To cross such a plain is to grow homesick for the mountains. I longed
for the Black Hills of Wyoming, which I knew we were soon to enter, like
an ice-bound whaler for the spring. Alas! and it was a worse country
than the other. All Sunday and Monday we travelled through these sad
mountains, or over the main ridge of the Rockies, which is a fair match
to them for misery of aspect. Hour after hour it was the same unhomely
and unkindly world about our onward path; tumbled boulders, cliffs that
drearily imitate the shape of monuments and fortifications—how drearily,
how tamely, none can tell who has not seen them; not a tree, not a patch
of sward, not one shapely or commanding mountain form; sage-brush,
eternal sage-brush; over all, the same weariful and gloomy colouring,
grays warming into brown, grays darkening towards black; and for sole
sign of life, here and there a few fleeing antelopes; here and there, but
at incredible intervals, a creek running in a cañon. The plains have a
grandeur of their own; but here there is nothing but a contorted
smallness. Except for the air, which was light and stimulating, there
was not one good circumstance in that God-forsaken land.
I had been suffering in my health a good deal all the way; and at last,
whether I was exhausted by my complaint or poisoned in some wayside
eating-house, the evening we left Laramie, I fell sick outright. That
was a night which I shall not readily forget. The lamps did not go out;
each made a faint shining in its own neighbourhood, and the shadows were
confounded together in the long, hollow box of the car. The sleepers lay
in uneasy attitudes; here two chums alongside, flat upon their backs like
dead folk; there a man sprawling on the floor, with his face upon his
arm; there another half seated with his head and shoulders on the bench.
The most passive were continually and roughly shaken by the movement of
the train; others stirred, turned, or stretched out their arms like
children; it was surprising how many groaned and murmured in their sleep;
and as I passed to and fro, stepping across the prostrate, and caught now
a snore, now a gasp, now a half-formed word, it gave me a measure of the
worthlessness of rest in that unresting vehicle. Although it was chill,
I was obliged to open my window, for the degradation of the air soon
became intolerable to one who was awake and using the full supply of
life. Outside, in a glimmering night, I saw the black, amorphous hills
shoot by unweariedly into our wake. They that long for morning have
never longed for it more earnestly than I.
And yet when day came, it was to shine upon the same broken and unsightly
quarter of the world. Mile upon mile, and not a tree, a bird, or a
river. Only down the long, sterile cañons, the train shot hooting and
awoke the resting echo. That train was the one piece of life in all the
deadly land; it was the one actor, the one spectacle fit to be observed
in this paralysis of man and nature. And when I think how the railroad
has been pushed through this unwatered wilderness and haunt of savage
tribes, and now will bear an emigrant for some £12 from the Atlantic to
the Golden Gates; how at each stage of the construction, roaring,
impromptu cities, full of gold and lust and death, sprang up and then
died away again, and are now but wayside stations in the desert; how in
these uncouth places pig-tailed Chinese pirates worked side by side with
border ruffians and broken men from Europe, talking together in a mixed
dialect, mostly oaths, gambling, drinking, quarrelling and murdering like
wolves; how the plumed hereditary lord of all America heard, in this last
fastness, the scream of the “bad medicine waggon” charioting his foes;
and then when I go on to remember that all this epical turmoil was
conducted by gentlemen in frock coats, and with a view to nothing more
extraordinary than a fortune and a subsequent visit to Paris, it seems to
me, I own, as if this railway were the one typical achievement of the age
in which we live, as if it brought together into one plot all the ends of
the world and all the degrees of social rank, and offered to some great
writer the busiest, the most extended, and the most varied subject for an
enduring literary work. If it be romance, if it be contrast, if it be
heroism that we require, what was Troy town to this? But, alas! it is
not these things that are necessary—it is only Homer.
Here also we are grateful to the train, as to some god who conducts us
swiftly through these shades and by so many hidden perils. Thirst,
hunger, the sleight and ferocity of Indians are all no more feared, so
lightly do we skim these horrible lands; as the gull, who wings safely
through the hurricane and past the shark. Yet we should not be forgetful
of these hardships of the past; and to keep the balance true, since I
have complained of the trifling discomforts of my journey, perhaps more
than was enough, let me add an original document. It was not written by
Homer, but by a boy of eleven, long since dead, and is dated only twenty
years ago. I shall punctuate, to make things clearer, but not change the
spelling.
“_My dear Sister Mary_,—_I am afraid you will go nearly crazy when
you read my letter_. _If Jerry_” (_the writer’s eldest brother_)
“_has not written to you before now_, _you will be surprised to heare
that we are in California_, _and that poor Thomas_” (_another
brother_, _of fifteen_) “_is dead_. _We started from_ — _in July_,
_with plenly of provisions and too yoke oxen_. _We went along very
well till we got within six or seven hundred miles of California_,
_when the Indians attacked us_. _We found places where they had
killed the emigrants_. _We had one passenger with us_, _too guns_,
_and one revolver_; _so we ran all the lead We had into bullets_
(_and_) _hung the guns up in the wagon so that we could get at them
in a minit_. _It was about two o’clock in the afternoon_; _droave
the cattel a little way_; _when a prairie chicken alited a little way
from the wagon_.
“_Jerry took out one of the guns to shoot it_, _and told Tom drive
the oxen_. _Tom and I drove the oxen_, _and Jerry and the passenger
went on_. _Then_, _after a little_, _I left Tom and caught up with
Jerry and the other man_. _Jerry stopped Tom to come up_; _me and
the man went on and sit down by a little stream_. _In a few
minutes_, _we heard some noise_; _then three shots_ (_they all struck
poor Tom_, _I suppose_); _then they gave the war hoop_, _and as many
as twenty of the redskins came down upon us_. _The three that shot
Tom was hid by the side of the road in the bushes_.
“_I thought the Tom and Jerry were shot_; _so I told the other man
that Tom and Jerry were dead_, _and that we had better try to
escape_, _if possible_. _I had no shoes on_; _having a sore foot_,
_I thought I would not put them on_. _The man and me run down the
road_, _but We was soon stopped by an Indian on a pony_. _We then
turend the other way_, _and run up the side of the Mountain_, _and
hid behind some cedar trees_, _and stayed there till dark_. _The
Indians hunted all over after us_, _and verry close to us_, _so close
that we could here there tomyhawks Jingle_. _At dark the man and me
started on_, _I stubing my toes against sticks and stones_. _We
traveld on all night_; _and next morning_, _just as it was getting
gray_, _we saw something in the shape of a man_. _It layed Down in
the grass_. _We went up to it_, _and it was Jerry_. _He thought we
ware Indians_. _You can imagine how glad he was to see me_. _He
thought we was all dead but him_, _and we thought him and Tom was
dead_. _He had the gun that he took out of the wagon to shoot the
prairie Chicken_; _all he had was the load that was in it_.
“_We traveld on till about eight o’clock_, _We caught up with one
wagon with too men with it_. _We had traveld with them before one
day_; _we stopt and they Drove on_; _we knew that they was ahead of
us_, _unless they had been killed to_. _My feet was so sore when we
caught up with them that I had to ride_; _I could not step_. _We
traveld on for too days_, _when the men that owned the cattle said
they would_ (_could_) _not drive them another inch_. _We unyoked the
oxen_; _we had about seventy pounds of flour_; _we took it out and
divided it into four packs_. _Each of the men took about 18 pounds
apiece and a blanket_. _I carried a little bacon_, _dried meat_,
_and little quilt_; _I had in all about twelve pounds_. _We had one
pint of flour a day for our alloyance_. _Sometimes we made soup of
it_; _sometimes we_ (_made_) _pancakes_; _and sometimes mixed it up
with cold water and eat it that way_. _We traveld twelve or fourteen
days_. _The time came at last when we should have to reach some
place or starve_. _We saw fresh horse and cattle tracks_. _The
morning come_, _we scraped all the flour out of the sack_, _mixed it
up_, _and baked it into bread_, _and made some soup_, _and eat
everything we had_. _We traveld on all day without anything to eat_,
_and that evening we Caught up with a sheep train of eight wagons_.
_We traveld with them till we arrived at the settlements_; _and know
I am safe in California_, _and got to good home_, _and going to
school_.
“_Jerry is working in_ —. _It is a good country_. _You can get from
50 to 60 and 75 Dollars for cooking_. _Tell me all about the affairs
in the States_, _and how all the folks get along_.”
And so ends this artless narrative. The little man was at school again,
God bless him, while his brother lay scalped upon the deserts.