us, still to a great degree maintain their ancient rule over the lands west of us. That vast, thrifty vine of speedy transportation, which has wound itself about the trunk of our national tree, strikes here and there one of its tendrils out upon the branches beyond us, over the region of a few counties. In one instance, in the State immediately south of us, a single energetic scion has crept even to the banks of the rapid Missouri, and others are pushing steadily on in determined emulation. But in most cases, we must be content to ride to the westward, only on the back of the laggard and unambitious coach, that tortoise of travel, crawling on through prairie and swamp. And it is still within the recollection of almost the youngest inhabitant, how the daily trains, drawn by horse, mule, or ox, dragged themselves through our streets, proclaiming from their cotton coverings their distant destination, illustrating on their march the Western 'Excelsior'-- 'The wheels in mud were sticking fast, As through a boundless prairie passed A youth, who drove a two-mule team, While on his wagon top was seen. PIKE'S PEAK.' Thus eastward we are within forty-eight hours of your press, while westward we are nearly as many days distant by private conveyance from the land of fabled wealth. But time and space must eventually give in. They are not equal to the task; and already the shadow of the great Pacific road makes them tremble for their natural tenure of the free West. It might have done for AEsop to talk about the tortoise and the hare, when they had not steam in those days to course their streams and stalk across their plains with giant tread, eclipsing the old seven-league boots of their fancy; but the tortoise is a used-up individual, is short of breath, and it is the passenger that sleeps, while the hare leaps onward to his covert. Being thus brought near to you by the swift convoys of science, it will be evident that we are not so far away as we seem. We do not perpetrate an Irish bull when we say that the distance _to_ a place is often greater than the distance in returning. It is, on the contrary, a well authenticated natural fact--a phenomenon, if you please. And by way of illustration we may aver that it is a great deal farther from your metropolis to west of the Mississippi, than from west of the Mississippi to the metropolis.