We seat ourselves in our comfortable arm-chairs, without the mortification of removing single gentlemen and the trouble of reversing seats to accommodate our party. The ladies are not compelled to sit in isolation, by the side of passengers who use the car-floor as a spittoon. We may chat together upon family-matters without awakening the vivid interest of any mother-in-Israel mounting guard in front of us over a bandbox. The gentlemen may smoke, if the ladies like it, and, so long as they keep the windows open, nobody shall say them nay. We all enjoy a sense of security and independence, which is like occupying a well-provisioned Gibraltar on wheels. If we have a sick friend with us, he need never leave his mattress till he reaches San Francisco. Should his situation become critical en route, the best medical attendance is at hand,—every through-train being obliged by statute to carry a first-class physician and surgeon, with a well-stocked apothecary-compartment. But our present party are all of them in fine health and spirits; so we may dismiss the doctor's shop from our consideration.
The whistle blows just as the ladies have hung their bonnets in the rack, and the gentlemen exchanged their boots for slippers. We wave adieu to the Atlantic coast and the friends who have come to see us off. A few minutes more, and we pass through the Bergen Tunnel. The remainder of the day is spent amid that wild mountain and forest scenery which the Erie Railroad has made familiar to the whole travelling-population of our Eastern States. At Salamanca we strike the Atlantic and Great Western's separate line. On the way thence to Dayton we shall pass a number of long trains, made up of platform-cars heavily laden with barrels carrying East the riches of the Pennsylvania oil-region. These have connected with our main road by a couple of branches built especially for the accommodation of the petroleum-trade. From Dayton to Cincinnati we shall traverse one of the finest farming-regions of the world, meeting trains laden with beeves, swine, packed pork, lard, grain, corn, potatoes, and every variety of produce that bears transportation. By this time, also, Ohio vine-culture has attained a development which justifies an occasional train entirely devoted to pipes of still Catawba and baskets of the sparkling brands.
From Cincinnati to St. Louis by way of Vincennes, we run through the southern portions of Indiana and Illinois, threading varied and picturesque scenery all the way, unless we have seen the Egyptian prairies so many times before that they pall on us before we reach the Mississippi bluff opposite St. Louis. Till we strike the prairie, our course is among bold, well-timbered hills, which now and then we are obliged to tunnel, and by the side of charming pastoral streams whose green bottom-land is shaded by noble plane-trees and cotton-woods. Certain passages in the scenery between Cincinnati and Vincennes are beautiful as a dream of fairy-land. Every few miles we continue to meet freight-trains laden with all the well-known products of the Western field and dairy. Twice, before we reach St. Louis, a splendid cortege of passenger-carriages shall whiz by us on the southern track,—and each time we shall have seen the daily through-express from San Francisco.
The St. Louis through-passengers will be ready, on our arrival, in cars of their own. We shall switch them on behind us with little over half-an-hour's detention, and strike for Leavenworth, taking Jefferson City by the way. The country we now traverse is rolling, well watered, and well timbered along the streams. Our road has so stimulated production in the mines of Missouri that we frequently pass on the switch a freight-train taking out bar and pig iron to San Francisco, or on the other track a train laden with copper ore going to the East for reduction. We have hitherto said nothing of the innumerable trains which pass us or switch out of our way, carrying through-freight between New York and San Francisco. We are still surrounded by excellent farming-land, a fine grain, fruit, and general-produce country. Not till we leave Leavenworth can we be said fairly to have entered the central wilds of the continent. We are now west of the Missouri River, and for a distance of two hundred miles farther shall traverse a country possessing certain individual characteristics which entitle it to a name of its own among the divisions of our physical geography. This is the proper place for an indication of those divisions, generalized to the broadest terms.
In passing from sea to sea, the American traveller crosses ten well-defined regions:—
1. The Atlantic slope of the Alleghany Range.
2. The eastern incline of the Mississippi basin.
3. The high divides of the short Missouri tributaries.
4. The Great Plains proper.
5. The Rocky-Mountain system of ridges and intramontane plateaus.