Gunnar learns from his mates that Philadelphia is one of the largest cities of the world, with nearly a million and a half inhabitants, and that in America only New York and Chicago are larger.
After a while, however, Gunnar has had enough of Philadelphia, and takes a ticket for Pittsburg, the steel and iron capital, where immigrants never need be in want of a post. He travels without a change of carriages between the two towns, traversing the whole of Pennsylvania. Innumerable branch lines diverge in all directions, for towns and villages are everywhere. Here a railway runs to a mine, there another to a district rich in maize and tobacco, and here again a third to a timber yard. At the station stand long trains laden with grain, planks, petroleum, cotton, reaping machines, coal—in fact all the wares that the earth can produce by its fertility, and men by the labour of their hands.
The country becomes hilly, and the train winds about through the northernmost part of the Alleghany Mountains. Gunnar lets his eyes rove with strained attention over the dark woods, the waving fields, and the smoke rising from villages and farmhouses, when an American comes and sits down on the seat just in front of him.
"I see that you are a newcomer in America," says the stranger. "It may then interest you to know that the crest of the Alleghany Mountains, composed of granite, gneiss, and slates, is the watershed between the Atlantic and the Mississippi. You must not suppose that these mountains are everywhere as low as here; far down south-west, in North Carolina, there are summits more than six thousand feet high. Maize and fruit are grown in the valleys, and there are fine forests of pines and foliage trees. And there are places where you lose yourself in dense clumps of rhododendrons and climbing plants. And there are wild recesses where men never go, but where bears and wolves have their haunts among broken branches and twigs, fallen trunks and moss-grown granite boulders, and where nothing is changed since the time when the Indian tribes went on the war-path. But where are you bound for?"
"I am going to Pittsburg to look for work, for I was a smith at home."
"Oh, Pittsburg! I was foreman in some steel works there for two years, and I have never seen anything more wonderful. You know that this town has sprung up out of the earth as if by magic. When petroleum springs were discovered, it increased at double the rate, and now it is one of the world's largest industrial towns, and, as regards iron and steel, the first in America. Here materials are manufactured to the value of more than nineteen million pounds annually. Almost inexhaustible deposits of coal are found in the neighbourhood. More than twenty railway lines converge to Pittsburg, which also has the advantage of three navigable rivers, and a network of canals. And round about the town are suburbs full of machine factories, steel works, and glass works. The neighbourhood has a million of inhabitants, a third of them foreigners, mostly Slavs, Italians, and Hungarians. You have a kind of feeling of oppression when you see from a height this forest of reeking factory chimneys, and when you think of the unfortunate men that slave under this cloud of coal smoke. There is a hammering and beating everywhere, and a rumble of trains rolling over the rails. Overheated furnaces bubble and boil, and sparks fly out under the steam hammers. At night you might think you were in the bottom of a volcano, where lava boils under the ashes ready to roll out and destroy everything. A weird reddish-yellow light flames forth from thousands of fires, lighting up the under side of the thick smoke cloud. I am sorry for you if you are going to Pittsburg. You had much better travel straight on to Chicago. Not that Chicago is a paradise, but there are better openings there, and you will be nearer the great West with its inexhaustible resources."
"Thanks for your advice. I am the more ready to follow it because I always intended to get to Chicago sometime."
"From Pittsburg," continues the American, "a line runs direct to the large town of St. Louis on the Mississippi. St. Louis is a junction of great importance, for not only do a whole series of great railway lines meet there, but also innumerable steamboats ply from there up the Mississippi and Missouri, and to all the large towns on their tributaries. St. Louis is the centre of all the winding waterways which intersect all parts of the United States. And there you can travel on comfortable flat-bottomed steamers along the main river to New Orleans, a great harbour for the export of cotton. You can well conceive what a blessing and source of wealth this river is to our country. It is of immense extent, for it is the longest river in the world, if we take its length from the sources of the Missouri in the Rocky Mountains, and in the area of its basin it is second only to the Amazons. Its plain is exceedingly fruitful, and far around its banks grain shoots up out of the soil to feed many millions of human beings. And its waterways, ramifying like the nerves of a leaf, facilitate communication and the transport of goods between the different States.
"You should just see how the great river rises in spring. You might think you were sailing on a large lake, and, as a matter of fact, it floods an area as large as Lake Superior. If the Mississippi is a blessing to men, on the other hand in spring it exacts a heavy tax from them. The vast volumes of brown, muddy water often cut off sharp bends from the river-bed and take short cuts through narrow promontories. By such tricks the length of the river is not infrequently shortened by ten or twelve miles here and there. But you can imagine the trouble this causes. A town standing on such a bend may one fine day find itself six miles from the bank. In another the inhabitants are in danger of being at any time drowned like cats. A railway bridge may suddenly be suspended over dry land, while the river has swept away rails and embankment a little farther off. Our engineers have great difficulty in protecting constructions from the capricious river in spring. Not a year passes without the Mississippi causing terrible destruction and inflicting great loss on those who dwell near its banks, especially in cattle.