LETTER No. XI.
The North Pacific Railway—Brainerd—Detroit—Massacre by Sioux—Indian Reservation—Fargo—Wheat-fields of Dakota—Bismarck—"Bad Lands"—The Rockies—Arrival at Livingston.
Frank's Ranche, Oct., 1885.
We took our departure from St. Paul in a Pullman Sleeping Car at 4 p.m., and found ourselves very comfortably placed; a fortunate circumstance, seeing that this car had to be our home for fifty-eight hours over 1,032 miles from St. Paul to Livingston, with no opportunity of even stretching our legs outside the train.
The North Pacific Railroad stretches across the great continent from Duluth at the head of Lake Superior, and from St. Paul, the capital of Minnesota, to Portland, on the Pacific, a distance of nearly 2,000 miles.
DINING CAR.
Of its commercial success or the value of its shares in the market I know nothing, but as a simple traveller over more than 1,200 miles I can speak well of it; its track is all steel rail, and its road-bed solid. All its passenger trains are equipped with the Westinghouse air-brake, Miller platforms, and patent steel-tired car-wheels. Pullman palace drawing-room sleeping-cars of the newest and most improved pattern run between St. Paul and Portland; I would, however, caution passengers that it is desirable to secure berths in these beforehand at St. Paul, by applying to the conductor, who will telegraph to the ticket agents in advance. The dining-cars are also very luxurious in their appointments, and the menu all that can be desired. I may add that the charge for every meal is only seventy-five cents, whereas I have been charged a dollar on other lines, and at inconvenient roadside inns, for far inferior fare. The only complaint I have to make is that the cars are sometimes heated in a way which is almost unbearable, and if they could increase their speed, which averages seventeen miles an hour, it would be a boon to weary travellers who want to get on. One does not object to moderate progress through beautiful scenery, but seventeen miles an hour for hundreds of miles of prairie land becomes monotonous.