AMERICAN TRAVEL

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR"]

Ix the following letter, a young English girl gives a bright an& vivid account of the experiences of herself and her sister on a• journey from New England to the West:—

"Chicago, September 8, 1870.

"Dear —,—Yes, here indeed we are ! the dream of my youtla is accomplished, I am at the West,—the new country, with all its. freshness, is around me, the prairies stretch for hundreds of miles between me and either ocean.

"People asked us before we started if we ladies were not afraid. to travel two thousand miles and more through unknown country,. without escort ; and we answered that we neither of us felt the least nervousness, indeed, that the thought of our independence. heightened the pleasure of anticipation, and that our faith in the- politeness and kindness of railway officials and fellow-travellers towards unescorted ladies was entire. A party of bright, pleasant. friends, however, were to pass the first day and night with us.

"Very early in the morning we left Philadelphia. Such a stranger dull morning it was !—the air thick and heavy, depressing one with a sense of weight and discomfort. Our fellow-travellers told. us that the haze from which we were suffering was the smoke of burning Canadian forests. Hundreds of milers of wood were on fire.

"All morning we travelled through the cultivated hill and dale. of the Susquehanna Valley, the scenery being very much that of the Thames above Maidenhead. We were in a slow train, chosea on purpose that we might see the country and study the people who would get in and out at the wayside stations. Then we left. the Susquehanna, and rushed up the narrower, wilder valley of the- " blue Juniata," which, however, was never blue, but always brown or green. Such a romantic little river !—with steep, wooded hills, and sudden bends and turns that seem to transform time stream into hill-locked lakes. Whether it was the charm of the name, or the memory of the "bright Alferata " and her "warrior bold," I do not know ; but I felt a love at first sight fort the wild little river, and I was sorry when we turned away from its wooded banks to grind up by steep grades the sides of the Alleghenies. For miles you creep up one mountain spur, trees above you, trees below you. No break to the trees but the railway cutting ; then you round the edge, and a deep valley ma before you ; while the mountain takes a great sweep in the form. of a horse-shoe, and your fellow-traveller points to another mountain spur right across the deep ravine, and tells you you, will be there in fifteen minutes. Slowly the train winds on, the deep ravine below, the wild mountain above you ; then you round the extreme bend, and the mountain's arms seem to enclose you ; and then your engine puffs and pants, and the carriages creak, and the wheels grind slowly on, and the last spur is reached and the horse-shoe is behind you, and you are on the top of the Alleghenies. Such a view is spread before you,—range after range of hills, and hundreds of acres of trees ; no house, no, steeple, nothing in sight to tell you that the world holds anything but trees and mountains. It was getting dusk as we made the descent, and half the glories of the scene were hidden from us ;. but as we swung down in the twilight, we could still see that are wider apart, and two by two face each other, four seatsncampment in the woods, without shelter and almost without making a • compartment. We had each a window, and clothing or food, and of his escape, and fight with bloodhounds. could watch with interest and delight how the country changes, The time passed away quite pleasantly till the conductor came to and the stations and villages grew hourly wilder and more western make up our berths. He pulled the seats to pieces, put down in appearance, and could mark how the rivers and streams, which mattresses, spread sheets and counterpanes, arranged pillows and before in all our journeying had flowed eastward, now set in the bolsters, and hung up in front heavy woollen curtains, behind contrary direction, hurrying one and all to swell the waters of the these we crept, one into the top shelf, the other into the mighty Mississippi. At two o'clock we reached Pittsburg, the lower. The novelty of the position, the jolting of the car, American Birmingham, a smoky, dirty city, lying in a cleft of the constant and steady downfall of grit from the engine kept the hills, placed there seemingly with the hope that the smoke me awake for hours. Through the windows, just on a level with should have no chance of escape from its tall chimney-tops. Here my pillow, I could see the stars swinging and rolling backwards we dined and changed cars. In twenty minutes we were again in and forwards, and the black telegraph lines dipping up and down motion. There was some little difficulty in finding sleeping-berths, across them. Then the train pulled up at a little shanty to take in and for the first dozen miles we travelled in the ordinary cars, water, and lights flashed up and down, and men shouted to each which we found crowded and dusty, filled apparently with emi- other, and then the bell rang, and away we rushed off again under grants on their way to the far West ; poor tired women, with the swinging heavens. And who can tell of the horrors of the worn-out, dirty children, and broad-shouldered, brown-faced grit ! When we awoke in the early dawn we found our pillows young men of the Mark Tapley type. There were evident signs of and everything about us covered with a thick layer of this pleasant kind feeling and good-fellowship amongst these poor travellers, substance, and we had to call to mind the successful enterprise of and we noticed that each woman had two or three brown_ Benzoni and Layard before we had the courage to attempt to handed chevaliers ready to carry bundles, nurse a child, arise. With much perseverance and more patience we performed or bring the weary baby and its mother tin cups of ice-water our simple toilet ; the only position in which this could be done, from the filter with which every car is supplied. We caught owing to the shaking of the cars, was by kneeling on your shelf, the spirit of the place, and soon established most friendly relations Your head firmly pressed against the roof above. This over, we with our neighbours ; a fat, solemn little fellow of two years old staggered to the rear of the car and washed our faces in the going fast asleep on my knee with the utmost readiness. My never-failing ice-water. Soon our mattresses, pillows, and cur- small friend had a well-shaped head and earnest little face, and I tains disappeared, and we were seated once more on our red thought as I watched him that perhaps my knee pillowed the head velvet cushions, the windows open, and the sweet fresh air pour- of the future President of this wide country. I was really quite ing in, and the wide green ocean lying like a kindly future before sorry when at the next stopping-place the conductor came to us, us, mysterious in the dim, tender lights, blue, grey, and gold, of and told us that there was now room in the saloon, and he would sunrise.

show us the way ; it seemed almost cruel to go away and leave our "After breakfast our Montana friend joined us with the morn- poor friends, and take refuge, by means of extra dollars, in the jug paper, and on the rolling priaries, four thousand miles away

spacious, clean, comfortable saloon, the first-class of these Western from Paris, we read the words of Jules Fevre, uttered twelve trains. We found excellent places, and had our belongings stowed hours ago, declaring for the deposition of the Emperor and the away around us, and then went to the dressing-room at the end Republic of France. There's Chicago ! ' said our companion, of the car, where you can wash your face and hands with scented in the midst of the war-talk which followed. We sped on, past soap in ice-cold water,—a most refreshing occupation. acres of level ground covered with one-storeyed wooden houses,

"All through that bright September afternoon we rushed at past immense lumber yards, machine-shops, gas-works, and express speed over the prairies, that wide green ocean of high through streets and across railways, and pulled up at last in a

grass. For many miles the ground was low and marshy, and big, dusty, dark, wood-built, barn-like station. There on the covered for acres with small white water-lilies, three or four heads platform stood our friends—whom last we had seen in a London growing on a stem a foot high. The edge of the railway track was drawing-room—looking bright, fresh, and handsome as if there bordered by a little thicket of sunflowers or wild chrysanthemums, were no such things as dust and cinder-grit and impossible toilets !

the prairie flower surely that Shawondasee fell in love with— "And now we have been for some days in this wonderful city, Can you see the picture? The bright border of flaunting yellow arrangements. The streets remind me of Paris, so evenly paved, heads, the large patches of dazzling white blossoms, the glimpses so clean, and so broad, with wide side walks and rows of trees ; the of blue water, and the great green plain which would have stretched pavement is of wood, and the carriage rolls over it with delightful away for ever had not the sky come down and stopped it in a ease and quiet. There are handsome shops and warehouses built cloud of grey-blue haze. We watched the sun set behind low lines of stone and marble, ornamented with pillars and cornices and of crimson clouds, and while the air was full of golden light, French roofs. There are monster hotels, theatres, concert-halls, stopped at a prairie village for supper. The meal was spread in art galleries, and long boulevards going out for miles towards the the large wooden refreshment-room of the station ; we were very country, lined with handsome houses, as fine as any you might see hungry, and rushed with one accord to the food; but though our in Fifth Avenue, New York. Between these lie the acres of neat movements had been swift, we found the table almost filled, and white and green wooden houses, where the workmen are located.

the meal half over. Such is Western expedition ! "We have been to see an elevator, a huge wooden tower where

"We were soon in our seats again, whirling over the wide green grain is stored. We watched the cars backed under its great earth in the grey twilight, which soon grew to darkness, made archway, and the yellow loads shovelled out into a trough, and visible by two miserable lamps. I retired into a dark corner to whisked up over our heads in little buckets fastened on a muse and meditate, or to slumber ; it was only seven o'clock, strap ; this unloading went on at the rate of ten trucks in

forests of trees were above and below us. We stopped for the rather too early to go to bed. So I got out my book, I tried every night at Cresson, a cluster of small houses, a railway sta- position in our compartment, held my book at every angle to try tion, and a monster hotel, perched among the trees half- to catch some ray of light, but in vain. Never was a helpless

way down the mountain side. After tea we took seats in the damsel more miserable ; but help came to Andromeda before the rather barn-like dining-room, which was cleared for dancing, and beast, and my Perseus appeared before I was in utter despair. He lighted by numberless small lamps in tin sconces. There was a came truly like an angel of light, for he bore in his hand the crowd of children—those typical American children who haunt guard's lamp, and, approaching me with a bow, proposed to hold every fashionable resort—the little girls dressed in the latest fashion, it for me while I read ; and in five minutes we were comfortably with the self-possessed manners of women who have been in society seated, the lamp between us, he deep in his paper, I in mine. My for fifty years. We watched the antics of the poor little souls till Perseus was a broad-shouldered young man, with a handsome face, the heart was heavy, for in their looks and ways was nothing of and soft Western accent. After we had read an hour or more

the meek loveliness of childhood. he began to talk, and I found that my companion came from Next morning rose bright and clear ; all the dull haze was gone, Helena, in the territoiy of Montana. We talked, of course, about the and a sweet, fresh breeze was blooming, which was inexpressibly West and its marvellous capabilities, and he told of the wonderful delightful, after the fatigues and depressing atmosphere of the day growth of Helena ; how it was only five years old, aud had before. After breakfast we parted from our pleasant companions, 30,000 inhabitants, and how he should have to travel 500 they coming down to the small wayside station to see us off. We miles by stage before he reached it, and then how he had had a pleasant compartment in a sleeping-car, which looked by served in the war, and been captured and confined in the day like an ordinary car, except that it is cleaner, and the seats Libby Prison. and of all its horrors, and the life in a prison e

are wider apart, and two by two face each other, four seatsncampment in the woods, without shelter and almost without making a • compartment. We had each a window, and clothing or food, and of his escape, and fight with bloodhounds. could watch with interest and delight how the country changes, The time passed away quite pleasantly till the conductor came to and the stations and villages grew hourly wilder and more western make up our berths. He pulled the seats to pieces, put down in appearance, and could mark how the rivers and streams, which mattresses, spread sheets and counterpanes, arranged pillows and before in all our journeying had flowed eastward, now set in the bolsters, and hung up in front heavy woollen curtains, behind contrary direction, hurrying one and all to swell the waters of the these we crept, one into the top shelf, the other into the mighty Mississippi. At two o'clock we reached Pittsburg, the lower. The novelty of the position, the jolting of the car, American Birmingham, a smoky, dirty city, lying in a cleft of the constant and steady downfall of grit from the engine kept the hills, placed there seemingly with the hope that the smoke me awake for hours. Through the windows, just on a level with should have no chance of escape from its tall chimney-tops. Here my pillow, I could see the stars swinging and rolling backwards we dined and changed cars. In twenty minutes we were again in and forwards, and the black telegraph lines dipping up and down motion. There was some little difficulty in finding sleeping-berths, across them. Then the train pulled up at a little shanty to take in and for the first dozen miles we travelled in the ordinary cars, water, and lights flashed up and down, and men shouted to each which we found crowded and dusty, filled apparently with emi- other, and then the bell rang, and away we rushed off again under grants on their way to the far West ; poor tired women, with the swinging heavens. And who can tell of the horrors of the worn-out, dirty children, and broad-shouldered, brown-faced grit ! When we awoke in the early dawn we found our pillows young men of the Mark Tapley type. There were evident signs of and everything about us covered with a thick layer of this pleasant kind feeling and good-fellowship amongst these poor travellers, substance, and we had to call to mind the successful enterprise of and we noticed that each woman had two or three brown_ Benzoni and Layard before we had the courage to attempt to handed chevaliers ready to carry bundles, nurse a child, arise. With much perseverance and more patience we performed or bring the weary baby and its mother tin cups of ice-water our simple toilet ; the only position in which this could be done, from the filter with which every car is supplied. We caught owing to the shaking of the cars, was by kneeling on your shelf, the spirit of the place, and soon established most friendly relations Your head firmly pressed against the roof above. This over, we with our neighbours ; a fat, solemn little fellow of two years old staggered to the rear of the car and washed our faces in the going fast asleep on my knee with the utmost readiness. My never-failing ice-water. Soon our mattresses, pillows, and cur- small friend had a well-shaped head and earnest little face, and I tains disappeared, and we were seated once more on our red thought as I watched him that perhaps my knee pillowed the head velvet cushions, the windows open, and the sweet fresh air pour- of the future President of this wide country. I was really quite ing in, and the wide green ocean lying like a kindly future before sorry when at the next stopping-place the conductor came to us, us, mysterious in the dim, tender lights, blue, grey, and gold, of and told us that there was now room in the saloon, and he would sunrise.

Brightest green were all her garments, this child of the present,. growing up on the most approved And her hair was like the sunshine: systems. Everywhere I am struck with the perfectness of the

five minutes. Then we mounted hundreds of steps to the top of the tower, where we found the little buckets hard at work tilting the grain in a yellow stream into huge bins. Here it is weighed. From these bins it is poured through wide tubes into the vessels lying at the wharf below, twenty minutes being sufficient to give out a cargo of eighteen thousand bushels. We were told that the elevator we were in had stored in the last twelve months twenty millions of bushels of grain. And these golden seeds, which have waved in the sunshine over the generous soil of Wis- consin, Iowa, or Illinois, mostly go to help to make a penny roll, to be bought by a ragged street Arab in some small shop of a dirty alley in Seven Dials.

"And now we have seen the great river of the West. As we stood upon the platform of the cars, suddenly among the trees we saw, glinting and glancing in the sunlight, the waters of the Mississippi, and soon afterwards we began to lumber over the high tresselwork bridge that is built on three islands, and spans the wide flood ; but rather seems as you move across it to rise straight out of the water, and hold you without railing or protection of any kind just above the rushing river. Later on we took an exciting walk across the huge rafts that lay at the water's edge, the logs waiting to be carried into the large wooden saw-mill, which we were told was the largest in the United States, and which we visited next morning. There we saw the great trunks of trees that had flourished in Canadian forests, and had floated hundreds of miles down the river, drawn up as if by magic from the water, and relentlessly pushed into the jaws of a great monster, whence they reissued in a few moments transformed into white planks, to be sent off by trains that waited below to all the surrounding States.

"But our sail at sunset upon the great river ! My memory of it is that we moved on noiselessly in molten gold, and that we came to a fairy island where the trees were wreathed with heavy festoons of creepers ; where there were red and purple and yellow flowers bending at the water's edge and reflecting themselves into double beauty ; and where splendid butterflies flitted about in the sunshine that flickered and glinted through the trees. The beauty was enough to carry one out of oneself, and out of the world almost. Then the sunlight faded away like the smile from a beautiful face, and we turned our boat, and were borne swiftly homeward by the tremendous current."