At Ogden we changed cars from the Union Pacific to the Central Pacific
line of railroad. The change was doubly welcome; for, first, we had
better cars on the new line; and, second, those in which we had been
cooped for more than ninety hours had begun to stink abominably. Several
yards away, as we returned, let us say from dinner, our nostrils were
assailed by rancid air. I have stood on a platform while the whole train
was shunting; and as the dwelling-cars drew near, there would come a
whiff of pure menagerie, only a little sourer, as from men instead of
monkeys. I think we are human only in virtue of open windows. Without
fresh air, you only require a bad heart, and a remarkable command of the
Queen’s English, to become such another as Dean Swift; a kind of leering,
human goat, leaping and wagging your scut on mountains of offence. I do
my best to keep my head the other way, and look for the human rather than
the bestial in this Yahoo-like business of the emigrant train. But one
thing I must say, the car of the Chinese was notably the least offensive.
The cars on the Central Pacific were nearly twice as high, and so
proportionally airier; they were freshly varnished, which gave us all a
sense of cleanliness an though we had bathed; the seats drew out and
joined in the centre, so that there was no more need for bed boards; and
there was an upper tier of berths which could be closed by day and opened
at night.
I had by this time some opportunity of seeing the people whom I was
among. They were in rather marked contrast to the emigrants I had met on
board ship while crossing the Atlantic. They were mostly lumpish
fellows, silent and noisy, a common combination; somewhat sad, I should
say, with an extraordinary poor taste in humour, and little interest in
their fellow-creatures beyond that of a cheap and merely external
curiosity. If they heard a man’s name and business, they seemed to think
they had the heart of that mystery; but they were as eager to know that
much as they were indifferent to the rest. Some of them were on nettles
till they learned your name was Dickson and you a journeyman baker; but
beyond that, whether you were Catholic or Mormon, dull or clever, fierce
or friendly, was all one to them. Others who were not so stupid,
gossiped a little, and, I am bound to say, unkindly. A favourite
witticism was for some lout to raise the alarm of “All aboard!” while
the rest of us were dining, thus contributing his mite to the general
discomfort. Such a one was always much applauded for his high spirits.
When I was ill coming through Wyoming, I was astonished—fresh from the
eager humanity on board ship—to meet with little but laughter. One of
the young men even amused himself by incommoding me, as was then very
easy; and that not from ill-nature, but mere clodlike incapacity to
think, for he expected me to join the laugh. I did so, but it was
phantom merriment. Later on, a man from Kansas had three violent
epileptic fits, and though, of course, there were not wanting some to
help him, it was rather superstitious terror than sympathy that his case
evoked among his fellow-passengers. “Oh, I hope he’s not going to die!”
cried a woman; “it would be terrible to have a dead body!” And there was
a very general movement to leave the man behind at the next station.
This, by good fortune, the conductor negatived.
There was a good deal of story-telling in some quarters; in others,
little but silence. In this society, more than any other that ever I was
in, it was the narrator alone who seemed to enjoy the narrative. It was
rarely that any one listened for the listening. If he lent an ear to
another man’s story, it was because he was in immediate want of a hearer
for one of his own. Food and the progress of the train were the subjects
most generally treated; many joined to discuss these who otherwise would
hold their tongues. One small knot had no better occupation than to worm
out of me my name; and the more they tried, the more obstinately fixed I
grew to baffle them. They assailed me with artful questions and
insidious offers of correspondence in the future; but I was perpetually
on my guard, and parried their assaults with inward laughter. I am sure
Dubuque would have given me ten dollars for the secret. He owed me far
more, had he understood life, for thus preserving him a lively interest
throughout the journey. I met one of my fellow-passengers months after,
driving a street tramway car in San Francisco; and, as the joke was now
out of season, told him my name without subterfuge. You never saw a man
more chapfallen. But had my name been Demogorgon, after so prolonged a
mystery he had still been disappointed.
There were no emigrants direct from Europe—save one German family and a
knot of Cornish miners who kept grimly by themselves, one reading the New
Testament all day long through steel spectacles, the rest discussing
privately the secrets of their old-world, mysterious race. Lady Hester
Stanhope believed she could make something great of the Cornish; for my
part, I can make nothing of them at all. A division of races, older and
more original than that of Babel, keeps this close, esoteric family apart
from neighbouring Englishmen. Not even a Red Indian seems more foreign
in my eyes. This is one of the lessons of travel—that some of the
strangest races dwell next door to you at home.
The rest were all American born, but they came from almost every quarter
of that Continent. All the States of the North had sent out a fugitive
to cross the plains with me. From Virginia, from Pennsylvania, from New
York, from far western Iowa and Kansas, from Maine that borders on the
Canadas, and from the Canadas themselves—some one or two were fleeing in
quest of a better land and better wages. The talk in the train, like the
talk I heard on the steamer, ran upon hard times, short commons, and hope
that moves ever westward. I thought of my shipful from Great Britain
with a feeling of despair. They had come 3000 miles, and yet not far
enough. Hard times bowed them out of the Clyde, and stood to welcome
them at Sandy Hook. Where were they to go? Pennsylvania, Maine, Iowa,
Kansas? These were not places for immigration, but for emigration, it
appeared; not one of them, but I knew a man who had lifted up his heel
and left it for an ungrateful country. And it was still westward that
they ran. Hunger, you would have thought, came out of the east like the
sun, and the evening was made of edible gold. And, meantime, in the car
in front of me, were there not half a hundred emigrants from the opposite
quarter? Hungry Europe and hungry China, each pouring from their gates
in search of provender, had here come face to face. The two waves had
met; east and west had alike failed; the whole round world had been
prospected and condemned; there was no El Dorado anywhere; and till one
could emigrate to the moon, it seemed as well to stay patiently at home.
Nor was there wanting another sign, at once more picturesque and more
disheartening; for, as we continued to steam westward toward the land of
gold, we were continually passing other emigrant trains upon the journey
east; and these were as crowded as our own. Had all these return
voyagers made a fortune in the mines? Were they all bound for Paris, and
to be in Rome by Easter? It would seem not, for, whenever we met them,
the passengers ran on the platform and cried to us through the windows,
in a kind of wailing chorus, to “come back.” On the plains of Nebraska,
in the mountains of Wyoming, it was still the same cry, and dismal to my
heart, “Come back!” That was what we heard by the way “about the good
country we were going to.” And at that very hour the Sand-lot of San
Francisco was crowded with the unemployed, and the echo from the other
side of Market Street was repeating the rant of demagogues.
If, in truth, it were only for the sake of wages that men emigrate, how
many thousands would regret the bargain! But wages, indeed, are only one
consideration out of many; for we are a race of gipsies, and love change
and travel for themselves.