It had been my intention, when I came to Paris, to go on to Australia; but as I passed through the various countries of Europe I saw that the shadow of panic and failure rested upon all. I had, indeed, completed many arrangements for going back to Melbourne, and I had got a letter of credit from the representative in London of the Bank of New South Wales for £20,000; but the project fell through, because of the panics and disasters of the year '57.

In '58—I may mention at this place—I had a few months' leisure on my hands, and decided to give my wife and her stepmother, Mrs. George T. M. Davis, a trip about Europe. We traveled through France, Italy, Austria, and Germany. At Leghorn we went to witness a spectacular exhibition of the storming of Sebastopol. It was a magnificent spectacle, realistic in the extreme. No one was astonished, when, at the very point where the city was taken and the fort blown up, a terrific burst of light appeared. Instantly thereafter we discovered that the explosion had been too real. The theater was ablaze. Of course there was a wild rush for the doors. Panic followed, and while we were crushed and trampled in the press, we got off finally with only severe bruises. The official report next morning gave the casualties as forty killed and one hundred injured; but the Government suppressed the facts. The dead and injured far outnumbered these figures.

We had an experience in Naples which illustrated the every-day use of words by the English that to us are offensive. We were aboard one of the dirty little steamboats that were found in that part of the Mediterranean, and, as the weather was somewhat rough, the bilge water had been shaken about in the night, and a terrible odor pervaded every nook of the vessel. An English nobleman was aboard, and in the morning, wishing to say something agreeable to my wife's stepmother, he said: "Madam, didn't you observe a dreadful stink in your state-room last night?" The blood of all the Pomeroys was fired by this supposed indelicacy. "Sir!" Mrs. Davis retorted, stepping back with great hauteur. I immediately advanced and said, "My dear madam, the gentleman meant no harm. The English prefer that 'nasty' word to something more refined and less shocking. He meant no insult." The Englishman explained; but the lady was not appeased.

At Rome I was astonished to find a delegation awaiting me. I could not make out what it meant, when I was hailed as a "liberator." There were many "liberators" in the Italy of those days; and I supposed they mistook me for Mazzini, or Garibaldi, or Orsini, or some other leader of the people. "Whom do you think I am?" I asked. "Citizen George Francis Train," they said. This was too much for my credulity. What was worse still, they asked me to go with them. I did not know just where they expected me to go, or what they would expect me to do when I got there. Things were pretty black in Italy just then, and I did not desire to be mixed up in "revolutions," or liberty movements, or conspiracies. However, they assured me that it would be all right, and I consented to go. I went through a dark alley, to their meeting place, and was told more things about the revolution than I cared to know or to remember. It was not a healthful kind of knowledge to carry about Italy with one.

But the curious thing about the affair was that here, as everywhere, these people regarded me as a leader of revolts—Carbonari, La Commune, Chartists, Fenians, Internationals—as if I were ready for every species of deviltry. For fifteen years five or six governments kept their spies shadowing me in Europe and America.

From Italy we passed into Austria. At Vienna we had the opportunity, through the courtesy of some friends near the court, of witnessing a splendid celebration by the Order of Maria Teresa, which was the most gorgeous and most beautiful spectacle I think I have ever seen. We soon returned to London, and then came to America, where I was to resume work on projects and enterprises here.

CHAPTER XIX

BUILDING THE ATLANTIC AND GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY
1857-1858

The great project of a connecting railway between the Eastern and the Middle Western States had been in my mind for some years. Queen Maria Cristina's fortune, which was then the greatest possessed by any woman in the world, seemed to me to offer a solution of the problem. I had no idea, of course, of attempting to use her fortune in any schemes of my own and for my own interest, but I saw at once that I could utilize her idle wealth to the tremendous advantage of the United States and, at the same time, render a service to her.