To Walt Whitman this event had a highly emotional significance. It came
in the same year that the Suez Canal was opened, and to Whitman the two
events marked a great step forward in the advance of civilization. In
his poem, “A Passage to India,” Whitman writes of the continental
railroad:
I see over my own continent the Pacific railroad surmounting every
barrier,
I see continual trains of cars winding along the Platte carrying
freight and passengers,
I hear the locomotives rushing and roaring, and the shrill
steam-whistle,
I hear the echoes reverberate through the grandest scenery in the
world,
I cross the Laramie plains, I note the rocks in grotesque shapes, the
buttes,
I see the plentiful larkspur and wild onions, the barren, colorless,
sage-deserts,
I see in glimpses afar or towering immediately above me the great
mountains, I see the Wind river and the Wahsatch
mountains,
I see the Monument mountain and the Eagle’s Nest, I pass the
Promontory, I ascend the Nevadas,
I scan the noble Elk mountain and wind around its base,
I see the Humboldt range, I thread the valley and cross the river,
I see the clear waters of lake Tahoe, I see forests of majestic pines,
Or crossing the great desert, the alkaline plains, I behold enchanting
mirages of waters and meadows,
Marking through these and after all, in duplicate slender lines,
Bridging the three or four thousand miles of land travel,
Tying the Eastern to the Western sea,
The road between Europe and Asia.