The Great Trans-Continental Railway—New York to Chicago—Niagara in Winter—A Lady’s Impressions—A Pullman Dining Car—Omaha—“The Great Muddy”—Episodes of Railway Travel—Rough Roads—Indian Attempts at Catching Trains—Ride on a Snow Plough—Sherman—Female Vanity in the Rocky Mountains—Soaped Rails—The Great Plains—Summer and Winter—The Prairie on Fire—A Remarkable Bridge—Coal Discoveries—The “Buttes”—The Gates of Mormondom—Echo and Weber Cañons—The Devil’s Gate—Salt Lake—Ride in a “Mud Waggon”—The City of the Saints—Mormon Industry—A Tragedy of Former Days—Mountain Meadow Massacre—The “Great Egg-shell”—Theatre—The Silver State—“Dead Heads”—Up in the Sierra Nevada—Alpine Scenery—The Highest Newspaper Office in the World—“Snowed up”—Cape Horn—Down to the Fruitful Plains—Sunny California—Sacramento—Oakland and the Golden City—Recent Opinions of Travellers—San Francisco as a Port—Whither Away?
Sufficient mention of New York has already been made in this work. The tourist or traveller bound round the world, viâ the great trans-continental railway and San Francisco, has at starting from the commercial metropolis of America, and as far as Omaha, a choice of routes, all the fares being identical for a “through ticket” to the Pacific. You may go among the Pennsylvanian mountains and valleys, and catch many a glimpse of the coal and coal “ile” fields; the country generally being thickly wooded. The Pennsylvania, Pittsburg, and Fort Wayne Railway passes through really grand scenery, and the construction of the road has been a work of great difficulty, involving extensive cuttings and embankments and long tunnels. The road takes a serpentine course among the mountains, and at one point, known as the “Horse-shoe Bend,” the line curves round so much that it almost meets itself again. A train following your own appears to be going in the opposite direction. The only city of any importance on this route, before Chicago is reached, is Pittsburg, the busy, coaly, sooty, and grimy—a place reminding one of Staffordshire, and abounding in iron and cutlery works. It is situated among really charming scenery, near where the Monongahela, Alleghany, and Ohio rivers meet, and is an ugly blot among the verdant and peaceful surroundings. After leaving Pittsburg the railroad passes through a charmingly fresh and fruitful country, watered by the Ohio. “Long stretches of green meadows, shut in by hill and dale, shady nooks, cosy farm-houses, and handsome villas, steamers, barges, boats, and timber-rafts—almost as large as those famous Rhine rafts—on the river, make up a varied and most attractive scene.” Next you reach Indiana, a country of fairly good soil, bad swamps, fearful fever and ague, and an indolent and shiftless people. In general terms it is a good country to leave.
But the tourist’s popular route from New York to Chicago is that briefly known as “The Great Central.” At Niagara it passes over a bridge spanning the river below the great Falls, where a tolerable view is obtainable. Most tourists naturally stop a day or two at the Falls, where there are fine hotels. They have been so often described that every schoolboy knows all about them. They are especially worth seeing under their winter aspect, when miniature icebergs and floes are falling, crashing, and grinding with the water. Below the Falls these will bank up to a considerable height, and the river is in places completely frozen over. From the rocks huge stalactites of hundreds of tons of ice depend. The contrast of the dashing green waters with the crystal ice and virgin snow around is very beautiful. [pg 15]Some idea of the volume of water may be gathered from this fact: the Niagara River a mile and a half above the Falls is two and a half miles wide, and is there very deep. At the Falls all this water is narrowed to about 800 yards in breadth. A traveller already mentioned[6] thus describes her impressions:—
“Nor do I think that the most powerful imagination can, with its greatest effort, attain even an approximate notion of the awful sublimity of this natural wonder. Like all other stupendous things which the mind has been unaccustomed to measure and to contemplate, Niagara requires time to grow upon one. The mind also demands time to struggle up to its dimensions, and time to gather up its harmonies into the mighty tones which finally fill the soul with their overwhelming cadences, and whose theme, ever-varying but still the same—as in the hands of a Handel or a Beethoven—thunders through the whole extent of one’s being—‘Almighty Power!’
“The chief impression produced upon the mind by Niagara is the perpetuity of immeasurable force and grandeur. This it is which lends such a strange fascination to the Falls; however pressingly one is desirous of getting away, one is obliged to turn back again, and yet again, like the disturbed needle to the magnetic pole. There is nothing in the way of natural scenery which has stamped itself so clearly, indelibly, and awfully on my mind as this gigantic magnificence; as this mighty body of waters, gliding stealthily but rapidly on its onward course above the Falls, springing forward more wildly, more exultingly, as it nears the brink, until it leaps over into the abyss to swell the mighty canticle, which, for thousands and thousands of years, by day and by night, through every season, has ascended in tones of subdued thunder to the Creator’s throne.”
Passing over all intermediate points, the traveller at length reaches the Garden City, Chicago. This, which used to be counted a western city—it is 900 miles west of New York—is now considered almost an eastern one. And it must be remembered that this place of half a million souls is a port. Large sailing-vessels and steamers enter and leave it daily, and through Lake Michigan and the chain of other lakes can reach the ocean direct. There are miles on miles of wharfs, and it is generally considered one of the “livest” business places in America. Handsomely laid-out and built, the city now hardly bears a trace of the terrific conflagration which in 1871 laid three-fourths of the finest streets in ruins.
From Chicago to Omaha the various routes have little to interest the ordinary traveller, and so, while speeding on together, let us dine in a Pullman hotel car. On entering you will be presented with a bewildering bill of fare, commencing with soups and finishing with ice-cream and black coffee. The dinner is served on little separate tables, while the purity of the cloths and table napkins, the brightness of the plate, and the crystal clearness of the glass-ware, leave nothing to desire. You can have a glass of iced water, for they have an ice-cellar; you can obtain anything, from a bottle of beer to one of Burgundy, port, or champagne; and cigars are also kept “en board;” while at the particular point indicated you will not pay more than seventy-five cents (about three shillings) for the dinner. It must be admitted that the liquid refreshments are generally very dear: a “quarter” [pg 16](i.e., twenty-five cents, the fourth of a dollar) for any small drink, fifty cents for a very small bottle of Bass, and wines expensive in proportion. Still you dine at your ease and leisure, instead of rushing out with a crowd at the “eating stations,” where the trains usually stop three times a day. We have the authority of Mr. W. F. Rae for stating that “no royal personage can be more comfortably housed than the occupant of a Pullman car, provided the car be an hotel one.”[7]
A PULLMAN RAILWAY CAR.
At Omaha, on the Missouri, the Pacific Railway proper commences, although the various New York and other lines, as we have seen, connect with it. The river, irreverently known on the spot as “The Great Muddy,” from the colour of its water and its numerous sand and mud banks, is crossed at this point by a fine bridge. Apropos of the said banks, which are constantly shifting, a story is told of a countryman who, years ago, before the age of steam ferries, wanted to cross the Missouri near this point. He did not see his way till he observed a sand-bank “washing-up,” as they call it, to the surface of the water near the shore on which he stood. He jumped on it, and it shifted so rapidly that it took him clear across the river, and he was able to land on the opposite side! The story is an exaggerated version of fact. The shifting sand-banks make navigation perilous, and good river pilots command a high figure.