Diary in America, Series Two | Page 7

frequent accidents arising from these causes
has occasioned the Americans to invent a sort of shovel, attached to the
front of the locomotive, which takes up a cow, tossing her off right or
left. At every fifteen miles of the rail-roads there are refreshment rooms;
the cars stop, all the doors are thrown open, and out rush the passengers

like boys out of school, and crowd round the tables to solace
themselves with pies, patties, cakes, hard-boiled eggs, ham, custards,
and a variety of railroad luxuries, too numerous to mention. The bell
rings for departure, in they all hurry with their hands and mouths full,
and off they go again, until the next stopping place induces them to
relieve the monotony of the journey by masticating without being
hungry.
The Utica railroad is the best in the United States. The general average
of speed is from fourteen to sixteen miles an hour; but on the Utica they
go much faster. [See note 1.] A gentleman narrated to me a singular
specimen of the ruling passion which he witnessed on an occasion
when the rail-cars were thrown off the road, and nearly one hundred
people killed, or injured in a greater or less degree.
On the side of the road lay a man with his leg so severely fractured, that
the bone had been forced through the skin, and projected outside his
trowsers. Over him hung his wife, with the utmost solicitude, the blood
running down from a severe cut received on her head, and kneeling by
his side was his sister, who was also much injured. The poor women
were lamenting over him, and thinking nothing of their own hurts; and
he, it appears, was also thinking nothing about his injury, but only
lamenting the delay which would be occasioned by it.
"Oh! my dear, dear Isaac, what can be done with your leg?" exclaimed
the wife in the deepest distress.
"What will become of my leg!" cried the man. "What's to become of
my business, I should like to know?"
"Oh! dear brother," said the other female, "don't think about your
business now; think of getting cured."
"Think of getting cured--I must think how the bills are to be met, and I
not there to take them up. They will be presented as sure as I lie here."
"Oh! never mind the bills, dear husband--think of your precious leg."

"Not mind the bills! but I must mind the bills--my credit will be
ruined."
"Not when they know what has happened, brother. Oh! dear, dear--that
leg, that leg."
"D---n the leg; what's to become of my business," groaned the man,
falling on his back from excess of pain.
Now this was a specimen of true commercial spirit. If this man had not
been nailed to the desk, he might have been a hero.
I shall conclude this chapter with an extract from an American author,
which will give some idea of the indifference as to loss of life in the
United States.
"Every now and then is a tale of railroad disaster in some part of the
country, at inclined planes, or intersecting points, or by running off the
track, making splinters of the cars, and of men's bones; and
locomotives have been known to encounter, head to head, like two
rams fighting. A little while previous to the writing of these lines, a
locomotive and tender shot down the inclined plain at Philadelphia, like
a falling star. A woman, with two legs broken by this accident, was put
into an omnibus, to be carried to the hospital, but the driver, in his
speculations, coolly replied to a man, who asked why he did not go
on?-- that he was waiting for a full load."
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Note 1. The railroads finished in America in 1835 amounted in length
to 1,600 miles; those in progress, and not yet complete, to 1,270 miles
more. The canals completed were in length 2,500 miles, unfinished 687
miles.

VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER THREE.
TRAVELLING.

The most general, the most rapid, the most agreeable, and, at the same
time, the most dangerous, of American travelling is by steam boats. It
will be as well to give the reader an idea of the extent of this navigation
by putting before him the lengths of some of the principal rivers in the
United States.
+==================================================
===+======+ Ý ÝMiles.Ý
+-----------------------------------------------------+------+ ÝMissouri and
Mississippi Ý 4490Ý
+-----------------------------------------------------+------+ ÝDo. to its
junction with the Mississippi Ý 3181Ý
+-----------------------------------------------------+------+ ÝMississippi
proper, to its junction with the MissouriÝ 1600Ý
+-----------------------------------------------------+------+ ÝDo. to the Gulf
of Mexico Ý 2910Ý
+-----------------------------------------------------+------+ ÝArkansas River,
a branch of the Mississippi Ý 2170Ý
+-----------------------------------------------------+------+ ÝSt Lawrence
River, including the Lakes Ý 2075Ý
+-----------------------------------------------------+------+ ÝPlatte River, a
branch of the Missouri Ý 1600Ý
+-----------------------------------------------------+------+ ÝRed River, a
branch of the Mississippi Ý 1500Ý