One thing the Western Pacific Railroad does that every railroad should do. It publishes a pamphlet, containing a relief map of its system, and a paragraph or two about every station on the line, giving the history of the place (if it has any), telling the altitude, the distance from terminal points, and how the town got its name.
From this pamphlet I judge that some one who had to do with the building of the Western Pacific Railroad, or at least with the naming of stations on the line, possessed a pleasantly catholic literary taste. Gaskell, Nevada, one stopping place, is named for the author of "Cranford"; Brontë, in the same State, for Charlotte Brontë; Poe, in California, for Edgar Allan Poe; Twain for Mark Twain; Harte for Bret Harte, and Mabie for Hamilton Wright Mabie. Other stations are named for British Field Marshals, German scientists, American politicians and financiers, and for old settlers, ranches, and landmarks.
Had there not been washouts on the line shortly before we journeyed over it, I might not have known so much about this little pamphlet, but during the night, when I could not sleep because of the violent rocking of the car, I read it with great care. Thus it happened that when, towards morning, we stopped, and I raised my curtain to find the ground covered with a blanket of snow, I was able to establish myself as being in the Sierras, somewhere in the region of the Beckwith Pass—which, by the way, is by two thousand feet, the lowest pass used by any railroad entering the State of California.
Some time before dawn the roadbed became solid and I slept until summoned by my companion to see the cañon of the Feather River.
Dressing hurriedly, I joined him at the window on the other side of the car (I have observed that, almost invariably, that is where the scenery is), and looked down into what I still remember as the most beautiful cañon I have ever seen.
The last time I had looked out it had been winter, yet here, within the space of a few hours, had come the spring. It gave me the feeling of a Rip Van Winkle: I had slept and a whole season had passed. Our train was winding along a serpentine shelf nicked into the lofty walls of a gorge at the bottom of which rushed a mad stream all green and foamy. Above, the mountains were covered with tall pines, their straight trunks reaching heavenward like the slender columns of a Gothic cathedral, the roof of which was made of low-hung, stone-gray cloud—a cathedral decked as for the Easter season, its aisles and altars abloom with green leaves, and blossoms purple and white.
Throughout the hundred miles for which we followed the windings of the Feather River Cañon, our eyes hardly left the window. Now we would crash through a short, black tunnel, emerging to find still greater loveliness where we had thought no greater loveliness could be; now we would traverse a spindly bridge which quickly changed the view (and us) to the other side of the car. Now we would pass the intake of a power plant; next we would come upon the plant itself, a monumental pile, looking like some Rhenish castle which had slipped down from a peak and settled comfortably beside the stream.
Once the flagman who dropped off when the train stopped, brought us back some souvenirs: a little pink lizard which, according to its captor, suited itself to a vogue of the moment with the name of Salamander; and a piece of glistening quartz which he designated "fools' gold." And presently, when the train was under way again, we saw, far down at the water's edge, the "fools" themselves in search of gold—two old gray-bearded placer-miners with their pans.
At last the walls of the cañon began to melt away, spreading apart and drifting down into the gentle slope of a green valley starred with golden poppies. Spring had turned to summer—a summer almost tropical, for, at Sacramento, early in the afternoon, we saw open street-cars, their seats ranged back-to-back and facing outwards, like those of an Irish jaunting-car, running through an avenue lined with a double row of palms, beneath which girls were coming home from school bareheaded and in linen sailor suits.
Imagine leaving New York on a snowy Christmas morning, and arriving that same afternoon in Buffalo, to find them celebrating Independence Day, and you will get the sense of that transition. We had passed from furs to shirtsleeves in a morning.