CHICAGO
Towards five o’clock Michigan Lake came into view and spread before us
as broad as the sea, with tides coming in and going out, and steamships
gliding on the blue water. At the last station before Chicago a boy came
into the car piled up to his head with advertisements, which he scattered
over us; he was followed by a man with a metal placard on his chest, who
thrust into our hands a card setting forth the virtues of Savoie Hotel,
and promised to occupy himself with our luggage. Most of the passengers
left the train at Hyde Park, the first stoppage at Chicago, but we
pushed on to Central Station. Over the city hung a sky laden with smoke;
everywhere black chimneys rose in the air.
Savoie Hotel is situated on the European place, the liveliest quarter of
Chicago. We took an apartment in the second storey, for 2 dollars ahead,
with board and lodging.
Desirous to keep the strictest incognito, we registered our names in the
hotel-book, “Mr. and Mrs. Sergius,” for fear of spies. Dr. Pokrovski took
the name of “Castorio,” which suited his profession admirably.
Our four days’ stay at Chicago seemed very short to me. Every morning
we went to visit Chicago’s World Fair. The exhibition commemorated the
fourth century of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. The
day was Sunday. A holiday crowd pushed and elbowed about the various
attractions, middle-class people for the most part, and negro beauties
and dandies. We walked through the sections of the Exhibition, where
nearly all the exhibited objects are provided with the curt warning:
“Hands off!” The Americans in general, do not shine for their politeness!
Whilst standing before a show-window, a policeman approached us and asked
what nation we belonged to. We said we were a company of French tourists
who had come to see the World’s Fair.
Midway Pleasance is the most animated part of the Exhibition. We entered
a theatre where a Japanese play was going on. The actors’ faces were
covered with terrifying masks, and they were all making atrocious
grimaces. After the play a troup of native musicians, sitting on the
floor, played “Yankee Doodle” and “God save the Queen” on their national
instruments. The spectators in the first row took off their coats and
remained in their shirt sleeves without ceremony. Close to the Japanese
theatre the Esquimaux performed marvels in the way of throwing lances
through rings. They invited the passers-by to enter their enclosure and
compete with them in a curious sport, consisting in breaking big sticks
into small bits by the means of a long whip. The Esquimaux came from
Greenland; they are American subjects but do not speak English, they can
say only: “Give money!”
On the quay where stands the monument of Christopher Columbus, the
largest elevator in the whole world brought us in the space of one
minute, on the roof of the “Liberal Arts,” where we visited a beautiful
picture gallery containing the works of the most renowned painters
of different countries. The Russian pictures occupy the first place,
but our manufactory section is very poorly represented. In one of the
pavilions of the United States we saw vegetables and fruit piled about
in profusion. The fruit of California is three times larger than in
any other country; tempting-looking apples and pears, coming from Los
Angeles, were enormous in proportion, but quite tasteless.
Foreign artists are greatly appreciated in America, and very highly paid.
When walking through the musical section we were agreeably surprised to
hear a first-class artiste play one of Chopin’s nocturnes in a masterly
manner, with a faultless technique and a perfect phrasing.
“Beauties” brought over from all parts of the world black, white and
yellow, are exposed in a large hall, in stalls behind a railing, just
like wild beasts. One of the prettiest girls, dressed in our Russian
national costume, appeared to be a Polish Jewess, who had taken the first
prize in a recent “Beauty Competition.”
A picture of “Nana,” the heroine of Zola’s last novel, painted by
Soukharowski (a Russian painter), is exhibited in Chicago, and much is
made of that canvas.
We went to see a Museum of wax-figures, and saw among other curiosities,
a big giant and a negress dwarf with no arms, who played the drum with
her toes, and wrote her autograph holding a pen between her toes. Next
to her a pretty white-skinned dwarf resembling a pretty wax-doll,
attired in a beautiful evening dress, was exhibited, who looked with
disdain, mixed with jealousy, at her dusky companion who attracted more
attention than her dainty little person. In the adjoining room a gipsy
fortune-teller told people’s future through examination of the palms of
their hands. I wanted my hand read and asked Mr. Shaniavski to accompany
me to her booth. From the very beginning the old gipsy woman made
formidable mistakes, taking Mr. Shaniavski for my husband. Nevertheless
she predicted a lot of charming things to me, and I left her booth with a
smiling face. After dinner we went to a Venetian Feast organised on the
central basin of Michigan Lake, which was transformed into a Venetian
canal. Gondolas floated on the lake, lit up by Chinese lanterns.
Chicago is a dirty, noisy commercial town, and looks a tremendously busy
place. The smoke of the factories blacken the sky; the soot stains the
sparrows, making them look quite black. We walked through the broad,
straight streets of the Great Grey City, stopping before the shop
windows. We saw a shop bearing the inscription “Food and dog’s medicine.”
In a hair-dressing shop a woman was sitting on a high seat with her back
to the window with wonderfully splendid hair falling down to the ground.
We entered the shop to see if the woman’s face corresponded to her
beautiful golden hair, but, alas, she appeared to be very unattractive.
Her hair served as advertisement for a patent elixir to make the hair
grow. How people have sometimes to earn their bread and butter.
The heat is intense. Everybody grumbled at the weather being so hot. The
head-porter of our hotel, who is a grand personage, too languid to talk,
in order not to be obliged to answer a hundred times a day to the same
complaint of the visitors about the heat, “Awfully hot, isn’t it?” stuck
a placard over the entrance door saying, “Yes, it is very warm to-day!”
Mme. Beurgier couldn’t sleep for the heat, and went one night for a
stroll on the outskirts of Michigan Common. She saw heaps of rags here
and there on the grass; she touched one of them with her foot, and oh,
what a jump she gave when from the rags strange and somewhat terrifying
sounds proceeded, that indicated a drunken sleep. It appeared that the
whole place swarmed with houseless vagrants, evidently prepared to camp
out-of-doors till morning.
During our four days’ stay at Chicago there had been three awful
accidents at the Exhibition. First: A collision between two steamboats
on the lake. We were crossing the bridge at that moment and saw a man
extracted from the water with broken legs. Second: A terrible fire had
broken out in the very centre of the Exhibition. An immense building
was burnt to the ground. Dr. Pokrovski saw people jumping down from the
eighteenth storey and killed on the spot. Third: A captive-balloon had
burst, causing the death of all the passengers.
2nd July.—We left Chicago this morning. Our train rolls rapidly towards
San Francisco. We have six days of railway. The temperature being very
hot, everyone put himself at his ease; my travelling-companions also
took off their coats—American fashion. We drink iced-water the whole day
to refresh ourselves. Our “Johnny” lay full stretched on the sofa in
the private saloon; Mme. Beurgier tried to make him take a more correct
attitude, but to make remarks to the darkie was as fruitless as to sponge
his nigger face white. He paid no attention whatever to her reproofs and
continued his _dolce far niente_, munching an apple with beautiful white
teeth.
Our train rolls on full speed. We are tossed about as on the sea.
“Johnny” came to make our beds early in the evening. We had to lie down
directly, for when the beds were made, there was no place to sit down.
3rd July.—The railway line is uninteresting and monotonous and the
heat something dreadful. At five o’clock dinner was served in the
restaurant-car, consisting of broth and roast beef surrounded by slices
of oranges.
4th July.—We crossed the Mississippi in the night, and are rolling
through fields of Indian wheat and beetroot. The heat has still increased
and our car is like an overheated stove; the dust entering through the
windows transformed us into chimney-sweeps.
We cross now the States of Nebraska and Wyoming. The villages and
towns are all illuminated with electricity. We read now and then the
word “Saloon” gambling house written on the front of the houses. I
have remarked that at the railway-stations nearly all the doors bear
the inscription “Entrance forbidden.” It is curious how many things
are forbidden in this “Free Country!” It is also very odd that the
carriage-roads are not closed before the passage of trains; there is only
an inscription on wooden poles “Look out for the cars!”
5th July.—I woke up in the night shivering with cold. The train was
rolling through the states of Utah, across the Great American Desert. The
country is bare and dull, and very poorly peopled; not a tree or a blade
of grass is to be seen. The great want in the place is water. A chain
of snow peaks appeared on the horizon. We are crossing the Cordilleras
mountains and find ourselves at eight thousand feet above the level of
the sea. Soon after lunch the Valley of Salt Lake spread before us. Our
train runs amid green pastures. We pass little hamlets and orchards,
which seem very green and beautiful to me after the long weary stretches
of the desert we had just left. Thatched ranches (farms) and bungalows
peeped from beneath the trees. We are in the legendary “Far West.” Here
is a long haired Red Indian, from Cooper’s Books, galloping on the road
on a small lean pony, followed by a cow-boy wearing a broad-brimmed hat.
It only wants “Buffalo-Bill” in person to complete the picture. Whilst
stopping at a station we saw a young Indian “squaw” (woman), sitting
cross-legged on the platform, wrapped up in a red blanket, carrying on
her back her papoos (baby), lashed up in its hammock. American travellers
ought to be accustomed to Red-Indians, nevertheless they surveyed with
great interest the young savage female, who showed her nursling to them
for the sum of 15 cents. She refused outright to show her “papoos” to a
passenger who offered only five cents to her. The local colour begins
to disappear in the “Far West,” the Red-Indians throw off their plumes
and deer-skins for a flannel shirt and a felt hat. They were plentiful
enough about here some years ago, but the railroad, with its settlements
has swept them back. The railway-line was being built during five years,
the Red-Indians destroying it continually. In the olden days, a touch
of adventure was lent to the journey by the fear of an attack from
hostile Indians. We are told that even now there is danger on the line
from Indian bandits. Our train passes with illuminated “Pullmans” in the
centre of the plains, and my imagination getting the better of me, I seem
to see our train on that lone prairie, surrounded by Red Indians. When I
went to sleep, visions of fighting savages woke me up with a suppressed
scream, as I fancied I was being scalped, and I find that it is only the
shriek of the locomotive, and the war-whoop of the Indians are only the
outcries of our pacific “Johnny” announcing that we were approaching
Salt Lake City. The capital of the Mormons’ State is surrounded by an
amphitheatre of hills, over which the Mormons’ Hierarchy still dominates.
In 1890, Welford Woodruff, the President of the Mormon Church, received,
it is said, a revelation from God, commanding that all Mormons should
give up their plural wives, and they are satisfied now with one consort.
We are in a long, narrow pass: above us hang abrupt rocks and below flows
a serpentine river. Our train makes right angle turns, and it seems as if
we were turning all the time on the same spot. Towards night we entered
the States of Sierra Nevada; we are now at only a day’s journey from
Mexico. The towns, rivers and mountains have Mexican names. A Mexican
pedlar selling curios and silver filigree jewellery, entered our car.
Sergy bought me a finely worked brooch in the form of a mandoline.
We enter a narrow wooden tunnel built to protect the line from stone
avalanches, which took a whole hour to go through.
6th July.—At dawn we speeded through the ranches of California, and soon
approached the town of Sacramento. Our train dashes now on its way to
the Pacific. We felt already the sea breeze, and soon appeared the Gulf
of San Francisco and the waters of the Pacific Ocean. Our train was
pushed by workmen along an artificial dike to the station of Bonifacio,
after which we rolled towards Oakland, where our train after having been
divided in three parts, was put on a ferry. When we touched the other
shore the train was made up again, and took us straight to San Francisco.