The following three or four months (Sept. to Dec. '79) I made quite a
western journey, fetching up at Denver, Colorado, and penetrating the
Rocky Mountain region enough to get a good notion of it all. Left
West Philadelphia after 9 o'clock one night, middle of September, in a
comfortable sleeper. Oblivious of the two or three hundred miles across
Pennsylvania; at Pittsburgh in the morning to breakfast. Pretty good
view of the city and Birmingham--fog and damp, smoke, coke-furnaces,
flames, discolor'd wooden houses, and vast collections of coal-barges.
Presently a bit of fine region, West Virginia, the Panhandle, and
crossing the river, the Ohio. By day through the latter State--then
Indiana--and so rock'd to slumber for a second night, flying like
lightning through Illinois.