FOOTNOTE:
[7] These photographs cannot be reproduced here, which I regret, as they were very well done.
LETTER IX.
JOURNEY FROM WHEELING TO COLUMBUS.— FIRE IN THE MOUNTAINS.— MR. TYSON'S STORIES.— COLUMBUS.— PENITENTIARY.— CAPITOL.— GOVERNOR CHASE.— CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS.— ARRIVAL AT CINCINNATI.
Columbus, Oct. 23rd, 1858.
The letter which I sent you from this place this morning will have told you of our arrival here, but it was closed in such haste that I omitted many things which I ought to have mentioned. It, moreover, carried us only to Zanesville, and I ought to have told you that the view continued very pretty all the way to this place, and the day having cleared up at noon, we had a brilliant evening to explore this town.
Before describing Columbus, however, I shall go back to some omissions of a still older date; for I ought to have told you of a grand sight we saw the day we passed the Alleghany Ridge. On the preceding evening Mr. Tyson received a telegraphic message to say that an extensive fire was raging in the forest; it is supposed to have been caused by some people shooting in the woods. It must have been a grand sight to the passengers by the train from which we had separated, and which went on during the night through the scene of the conflagration, for the fire was much more extensive than those which are constantly taking place, and which are passed by unheeded,—unhonoured with a telegraphic notice. When we passed by the place next morning it was still burning vigorously, but the daylight rendered the flames almost imperceptible. It was curious, however, to see the volumes of smoke, which we first perceived in a hollow. The fire was then travelling down the side of the mountain; and long after we passed the immediate spot we saw the fire winding about the mountains, spreading greatly, in the direction of the wind and making its way even against it, though it was blowing with considerable violence. The people in the neighbourhood were busily employed in trying to save their hayricks from destruction. Mr. Tyson said they would probably succeed in this, though the whole of the forest was likely to be burnt, as the fire would wind about among the mountains and pass from one to another for perhaps two months, unless a heavy rain put it out. This we hope has been the case, as it poured in torrents all the following night when we were at Wheeling.
Another circumstance we ought to have mentioned was our passing through a very long tunnel, called the Board Tree Tunnel, about 340 miles from Baltimore. This tunnel, after having fallen in, has only been repaired within the last two months. The history of this catastrophe, and of the mode of remedying it, forms quite an incident in the history of the railway, and shows with what resolution difficulties in this country are overcome. To reopen the tunnel it was clear would be a work of time, so Mr. Tyson resolved to run a new temporary railway for three miles over the mountain which had been tunnelled, and this was accomplished by 3000 men in ten days. We saw the place where this road had passed, and the zig-zag line by which the mountain was crossed. The road seems positively to overhang the precipice, and reminded me of a mountain pass in Switzerland—as, indeed, the whole of the road here does. Mr. Tyson himself drove the first train over, and he said his heart was in his mouth when, having got to the top, he saw the descent before him, and the engine and train on a precipice where the least contretemps would have plunged the whole into the abyss below; but happily all went right, and till within the last two months this temporary road has been used. It was really quite frightful to look up and think a train could pass over such a place, the grade being 420 feet in a mile, or 1 in 12½; but you will one day be able to form some idea of it, as a photograph was taken, and Mr. Tyson will give us a copy of it. This is certainly a wonderful country for great enterprises, and the Pennsylvania Central Railway, by which we contemplate recrossing the Alleghanies, is in some respects a still more remarkable undertaking, though the height at which the mountains are crossed on that line is not so great as that on the Baltimore and Ohio line, which, as I told you in my last, is at an elevation of 2700 feet. It was long supposed that such a feat could not be surpassed, but Mr. Tyson says that, encouraged by this, a railway now crosses the Tyrolean Alps at a somewhat higher level.