Sacramento is the terminus of the Western Pacific Railway, from which the Central Pacific extends east towards the Rocky Mountains. The railway workshops of the Company are located here, and occupy a large extent of ground. They are said to be very complete and commodious.
Many of the passengers by the train, whom we had brought on from San Francisco, or picked up along the road, descended here; and I was very glad to observe that amongst them were the Chinamen, who relieved us from their further most disagreeable odour. After a short stoppage, and rearrangement of the train, we were off again, toiling up the slopes of the Sierra Nevada—the Switzerland of California.
CHAPTER XXIV.
ACROSS THE SIERRA NEVADA.
Rapid Ascent—The Trestle-Bridges—Mountain Prospects—"Placers"—Sunset—Cape Horn—Alta—The Sierras by Night—Contrast of Temperatures—The Snow-Sheds—The Summit—Reno—Breakfast at Humboldt—The Sage-Brush—Battle Mount—Shoshonie Indians—Ten Mile Cañon—Elko Station—Great American Desert—Arrival at Ogden.
We had now begun the ascent of the difficult mountain country that separates the Eastern from the Western States of the Union, and through which the Central Pacific Railway has been recently constructed and completed—one of the greatest railway works of our time. As we advance, the scenery changes rapidly. Instead of the flat and comparatively monotonous country we have for some time been passing through, we now cross deep gullies, climb up steep ascents, and traverse lovely valleys. Sometimes we seem to be enclosed in mountains with an impenetrable barrier before us. But rushing into a tunnel, we shortly emerge on the other side, to find ourselves steaming along the edge of a precipice.
What struck me very much was the apparent slimness of the trestle-bridges over which we were carried across the gullies, in the bottom of which mountain torrents were dashing, some fifty or a hundred feet below us. My first experience of such a crossing was quite startling. I was standing on the platform of the last car, looking back at the fast vanishing scene—a winding valley shut in by pine-clad mountains which we had for some time been ascending,—when, glancing down on the track, instead of solid earth, I saw the ground, through the open timbers of the trestle-bridge, at least sixty feet below me! The timber road was only the width of the single iron track; so that any one looking out of the side carriage-windows would see sixty feet down into space. The beams on which the trestle-bridge is supported, are, in some cases, rested on stone; but oftener they are not. It is not easy to describe the sensation first felt on rattling over one of these trembling viaducts, with a lovely view down some mountain gorge, and then, perhaps, suddenly plunging into a dark cutting on the other side of the trestle. But use is everything; and before long I got quite accustomed to the sensation of looking down through the open woodwork of the line on to broken ground and mountain torrents rushing a hundred feet or more below me.
We left Sacramento at 2 p.m., and evening was coming on as we got into the mountains. Still, long before sunset we saw many traces of large "placers," where whole sides of the hills had been dug out and washed away in the search for gold; the water being brought over the hill-tops by various ingenious methods. Sometimes, too, we came upon signs of active mining, in the water-courses led across valleys at levels above us, consisting of wooden troughs supported on trestles similar to those we are so frequently crossing. In one place I saw a party of men busily at work along the mountain side, preparatory to letting the water in upon the auriferous ground they were exploring.