LETTER No. XVI.
We leave Cheyenne—Arrival at Omaha—The barber's shop—Narrow escape from having my head shaved—Arrival at Chicago—Niagara Falls.
New York, Nov., 1885.
I have already told you that I am not writing a book of travels, but merely recording my impressions by the way; these have already occupied far more space than I had ever contemplated, and as we are now approaching the more beaten tracks of civilization, I will hasten on to a conclusion.
We left Cheyenne on Friday morning at 10.30, and after a continuous run of 516 miles, we "stopped off" at Omaha for a few hours at 10.30 on Saturday morning. Omaha is a great rambling city of 60,000 inhabitants on the western bank of the Missouri. Council Bluffs is an equally flourishing city on the eastern bank.
My chief recollection of Omaha is the barber's shop whither I went to get shaved. I had tried to shave myself in the train, but had contrived instead to gash my cheek sufficiently to cause much bloodshed. When the barber had finished shaving me, I asked him just to trim my hair the least bit in the world. He was an hour and a quarter over the job, and as I had been travelling continuously for twenty-four hours with little or no sleep, I fell asleep under his hands. Luckily, I was woke up by an unusual tickling at the back of my head; he was lathering me there, and I am quite sure he meant to shave the whole of my head.
"Confound it," I shouted; "what are you doing?"
"I was only going to shave the back of your head," he said.
I found to my horror that my whiskers had entirely disappeared, and he had not only cut my hair as closely as it could be cut with a pair of scissors, but he had run it over with a sort of small horse-clipper. I caught him in time to stop the further operation of shaving. Judging by the many naked polls I afterwards saw in the hotel, I concluded that it is the fashion in Omaha to go about with your head shaved. It is a compliment, I suppose, which those who have hair pay to the bald-headed ones.
The Omaha barber has quite destroyed the youthful appearance which I flattered myself I had acquired since I have been travelling on this Continent.
My friend M., when I came out of that terrible barber's hands, passed me by without knowing me; and when at last he began to have a suspicion that the bald individual before him was I, he exclaimed, "What on earth have you been doing? An hour and a quarter of our precious time have you wasted in that barber's shop, and you come out like a bald-headed boiled lobster. Our friends in Chicago, Boston, and New York certainly won't know you."
Time the destroyer is also a happy restorer, and now while I am writing, a fortnight after the event, my whiskers have already given indication of a returning crop, and my hair has grown long enough to enable me to identify myself. I trust that after the sea voyage, and when I get home, my wife will also be able to identify me. The rascal charged me seventy-five cents (three shillings) for this personal disfigurement.
I was very glad to get away from Omaha the same day at 5.30 p.m. We travelled by the Chicago and Rock Island line, and we reached Chicago, a distance of 500 miles, the next afternoon at three o'clock.
On Monday it rained in torrents all day, and Tuesday was not much better. On Tuesday night at 8.40 I started for Boston, leaving my friend M. behind for two or three days. This was the first time we had separated since we started together from Euston on our outward journey.
The line I now travelled on was "The Michigan Central." About seven o'clock next morning we reached Niagara, where the train stopped a few minutes to give us a look at "The Falls."
As I have no more superlative adjectives left in my vocabulary, I will tell you what the "Michigan Central" has to say about Niagara. It far surpasses my most sublime efforts.
"The Niagara Falls Route.
"'So long as the waters of that mighty river thunder down to the awful depths below, so long as the rush and roar, the surge and foam, and prismatic spray of nature's cataphractic masterpiece remain to delight and awe the human soul, thousands and tens of thousands of beauty-lovers and grandeur-worshippers will journey over the only railroad from which it can be seen. There is but one Niagara Falls on earth, and but one direct great railway to it.'
"Trains stop at Falls View, near the brink of the Horseshoe Fall, where the finest view is obtainable without leaving the cars, cross the gorge of Niagara river on the great steel, double-track Cantilever Bridge, the greatest triumph of modern engineering, and connect in Union Depots, at Niagara Falls and Buffalo with the New York Central and Hudson River, the only four-track railroad in the world."
