Across The Plains | Page 5

door and stepped forth, as from a
caravan by the wayside. We were near no station, nor even, as far as I
could see, within reach of any signal. A green, open, undulating
country stretched away upon all sides. Locust trees and a single field of
Indian corn gave it a foreign grace and interest; but the contours of the
land were soft and English. It was not quite England, neither was it
quite France; yet like enough either to seem natural in my eyes. And it
was in the sky, and not upon the earth, that I was surprised to find a
change. Explain it how you may, and for my part I cannot explain it at
all, the sun rises with a different splendour in America and Europe.
There is more clear gold and scarlet in our old country mornings; more
purple, brown, and smoky orange in those of the new. It may be from
habit, but to me the coming of day is less fresh and inspiriting in the
latter; it has a duskier glory, and more nearly resembles sunset; it seems
to fit some subsequential, evening epoch of the world, as though
America were in fact, and not merely in fancy, farther from the orient
of Aurora and the springs of day. I thought so then, by the railroad side
in Pennsylvania, and I have thought so a dozen times since in far
distant parts of the continent. If it be an illusion it is one very deeply
rooted, and in which my eyesight is accomplice.
Soon after a train whisked by, announcing and accompanying its
passage by the swift beating of a sort of chapel bell upon the engine;
and as it was for this we had been waiting, we were summoned by the
cry of "All aboard!" and went on again upon our way. The whole line,
it appeared, was topsy-turvy; an accident at midnight having thrown all
the traffic hours into arrear. We paid for this in the flesh, for we had no
meals all that day. Fruit we could buy upon the cars; and now and then
we had a few minutes at some station with a meagre show of rolls and
sandwiches for sale; but we were so many and so ravenous that, though
I tried at every opportunity, the coffee was always exhausted before I
could elbow my way to the counter.

Our American sunrise had ushered in a noble summer's day. There was
not a cloud; the sunshine was baking; yet in the woody river valleys
among which we wound our way, the atmosphere preserved a sparkling
freshness till late in the afternoon. It had an inland sweetness and
variety to one newly from the sea; it smelt of woods, rivers, and the
delved earth. These, though in so far a country, were airs from home. I
stood on the platform by the hour; and as I saw, one after another,
pleasant villages, carts upon the highway and fishers by the stream, and
heard cockcrows and cheery voices in the distance, and beheld the sun,
no longer shining blankly on the plains of ocean, but striking among
shapely hills and his light dispersed and coloured by a thousand
accidents of form and surface, I began to exult with myself upon this
rise in life like a man who had come into a rich estate. And when I had
asked the name of a river from the brakesman, and heard that it was
called the Susquehanna, the beauty of the name seemed to be part and
parcel of the beauty of the land. As when Adam with divine fitness
named the creatures, so this word Susquehanna was at once accepted
by the fancy. That was the name, as no other could be, for that shining
river and desirable valley.
None can care for literature in itself who do not take a special pleasure
in the sound of names; and there is no part of the world where
nomenclature is so rich, poetical, humorous, and picturesque as the
United States of America. All times, races, and languages have brought
their contribution. Pekin is in the same State with Euclid, with
Bellefontaine, and with Sandusky. Chelsea, with its London
associations of red brick, Sloane Square, and the King's Road, is own
suburb to stately and primeval Memphis; there they have their seat,
translated names of cities, where the Mississippi runs by Tennessee and
Arkansas; and both, while I was crossing the continent, lay, watched by
armed men, in the horror and isolation of a plague. Old, red Manhattan
lies, like an Indian arrowhead under a steam factory, below anglified
New York. The names of the States and Territories themselves form a
chorus of sweet and most romantic vocables: Delaware, Ohio, Indiana,
Florida, Dakota,