At the sight of the Palisades Bill could no longer restrain his aesthetic feelings—oh yes, Bill had them too, and he knew the beautiful when he saw it.
“I tell youse the Hudson has got them all faded, Jack. I’ve seen ’em all includin’ the Schuylkill at Philadelphia and they might as well get offen the map.”
“There are three rivers you haven’t seen yet, Bill, and these are the Mississippi, the Yukon and the Amazon. When you have seen these great streams you’ll be in a better position to judge the merits of the Hudson.”
“This position right here in seat 2, car 30 is good enough for me to size up the Hudson. Just as Noo York is the onliest town in the world so the Hudson is the onliest river on the map. Somebody oughter give Mr. H. Hudson a medal for havin’ discovered it; an’ when we come back, richer’n Rockerfeller, I’ll donate one to him that is twenty-four carats fine.”
Jack had the porter fix a table between the seats and laid out his time-tables of the three railroads that were to carry them across the continent. Then for Bill’s enlightenment and his own pleasure he traced the route they were to make to Seattle and thence on up to Circle City, Alaska.
“Let’s see, we reach Chicago to-morrow morning and change cars there. Then we’re in for a long ride, for it will take us about three days and nights to make the trip. We’ll get into Seattle next Saturday morning some time. Our boat leaves Seattle the following Monday morning and this will give us all the time we want to see Seattle.”
“Now look up this boat trip from Seattle to Skagway,” said Bill.
“We take the S.S. Princess Alice and sail up through Puget Sound until we reach the northern end of Vancouver Island, when we come to the open sea; then we run through Hecate Strait, between the Queen Charlotte Islands and the Province of Columbia, when we pass through Dixon Entrance into Clarence Strait and are in Alaskan waters. Farther on when we get to Juneau we’ll begin to see something that looks like real scenery for that’s the beginning of the great glaciers.”
“I’m not so keen on seein’ scenery as I am on seein’ gold,” vouchsafed Bill, whose resultant financial success in the Mexican expedition seemed to have completely turned his young head from contentment and the love of adventure into discontent and a violent itching for riches.
“You’ll see both a-plenty before we’re through with it, take it from me.”