The literature of the railway has hardly yet been attempted. It is true that scarcely a day passes without something of interest transpiring in connection therewith: now some grand improvement, now a terrible accident or narrow escape, and now again the opening of some important line. The humours of railroad travel—good and bad—often enliven the [pg 17]pages of our comic journals, while the strictly mechanical aspect of the subject is fully treated in technical papers. But the facts remain that all this is of a transient nature, and that the railway can hardly be said yet to have a literature of its own.
MADISON STREET, CHICAGO.
The following episodes mainly refer to the grand railway under notice, which is by all odds the longest direct road on the surface of the globe. From New York to San Francisco the distance by this railway is 3,300 miles, and the ticket for the through journey is about two feet long! This would be more justly described as a series of tickets or coupons. The writer has crossed the American continent twice by this route, his first trip having been made on its completion in 1869, when, as correspondent of a daily journal, he had ample facilities for examining it in detail. In Chicago he had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Pullman, who kindly furnished him with information which in those days, at all events, was new to the British public. He was even then trying to get his famous carriages introduced into England; as events proved, it took him several years to get them even tested. In this connection he is credited with a bon mot. He was speaking of our land in the highest terms, but, like many Americans, did not think we adopted new ideas with sufficient readiness. “It is a grand country,” said he, “a grand country. But you have to be born very young there;” meaning that otherwise you might grow grey in the consummation of even a promising scheme.
When the writer first crossed the continent the railway was very much in the rough. Rails laid at the rate of seven, and, on one occasion, ten miles a day, can hardly be implicitly relied upon; much of the road was flimsily ballasted, and many of the bridges were temporary wooden structures of a shaky order. The train had sometimes to literally crawl along; passengers would often get off and walk some distance ahead, easily beating the locomotives, and be found seated on the boulders at the side of the road, having had time for a quarter of an hour’s smoke. Mr. James Mortimer Murphy, in his “Rambles in Northwestern America,” gives some similar experiences on a still rougher line on which he travelled from Wallula, on the Columbia River, to a point in Washington Territory. The railroad was only fifteen miles long, and had wooden rails. Having secured an interview with the president, secretary, conductor, and brakesman of the road—represented by one and the same individual—he was booked as a passenger, and placed on some rough iron in an open truck, with instructions to cling to the sides, and be most careful not to stand on the floor if he cared anything about his limbs. The miserable little engine gave a grunt or two, several wheezy puffs, a cat-like scream, and finally got the train under weigh, proceeding at the headlong speed of two miles an hour, “rocking,” says the narrator, “like a canoe in a cross sea. The gentleman who represented all the train officials did not get on the train, but told the engineer to go on, and he would overtake him in the course of an hour. Before I had proceeded half a mile I saw why I was not permitted to stand on the floor of the truck, for a piece of hoop-iron, which covered the wooden rails in some places, curled up into what is called a ‘snake head,’ and pushed through the wood with such force that it nearly stopped the train. After this was withdrawn the engine resumed its course, and at the end of seven hours hauled one weary passenger, with eyes made sore from the smoke, and coat and hat nearly burnt off by the sparks, into a station composed of a rude board shanty, through whose apertures the wind howled, having made the entire distance of fifteen miles in that time.” The drivers of the passing “prairie schooners,” as the waggons drawn by eight or more pairs of mules or oxen are called, occasionally challenged the president of the line to run a race with them in his old machine; but he scorned their offers, and kept quietly walking beside his train. This eccentric railway has since been superseded by one much more desirable, while in justice to the great line referred to, it must be said that it is now, and long has been, in admirable condition, and that it is crossed by numerous express, emigrant, and freight trains daily.
The Indians have never given the trans-continental railway companies much trouble since the completion of the lines. Early in its history a story is told, however, of the Chien or Dog Indians, from whom the town of Cheyenne takes its name. They had a strong prejudice against the iron horse with the fiery eyes, and determined to vanquish him. Some thirty of them mounted their ponies, and urging them up the line, valiantly charged a coming train. It is perhaps unnecessary to state that fragments of defunct red men were found shortly afterwards strewed about the road, and that the tribe has not since repeated the experiment. Perhaps better is the true story of the Piute Indians of Nevada, who tried to catch a train, and found that they had “caught a Tartar” instead. Annoyed by the snorting monster, they laid in ambush, and as it approached dexterously threw a lasso, such as is used for catching cattle, over the “smoke stack,” [pg 19]or funnel of the locomotive, while a number of them held on to the other end of the rope. The engine went on its way unharmed; but it is said that the eccentric gymnastics performed by the Indians, as they were pulled at twenty-five miles an hour over the rocks and boulders at the side of the track, were more amusing to the passengers than to themselves.
Most readers will have heard of the celebrated “Cape Horn,” high up among the Sierra Nevada mountains, where the Central Pacific Railway rounds the edge of a fearful cliff. The traveller is there between six and seven thousand feet above the sea level; and at the particular point of which mention is now made there is a precipice descending almost perpendicularly to a depth of fifteen hundred feet. Above, again, rise the walls of the same rocky projection to a still greater height. The sublimity of the spot is undoubted, but as regards the passengers, the ridiculous too often appears upon the scene. Most ladies and many timid men audibly shudder at this juncture, and after taking a hasty glance downwards at the turbulent Truckee River dashing round the base of the precipice, retire to the other side of the carriage, where there is nothing but the prospect of a rough-hewn rocky wall a foot or so off the carriages. Is it with the idea of ballasting the train? Perhaps like the ostrich, they think themselves out of danger, when danger is hidden!
Not very far from the above spot, on the western side of the mountains, where the grades are particularly steep, an accident occurred a few years ago which had more of the comic element than the serious. A train, proceeding at a rapid rate, broke in two, the locomotive and several carriages dashing on, while the second half of the train followed at slower speed. At length the foremost car of this part of the train left the rails, and breaking off from the couplings, turned bottom upwards on the embankment, just coming to an anchor at the edge of a ravine, into which, had it fallen, no one could have been saved. A husband of Falstaffian proportions was in one of the foremost carriages which had proceeded with the locomotive, and as soon as they stopped he scrambled off, running back to the scene of the accident, hurrying and stumbling and shinning himself on and over the rough roadway and obtrusive sleepers, for his wife was in one of the hindmost cars, and he feared the worst. At last he approached the wreck, where his wife was seen standing, calmly waving a handkerchief, she having climbed out through one of the windows, almost unhurt. She had just been tending the one damaged person of the whole number. That individual, in his anxiety to grasp something as the carriage overturned, had seized on the hot stove, and was badly, though not seriously, burned.
Not altogether a nuisance is an institution inseparably connected with American trains—the peripatetic boy who offers you one minute a newspaper, the next a novel, and then anything from a cigar or a box of sweetmeats to a “prize package.” These latter are of all values, from a twenty-five cent package of stationery to a bound book at a dollar and a half, about one in a hundred of which may possibly contain a money prize. The writer had been a good customer as regards paper-covered novels, and his plan was to sell the books back at half-price, then purchasing a new story, and this, of course, suited the boys well enough. In consequence of these and other purchases, he was one day allowed to win a five-dollar “greenback” in a prize package. He was somewhat annoyed afterwards to find that he had been used really as the “decoy duck.” The news of his winnings flew through the carriage, and even through the train, and the enterprising youngster soon [pg 20]sold a dozen or so of the same packages, and, it may be added, the same number of purchasers. There were no more prizes that day!
