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162 John Minto. width) the shorter and easier portion of the way. The expense account for hibor and board of labor was $1,865.00. The law^ of Congress could not then be complied with as to points of entry into and departure from townships on this road, as the surveys were not then, and are not yet, closed across the range. The railroad and the Forest Service have received and are receiving the benefit of the surveys and labor expended, and it seems to me there is an equity neglected in this matter which I shall refer to later. It was really an effort of altruism to open a free business road between the naturally diverse divisions of the State which the writer helped to make, as viewer and time-keeper, but which he very deliberately now advises for political rea- sons—the States of Oregon and Washington ought each to be divided by the summit of the Cascade Range. They are both being held up now and robbed under the ill-considered action of Congress and the ill-advised form of the most needful national reforestration of lands on the Atlantic side of the nation which have been overcut and should be replanted on carefully considered plans before the needs of the people for land and for fuel set at defiance a policy begun by breaking the compacts between the States of the Pacific Slope and the Nation. The Marion and Wasco stock and wagon trail was put through, as before said, by a largely altruistic effort, and as it got through, summer recreationists got to the summit with ease, and the foremost of these, the Hon. John B. Waldo, began to observe and note lower depressions and easier grades to the summit via the south or main branch of the Santiam. This was viewed, surveyed and marked at the summit, but measured two miles further to a connection with the Willam- ette Valley and Cascade Mountains military road near the summit. Here was found to be 500 feet lower than Minto Pass, but thirteen miles further in distance. The writer, believing this to be a practical railroad pass, and learning that the Corvallis & Eastern Railroad Company were seeking a crossing of the range, wrote to their office and indicated a guide. They found it as stated and began construction on