Silverland | Page 7

fashion of
Peter's nose, and Bridget's toes,
And Apollouius' hair.
Early on the morrow we embarked on the 'Arlington,' which, for the next two months, was to be more or less our home. The interior of these Palace Cars, I suppose, has been often enough described, the saloon, bright with polished woods, gilding, and harmonious colours; opening into state rooms that you may turn into hermitages if you will, the cosy tables, so temptingly spread at meal hours, the compact caboose, more wonderful in its faculties of production and reproduction than any conjuror's hat, the sleeping appliances of sliding seats and descending panels, from which arise a double tier of couches decorously curtained, more than spacious enough for the repose of ordinary mortality. But it needs long and actual experience of these institutions, to do full justice to their merits.
We were, perhaps, exceptionally favoured. Purveyors like the Commodore are rare; and one might not always find such amiable and amenable officials as the conductor of the Arlington, or waiters deft and zealous as his sable subordinates. Nevertheless, 'Henry' meekest and merriest of created beings by nature was, when the devil of drink possessed him, too often overcome by an insane desire of 'putting a head' on the world in general, and on his coloured brethren, in particular. He had repented tearfully, and, at our intercession, had been forgiven seven times at least, when the Commodore, refusing again to temper justice with mercy, left him in ward amongst the Mormons. I trust that the wife, whose letters or silence were the invariable excuse for his backslidings, has, long ere this, taken the simple sinner back to her ample bosom.
Smoothly, if not swiftly, we swept on through the rolling corn-lands of Illinois; and there first began to realise the marvels of Western agriculture. The rail traverses, we were told, one maize-plot of a thousand acres, in a ring-fence; and it was easy to believe this; for, on either hand, far beyond ken, bare stalks peered above the shallow snow. Further south in the State, there is farming on a yet more colossal scale; but we saw quite enough, to feel assured that the reports which have reached Europe fall rather short of the truth.
The price of land varies, of course, in proportion to its remoteness from town or rail perhaps from twenty to twenty-five dollars an acre would be a fair average, after Chicago is left some score of miles behind. In Iowa scarcely inferior in its fertile resources prices are still more moderate. Taking this tariff, and allowing that it is worth something to abide a little while longer under the old Dominion, I admire rather the energy than the wisdom of the settler who prefers hewing his way, inch by inch, through a Canadian clearing, to the trenching of soft prairie loam, where neither stock nor stone wil blunt a ploughshare. A year ago, one of our party watched an Iowa farmer breaking up virgin soil: the first furrow ran straight, for hard on a league, before the team was turned.
Crossing the Mississippi at Burlington, we rolled on, without notable let or hindrance, till Council BluEs towered on our right. A pile-bridge, chiefly supported by Missouri ice, took us into Omaha, a dreary depressing town enough; though, they say, its future looms large, and it can boast already of having made the fortunes of George Francis Train. Here we halted another night for repairs; and, henceforward, time-tables became things of the past.
To English ears a snow-blockade may sound a small matter, of lighter interest than a single grave casualty. Do you know what it means out here?
It means nothing less than utter stagnation of commerce, involving ruin to many, privation and distress to all a moral twilight, during which none can commune with his fellows, save by use of the overtaxed wires, that often prove faithless to their trust. Figures in these parts are not always to be swallowed 'unsalted '; but, after careful inquiry, we could not believe that the estimate of eight million dollars, set on the merchandise locked up in this fatal spring, was much exaggerated. On the hardships, perils, and sore sickness mortal in not a few cases endured by those who were actually- in thrall, I have not space to dwell; yet, if you had traversed a car, in which forty human beings had been cabined for over a week, with every outlet barred against the cold, cooking their scanty victuals on a couple of greasy stoves, and sleeping almost pell-mell, you might have thought this last item not the lightest in the heavy score.
And with w T hom is reckoning to be made?
The scope of Western malison is so extensive, that it may be doubted if the Directors of the Union Pacific have deserved all the strong