Forty Thousand Miles Over Land and Water. Ethel Gwendoline Vincent

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СКАЧАТЬ drive. We should have liked now to have stayed another day to have seen some "trotting races," and made an expedition to Pullman City, the Utopian village erected by Mr. Pullman for his large colony of workers, employed solely in the construction of his Palace Cars. The clean, well-paved streets; the model houses, with improved ventilation and sanitary methods; the fine gardens, and the complete absence of poverty, renders the little village quite celebrated. We had a letter of introduction to Mr. Pullman, through whose express permission alone the works are viewed.

      We left Chicago at noon, by the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy route, familiarly known as the "C. B. and Q." A dining car attached to the train provided luncheon, and we travelled in a Pullman, with inlaid and polished panels, plush curtains, velvet cushions, and looking-glasses. The heat was terrible, and we gasped and panted through the long hours of the afternoon, taking refuge at last on the platform outside the car, sitting on camp-stools, heedless of dust and grit, and the deafening roar, as the on-rushing cars thundered over the rails, willing to endure any discomfort for the chance of a breath of air. In the evening, at dusk, we crossed the mile-long bridge over the Missisippi, and looked into the rolling volume of turbid waters. "Blackie" gave us a little supper, neatly and cleanly served on a movable table, of blackberries, bread and butter, cold tongue and eggs, iced tea and lemonade—so much nicer than the hurried meal at the railway buffet. The car was turned upside down, and beds made up at 9 p.m.

      We found ourselves the next morning on the muddy banks of the Missouri, the second of America's great rivers and unnavigable, owing to the large sandbanks which form between the swift currents. Soon we passed Council Bluffs, with Omaha, a large town on the broad plateau just opposite. Yesterday we were journeying through the State of Illinois, during the night through that of Iowa, and now, through Nebraska, Lincoln, the capital of which we had just passed.

      I believe every one, from the days of early childhood, from books of voyages and travel, forms some vague idea of the prairies. We were nearing them now, and I was longing for my first sight of that vast deserted plain, "the blankness of desolation." The scene was growing wilder and wilder; dreary, uninhabited expanses were succeeded by wooden shanties, clustering round a small store with a few cultivated fields and low-lying marshes; horses and cows were hobbled in the vicinity of the village to prevent their straying away to the plains. The sunflower, a smaller kind than ours, flourished luxuriously in large patches; but that was the only evidence of nature, usually so prolific, here so grim and stingy. The day was cold and gloomy, with frequent scuds of rain.

      At length we seemed to leave all human habitations behind; and in the majesty of loneliness we were crossing the desert, on a single track, in the midst of the lone prairie lands.

      Those beautiful rolling plains—millions of acres, covered with the short, yellow buffalo grass—extend to the horizon in undulating lines, a wide, uninhabited, lifeless, uplifted solitude. The blue of the sky overhead and the dried-up grass are the only blending of colours. Monotonous as they are, there is the greatest fascination about the prairies. Involuntarily you cannot help looking for some sign of life, some tree or green plant. Sometimes too, far-distant specks resolve themselves into the cattle, roaming at will over the boundless plain.

      Buffaloes there are to be seen now and again, but they are dying out fast. The indigenous prairie dog alone remains. These curious little animals are of a grayish-brown colour, always fat, with the long body and bushy tail of a dog, and the head of a ferret. They scamper away at the first sign of the train to their "villages," uttering a short, yelping bark. Their mounds are burrowed as much as two or three yards underground; and the rattlesnake and the burrowing owl are supposed always to share the home.

      In the evening we had a grand sight, when a storm swept with terrific force over the prairie. A dense blackness enveloped the previously lurid sky, against which the forked lightning played in jagged edges, and the thunder pealed overhead, mingling with the rattling of the hailstones. The engine ploughed along,—we were swallowed up in darkness and gloom, till the sky lightened and gradually broke, and from a confused mass of purple clouds the rays of the setting sun converged into a pale gold mist on the distant hills.

      When the storm cleared we found ourselves in the fertile little valley of the Platte River, the narrow stream winding and circling among green meadow-land, the banks fringed with waving grass and rushes; a scene of quiet beauty.

      That night we longed to see a prairie fire, but I suppose such good fortune rarely happens to any traveller. It must be an awful but marvellously grand scene. The heavens and the horizon are first seen like a furnace, and then the long line of flame, banked up with dark smoke clouds, comes sweeping on its resistless course. The wonderful thing is how they are ever checked, but most of these prairie fires are said to burn themselves out. And when they approach within two or three miles' range of the settler's ranch a counter fire is started, which eats up all before it, and, joining with the greater fire, leaves it nothing to feed upon. The flames will often travel twenty miles an hour, and leap angrily into the air to a height of fifteen feet. Sometimes they are started by the careless dropping of a match, or some ashes shaken from a pipe, but more often from the spark of a locomotive. It touches the grass, dry as tinder, and the breeze fans into life the little flame destined so soon to burn millions of acres. There is a very curious feature in connection with these prairie fires. So long as they rage, nothing but tufted or prairie-grass will grow; but so soon as they cease, trees, shrubs, and bushes of all sorts spring up spontaneously—in fact it ceases to be prairie. "It is an ill-wind which blows nobody good," for the next year the grass comes darker and richer than ever, and strange as it seems, this burnt-up grass is the finest feeding pasture in the world for cattle and horses. With this unfulfilled wish we lay down to sleep peacefully.

      At three in the morning, we were awoke with a dreadful shock, under which the car shivered and upheaved. We heard the crash of falling china, and seemed to feel the furious application of the air brakes, which brought us to a dead stop.

      In the awful stillness that succeeded, the conductor rushed through the cars and begged us to "keep still." Every head was protruded from between the curtains, and there were frightened exclamations to be heard from all sides. The suspense that ensued was terrible.

      Too soon the truth came. There was our engine smashed to pieces off the line, the tender high in the air, telescoping the luggage van. Ten feet off was another engine of another passenger train. It was eastward-bound, and therefore on the main track, waiting for us, the westward train, to pass on to the siding. The signal, a covered head-light, had gone out; the fireman moving to replace it, accidentally waved a lighted lantern, which the driver of our train took as a signal that the east-bound train had gone into the siding instead, and, at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour, we continued running into the stationary passenger-train! The drivers and firemen of both engines saved themselves by jumping off, and we all had a providential escape from what might have proved a terrible accident. We were forty miles from a village, and eighty from a town and any surgical aid. A messenger was sent to walk to the nearest telegraph station, six miles away, and nothing remained to us but to wait. We looked out on the silent prairie, the stars solemnly keeping watch in the deep blue vault of heaven, thinking of the strange situation, till dawn broke and the sun rose. Then we could penetrate to the scene of the disaster. There was much débris scattered about the track, and the broken engines lay on the ground facing each other. The corpses of some murdered fowls were inside the luggage van, and, suspended in mid-air, I saw at once my new saratoga, a last American acquisition. The remainder of the baggage was more or less injured, and two trunks were completely wrecked, and their contents strewn on the ground. We were resigned, and prepared to spend the day on the prairie, when, sooner than we thought possible by the earliest calculation, two relief engines arrived, and drew off each train. The eastward-bound was first sent on its way rejoicing, and we followed. The black porter had been very much to the fore about seven o'clock, providing breakfast for all, as those bringing provisions had calculated on arriving at Denver in the early morning. "Guess I'se best man on the car this morning," he said, with a grin, showing his white teeth. For the remainder of the journey we suffered dreadfully from the heat, and the sand penetrated СКАЧАТЬ