presented to the
LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO
by
FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY
donor
G
AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY
OR NOTES OF A
ROUND TRIP FROM LONG. o TO o c
AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY
OR NOTES OF A
ROUND TRIP FROM LONG. o TO o c
DANIEL PIDGEON, RR.S., Assoc. INST. CE.
4
IN TWO PARTS
PART I. WEST. PART II. EAST
SECOND EDITION
LONDON:
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, & CO., i, PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1883
(The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved.")
PREFACE.
A TOUR of the World makes many radical changes in those ideas
about foreign countries which are insensibly gathered in the
course of time from the reading of books and newspapers.
I landed in America, a prospective admirer of its people and
institutions, and left it, after five months' stay, charmed with the
courteous kindness of its private citizens, astonished at the breadth
and boldness of the national mind, and convinced that, so far as
power and prosperity are concerned, the great republic is on its
way to become the foremost nation of the modern world. But I
looked for political enthusiasm, intellectual aspiration, and re-
publican simplicity of life among the people of the United States.
I found politics a close profession, material well-being the goal of
ambition, and luxury rampant among the rich.
I believed that the Japanese were, next to the white races, the
most advanced people in the world, whose intelligent appreciation
of a civilization higher than their own had led to the overthrow
of a remotely ancient social and political system, too rigid for
Western ideas of progress. I found them cultured, courteous,
and charming ; but insincere and reactionary in policy, un-busi-
ness-like and untrustworthy in affairs.
I thought that the Chinese were a stationary people, prejudiced,
dishonest if not vicious, and the slaves of a degrading form of self-
indulgence. I found them cold and ungenial, it is tine, but acute
and enterprising men of business ; industrious, orderly, and reliable
workers ; economical and abstemious in their habits ; a real
vi PREFACE.
benefit to the foreign countries where they settle ; but impover-
ished and hampered in their otherwise certain development at
home by the tyranny of a corrupt and alien rule.
I imagined that India was a rich extension of the British
Empire, with more to give, whether of wealth or strength, to
England than to gain from her. I found her the poorest country
in the world, which, strain our strength as the task may, we are in
honour bound to dower with security, peace, justice, and culture ;
all the blessings, in fact, of civilized rule.
These are my excuses for having thrown some private notes of
travel over trodden ground into the form of a published book. I
shall be glad if my readers find in the volumes themselves any
other justification for their appearance.
LONDON, April 1882.
CONTENTS.
PART I. WEST.
CHAPTER I.
THE ATLANTIC NEW YORK.
PAGE
The Atlantic passage Arrival in New York Henry Hudson's third
voyage Aspect of the city Business men Up Town and Down
Town American luxury Democracy in America and Europe The
churches of New York The river ferries High prices ... ... i
CHAPTER II.
ON THE RAILROAD.
The national system of travelling The long car Railway companies as
advertisers Speeds Locomotive engines Pullman cars Sale of
tickets Yankee advertisers 10
CHAPTER III.
WASHINGTON.
The City of Magnificent Distances " North and South The negro
question The Capitol The House of Representatives Debating
Politics and politicians The Treasury National banking Forgeries
Patent laws and Patent Museums Why American workmen are
inventors The Smithsonian Institution Neglect of natural science
in America The department of Agriculture The Potomac Shad-
fishing ... ... ...
viii CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IV.
PHILADELPHIA.
PAGE
Charles II. and William Penn Independence Hall The Declaration of
Independence The science of numbering streets and houses Ameri-
can hotels The Academy of Natural Sciences The Academy of
Arts Science and Art in America The old Philadelphia Hospital
American medical degrees Chestnut Street Philadelphians and
New Yorkers ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 23
CHAPTER V.
THE COAL-FIELD OF PENNSYLVANIA.
The Alleghanies Geological structure The coal-field Bituminous and
anthracitic coals Mauch-Chunk First discovery of coal The
Lehigh river Early difficulties of navigation The Gravity Railroad
Present condition of coal trade The Switzerland of America
Coal-mining Iron-smelting ... ... ... ... 31
CHAPTER VI.
ACROSS THE ALLEGHANIES.
Pennsylvaniaii farms The Juniata Valley Rural Huntingdon A noisy
Arcadia Village life in America Altoona Workshops of the Penn-
sylvania Railroad A conversazione under difficulties American gal-
lantry The passage of the Alleghanies Cresson Springs Agricul-
ture on the watershed The old " Portage Railway " A great
. geological section ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 36
CHAPTER VII.
PlTTSBURG.
The English and French in America in the eighteenth century Fort Du
Quesne General Braddock's defeat Pittsburg The Monongahela
and Alleghany rivers "The Smoky City" Iron and glass making
Manufacturing waste and economy Bridge-building Specialised
manufacture Blast furnaces Protection Municipal government
Bad roads Coal for the South A dirty night 41
CONTENTS. ix
CHAPTER VIII.
THE OIL REGIONS OF PENNSYLVANIA.
PAGE
Mineral oil and the early settlers First use of petroleum for illumination
Oil " struck " for the first time The rush to the oil regions The
valley of the Alleghany river The Alleghany Valley Railroad
Queer company Odd names Derricks Oil wells Well-sinking
"Spouters" Discharging depSts -Tank cars Pipes Natural gas
Fires Oil City Refining petroleum Value of oil claims Wells
running dry Storage tanks Explosions An industrial battle-field 49
CHAPTER IX.
ODD PHASES OF FAITH AND FEELING.
Lake Chautauqua A deserted village A sacred grove In the Holy
Land The Sunday School Assembly Instruction and amusement
A model of Palestine The ark and Horeb Life among the Metho-
dists Pickerel fishing Decoration Day Jamestown A little
" brag," but no " bosh " ... ... ... ... 55
CHAPTER X.
NIAGARA.
The Falls of Niagara The Niagara river Queenstown Heights How
the Falls recede Proof of their recession Rate of recession Behind
the scenes A swim in the rapids Allen's canal Utilization of
Niagara Falls Man versus the Falls Glacial drift Agassiz's con-
tinental ice-sheet The retreat of the ice Ice-marks Erratics
Farming and fruit-growing A Canadian vineyard Drummondsville
An Indian reservation Refinement among the redskins An eth-
nological error ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 61
CHAPTER XI.
ON THE GREAT LAKES.
From the Falls to Buffalo American lake steamers The transport of
grain from the north-west Erie Canal Welland Canal Montreal
versus New York The war of 1812 A naval engagement on Erie
Lake Huron Lumbering ... ... ... ... ... ... 70
PAGE
x CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XII.
MACKINAW.
England and France in the north-west Jesuit missions Pere Marquette
Dablon Allouez The discovery of the Mississippi Joliet Death
of Marquette Mackinaw Indian half-breeds The Chippeways A
backwoods practitioner Mackinaw Fort The massacre" The
British Landing " Mr. Astor and the fur trade The Mission House
Catholics at Mackinaw Religious tolerance Our yawl on the
lake Huron scenery ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 7&
CHAPTER XIII.
CHICAGO.
Some American traits of character The first settlement of Chicago Its
growth The fire of 1871 Present aspect The Middle States
Chicago their natural capital The seamy side of the city Hogs,
grain, and lumber The stockyards The packing-houses Pig-killing
extraordinary ' ' Rendering " Dr. Wolff The abatement of a
nuisance A grain elevator A party of Sioux Base-ball A great
book store Western impudence -Fire alarm and fire extinction
Teutonic Chicago The plutocratic quarter Raising the city
Moving houses ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 85
CHAPTER XIV.
EN ROUTE FOR THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.
From Chicago to Cheyenne Life in a Pullman car International copy-
right The Prairies American agriculture The homestead law
Peasant proprietors No labourers American agricultural competi-
tion Land laws The Missouri Nebraska Cattle-raising The
Plains Prairie dogs Sage brush No game The Railroad Old
emigrants' road Prairie sunset Thunderstorm Mirage " Eating
stations " Cheyenne The Rocky Mountains in sight Irrigation
Longmont The " Colorado zephyr " ... ... ... ... ... 99
CHAPTER XV.
IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS ESTES PARK.
Physical sketch of the United States The Cordilleras The parks of
Colorado Staging in the mountains Canons Flumes Structure
of the Rocky Mountains Weathered granite Estes Park Society
CONTENTS. xi
PAGE
in a solitude The scenery The climate Electric sparks The
Black Canon Long's Peak "Good society" Equality in the
West The dignity of labour The earl's cottage Our host's home
Hank Farrar, the hunter English and American sportsmen
Stage-driving Mountain roads Sea or plain ? .. no
CHAPTER XVI.
DENVER.
The plains and the range Transparent air Coal-pits in the desert
The Colorado Central Railway Armed passengers A flood in the
Platte Rain in Denver The raison d'etre of Denver Its first settle-
ment Present aspect No women " Transients "The Chinese
Public order Highway robbery A " social hop " Flies The
English in Colorado Senator Hill's smelting works ... ... ... 121
CHAPTER XVII.
THE MINING CAMPS OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.
A mountain railroad Clear Creek Black Hawk Central City ; a
high town The Cornish in Central Discovery of silver in Colorado
Silver versus gold Nature as a gold-digger A gulch mine-
Fissure vein mining The gospel of gold An electrical discharge
Idaho Springs The " Beebee House" A "Health-resort" Vale-
tudinarians Washed out The ' ' Great Ice Age " Georgetown
Big boulders The Ice Age again Green Lake A glorious view
Dinner at Denver The balloon repaired ... ... ... ... 129
CHAPTER XVIII.
MANITOU PIKE'S PEAK.
Another Health-resort American ladies Ascent of Pike's Peak
" Wouldn't take twenty dollars to walk it" A half-way house An
invalid- The summit and meteorological station The view The
" Fontaine qui bouille " The process of cutting a canon The
"Garden of the Gods "Monument Park Strange wind-worn
rocks ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 139
CHAPTER XIX.
THE GRAND CANON OF THE ARKANSAS LEADVILLE.
The Arkansas river The "Mesas" Canon City The Grand Canon
The upper Arkansas Valley Leadville The Arkansas Valley
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Railroad Mountain railroading The discovery of silver-bearing
carbonate of lead in the upper Arkansas valleys The birth of Lead-
ville Its rapid growth A "hard " mining camp Life in Leadville
On the Denver and South Park Railroad Kenosha Summit The
highest railroad in North America The Platte Canon ... ... 147
CHAPTER XX.
SALT LAKE CITY.
Crossing the summit of the Rocky Mountains The Laramie Plains
Cattle and game Echo and Weber Canons The Wahsatch range
The " Devil's Gate "An old lake-bed The City of the Saints-
Fort Douglas A powerful argument Joe Smith and Mormonism
The Mormon exodus to the west under Brigham Young The
halt in Salt Lake Valley The rise and progress of Young's com-
munity What have the Mormons done ? At the tabernacle The
Mormon theocracy Polygamy The future of Mormonism Great
Salt Lake ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 157
CHAPTER XXI.
LAKE TAHOE VIRGINIA CITY.
The Great American Desert Old lake-beds The American Indians
The ascent of the Sierra Nevada Carson City The Washoe range
Timber Flumes Hank Monk Lake Tahoe "Yank's Landing"
Campers A ball at "Yank's" Life at "Yank's" Ascent of
Teliae Mount Davidson -Virginia City A mountain railroad
Discovery of the Comstock Lode The Bonanza mines Excellent
organization A " Pan Mill " The " Bonanza kings " ... ... 169
CHAPTER XXII.
SAN FRANCISCO.
The Truckee River Summit of the Sierra Nevada Snow-sheds
Physical aspects of the Sierra Nevada The central plain of Cali-
fornia A great wheat-field Californian farms Mexican titles
A big ferry-boat San Francisco Fog Cool weather Buena
Yerba The native Californians The first finding of gold Marshall's
saw-mill The rush to the diggings Growth of San Francisco
Vigilance Committee The aspect of the city The Coast Range
CONTENTS. xiii
PAGE
Californian wine and fruit growing Fruit-canning The Cliff House
The Seal Rocks The Pacific coast Spiritualism in San Francisco
The Chinese The Californians of to-day ... ... ... ... 181
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE CHINESE IN AMERICA CHINATOWN.
The Chinese in the United States Chinatown, San Francisco A
pawnbroker's shop Opium-smoking Sam-Li's restaurant A
Chinese lodging-house Prostitution Joss-houses The theatre
Character of the Chinese The Chinese persecution Mob violence
and State injustice Ostensible reasons for the persecution "We
are ruined by Chinese cheap labour" The Buiiinghame Treaty
Justice for the Chinese ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 197
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE " BIG TREES " YOSEMITE VALLEY.
Dowd's discovery of the big trees En route to the Calaveras Grove
The pine belt of the Sierra Nevada The big trees On the way to
the Yosemite Valley Washed out Hydraulic mining Deserted
mining camps Last sight of the big trees The Yosemite Valley
Mountaineering in the High Sierra The Sierra Nevada Staging
to Madera San Francisco again On board the Pacific mail-steamer
At sea 210
PART II. EAST.
CHAPTER I.
THE PACIFIC.
A Pacific mail-steamer A typhoon Chinese sailors Chinese pas-
sengers Chinese students abroad Feudal China " The Incon-
sistencies of the American People" The Gull of Tokio "An
intercepted letter" Gulls "I have lost a day" "Japan is in
sight!" ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 229
xiv CONTENTS.
CHAPTER II.
YOKOHAMA FIRST IMPRESSIONS.
PAGE
"The Land of the Rising Sun "The settlement of Yokohama The
town "The Bund " " The Bluffs "Jinrickishas Our hosts
The native town Street Scenes Mississippi Bay Cultivation
Rice-harvest A lovely view A native fair "The Scotch of the
East " The Chinese question again The Jap versus the Chinaman
Stagnant trade ... ... ... 238
CHAPTER III.
A JAPANESE "Ar HOME."
Mr. Okowa A Japanese railway The wayside scenery Our fellow -
passengers Intoning The great clothes question Jinrickisha-men
Mr. Okowa's paper-mill A Japanese interior A native dinner
Japanese society A Japanese day The position of women
Marriage ... ... ... ... ... ... ' ... 248
CHAPTER IV.
ENOSHIMA KAMAKURA DAIBUTZ.
A carriage and pair " Following the custom of the village " Japanese
houses Japanese children An accident Naturalia non sunt
turpia -A bad road Men or children ? Are they in earnest ?
Our first tea-house Watering the horses Katase The route
The Island of Enoshima Comfortable quarters A fish dinner
Dressing under difficulties The origin of Enoshima Benten, the
dragon-tamer Old friends How did we come here ? Divers
Kamakura The cockpit of Japan The temple of Hachiman
Yoritomo's sword Daibutz A great casting Shinto and Bhud-
dhism Religion in Japan "Miya" and "tera" My kingdom
for a chair ... ... ... ... ... 255
CHAPTER V.
TOKIO (JEDDO).
The city of Tokio The castle of the Shogun The streets Street
scenes Water files The Yoshiwara Prostitution in Japan
"Gueshas" Singing and dancing The Insetz Kioku A scientific
CONTENTS. xv
PAGE
welcome A kite manufactory Industrial reform in Japan Tiffin
at the German Legation Art collecting Shiba and Uyeno The
tombs of the Shoguns : Asakusa A " matsuri " Devotion Wax-
works Shooting galleries The"Ameya" Is Tokio a city ? ... 267
CHAPTER VI.
MYANOSHITA HAKONE.
Fish or flesh ? The geology of Japan The buggy again From bad
to worse roads Japanese rivers Floods Take care of the planks,
and let the piers take care of themselves Odowara Bay Tono-
sawa Drawing lots for a job A hill-side path The tea-house at
Myanoshita Our handmaidens "Not at all ! " The Otomi-tonga
Pass Fusiyama The flanks of a volcano Snow Snakes Land-
crabs Land-shells A Japanese Buxton Myanoshita village
Wood-turning A modest retreat A Japanese garden A glorious
view Stone prayers A Highland loch Fusiyama again The
sulphur springs Physical comfort The new Joseph Shampooing
A sorrowful " Saionara " ... ... ... ... ... ... 278
CHAPTER VII.
SETTLEMENT LIFE AND VIEWS.
American variety versus Japanese monotony Yokohama races The
road The course The riders Settlement life A Japanese theatre
The stagnation of trade- Imports and exports Smallness of
native wants Unbusiness-like character of the Japanese Contrast
with the Chinese The opening of the country -What the foreigner
asks for What the Japanese reply A dead-lock // faut q'une
porte soit ouverte ou fermee What will the end be ? Allies
within the gates Caste in Japan The "samurai" The farmers
The artisans The traders The coolies Wanted : a public
opinion The Japanese Government Renaissance or revolution ?... 286
CHAPTER VIII.
A TRIP TO NIKKO.
The start Kobe The wayside scenery Rice-harvesting A hedge of
camellias Hoe versus plough Agricultural animals and imple-
ments Rice-strippingWinnowing The rice-pounder Handi-
xvi CONTENTS.
PAGE
craft and pedicraft The farmers of Japan Tenure of land Rents
Tenant right The land-tax La petite culture Nakada An
avenue of cedars Utsonomiya An earthquake Nikko The
volcanic range The Nikko temples A Japanese Pygmalion Art
in Japan Architecture Sculpture Painting A good run The
snowy range A cheap ride ... ... ... 295
CHAPTER IX.
HIOGO KIOTO NAGASAKI.
Farewell, Yokohama! Kobe Hiogo The settlement The Hiogo
Kioto Railway A fine farming country Ploughs Bullock-carts
Careful cultivation Kioto The city Art treasures Silk-weaving
Theatres Jugglers A magic lantern The Oigawa rapids A
wild towing path The "Light of Asia" The Peninsular and
Oriental ship Malacca The Inland Sea The Straits of Shimono-
seki Nagasaki A dead port Desima A chapter in the history of
Japanese Christianity Japanese coal The East versus the West ... 305
CHAPTER X.
NEW JAPAN.
Old Japan The Mikado The Shogun The dual government Four
centuries of feudalism New Japan The arrival of Commodore
Perry Makes a treaty with the Shogun Treaties made with the
European Powers Anger of the clans Coalition of the clans
Attack on foreigners The southern clans Action of Aidzu-
Bombardment of Kagoshima and Shimonoseki The civil war
begins Defeat and death of the Shogun Re-establishment of the
Mikadonal power The end of the Shogunate Yokohama during
the civil war The hatred of foreigners The abolition of the feudal
system The new constitution An oligarchy and its difficulties
Rule or anarchy ? The financial situation A coming crisis
Three courses Wanted : a public opinion What will the end be ?
CHAPTER XL
HONGKONG CANTON.
England's outpost Hongkong Harbour Victoria Society ' ' The
good old times " Commercial discontent A protecting flag The
CONTENTS. xvii
PACK
Pearl river Approach to Canton A great fire The river popula-
tion A dangerous disembarkation Shamien Our hosts Canton
streets Industries Temples The Bell of Canton The Examina-
tion Hall The water-clock Tartar Canton Chinese Canton
Chinese justice The prisons Men or beasts? The execution-
ground Chinese character Chinese art Civilization in China
A corrupt Government ... ... ... 323
CHAPTER XII.
THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS.
Singapore " Have a dive ?" Tropical vegetation A kind welcome
The Chinese in Singapore The Tamils The Malays The markets
Athletics in the tropics The botanical gardens A dinner-party
" Wallace's line " Penang The Rajah of Queda Chinese coolies
Tobacco-planting England's unconscious allies 332
CHAPTER XIII.
CEYLON.
Life on board the Teheran Flying-fish Salpse Galle Harbour A
motley crowd Men or women ? Cinghalese costumes Handsome
boys The Afghans The Moorman The Dutch East India Com-
pany En route for Colombo Wayside scenes Cocoa-nut palms
Trotting bullocks "That my present !" Coral bricks Cabook
Colombo Nuwara-Eliya The Kandy railroad ' ' Patenas "
Gampola Rambodda A European flora Nuwara-Eliya Ascent
of Pederotallagalla Tropical Forest Elephants jungle life Coffee
cultivation Hemileia vastatrix Worn out Cinchona Liberian
coffee Peradeniya Kandy The Temple of Buddha's Tooth
Colombo A pleasant dinner Ceylon The Portuguese The
Dutch The English British Rule A colonial crisis ... ... 340
CHAPTER XIV.
MADRAS CALCUTTA.
Christmas in the tropics English Settlements in the East Madras
The surf- boat A dilapidated town the native town Return
tickets not available for this trip The Southern Cross Indian civil
b
vviii CONTENTS.
' PACK
servants The pilot The Hooghly navigation "Pull baker, pull
levil !" The King of Oudh's palace Calcutta The Strand The
Meidan The Citadel The Mahratta Ditch The Black Hole of
Calcutta The Hyde Park of Calcutta The native town The foun-
dations of Manchester Native merchants John Chinaman again
The "mild Hindoo" Servants and masters Native dress
Calcutta races A/^at the Zoo A brilliant crowd Crows Dinner
in a " chummery " ... ... ... ... 354
CHAPTER XV.
IN THE HIMALAYAS.
En route for Darjeeling Crossing the holy river A narrow-gauge
line "Snaky" work A "sleeping-carriage" The battle of the
gauges The Terai First view of the Himalayas The hill tram-
road The jungle Climbers Orchids Tree-ferns A temperate
flora Kursiong A " tonga " Darjeeling Sikkim Drs. Campbell
and Hooker Hill races In Mangolia Buddhism in profundis
praying-wheels The Bhotea porter Native houses A primitive
spinning-wheel The bazaar at Darjeeling In the clouds The
snowy range Kinchinjanga Tea-planting Cinchona-growing
Dear labour Coolie immigration China versus India as a tea-
grower ... ... ... 364
CHAPTER XVI.
BENARES.
Indian servants East Indian Railway The Ganges Valley " The
Holy City " Vedism Old Buddhism Buddhism Puranism
Phallic worship The bathing ghats Temples Idolatry The
streets Brass- work Merchants Indian conjurers The burning
ghat A funeral Piety in high places View of Benares 375
CHAPTER XVII.
LUCKNOW CAWNPORE.
The province of Oudh "The City of Stucco Nightmares" The
Mutiny Sir Henry Lawrence Defence of the Residency Cawn-
pore Wheeler's entrenchment Nana Sahib Colonel Havelock
The Well The relief of Lucknow The siege of Delhi End of the
Mutiny^The bazaar at Cawnpore Indian manufactures , 384
CONTENTS. six
CHAPTER XVIII.
AGRA.
fAGE
The Moguls Akbar Shah Juhan Aurungzebe End of the Mogul
rule Agra Fort Sikandra -The Palace of Akbar The Moti Musjid
The Jehangir Mahal The Taj Mahal Pietra dura work View
from the Taj In do-Saracenic architecture The Pathan periods
The Mogul School Futtehpore-Sikri The decadence Contem-
porary Hindoo art ... .:. ... ... ... ... ... 395
CHAPTER XIX.
DELHI.
Shah Juhan Juhanabad Old Delhi Fort Lalkot Rajah Pithora
Afghan incursions Mahomet Ghori's invasion of India The
Moguls Sacking of Delhi Modern Delhi Vicissitudes The Fort
The Palace The Pearl Mosque The "peacock throne" The
Jumma Musjid Relics of the Prophet The Chadni Chowk The
Cashmere Gate A marriage procession Street scenes A Maho-
metan service Old Delhi Khootub's Column and Mosque Pathan
and Hindoo art Timour the Tartar Asoka's lat A Buddhist
monarch ... ... ... ... .. ... .. 408
CHAPTER XX.
JEYPORE BOMBAY.
The Rajpootana State Railway Jeypore The Palace Street scenes
The ' ' Light of Asia "Indian art The city of Amber The
Indian desert Indian bridge-building Camels An Eastern Nevada
Monkeys on the line Arrival at Bombay The city and harbour
The Parsees The Towers of Silence The Caves of Elephanta
The Apollo Bunder 418
CHAPTER XXI.
ENGLAND AND INDIA.
What has British rule done for India ? Physical changes Com-
mercial development Moral improvement Poverty of India The
land question in Bengal Checks on population The pressure of
CONTENTS.
PAGE
population on the soil Rise of rents The Rent Act of 1859 The
land question in Madras Over-population The remedies A
land law for Bengal Indian finance European government and
Asiatic revenue Cheap civilized rule Representation A great
experiment 427
CHAPTER XXII.
HOMEWARD BOUND.
The Peninsular and Oriental steam-ship Sumatra The Milky .Sea
Aden " Have a dive ! " Volcanic Hills Artificial water The Red
Sea Suez From Suez to Cairo The Nile inundation Fertile
Egypt Cairo Street scenes The bazaars Dogs Tombs of the
Mamelukes Mosque of Sultan Hasan Cairo University Dancing
dervishes The Palace of Gezireh " Improvement " in Egypt
The Fellahin Agriculture Stationary Egypt The Pyramids of
Ghizeh " Hard work ! "The Sphinx The Temple of the Sphinx
Egyptian chronology Boulak Museum Ancient art Ancient
theology Marriette Bey Memphis The Apis Tombs The Tomb
of Ti A desert view The Isthmus of Suez Ancient canals M.
Lesseps' canal Passage of the canal Port Said The Mediterranean
Malta Gibraltar The Holiday is over "... ..." ... ... 436
PART I
WEST
AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY,
OR NOTES OF A
ROUND TRIP FROM LONG. o TO o () .
CHAPTER I.
THE ATLANTIC NEW YORK.
April 17 May 4, 1880.
THE Atlantic was crowded with icebergs during the spring and
early summer of 1880, but the prudent captain of our steamer
the Algeria took us too far south to see them. We thus missed
a spectacle which the steamship Belgenland enjoyed a month
later, when in latitude 43 N., she passed two fleets of bergs
one on either side of the Newfoundland Banks numbering
together not less than a hundred, the largest of which was a mile
long, and towered two hundred feet above the water.
Any one who doubts the theory that climate is dependent on
ocean currents should sail the North Atlantic. It is a witches'
caldron where two immense streams of hot and cold water meet
but do not mingle, though they are so closely apposed that a
ship may pass in her own length through temperatures differing
by twenty degrees. When the prevalent westerly wind shifts a
few points to the south, it coincides with the Gulf Stream, and
saturated with its warm vapours, prostrates the ship's passengers
with the atmosphere of a hot-house. When, on the other hand,
B
2 AN ENGINEER 'S If OLID A Y.
it veers a little north, it brings the cold of the polar current over
the starboard bow and sends every one hurrying below for ulsters.
There is no equilibrium and consequently no peace in such a
sea where a flat calm at breakfast, a gale at noon, and a halcyon
sunset may all be expected. Thus a shift of the wind from
south-west to north-west brought us on one occasion a succession
of fog, warm sunshine, tropical rain, and heavy snow, within a
few hours, while, to complete the meteorological variety, night
dressed our yards and masts with St. Elmo's fire. The shining
trail which streams from our screw is singularly sensitive to these
changes : when the wind is warm the wake is brilliant with
phosphorescent animals ; when cold there is hardly a sparkle.
Although the Algeria is a slow ship we make three hundred
miles a day in favourable weather, but this is reduced to less than
two hundred whenever there is much head wind. It does not
pay to drive a vessel of this kind too hard ; you may burn the
coal, but without getting a corresponding speed out of her. On
the other hand, crack steamers like the Britannic can be advan-
tageously forced in the teeth of a gale, and this is why the " tubs "
are not badly beaten in fine passages, though they may be four
or five days longer than the clippers in crossing when the wind
is adverse.
The captain's cabin is socially a very agreeable resort, and
illustrates the age we live in. Darwin's " Origin of Species " and
Spencer's "Sociology" are on the book-shelves, while a recent
French novel lies on the chart-table. These books would sur-
prise the captain of an East Indiaman of twenty-five years ago,
who was usually learned in no arts but seamanship, and read in
no other literature than the log.
The passage of the North Atlantic is much like other voyages
until the seventh or eighth day, when the steamer crosses the
polar current that region of mists and bergs. Then very often
the air thickens without warning to the consistency of a London
fog; the whistle shrieks its warning from minute to minute; the
captain keeps the bridge, and is not seen at meals ; every one is
THE ATLANTIC NEW YORK. 3
chilly and apprehensive. If you go forward, braving the rimy
air, there stand the watch like statues, every faculty of their being
concentrated in their eyes.
When under these circumstances the thermometer suddenly
drops, it is known that somewhere behind the veil of yellow mist
ice is close at hand. But the speed is not slackened, way being
kept on the ship in order that if the moment for action comes she
may answer her helm quickly and easily. Thus, instinct with a
painful watchfulness, the great steamer advances in the gloom to
whatever may befall. If a berg is sighted while still half a mile
off, all will be well, for there is time enough with a speed of twelve
knots to alter the course, but one does not care to think of what
would happen if the keen eyes on whose acuteness the safety of
the ship depends should be baffled by the fog.
In the happy absence of such incidents the time of our passage
passed quickly and pleasantly, and in view of the early break-up
of some pleasant intimacies, we hailed the pilot with regret. He
picked up the Algeria while she was still a hundred and ninety-
five miles distant from New York, and such is the competition
among these men that their handsome schooners are sometimes
met three hundred miles away from shore.
It was midnight when we anchored in the harbour of New
York, and were boarded for the mails by a characteristic American
steam-tender. This vessel was a small steamer with big paddles
and a great "walking beam " oscillating above a high maindeck.
Over her masthead hovered a gigantic gilt eagle, whose outspread
wings seemed to cover the ship from the waist to the bow. In
the wheel-house, an elegant circular saloon enclosed with sliding
plate-glass panels, sat the master, whether mariner or mechanic it
would be hard to say, smoking, lounging, and steering. There
was nothing in the skipper's manner to indicate which of these
three occupations was the most important, and his superintendence
of the mail transfer had the same casual, unofficial air. But the
work was very quickly done, and already we began to discern that
we had reached a country where officers can be smart without
B 2
4 AN ENGINEER 'S HOLIDA Y.
uniforms, and where no man's profession can be inferred either
from his clothes or his manners.
Henry Hudson was seeking in a third voyage that passage to
the Indies which was the dream of the seventeenth century, when
he anchored, in 1609, near Sandy Hook. No white man had
ever before sailed up the noble stream that bears his name, but
beautiful as he thought the " Groot" (Great) River, he never saw
it again, for the Dutch East India Company cared nothing about
its exploration, since it did not lead to India.
Wise James I. had before this chartered two companies for the
purpose of colonizing North America, but kept them a hundred
miles apart in order to prevent their quarrelling, and into that
vacant space Holland, after Hudson's discoveries, naturally
slipped, founding the territory of New Netherlands. Next year
(1614), Adrian Block, trading in skins, lost his ship by fire and
wintered with his crew in log huts on Manhattan Island, which
was bought from the Indians ten years later for 24. sterling by
the Dutch.
New England and New Netherlands never agreed, while Block's
town of New Amsterdam grew but slowly under an inelastic colo-
nial system, so that in the course of time the New England
emigrants surpassed the Dutch in numbers and wealth. At length,
after many quarrels, the town fell to an English fleet in 1664,
changing its name to New York in honour of the king's brother
to whom Charles II. gave the province. The city long retained
the Dutch language and many Dutch peculiarities. Dutch names
are still common, while the Jour de 1'An, Easter eggs, Santa Claus,
and other Continental festivals have become incorporated into
American life and manners.
One cannot step for the first time on American soil without
some retrospection. History we know will soon be forgotten in
the roaring streets of New York ; but while our steamer threads
her way through the crowded river to the quay, a first and last
THE ATLANTIC NEW YORK. 5
thought of Henry Hudson's voyage past these banks, then
" pleasant with grass and flowers and goodly trees," where Indians
came to meet him in canoes "made of single hollowed trees,"
scarcely three hundred years ago, is not out of place.
New York is unattractive at a first glance. It is English in its
business-like air but with a Continental varnish. The houses are
built in square blocks, usually of red brick, very high, and with
windows shaded by green jalousies. Here and there are some
fine buildings, as the Post-Office, the newspaper offices, and a few
very large stores, but the city possesses no dominating architec-
tural features. The " elevated railroads," carried through the
streets on staging at the level of the first-floor windows, are con-
venient but extremely ugly. Neither does a Londoner easily
accustom himself to the sight of innumerable telegraph wires
stretched along rough posts throughout the city. The Americans
themselves have not a word to say for their badly paved roads, or
for the absence of a decent system of cabs. Street locomotion is
carried on entirely by trams and omnibuses, the rails of the former
being laid in such a manner as to make carriage traffic almost
impossible, while the latter are excellent liver-shakers, but have
no other merit. The bad roads are worse kept. Broadway itself
is thickly littered with the debris swept from shops and warehouses,
which it is apparently no one's business to remove. Boxes and
casks, containing domestic refuse, stand out on the side-walks
before every door in many of the good streets. The municipal
cleanliness of Paris or London is quite unknown.
But no sooner does one pass from the street into the house
than all is changed. Within the public and private offices, stores,
and warehouses of the city, order, neatness, and comfort are
supreme. While successful merchants and professional men in
London often spend the business day in dark recesses of grimy
old houses, their American brethren are lodged luxuriously and
surrounded by the last appliances for the easy conduct of work,
from a newly patented bill file to the telephone or telegraphic
printer. " I guess we live the most of our lives here and expect
6 . AN ENGINEER 'S HO LID A Y.
to be comfortable," said a friend to whom I expressed my sense
of the contrast.
The wish for comfort and luxury is a striking American trait.
It shows itself in the adoption of everything that tends to reduce
friction in daily life. It dictates the complex but convenient
hotel system, the sale of railway tickets at offices on the street, the
general use of the lift, the type-writer, the telegraphic printer, and
the telephone. It is seen in the fitting and furnishing of a
merchant's office, from the handsome decorations to the compre-
hensive bureau, the scientific safe, and the easy-chairs. If the
street gives an impression of makeshift, and seems to partake of
the camp rather than the city, the warehouse and store are palaces
where nothing is too good for the entertainment of industry.
And one soon becomes aware that industry occupies very
different positions in England and America. We worship other
gods beside our occupation. To possess land and enjoy the
influence it brings, is an ambition with most of our merchants
and manufacturers. By our unwritten code of caste, the trader,
as in the half-civilized East, stands below the soldier and the
landed proprietor.
The American man of business, on the other hand, owns no
divided allegiance, his own work interests him above all other
things; and whether he runs a barber's shop or rules a great
factory, he has but one aim to be " top of the heap."
"Up Town" and "Down Town," Fifth Avenue and Wall
Street, are the opposite poles of New York life and society, just
as the City and West End are with us. Down Town life is much
like our own, though more excited and feverish. The English
visitor however has heard of the go-ahead Yankee, and being
prepared for unusual commercial activity finds the merchant no
more speculative than he expected. But the life which fills Fifth
Avenue in the afternoon astonishes and perplexes him not a little.
Magnificent carriages, rich liveries, costly horses, and splendid
toilettes, crowd the fashionable quarter. An air of unbridled
luxury pervades the scene and there is no public drive in Europe
THE ATLANTIC NEW YORK. 7
where gold flows in a deeper stream. Yet side by side with this
pomp walks republican equality in a mechanic's suit a figure
which would seem out of place among such surroundings any-
where else in the world ; while here, the man of the people eyes
and enjoys the spectacle without envy or sense of inferiority,
soberly hoping that one day all this may be his.
The case illustrates the essential difference between democracy
in America and in Europe. The lives of the vast majority of
European workers run in grooves which have been cut so deep
by time and custom, that to " do their duty in that station of life
in which it has pleased God to call them," is all that is practically
within the power of the masses. Hence the democrat, feeling the
hopelessness of rising, would drag others above him down. No
such grooves exist in the States, where it has " pleased God " to
place any station within the reach of every man, and where con-
sequently every worker hopes to rise. Luxury and labour elbow
each other good-humouredly enough on the brilliant side-walks of
Fifth Avenue, and the new-comer finds both the love of the first,
and its complacent tolerance by the last, a complete surprise.
The churches of New York are very numerous but generally
without architectural merit, exception being made of the new
Catholic Cathedral, a beautiful Gothic pile of pure white marble
worthy of any country or age. The characteristic American
Churches must be sought in Fifth Avenue, and if few of them are
of striking design externally, they are beautifully decorated and
luxuriously fitted within. " Religion is nothing in this country if
it is not comfortable," said the minister of one of these chapels-of-
ease ; and certainly the hard seats of an Anglican church offer a
strong contrast with the couches of a New York place of worship.
Mechanical ventilation, softly carpeted aisles, deep seats and
thick cushions, warmth in winter, coolness in summer, good
music, and popular preachers, these are the things which make
religion comfortable here. But fans strew the sittings ; no one
kneels to pray or stands to sing ; and the service is heard, like an
opera, from a luxurious stall. It is not only at the Madeleine
8 AN ENGINEER 'S HO LID A Y.
one may see pretty, perfumed sinners, who give themselves up for
a moment to holy thoughts, slipping a well-gloved hand under the
bonnet for a hasty examination of the chignon, and slily surveying
the neighbouring toilettes, only when the soul has satisfied its
divine aspirations. The American spends freely, whether on self,
wife, or church. Not only is a high rent paid for sittings, but
the privilege of occupying these is annually sold at auction and
large premiums are thus obtained. The money is spent in pro-
curing the best available preaching talent and congregations
pride themselves on possessing distinguished men ; while under
this quasi-competitive system, popular divines command large
incomes and a high social position.
I found the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher's church at Brooklyn
densely filled with a congregation of the wealthy " upper classes."
Comfort as usual reigned in all the arrangements, the flock
listening to both pastor and choir from luxurious fauteuils.
Christianity and cushions have certainly "kissed one another"
in New York. The pursuit of material success may be said to
engage the whole attention of Americans at present. There are
highly cultured circles in all the eastern cities, but they are out of
harmony with the mass of well-to-do citizens, retiring in habit,
and exclusive in manner. Plymouth Church is recruited not so
much from this class as from the intelligent, active, ambitious,
and wealthy commercial order, who yearn, like other men, for
the higher life which material success cannot give. But while the
rebound from the prose of existence is idealistic in character
among cultured men, it is always spiritualistic in the case of a
congregation such as I have endeavoured to depict. Hence, as
might be expected, Mr. Beecher's sermon was an eloquent and
passionate plea for doubling the life of the city with the ecstasy
of the saint the message of the camp meeting, enlarged, refined,
and adorned as befitted his audience ; satisfying while it stimu-
lated the needs of emotion, but leaving the intellect starving.
The great river ferries are an important feature of New York.
There are at present no bridges across the Hudson or East rivers,
THE ATLANTIC NEW YORK. 9
and communication between the city and Brooklyn and Jersey
City, its extensions, is by steam ferry. The boats, or rather flats,
are of gigantic dimensions, very comfortably fitted, and beautifully
kept. There are spacious saloons for passengers, deck space for
waggons, and a bar for refreshments. Bow and stern are alike,
bluntly rounded and fitting accurately into corresponding recesses
in the wharves, so that passengers and teams go on board as if on
a continuous road. The transit is made quickly and quietly, and
the service is so perfect that the inconvenience of an island
situation is hardly felt by New Yorkers. A great suspension
bridge will shortly connect New York and Brooklyn, but will
hardly surpass the ferries in convenience. As the railway termini
lie across the Hudson, each railroad company has its ferry, and
once on board the boat one is practically already in the cars.
The visitor who lands in America believing that a dollar in
New York equals a shilling in London, is nevertheless astonished
not so much at high prices as at their capriciousness. While he
can live like a prince for sixteen shillings, or like a gentleman for
twelve shillings a day, he cannot buy the Herald for less than
twopence-halfpenny, though the publishing price is three-halfpence.
Shaving costs a shilling, and a drink the same sum. A shoe-black
demands fivepence for his services, and a cabman is occasionally
to be found who will jolt body and soul asunder over the wretched
roads, at the rate of eight shillings an hour. Competition is not
popular in America. Everybody wants large profits. From rival
railroads to rival retailers, every one prefers combination to com-
petition. Even the buyer is a consenting party. He likes paying
a high price, and such artificial values as the above, which seem
ridiculous to a new-comer, are cheerfully approved by Americans.
Some people explain all this by saying that commerce in the
States has been reared upon protection ; but the Yankee, though
a smart man of business on the surface, is a republican senti-
mentalist not far below, and gives a benevolent width to the
proverb, " Live and let live," wherever the claims of labour are
concerned.
io .AN ENGINEER 'S HO LID A Y.
CHAPTER II.
ON THE RAILROAD.
May 4.
I FOUND myself at the New York depot of the Pennsylvania
Railroad, bound for Washington, with no bones broken, after
a cab ride from the Brevoort House to Desbrosses Street. In the
baggage office a numbered brass plate was strapped to each of
my pieces, and duplicate checks having been handed me, I strolled
off free of all impediments, to buy a seat in the Pullman " parlour
car." The transaction, which is rather like taking a stall for the
opera, resulted in my pocketing a piece of paper with " Car
No. 2 ; Seat No. 30," printed thereon, and this was my reserved
seat for the journey. " Parlour cars," used for day travelling, are
handsome rooms of gilded walnut-wood, furnished with numbered
easy-chairs. A smoking-room and lavatory are attached to each
carriage, and a servant is in attendance who, if politely asked, will
lay a lunch, cool wine, or bring iced water from the reservoir.
Every American thinks the national system of travelling vastly
superior to ours, but there is a good deal to be said on both sides
of the question. Setting Pullmans on one side for the moment,
the ordinary " cars " are long carriages holding about forty
passengers disposed in rows two deep on either side of a central
gangway. The space allotted to each person is very small. The
seats are thinly cushioned and have pivoted iron backs which
swing over to " face the horses," whichever way the train goes.
There is no room to carry wraps or small baggage unless the
neighbouring seat is unoccupied ; the traveller himself is cramped
during the day, and sleeping at night is impossible. On the
other hand, he is free to wander from car to car, or divert himself
on the platform outside ; iced water is always at hand in summer,
and the carriage is warmed in the winter. The newsboy keeps a
comprehensive store-box in the corner, and is always peddling
ON THE RAILROAD. 1 1
literature, candy, cigars, and pea-nuts in the gangway. The
Pullman " parlour " and " sleeping cars " have each their good
and bad points. In the former, upholstery has been considered
before comfortable easy-chairs ; while the latter, though giving an
excellent bed, are too stuffy at night, and the day seats are
singularly angular. All drawbacks notwithstanding, railroad tra-
velling is not fatiguing in America, the freedom to move about
affording so much change and rest.
Railway companies compete for custom by advertising comfort
and safety, in a way of which we know nothing in England.
Their time-tables, often pictorial and descriptive pamphlets, boast
of " rock, road-beds, steel rails, the Miller platform and coupler,
and the Westinghouse break ;" or exhibit maps whose topography
is seductively direct.
The speed of the Washington express does not exceed thirty-
five miles an hour, but new locomotives with six-and-a-half-feet
driving wheels are now in course of construction which will
compass the distance from New York to Philadelphia, ninety
miles, in as many minutes. Engines with small coupled driving
wheels are in general use in the States, and they suit the rougher
tracks and heavier grades of the railways very well. A really fast
train between New York and the political capital is however
much wanted, and the Pennsylvania Railway Company have
lately made such improvements in their permanent way as will
permit the use of speeds like our own over this section of their
line. American locomotives are second to none in design and
workmanship, though the cow-catcher, spark-arrester, big bell, and
driver's " cab " look strange to unaccustomed eyes. All these
things, however, have their raisons d'etre in a country of unfenced
lines, forest fires, street stations, and extreme temperatures.
Automatic brakes are universally applied in the States, but the
points and crossings, switches and signals, are far behind our own
in merit
The bridges along the line are all of one type; trussed iron
girders, much lighter and more graceful in appearance than our
1 2 AN Ei\ GINEER 'S HO LI DA Y.
own. The Susquehanna river is crossed by an exquisite structure
of many spans, which looks like a spider's web in the distance.
The American love of comfort provides some welcome accom-
modation in the Pullman cars. Our train for example allowed
no time for refreshment by the way, but an " agent " took orders
for lunches as we approached Philadelphia, whence they were
telegraphed on to Wilmington. On reaching this place half an
hour later, a man came " aboard " with a pile of flat baskets, each
of which opened across the knees into a white-napkined table,
and enabled one to lunch as comfortably as in the dining-room of
an hotel. Whenever the train stopped a boy passed quickly
through carrying telegraph forms in his hand and crying,
"Messages to all parts of the world!" which might be sent
without rising from a luxurious seat. Finally the express agent
inquires your destination and the name of your hotel, receives
your checks, and gives you his own in exchange, stating that
your baggage will be in your bedroom on your arrival. This is
an independent service paid for at the uniform rate of twenty-five
cents or a shilling per package, and the English traveller soon
learns why Americans travel with only one trunk apiece, and if he
is an economical man, at once despatches his hat-box and super-
fluous bags to await his return in New York. If there were
decent roads and cabs in the country I should not give the pre-
ference to the express man, who is by no means so prompt as he
represents himself to be, but he is a necessity in America.
Railroad tickets are sold at all sorts of prices, and the dearest
place to buy them is at the booking office. The companies make
contracts with agents, to whom they allow heavy discounts, and
where there is much competition these men undersell one another.
The rate per mile is less for long than for short journeys, and a
smart man going west to Omaha for example will book through
to San Francisco and sell the balance of his ticket on the train.
The " conductor" again issues tickets in the train at "conductor's
prices," the tariff of which may or may not be posted in the cars,
and if changes in the traveller's plans should make it convenient
WASHINGTON. 13
to book in this way there is always an unknown loss on the trans-
action. The whole system is distasteful to the English tourist
who has not learned how to bargain for his tickets, and never
knows to what extent he has been "bled."
All the way from New York to Washington the road is flanked
with advertisements, painted in gigantic letters upon every gable,
shed, fence rail, or boulder which can be seen from the train.
The state of New Jersey appears to be given over to a quack,
who is never tired of repeating, " Try Schenck's Seaweed Tonic !"
" Take Schenck's Mandrake Pills !" " Schenck against the world
for mild aperients!" If the Yankee tradesman could reach the
rainbow with a paint-brush, he would worry heaven to " Try Hop
Bitters !" or chew " Gail and Ax's Navy Plug !"
CHAPTER III.
WASHINGTON.
May 5-9.
WASHINGTON has been aptly called "The City of Magnificent
Distances." It is five miles long by three miles wide, but only a
small portion of this area is built over. The site was chosen by
Washington himself, who laid the corner-stone of the Capitol in
1793, and seven years later the seat of Government was shifted
from Philadelphia to the city built for its reception.
The national metropolis was laid out on the same scale as the
national hopes for its future ; but man only proposes, and the
population, which was planned for millions, had not reached
150,000 in 1875. Meanwhile the distances remain. Pennsylvania
Avenue, the principal street, is a hundred and sixty feet wide.
From the Capitol as a centre it is a mile and a half to the
Treasury and White House ; a mile to the Post-Office and Depart-
14 AN ENGINEER'S HO LID A Y.
ment of the Interior; and a mile in another direction to the
Smithsonian Institution ; while the United States Naval Observ-
atory lies in latitude 38 53' and longitude 77 8', entirely out of
reach in a cabless country. All this is magnificent, but it is not
common sense. The stores and private houses "make believe
very strong," and during the session of Congress almost persuade
the visitor that he is in a first-class city. Washington at any rate
has good roads and is well paved. At the time of the civil war
its streets were bottomless bogs, now they are models for the rest
of the Union.
The traveller's attention is first arrested, not by the fine public
buildings of the city, but by the negroes. New York, without his
knowledge, has already stood for the portrait of America, and the
sight of black faces is a surprise, recalling the separate identity of
the South, and suggesting questions, once more disquieting than
they are now, Will the South finally amalgamate with the domi-
nant section of the nation ? and, What will become of the negro ?
For my own part I believe that the amalgamation will take place.
The great estates are breaking up; the contempt of trade is
breaking down. Manufactories are rising. Northern capital is
welcomed. The new generation begins to follow mercantile and
mechanical pursuits. Men who despised business take an interest
in the multiplication of factory chimneys. These are signs of the
times which point to the ultimate adoption of Northern ideas of
progress and development. The negro on the other hand is in
course of absorption. From some unascertained cause, this race,
so prolific in slavery, does not increase when free. Black blood
tends by preference to mingle with white, and may do so since
the abolition of the Southern marriage laws. Emigration is
carrying large numbers of coloured men westward, where white
marriages or death will thin their ranks. Thus the questions to
which no reply was possible fifteen years ago may be answered
hopefully to-day.
The State buildings of Washington are much more magnificent
than we in England are apt to suppose. The Capitol is probably
WASHINGTON. 15
one of the finest public buildings in the world. The Treasury is
a splendid classic pile of grey granite. The Post-Office and
Department of the Interior are white marble palaces; while the
Smithsonian Institution is a beautiful Romanesque building of
warm red sandstone. It is worthy of note that the dome of the
Capitol is built entirely of iron, though there are no external
indications of this, the material being used with great architectural
skill.
The gallery of the House of Representatives is open to all the
world, and I entered it with very mixed views about the American
Parliament. On the one hand I was prepared for a perfunctory
discussion in a noisy House, whose members were engaged with
their own rather than with public affairs. On the other I had
some expectation of hearing hard names, if not pistol-shots,
exchanged across the floor. But we are taught to expect too
much by our newspaper writers, and I was a little disappointed
with the proceedings.
A Bill for extending the Congressional Library was under
consideration. The speeches were excellent and attentively
listened to. Republican freedom certainly dispensed with cere-
mony to a remarkable degree in the customs of the House, but I
saw nothing that impaired the dignity of a legislative assembly.
One soon learns that " politics " and " politicians " are oppro-
brious names in the States. The former is a disreputable profes-
sion ; the latter are " scallowags." Americans are never tired of
denouncing both, and almost always attribute their degradation to
universal suffrage. In this I think they are wrong. It is quite
true that a political machinery exists which is operated for the
benefit of professional politicians, but these men, unscrupulous as
they are, are really controlled by a healthy public opinion. There
are doubtless persons who would sacrifice even national honour
and good faith for their own advantage, but if masters of the
political situation, they are nevertheless servants of the people,
whose soundness is proved by the limits which they unconsciously
impose on those who manipulate the popular vote. If the masses
16 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDA Y.
were really unfit for the franchise, " politicians " might easily
become dangerous enemies of the common weal, instead of the
mere self-seekers they are. The degradation of political and
municipal functions in America is in truth due to neglect of their
public duties on the part of citizens who are too much engrossed
in their own affairs ; and all that is required for the purification of
politics is that the natural leaders of the people should reassume
responsibilities which in the early days of the republic were
sought, not shirked, by the best men in the country. The profes-
sional politician will die hard no doubt : but dissatisfaction with
the present state of things is so general, and the Americans are so
capable, as the Tweed affair proved, of " straightening out "
admitted difficulties, that the proper remedy will be applied before
long, and we shall hear no more about the evil results of universal
suffrage.
The Treasury is one of the finest public buildings in Washington,
second only to the Capitol in architectural excellence. The
national paper currency is manufactured here, and in its great
safes are kept the deposits of all the national banks in the
country. The banking system of America was legislatively
remodelled shortly after the war, and private banks were every-
where replaced by national banks, established under conditions
requiring a certain relation between capital and population, the
deposit with the Treasury of national bonds equal to one-third of
such capital, and State supervision of the accounts. Any banking
corporation having complied with these conditions is entitled to
receive and issue Treasury notes amounting to ninety per cent, of
its deposit in the Government safes. The security of the public
under this system is very great, and " greenbacks " are current
everywhere at their full value, an advantage which will be appre-
ciated by every one who has tried to change local notes in
England, or the paper of the Bank of Bengal, a State institution,
in any other Indian Presidency. Treasury notes practically
supersede metallic money in the States, the clumsy silver dollar is
hardly ever seen, and the small change carried in the pocket
WASHINGTON. 17
consists of " quarters," ten-cent pieces, and "nickels." The first
is like our shilling in size and value, rhe second like our sixpence,
and the last is a plated coin value twopence halfpenny. There
are copper cents in America, but as nothing costs less than
a nickel, they are of no value to the traveller.
The Treasury deposits amount to such vast sums, that special
safes, secured by " time locks," are used for their reception. The
latter consist of an ingenious combination of chronometer and
lock, whose bolts cannot be shot except at nine o'clock every
morning and for ten minutes after that time. Three officials, each
provided with a combination of letters only known to himself,
must all be present in order to unlock the safe. If the door is not
opened during the ten minutes in question, the clock secures it as
before until the same hour on the following morning.
Some clever forgeries are shown in the Redemption Office, a
department for receiving and exchanging worn-out or mutilated
greenbacks. In one case fifty 5oo-dollar notes were each cut
across into fifty narrow strips. One strip was then taken from
each note in regular succession, and the fifty abstractions pasted
side by side on a piece of paper, making a new 5oo-dollar bill.
Each of the original notes, consisting now of forty-nine strips
only, was similarly backed, the absence of one narrow strip being
easily overlooked. When the trick was detected it was found that
the process, which no one had anticipated, was not illegal, and the
ingenious operator consequently escaped punishment.
The acknowledged pre-eminence of Americans in the mechanical
arts is largely due to their patent laws, and the Patent Office at
Washington is a department specially interesting to Englishmen.
It costs ^"30 to protect an invention for six months in England,
and nearly ^200 to secure it for the full term of fourteen years.
Our patents are issued to all applicants, without any official ex-
amination into the novelty of the process sought to be protected,
and an inventor must therefore ascertain by a laborious search
through the records, whether his or any similar scheme has been
previously patented. All this puts patents entirely out of the
c
1 8 AN ENGINEER'S HO LID A Y.
reach of our working men, who as a matter of fact do not
invent.
The cost of a patent in the United States, protecting the in-
ventor for seventeen years, is only ^7. Examiners determine
whether an invention is novel, thus saving the cost of a search.
Classified models of every patented invention are displayed in the
Patent Museum, making it easy to ascertain what has been pre-
viously done by others. It is not difficult for an operative to
examine models, while the reading of voluminous specifications
might be a hopeless task.
Patentees in the States are very frequently working men, and
there is no doubt that this is due to the character of the American
patent laws. In England on the other hand, working men cannot
afford to take out patents if they would. This is a national dis-
advantage in the growing competition between the two countries,
but there are other reasons why workmen invent on the other side
of the Atlantic and do not here. The traditions of the workshop
in England are not favourable to improvements. Our artizan
objects to cheapening work, and resists rather than promotes the
adoption of labour-saving appliances. He fears " making work
scarce," and thinks the more a job costs and the longer it lasts
the better for him. He has never been encouraged by the hope of
reward to scheme new means for expediting work, and it is equally
against the principles of his order and the rules of his Trade
Union to do so.
Shop traditions in America are of a totally different kind. The
workman sees that cheap production means increased demand,
and does not treat every job of work as if there were no other to
follow it. Any improvement he may suggest in tools or processes
is considered by the employer, and if adopted paid for. Trades
Union rules are not restrictive, and it is the custom of his class to
be perpetually scheming. The patent laws as we have seen, are
conceived in his interest, and he takes advantage of them when-
ever he hits upon anything that seems worth securing.
At the present moment we are divided between admiration and
WASHINGTON. 19
alarm at the mechanical skill of the States, and deplore the grow-
ing insecurity of our position as American competition makes
itself felt in one branch of manufacture after another. Our fears
indeed exaggerate the inventive powers of our Transatlantic
cousins, who are certainly not superior to ourselves in originality,
though being greater users, they are greater improvers of all
mechanical appliances. Unless we can not only cheapen the cost
of patents, but change the traditions of our workshops, it is to be
feared that America may in future oust us out of one industry
after another, for we are badly handicapped in the race. Patent
law amendment has been talked of for years in England, but will
not be accomplished until the public are alarmed on the subject.
Neither will the artizan become, as he might do, an ally in our
competitive battle with the States, until the employer recog-
nises the value of his co-operation, and encourages invention in
the workshop by every means in his power.
I searched the booksellers' shops in New York without success
for a compendious geological handbook of America, a vade mecum
such as Ramsay has given us for England, Geikie for Scotland,
and Hull for Ireland. The publishers said that nothing of the
kind existed or was demanded by the public, and referred me to
the voluminous reports of the United States Geological Survey,
which though excellent, did not meet my case.
The absence of such a book is only one among many indica-
tions of the neglect with which science is generally treated in
America. There are many able scientists and original workers
in the States, as the names of Agassiz, Dana, Draper, Marsh,
Cook, Whitney, and King sufficiently prove, and science is taught
in the universities, colleges, and schools of America; but there
is little popular appreciation of natural knowledge for its own
sake. Nowhere are men readier to apply scientific knowledge to
practical and profitable uses, but the interest seems to cease with
the application, and so far as pure science is concerned, the great
majority of Americans are Gallios.
c 2
20 AN ENGINEER 'S HOLIDA Y.
The Smithsonian Institution at Washington, endowed by James
Smithson, an Englishman, " for the increase and diffusion of
knowledge among men," is to some extent a case in point. It
has an excellent reputation in Europe for the liberal and en-
lightened way in which it endeavours to carry out its founder's
cosmopolitan intentions by printing and distributing scientific
works. Yet, saving a valuable and excellently arranged ethno-
graphic collection, deposited there en bloc by the United States
Geological Survey, its museum is neither valuable nor well-
arranged, being indeed little better than an old curiosity shop,
rarely visited except by travellers like ourselves, or by negroes at
holiday times.
A different state of things prevails in the neighbouring " De-
partment of Agriculture," whose scientific activity however does
not disprove what has been said above. Agriculture is usually
conducted by the rule of thumb ; yet the growth of plants and
animals depends on biological laws requiring the nicest research
for their elucidation. The systematic experiments of Messrs.
Gilbert and Lawes are perhaps the only important efforts which
have yet been made in England towards applying the methods
of science to agricultural questions. In Germany on the other
hand obscure and difficult problems of biology are being vigo-
rously attacked on behalf of agriculture, and America, it a Gallic
in science, has a single eye for everything that fosters business.
Farming is one of her chief industries, and on its behalf Congress
has taken the unusual course of subsidizing a department for the
examination of all agricultural questions of national importance.
A research on the growth of " sorghum," the Chinese sugar-cane,
is now in progress at Washington, whose results promise to be of
immense importance in states where the climate is too cold for
the cultivation of the ordinary sugar-cane ; and a laborious ana-
lytical examination into the relative feeding values of all the
grasses of America is also in hand. The Department of Agri-
culture is an institution we should do well to copy. It is directing
inquiry into the fundamental principles of growth both in plants
WASHINGTON. 21
and animals, and laying down new lines, much needed in England
just now, for the guidance of the farmer.
The Potomac is a wide shallow stream, with low well-wooded
banks of drift, and abundantly stocked with shad, an excellent
fish which is taken on a very large scale a few miles below
Washington. A trip to see the nets hauled, with a fish dinner
to follow, is one of the amusements of the city, and a " shad
bake," or " plank shad excursion," was always a favourite form of
picnic in old Southern days. It was a stifling morning when we
left the city with a party of perhaps a hundred people, in a large
river steamer. The Potomac was gay with shipping of all kinds,
from brigs in cargo for Washington, to fishing crafts and pleasure
yachts. The latter are more like saucers than boats. Each
carries a single mast, stepped near the bow, and one great main-
sail, with a boom nearly twice the length of the yacht. They
are exquisitely built, and sail like the wind. The river near
Washington is full of shallows, covered with miles of stake nets,
in which great quantities of Potomac herrings are taken at
every tide. Fifteen miles below the city is Mount Vernon, the
burial - place of George Washington, on passing which the
steamer's bell tolled solemnly, and shortly afterwards we reached
the fishery.
Shad are taken in seines not less than three miles long, which
are hauled twice in every twenty-four hours by a steam-engine and
windlass fixed on shore, the tackle being quite unmanageable by
hand. When the net reaches shallow water it is surrounded by
a semicircle of black fellows who, standing close together and
waist-deep in the water, keep up a constant stamping to frighten
the fish and prevent their escaping. Meanwhile large " scows,"
or flat-bottomed boats, are brought alongside the seine and filled
with shad by means of wooden scoops. When loaded, these are
taken in tow by a steam-tug, and the fish are landed in Washing-
ton market within an hour or two of being caught. The seines
are shot from a large boat propelled by forty rowers, or in the
case of some companies, by a steamer. These long nets cost
22 AN ENGINEER 'S HO LID A Y.
^1000 each, and the whole plant of a shad fishery is worth
nearly ^"2000.
When the scows had been loaded we landed by a rickety stage
and found dinner awaiting us in a big wooden shanty on the
bank. This primitive hotel stood among maples and hemlocks
growing thickly around, but hardly shading it from the sun, which
beat fiercely down although it was yet early in May. Within,
everything was clean, but rough, the tables made of sawn boards,
no tablecloths, and chairs of the simplest structure. Negro
waiters ran to and fro with plates of baked shad and great jugs
of coffee. No one drank any intoxicating liquor, although the
shanty seemed red-hot, and we, dripping like sponges, were quite
ready for a cool " cocktail." Outside the shed, a wood fire about
a foot in width and nearly twenty feet long was blazing. This
was bordered on either side by a wide plank set edgewise in the
ground with its face to the fire. The freshly caught fish were
nailed to the planks and after ten minutes' roasting served, only
a little hotter, judging from appearances, than the black cooks
who tended them. Shad, shad roe, and coffee, all hot, brought
us rapidly near the fusing point, and having satisfied hunger, we
beat a quick retreat from the wooden oven to the deck of the
steamer, seeking air. But the morning breeze had died away,
and sweltering under the pitiless sun we began to understand
what summer in the sunny South must be like.
Washington looks imposing when approached from the river.
Its granite and marble buildings glitter in the brilliant sunshine,
while an atmosphere clear as that of Italy makes distance seem
of no account. The dome of the Capitol a more striking object
than the cupola of St. Peter's itself towers above all the other
piles, and when sunset tinges with rose the pure whites and greys
of marble and granite, it must be admitted that there are few
fairer cities than that of the " magnificent distances."
PHILADELPHIA. 23
CHAPTER IV.
PHILADELPHIA.
May 10-15.
WHEN Charles II., richer in American land than English gold,
gave a promise to William Penn in liquidation of a claim for
money lent by his father to the king ; he set up a rival monarch,
the " Quaker King," as his settlers liked to call him, in whose
capital a century later kingly power received a deadlier blow than
that which struck the " Martyr" on the scaffold in Whitehall.
" My province " said Penn on landing, " is a free colony for all
mankind, and its people shall be governed by laws of their own
making." These were strange words in an English mouth at the
end of the seventeenth century, as they would be in some European
countries to-day, but they were pregnant with freedom.
Penn's forest capital was a hamlet of three or four cottages
scattered in clearings among the pines in 1681; it is a city of
nearly a million inhabitants to-day. He called it " Brotherly
Love " (Philadelphia) and by the " divine right " of love and
justice alone did the Quaker king rule the settler and the savage.
Expelled from the University of Oxford for attending meetings of
Quakers, exiled by a king too divine to pay his debts, Penn left
this country to found a city where the principles of government
which he proclaimed to an obscure group of colonists were after-
wards to be affirmed in the Declaration of American Independence,
and adopted as the basis of national life by what is now the freest,
if not the greatest people in the world. If kings possessed divine
insight, and learned bodies had saving knowledge, Charles II.
would never have let William Penn, the Christian statesman, loose
on the world. Better for king and priest to have kept him pining
moneyless in gaol ; but happy for mankind that he had the courage
to accept the distant patch of primitive forest, and faith in the
power of liberty to reclaim and govern it.
24 AN ENGINEER'S KOLIDA Y.
The most interesting object in all the United States is " Inde-
pendence Hall," the old " State House " of Philadelphia. It is
the cradle of American liberty ; the first meeting-place of the
" Continental Congress ; " the spot where Adams, Jefferson,
Franklin, Sherman, and Livingston, a committee of the Congress,
drew up the Declaration of Independence, and whence the " bell
of liberty " proclaimed the birth of free America.
This modest building, which reminds the English visitor of an
old-fashioned town hall, was built in 1735 as a permanent place of
meeting for the assembly of Pennsylvania which had hitherto
managed the affairs of the colony from all sorts of temporary
abodes. Here the newly formed Congress met for the first time
in 1775, removing as we know to Washington in 1800. The hall
is now used as a court-house and for municipal purposes, but it is
also a national museum, containing a collection of historical relics
both of the colonial and revolutionary periods. Among the
former are Penn's original charter of the city of Philadelphia and
a painting of himself negotiating with the Indians. The later time
is illustrated by a copy of the Declaration of Independence,* and
portraits both of its signers, and the soldiers who distinguished
themselves in the war. These were painted by an Englishman
named Sharpies, and are excellent works of art. The English type
of face prevails in them to a remarkable extent, the characteristic
American features of the present day having evidently not yet
arisen. The pictures hang round a chamber called the " Congress
Hall," preserved in exactly the same state as when the Declaration
was signed within its walls ; and in a corner of the room is the old
" liberty bell " cracked, and replaced in the belfry by a fac-simile
whose tongue first told that America was free. It bears an
inscription very characteristic of the fine old colonists who hung it
in their State House tower : " Proclaim liberty throughout the land
to all the inhabitants thereof."
* The original is carefully preserved at Washington, and it is much to
be regretted that lapse of time is destroying the ink with which it was
written.
PHILADELPHIA. 25
It is an impressive sight, this modest but dignified chamber,
with its familiar eighteenth-century furniture and its intensely old-
fashioned English air. The faces which look out from the walls
are like those of our grandfathers, and belong without exception
to earnest and capable men who are fully conscious of their re-
sponsibility and the importance of the matter in hand. Dr.
Franklin's portrait shines with his cheerful wit. It is easy to
believe that he looked thus when prudent John Hancock, who
headed the members of Congress coming up to sign, said, pen in
hand, " We must be unanimous, gentlemen ; there must be no
pulling different ways. We must all hang together." " Yes," said
Franklin, "we must all hang together, or else we shall all hang
separately." They laughed at the sally ; but there were anxious
hearts among those who laughed. It is pleasant to see with what
enthusiasm Americans regard these germs of their national life,
while, far removed as we are from the policy of that day, it is also
pleasant for English visitors to be reminded that the brave men
who planned and bled for American freedom were so conspicuously
Englishmen.
Philadelphia is larger than any other city in the Union, and its
paved streets measure three hundred and fifty miles. It is second
to New York in population, but first in manufactures, surpassing
the capital in the amount of money invested and number of hands
employed in its factories.
American cities are laid out in square blocks like a chess-board,
but happy irregularities sometimes occur, as in the case of Broad-
way which cuts diagonally across New York ; and at Washington,
whose streets are partly radial, partly rectangular "the city of
Philadelphia griddled across the city of Versailles." The town of
Brotherly Love on the other hand is quite " on the square," as
might be expected in a Quaker city, and it consequently illustrates
perfectly the American science of numbering houses. The city
lies like a great chequer-board between the Delaware and Schulkill
rivers, whose courses are roughly parallel at this point. The
divisions between the chequers coincide with the cardinal points
26 AN ENGINEER 'S HO LI DA Y.
of the compass, and all the streets running north and south are
numbered consecutively from i to 30, beginning at the Delaware.
These are crossed at right angles by named streets, the houses of
which are numbered from east to west, all between First and
Second Streets being between 100 and 200, and all between
Second and Third Streets between 200 and 300, and so on ; so
that the number of each house indicates the number of the street
in which it is situated as well. Thus, if the number of a house is
836, Eighth Street is east and Ninth Street west of it. In like
manner streets running north and south are allowed 100 numbers
for every square they are distant from the central, or Market
Street, either north or South. In going about the city therefore,
whenever one can see a number he can calculate his exact dis-
tance from Market Street or the Delaware. This is scientific but
prosaic. An Englishman would not like to have such an address
as " No. 1710, Eighteenth Street;" while to be identifiable by a
number has something of the convict about it.
The " Continental " at Philadelphia may stand for a portrait of
American hotels generally, in describing which it is necessary to
make comparisons more or less " odorous." An English hotel is
a place to eat, drink, sleep, and be cheated ; where the maximum
of electro-plate is combined with the minimum of mutton cutlets ;
where wine, ice, and baths are ruinous luxuries ; where bed-rooms
are cleaned before the arrival of guests, but not during their stay ;
where the waiters, to say the best, think more of their tips than
your comfort ; a place which the traveller enters leaving hope
behind, and leaves, but for his bill, with pleasure. The guest of
an American hotel, on the other hand, pays a fixed tariff of from
twelve to sixteen shillings a day, and there are no extras. He is
lodged in a bed-room, often with a sitting-room, and always with
bath and retiring rooms attached, which are kept scrupulously
clean. Four meals almost overlapping each other in time are
served daily, and one may therefore feed at any hour. I have
counted eighty-two dishes on a dinner memi, any or all of which
may be ordered at discretion. Ice is a drug both at table and in
PHILADELPHIA. 27
the bed-rooms ; no one drinks wine, so there is no temptation to
order anything simply " for the good of the house." Practical
lifts, which really abolish the staircases, are running all day, and
can be called from any floor by an electric bell. The waiters are
independent in their manners, but attentive to orders and require
no "tips." The bar dispenses Olympian nectars. The hall is
an exchange, telegraph, and telephone office, railway booking
office, and mart, where every want from a suit of clothes to a
cigar may be bought. The hotel " clerk " is an official having no
equivalent in England. He is an equal with whom, if you are
wise, you will shake hands on arrival and leaving. There is no
local information which he cannot give you, and he furnishes it
with a frank pleasure in being of use that is delightful. Some
of these great houses can accommodate more than a thousand
guests, and cost as much as three-quarters of a million sterling to
build and equip. Yet, in spite of their size and complication,
they are "run" with the smoothness of a private house. The
order and cleanliness is perfect, the service far better than ours,
and every employe is kept up to the mark by vigilant heads of
departments who are felt but not seen.
The janitor of the Academy of Natural Sciences looked quite
surprised to see a visitor, and I paced the spacious galleries of
this home of knowledge quite alone. Natural science is not more
popular in Philadelphia than at Washington, though here, as
there, it receives the homage of fine buildings. Material success
is confessedly the leading pursuit in America, but it is followed
with so much intelligence that it is difficult to believe the Ameri-
cans are not an intellectual nation. Gradually, however, one
learns that the breadth of view and readiness to entertain new
ideas so delightful to a new-comer are strictly confined to business,
to which if science does not minister it is neglected.
In a less degree the same thing is true of art. Philadelphia
possesses a fine Academy of Arts, with charming picture galleries,
consisting of a group of large central halls having side rooms
opening into them, so that there is a general view of the saloons
28 AN ENGINEER 'S HOLIDA Y.
from every point, giving the visitor a delightful sense of lightness
and freedom. The schools too are excellently designed, but the
amount of art work going forward within these walls is surprisingly
small for so great a city. I counted from thirty to forty students
where I expected to find hundreds.
No one who looks critically at the toilettes of Fifth Avenue, or
at Tiffany's exquisite silversmith's work and jewellery, can deny
that the Americans have excellent taste ; and probably no
European capital contains finer private galleries of modern
pictures than New York. But it cannot be said that the cultiva-
tion of art any more than of science is characteristic of the
American people. This is probably only a transition state of
things. Americans who have resided, been educated, or had
frequent communication with Europe, cultivate the Muses assidu-
ously ; and from this union of Old World culture with New World
freedom there has arisen a charming social life in many of the
Atlantic cities. But these coteries are the leaven, and we are
talking of the lump.
The old Pennsylvania Hospital, built in 1750, is another relic
of the colonial age which is extremely English in character. The
building is worth a visit on this account, but it also furnishes a
capital example of the application of scientific principles to prac-
tical wants. Warming and ventilation were not much considered
in the construction of eighteenth-century buildings ; but the
American medical man characteristically likes to use the best
appliances for his work and has no notion of making a bad job
for want of good tools. In accordance with modern ideas he has
consequently introduced a system for supplying the wards of the
old hospital with fresh air in any required volume and at any
required temperature. A large fan, driven by steam-power, draws
atmospheric air from a pure source and drives it through a
chamber furnished with coils of hot-water pipes whose temperature
is regulable at will. The pure air thus dried and warmed is in-
troduced into the wards at the floor level, whence it flows through
gratings in the ceiling into tall chimney shafts. There are no
PHILADELPHIA. 29
fires, no open windows, and no draughts, and pysemia, the curse
of ill-ventilated hospitals, is unknown.
In view of the advanced character of such arrangements it
seems paradoxical that medical education in the States is so
perfunctory, and that medical degrees should be obtainable with
almost scandalous ease. A medical student in England cannot
obtain his M.D. in less than seven or eight years, during a large
portion of which time he is employed on clinical work. In
America, on the other hand, a student can take his degree within
at most three years, during which time his attention has been
wholly given to book-work ; so that it is actually possible for a
medical man to commence practising before he has felt a pulse
or taken a temperature. I do not say this occurs, but only that
it can happen.
Each state has its own degree-giving bodies, often constituted,
especially in sparsely peopled states, by not very enlightened legis-
latures; and in certain parts of the Union degrees may conse-
quently be obtained by men without any real knowledge, and in
almost any school, whether of medicine or quackery. The public
sentiment of America is so jealous of any interference with freedom
of opinion that it resolutely objects to selecting any one system of
medicine in which to grant degrees. The title of " Dr." conse-
quently gives no guarantee that the holder is an educated man ;
and a crowd of unscrupulous quacks, many of them indisputable
doctors, infest the States to an extent which is unknown in any
other country. As the properly qualified members of the profession
advertise their names and official addresses every doctor in the
States has an office the quack cannot be distinguished from the
educated practitioner by the use of so general a custom, and he
flourishes in proportion to his skill as an advertiser. Quack
advertising is a gigantic institution in America, and the quantity
of patented medicines manufactured is almost incredible. Some
of these remedies are produced in great factories, and fabulous
fortunes are made by their proprietors. It may be said that the
demand for nostrums creates the supply ; but American quackery
30 AN ENGINEER'S HO LID A Y.
is fostered to such an extraordinary degree by the promiscuous
granting of medical degrees that it is more than time some cen-
tralized system should be established which, favouring no school
of medicine, should at least require a competent knowledge of
the structure and functions of the human body from every
American M.D.
Chestnut Street is the fashionable promenade and contains all
the best hotels, offices, and shops. Here may be seen two more
fragments of Old England : " Perm's Cottage," the first brick
house built in Pennsylvania for William Penn ; and the old
" London Coffee-House," now a tobacco shop, another brick
house, built in 1702, and frequented by the city magnates in' the
colonial days. The residential streets of Philadelphia are embel-
lished with handsome houses of brown stone and white marble,
but there are few gardens. Roads and pavements, as usual else-
where, are disgraceful, thanks to the absence of municipal public
spirit, but nothing can exceed the order and cleanliness of the
homes of the well-to-do classes. Housekeeping in the Atlantic
cities is carried on with the thoroughness of business, and not in
the sloppy way too common at home. Whatever may be the
faults of American " helps," they are not visible to foreigners,
and are more than compensated for by good management on the
part of mistresses. A good many laborious and dirty operations
are certainly saved in American houses by the use of mechanical
arrangements, especially in regard to warming and the disposal of
waste water, but the credit of excellently well-kept houses belongs
to the housekeeper nevertheless.
The Philadelphians differ essentially in character from the New
Yorkers. The latter are cosmopolitan, speculative, and easy of
approach. The former are provincial, prudent, and exclusive.
The two cities are great rivals ; and while New York boasts its
larger population, its greater commercial activity, and its social
splendour, Philadelphia prides herself on her more important
industries, her commercial solidity, and social propriety. New
York thinks itself brilliant, and Philadelphia slow. Philadelphia
THE COAL-FIELD OF PENNSYLVANIA. 31
on the other hand considers herself safe, and New York specu-
lative. Perhaps an Englishman's training disposes him to lean to
the Quaker rather than the cosmopolitan view.
CHAPTER V.
THE COAL-FIELD OF PENNSYLVANIA.
Matick-Ckunk, May 16-19.
ALL the eastern cities are built on the " Atlantic slope," which is
a low plain bordering the Atlantic coast and having a width of
from fifty to a hundred miles. Beyond this rise the Alleghanies,
which are not so much a chain of mountains as a plateau crested
by several chains, separated from each other by elevated valleys.
East of the Hudson river the hills form irregular groups, but in
Pennsylvania they become long, parallel ridges, varying from two
thousand five hundred to four thousand feet in height, with a total
breadth of a hundred miles.
The subterranean floor of the Alleghanies is composed of Pri-
mary rocks which, in a much earlier stage of the world's history,
formed a great range of mountains probably higher than the
Andes. Under the influence of rain and frost the debris of these
easily weathered felspathic rocks accumulated in the neighbouring
ocean, where they formed the Palaeozoic strata constituting the
present Alleghany chain. While the old mountain range was
thus being slowly destroyed, the sea which received its debris was
gradually deepening, and so continued through periods of such
vast duration that the sedimentary beds derived from the ruins of
the Primary rocks were piled up to a thickness of nearly seven
miles. At length the ocean ceased to deepen, and the period of
deposition closed with the Coal-measures, which constitute a sub-
ordinate system in the vast and varied Palaeozoic succession.
32 AN ENGINEER'S HO LI DA Y.
These stratified rocks were next subjected to enormous lateral
pressure, produced probably by the falling inward of the earth's
crust, which must have repeatedly occurred as the internal mass
shrank on cooling; and resulting in the formation of great folds,
or crumples, such as are made by laterally squeezing the leaves of
a book. The greater part of the ridges thus produced have since
been planed down by denudation, but their original height is indi-
cated by the curves which remain, while the depth of the corre-
sponding troughs is similarly inferred. The present plateau of the
Alleghanies is only a small fragment of these great convolutions,
and the greater part of the once continuous Coal-measures have
been swept away, only those escaping which lie in the deep
troughs, or "synclinals."
The Pennsylvania coal-field consists of three such synclinals,
lying in three narrow parallel glens, known as the Schulkill, the
Mahoning, and the Wyoming valleys, stretching westward right
across the state. The original area of the Pennsylvania coal-
field cannot be defined, so much of it having been destroyed by
erosion, but it probably extended to the Catskills and Southern
New York, and might have been continuous with the coal of
Rhode Island, New Brunswick, and- even Nova Scotia; while it
certainly spread westward in an unbroken sheet across the state
of Ohio and joined the fields of Indiana and Illinois.
West of the Alleghanies the coal is bituminous, while east of
them it is anthracitic in character. There is a regular progression
in this respect from west to east, the coal passing by almost
insensible degrees from its most gaseous to its dryest condition,
and this change coincides with the more or less disturbed state of
the Coal-measures themselves. Among the crumpled ridges of
the mountain range the beds are upturned at high angles, covered
by disturbed strata, and exhibit frequent outcrops; while west-
ward of the hills they are almost flat and the overlying rocks are
undisturbed. The position in the former case is favourable to
the gradual escape of the hydrogen once contained in the coal,
while in the latter instance the gas has been retained. To this
THE COAL-FIELD OF PENNSYLVANIA. 33
circumstance the Atlantic cities owe their freedom from smoke.
New York and Philadelphia have the bright atmosphere of Paris,
but manufacturing towns west of the Alleghanies are as dingy as
any in England.
The little town of Mauch-Chunk, built on the river Lehigh, an
affluent of the Delaware, lies in the very heart of the Pennsylvania
coal region, and possesses a special interest as the cradle of the
American coal trade, while the Lehigh Valley itself is called the
Switzerland of America. About the middle of the eighteenth
century a hunter trapping over its wilds built his camp fire on
" Summit " Hill upon half a dozen big stones, which to his great
astonishment took fire and burnt like logs. In the course of
time the story reached Philadelphia and excited the attention of
some of the enterprising citizens, who ultimately chartered the
Lehigh Coal-Mining Company in 1792, and commenced to work
this strangely discovered coal-field. Companies were modest
bodies in those days, and this one began by authorizing an expen-
diture of ,5 for making a road from the outcrop on Summit Hill
to the foot of Mauch-Chunk, or Bear Mountain, the nearest point
on the Lehigh. This river is a shallow stream with a number of
rocky ridges extending almost across the stream and giving rise
to many rapids. Nothing could look less promising for naviga-
tion than the Lehigh in dry weather, but the Quakers were sturdy
men, and fuel was already a want in Philadelphia. The coal was
carted to the river by mules and shipped in great flat-bottomed
scows of very light draught, and these, when there was water
enough, ran the gauntlet of rocks and rapids for forty miles at
which point the Lehigh joins the navigable Delaware. In the
course of a short time the bed of the river was paved with the
wrecks of the scows, but very little coal reached Philadelphia,
and after much labour and disaster the attempt was abandoned as
useless and the enterprise slept for nearly thirty years.
In 1818 a new survey was made of the Lehigh, and it was
improved for navigation. Two years later another company,
called " The Lehigh Navigation Company," was formed, and the
34 AN ENGINEER'S HO LID A Y.
two corporations having amalgamated, the first cargo of coal
reached Philadelphia in 1820. It was three hundred and sixty
tons in weight and stocked the market for a year ! Five years
later the prospects of the trade had improved so much that a
canal from Mauch-Chunk to White Haven on the Delaware was
projected and opened in 1829. After being many times nearly
destroyed by floods, this work was almost ruined in 1862, when
the Lehigh Valley Railway was built to replace it and the canal
abandoned. Simultaneously with the cutting of the canal, a rail-
road, the first in Pennsylvania and second in the States, was
constructed from Summit Hill to Mauch-Chunk. In the begin-
ning this was simply a grade some nine miles long, falling gently
from Summit around the hillsides to the level of the river; but
the outcrop, which alone had hitherto been worked, became in-
adequate to supply the increased demand, and the seam was
accordingly followed into the valley on the other side of the
hill where fresh pits were opened. The Gravity Road was
improved and extended to the new workings, powerful winding
engines were substituted for the mules which had hitherto hauled
the empty trucks up from the wharves to Summit, and the whole
system brought into a condition of efficiency which reflects the
utmost credit on the men who carried out the work at a time
when the principles of railway construction were little understood.
It is said that one of the chief mechanics employed was sent to
England on one occasion for the purpose of learning some
trifling details of rail-laying. He returned with only part of the
required information, having omitted to make any notes, and his
memory failing him in one important particular. Notwithstand-
ing the length of the voyage he w%s sent back again for the
missing link, and the incident proves the earnestness with which
a new and difficult enterprise was attacked.
The Lehigh Valley Railway has long since superseded the
Gravity Road, and Summit Hill has been pierced by a great
tunnel, through which the coal from all the numerous pits finds
its way to the rails ; but the old route remains intact and is used
THE COAL-FIELD OF PENNSYLVANIA. 35
every summer as a pleasure road by tourists. From the top of
its highest inclines magnificent views are obtained of a country
very much like the Jura, while the descent by gentle grades to
Mauch-Chunk along hillsides densely clothed with primitive forest
of chestnut and oak, with an undergrowth of rhododendron and
azalea, forms not the least charming part of the trip.
We have seen that sixty years ago a shipment of three hundred
and sixty tons of coal glutted the Philadelphia market. Ten
years later two other coal-fields besides that of Lehigh had been
opened in the Schulkill and Wyoming valleys respectively, and
the production had advanced to 170,000 tons. Within another
ten years the Shamokin coal measures were tapped, and 800,000
tons marketed ; while ten years ago, the coal raised in Pennsyl-
vania amounted to nearly 24,000,000 tons about one-fourth of
the whole output of England, and the industry gave employment
to thirty thousand people. A second railway the Central of
New Jersey now runs through the Lehigh Valley, which is
hardly wide enough to contain the street, the river, the canal, and
the rails. The Mauch-Chunk hotel flanks the railroad closely,
and the visitor is soon made aware that the Switzerland of
America is no quiet solitude. From the " Mansion House " he
either sees or hears trains of a hundred and fifty cars each fol-
lowing within sight of one another in a continuous stream all day
and night. The engines toll a huge bell as they pass through the
village and their whistles emit a thrilling bass note, while the
automatic brakes are operated by a steam aspirator whose pene-
trating hiss is worse than the whistle. Such are the accompani-
ments of romantic scenery in the Switzerland of America.
Coal-mining is conducted quite differently in England and in
the Alleghanies. The seams with us are rarely more than a few
feet in thickness, and, though often much disturbed, are not far
from horizontal. The anthracites of Pennsylvania, on the other
hand, are fifty and sometimes even eighty feet thick, and lie in
highly inclined beds. The bituminous coals west of the Alle-
ghanies are thinner and nearly level. The latter are consequently
D 2
36 AN ENGINEER 'S HO LI DA Y.
worked by shafts, as with us, but the steep and thick seams of the
former district are usually reached by horizontal tunnels pierced
in the hillsides, and the coal is quarried rather than mined. The
chief ironworks of the States are collected in the Lehigh and
neighbouring valleys, and the first furnace ever erected in the
States for smelting iron with anthracite coal was built at Mauch-
Chunk itself, that " happy father of twins " the coal and iron
trades of America.
CHAPTER VI.
ACROSS THE ALLEGHANIES.
Huntingdon and Altcona, May 20-24.
THE traveller designing to go west from the Pennsylvania coal-
field by the Pennsylvania Railway, returns from his short excursion
into the eastern valleys of the Alleghanies to the Atlantic slope,
and turning his face south, skirts the feet of the mountains until
he reaches the Susquehanna at Harrisburg.
The country between Mauch-Chunk and Harrisburg is some of
the oldest settled land in Pennsylvania, and looks like a smiling
agricultural district in England. The farms, cultivated by their
owners, are seldom more and sometimes much less than a hundred
and sixty acres in extent. Near market towns they are worth as
much as ^50, but in the country they sell for ;io an acre.
Numerous villages, pretty farmhouses, cleared fields, small en-
closures, good fences, and capital crops, chiefly of artificial grasses,
remind the tourist of Europe rather than America. The first
contact with such small farms is a surprise to Englishmen, who
usually but erroneously suppose that farming is always conducted
on a very large scale in the States.
After crossing the Susquehanna on a long bridge, light as a
cobweb in appearance, the train follows the valley of the Juniata
ACROSS THE ALLEGHANIES. 37
for more than fifty miles into the heart of the Alleghanies. The
hills are generally not more than a thousand feet in height ; they
are wooded to their summits, and intersected by numerous valleys
carrying unimportant streams. The banks of the Juniata are
thickly clothed with sumach and acacia, the latter filling the air
with a delightful fragrance.
If, warned by the din of the American Switzerland, and mindful
that his next resting-place is the home of the great workshops of
the Pennsylvania Railway, the traveller elects to woo sleep in
some quiet retreat on the way, he is not unlikely to spend a night
in the agricultural village of Huntingdon. In that case, he finds
himself on stepping out of the cars in the main street of the place,
there being no platform, and the " depot " only a neighbouring
shop for the sale of tickets ; while the railway, one of the greatest
arteries of commerce in America, is flanked on either hand by
the hotels, shops, and dwelling-houses of the village. A constant
stream of traffic pours along the line, passenger and emigrant
trains during the day, corn and coal trains both night and day.
The big bell and deep toned whistle are seldom silent, but the
villagers seem to like it. They loaf into the bar in the morning,
a mixture of master mechanic and labourer in appearance, and
read the paper, or take their " whisky straight." At night they
sit in groups on the side-walks bordering the rails, with heels up,
chatting, chewing, and spitting. At the corner near the depot is
a telegraph office, the main street is lined with wires, half a dozen
of which enter each of the two village " hotels," and the click of
the sounder can be heard whenever the trains are silent. The
side streets, laid out as usual on the square, and planted with
acacias, are a mass of ruts and holes as to the roadway, while the
side-walks consist of planks, badly fastened, and often with loose
ends. The " cottages " are boarded houses, roofed with shingles ;
there are no gardens, and the women spend the hot evenings
seeking air on their door-steps, nicely dressed, with their hair
carefully, not to say fashionably, arranged. Sometimes from an
open window the notes of an American organ float out into the
38 AN ENGINEER'S If OLID A Y.
warm still air, heavy with the scent of acacia blooms. Here and
there an ugly chapel breaks the monotony of the street, or a
square brick church with an open-work cast-iron spire, accentuates
the surrounding prose. From a picturesque point of view pastoral
Huntingdon is a failure, but these sincerely unromantic people
cannot see it. They are serenely sure that it is all right, and
would think it superior to the prettiest English village.
Such places as Huntingdon, even more than New York City
or Philadelphia, illustrate the fundamental differences between
national character in America and England. The rural life of
the two countries is as far as the poles asunder, both in outward
semblance and inward spirit. The English hall and squire, the
old church and parson, the village green, the thatched cottages,
the patient people, and simple costumes, form a strange contrast
to the hotel, the wooden chapel, the railway and telegraph, the
board houses and " high-toned," well-clad people of Huntingdon ;
but this is nothing to the gulf which separates the mind of the
English rustic, with an ambition too often bounded by parish
relief, from that of the American " hired man," who alternates
between working for others at high wages during the busier
agricultural seasons and tilling his own acres in the intervals.
Altoona lies at the very foot of the highest and most westerly
ridge of the Alleghanies. It is a city of fifteen thousand in-
habitants, built since 1850, when the site, then primitive forest,
was chosen for the erection of the vast machine-shops of the
Pennsylvania Railroad. These works are the only interesting
feature of Altoona, which is another Huntingdon in appearance.
They are well situated for supplies of coal and iron, laid out on
an enormous scale, and fitted with everything that engineering
science can suggest for improving and expediting work. Hence
the locomotives and rolling stock of the Pennsylvania Railway
Company, all of which are built within these walls, are unsurpassed
in excellence of workmanship.
The hotel at Altoona abuts on the railway, whose four lines of
way are constantly roaring with traffic. The Medical Association
ACROSS THE ALLEGHANIES. 39
of Pennsylvania was holding its annual meeting here on the day
of our visit, and a kind of open-air conversazione took place in the
evening after the reading of papers was over. The scene, though
interesting, was not a little incongruous to English eyes. A large
number of ladies and gentlemen, all en grande tenue, lounged, sat,
or strolled, chatted with old friends or made new, on the verandah
of the hotel, which occupied exactly the same position in regard
to the railroad as the platform of a station does with us. Mean-
while travellers embarked and disembarked, great walls of trunks
were made and unmade in the midst of the conversationalists,
great trains of coal, corn, and emigrants roared through the
echoing depot, bells tolling and whistles blowing. Across the
way the clanking workshops added to the din, while to crown all,
a terrific thunderstorm burst over this Pandemonium. But society
was not stirred in the least. It made polite speeches, smiled, and
flirted happily, and seemed entirely unaware of any incongruity
in its surroundings.
This little reunion of ladies and gentlemen, few of whom were
intimates, offered us many opportunities of observing that gal-
lantry towards women for which America is famous. Women in
the States are surrounded with privileges unknown in the Old
World. They can appear alone anywhere and at any time. They
may travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast without an escort.
They may claim as a right attentions which are only accorded as
a favour in Europe. With a touch of her fan or parasol, a lady
may indicate to a perfect stranger that she desires his seat in
a concert-room or an omnibus. When this is yielded she may
take it without thanks. Or she may load her male companion
with trifles without paying for his service with a smile. All this
might be called chivalrous but for the curiously common place air
which it assumes. The charm of small cares lies in their being
rendered as much to please the giver as the receiver. But a
pretty girl in America sends a young man on her errands in so
business-like a manner, that she looks selfish and he a little silly.
The ascent of the Alleghanies begins just beyond Altoona. The
40 AN ENGINEER 'S HO LI DA Y.
grades are not severe, and two magnificent locomotives carry the
train easily and quickly up to the summit, a distance of eleven miles.
Here, at three thousand feet of elevation, the astonished traveller
finds iron furnaces in blast and extensive coke hearths blazing. A
few miles further on all traces of coal and iron industries dis-
appear, and a comfortable hotel presents itself at Cresson Springs,
where it is extremely refreshing to spend twenty-four hours in the
cool bracing air of the summit, before descending into the heat
and smoke of Pittsburg. The watershed of the Alleghanies is a
wide plateau, densely covered with forests of oak, maple, pine, and
hemlock, diversified with numerous cleared farms and land in the
course of clearing. The crops grown at this elevation are chiefly
oats and artificial grasses, but wheat will ripen. Uncleared land
is worth from five to ten dollars an acre, and clearing costs about
ten dollars an acre more. The trees are felled at about two feet
from the ground, and the stumps allowed to rot an operation which
takes five years with hemlock, fifteen years with oak, and as much
as fifty years with pine. Descending the western slope of the
range, the railway follows the valley of the Conemaugh, falling by
gentle slopes through a lovely country of densely wooded hills,
furrowed by numerous side ravines. The remains of another rail-
road are constantly seen from the cars, sometimes above and
sometimes below the track followed by the trains. This is the old
" Portage Railway," which in pre-locomotive days carried loaded
canal boats in sections over the hills by a series of inclined planes.
On reaching the eastern base of the mountains, the sections were
once more united, and the complete barge relaunched. The whole
thickness of the Palaeozoic strata of the Alleghanies is exposed in
the railroad cutting, the beds lying in a great trough, or synclinal
basin, so that they are first passed in reverse order and afterwards
in the proper order of superposition. As the train traverses mile
after mile of this magnificent section, the mind loses itself in a
vain endeavour to realise the lapse of time during which the vast
pile of sediments was built up. Equally in vain it tries to picture
the forces which subsequently crumpled the mass, seven miles in
PITTSBURGH 41
thickness, into gigantic folds ; and lastly, but still vainly, it asks
how long since rain and frost began to pare down the Andean
ridges to the small fraction of their original mass which constitutes
the present Alleghany chain.
CHAPTER VII.
PITTSBURG.
May 25-27.
THE English colonies of America in the middle of the eighteenth
century were confined to a strip of land lying along the Atlantic
coast. The French who had explored the great lakes, the Illinois,
Ohio, and Mississippi rivers, establishing trading posts, forts, and
missions on their way, claimed all the interior regions from the St.
Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, and were quite as anxious as the
aborigines with whom they traded to keep the English out of all
that region. Our colonists indeed began to feel so hemmed in
that the Governor of New York wrote to England saying that if
the French were allowed to hold all they had discovered, England
would not have a hundred miles from the sea anywhere. It was
under these circumstances that George Washington was sent, in
1753, to remonstrate with the French officers who objected to the
English making a survey of the Ohio Valley. The mission came
to nothing, but Washington on his way home selected a spot at
the confluence of the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers for the
erection of an English fort. The Virginian Government approved
of his project and sent an expedition to carry it out, whereupon
the builders were attacked and driven away by the French, who
finished the work themselves and called it Fort Du Quesne. In
the summer of 1755, General Braddock with a veteran English
army tried to retake the post, but his ignorance of Indian warfare
42 AN ENGINEER 'S HOLIDA K
caused him to suffer a crushing and bloody defeat. This repulse
gave rise to the greatest excitement throughout the colonies and in
England, while it left the French in possession of all the country
west of the Alleghany Mountains. Three years later however Fort
Du Quesne surrendered to Washington, and its capture was one of
the most important incidents in the French and Indian war of
i755-63,which ending unfavourably for France and her savage allies,
determined the question whether the French or the English should
control the continent of America. It is worthy of remark that
the same question was answered with regard to India in the same
year, and in the same way ; for with the disgrace of the great
Dupleix, in 1754, began the fall of French power, and with the
recall of his almost equally great lieutenant Bussy, in 1758, passed
away the last chance of French supremacy in India.
On the site of Fort Du Quesne now stands the manufacturing
town of Pittsburg, looking down upon whose busy streets we can-
not but wonder what would have been the effect on America if a
different result had attended the international colonial struggles of
the eighteenth century. The Monongahela and Alleghany rivers,
flowing one north and the other south, drain the western slopes of
the Alleghanies for a distance of three hundred miles and finally
unite to form the Ohio. At their point of junction they have
thrown up a delta upon which Pittsburg is built ; and as both
rivers run through steep bluffs of carboniferous strata, the town is
hemmed in by rocky walls. The city has out-grown the delta and
thrown one offshoot called Alleghany City across the river of that
name, and another called Birmingham across the Monongahela.
All the flat land is covered, and still there is not room enough for
the private residences of merchants and manufacturers, which have
been obliged to spread over the top of the neighbouring bluff,
whose steep sides are scaled by several steam inclines. The view
of Pittsburg from above on a still day is like " hell with the lid
off," the whole city being covered with an opaque pall of black
smoke, lurid here and there with the flames that issue from the
chimneys of rolling-mills. Iron and glass-making are the chief
PITTSBURG. 43
industries, but a large amount of miscellaneous engineering work is
also carried on. The Alleghany and Mononghela flow through in-
exhaustible coal and iron fields, while the Ohio,*which is navigable
to its junction with the Mississippi at St. Louis, forms an open road
to the Gulf. Pittsburg accordingly supplied the Southern states
with coal, iron, and manufactures in their palmy days, before
water carriage was supplemented by railroads ; and since these
were introduced the city has become the centre of a new and
extensive trade with the growing Western states.
" The stranger," says the guide-book, " will have missed the
city's most characteristic sights if he fails to visit some of its great
manufacturing establishments ;" which is perfectly true in more
than one sense of the words. America is at once the most
economical and lavish of nations lavish of her natural resources,
but economical to the last degree of labour. Even in the Eastern
states, where manufacture is much older than in the West, and
conducted more upon European lines, waste of material occurs
such as would make all the difference between profit and loss in
the Old World, where competition has brought prices down to
their lowest point, but which passes unnoticed in the States,
where a high price is ensured by the protective tariff.
Eastern extravagance however is economy compared with
western waste. The very smoke of Pittsburg tells the traveller
beforehand what to look for within the walls of the great rolling
milts, where, instead of a scientific use of fuel, he finds the
slovenliness of Staffordshire. The American Iron Works cover
seventeen acres of ground, and employ three thousand hands,
but are interesting rather on account of their extent than for
their management, the quality of economic production which we
associate with American industries being conspicuous by its
absence. The same thing may be said of the glass-houses, which
are also generally inferior to similar establishments in Germany
and England, while the window glass they produce is poor in
colour, and the table-ware lacks both design and finish.
But if the rolling-mills and glass-houses are open to criticism,
44 AN ENGINEER 'S HOLIDA Y.
Pittsburg offers examples of other industries, such as bridge-
building for example, where labour is economized in a manner
of which we know nothing in England. Indeed, we have no
establishments at all similar to those in which the beautiful
trussed girders of American railroads are made. The bridges
for a railway line in England are designed by the civil engineer,
who issues drawings and specifications to contractors for tenders,
usually accepting the lowest estimate. It is seldom that a type
of bridge is selected to which the various structures on the line
are as far as possible conformed, and as every engineer has his
own views on the subject of bridges, no two of them ever adopt
similar designs. The contractor, on the other hand, is not a
bridge-builder by trade ; his chief business may be that of a
founder, a boiler-maker, or an iron-ship builder, and he only
works to the engineer's drawings and specifications. Under these
circumstances, establishments fitted with a special bridge-making
plant cannot arise, for every new contract requires new prepara-
tions. Excellent work is no doubt done in this way by our civil
engineers, but with a commensurate expenditure of time and
money, the system excluding the use of labour-saving machinery.
In America, on the other hand, bridge-building is a specialized
business, like the manufacture of watches or sewing-machines, and
a visit to one of the Pittsburg bridge factories is a delightful
surprise to an English engineer. An excellent building, planned
for the purpose, contains all the plant and tools. Girders of
many sizes are made, but all conforming to a given type of con-
struction, and drawings, specifications, and prices of bridges of
any span on this type are furnished upon application to the rail-
way engineer, who works them into his plans, and finally orders
them as he would rails or sleepers. These bridges are made
almost entirely by machinery, and the pieces being accurate and
interchangeable are never even put together in the workshop, but
assembled at the site of the structure. I was not surprised to
hear that girders thus built can be supplied practically on receipt
of order, or that large spans can be fixed in a few days.
PITTSBURG. 45
Speciality in manufacture is an extremely characteristic Ameri-
can peculiarity, and next to the national habit of inventing and
improving is the means by which the States have become our
competitors in many mechanical industries. With us the artificer
has been and still is too much a Jack-of-all-trades, a thing which,
as in the case of bridge-building, forbids the extended use of
labour-saving machinery, and involves too much handwork. Not
only is this system costly, but its products are inferior in finish
and uneven in quality, while it tends to increase the number of
trifling and unnecessary variations in the goods produced. The
American on the other hand gives his whole attention to the
manufacture of a single article, trusting, even when this is a thing
in small demand, to make a market by cheapening its production.
With this view, he " gets up " to use his own phrase a machine
or a series of machines, which in regard to any given manufacture
perform automatically, and therefore cheaply and accurately, all
the processes which the Jack-of-all-trades does by hand, turning
out a better, cheaper, and more even article than his competitor,
and beating him in his own market, in spite of the high prices of
wages and materials in the States.
Pittsburg is a centre of the iron trade, and is surrounded by
blast furnaces which, though good, are not in advance of our
own. I visited the Lucy furnaces, belonging to the Messrs.
Carnegie favourable examples, as I was informed, of a modern
plant and found that their yield of iron per ton of fuel is less
than with us. If ever America adopts a free-trade policy, one of
its first results will be an improvement in American iron-making,
for the profits of this industry are so great under the protective
system, that iron-masters are not stimulated to do their utmost in
cheapening production. Nowhere is pig-iron made under more
favourable circumstances than at Pittsburg, where the coal and
iron are both extremely accessible, and lie side, by side upon the
banks of a great navigable stream, while labour is not much dearer
in Pennsylvania than in Yorkshire, skilled men at the Lucy fur-
naces earning seven shillings, and labourers five shillings a day.
46 AN ENGINEER 'S HO LID A Y.
Granting then for the sake of argument the favourite pro-
tectionist position of Americans that a tariff is a premium
willingly paid by the nation for the purpose of fostering its
budding industries, one fails to see that the iron-master of Western
Pennsylvania needs any further nursing. His natural advantages,
mechanical skill, and the present price of labour put him on a
practically equal footing with his English competitors. The man
who gets very rich in America is the manufacturer ; the man who
pays is the American consumer. I saw a small blast furnace
plant near Pittsburg, whose owners, starting with borrowed capital
twenty-five years ago, are now millionaires. They did not make
this money by their brains, for their furnaces are not so scientific
or so productive as many at Middlesborough ; and they would
probably have done very well for themselves if their customers
had been allowed to keep the greater part if not the whole of the
import duty on pig-iron in their own pockets.
A bird of passage can only peck at great questions like this one
of free trade, but it is clear, and will be admitted by the Americans
themselves, that no manufacturer who can profitably sell his goods
in European markets requires further nursing at the expense of
American consumers. Yet it is a fact that within the last ten
years a number of clever American merchants have settled in
London, for the purpose of introducing their native manufactures,
many of which are sold in England at lower prices than in the
States themselves. The raw materials of these goods are often
imported from England, and pay a heavy duty on the other side,
notwithstanding which, thanks in a great measure to the system
of specialization already referred to, the finished articles are re-
exported, to compete with all the world in open markets, by
gentlemen who claim protection from foreign competition at
home. Englishmen need not be anxious for Americans to be-
come free traders. The prospect of an enlarged market in the
States for our manufactures is seductive, but the impulse which
the abolition of the tariff will give to American skill and enterprise
will end, though the people do not see it themselves at present,
PITTSBURG. 47
in their importing fewer and exporting more manufactures than
either nation anticipates.
Municipal government is a very weak point in Pittsburg. The
town is wretchedly paved, with water-rolled pebbles, the pave-
ments and roads are filthy, and the drainage very defective. I
was told by a merchant residing in one of the principal business
thoroughfares, that the tradesmen subscribe for the purpose of
cleansing and watering this street themselves, in addition to
paying their rates. The tram rails are so badly laid that driving
a buggy is dangerous, and in some of the busiest parts of the
town the locomotive is constantly shunting cars. Yet just outside
the city there are miles of excellent roads which appear to lead
nowhere and have only a house or two flanking them here and
there. These have been made in many cases by means of
municipal corruption. There is a great deal of suburban property
on one side of Pittsburg which is convertible from farm value
into " town lots " by making roads. The owners of this land do
not spend money on the work, because they can find members of
the city council who, for a consideration, will vote for " the im-
provement," and when a sufficient number of councillors have
been bought the thing is done. "But why don't you get the
representation out of such hands ?" says the English visitor,
conscious of municipal purity at home. " I guess we are too busy
making money," is the reply of the frank man, or " It's the fault
of universal suffrage," says the gentleman who can spare no time
from private for public business. This abnegation of duty on the
part of the natural leaders of the city leads to other results. I
found no such thing as a mechanics' institute or any similar
organization in Pittsburg, but there are plenty of saloons and
beer-gardens, where the great mining population of the district too
often get " full " on Saturday nights, like other similar populations
nearer home.
The condition of the farmers at the back of the industrial town
forms a strong contrast to this state of things among the dwellers
43 AN ENGINEER'S HO LID A Y.
in the city. This part of Pennsylvania was very early settled, and
chiefly by Germans, who are old-fashioned, never moving from
their homesteads, and still speaking English with a strong accent.
Their farms are small as usual, being seldom more than two
hundred and fifty acres, and often half that size ; but they are a
prosperous class of people, who bring up their children well and
give them an excellent education.
The Alleghany river, upon whose banks the famous oil regions
are situated, is distinguished by floating patches of petroleum.
The Monongahela on the other hand is a shallow stream, which
taps the chief coal-fields of the district, and being naturally un-
navigable, is crossed by numerous dams usually full of loaded
coal barges. The wharves of Pittsburg itself are crowded with
huge stern wheeler steam-boats, waiting at the present moment
for water in the Ohio to take the great fleets of coal barges in tow
for St. Louis and the Southern states. Our hotel overlooks the
Monongahela, but though it is night, no breath of cool air moves
along its valley. The sluggish smoke hangs its opaque curtain
between the near and opposite banks of the river, and lurid
patches appear at intervals upon, and fade from this murky
screen. The piazza is lined with the chairs of guests, gasping for
air, or talking slowly and with low voices, of patents, contracts,
and stock companies. If I speak to a neighbour, he says,
"How?" politely, and shows himself ready to discuss the wear
of rails on steep gradients, or the character of all the neighbouring
railroad tracks ; but aside from such subjects he prefers silence.
Ne sutor ultra crepidam is a golden rule in the States ; men
seldom talk except about things which they understand, and this
makes them seem taciturn, especially when they are with ladies.
All the sweet cleanliness of Washington and Philadelphia is gone.
My bedroom, whose windows, the temperature being 84, are
necessarily open, acquires a measurable film of " blacks " during
the night, and I rise on the last morning of my stay in Pittsburg
with a feeling of relief at the prospect of leaving this hot,
THE OIL REGIONS OF PENNSYLVANIA. 49
industrious city, with its dirty and depressing atmosphere, for the
fresher air and purer skies of the Alleghany river, whose course
we are about to follow to the oil regions of Pennsylvania.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE OIL REGIONS OF PENNSYLVANIA.
Oil City, May 27.
THE early settlers of New York and Pennsylvania States were
aware that mineral oil existed in the head waters of the Alleghany
river and its affluents, to one of which they gave the name of Oil
Creek. The Indians also collected crude petroleum from the
surface of Seneca Lake, whence the name of "Seneca oil," and
used it, like the settlers, as medicine. Petroleum was first applied
to a practical purpose in 1845, by the Hope Cotton Company,
who mixed it with sperm oil for the lubrication of their spindles.
Five years later it was burned for the first time in lamps, and
when its value for illumination was established, the search for
a sufficient supply commenced in earnest.
The Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company was formed in 1858,
and on August 26 in the following year they "struck oil" at
a depth of seventy feet from the surface, in a well sunk about a
mile south of the now flourishing town of Titusville. The rush
to the oil region which followed upon this success can only be
compared to the Californian gold rushes of 1849-50. Within
sixteen months, or by the end of 1860, upwards of two thousand
wells had been sunk, and the production became so enormous
that oil was a drug, and sold for a shilling a barrel. At the
present time there are four thousand oil wells in Pennsylvania,
representing a capital of five millions sterling, and yielding
annually four hundred and twenty million gallons of oil, having
a value of seven millions and a quarter sterling.
E
So AN ENGINEER 'S HO LI DA Y.
The Alleghany Valley Railroad, on leaving the " smoky city,"
runs for some miles through suburbs of factories, iron works, and
oil refineries, whence it emerges on the river which it follows for
a hundred and thirty miles to Oil City. The river-banks are at
first low and cultivated, but soon rise into high wooded hills, the
western bases of the Alleghany range, around whose feet the river
sweeps in bold and changing curves. The scenery, though on
a larger scale, is remarkably like that of the famous Sharpham
Woods on the Dart, and retains the same features all the way to
Oleopolis. For more than three-fourths of this distance the route
lies through the lower coal measures and villages, either rural or
mining, occur at every few miles. These are collections of
wooden houses closely skirting the railway track, which really
forms the main street of the village. The hotel, as usual, is
practically a part of the depot, and the best stores and houses are
built on the line. Here and there a neater little dwelling than
common displays the name of the doctor or attorney, conspicu-
ously painted on a big sign-board. With a little more of the
picturesque about their construction, these wooden dwellings
might recall the homes of Switzerland, but there is nothing out
of America to which an American village can truly be likened.
The male inhabitants, who loaf about the depot in some numbers
on the arrival of a train, appear to have plenty of leisure, and are
dressed in shirt-sleeves, wide straw hats, and Wellington boots
drawn over their canvas " pants," a costume which, like that of
American artisans generally, wears an air of compromise between
the claims of labour and society.
When once the great cities are left behind, the traveller soon
discovers that there are no conventional " ladies and gentlemen "
in America, the national machine being run for and by working
men. Our car was occupied by a party of boiler-makers, most
of whom being already " full," were of course anxious for another
drink of " old Bourbon " at every stoppage, and the journey was
consequently enlivened by a fight, an exhibition of fine art in
oaths, and an accident to one of the gentlemen boiler-makers,
THE OIL REGIONS OF PENNSYLVANIA. 51
who having delayed too long at a particularly seductive " bar,"
jumped for the train, already in motion, and landed face down-
wards on the track. Sympathizing friends administered whisky
externally and internally to the wounded man during the remainder
of the trip, and when we left the cars at Oil City, the interesting
invalid was as well as could be expected under the circumstances.
Incongruity, naive as Mrs. Malaprop herself, is one of the
characteristics of America. One meets with it everywhere, from
the public bar, the luxury of whose furniture and decoration is
little in keeping with the very mixed society frequenting it, to the
palatial buildings which spring from the unkempt streets of the
great, cities. But nowhere is this quality more oddly exemplified
than in the names of the stations on the Alleghany Valley Rail-
way. Not long after leaving Pittsburg, we found ourselves at
Verona, and hardly had we equilibrated our boiler-makers with
this classic name, than we arrived at Kittanaing, running thence
in rapid succession through Cowanshaock, Parnassus, Catfish,
Tarentum, and Scrubgrass.
Shortly after leaving Scrubgrass, the train enters the oil region.
The scenery still consists of wide river sweeps, flanked by high
wooded hills sloping steeply to the water; but this primitive
simplicity is suddenly broken by a forest of derricks, which line
the river on both sides, or show their heads among the trees on
the hillside, and even crown the hill-tops. A derrick is like the
tall wooden framework called a pile-driver, with which every one
is acquainted, but more strongly braced together, and about
seventy feet high. Below it is the oil well, a hole of some few
inches diameter, sunk, it may be a hundred, it may be a thousand
feet into the ground. It is bored by means of an iron bar, armed
at its lower extremity with steel, or, in the case of very hard rock,
diamond cutters, and attached to the " walking " (or oscillating)
beam of a small steam-engine. While the borer delivers a suc-
cession of blows, it is slowly rotated by hand, forming in fact a
"jumper," exactly like those used by quarrymen in drilling for
blasts, and as the hole deepens, length after length is added to
E 2
52 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDA Y.
the borer by screwed unions. A pulley fixed in the head of the
derrick, together with a wire rope and windlass driven by the
engine, furnish the means for withdrawing the boring rods from
the well, in order to clear it of debris. A clever instrument called
the "sand pump" is used for this purpose. It consists of a
sheet-iron cylinder with a butterfly valve at the bottom, which on
the removal of the rods is lowered by means of the rope and
pulley into the hole. Water being either present or supplied, the
sand pump sinks into the soft mud left by the borer, and the
valves closing on its withdrawal, it comes to the surface loaded
with debris. With these simple tools the well-sinkers of Petrolia
pierce the hardest rocks and bore to enormous depths, dealing
with difficulties caused by the irruption of water or breakage of
rods with the utmost ingenuity.
The well when bored may, if productive, be a " spouter " or
require pumping. The most remarkable example of a flowing
well is the Lady Hunter, near Petrolia City, where oil was struck
on October 9, 1874, and the fact proclaimed by a tremendous
rush of gas, followed by a jet of petroleum, which shot upwards
in a column more than a hundred feet high. Three thousand
barrels were ejected on the first day, and nearly one hundred and
sixty thousand barrels within the following six months, at the end
of which time the well was still flowing at the rate of one hundred
and fifty barrels a day. The wells on the Alleghany river have
long ceased to flow, and the oil is pumped up by the engine,
which forces it through pipes into great storage tanks, whence it
flows as required to discharging depots situated on the railway ;
light wooden scaffolds fitted with a number of delivery pipes,
nozzles, and cocks, by means of which a train of tank cars is
rapidly filled. The tank cars are cylindrical vessels, like boilers
mounted on railway wheels and axles, holding eighty barrels each,
and about four thousand of them are always about on the lines,
or lying at the discharging depots of the district. Three thousand
miles of pipes have been laid for the transport of oil from its
various sources to the storage tanks and railways, accomplishing
THE OIL REGIONS OF PENNSYLVANIA. 53'
silently and cheaply work which, if carried by road, would need
more than a thousand waggon teams.
Gas usually rises from oil wells for some time before the flow of
oil is established, and in some cases continues to do so per-
manently. There are iron works in Western Pennsylvania fired
with natural gas, which is sometimes carried as far as forty miles
from its source to the factory.
The blackened ruins of derricks and engine-houses beside the
track tell of the frequent occurrence of fires in the Alleghany
valley, and discharging stations are occasionally passed where a
ghastly skeleton of iron pipes supports itself above the ashes of its
wooden scaffold, one knows not how. The strip of forest between
the rails and the river is cumbered with charred trees sometimes
still smouldering, while clouds of smoke rolling up from the
woods tell us that, even as we pass, a great forest fire, whose
flames we cannot see in the daylight, is raging on the opposite
hillside.
In the centre of this strange district lies Oil City, built on a
small delta formed at the junction of the Alleghany river and
Oil Creek, and hemmed in by high bluffs, up whose steep sides
the town tries to clamber. This place is no longer the head-
quarters of the oil-trade, which, so far as production is concerned,
has, since the discovery of flowing wells in another Pennsylvanian
county, gone to Bradford; but the oil exchange is still held
here, and the town is the centre of all large buying and selling
operations.
The process of refining crude petroleum is one of distillation.
Volatile bodies such as benzine come over from the stills at a
very low heat, and as the temperature is gradually raised, a variety
of other products appear, terminating in paraffin, which distils at
about 1000 Fahr. The oil, deprived of its volatizable con-
stituents, is treated with sulphuric acid to remove carbonaceous
impurities, neutralised with caustic potash, washed, and finally
barrelled for exportation. A residuary product resembling coke
is burnt under the refinery stills.
54 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDA Y.
Oil claims, a hundred feet long by fifty feet Avide, used to sell
for ^400 in the palmy days of Petrolia, but since the compara-
tive exhaustion of the district, similar properties are not worth
^50. So many wells have been sunk that none are now flowing ;
some are not worth pumping, and others, which used to yield
from fifteen hundred to two thousand gallons a day, give no more
than twenty-five gallons. Still the aggregate production is large,
and the Alleghany district furnishes a considerable proportion of
the whole American export of petroleum. The crude oil is stored
in large circular iron tanks, covered in from the rain. These are
usually painted bright red, and being much like gas holders in
appearance, have a strange effect, peeping out from isolated spots
among the trees of the primitive forest. Though protected by
conductors, tanks are sometimes fired by lightning, and flowing
wells, especially of gas, have frequently been accidentally ignited.
In the former case the vessel is usually broached, by cannon if
need be, and the fiery stream allowed to flow through the forest to
the river. Explosions of gas, or oil spouters, on the other hand,
occasionally offer phenomena not much inferior in splendour to
those of a volcanic eruption.
Though peaceful now, the very appearance of this oil region,
more like a field of battle than a field of industry, awakens re-
flections which only slumber even in the settled cities of America.
Life in the New World is visibly a battle. Civilization and Nature
are at open war ; and man, the soldier of civilization, must conquer
or die. To clear the virgin forest and transform it into cultivable
land ; to bring the grassy plains of the vast prairies under the
plough ; to make railroads across a scarcely known continent, and
join cities parted by immense deserts ; to fertilize these rainless
wastes by means of the mountain snows ; to control the Red
Indian from frontier forts, or to prospect the lonely canons of the
sierras ; to be, in fact, the pioneers of coming generations : this
is the task imposed upon the American people of to-day.
The struggle is not for mere subsistence, as with the masses of
Europe. In the New World man is rather a gladiator than a
ODD PHASES OF FAITH AND FEELING. 55
labourer. Thrown into an arena where enormous gains may re-
ward victory, he would not, if he could, avoid the combat ; and
be he backwoodsman, prospecter, oil-seeker, or frontiersman, nay
even an engineer or a geologist, he leads the feverish life of a
military chief whose aim is conquest and whose home a camp.
CHAPTER IX.
ODD PHASES OF FAITH AND FEELING.
Lake Chatitauqua, Jamestown, May 28 June 4.
AFTER a month spent in the industrial cities, with the thermo-
meter well up among the nineties, the traveller is glad of a few
days alone with Nature, and we found her in one of her most
peaceful aspects at Lake Chautauqua, where we halted for a rest
on our way from the oil-fields to Buffalo. This little sheet of
water, only a few miles distant from the eastern shore of Lake
Erie, lies among low, softly rounded hills, in the middle of the
finest dairy district in the state of New York. Its banks are
park-like, and the surrounding scenery that of a cultivated and
undulating English county, while its elevation of thirteen hundred
feet allowed us to read with equanimity of New York City pros-
trated by a temperature of ninety-eight degrees. These sufferings
of others, indeed, as in the days of Horace, seemed to enhance
the pleasure of our daily cruise and dip, and give zest to the
capture of every pickerel and catfish.
Thus lotophagously sailing, we landed one morning on a beauti-
fully wooded point in search of a shady place for lunch ; and,
pushing our way through the thick maples, found ourselves in the
streets of an apparently deserted village. It was a large, irregular
group of pretty wooden cottages, built among, and completely
embowered by virgin forest. Not a soul was to be seen, and we
strolled through a labyrinth of leafy avenues, stumbling at length
56 AN ENGINEER 'S HO LI DA Y.
on a vast open-air auditorium, capable of seating several thousand
people, but roofed only by graceful maples. We passed from this
into a grove, where the young trees were labelled with white
tablets bearing reverend names, which were repeated in the streets
and avenues. The Rev. S. Strong, Professor Vail, and the Rev.
Lewis Miller were among the chief sylvan deities ; but the largest
maple of all was consecrated to Mr. P. P. Bliss, the gifted com-
poser of Moody and Sankey's music, in immortal verse as
follows :
" The finest tree in the lot, I ween,
Spreading so tall, so broad, so green ;
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful tree,
How very much you are like to me ! "
Much impressed but not enlightened by the inscriptions in the
sacred grove, we continued our search for information, and found
ourselves successively before a building called the " Jewish
Tabernacle," a model of Cheops' pyramid, and, finally, in the
" Park of Palestine," evidently a relief map on a large scale of the
Holy Land. Everything was labelled, but the more labels we
read, the more puzzled we got. At length we struck a big regu-
lation Yankee hotel, where we found a waiter smoking a cigar
stub and wearing a week's beard, but who proved in other respects
a worthy man. Although the establishment was evidently not
" running," our friend " guessed he could fix us," and not only
gave us a better lunch than our boat could furnish, but became
our guide, philosopher, and friend for the rest of the day.
The Chautauqua Lake Sunday School Assembly is a vast
educational, religious, and recreative institution, to which tens of
thousands of people resort every season. This organization
sprang out of the old camp meetings, and still retains some of
their characteristic features, while it occupies an old camp meeting
ground. It is the creation of the Methodist body, and was only
established in 1874, but is being rapidly imitated by other religious
communities, notably by the Baptists, who are building a similar,
but more ambitious holy village on the opposite shore of the lake.
ODD PHASES OF FAITH AND FEELING. 57
The assembly meets early in August, and opens its session by a
tremendous dinner at the hotel. We had the privilege of seeing
the printed menu of last year's feast, containing eighty-six dishes,
which were honestly partaken of, dish by dish, by many excellent
Methodists, if the statement of the waiter may be believed. The
association comprises all the Methodist school teachers in America,
most of the Methodist preachers, and a great number of Methodist
families and children. The houses belong to the members, and
are built on land purchased from the association under certain
conditions. No intoxicating liquors are allowed ; lights must be
out at ten o'clock ; sabbath-breaking is strictly prohibited ; and
subjection to the rules and officers of the assembly enforced.
More than six thousand people live here during the session, which
lasts three weeks, and there are often as many daily visitors as
residents. A newspaper, printed on the ground, publishes a
programme of proceedings for each day, every hour being appor-
tioned either to meetings of societies, religious services, the teach-
ing of children, or amusements of some kind. The Chautauqua
Assembly is a kind of cross between Exeter Hall, the Sunday
school, and the " Hall by the Sea " at Margate.
The meetings embrace those of the National Educational
Association, the Chautauqua Teachers' Retreat, the School of
Languages, the Foreign Mission Institute, the Musical College,
Literary and Scientific Circle, together with lectures, concerts, class
drills, stereopticon experiments, fireworks, the Brush electric light,
and illuminated fountains. Certainly a remarkable pot-pourri of
instruction and amusement. In the grounds are models, already
referred to, of Palestine, Jerusalem, Mount Ararat, and the ark,
the Jewish tabernacle, the pyramids, etc. Lake Chautauqua itself
represents the Mediterranean Sea, and the ground to the eastward
of it is fashioned into a great relief map of Palestine on a scale of
a foot to the mile. The river Jordan, admitted through a tap,
flows from its head waters at Dan through the Lake of Merom,
the Sea of Tiberias, and the Dead Sea successively. Perched on
the high land west of the Jordan stands a plaster model of
58 AN ENGINEER'S HO LID A Y.
Jerusalem ; a little south of it is Bethlehem ; while salient points
in Scripture history, such as Pisgah, the Mount of Olives, Ramoth-
Gilead, Nazareth, Capernaum, Bethsaida, and others are duly
located, and Sinai, rather out of place, dominates the whole.
Once a day a teacher, dressed in Oriental costume, addresses an
audience seated around the model, on ihe history and topography
of the Holy Land. Thence the class proceeds, it may be, to
Ararat, to see a dove let fly from the window of the ark, or to the
wilderness, where the miracle of Horeb is repeated, by means of a
cleverly hidden tap and the teacher's wand.
But amusement also plays a great part in the proceedings of
the assembly. There are hourly excursions of steamers ; rowing
and sailing boats are laid up by the score under the maples;
bathing houses line the lake where, dressed in becoming costumes,
Methodists of both sexes join in the refreshing dip. Bazaars,
ice-cream saloons, and bars for effervescing drinks are scattered
here and there among the trees, which are threaded in all direc-
tions by secluded and romantic forest paths. At night there are
lectures, entertainments, concerts, recitations, magic lanterns, and
fireworks, while the woods glimmer with the scattered lights of
Japanese lanterns. The curfew rings at ten o'clock, and at the
same moment the electric lights are extinguished, and the candles
of the Japanese lanterns expire. But the moonlight silvers the
maple leaves ; the fireflies hang their golden lace around the lake
shore ; the air grows balmier, and the forest paths more myste-
riously romantic as the cool delicious night descends. It is
difficult to believe that an unwritten programme of entertainments
commences with the curfew ? or must we suppose that emotion
has been exhausted by the religious exercises of the day ?
The stubbly waiter was only a Philistine sojourning in this
Judaea, but such were not his views. He had been very kind to
us, showing us everything, and explaining the Holy Land, the
ark, and the miracles, with an evident wish that we might enjoy
the whole thing as much as he did. " Many a time," said this
Amalekite, " I hev sot on Sinai with a ' tony' gal, and watched
ODD PHASES OF FAITH AND FEELING. 59
the old patriarch work Horeb. Ef you'll come hyur and see the
machine running in August mister, I guess I'll fix you in the best
room on Ararat; thet ark is kep' for high-toned company, and
you'll hev a good time, you bet Why there's just a thousand gals
flirting at you as soon 's your nose is inside thet amphitheatre."
Lake Chautauqua is full of bass and pickerel, the latter a hand-
somely coloured fish like a pike in shape, as its name implies. It
is taken by spinning and spearing, and is excellent eating. The
fishing begins on June i, when the lake is visited by many parties
of ladies and gentlemen, who make a little festival of the opening
day. On this evening there befell the most beautiful sunset which
we had yet seen in America. We sat in the verandah of the hotel,
watching the play of orange and crimson lights between the sky
and the calm water till night fell, and the fireflies were darting to
and fro among the trees. Presently a glowing point, like a larger
firefly, slid out over the now dusky water from a wooded bay. It
was the distant light of a pickerel spearer, and was soon succeeded
by others, some nearer, some farther, until the whole surface of
the lake was strewn with slowly moving meteors. Each boat
carries two men, and a petroleum torch is fixed in the bow.
Behind this stands the fisherman, his eyes protected from the glare
by a screen. The second man rows the boat slowly along, and as
tne fish are attracted by the blaze the spearer delivers his weapon.
It was a beautiful picture. A light mist lying on the surface of the
water, concealed the boats themselves, while the trees were hung
with the fireflies' nets of golden thread, through whose quivering
meshes we saw the gliding torches cross and recross each other, as
in the slow decorous figures of a dance. This silent but moving
scene was canopied by a violet-black sky, sprinkled with brighten-
ing stars, while a line of pure yellow in the west reminded us of the
faded sunset, as a strain from the overture sometimes lingers in the
opera's sweetest air.
May 3 1 is Decoration Day, and a general holiday in America,
when a procession is formed in every town for the purpose of
visiting and decorating the last resting-places of soldiers who fell
60 AN ENGINEER 'S HO LI DA Y.
in the civil war. We went to Jamestown, at the extremity of
Lake Chautauqua, for the purpose of witnessing this national
ceremony. The procession was headed by a poor and noisy
band, followed by a score of veterans carrying their old regimental
colours. Only one of these men wore a uniform, which was
shabby and ragged ; the rest were dressed like, and probably
were, mechanics. Behind them came a "fire company" in
brilliant uniforms, their engine and life-saving apparatus shining
with plating and paint. A second fire company followed in still
finer cream-coloured clothes, white ties, and white kid gloves, and
then the hoi polloi.
We marched with the last two miles in a blazing sun, the band
playing dirges ; and upon arrival at the cemetery, wound our way
among the maples shading the graves to a stage already occupied
by several ministers of religion, the orators of the day, and a
choir. Proceedings commenced by decorating the graves with
flags and flowers, after which every one gathered in a grassy
amphitheatre around the platform. Prayers, choral singing, and
addresses followed. The first were of the usual type, and the
vocal music was good ; but the speeches were the most notable
features of the day, and that chiefly from their evident effort to do
justice to the memory of brave men without wounding the sus-
ceptibilities of old foes, who are also fellow-countrymen. Civil
war is the last misfortune of nations. Victor and vanquished are
after all brothers, and the memories of the fallen on both sides
would perhaps be better kept green by the silent strewing of
laurels. Apparently the speakers felt this, for while fully ex-
pressing their reverence for the dead, a general sensibility for
others gave that feeling a much more general expression than
would have been the case if the soldier had fallen in conflict with
a foreign foe. Hence the nation rather than the national heroes
was exalted, and it is excusable if this circumstance lent some
extravagance to the words of men striving to honour brave sons
by praises of their mother country.
" We stand to-day," said one of the speakers, " the foremost
NIAGARA. 6l
nation in history. The rulers of Europe are viewing with astonish-
ment our rapid advancement, boundless resources, and the con-
tentment, happiness, and prosperity of our people ; while they
witness with fear the discontent, turbulence, and unhappiness of
their own. Pointing to her network of railways and telegraphs,
her cities and villages, her two million farms, her boundless
prairies, her vast tracts of forest, her fields of coal, her mines of
iron and gold, her rattling looms, and the deep bass of her
million spindles ; to the smoke of ten thousand furnaces ; to her
homestead law, giving a farm in fee simple to whoever will work ;
to her schools and churches, her fifty millions of contented people,
sheltered by the o'erhanging branches of the tree of liberty ; she
proudly says to the world, ' These are the fruits of a hundred
years in a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal.' Meanwhile in Europe,
Nihilism and Socialism, seeking revenge in open revolution or
cowardly assassination, are the legitimate growth of misgovern-
ment, and of the natural desire on the part of the people to escape
the burden of vast armies raised to support a power which they
hate, and to escape from a pernicious land system which robs the
labourer of the fruit of his industry."
Two candid Englishmen, sailing back in the cool evening to
their hotel on Lake Chautauqua, found it necessary after much
discussion to agree that if there were some " brag," there was
little " bosh " in the oratory of Decoration Day at Jamestown.
CHAPTER X.
NIAGARA.
June 5-12.
EVERY tourist must visit Niagara but need not redescribe at
length the great Falls, about whose beauty and sublimity enough
has perhaps been said. The Niagara river is the overflow of the
62 AN ENGINEER'S HO LI DA Y.
four great lakes, and its course between Erie and Ontario is made
famous by the drop of a hundred and sixty feet over which the
waste waters of these great inland seas take a sudden plunge.
There is none of the usual prettiness of a cascade about this fall,
whose enormous mass constitutes its chief claim to the admiration
of the world. The river splits on Goat Island, but the bulk
tumbles over the Canadian, or Horse-shoe Falls, beside which the
American falls look like a weir. And the eye soon selects the
crown of the horse-shoe as the central point of the picture.
There, a translucent curve of green water bends slowly from the
horizontal to the vertical, and plunges with apparent deliberation
over the precipice, to lose itself almost immediately in froth and
mist, while out of the hell-broth below rise clouds of the finest
spray. These children of the air give the chief beauty to Niagara,
for the smooth, repeated liquid curves and restless foam soon pall
on the eye. The mist on the other hand, changes from beauty to
beauty with every alteration of atmospheric conditions. Some-
times it sways hither and thither, like gauze in the shifting winds ;
at others it rises in unbroken columns whose capitals float away
in billowy cumuli to join their shining companions in the blue.
When the air is moist and the wind blowing gently from the falls,
the valley becomes filled with luminous fog. On rarely bright
still days, a shaft of vapour rises to more than a thousand feet in
height, forming a stationary pillar of cloud, white as snow above
where it is lost by absorption, and iridescent below where its base
is wreathed in rainbows.
The country between Lakes Erie and Ontario consists of a
nearly level plateau, terminating suddenly twenty-two miles north
of Lake Erie in the bold precipitous cliffs nearly three hundred
and fifty feet high, called Queenstown Heights. At their feet lie
the towns of Lewiston and Queenstown, one on either side of the
river Niagara, and thence the ground slopes gently and regularly
to Lake Ontario. The cliffs are evidently an old shore-line, and
the flat country was once a sea-bottom. The Niagara river issues
from Erie in a wide tranquil stream, and flows over the surface of
NIAGARA. 63
the plateau for about fifteen miles, when rapids occur, and then
the cataract, the stream falling suddenly into a narrow gorge.
This is best described as a trench three hundred feet deep and
varying in width from two hundred to four hundred yards, which
winds for seven miles like an artificial excavation through the
plateau to Queenstown Heights, where the river debouches into
the flat country, and flows in an almost level course to Lake
Ontario.
The strata, on either side of the gorge, being nearly horizontal
and formerly continuous, early suggested the idea that the falls once
poured over Queenstown Heights, and have cut their way back to
their present position. The existing lip of the cataract is a bed
of hard limestone about eighty feet thick, supported by a similar
thickness of friable shale. The falling water gives rise to ex-
tremely violent blasts of wind in the space between itself and the
rock, which is consequently lashed with a perpetual storm of
heavy spray. As the soft shales gradually yield before this attack,
the limestone capping becomes undermined and drops from time
to time, causing the falls to recede. The process is of course
extremely slow, but there is some evidence of a slight change of
position within half a century, while a description of Niagara,
written in 1678 by the Franciscan missionary Pere Hennequin,
leaves no doubt that considerable alterations have taken place
during the last hundred and fifty years. As however Hennequin
was the first European to see the Falls, and that only a century
and a half ago, the historical proofs of their recession are very
slight ; but fragments of an old river bed, containing shells of
existing species, were found by Lyell on the banks of the present
stream, and level with the plateau, at several points in its course
between the falls and the escarpment at Queenstown. This fact
leaves no reasonable doubt that the Niagara once flowed from
Lake Erie across the whole width of the plateau to the edge of
Queenstown Cliffs, whence the cataract has cut its way slowly
back to its present position.
It would be extremely interesting if a regular rate of recession
64 AN ENGINEER'S HO LID A Y.
could be established, for this would enable the geologist to
measure the minimum lapse of time which separates us from
the glacial period, after whose occurrence the gorge in question
was commenced. But the strata already cut through are of very
various degrees of hardness, while in consequence of a slight
inclination in the bedding, the hard rock forming the present lip
will be at the bottom of the Falls when they have progressed
two miles further southward. Wind and spray will make little
impression on this compact limestone compared with what they
now effect in the soft shales, and the cataract will probably remain
almost stationary for ages, as has doubtless already been the case
more than once in the past. Hence no reliable estimate can
possibly be made of the lapse of time required for the digging of
the trench. All that can certainly be known is that enormous
periods have passed since the Niagara began to drain the upper
lakes, yet the mollusca living in its waters to-day have undergone
no change during all that time, as the shells found in the old river-
bed testify. If then, living forms have remained unmodified at
least as long as, and it may be much longer than, the time occu-
pied in cutting the gorge in question, what must be the chronology
of the whole geological succession to which the age of the pheno-
mena in question bears an absolutely inappreciable proportion?
Excursions can be made to the back of both the Canadian and
American falls, but that behind the latter is the more extensive
and interesting. We dressed for the trip in waterproofs and list
shoes furnished by the guide, whom we followed through the spray
down a rough wooden stairway and path at the side of the Falls,
until we reached the bottom, and then crept carefully along the
face of the rock. Gusts of wind loaded with heavy spray made
us shut our eyes and catch our breath at first, but once wet
through, we advanced without further discomfort through a con-
stantly increasing storm of wind and water. Here and there we
found spots where local calms due no doubt to the configuration
of the rocks prevailed, and in such places it was possible to keep
our eyes open, though there was absolutely nothing to be seen
NIAGARA. 65
except the heavy spray. On leaving the last of these shelters, the
blasts became so violent as to suggest the propriety of holding on
to something, and we thought that erosion of the shaly beds must
be proceeding rapidly in such a hurricane. After traversing a
hundred and thirty five feet, our guide stopped, declaring that it
was impossible to go further ; so we returned to daylight, not a
little disenchanted after all the extravagant accounts we had heard
of this trip. There is no real interest in penetrating behind the
cataract, and a heavy thunderstorm in the absence of an umbrella
is certainly more emotional. The guide showed us a spot below
the falls where a safe backwater tempted us to a dip. We wanted
no more tubbing than we had already had in the " Cave of the
Winds," but only to say that we had swum in the rapids of
Niagara.
About twenty-five years ago a Mr. Allen made a serious attempt
to utilize some of the wasted water power of Niagara. With this
view he dug a large canal from a point on the river above the falls
to a plateau well adapted for building, about two miles below
them. Here he proposed to erect a number of large turbines and let
out power to factories which it was expected would be attracted
to the neighbourhood. But the early works exhausted his re-
sources. He became ill, and was forced to connect himself with
others, who asked too high a price for their water privileges, and
so the scheme failed. Allen's canal has now become the property
of a wealthy and enterprising man, who has erected upon it a
magnificent grist-mill driven by wheels of a thousand horse-power,
together with a paper-pulping mill, a manufacture which requires
a large supply of both power and water. The question of how
best to utilize the forces of nature is much discussed in these
days. Electricians declare that the mountain, hitherto considered
immovable, is to be brought to Mahomet; and meanwhile the
potential group of factories at Niagara and the actual collections
of workshops at Belle Garde in Switzerland, and at the Falls of
Schaffhausen on the Rhine, demonstrate the possibility of utilizing
waterfalls. Coal itself is only a reservoir of energy, which we can
F
66 AN ENGINEER 'S HOLIDA Y.
tap when and where we please, but it is difficult of access, while
the Falls are a great natural force, which is freely at the disposal
of man.
While at Niagara we witnessed an obscure but spirited single-
handed struggle between man and the natural force under review.
In the spring of the year a great scow, coming out of Chippewa
Creek, broke loose from the tug and entered the rapids. She
stranded on a shallow a few miles above the Falls, in a position
threatening the destruction of one of the small suspension bridges
connecting the left bank of the river with a group of islands.
The current at this point runs at a speed of twenty miles an hour,
and the scow lay about a hundred yards from shore. Some
rough trestles having been prepared, a man took one of them on
his shoulders, and waded out into the stream with it for a distance
of about ten feet. Here he pitched the trestle, and his mate
pushed a plank out from the bank till its end landed on the frail
pier. By the pathway thus constructed the wader returned to the
mainland, and shouldering a second trestle again crept cautiously
out into the current. The second was pitched like the first, and
twenty feet out of three hundred were bridged. Within a few
hours some fifty yards of staging was finished, when the wader
reported, " Thar is three foot of water in a derned hole ahead,
and we'll hev to pitch the next two trestles with a rig." We had
no time to wait till the rig was made, and do not know whether
this hero succeeded in reaching the scow ; but if he was drowned
there is one brave man the less in the world. The speed of the
current was fearful, the bottom was of course concealed from view
by the broken water, and the sound of the Falls was loud in our
ears. A false step was certain death, for once fallen, recovery was
impossible in such a stream. Yet, feeling his way with a pole,
and loaded with the heavy trestle, without whose weight he could
not have kept his feet, the man crept carefully but confidently out
from shore, apparently as thoughtless of danger as a bricklayer's
labourer on a ladder.
From the Arctic regions to the latitude of New York, the whole
NIAGARA. 67
breadth of North America is covered with glacial drift, which
varies from six hundred to two hundred feet in thickness in the
middle and north-western states, while southward it becomes
thinner and more evenly spread over the country. The drift
consists of a vast accumulation of sand, pebbles, and boulders,
always belonging to rocks lying north or north-west of their
position, with beds of clay also evidently brought from the north
by causes quite different to any of those now at work. Nearly
every recently uncovered rock in the drift-covered region is
grooved, scratched, or polished, and these marks point generally
north-west, north, or north-east. Throughout these areas, erratics,
or travelled blocks of stone, are found, which can only have been
transported to their present sites by ice. It was for a long time
a question whether land or sea ice had been the carrier of these
various deposits, but it is now admitted that Agassiz's theory of
an ice-sheet, continuous from the Arctic regions to the latitude of
New York, is the only way of accounting for all the facts of
American glaciation. Professor Dana has estimated that this
sheet was not less than twelve thousand feet in thickness on the
watershed of the St. Lawrence and Hudson's Bay, diminishing
to four thousand feet on the east coast. Midway across the
continent the vast mer de glace coalesced with a similar sheet
issuing from the Rocky Mountains, whose summits were not
covered, although the higher valleys were filled with enormous
glaciers which fed the general mass below. In the course of time
the rigorous climate of the glacial period changed. The ice
retreated successively from the lowlands, the highlands, and the
mountains, leaving Central America drowned in an inland sea
derived from the melting ice. In the still waters of these internal
oceans the alluvial soils of the Mississippi and Missouri valleys
were laid down, and finally the inland seas themselves dried up
under the influence of an arid climate, and the present land
surfaces appeared. Unless mountainous, the country north of
the fortieth parallel is almost uniformly drift or alluvium, through
which the underlying rocks rarely protrude, and the traveller
F 2
68 AN ENGINEER 'S HO LID A Y.
going north or west after leaving the flanks of the Alleghanies,
finds the surface everywhere composed of beds of gravel, sand, or
alluvium.
The surface of the plateau about Niagara is thinly covered with
glacial drift, stripped of which the limestone is seen to be scored
all over by ice. The marks are beautifully preserved and all
point to the north. Travelled blocks of various primitive rocks,
some of them many tons in weight, lie scattered in all directions.
These are evidently derived from the gneisses of the watershed
north of the great lakes and the St. Lawrence, and but for the
forests which clothe the country about Niagara the whole district
might seem to have just emerged from the ice-sheet of the glacial
period.
The Niagara limestones weather into a soil carrying excellent
crops of artificial grasses, while the shaly beds yield clays which
form capital wheat and grass land. But the best farms are found
on the warm sandy soils of the drift. A particular strip of this,
bordering the river, and comprising only a few square miles, is
especially suited to fruit-growing. Its apple orchards are very
productive, and the trees exceedingly fine. Peaches, strawberries,
and raspberries are extensively grown, and come in very early.
Vines are being rapidly introduced around Niagara in the hope of
replacing the peaches, which have suffered from a leaf disease
during the last few years. The farms are small, fifty acres being
the average size, while a hundred acres is rarely exceeded. Good
land changes hands at from ^20 to ^30 per acre, and some-
times yields more than its cost in a single year's fruit crop. I
saw one vineyard of three acres which last season produced
eleven tons of grapes, worth 12 per ton. A Canadian vineyard,
like other American industries, is rough and ready. Essentials
are cared for, but finish is disregarded. The ground having been
prepared by the plough, receives rows of wooden posts, driven
about thirty feet apart, along which are strained three lines of old
telegraph wire. Two vines are planted in each thirty-feet space,
and six or eight shoots are trained vertically to the wires with
NIAGARA. 69
cotton twine. The birds carry off the strings for nest-building,
and it is a common thing to find nests among the vines con-
structed entirely of cotton thread ; whenever a vine falls it is sure
to be because the birds have untied it from the wires.
Farming only pays here when a man goes thoroughly into it
himself, becoming his own bailiff and his own hind ; labour is so
dear that every operation must be skilfully economized, and a
gentleman farmer would be bankrupt in a very short iime. Still
the village of Drummondsville, which is a centre of the rural
industries round Niagara, is a flourishing place, and the farmers'
wooden houses, if simple, are very comfortable. The farmers
themselves are shrewd, active, and evidently prosperous, with the
manners of business men rather than those of our agriculturists,
though that pleasant rusticity which seems inseparable from the
cultivation of the soil is not entirely wanting.
There is an Indian reservation near Niagara, where a tribe of
Tuscaroras were settled by treaty nearly a hundred years ago. It
is six square miles in extent, and occupied by four hundred
families, each owning a house and land. No model village in
England is more inviting in appearance. The fields are clean
and well farmed; the crops, whether of grain, grass, or fruit,
are magnificent; the fences are in good repair; the stock consists
of handsome and healthy Durhams ; the houses are well built,
clean, and neat ; and the whole reservation is superior in finish to
American farms in general, challenging comparison in this respect
with Lincolnshire or the Lothians. A heavy thunderstorm occur-
ring during our visit, caused us to seek shelter at the house of
Mr. Mount Pleasant, the chief of the tribe, by whom we were
hospitably welcomed. The chief is a fine old Indian, who though
nearly eighty years old, is as upright and active as a young man ;
and his wife, who belongs to the Senecas, is a quiet, shrewd
woman. The house is a very pretty wooden building, excellently
furnished, and provided with an abundance of good books,
pictures, photographs, a piano and harmonium ; in fact, a home
of refinement. There was a daughter, educated in one of the
70 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
eastern cities, who sang and played beautifully, and was very
agreeable and intelligent. A Boston lady, interested in ethnology,
was a guest in the house, collecting Indian folk-lore, and we were
soon engaged in conversation with her about primitive man and
the local geology. A strange position under the roof of a redskin.
Yet some of us are bold enough to prophecy that peasant pro-
prietorship will effect no change in Irish character, which seems
almost equivalent to saying that the red man is more civilizable
than the Celt. Our fair investigator had made one unfortunate
expedition during her stay at the reservation. The chief assured
her that skulls had been found in the neighbourhood, belonging
to a race of men of whom the Tuscaroras had no traditions, and
that these skulls were brachycephalic (Mr. Mount Pleasant used
other words) to an extraordinary degree. She at once persuaded
two young men to dig at the indicated spot, and at night, in order
not to arouse the prejudices of the Indians. Skulls were found,
but they did not differ from existing types, and by-and-by it was
discovered that the forefathers of half the tribe were being
disinterred.
CHAPTER XL
ON THE GREAT LAKES.
June 12-15.
WE determined to. travel by way of the great lakes to Chicago,
making a short stay at the Straits of Mackinaw, between Lakes
Huron and Michigan, for the purpose of seeing the timber or
" lumbering " industry. From the Falls to Buffalo is twenty miles,
the railroad skirting the Niagara river, and traversing a level
country rich in apple and peach orchards. Buffalo lies half on
Lake Erie, and half on the Niagara, and its position at the foot
of the great chain of lakes gives the town considerable commercial
importance. Here we found the steamer Oneida, one of the
ON THE GREAT LAKES. 71
strange-looking lake-boats, having sides strengthened by deep
"bowstring" girders running almost from stem to' stern, and
making the vessel look like a Noah's ark carrying a railway bridge
as deck freight.
American steamers combine the sea-going and shore-going
elements very curiously. The British shipbuilder gives such a
nautical character to every feature and fitting of a vessel that
a landsman always feels his lubberhood keenly when on board
ship. He is naturally crushed by a sense of ignorance on deck ?
but it is little better in the saloon whose approaches, seats,
lighting, and accommodation differ from anything he has ever
seen on shore ; while his berth, with its port-hole, narrow bunks,
and borrowed lamplight, is not a bed-room, but the roost of a tar,
off watch. The traveller on board such a ship is never allowed
to forget that he is only a passenger, or to lose sight of the
humiliating nature of his position. In the States on the other
hand, ships are made for passengers, not passengers for ships;
and a landsman loses none of his accustomed dignity on taking
up his quarters in the hotel-afloat which American shipbuilders
have created. The deck itself has a less professional air, the
saloon has a staircase, lights, tables, chairs, even doors, hinges,
and handles, like those to which he has been accustomed ; his
cabin contains a real bed, and being on deck, is lighted by sliding
sash windows, shaded with blinds, as in his own house. There is
nothing of the " old salt " about the captain or crew, who may,
and probably have, followed many occupations before becoming
sailors. All this is pleasanter than sailing in more nautical craft
under scornful nautical eyes.
The low pine-clad shores of Erie were lost sight of soon after
leaving Buffalo, and there was nothing to relieve the monotony of
the ocean-like scene except occasional meetings with grain ships.
The agricultural states of Western America may be practically
regarded as anxious to send all their surplus food stuffs to
Liverpool, and Chicago is the centre where the grain collects.
From this point there are three routes to the eastern seaboard :
72 AN ENGINEER 'S HO LID A F.
first, by rail direct from Chicago to New York, Philadelphia, or
Baltimore ; second, by way of the lakes to Buffalo, and thence by
the Erie Canal and river Hudson to New York; third, by the
lakes to Buffalo, and thence through the Welland Canal to
Montreal. The railway is of course the quickest of all these
routes, but competition with shipping freights has greatly reduced
the profits of the carrying companies, who wear out their rails
and rolling stock to little advantage. Still the bulk of the grain
traffic between Chicago and the Atlantic goes by rail, a great deal
of stuff being picked up in Indiana and Ohio, states which lie east
of Chicago and off the water routes. Grain shipped by the lakes
and Erie Canal is carried in sailing vessels, or steamers, or towed
in very large barges to Buffalo, where it is transhipped by means
of " elevators " into the boats of the Erie Canal and, arrived at
New York, is again transferred into Atlantic vessels. Cargoes
were formerly shipped on the lakes exclusively in sailing vessels,
but these have competed of late years with steamers of fifteen
hundred to two thousand tons burden which are more profitable
to the shipowner because of the greater number of trips they can
make in the same time. Recently a new system has arisen.
The large steamers, which carry passengers as well as cargo, are
expensive both in first cost and maintenance, and are consequently
being replaced by enormous barges, two or three of which are
towed by a powerful tug. A tug is costly only in respect of its
engines, the rest of the ship being cheaply built, while it only
needs a crew of four men, instead of the twelve or twenty required
by a great lake steamer. The barges are rigged with masts and
sails, and are cast loose from the tug on bad weather arising,
when they either fend for themselves, or shelter behind a point
until the storm abates, after which they are again taken in tow.
Each barge carries from thirty to forty thousand bushels of grain,
the tug holding another fifteen thousand bushels, and the system
beats both steam and sailing vessels for economy.
With the arrival of grain at Buffalo there begins a competition
between the United States and Canada for the transport trade of
ON THE GREAT LAKES. 73
the north-west, and it is still an open question whether Montreal
or New York will ultimately control the grain traffic of America.
The Erie Canal, which connects Lake Ontario with New York,
is a great national work begun under difficulties in 1809, delayed
by the war of 1812, finished in 1825, and enlarged in 1862. It
is three hundred and fifty miles long, but no more than seven feet
deep, and only admits barges of two hundred and twenty tons
burden. From its commencement to its completion the Canadians
watched the progress of the Erie Canal with keen interest, and
finally, one of the clearest-headed men in the colony, William
Hamilton Merritt, devoting years of enthusiastic labour to the
construction of a rival route, caused the Welland Canal to be
built, which, connecting Lakes Erie and Ontario by a channel
twenty-seven miles long, cheats the Niagara Falls, and gives a
clear water-way from the upper lakes to the head-waters of the
St. Lawrence. This river is itself obstructed by rapids near
Montreal, which were avoided by cutting a second canal, eight
miles and a half in length, past the Lachine rapids, the two works
together affording access from Lake Superior to the Atlantic.
The Welland Canal was originally ten feet and a quarter, and the
Lachine nine feet deep, accommodating vessels of six hundred,
and four hundred tons respectively, while the Erie still remains
only seven feet deep, its further enlargement, though often dis-
cussed, being difficult on account of its great length. But now
a new factor in the problem of water transportation has appeared.
The old freight boats have been succeeded by grain vessels of a
thousand tons burden, and those ships cannot pass through the
Canadian any more than the American canals. A further and
uniform enlargement of the Welland and St. Lawrence Canals to
a hundred feet in width and fifteen feet in depth, admitting vessels
of fifteen hundred to two thousand tons, was therefore agreed to
as part of the Canadian Confederation Scheme of 1867, and has
already been completed so far as the Lachine Canal is concerned.
The works on the Welland will probably be finished in two years
from the present time, and it will then remain to be seen whether
74 A N ENGINEER 'S HO LID A Y.
the efforts by which the Canadians hope to divert the carrying
trade of the north-west, not only from Buffalo but from New York
as well, will be successful. The St. Lawrence route is open for
only half the year, and the process of enlarging the capacity of
grain ships is still going on, there being already vessels on the
lakes above Buffalo which could not enter even the new Welland
Canal ; but whether Canada gets the whole or only a part of the
gigantic trade she is bidding for, there can be no question that
with the completion of a clear water-way for vessels of two
thousand tons from Lake Superior to the Atlantic, Montreal must
become a serious rival to New York in regard to the transportation
of grain. The five great Atlantic outlets are Montreal, New York,
Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and of these New York at
present receives rather more than half the grain coming from the
north-west, while Montreal only handles ten per cent, of it, the
remaining forty per cent, being pretty equally distributed between
the three other ports. The New York traffic is partly rail and
partly water-borne, that of Montreal is all water-borne, while
Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore are connected with the west
by rails only. When the Canadian Pacific Railway is completed
there will be six great taps draining the north-west, a state of
things which, while it warns the colony not to expect too much
from its enterprising movements in the canal system, offers a
bright prospect of further cheapening the transportation of bread
stuffs between America and Europe.
Lake Erie is one of the few seas which have witnessed the
surrender of an entire squadron of British ships. The efforts of
Napoleon in the early part of the century to exclude English
exports from the Continent were foiled by the rise of a vast
system of contraband trade, and by the development of the carry-
ing trade in neutral bottoms. Anxious to prevent the transfer of
one of her important industries to other nations, England endea-
voured to compel all vessels on their way to blockaded ports to
touch first at British harbours; and claimed the right to search
vessels for British sailors, a high-handed proceeding which led to
ON THE GREAT LAKES. 75
a serious quarrel with America, terminating in the war of 1812.
In this contest the States were as unfortunate ashore as they were
victorious afloat. The defeat of the British frigate Gtierrire by
the Constitution was balanced by the capture of the American
frigate Chesapeake by the Shannon in Boston harbour; but the
loss of this ship and the death of her brave commander Lawrence,
who fell exclaiming, " Don't give up the ship," was more than
avenged on Erie. There, on September 10, 1813, a naval battle
took place between a British squadron of six ships and nine
American vessels, under the command of Lieutenant Perry, who
sailed from the little town of Erie in the flag ship Lawrence, so
named after the captain of the Chesapeake. This ship was dis-
abled in the fight, and Perry transferred his flag to another vessel,
but in the result the British squadron surrendered, and the
American lieutenant returned with his prizes to Erie. Three
years later the war was ended by the Treaty of Ghent, when the
English claim to a right of search was silently abandoned, thanks
to the exploits of the American navy.
Lake Erie opens into the small but pretty St. Clair Lake by
the Detroit river, whose banks, generally covered with primitive
forest, are cleared and settled all along the water's edge, and
beautiful with fruit orchards, where excellent apples may be
bought during the season for a shilling a bushel. The stream at
the entrance of Lake Huron is almost a rapid, against which
steamers crawl slowly upwards. The shores of Huron are very
low and composed entirely of ice-borne drift. They are clothed
with dark pine woods whose seemingly boundless extent impresses
the mind with an overpowering sense of loneliness, and whose
monotony is scarcely broken by "lumbering" villages, which hide
among the pines, their presence betrayed only by clouds of yellow
smoke hanging like a pall over the forest and adding to the
melancholy of the scene.
" Lumbering " is the sole industry of these vast solitudes, and
is conducted in the rough-and-ready way so characteristic of
American enterprise. A company having been formed, a site on
76 AN ENGINEER 'S HOLIDA Y.
the lake shore is selected for the mills, and some square miles of
timber lands, bordering on rivers or creeks debouching into the
lake, are purchased from the Government Pioneer gangs visit
these " pine lands " in autumn, and establish permanent camps in
favourable positions near the most important lake affluents ;
erecting stabling for twenty or thirty teams, and log huts for forty
or fifty men. All being thus prepared, the camp is occupied as
soon as the first snows fall, and felling is commenced in earnest.
The fallen trees are cut into lengths, sledded over the snow to
the river, and tumbled in ; the mouth of the stream having first
been closed by a strong boom which prevents the egress of
timber into the lake. When four or five thousand pieces have
accumulated behind the boom, they are formed into a raft in the
following manner : Thirty large logs, each sixty feet long, are
chained together end to end, forming a string ; a second similar
string is then constructed, and the two are secured together by
thirty cross-pieces, each sixty feet long, and sixty feet apart. The
finished structure forms a floating and jointed framework, having
thirty bays, each of which holds about a hundred and sixty logs ;
so that a raft contains nearly five thousand pieces of timber, and
has a length of six hundred, and a width of twenty yards. When
one is completed the boom is removed from the mouth of the
river, and a steam-tug takes the raft in tow, then the boom is
replaced and the river again filled with timber.
Before following one of these great floats to the mills, situated
it may be many miles away, the camp deserves a moment's
notice. The lumberers are chiefly Canadians, men of magni-
ficent physique, but not of refined habits. The hard labour,
remoteness, and severe winter climate all disincline the men from
cleanliness, and while in camp they never wash, and hardly ever
take off their clothing. They doff their " pants " and the heavy
woollen " jumper " at night, but that is all. They earn about
sixteen dollars a month, all rations being found, and receive no
money payments while in camp. Though strict abstainers while
at work, they loaf about the village saloon all summer, and
ON THE GREAT LAKES. 77
having spent their last dollars go in debt at the " store " in order
to keep going until the next season's work begins. None but the
strongest frames can withstand the hardships of a winter camp in
these latitudes, where the snows are deep and the temperature
almost Arctic in severity ; but the transport of heavy logs is so
much more difficult on wheels than by sleds that the business of
lumbering must always remain a monopoly in the hands of a
class whose physique is superior even to that of an English
navvy.
Lumber-towing on the wide and stormy waters of the lakes is
not free from excitement and danger, as we learned later from
the narratives of our Michigan boatman, John McCarty, who was
for many years in charge of a tug. This man was once caught in
a sudden gale, on a lee shore, with his raft to windward of the
steamer. Fearing the loss of the vessel which was rapidly drifting
ashore, he determined to " jump the raft " and at the risk of
entangling the screw and smashing the engines, turned the tug,
and drove her directly at the logs. These were submerged by
the weight of the boat, and the propeller sent the sticks flying in
all directions, but McCarty ultimately cleared the raft with all the
machinery sound, and only his rudder damaged. Next day he
picked up -the raft which, though stranded, had not gone to
pieces, and towed it safely to its destination. The lake is always
dotted with floating timber and the shores are lined with the
wreckage of years. Sometimes a storm breaks up a raft, some-
times destroys a " boom," when hundreds or it may be thousands
of logs escape. These cumber the beaches, and add to the
desolation which is so marked a feature of Lake Huron scenery.
The site chosen for the erection of saw-mills is always a
sheltered bay, where a kind of floating dock, made of logs
chained together and secured to piles, rides on the water for the
reception of the rafts. Here the tug discharges its burden and
then returns to camp, towing the empty framework back, to
be refilled. The docks accommodate sufficient timber for the
supply of the mill at all seasons, and present a really astonishing
78 AN ENGINEER 'S HOLIDA Y.
sight when full. Piers, constructed of waste wood, on a com-
mensurate scale with the docks, are run out from the shore into
deep water, forming wharves for the stacking and shipment of cut
boards. The mill is erected by the lake side, and an inclined
slide-way ascends from the water to its first floor, where the saws
are placed, the ground floor of the building being occupied by
the motive power and driving gear. The slide-way is fitted with
an endless chain, which is fed by a man wearing high boots, with
corked soles, and armed with a long boat-hook. This clever
acrobat walks about over the floating logs with a skill that is only
acquired after repeated duckings, and punts them one by one to
the foot of the slide, where they are laid hold of by hooks at-
tached to the endless chain, and carried to the saw-benches.
These machines and others which handle the great tree trunks
mechanically, are excellent examples of the survival of the fittest,
being entirely different from and far superior to any similar tools
in this country. The work is extremely heavy, yet the logs are
rapidly adjusted, almost entirely without hand labour, on the
saw-benches, from each of which a stream of cut boards issues at
the rate of nearly a hundred feet a minute, or a mile an hour. A
mill with two saw-frames turns out twenty million cubic feet of
lumber per annum, worth ^40,000 in Chicago ; and lumbering,
the distinctive industry of the great lakes, is a profitable enter-
prise.
CHAPTER XII.
MACKINAW.
June 16-20.
THE rivalry between France and England in the seventeenth
century was worldwide in its extension. The two countries were
neighbours in the West Indies, the East Indies, and in Africa ;
while in America, as we have already seen, Louis XIV. claimed
MACKINAW. 79
sovereignty over all the known regions west of the Alleghany
Mountains. French colonies had been planted in America years
before the Mayflower anchored within Cape Cod ; but France
and England, rivals in the Old World, could not be partners in
the New. Neither ambition nor commercial enterprise however
carried the power of France into the western wilds, but the
religious enthusiasm of the Church of Rome. A similar motive-
power urged the pilgrims to colonize New England, and the two
peoples in America were, in the first instance, parted more by
religious differences than national jealousy. But a struggle,
which terminated as we have seen in favour of England, was
unavoidable between powers, divided by so many animosities,
when lust of territory and desire for commercial supremacy had
taken the place of the apostolic zeal which animated the Jesuit
missionaries through whom Rome, as much as France, attempted
the spiritual conquest of America.
Hardly was the Society of Jesus established than it gave to the
world an army of devoted Christian soldiers, who raised the cross,
not only among the old civilizations of India, China, and Japan,
but even on the high lands of Abyssinia, the plains of Paraguay,
and the slopes of the Sierra Nevada. The shores of the upper
lakes were all first explored by Jesuit missionaries, who early
penetrated into the heart of the Huron wilderness, disregarding
toil, hardship, torture, and death, in obedience to their vows, and
at the bidding of their superiors. If these men were superstitious
ascetics, at least they were Christian heroes, often Christian
martyrs, and always, although incidentally, explorers. Every
town of importance in French America originated from their
labours, and " not a cape was turned or a river entered, but a
Jesuit led the way."
We left the steamship Oneida at Mackinaw, an island of many
interesting memories, whence Pere Marquette, one of the most
distinguished yet unaspiring of these remarkable men, was long
employed in extending Christianity, and confirming the influence
of France in the vast regions between Lake Michigan and the
So AN ENGINEER 'S HOLIDA Y,
head of Lake Superior, and where, spent after only thirty-eight
years of toil, his body reposes. In the spring of 1668, Marquette
was sent to take charge of the Ottawa Mission, as that around
Lake Superior was then called, and he planted himself at Sault
St. Mary, on the American side of the rapids which connect the
upper lakes with Huron. Here he was joined in the following
year by Pere Dablon, and the log church and cabins built by
these two formed the first permanent settlement made in Michigan.
In the same year, leaving Dablon in charge of his Huron con-
verts, Marquette travelled westward by Lake Superior, and having
established a mission among the Chippevvays on its southern
shore, he pushed on to its western extremity, where he found
several Indian villages, one of which was inhabited by Hurons
who had lived several years before on Mackinaw Island.
Four years previously Allouez, another Jesuit missionary, had
raised the Chapel of the Holy Spirit in these distant regions ; and
such was the power of his teaching that the scattered tribes
roaming the deserts north of Lake Superior, the Potawatomies
from Lake Michigan, and even the Illinois from the as yet
unknown Mississippi Valley, pitched their tents around his cabin,
and listened to the gospel message. These last spoke of their
country, describing the noble river on which they dwelt, and the
vast treeless prairies where buffalo and deer abounded. " Their
country," wrote Allouez to his superior, " is the best field for the
gospel ; " and these letters first made the pale faces acquainted
with the existence of the great stream, which Allouez in his corre-
spondence called the " Messipi." The missions of Marquette
and Dablon were created by this great enthusiast, who, returning
from the wilderness to Quebec for a few days in 1667, pleaded so
fervently with governor and bishop for the establishment of more
stations, that Sault and Lapointe were occupied in the two fol-
lowing years, and a third still more important mission established
by Marquette at Mackinaw, in 1670.
While at Lapointe, Marquette, like Allouez, heard from native
lips of the magnificent open country of the Mississippi Valley ;
MACKINAW. 8 1
and in the autumn of 1669 he resolved on attempting its explora-
tion, in order to carry the message of the Cross still further
among the heathen. Nearly four years however elapsed before
it was possible for the father to carry out his plans ; but at length,
in June, 1673, ne started with Joliet, another Jesuit missionary,
on the expedition. Leaving Lake Superior by the Fox river,
they followed this stream to its head-waters, and carrying their
boats across the narrow watershed separating these from the
sources of the Wisconsin river, the two poor Jesuit missionaries
reached 'the basin of the Mississippi. Launching their canoes
upon the Wisconsin, the discoverers entered the great river after
seven days, and floated thankfully southward nearly to the Gulf,
over the vast and then unknown stream which within two centuries
has become one of the chief highways of the world. Neither
pride nor ambition swelled the bosoms of these explorers, whose
absorbing piety purged every earthly feeling from their thanks-
givings that God had thus widened the field for the spread of His
Word. Of Joliet nothing is known except in connection with
this expedition. He carried the news to Quebec, and then
probably returned to the obscure toils, perhaps suffered the
painful death of many another labourer in this section of God's
vineyard ; while Marquette halted on the spot where Chicago
now stands, and preached the gospel to the Miamis for another
two years. Then, worn out with the hardships of life in the
wilderness, he set out in the spring of 1675 to return to his home
at Mackinaw ; but as he coasted along the shores of the lake, his
strength gradually failed. His devoted Indian companions, feeling
that the end was near, entered a little creek where they built a
bark cabin, kindled a fire, and laid him down beside it. After
shriving his companions and commending them to God, he pro-
fessed his faith aloud upon the crucifix, and thanking God for
permitting him to die a Jesuit missionary and alone, he passed
away with the name of Jesus on his lips. Two years later, acting
under Marquette's instructions given at Lapointe, the Indians
reverently transferred his body to Point St. Ignace at Mackinaw,
G
82 AN ENGINRER '5 HO LID A V.
where it lies under the solemn pines, beneath the roof of the
church which he himself had raised.
The village of Mackinaw, containing five hundred souls, is redo-
lent of the backwoods. Indian half-breeds are numerous in its
streets and are not bad-looking people, the women especially
having fine faces and figures, while the shops are gay with Indian
handicraft. Not many years ago the Chippeways assembled here
once a year to receive their annual allowance from Government at
the hands of the Indian agents a class of men who unfortunately
for the relations between the red skin and the white, have often
been badly chosen for the discharge of duties demanding the
strictest justice. The Chippeway claims have been extinguished
for some years, and a characteristic spectacle is now lost to
visitors. In the old days the tribes camped along the beach, and
gave themselves up for a week or more to feasting and Indian
merriment. The shops of Mackinaw are tiny general warehouses,
where almost everything can be bought, but the store-keeper is a
very different person from the huckster of an English village. The
stock though miscellaneous, is well selected, and arranged in the
most orderly manner on clean white shelves which surround the
shop. The proprietor is an intelligent man of some importance,
living on tenns of friendly equality with every one about the place.
The drug store, for example, is " run " by our good friend Dr.
Baily, a properly qualified M.D., a wide traveller, a good doctor,
and an excellent companion ; who will either prescribe for patients
or retail them quack medicines as they may desire ; and who sells
you an ounce of tobacco, a pound of soap, or a packet of fish-
hooks, without loss of his professional dignity. His shop is a
picture gallery of advertisements, and becomes a kind of club at
night, where we refresh with " old rye," and discuss American
politics and local history with the doctor himself and such neigh-
bours as may happen to drop in.
The little town is dominated by a fort, which affords us the rare
sight of American soldiers, whose appearance is smart and whose
rifle practice is excellent. This fort was once a French post, and
MACKINAW. 83
many an English adventurer, pushing up from the lower lakes to
the upper waters in search of the furs of the north-west, left his
scalp hereabouts in the hands of the savage subjects of France, to
whom Jesuit zeal was trying to teach the law of love. After the
question between France and England was finally settled on the
Heights of Abraham, Mackinaw, together with all the French
posts around the lakes, passed into the hands of the British, whose
scattered soldiers, lost in the boundless woods, held these isolated
spots at the imminent risk of massacre by the Indians, recently
the allies of France. Such a massacre occurred at Mackinaw Fort
two years after the British took possession of it, the Indians,
presumably friends, having entered by stratagem, and a solitary
trader alone escaping from the butchery which followed. The
fort was again the scene of strife in the war of 1812, of whose naval
aspects some mention has already been made, and the spot where
our troops were disembarked is still called " The British Landing."
The island became very prosperous shortly after the war, having
been chosen by Mr. Astor as the base of his widespread operations
in the fur trade. His company, controlling an immense capital,
had outposts scattered throughout the whole west and north-west,
for which Mackinaw was the central mart and depot. Here the
trappers' supplies were collected from the company's store-houses
in New York, Quebec, and Montreal ; and hence they were dis-
tributed to the outposts. The furs on the other hand were
brought annually to the island, whence they found their way to the
eastern states and to Europe. At this time Mackinaw held nearly
two thousand souls, mostly Indians; but the trade declined on
Mr. Astor's retirement from the enterprise, to pass at length into
the hands of the Hudson's Bay Company. '.;
We quartered at a hotel called the Mission House in memory,
not of the seventeenth century apostles, but of the Christian work
of Dr. Morse, father of Professor Morse the inventor of modern
telegraphy, who visited the island in 1820 and preached the first
Protestant sermon ever delivered in the north-west. Acting upon
his report on the condition of the natives and traders, the United
G 2
84 AN ENGINEER 'S HOLIDA Y.
Foreign Missions Society of New York established a church and
school here in 1822, but the work of religious instruction and
education slackened with the dwindling population, and upon the
Indians altogether ceasing to resort to the place for purposes of
trade, the enterprise was abandoned.
Once more the Romish Church is in the ascendant at Mackinaw.
The Protestants are too few to support a clergyman, and we found
their church dilapidated and unused, except for the entertainments
of the " Caramel Minstrels," whose latest programme of comic songs
was chalked on the canvas wings of a rough stage occupying the
site of the displaced pulpit. The Catholic church on the other
hand, built of wood, in the severest style of carpenter's Gothic, is
in good repair, and evidently well attended. Our friend Dr. Baily
was the only Protestant member of the village school board, yet,
as we learnt with astonishment, the Catholic majority supports a
conscience clause, and allows of no religious teaching in the
Mackinaw schools repugnant to the feelings of parents. Thus do
free institutions modify religious prejudices, and take the sting
even from religious intolerance.
While at Mackinaw we hired a small yawl, whose skipper, John
McCarty, as already related, saved his steam-tug from destruction
on Lake Huron by "jumping" the timber raft which threatened
to drive him on a lee shore. With him we sailed round the island,
and explored the neighbouring shores, visited some of the great
lumbering establishments, and touched at Point St. Ignace to see
Marquette's grave. The fishing was excellent, and a dip, diversified
with balancing feats on the floating logs, was our daily luxury.
Nothing can seem more perfectly desolate than the low, silent,
pine-clad shores of the lake, with their narrow white beaches,
sprinkled with erratic pebbles of granite and gneiss, and cumbered
with derelict logs of timber. But once landed, the forest is not
without its attractions, at least in summer. There are clear spaces
among the trees where the columbine displays its symmetrical
scarlet blossoms, and the smooth brown stems of the wild cherry
contrast with the silver bark of the birch ; but even after our most
CHICAGO. 85
enjoyable rambles among the pines, we thought that restraint had
been exchanged for freedom when the forest was left behind us,
and our yawl danced again on the sunlit waves of Mackinaw
Strait.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHICAGO.
June 20-27.
THE navigation of the great lakes becomes monotonous after a
time, and we stepped on board the St. Louis steamboat at Mackinaw,
bound for Chicago, disposed rather for the observation of our
fellow-creatures than of nature. The general want of interest
shown by Americans in Europe and European concern had
already struck and surprised me so much that I determined
to test the question of its existence on the voyage. Strolling
about the Treasury on the evening of our arrival in Washington,
we fell into talk with a caretaker, who answered our inquiries
about the building very intelligently, and appeared in other
respects a well-informed man. Having satisfied our curiosity
he said, " I guess you are tourists, gentlemen," to which we
replied that we were from England, rather hoping that the man,
who had answered so many of our questions, would ask us some-
thing about the " tight little island," if only for the sake of
repaying him for his politeness. He paused for a few moments,
and then with the air of a person who feels bound to make a civil
speech, said, " And haow's England ? " If the " tight little island"
had been our sick relation and a perfect stranger to him, our
friend could not have spoken with more polite indifference. The
tone, impossible of reproduction, pricked such a big hole in the
balloon of our national vanity that we collapsed on the spot.
Nothing has since occurred to reinflate us ; on the contrary we
86 AN ENGINEER 'S HO LID A Y,
have, figuratively speaking, heard so many compassionate in-
quiries of " Haow's England ? " that we are not anxious to air
our nationality.
The Americans are great European tourists, and every steamer
that leaves New York is crowded with innocents going abroad,
but they are for the most part tarred with the same brush. Some
of them, on their return, will own to having passed over rising
ground in the Bernese Oberland; while others may naively
complain, as happened once in my hearing, that the Highland
hotels are inferior to those of Paris, and this city therefore to be
preferred before the land of flood and fell. Once in an Oxford
hotel I was asked, " Do you think I might shunt York Minster
on my way to the north ? I have seen everything here, and the
English antiques are so much alike that I will lump them, and
save a day, if you so advise." Willing to believe that these
were exceptional cases, I began my search for a fellow-passenger
with a genuine interest in the Old World, but found none. For
Americans generally England is the country of Shakespeare and
of some interesting " antiques." Paris, the Yankee heaven, is the
beatified home of Worth and the birthplace of beautiful jewellery;
while the balance of Europe is either a great bric-a-brac shop or a
playground. The night of the Middle Ages, the morning of the
Renaissance, the strife of peoples with priests and kings, the birth
of free institutions, and the growth of nationalities, are naught in
the ordinary American's valuation of Europe. Only the history of
states, where men are born free and equal, is of any real human
interest ; the rest is sound and fury, signifying nothing. I do not
think I overstate the case, and there is something to be said for
this view. Human energies have necessarily been, as they still
are, recklessly squandered on stupid issues in the European
struggle for liberty. It is heart-breaking to sum the waste of
courage and genius which has accompanied the evolution of
humanity in the Old World. But while we crown with bay the
heroes of freedom's battles, America is placed where the valour
that we rightly honour, and its needlessness are both equally con-
CHICAGO. 87
spicuous. Whatever the reason, there is very little interest felt -in
the New World for the Old ; but there is a great deal of confidence
in the superiority of America to Europe in all respects.
There is less small-talk among the Americans than with us, and
conversation is commonplace, solid, and argumentative. Men
rarely speak about subjects with which they have not considerable
acquaintance, but they are fond of discussion, which is conducted
fairly and without heat. While making use of extravagant hyper-
bole to illustrate a position, they avoid all injurious expressions,
and try to establish their points without appeals to prejudice, and
without personality. They state a case slowly, listen to the other
side patiently, and attach much weight to conclusions arrived at
by the reasoning process. Prejudice, tradition, and custom are
powerful dictators of opinion in Europe, and too often colour our
convictions; while the deadly character of competition in a
crowded country lends bitterness to every conflict which touches
vital interests. In the States on the other hand, the competitive
struggle is not a entrance, and the freedom of the career, develop-
ing individual character to an extraordinary degree, strikes off
many fetters which bind thought in Europe.
The first white man to visit Chicago was Marquette, who
preached the gospel there to the Miamis on his return from the
discovery of the Mississippi in 1673. No settlement took place
until 1804, when the United States Government built a fort ; but
this was abandoned in the war of 1812, and finally demolished.
The first house was built in 1832, when Chicago numbered only
a hundred souls. The first vessel entered the harbour two years
later, and the first official census, taken in 1837, showed a popu-
lation of four thousand inhabitants.
Forty years ago the site of Chicago was rolling prairie, covered
with tall grasses, wild marigolds, and sunflowers, the haunt of the
buffalo, and the home of the Indian. Thirty years later a busy
city of three hundred thousand inhabitants stood on the same
spot, but was suddenly swept out of existence by a great fire in
1871. While we in England feared that Chicago had received a
88 AN ENGINEER 'S HOLIDA Y.
mortal wound, the young athlete had but tripped for a moment in
that arena where, though the struggle for existence never ends,
the survival of the fittest is assured ; and in the result the spot has
proved to be the natural centre of the American grain trade, while
now, only ten years after its practical annihilation, the city con-
tains more than half a million inhabitants. The wooden shanties
of 1871 have given place to warehouses and stores which remind
the English visitor of Cannon Street or Queen Victoria Street.
Great industries connected with the food supply of the whole
world have arisen, and ministering to the wants which these
create, a multitude of manufactures have clustered around the
central interests. Stately public buildings serve the municipal
wants of the city. Bold engineering works bring a splendid water
supply through several miles of tunnel, from the purer depths of
Lake Michigan. The private houses of wealthy merchants and
manufacturers palaces such as the American architect delights
to rear adorn the environs. Lincoln and South Parks, rivalling
anything of the kind in Europe, lie one on either side of the city,
which will soon be girdled by thirty miles of leafy boulevards.
The middle states of America, now no longer appropriately
called the West, were almost untapped in 1850, and the heart of
the continent, containing millions of square miles of fertile soil,
was waiting for the plough. An immense commerce, for the
control of which older cities were reaching out their hands, was
about to flow from these hitherto unoccupied lands. Where
should it find its centre ? The situation of Chicago' destined it
for this position. Standing at the head of Lake Michigan, it
commands the inland navigation, and its early citizens soon
supplemented their natural advantages by the construction of
railways in all directions. Thus placed, with the agricultural
states of Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, and Wisconsin at her back,
with an uninterrupted water-way and direct railways connecting
her with the seaboard, Chicago forms at once the natural focus
for the productions of the Middle States, and the point whence
grain, cattle, and hogs are distributed to the populous Eastern
CHICAGO. 89
states and the markets of Europe. It also receives from the pine
forests of Huron vast quantities of timber, which find their way
either to the Southern cities and plantations, or to the ever-
spreading emigrants of the treeless western prairies. The Chicago
river is lined for seven miles with lumber yards, witnessing even
more powerfully than the grain trade itself, to the energy of the
city. For the corn which Chicago distributes is grown almost at
her gates, but the forests of South Carolina are nearer the Southern
markets than the pines of Huron; yet the business men of
Chicago have created facilities for the distribution of timber which
neutralize the natural advantages in favour of their Southern
competitors. Within another thirty years Chicago may rival New
York. There is room on the American continent for many
capitals, and the Atlantic cities do not perhaps derive more
importance from their manufacturing enterprise and command of
European markets, than the Queen of the Middle States will
shortly acquire from the rapidly increasing wants of the vast
internal territory over which she rules.
Naturally enough, the city bears traces of its rapid growth.
The great piles of handsome buildings are hustled by wretched
little wooden houses. The side-walks are for the most part of
planks, laid in a series of ups and downs, and so badly constructed
that the loose boards often tip under the weight of the passer-by.
The roads are dirt-beds, not yet filled up to the level of the side-
walks sloughs in winter and full of holes in summer. Open
spaces, full of rubbish, and detached shanties are common in the
best parts of the town, while the side streets are built almost
entirely of wood, and are full of beer saloons. Altogether,
Chicago is a city of contrasts, and the traveller's estimate of it
will vary enormously according to his point of view.
The prosperity of the Queen of the Middle States rests on her
trade in hogs, grain, and lumber, and so characteristic are the two
former industries that no one can be said to have seen Chicago
who has not visited one of the packing houses and a grain
elevator. Of the former there are thirty-five, with a capacity for
90 AN ENGINEER 'S HOLIDA Y.
killing and curing which varies from a hundred hogs a day in the
smallest concerns, to ten thousand a day in the largest. The
total number of hogs killed in a year is upwards of five millions,
and the average weight of each pig being two hundredweight,
about fifteen hundred tons of pork a day, or half a million tons
per annum, issue from the united doors of the Chicago packing
houses.
In the agricultural states of the West, Indian corn is the staple
crop. It is grown in vast quantities, and not being a breadstuff,
is most profitably exported as pork. From a group of states
therefore covering an area larger than England, streams of corn-
fed hogs flow steadily to Chicago. Here they debouch into the
" Stockyards," immense enclosures for the reception of all kinds
of live stock, occupying an area of nearly three hundred and
fifty acres, with a capacity for holding two hundred thousand
animals of all kinds. Around these spacious reservoirs of human
food the packing houses have arisen. Externally they are like
great factories, but each is connected with the stockyards by an
inclined roadway by which the hogs enter the building on the
first floor. The incline leads to a pen within the packing house,
where, among some hundreds of snuffing pigs, stand two men,
almost naked, their bodies covered with filth from contact with
the great unwashed. Over their heads is a simple railway, com-
posed of a single bar of iron set edgwise, and provided with
rollers which act the part of carriages. The rail is continuous
throughout the whole length of the building, falling by gentle
inclines from one end of it to the other, and serving to carry the
carcases throughout their journey from pig to pork. Above the
pen and railway there is a steam hoist controlled by an attendant,
who in the first instance lowers a chain to the men below. They
in the meantime have secured a victim from the crowd of pigs,
and one of his hind legs is fastened by a spring clip to the
dangling end of the chain. In a moment the hog is lifted into
the air, screaming and kicking violently, and in another he hangs
head down from one of the roller carriages, while the chain falls
CHICAGO. 91
back into the hands of the penmen. Loudly protesting, the hog
rolls smoothly down the descent of Avernus until he reaches the
executioner, who awaits him standing alone in the middle of a
pen much like the one above. This man also is nearly naked,
befouled with mud and bristle like his fellows, and in his right
hand gleams a short curved knife sharp as a razor. With a swift
and apparently effortless turn of the wrist, he cuts the throat of
the helpless screamer, who then continues on his way, silenced
but still kicking, until he reaches the lower side of this chamber
of horrors, which is closed by a sliding door. When a dozen
carcases have accumulated, the door is opened, and the group
roll forward until they hang over a large tank of boiling water,
when the clips are tripped, and the hogs plump down into the hot
bath, rolling about like porpoises, with their round backs only
above the surface. After scalding they are lifted out on to a
long, narrow, sloping bench, the upper end of which is occupied
by an ingenious shaving machine, consisting of four drums, armed
with revolving spring razors, so arranged that a pig passing
through the system is shaved on four sides of a square, into
which sectional figure the soft body is approximately squeezed
during the process. A large portion of the hair is thus removed,
and the rest is taken off by hand. Below the shaving machine
the bench is occupied by ten men, five on either side, standing a
few feet apart who, as the hog passes rapidly from one to another,
remove more and more bristle, until he finally reaches station
number five perfectly white and clean. Here the head is severed
from the body, and thrown on one side as refuse. The trunk is
once more hitched up to a carriage, and rolls forward to the dis-
embowelling room, whose arcana are perhaps better left un-
described, and thence it presently issues, a spotless and attractive
object, like that to which our own butcher complacently draws
attention as " prime country-fed pork."
The hog now makes a long excursion to a distant room, far
removed from the gory surroundings in which we have hitherto
seen him, and here while still hanging, he is split in two with an
92 AN ENGINEER 'S HO LID A Y.
axe, and the halves, as they accumulate from the fast-flowing
stream of carcases, are rolled away in batches to the ice-house.
All the animals slaughtered on one day remain in the cold
chamber until the next, when the stiffened halves are brought
out and severed by swift and accurate blows of a heavy axe into
hind quarters, fore quarters, and sides. These are then taken to
the trimmers, who artistically shape hams and shoulders, cut out
ribs and spare ribs from the flanks, leaving flat sides of bacon.
The trimmers' waste slips through shoots into a room below,
where it is at once manufactured into brawn and Bologna
sausages. The joints meanwhile descend by other shoots to
the pickling department, where the shoulders and spare ribs are
packed at once in barrels, which are afterwards injected with
fluid pickle at a high pressure; while the hams and bacon are
first allowed to lie for some days in dry pickle in a cold room,
and then packed, the former in canvas bags, the latter in strong
wooden cases, for the market. Such are the operations of a
packing house, one of the largest of which occupies fourteen acres
of land, contains sixty-four acres of floors, kills ten thousand hogs
daily at certain seasons of the year, and employs more than two
thousand hands !
The putrescible refuse produced in the packing and slaughter-
ing houses of Chicago amounts to more than two hundred tons
daily. This is converted into artificial manure by cooking and
drying ; and the business of " rendering " the offal into fertilizer
was carried on, until the last few years, in so careless and un-
scientific a manner that Chicago was nearly poisoned by the
noxious gases generated in the process. Early in 1877 however
Dr. Oscar Wolff, a man of great energy, was appointed Health
Commissioner, and backed both by municipal authority and public
opinion, he determined on a thorough reform in the conduct of
this industry. Means for abating the nuisance having first been
devised, he tried to procure their adoption, but the offenders,
wealthy and powerful corporations, were obstinate in their resist-
ance to reform, and it was only after many failures and in face of
CHICAGO. 93
great difficulties that Dr. Wolff succeeded in establishing the legal
claim of the municipality to control the operations of the packers.
A test case, which was vigorously fought right up to the supreme
court by a determined combination of capitalists, was finally won
by the Commissioner, and notice was given to the houses that
unless the nuisance was forthwith abated, the Board of Health
would seize and close every one of them. Once defeated, the
packers showed the true American spirit, setting themselves
heartily to work to apply and improve upon the suggested
remedy, with the result that a system of rendering has been
introduced which, working under strict municipal supervision, has
completely cured the evil, with advantage to all parties.
Originally the offal was cooked in iron tanks by steam, at a
pressure of forty pounds to the square inch, and the fetid gases
generated during this process were allowed to pass directly into
the open air. After eight or ten hours the tank was opened and
the material drawn into wooden vats, where the fat was skimmed,
the water drained away, and the solid remainder then transferred
to the dryer. This consisted of a revolving cylinder, thirty feet
long and three feet diameter, furnished with stirrers attached to
the axle, and heated by a current of hot air passing through the
chamber. Large volumes of noxious gases were generated in
this process also, and when Dr. Wolff took the matter in hand,
the atmosphere of Chicago had become almost unbearable.
Now, both cooking and drying take place in closed vessels,
and the gases evolved, having first been drained of their watery
vapour by condensation, are carried in pipes to a tank partially
filled with gasoline, whence, charged with highly inflammable
hydro-carbon vapour, they flow over the coal-beds of the furnaces,
and supply additional heat to the steam boilers. In some cases a
portion of the carburized gas is made use of to light the factory
as well.
Chicago's facilities for the grain trade are probably unequalled
in the world. There are nineteen grain elevators in the city,
having a total warehousing capacity of sixteen million bushels,
94 AN ENGINEER 'S HOLIDA Y.
and handling yearly nearly one hundred and fifty million bushels.
These buildings may be considered as great collections of corn-
bins, provided with apparatus for receiving, unloading, and re-
loading ships and railway cars. We visited one of the largest,
and found a very ugly wooden structure, about three hundred
feet square and a hundred and thirty feet high. Two receiving
and one discharging lines of railway run through the house, the
former in the centre, the latter on one side of it. Ten cars, each
containing five hundred bushels of grain, can be unloaded at the
same time, an operation which occupies six minutes. The trucks
are cleared by mechanical scoops, operated by a quick-running
windlass, and the grain falls from the truck into a pit, whence it
is lifted by revolving buckets to the top of the house and dis-
charged into a weigh-bin. As each car is emptied, the scoopmen
telegraph the fact to the men above ; the weight of the grain is
ascertained and registered, together with the number and invoiced
load of the car, and the contents of the weigh-bin are then spouted
into a suitable store-bin. In discharging, the grain runs down
wooden spouts, either into railroad cars or into vessels berthed in
the basin adjoining the building. It takes twenty-five minutes to
weigh and load five thousand bushels of wheat into trucks, but in
the case of shipments a cargo is weighed and made ready before-
hand, and half a dozen spouts fill up a vessel of ordinary capacity
with some sixty thousand bushels in two hours and a half. The
elevator we saw, though not the largest in Chicago, could receive
a hundred and thirty thousand bushels and discharge a hundred
thousand bushels a day. The mercantile operations of the grain
trade are much facilitated by a system of State inspection and
"grading." A certain number designates a certain quality of any
given cereal, and the Liverpool merchant, who, for example, buys
" No. 3 " winter wheat, or " No. 2 " barley, knows exactly what
will be the character of the cargo forwarded to fill his orders.
The dining-room of the Grand Pacific Hotel was tenanted
during one evening of our stay by a large party of Sioux Indians,
returning to the Dakota reservation with their children, who had
CHICAGO. 95
been educated in the schools of the east. They were clean, good-
looking men, well dressed, for the most part in European clothes,
and the young fellows who were going back to the wigwam were
very pleasant bright youths, glad to be once more among their
own people. None of the seniors could speak English, but the
Indian agent who had charge of the party translated some of
their names, which always refer to some incident in the life of
each man. Among them were the following : Jumping-Thunder,
Poor-Wolf, Son-of-the-Star, He-Bear, Runs-after-the-Moon, Cloud-
Bull, White-Cow, Passes-the-Evening, Red-Dog, Spotted-Tail,
White-Thunder, Black-Crow, Iron-Wing, Two-Bear, Big-Head,
Thunder-Hawk, Bull-Eagle, Brother-to-All, Medicine-Bull. There
were several squaws with the party, who were not handsome, and
some of the men had such feminine faces that we should not have
suspected their sex but for their costume.
Base-ball is an American's cricket, and being anxious to see
how it is played, I attended a match between the Troy and
Chicago Clubs, each represented by a crack team. The game is
something like rounders, and not so scientific as cricket, but a
very manly form of athletics nevertheless. I was much struck
with the contrast between the spectators present, and those to be
seen at a good cricket match in England. There were few ladies,
and the following notice, which I copied from a placard conspicu-
ously displayed on the walls, will perhaps illustrate the difference
to which I have alluded more perfectly than I could describe
it: "The umpire is not to be hissed, insulted, or have any
indignity offered him by the spectators. GENTLEMEN will,
and others must, be guided by the above hints." This would
read oddly at Lord's; but there were a good many "others"
among the gentlemen on this occasion, and no doubt the Chicago
Base-Ball Club knows its business.
There is a book store at Chicago which must, I think, be the
largest retail booksellers' shop in the world. Certainly there is
nothing like it in London, whether for the amount or variety of
its stock of high-class literature both native and foreign. Its
96 AN ENGINEER 'S HO LI DA Y.
existence literally speaks volumes for the intelligence of Chicago,
as do the several excellent literary journals published in the city ;
and I learnt from Mr. Jansen, the cultivated proprietor of the
store in question, that there is immense literary activity existing
here alongside of the earnest pursuit of wealth. While I was
talking to this gentleman one day, an incident occurred which
illustrates Western freedom, or as we should call it, Western
impudence. The newsboys peddle papers unchallenged in the
halls and corridors of hotels, and even inside the shops, of
America, and a very dirty street arab came into Mr. Jansen's
store pressing his wares obtrusively on customer after customer,
perambulating the large and handsome hall as if it were his own.
Mr. Jansen stood it for some time, and at last in the gentlest
manner ordered the boy out, whereupon the young ruffian turned
on him like a tiger, showed fight, and in violent language refused
pointblank to stir. I came very near boxing the impudent young
rascal's ears; but Mr. Jansen only followed the custom of his
country in treating the trespasser with what seemed to me absurd
forbearance.
The American system of fire alarm is interesting and has been
brought to great perfection in Chicago. The city is divided into
districts, each of which is provided with one or more fire stations,
or as we should call them, fire-engine houses, while alarm boxes
to the number of five hundred are distributed throughout the city,
being usually attached to lamp-posts and conspicuously painted.
Each box presents a crank-handle to the public, upon turning
which a bell rings, and the number of the box from which the
alarm proceeds is recorded on a Morse printing instrument at a
central station. On receiving such a warning, the central station
calls all the fire stations, whether one or many, situated in the
threatened district, giving the number of the box from which the
alarm proceeds. If the fire gains ground and additional help is
needed, the central office is notified from the nearest box, and the
engines of a second or even third district are called in the same
way as the first. The fire-engine, team, and firemen are always
CHICAGO. 97
ready to start. From the ceiling of every station a complete set
of harness hangs, provided with hinged collars, which close with
a snap, the whole being tilted up on one side so as to admit the
horse to his place. The same electric current which sounds the
gong unlatches the doors of the stalls, and the horses trot instantly
to their proper positions ; the swivel harness is tilted over their
backs, the collars clasped and they are ready to go. Meanwhile
the driver climbs to his seat, and on his pulling a cord hanging
from above, the street doors fly open, while the act of starting
opens a gas-tap and sends a rush of flame into the fire-box,
lighting a fire already laid ; the same action shuts the taps of a
circulating system which keeps the boiler full of hot water while
standing ; and the first pull on the reins releases the harness from
its ceiling supports. In the next moment the engine is sailing
away at a gallop, getting under way in twenty seconds in the day-
time, or thirty seconds at night
At one salvage station in Chicago where there is only a waggon,
the men get out in five seconds, night or day ; indeed they can do
it quicker at night. In this case not only are the horses released
by the alarm current, but the same agency pulls the coverlets off
the firemen's beds, opens trap-doors in the bedroom floor, and lets
fall slides, through which the men slip direct from their beds into
the waggon. There are two drivers, and the man who is first on
the box, takes up the reins, while the second draws on his " pants"
and boots, lying ready one inside the other on the seat. This
done, he takes the lines from No. i, who pulls on his boots and
" pants," so that half a block is sometimes covered before the
second man has dressed.
By the kindness of " Fire-Marshall " Sweeny we saw the system
in operation, and verified with our own eyes and watches the sur-
prising times given above. At one moment the whole building was
wrapped in apparent repose. The waggon-room was silent and
deserted, the horses were shut in their stalls, while upstairs, eight
active fellows feigned sleep under the bed-clothes. Suddenly a
gong gave one loud stroke, and as if by magic, the team appeared
H
98 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDA Y.
in place duly harnessed, the coverlets flew to the ceiling of the
bedroom, whose floor yawned and swallowed the men as they
rolled from their beds into the shoots. Before the Morse instru-
ment had finished printing the number of the box from which the
alarm proceeded, before the last reverberation of the gong had
died away, the waggon was tearing along the street at a furious
gallop, the whole thing having occupied less than five seconds.
America is a great solvent of nationalities. Even the stiff-necked
Englishman becomes Americanized in time, while the adaptive
German is soon absorbed. Chicago is full of Germans. There are
whole streets where the names over the shops are without excep-
tion German, and the city is crowded with lager beer saloons, kept
by Germans, and displaying German signs. Yet, saving his love
for the beer-garden, the Teuton loses all trace of his origin within
a few generations in the States, becoming thoroughly American
not only in speech and manner, but even in appearance ; and it
is striking to feel oneself, as happens in many parts of Chicago, in
a German town, and yet hear nothing but English spoken.
The banks of Lake Michigan are low and flat, and the sur-
roundings of Chicago have a melancholy air. Michigan Avenue,
the plutocratic quarter, lies partly on the lake, and contains some
magnificent houses, among which is a palace of Mr. Pullman's ;
but while the architecture of these wealthy homes, sometimes
classic, sometimes Gothic, sometimes Romanesque, has a certain
charm, an Englishman always feels surprised at the smallness of
the grounds surrounding great houses in the States. Gardening
certainly is not a national taste in America.
Chicago was originally built on a swamp, and had no proper
drainage either into the lake, or the canal which connects the
Chicago river by way of the Illinois with the Mississippi. When
the question of sewerage became urgent it was proposed to raise
the whole city twelve feet above its original level, and this bold
proposition was actually carried out. Great stores, warehouses,
hotels, and private dwellings were jacked up and removed, some-
times long distances from their first sites, business being carried
EN ROUTE FOR THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 99
on as usual during the operation. Even now it is not uncommon
to see a house travelling slowly along one of the less crowded
streets, with chimneys smoking, and perhaps even the piano
going. We met two such phenomena during our stay; and
nothing that we saw in Chicago so forcibly reminded us at once
of the energy of its early citizens, and the marvellously short
career of a city which was an ash-heap ten years ago, and is the
rival of New York to-day.
CHAPTER XIV.
En route FOR THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.
June 28-30.
THE traveller going west from Chicago may choose between three
railroads, which run in parallel courses from the capital of the
central states as far as the Missouri river. Each of them " touts "
vigorously for custom ; their rival time-tables are illustrated works
of fiction, and they all advertise the addition of a comfortable
dining-car to the usual Pullman " sleeper " a novelty which on
these long journeys is very agreeable, not only from a hungry
man's point of view, but because it furnishes a means of whiling
away time that might otherwise hang heavily.
The trip from Chicago to Cheyenne, where we made our first
halt, occupied two days and two nights, but we certainly were not
dull on the road. When tired of our books and easy-chairs, we
lounged on the platform, smoking, chatting, and viewing the
country, or strolled through the train and amused ourselves with
the varied groups of passengers. Here was a knot of Chinamen
going west, or a coupled of blanketed redskins; there a flaxen-
haired family of Scandinavian emigrants, or a party of Irish exiles.
When tired of talking to one or another of these groups we had
H 2
ioo AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
a rubber ; or if night were falling, watched the clouds aflame with
the fiery colours of a prairie sunset ; while a good bed and the
dining-car supplied us with ample material comforts. Nor were
our mental wants neglected by the newsboy, who not only peddled
papers, pea-nuts, candy, and cigars, but plied us with copious
cheap literature both heavy and light.
The American reprints of our best contemporary authors are
very tempting ware. Not only can all the best and worst novels,
from George Eliot to Ouida, be bought for from fivepence to
tenpence apiece, well printed, on excellent paper ; but such books
as the " Memoirs of Madame de Remusat," Justin McCarthy's
" History of our own Times," and Matthew Arnold's " Words-
worth," are offered at similar prices in the " Franklin Square
Library," published by Harper Brothers. The question of inter-
national copyright is a delicate one to discuss with Americans,
as indeed would be the proprietorship of your own handkerchief
with a pickpocket ; but the subject is capable of original treat-
ment, and was recently placed in quite a new light by the New
York Herald. " We believe," says Mr. Bennett's paper, " that
the absence of an international copyright is more widely regretted
in this country than in England, though for a different reason.
People lament that this system makes cheap such trash as Wilkie
Collins,* and makes dear those good books which can only be
purchased in an English edition ; while it well-nigh arrests the
literary activity of this country. The land is flooded with foreign
thought, and consequently dwarfed in all that part of its intellec-
tual activity which would choose to manifest itself in literature.
If American literature were protected by a copyright law which
would compel proper remuneration to foreign writers, this would
be otherwise."
Although the Herald, being furious against Mr. Wilkie Collins,
is more anxious to say something offensive about his works than
* It is only fair to Mr. Collins to say that the article from which I quote
was written in reply to some excellent if severe remarks of his on the question
of international copyright.
EN ROUTE FOR THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 101
to elucidate the question of international copyright, this remark-
able utterance is worthy of a moment's consideration. It certainly
is not complimentary to the literary activity of America to say
that it is arrested by the widespread publication of low-priced
English "trash ;" yet this is the writer's position, for he tells us
that good or thoughtful books are not cheaply reproduced, but
must be bought in dear English editions ; while in the same
breath he declares that native ideas are swamped in a flood of
foreign thought. The Herald, being angry, forgot that some
of the best contemporary English literature is reproduced in a
cheap form side by side with the "trash"; witness the examples
I have already given : but thoughtful books like these, sown
broadcast throughout the States, ought surely to stimulate rather
than drown the literary activity of the country. It is not disgrace-
ful for America to admit, what the catalogues of her publishers
silently proclaim, that she has not yet become a literary nation,
but it would be more dignified if she paid for the " foreign
thought " she now steals, instead of accusing it of dwarfing her
literary energies. The Americans are not only greedy readers,
but great buyers of books. The circulating library which fosters
the production of " trash " in England, is happily unknown in the
States, and its place is taken by the issue of large low-priced
editions. Book-buyers are critical readers, and the American
system encourages a habit of judicious selection ; while the circu-
lating library lowers literary taste and checks the formation of
private collections of books.
Leaving Chicago, the train enters at once on the prairies,
which, though they appear level, are low, rolling hills of drift.
These were formerly covered with buffalo grass and flowers, but
the first has been almost entirely replaced by cultivation, while
the sunflowers and marigolds fringing the sides of the track, are
all that remain of the last. On either side of the railway a wide,
well-farmed, undulating country, and far reaching views, remind
the traveller of the Lothians ; while the fields are green with oats,
and the lush foliage of Indian corn. Here and there stretches of
102 AN ENGINEERS HO LI DA Y.
prairie grass occur, which, diversified as they are with groups
of oaks, give a park-like appearance to the scenery ; but the
prairie becomes quite treeless about fifty miles beyond Chicago.
The prairies form probably the most important natural feature
of America, for in them is centred her great agricultural wealth.
They are vast natural meadows, sometimes hundreds of miles in
extent, having a deep soil of great fertility, with scarcely any
exposures of the underlying rocks. The whole of America
between the Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains is a flat
depression, occupied as far south as lat. 40 by the glacial drift
which remained after the ice age had passed away. This drift
covers the feet of the Rocky Mountains, and forms great shoulders
on their flanks, whence it slopes gently to the valley of the
Mississippi ; while a similar slope extends from the western side
of the Alleghanies to the " Father of Waters " which occupies the
middle of the continent, and carries the drainage of its central
depression to the Gulf. The drift of the Mississippi valley is
overlaid by the " bluff" formation a thick widespread deposit of
fine adhesive yellow loam, or loess, obscurely stratified, and
derived from the muds of the shallow inland seas which covered
Central America after the close of the glacial period. This
material is easily dug by the spade, but resists atmospheric
influences so perfectly that walls of wells and railroad cuttings
stand like masonry. Where the loess has been excavated by
rivers, the banks have cliff-like sides, sometimes more than two
hundred feet in height, which rise so steeply from the water that
a man cannot climb them, although they have no rocky framework
and are destitute even of pebbles. These thick beds of finely
comminuted soil cover vast areas, sometimes hundreds of miles
across ; they form the arable land of the great corn and wheat
growing states, and constitute the finest farming region in
America; the heart of what is at present the granary of the
world.
Good land and plenty of it not manufacturing skill or su-
premacy is the true secret of America's prosperity. Four-fifths
EN ROUTE FOR THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 103
of her total exports consist of raw materials and food stuffs, and
nearly one-half of them are food stuffs alone. If we as free traders
are right in believing that her methods of fostering manufacture
are mistaken, it is fortunate for the States that such a policy
affects only one-fifth of her whole turn-over. There is still more
than twice as much unimproved as improved land in America ;
and her land legislation is in strong contrast with her industrial
policy, being wise and liberal instead of short-sighted and reac-
tionary. Under the free homestead law, every naturalized citizen
of the United States can have a farm of a hundred and sixty acres
without charge, solely upon condition that he puts a specified
amount of work into the land within a given time ; and after the
law has been complied with in this respect, he may if he pleases
" pre-empt " a second hundred and sixty acres at an almost
nominal price per acre. Favoured by such an Act, men with
little capital, and even very poor men, can become proprietors by
hiring themselves out during the busier agricultural seasons at the
high wages prevailing in a country of few labourers, and working
on their own homesteads in the remaining months of the year.
There are two and a half millions of farms in the States, many of
which have been acquired in this manner ; and the effect of the
homestead law is to turn industrious emigrants into proprietors,
instead of allowing them to remain labourers, to the disadvantage
of State and individual alike. In the four great farming states of
Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Ohio, there is only one labourer to
every four farmers a state of things which stimulates personal
energy and develops character in a remarkable manner, and a
consummation devoutly to be wished in the British Islands. For
this question of tenant versus proprietor is becoming the crux of
English agriculture in face of the ever-increasing American com-
petition. We alone of all nations retain a modified feudal system,
with the result that the condition of the English agricultural
labourer is a disgrace not only to our Christianity but to our
commercial insight. During the year 1880, just half a million
pairs of hands poured into the United States, and the greater part
104 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDA Y.
of them found their way to the land. If American law did not
encourage proprietorship and discourage tenancy, these emigrants
would remain only labourers in exile ; but instead of this they
become land-owners, and in the act of extending the cultivation
of cheap land, strike blow after blow at the prosperity of English
agriculture. There is no surplus land in England, but that is no
reason why law and custom should both try to diminish the
number of English land-owners. We cannot give our labourers
homesteads, but we can free the land, and leave the rest to the
action of time and natural laws.
The trains of all the three competing lines arrived at Council
Bluffs, the terminus of the Chicago and Rock Island Railway,
within a few moments of each other, after a run of nearly five
hundred miles. We gave ourselves an excellent farewell dinner
in the travelling restaurant, and toasted the sentiment heading its
menu in a bottle of Perrier-Jouet
" Whizzing past the station, rattling o'er the vale,
Really this is pleasant, dining on the rail."
The Missouri is a wide, turbid stream of yellow water, flowing
between high bluffs of loess, far removed from its existing bed.
It is crossed by a beautiful iron cobweb, rather than bridge, and
on the farther side of the river the Union Pacific Railway receives
the passengers for the transcontinental journey. This road follows
the valley of the Platte, an affluent of the Missouri, for nearly
three hundred miles, over level country skirted on either hand by
rolling prairie. The Platte was probably a vast stream when
America was emerging from the melting glaciers, and its old
banks form remote bluffs on each side of the present river. After
crossing the Missouri, the train enters the state of Nebraska,
throughout whose eastern half cultivation steadily declines, and
whose western moiety has all the appearance of a desert. The
rainfall is very unequally distributed in North America, varying,
in regard to the line of our route, from an ample supply in the
eastern states, to zero in Colorado. The prevailing winds, blow-
EN ROUTE FOR THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 105
ing from the Pacific are westerly, but their moisture falls chiefly
on the Sierra Nevada, only a little of it reaching the Rocky
Mountains, and none passing further eastward. The Atlantic
moisture on the other hand penetrates beyond the low barrier
of the Alleghany range, and is strongly reinforced by evaporation
from the great lakes, whose vapours supply rain to and beyond
the middle states. The western half of Nebraska however, to-
gether with Wyoming and Colorado, has an almost rainless
climate, and the soil can only be cultivated by the aid of irriga-
tion. It is believed that the moisture belt has followed the
railway, or rather the westward extension of cultivation to which
the railway has given rise, and much is expected from the further
planting of trees. Grants of land in the arid district are made
both by the State and the Union Pacific Railway, on conditions
of tree culture, but it seems very doubtful if any expedients short
of irrigation, will avail for the successful prosecution of agriculture
in so dry a region.
Western Nebraska and Wyoming are now, and will probably
always remain, cattle-raising states. The soil, though so parched,
produces nutritious dwarf grasses, formerly the food of the buffalo,
who lived in vast herds among the natural meadows bordering
the feeble prairie affluents of the Platte. The wasteful Indian
and indiscriminate slaughter of these animals for the sake of their
skins, have almost exterminated the buffaloes, but their place has
been taken by tens of thousands of cattle, which graze summer
and winter on the prairie grasses both on this and the further side
of the range. The winter snows, though sometimes deep enough
to be fatal to sheep, do little harm to cattle, which thrive and
multiply without attention of any kind and without artificial
shelter. " Wyoming," said a ranchman with whom I fell into
conversation in the train, " is God's own footstool for cattle."
Once a year there is a " round up," when the beasts are driven by
mounted stockmen into great corrals, or enclosures ; part of the
stock is selected for sale, and the calves, running beside their
mothers, are branded with the distinctive mark of each pro-
lo5 AN ENGINEER'S HO LID A Y.
prietor : after which the herds are again turned loose, animals
which cannot be definitely claimed by any one being divided
among the ranchmen. Cattle-raising is a profitable business, and
is pursued by many Englishmen who like the sporting character
of the life, and think it more befitting a gentleman than commerce
or agriculture.
We were sleeping when the train passed from the cultivated
into the uncultivated portion of Nebraska, and awoke to find
ourselves surrounded by a yellow brown desert, stretching in all
directions to the visible horizon. Here and there were villages
of the marmot-like prairie dogs, who sat up on end and watched
the passing train, or bolted into their holes at our approach.
Scattered tufts of sage brush abounded, together with a dwarf
pear-shaped cactus, with a large and beautiful yellow bloom.
Game of all kinds was conspicuous by its absence ; instead of
herds of buffalo and deer, we only saw one antelope. But a
strange spoor puzzled us for a long time. Every here and there,
beaten tracks radiated from the telegraph posts, while a close
inspection showed that many of the posts themselves were
rubbed smooth up to a certain height from the ground. After
many guesses we concluded that the cattle " bless the Duke of
Argyll" on these rough masts, and even learnt that the beasts
are dainty in their choice, for the smoothest tree stems were
always selected, and those having projecting knots, however small,
avoided.
I was not much impressed with this portion of the Union
Pacific Railroad as an engineering work, and presume that the
constructive wonders, of which we hear so much, will be found
hereafter among the mountains. The line is straight and nearly
dead level for hundreds of miles. The loess forms a good natural
road-bed, upon which the sleepers are laid down without prepara-
tion of any kind, and the rails are simply secured with hooked
spikes. There are very few bridges west of the Missouri river,
the prairie affluents of the Platte being few, and usually small
enough to be crossed by culverts. The line is unfenced after
EN ROUTE FOR THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 107
leaving the cultivated country, and the train clears the track of
cattle by means of the whistle during daylight and the cow-
catcher at night. The depots are rough wooden houses, usually
accompanied by a few tiny shanties, which from want of wood in
this treeless region are often made entirely of old sleepers daubed
with mud. These are the desolate homes of the well-tenters, or
men in charge of the windmills and pumps which furnish water to
the locomotives from wells bored through the drift down to the
bed-rock. The road rises imperceptibly from the Missouri Valley
to an elevation of five thousand feet at Sidney. Here the snow,
of which little falls even at this elevation, drifts into depressions,
crossing which the rails are protected by snow sheds ; rough lean-
tos of boards and posts, like the first stage of a child's house of
cards. The old emigrants' road follows, like the railway, the
level bed of the Platte, and is almost always in view from the
train. We passed many waggon teams during the day, and saw
many camp fires at night, never without thoughts of the early
pioneers who were spent by the thousand toils and dangers of the
desert, for the advantage of those who now follow them luxuriously
in a Pullman sleeping car.
The air of the prairies is indescribably pure and exhilarating.
The sun sets dressed in garments of scarlet and gold such as he
never wears in Europe, and for a few minutes before his departure
all heaven is aflame ; but no sooner has he fallen below the
horizon than the shadows of night descend, and the chill of
winter succeeds to the heat of day. On the first night of the
trip we were awakened by a prairie thunderstorm. No rain fell,
but the lightning flashed so quickly that at no time could I count
more than four or five between the discharges, which for the most
part were quite continuous ; while the thunder sounded as if the
train were being smashed to atoms. Next morning, the sun
being hot and the air clear, we saw a great deal of mirage. The
high bluffs of the old river-bed seemed to become islands, lying
in wide spaces of silver grey sea and receding to enormous
distances : the last effect was a purely subjective one, for as the
lo8 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDA Y.
pseudo-islands returned to their true forms, their real distance
became apparent.
How we lamented the late dining-car while travelling on the
Union Pacific Railroad ! Three times a day the train stops for
meals at " eating stations " a most fitting title for what are in no
sense refreshment-rooms ; and a medley crowd of human beings,
clad for the most part in brown holland coats, or "dusters,"
rushes tumultuously into the tepid saloon, while the engine blows
off steam with open throat, and gongs are clashed as the signal
that food is ready. All the world is hungry and dirty, but there
is no time to negotiate for a sprinkle from the hose with which
the car reservoirs are filling, so we jostle, white, yellow, and red
skins alike, in the ardent competition for good places and early
service. Two or three dishes of tough meat antelope is often
served and one or two sweets, eaten in haste and washed down
by tea, coffee, or iced water, promote an indigestion which the
best Havannah fails to allay ; and we learned at length that a
store of canned meats and fruits, which the coloured attendant
kindly keeps and eats for us, together with a bottle of champagne,
fresh from the ice of the water reservoir, is the best substitute for
the travelling restaurant.
Arrived at Cheyenne, the Rocky Mountains were in full view,
but we left the train at this point, and turning south by the
Colorado Central Railway, skirted the range for about fifty miles
to the little village of Longmont, whence we proposed to enter
the mountains, our first objective being Estes Park, the property
of Lord Dunraven. Cheyenne itself, now the centre of the cattle
trade of Wyoming, was only settled in 1867, acquiring almost
immediately a population of six thousand souls, thanks to the
operations of the Transcontinental Railway, since the completion
of which the town has slightly diminished in numbers. Like all
the cities of America, called into sudden existence as camps for
the armies of civilization in their rapid western march, Cheyenne
was once a headquarters of rowdyism, where there was a " man
for breakfast" every morning, while almost every house was a
EN ROUTE TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 109
gambling den or a brothel. But Cheyenne is orderly enough
now. The mining towns of California taught America how to
deal with turbulent populations, and as the number of steady
citizens increased a vigilance committee was improvised, who
promptly hanged some of the worst desperadoes, with the effect
of encouraging the others either to mend their ways or depart.
The Colorado Central Railroad skirts the Rocky Mountains
closely, traversing beds of coarse drift which lie upon the hill-
sides to heights of more than five thousand feet. Above these
appear the higher slopes and summits of the hills, whose feet are
deeply buried in the enormous masses of rubbish which have been
excavated from the glens by the action of ice and shot around
the base of the range, whence the plains stretch away like a
boundless ocean, out of whose yellow and hazy levels rise blue
hills, seamed with dark glens, rough with forests, and capped
with scattered patches of gleaming snow. The route crosses
some of the chief affluents of the Platte river, whose sources are
the snows of the range. Such Pacific vapours as escape con-
densation by the Sierra Nevada, deposit their remaining moisture
as snow on the Rockies, but no rain falls from them on the plains,
the air sponge being completely wrung out by the mountains.
The streams are used for irrigation, and the valleys of the Cache
la Poudre, the Big Thompson, Little Thompson, and St. Vrain
rivers, have been partially changed from deserts into gardens by
this means. Large tracts however still remain unwatered, and
there are spots in the fertile areas to which water cannot easily be
carried ; hence the train crosses now a wilderness, and now a
wheat-field, which succeed each other like strips of cropping and
ploughed land in an allotment ground. The soil, an easily
worked sandy loam, lends itself admirably to the excavation of
the ditches, which are cut out by a scoop-like plough, labour being
too dear in America for the use of the spade. The work, though
roughly done, is almost as effective as the elaborate grading of
the Lombardian plains, which has cost centuries of patient labour.
Longmont is an irrigated oasis, surrounded on all sides by arid
I io AN ENGINEER 'S HO LID A Y.
desert, and depending for its water supply on the snows of the
Rocky Mountains. To-morrow we shall follow the stream that
supplies its people, fertilizes its land, and waters its shade trees,
into the heart of the range, whose peaks we can see clearly out-
lined on the evening sky across fifteen miles of intervening plain.
The hills to the southward were capped with heavy thunder-clouds
on our arrival, and the lightning was flashing brilliantly, while a
cold air sighed as if a storm were coming. " It will surely rain
to-night," we said to our host. " I guess not," was the answer ;
" the ' polorado zephyr ' blows up most nights and there's rain on
the range every day in the two summer months, but it a'n't rained
any in Longmont for thirteen months, and won't to-night." Which
prophecy came true. The black cap remained firmly fixed on
the brows of the hills, the breeze died out; only the high, silent
lightning continued to flash incessantly long after two weary
Englishmen had sought their hard but welcome couches.
CHAPTER XV.
IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS ESTES PARK.
July 1-14.
THE United States present to the traveller crossing them from
east to west three well-marked divisions which may be called the
eastern, middle, and western regions. The first includes the
Atlantic slope and Alleghany range, the latter a series of parallel
ridges, nowhere more than seven thousand feet in elevation,
densely wooded, and separated by fertile valleys, settled, and
cultivated. The middle region comprises the great central de-
pression of the continent, a vast basin of drift and alluvium more
than a thousand miles wide, and rising gently on either hand from
the valley of the Mississippi to the flanks of the Alleghanies on
IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS ESTES PARK. in
the east, and those of the Rocky Mountains on the west. The
western division is a tangle of mountains extending from the edge
of the plains to the Pacific. The eastern border of this vast
assemblage of hills is usually called the Rocky Mountains, and its
western edge the Sierra Nevada, but the space intervening between
these two ranges is filled with rock masses which, though broken
by immense stretches of plain, are never quite detached; and
American geographers now proposed to designate the groups of
mountains occupying Western North America as the Cordilleras,
the old name of the Andes remaining applicable to the South
American chains bordering on the Pacific. From the moment the
traveller enters the Cordilleras from the east, he " threads his
way," to use the words of Professor Whitney, the State geologist
of California, " through narrow, intricate defiles, winds around or
crosses over innumerable spurs and ridges, traverses narrow
valleys, and occasional broad plains, the former sometimes green
and attractive, the latter always arid and repulsive to the last
degree. He never descends below four thousand feet above sea-
level, and is never out of sight of mountains ; these always environ
him with thinly wooded flanks, and sterile and craggy summits,
often glistening with great patches of snow, which gradually lessen
as summer approaches. In the distance, these mountain ranges,
behind their atmosphere of purple haze, seem massive and uniform
in character ; as he approaches each one, he finds it presenting
some new charm of hidden valley or canon deeply countersunk
into the mountain side. As he rises still higher, he may quench
his thirst at the refreshing spring of pure water fed by the melting
snow above, while the grandeur of the rocky masses, the purity of
the air, the solitariness and the almost infinite extent of the
panorama opened before him, when he fairly reaches the summit,
leave upon his mind an ineffaceable impression of the peculiar
features of our western mountain scenery. It is through and over
these mountain ranges that the Pacific Railway threads its way
across the continent." That portion of the Rocky Mountains
lying within the limits of the state of Colorado is distinguished by
H2 A N ENGINEER 'S HO LI DA Y.
the occurrence of great natural parks. Of these North, Middle,
and South Parks are the most considerable, and Estes Park is
perhaps the most beautiful. All of them are elevated plains,
sometimes more than two thousand square miles in extent, and
from seven to ten thousand feet above the sea, surrounded by the
peaks of the range and watered by the streams flowing from its
snows.
We left Longmont in a four-horse stage, a coach with the body
hung upon leather straps, springs being useless in mountain
vehicles. Our route for the first ten miles lay over the plain,
irrigated here, and arid there, a chequer-board of wilderness and
vegetation. At the eleventh mile we entered the St. Vrain Canon,
where at a height of four thousand feet from sea-level, the
mountains themselves began to appear above the vast beds of
drift which cover their feet and slope from their shoulders to the
Mississippi, six hundred miles away. The word " canon," adopted
from Spanish America, denotes a river valley with steep sides,
such as is excavated by running water in rainless countries where
streams originate in remote sources and have no lateral affluents.
This state of things results in the cutting of deep notches instead
of the open V-shaped valleys to which we are accustomed ; and
these notches, called canons when large, and gulches when small,
are peculiarly characteristic of the Cordillera scenery.
Our road save the mark ! wound up, and sometimes through,
the St. Vrain river, dominated on the right by high sandstone
cliffs, and fringed on the left by a narrow strip of cultivated land
and cottonwood trees, whose green leaves were a welcome sight
after the treeless plains. "Flumes," or wooden spouts, tapped
the stream here and there, and carried its fertilizing waters, by
rough but often boldly conceived aqueducts, to the rainless fields
of the arid desert below. Presently from beneath the sandstone
cliffs the granite core of the mountains appeared and the structure
of the range became apparent. Below the drift of the plains a
level sheet of sedimentary rocks stretches right across the middle
region of America and was once continuous to the Pacific-
IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS ESTES PARK. \ 1 3
Through this floor the primitive rocks forming the mass of the
Cordilleras have been thrust forcibly upwards, and the once
horizontal strata now lie broken and tilted at high angles on the
mountain sides. The sandstone cliffs in the St. Vrain Canon are
the edges of such uplifted strata, and though not so highly inclined
as similar rocks flanking the range elsewhere, they plainly bespeak
the intrusive character of the mountain masses. The granite has
crystallized into huge irregular^ cubes, which weathering most at
their bounding surfaces, produce the effect of cyclopean masonry,
whose courses have been worn by time and disturbed by sub-
sidence or convulsion. These seeming walls and towers are
capped here and there by isolated blocks, poised as if by the hand
of man, and threatening to fall with every gale. They, like the
logan stones of Cornwall, are the result of weathering, and there
are doubtless thousands of rocking stones to be found among
these hills. The granite, being felspathic, decomposes easily,
giving rise to great sand-slides or tali of fine debris, while the
road, which is only a track worn by the wheels of the stage, is
deeply covered with coarse granitic sand. The flanks of the hills
are sparsely clothed with pines which huddle together in the shel-
tered ravines, and climb slopes almost too steep for the foot ;
while the wayside is carpeted with dwarf grasses and pear-shaped
cactus.
After a drive of thirty-six miles, occupying seven hours, we
looked down upon Estes Park, a flat, grassy depression, about four
miles long and half as wide, dotted over with pines, bisected by a
brawling stream, and entirely surrounded by mountains, some
timbered to their summits, others rising above the timber line
and streaked here and there with snow. The park evidently
occupies the site of an ancient lake whose waters have escaped ;
but it now forms a natural amphitheatre where peak and plain,
forest and stream, are combined, almost theatrically, to form a
picture having the charm of a park with the sublime features of a
mountain range.
The volatile member of our party, a man of pre-eminently social
i
ii4 AN ENGINEER 'S HOLIDA Y.
nature, had diluted the heat and industries of Chicago with hopes
of being shortly "alone with nature among the everlasting hills;"
and even the cynical balance of the expedition expected solitude
as well as cool air in the Cordilleras. It is well known that Estes
Park was purchased some years ago by Lord Dunraven, and we
unconsciously presumed that his lordship became the proprietor
of this remote estate in the character either of Timon or Nimrod.
We were certainly told that besides the earl's cottage there was a
good hotel in the park, but we thought this was probably a hos-
pitable provision for his lordship's sporting friends and occasional
English tourists. Commercial enterprise however grows rank on
American soil, and even a child of primogeniture becomes a land
speculator in the West. The hotel at Estes Park is a large
establishment, and what the Americans call a " health resort,"
having a resident doctor and a regular clientele of invalids, who not
only derive great benefit from the air of this mountain sanatorium,
but carry away, and therefore presumably spread, most favourable
impressions of the location, thanks to the judicious management
which makes every guest acquainted not only with the beauty of
the park but all its natural advantages whether for sport or
agriculture. Hence, instead of being alone with nature, we found
ourselves in a gay and crowded house, the company comprising
several invalids, a few fishermen, a number of American tourists,
and some foreign waifs and strays like ourselves. The host, to
our intense surprise, greeted us with the cultivated voice and
manner of a thorough English gentleman, and we found later that
he was Lord Dunraven's partner in the purchase, who, with his
pretty American wife, lives in a charming cottage near the hotel,
and manages the affairs of the Estes Park Company, Limited, into
whose hands the estate has now passed. For the first time since
leaving New York we wondered whether we ought to dress for
dinner ; and this in the Rocky Mountains ! But the war-paint of
civilization had been forwarded with our heavy luggage to San
Francisco, and both cynic and socialist searched their hand-bags
in vain even for a linen collar.
IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS ESTES PARK. 115
Our host was indefatigable for the amusement of his guests.
Yesterday he drove a party of us round the park in his four-in-
hand, and the journey was interesting as much from the superb
driving over roadless hill-sides as from the wild beauty of the
scenery. To-day he gave a picnic in Clear Creek, when the
toilettes were as pretty and the lunch as good as if we had been
under the trees of Cliefden Woods. To-morrow, a fishing party
starts for the Big Thompson, where if any fishermen are as lucky
as ourselves, they may take, as we did, a hundred and twenty
trout in a short afternoon. In the evenings the saloon was full
and the piano never idle, while flirtation flourished on the
verandah, as rapid and rank of growth as on the stairs of a
London house in the season. Such was our introduction to life
in the Rocky Mountains !
Estes Park is rather more than seven thousand feet above
sea-level, and the hotel stands in the centre of a vast semicircle of
hills, some of which are among the highest in the Rocky Moun-
tains. Long's Peak, only a little lower than Mont Blanc, lies on
the left ; Olympus and Ida the latter named after our host's wife
face the hotel ; and thence the range trends away northward,
becoming lower as it goes. There is no definite snow-line, and
what little snow remains lies in the gullies and among the higher
timber. The timber-line however is clearly defined at an altitude
of about twelve thousand feet, and above that the summits are
bare rock. This absence of snow in summer from heights of
nearly fifteen thousand feet, in latitude 41, and during winter,
from plains more than seven thousand feet above the sea, is very
surprising. But the great dryness of the atmosphere which it
bespeaks gives to the enclosed parks of Colorado one of the most
beautiful and exhilarating climates in the world. The air is
deliciously cool although the sun is hot ; every day breaks with a
cloudless sky, and the sunrises offer startling spectacles of pure
colours; a cool breeze rises every morning at ten o'clock, and
blows fitfully till sunset. At night every star looks out of a deeply
blue sky, and the Milky Way throws a broad and brilliant band
I 2
1 16 AN ENGINEER 'S HO LID A Y.
across the heavens. It is never too hot for exertion during the
day, nor too cold at night, and the atmosphere is so clear that
we can distinguish all the details of Long's Peak from base to
summit In this dry air the nails become brittle and the hair
harsh, food dries up, and bread becomes biscuit in a very short
time. Lightning is always playing about the horizon, be the sky
never so clear, and electric sparks are given off on approaching a
knuckle to metal after shuffling across the floor in woollen socks.
Our friend the doctor once produced an explosion like that of a
rifle by pulling some woollen drawers quickly out of a pair of
trousers, and the latter were covered with a sheet of flame.
Climbing is difficult at first on account of the dryness of the
air, but after getting acclimatized fatigue is hardly felt. One of
our party being out of condition, we gave up with regret the
ascent of Long's Peak, with the intention of " doing " Pike's Peak,
a slightly higher mountain, later on, and meanwhile we found some
fine scrambles among the lower hills. One of our pleasantest
excursions was to the Black Canon, which brings a considerable
stream of snow water to the Big Thompson River, and leads over
a divide, somewhat higher than the timber-line, into Middle Park.
This gorge is densely clothed with pines, and an Indian trail
sometimes conspicuous, sometimes obscure, but always traceable
leads through the forest. The ascent is rough and toilsome, and
we tyros were always a little anxious about missing the trail,
which would not be easily found again when once lost. On the
way we got splendid occasional views of Long's Peak and the
range, and finally rose above the timber-line. Here full-grown
pines give way very suddenly to bare rock, covered with large
patches of granular snow. The air was piercingly cold at this
elevation, and, wonder of wonders, we had a rainstorm, showers
being common and heavy about the crests of the hills though
rarely extending to their feet. We saw no large game on the
way, the elk being among the timber at this time of year, and
only descending into the park when driven from the higher
feeding-grounds by the winter-snows, but we started a few grouse
IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS ESTES PARK. 117
large birds like a pheasant, who let you walk up to them before
they rise. Coming home by the Big Thompson river, in whose
rapid stream the trout were rising fast, we found two beautiful
kinds of wild flowers growing in the moist bottoms a small tiger-
lily of brilliant red colour, and a lovely wild cyclamen, the latter
thickly clustering on the banks of the creek close to the water's
edge.
It was pleasant, returning tired after our daily tramps, to find
an excellent dinner of trout and mountain sheep, together with
pleasant society, at the hotel; and it was amusing to study
Western manners in the billiard-room after dinner. Here a party
of ladies and gentlemen, whose toilettes would have passed muster
at a suburban garden-party, played pool at one table while a
second was occupied by the ranchmen and servants of the estate ;
the room, which contained the bar, being usually filled with men
dressed in canvas " pants " and wide hats, lounging, chewing, and
drinking cocktails.
The American artisan assumes equality with the higher classes
with perfect naivete and good humour. No operative, especially
in the West, doubts that the sale of labour stands on the same
level with the sale of dry goods or " notions ; " and if we were
startled on the night of our arrival at Estes Park to find ourselves
seated at the same table with the stage-driver at dinner, he at least
proved an amusing and well-informed companion. The American
working man is a very different being from his English confrere.
He is usually the better educated of the two ; but those who have
mixed with the cream of the latter class know that they are better
informed, and more interesting companions than the prejudiced or
frivolous sections of our middle classes, in comparison with whom,
if they have not easy manners, it is because they are made to feel
like social inferiors. The American artisan on the other hand is
not sharply separated from the class above him either by dress or
by manners. It is only in the workshop that he wears clothes
suited to his employment ; at home and in the streets his appear-
ance is like that of his employer or any other citizen. This dis-
1 1 8 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDA Y.
tinction may seem trivial to some people, but the case is one
where trifles denote much, and the gap between the skilled artisans
of the two countries is far wider than is indicated by differences in
a coat. Fresh from England, I once offered a dollar to a New York
mechanic who had given me a long and intelligent explanation of
a certain process ; but I was soon politely given to understand that
I had made a mistake, and, while tendering an apology, I wished
that such an incident could occur in England. Nothing but the
British theory of caste prevents this. Our skilled artisans, would
accept nothing, in such a case from an equal, while they are ready
to pocket a shilling which, if it comes from a " gentleman," implies
no insult, although it pays for no equivalent service. I once
asked one of my own workmen, who had reappeared in the work-
shop when I thought he was in America, why he had come back.
" Only to visit my friends," was the reply, " but I took a job to
lessen expenses." " Do you earn better wages in the States than
here ? " " Well, I think about the same, for times are dull on the
other side, but it costs me more to live in the States because I
have a standing to keep up." " And is that why you are going
back ? " " Well sir, that is the only reason ; I can do about as
well in England, all things considered, as in America, but I am
a respectable member of society there, and here I am only a
moulder." Necessity and custom have given manual labour
inadmissible among the higher classes of the Old World a new
character in America. Every one becomes a handicraftsman on
occasion, willingly and without false shame. Hence the opera-
tive suffers scarcely any disabilities from labour, while he may
avail himself of intellectual and material enjoyments which are
reserved for the upper classes in Europe. For sensitive men
bred in the refinements of the best European society, the less
exclusive habits, less elegant life, and less polished manners of
the States form a purgatory ; but the country is the paradise of
the artisan.
The " earl's cottage " is a pretty boarded house, which would
however be more in keeping with its surroundings if built of logs
IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS ESTES PARK. 119
like our host's house. The latter is charming both, without and
within; a home with the air of an English country house, but
decorated with the spoils of nobler game than ours, and graced
by the refined taste of an American lady; seated in whose
exquisite little drawing-room it was difficult to believe that we
were in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. It was easier to
recognise the fact however while talking with Hank Farrar, the
hunter, who was usually to be found on the piazza of the hotel in
the evening. Hank is the guide, philosopher, and friend of every
stranger who comes to Estes Park in search of sport; and it
was pleasant to listen to his slow good-humoured talk of elk and
elk-hunting, and to admire his word-pi ctures of the chase and
camp. Elk is much less abundant in the park than formerly, and
a man must now work hard to find his game. In this regard
Farrar makes no secret of the fact that he prefers hunting with
Englishmen rather than with his own countrymen. The latter he
accuses of being lazy ; they will not do their fair share of work in
camp, or slave all day for a shot. An Englishman on the other
hand takes his full half of the labour in caring for and picketing
the horses, camping, cooking, and breadmaking, while he is
always earnest about his work, and will spare himself no fatigue
to get his elk or mountain sheep. This was not said to please an
English listener, that is not an American fashion ; and Farrar
illustrated his views with so many stories that I fully believe his
statement.
Good society, scenery, and trout-fishing had already detained
us for a fortnight among the mountains, when we tore ourselves
away from kind friends and excellent quarters and started for
Longmont, en route for Denver, the capital of the west. The
stage carried a much heavier load this time, needing a six-horse
team; and the skill of the driver, which had not struck us
so much on the lighter coach, became very conspicuous dis-
agreeably so at times on the return journey. On three
occasions we came as near capsizing as it was possible to do
without failing; twice when the driver's attention had been
1 20 AN ENGINEER 'S HO LID A Y.
diverted from his horses for a moment to accept a chew of " Navy
plug " from a friend ; and once when the off middle leader hitched
his hind leg up in the whippletree while descending a hill where
pulling up was impossible. In the last case the horse was so
stimulated by the thunderstorm of oaths which broke out upon
the instant, that under its influence he continued to canter on
three legs till we reached level ground, and thus averted an
accident which was inevitable if he had fallen. It is difficult to
make the reader understand the character of these mountain roads
by any description without appearing to exaggerate their dangers;
but I may say that the stage-driver's worst enemy is sideling land,
traversing which the heavily loaded coach, with its high centre of
gravity, often hangs over at dangerous angles. Labour again is
so dear that mountain road-making cannot afford much assistance
from art, and small gulches are consequently filled up with a
minimum quantity of boulders or pine stumps. In these cases
it is really necessary to drive to an inch, which, with six horses
and a heavy rolling coach, requires great coolness and skill. The
bridges over streams or wide gulches are made by throwing two
stout pines across the gap and laying smaller pines across these
again, forming a corduroy road, whose loose timbers rattle and
shake under the passing stage, or it may be break, as happened to
us at one such place, though fortunately the team was landed before
the pines cracked, and the horses were able to drag the stage up
the gradually sinking incline.
We changed horses three times in the thirty-six miles. The
stables are shanties of rough pine boards buried among the
mountains. At one of these the young fellow in charge, hand-
some, active, but in very fine-drawn condition, was addressed by
the driver as follows : " What do you live on here Tom any-
how ? " " Wai, I get a few flies mixed up sometimes, I guess."
" Haow do they go with mountain scenery?" "Pretty wal I
reckon, but I hev to live most of the time on the scenery." From
this point we started before the stage on foot, and, the road
rising, did seven miles before we were picked up again. Making
DENVER. 121
a short cut in the course of this walk, we turned a point whence
the plains became suddenly visible. At first sight we could
hardly persuade ourselves they were not the sea, stretching away,
flecked with the purple shadows of gliding clouds, to an horizon
yellow and dim with dust haze. It was a beautiful scene. High
granite towers hemmed in the way on either side and framed two
glorious pictures. Looking southwards, we saw the blue-black
gorges and sterile summit of Long's Peak, streaked here and
there with snow, while to the north lay a mimic ocean, still, sunlit,
and boundless. A fortnight in the mountains amidst cool air and
clear skies had made us critical, and we grumbled a good deal as
the stage emerged from the St. Vrain canon into the heat and
dust-laden atmosphere of the plain. Our hearts turned to the
pleasant party of sudden friends we were leaving, and our eyes to
the beautiful hills, wrapped in diaphonous garments of azure and
purple air, through which, as through a Coan robe, the range,
half hiding, half displaying her beauties, showed herself to her
lovers. -.
CHAPTER XVI.
DENVER.
July 14-16.
THE railroad from Longmont to Denver runs almost due south
over the plains, skirting the range at an average distance of
fifteen miles, but approaching it more nearly now and then.
On the right are the blue hills, capped as we pass with pink
sunset clouds, while to the left stretches an apparently boundless
desert of yellowish drift, arid, treeless, and, except for patches of
cactus, entirely bare; the home of chipmunks small striped
squirrels and prairie dogs. The mountain outlines are ex-
tremely sharp and jagged, showing no signs of glaciation, and
they probably were never covered to their summits by the con-
122 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
tinental glacier, of whose extent and action so much has been
said ; but vast terraces of drift run out from the flanks of the hills
into the plain, looking like unfinished railway embankments.
Massive as the range is, it does not impress the traveller as
much as the mountains of Switzerland. There is hardly any
snow, and the clearness of the air leaves nothing to the imagina-
tion, which, always taking the unknown for the magnificent,
creates for itself the sense of size out of clouded peaks and
gloomy gorges. The air of Colorado is so transparent that it is
impossible to estimate distances ; instead of fifteen miles away
the hills look close at hand. A couple of Englishmen once
started, so they say, from Denver for the foot hills, judging them
to be four miles off. After walking eight miles and finding them-
selves apparently no nearer to the range, they came to the
Denver irrigation ditch, about four feet wide. One of them
stopped on the bank and began to strip, his companion ex-
claiming, "Why, what are you going to do?" " I am going to
swim this river." " Why man, it's a ditch and only a yard or so
across." " How the deuce do I know it isn't a quarter of a mile ?
We've been fooled enough already, and I'm not going to risk a
wetting ; you can jump if you like." This atmospheric trans-
parency not only impairs the power of judging distances, but
seems to dwarf the size of objects as well. A line of hills nearly
two hundred miles long is in view from the cars ; they are high,
massive, and occasionally snow-capped, yet we are obliged to tell
ourselves that they are part of one of the great mountain ranges of
the world. The plains on the other hand are almost painfully
impressive, so wide and desolate are they. There are no
mountain streams between Longmont and Denver ; and no strips
of cultivation therefore break the monotony of the desert land-
scape ; but here and there the derrick and engine-house of a
coal-mine rise like a black island out of the plain. The glacial
drift is thinner here than it is further north, and the cretaceous
strata below it contain beds of lignite which are worked wherever
the overlying mass of sand and pebbles is not too thick.
DENVER. 123
The cars of the Colorado Central Railroad are rilled for the
most part with miners or men connected with mining interests,
and we observed that most of them carry arms. Opposite me a
young giant in a blue flannel shirt and canvas trowsers stretched
himself, now this way, now that, in search of a comfortable
position for a nap, and as he rolled sleepily about a pretty little
revolver dropped from his pocket. I picked it up, and gently
waking the young Hercules, suggested that if the pistol was loaded
it would be better not lying around loose. With a mixture of
thanks and oaths he re-pocketed the weapon and took another
awful reach after comfort ; but the thing was on the floor again
within a few minutes and I thought it best to secure it until my
friend should awake. As we neared Denver, the giant, refreshed
with slumber, took the revolver once more from my hands and,
wishing I suppose to repay my attention, said in a hoarse voice
finely flavoured with whisky, that he would show me the "All-
firedest hotel in Denver," if I would put myself in his charge. We
declined the offer with many thanks and left him playing with his
pretty toy, and looking very sorry not to be of service.
The Platte river on which Denver is built, was rolling at head-
long speed on our arrival, a mad, muddy torrent, through the
bridge just outside the town. Men and lights were moving about
the abutments, which were evidently considered in danger of
being washed away, and the train crawled over to the other side
at a snail's pace. My neighbour in the car was returning from a
short journey and had left Denver only four hours before, at
which time there was hardly a drop of water in the bed of the
Platte. Floods like these arise from heavy rains on the range,
where the clouds sometimes discharge their burden like the
breaking of a waterspout, and every canon then carries a boiling
stream to the plains. At such times, as upon this occasion, the
water rushes in a solid mass five or six feet high down the almost
flat and usually narrow bed of the river, spreading right and
left to a great distance and wrecking bridges and dwellings in
its course. Men on horseback" race the flood from higher to
124 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
lower levels and give what warnings are possible in advance;
but little can be done on these occasions beyond watching the
railway bridges, and within a few hours the Platte is again empty.
At the moment of our arrival, rain was the question of questions
in Denver. There had been none for more than a year; the
Platte was pumped dry, and the mayor had issued a proclamation
enjoining the most rigorous economy in the use of water. Now,
every one is cheerful. The wrecks are forgotten, and if the flood
had carried away a quarter of the town it would have been
welcomed in Denver. The thunder was roaring loudly, and the
sky over the range was intensely black as we walked from
the depot to our hotel, but though a drenching rain looked im-
minent, not. a drop fell, and so it is throughout the rainy months.
The hill-tops are swathed in clouds, lightning flashes, thunder
rolls, and torrents fall on the range, but only an occasional shower
wanders out into the plain.
Denver, the capital of Colorado, is one of the peculiar creations
of the swift tumultuous advance of American civilization, origina-
ting in and sustained by the thirst for gold. Lying out in the
plain at some miles' distance from the range, it possesses no
mineral wealth itself, but its position makes it the natural
metropolis of the Rocky Mountains, and every new mining
discovery is a fresh stimulus to its growth. The first settlement
of white men within the limits of Denver was made by a party of
prospectors who, attracted to Colorado by the reports of gold,
camped here in 1857-58. The camp soon grew into a city, and
in 1859, not only had a child been born within its walls, but
municipal government had been established, a mayor elected,
a newspaper published, public worship performed, and a theatre
opened. Four years later Denver was almost destroyed by fire,
and within another twelvemonth the new wooden houses rising
from the ashes were swept away by a great flood. Such events
are but episodes in the history of these strange mining towns,
and the city now contains twenty thousand inhabitants, thirty
hotels, many great commercial houses, a branch of the United
DENVER. 125
States Mint, fine churches, schools, a splendid opera-house, and,
streets of elegant private residences. All this in the heart of the
desert.
The town is rectangular in arrangement, as usual ; the streets
are wide, and the roads wonder of wonders ! excellent. The
citizens are proud of these roads, but without reason, for they
have had nothing to do with there being so good; the plain
hereabouts consisting of a mixture of loam and gravel which forms
hard and durable tracts without artificial aid. But the Western
man is apt to take credit to himself whether fairly or unfairly, and
in his higher flights would persuade you, if not himself, that the
blue mountains themselves and all their mineral wealth are
creations of the great republic. Every street is planted with
cotton-wood " shade trees," which are watered from ditches lining
the side-walks. The shops are excellent and beautifully kept.
About half the houses are of brick, the other half being of wood,
and the pavements are of planks badly nailed down as usual.
The drinking saloons are numerous, tastefully fitted up with
walnut-wood and graceful draperies, whose Parisian elegance
contrasts strangely with the company frequenting the bars. Hand-
some horses and equipages are common in the streets, especially
in the late afternoon when all the world goes " buggy-riding."
This is the time for seeing the ladies of Denver, who are not less
fond of dress and jewellery than their New York sisters, and like
to display both in their daily drive. The absence of women is a
most striking feature of Denver. The streets are full of men, but
one rarely sees a woman, and the men themselves appear to form
a very fugitive population. A queue forms daily at the post-
office, waiting for letters addressed " till called for," and seldom
numbers less than a hundred people, among whom fresh faces are
seen every day. Almost all these men wear the blue shirt
denoting a miner's occupation, and this crowd of " transients "
forms a strange feature of Western life to our unaccustomed
eyes.
The Chinese form an important element in the population of
126 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDA Y.
Denver. Hitherto we have seen but few Chinamen, although they
are present in all the American cities. In New York they have
superseded washerwomen, while there are factories in Massa-
chusetts notably a large boot and shoe works at North Adams
" run " by Chinese labour. At Estes Park several Chinamen were
employed about the hotel, and they are always to be seen in the
cars of the transcontinental railroad ; but it is only in Western
America that the yellow race assumes any numerical importance.
So far as we can judge, the Chinaman seems to fill his humble
place in an exemplary manner, and our sympathies are already
enlisted on behalf of this well-behaved and industrious worker.
But the public clamour against him is loud, and we have as yet
had so few opportunities of observation, that we shall reserve our
judgment in regard to the Chinese question until we reach
California, where the Mongols are most numerous and most
unpopular.
Public order has been established in Denver for some years
past, but only, as in so many other western cities, by violent
means. At the present moment the " rowdies," though strongly
represented, are afraid of the respectable element of society,
knowing that if a steady citizen were to shoot a rough in the
course of a " difficulty," a jury would not convict; whereas if a
rowdy is taken red-handed, or only suspected of foul intentions,
no mercy is shown. But though the town is generally speaking
orderly, outrages sometimes occur. A tram car was attacked in
Larimer Street, one of the chief thoughfares, during our short stay,
by two fellows, who tried to make away with the cash-box. We
were in the street at the time and heard the shots which the con-
ductor discharged from his revolver at the thieves, but being near
a small shooting gallery at the moment, we had no notion that
highway robbery was being attempted within a few hundred yards
of us. The newspapers mentioned the incident next morning but
without any comment ! On the other hand I have patrolled
Denver late at night, and though I saw many picturesque figures,
who might be either miners or brigands, lounging at the corners of
DENVER. 127
streets, I was never molested, and the town seemed as quiet as an
English village.
One evening we attended a " social hop," to which, in common
with all the world, we were invited by public placard. Not know-
ing whether a social hop might or might not be given by the social
evil, but presuming that the city hall would only be lent to respect-
able people, we paid our fifty cents entrance money and found
ourselves among about a hundred persons of both sexes who were
waltzing, polking, and quadrilling to the music of a good band.
The ladies looked like " helps," and the men like mechanics, but
both the dancing and behaviour were excellent. The girls
were simply but tastefully dressed and the young men inclined to
dandyism. Dance programmes hung from every man's button-
hole, and introductions were as ceremonious, and etiquette as
strict, as in a London drawing-room. Seeing we were strangers,
a polite steward found us partners, and whether for good waltzing,
animated conversation, or thoroughgoing enjoyment, we would
back the social hoppers of Denver against even a London " small
and early."
" There are more flies in Denver than anywhere else in the
world and they stick more." Such is the dictum of the natives,
and it is true so far as our present experience goes. I have never
seen flies thicker or more affectionate. If the waiters did not fan
one during meals, only a few fragments of any dish would remain
many seconds after the cover is removed ; and if the creatures did
not sleep at night, life would be a burden.
Colorado is English almost as much as it is American. We
knew more about this state ten years ago than the Americans
themselves, who regarded it as little better than an arid wilder-
ness. Englishmen early settled here in some numbers, taking
up land for cattle ranches, digging irrigation ditches, investing
money in real estate, building hotels in Denver, and mining in
the range, until they are now quite a commercial power in the
state. Among American enterprises in Colorado, Senator Hill's
smelting works are the most important. They are situated at
128 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
Argo, just outside Denver, and reduce the chief part of the ores
mined in the state, turning out about one ton of silver and fifty
pounds of gold weekly. The process of silver extraction consists
in first crushing and roasting the ores to expel the sulphur ; the
residue is melted to get rid of the silex and earthy matters, and a
metallic "mat" results, which is reduced to a fine powder and
gently heated, when the remaining sulphur combines with oxygen
from the ore, producing sulphuric acid. This attacks the silver,
forming a soluble phosphate, while any gold that may be present
remains in the "mat." The silver sulphate then flows over copper
plates, which take metallic silver from, and give up copper to the
fluid by interchange. The sulphate of copper is sold as such,
while the silver, which appears in a white and spongy condition,
is dried and finally run into ingots. The gold in the mat is
reduced by a secret process known only to Mr. Hill and his
manager, and upon this secret the prosperity of the Argo Works
is built. Ores differ enormously in value a lean one, located
where transport is easy, being often better worth mining than
much richer lodes less accessibly situated ; but the average yield
of the precious metals at Argo may be taken as sixty ounces of
silver and one ounce of gold to the ton of ore. The dry air of
Colorado has a curious effect on the sulphurous vapours that
issue from the roasting furnaces of the Argo Works. In Swansea,
as is well known, vegetation is killed by similar fumes evolved in
the reduction of copper, and chimneys are sometimes carried to
the tops of hills in order to discharge the copper smoke high up
in the air. Here however the sulphurous acid diffuses into the
atmosphere and no condensation takes place in consequence of
the absence of aqueous vapour.
The range, always in view from Denver, dressed in hourly
changing garments of pink and purple, gold and azure, tempted
us to return to its cool glens every time our glances sought the
west. The attraction was too powerful to be long resisted, and at
length our hand-bags were gleefully stuffed a day before the time
appointed for our next move up to the mountain towns, or "mining
camps " of the Rockies.
THE MINING CAMPS OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 129
CHAPTER XVII.
THE MINING CAMPS OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.
July 17-20.
WE left Denver for Central City, one of the most important
mining camps of Colorado, by the Colorado Central Railway,
retracing our steps across the plains for fifteen miles to Golden, a
small smelting town close to the foot of the range. Here a
mountain stream called Clear Creek debouches from a canon
and enters the plain, seeking the Platte river. Golden, though
standing on drift, is nearly six thousand feet above the sea, while
Central is eight thousand three hundred feet in elevation ; and the
railway which connects the two places rises therefore two thousand
five hundred feet in its course of forty miles. A narrow gauge of
three feet six inches has been chosen for the mountain railroads of
Colorado, both on account of its lower first cost and because it is
better suited for steep inclines than a wider gauge with heavier
rolling stock. Our train consisted of six passenger cars, a freight
car, and an " observation " car the latter an open truck from
which we got capital views of the scenery, though we were terribly
bombarded on the upward journey by ashes from the labouring
engine.
The canon is narrow, and for the most part filled with a thick
level deposit of detritus, through which the stream, evidently much
smaller now than at some former period, flows or leaps in a
channel always steep and sometimes precipitous. The rails
130 AN ENGINEER'S HO LI DA Y.
occupy the left bank of the " crick," and rest for the most part on
the floor of detritus ; but here and there the gorge narrows, the
debris disappears, and the river foams between strait rocky walls
which rise precipitously on either hand to heights varying from a
thousand to two thousand feet. Nevertheless the stream winds
like a river flowing through flat meadows, and the train rolls
around curve after curve at a uniform speed of eighteen miles an
hour, until after passing many stations once busy with "gulch
mining" it reaches Black Hawk, thirty-seven miles from Golden
and seven thousand three hundred feet above sea-level. Here the
valley is wide enough to hold a considerable town full of foundries,
stamping-mills, and smelting works. The distance between
Black Hawk and Central is only a mile and a half as the
crow flies, but there is a thousand feet difference in their levels, so
the railroad zigzags up the hill-side, the train travelling now
forward, now backward, over a series of dizzy inclines, having a
total length of about four miles. The position is a remarkable
one for a railway traveller. Around him are the peaks of the
range whose sterile summits gleam with occasional snows. Right
beneath his feet is the busy little town of Black Hawk, whose
chimneys shoot their pointed flames from among rolling clouds of
smoke. Lower still the white thread of foaming Clear Creek
slips in seeming silence through hidden eyes in pointed needles of
rock. And at this great height he steps from the cars into
Central City, a flourishing mining camp of three thousand souls,
perched at an elevation of more than three hundred feet above the
Alpine line of perpetual snow.
The little town consists of a straggling collection of wooden
shanties dotted all over the steep hill-sides, but clustering more
closely at one spot where a short street contains a number of
excellent shops, three banks, three hotels, and several churches
The bare brown hills are burrowed everywhere with seeming
rabbit-holes, from whose mouths run out little embankments of
bright-coloured mining rubbish, while here and there horses are
seen treading the mill round of windlasses or whimseys. The
THE MINING CAMPS OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 131
streets are deserted during the day, but all the world is astir in the
evening, presenting faces of a type which is very familiar to us.
Two-thirds of the miners in Central are Cornishmen and the
balance either Norwegians or Germans. Native Americans are
seldom found underground ; they " prospect," and sell their
" claims," generally preferring the manufacture of balloons to the
founding of solid industries, and having little stomach for the hard
work of a miner's life.
Nothing was known of the existence of the precious metals in
the mountains of Colorado before 1852, but in the summer of
that year a Cherokee cattle-dealer found gold in an affluent of
Clear Creek, and members of the tribe continuing to prospect,
they finally obtained a moderate quantity of the precious metal.
The first party of American prospectors entered Colorado in the
early part of 1858, but their success was only partial, and it was
not until 1859 that the first gold-bearing lode found in the state
was discovered by a man named Gregory. This was a true
" fissure vein," as it is called in America, of auriferous quartz very
rich in gold. It crosses the valley now called " Gregory's Gulch,"
between Central and Black Hawk, and, although the first, has
proved the richest find in this neighbourhood. Many similar dis-
coveries followed that of Gregory, and two years afterwards it
was estimated that the new mining camps of Colorado contained
together a population of twenty thousand souls. The pioneer
prospectors, seeking gold only, never thought of silver, and finding
it without recognising it, threw it on one side as worthless ; but in
1864 a Central assayer, named Dibbin, detected silver in some
ores sent him for analysis, and since that date the mining history
of Colorado is chiefly a record of silver discoveries on the one
hand, and the introduction of scientific processes of reduction on
the other. Gold, which is found exclusively in quartz rock, and
in a " native " or pure metallic state, is often accompanied by
silver, usually in the form of a sulphuret. The inexperienced eyes
of the early miners failed to recognise these silver ores, and in
some cases lodes which have been abandoned on account of their
K 2
132 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
poverty in gold are now being worked as silver mines. Gold as
well as silver is still sought in Colorado, but the prosperity of the
mining camps rest chiefly on silver.
" Gulch mining," the earliest form of gold-digging, consists in
washing the sandy detritus of river valleys, and collecting the free
gold which subsides by virtue of its specific gravity. The erosion
of a mountain glen in rocks containing mineral veins, constitutes
a gigantic natural process of quartz- crushing and gold-washing,
whose operations have been continued over enormous periods of
time. As frost and rain slowly carve out the valley, the fragments
of rock falling from time to time into the stream, are converted
by its action into sand and pebbles. In the course of this operation,
the quartz parts with its gold, whose flakes and scales are however
too heavy to be carried away like sand, so that they remain
scattered among the detritus left in the gulch and accumulated
chiefly in the upper valleys and at the lowest levels. Gold in fact
can neither be destroyed nor removed far from its original position
by natural means. It has come into the quartz we know not how,
but it is inoxidizable, so that the atmosphere cannot consume it as
it would any other metal under similar circumstances, while its
high specific gravity prevents its distribution by water.
In some valley then whose gravels have been proved by pre-
liminary washing to be auriferous, the gulch miner sinks a shaft
down through the detritus to the bed rock, and upon this floor
runs a tunnel or gallery up stream. Water percolates freely through
the loose roof and sides of the burrow, but is kept under by
pumping. A portion of the stream, diverted from its bed higher
up the valley, turns a rude water-wheel, which operates the pump
and raising windlass. The mine is worked by two " pardners "
who dig and wash by turns, the former employment being wet and
heavy work. The contents of the bucket are emptied on a plat-
form and shovelled thence into the " sluice box." This is a long
wooden shoot, supplied at its upper end with a constant stream
of water and discharging into the creek. The shoot is provided
with " riffles," or strips of wood nailed at short intervals across the
THE MINING CAMPS OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 133
bottom, which serve to retain a charge of mercury placed there
for the purpose of amalgamating the finer particles of gold which
might otherwise escape. The riffles are " cleaned up " at regular
intervals, the amalgam being squeezed in a linen bag for the
recovery of free mercury, while the heavy sand which they con-
tain is transferred to the " pan," a saucer-shaped tin vessel, where
the larger pieces of gold are separated out by hand-washing.
Gulch mining has almost ceased to exist now that all the auriferous
gravels of Western America have been washed. Only the patient
Chinese practise it, at the present moment, working over again
gravels which the white man considers exhausted.
In "fissure vein" mining, quartz outcrops are sought among the
mountains by prospectors, who, when they find a promising
" lead," drive in eight stakes, enclosing a space of fifteen hundred
feet by one hundred and fifty feet, and this is called a " miner's
claim." To convert such a claim into freehold property it is
needful to put five hundred dollars' worth of labour into the mine
within one year, and this being done the United States Govern-
ment issues a title. The professional prospector rarely carries his
operations beyond this point, but tries to sell his claims, and it is
probable that as much money has been fooled away over bubbles
blown very big by "smart men," and glowing with iridescent
lies, as has been made by honest mining.
Fissure vein mining is carried on in the same way as copper
and tin lodes are worked in Cornwall. A shaft is sunk, and
galleries constructed, striking the vein at different levels ; and the
ores on reaching the surface are sorted and crushed, after which
they are for the most part sent away to Argo, to be reduced as
already described. No great lodes have yet been found in
Colorado, the quartz veins varying from a few inches to a few
feet in thickness, whereas in Nevada, lodes occur which are two
or three hundred feet thick. The mines are small, carried on
without adequate capital, and in the rudest way. There are fewer
people engaged in mining in Colorado than we were led to
expect from the exaggerated statements made to us in Denver,
134' AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
and the mining camps of the Rocky Mountains cannot for a
moment be compared with the great and organized operations
which we have yet to see in the Sierra Nevada.
These, however, are by no means the opinions of the Colo-
radans. They believe, or would have you believe, that their
claims are all El-Dorados, and their shares priceless. We were
fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of a Mr. Fillmore,
"attorney and mining agent," whose office, a small wooden
shanty, was fitted with shelves filled with specimen ores from
every mine in the neighbourhood. One wall was covered with
photographs of bare hill-sides, pierced here and there with tiny
burrows and dotted with shanties, the pictures representing the
" richest mines in the state." Mr. Fillmore himself was a glib
man with an enthusiastic manner, roving eyes, and long grey
hair, who sold town lots and mining shares in earnest, and called
himself an attorney apparently in jest. Thinking probably that
an Englishman in Central City could only be explained as a
possible investor, he took us into his "prettiest little parlour" of
an office, and sidling from shelf to shelf, showed us the world and
all the riches thereof. His eyes glowed and his white hair floated
as if electrified by excitement while he delivered an eloquent
address on the potential wealth around us, describing mines
which were all Golcondas, and " town lots " which were para-
dises. His ardour was infectious, and made us feel so rich that
we determined to take some stock in the " richest mine in the
state " as soon as Fillmore could make up his mind which that
was. But the last lode was always the best, and finally the
"attorney and mining agent" piled it up so high that the entrance
of a fourth party was a relief from an excitement which was
getting too much to be borne seriously. The new-comer was a
Mr. Bozey, to whom we were ceremoniously introduced as " one
of our earliest prospectors, a gentleman who has found and sold
more good mines than any man in this state, and who is now
resting on his oars."
Mr. Bozey was a fat millionaire, dressed in shirt sleeves, and
THE MINING CAMPS OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 135
evidently resting even from the labour of washing his hands ; but
he enjoyed Mr. Fillmore's dish of melted butter exceedingly,
swallowing it in silence, and remaining a perfectly dumb oracle to
the end of the interview. When the great man was gone, the
mining attorney looked at us with benevolence beaming from
his glowing features and flying hair. His face said plainly,
"Gentlemen, I can make Bozeys of you both;" but we felt in
want of a little fresh air after the millionaire, whose well-timed
entrance and exit had thrilled us like a melodramatic situation, so
we said au revoir to our apostle, and left him preaching the gospel
of gold in the doorway, and half hoping that the seed had fallen
on good ground, half fearing, from an untimely smile on the
socialist's face, that we had received the word with the wrong sort
of gladness.
Idaho Springs is another mining town distant six miles from
Central, lying on a branch of Clear Creek, the divide which
separates the two valleys being seventeen hundred feet above
Central City or ten thousand feet from sea-level. Driving over
this ridge we experienced a curious electrical phenomenon. Daily
at this season of the year clouds cover the summits of the range
about two o'clock and heavy showers fall ; these are accompanied
by thunder and lightning and usually last about half an hour,
when the sky clears again as suddenly as it clouded, but the rain
extends only a very little way from the hill tops. It was raining
but without lightning as we neared the divide, when I felt a
tickling sensation on the back of my hands like what one experi-
ences when standing on a glass stool and in connection with the
conductor of an electrical machine. Judging that a discharge was
taking place from our persons I tried to increase its intensity by
holding one of the wet umbrellas point upwards above the waggon.
This at once produced a distinct sensation in the hand and arm,
and on mentioning the matter to the driver he exclaimed, " I
guessed you felt it when I saw you looking at your hands. It's
common enough here, though many don't know what it is, and
others don't notice it." This man was very nervous about cross-
136 AN ENGINEER 'S HOLIDA Y.
ing the divide while it was thundering, and plainly said that if
there was lightning he must wait for fair weather. He declared
that the ridge is constantly struck and very unsafe during thunder-
storms, a moving horse or buggy being very liable to accident,
while once in the gulch, no matter how little below the summit,
there is no danger.
The approach to Central City by the Colorado Central Railway
is, as we have already seen, a succession of frowning precipices
and bare mountain slopes ; but the valley of South Clear Creek is
hemmed in by less rugged hills, the barren crags are replaced by
pine-decked slopes, and the stream is no longer a torrent but a
gliding brook, while the gulch is almost too open to be called a
canon. Idaho was first settled in 1859 by a party of gold-diggers,
who commenced gulching where the town now stands. In the
same year a small log cabin was built by a man named Beebee,
who catered for the miners' physical wants, but this has now
grown into a great hotel the " Beebee House," for Idaho pos-
sesses soda springs and has become a health resort as well as a
mining town. Two years after the camp was first pitched, Clear
Creek Canon was alive with gold-diggers, and gold dust was the
universal medium of exchange in this then remote spot. In 1864
came the discovery of silver, followed first by a new excitement
for fissure vein mining, and then by the gradual decadence of
gulching. Several mineral springs were discovered in sinking the
earliest shafts at Idaho ; and these having been exploited by an
enterprising medical man, the place now attracts a number of
Americans, always great valetudinarians. The Beebee House is
yearly crowded with these real or fancied invalids, who drink the
waters or lounge in the sun on the piazza, weighing themselves
daily to see whether they are improving.
The deserted bed of a creek which has once been the site
of active gulch mining is a curious sight. The stream flows
between banks composed entirely of great heaps of washed
pebbles, clean and bare of any vegetation. Wrecks of water-
wheels, flumes, and sluice-boxes lie here and there, accenting the
THE MINING CAMPS OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 137
desolation of the scene ; and if a group of Chinamen should be
seen, their blue frocks, conical hats, and pig-tails give the last
touch of outlandishness to the picture.
A mass of detritus with a surface flat as a floor, through which
the creek meanders, fills the bottom of Clear Creek Canon to a
depth of about seventy feet. It consists of sandy soil, thickly
stuffed with boulders varying in size from stones as big as a piano
to pebbles. All of them are water-worn and free from glacial
scratches, but there are trains of boulders lying on the shoulders
of the hills at heights of two and three hundred feet, where they
could only have been left by ice, and many of the blocks in the
river-bed are so large as to preclude the idea of their being water-
borne. The stones differ from the local rock, having travelled,
as we afterwards found, from a point twenty miles further up the
stream, and the whole must have been deposited during a state
of things totally different to that which now prevails. The erratics
which line the hill-sides up to heights of more than three hundred
feet, and the tumultuous assemblage of sand, stones and boulders
in the bed of the stream, point to a time when Idaho Valley was
nearly abrim with ice, as well as to a later period when the melting
glacier poured a roaring torrent of water down the gulch which
now carries only a comparatively tiny stream.
A branch of the Colorado Central Railway follows South Clear
Creek from its point of junction with Clear Creek to Georgetown,
fourteen miles above Idaho, and the highest mining camp in the
Rocky Mountains. Georgetown lies in a perfect amphitheatre
of hills, at an elevation of eight thousand four hundred feet,
or five thousand feet higher than Chamounix. It is considerably
larger than Central, and notwithstanding its elevated situation has
all the appearance of an old settled place. Its streets are
numerous, wide, and busy ; it has capital shops, and many hotels.
The snow does not often lie for more than twenty-four hours in
winter, and the sun is warm and pleasant in January ; this at the
height of the perpetual snow-line in Switzerland. Mining towns,
like Western cities, are soon seen, and we were now pretty familiar
138 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
both with the wooden homes and burrows of the miners ; so giving
Georgetown a passing glance, we started up another branch of
Clear Creek in search of the granites whence the Idaho pebbles
were derived, and to visit Green Lake a small sheet of water
dammed by moraine, at a height of sixteen hundred feet above
Georgetown, or ten thousand feet from sea -level.
The narrow gorge is very fine. The stream falls so rapidly
that for the first mile its course is an unbroken sheet of foam. Its
bed is cut through enormous lateral moraines lying on the flanks
of the mountains, and containing boulders of stupendous dimen-
sions. Some of these are as big as a moderate-sized house, and
where they have fallen the stream is put to shift after shift to out-
flank the tremendous obstacles in its path, while the valley is
cumbered with such a confused mass of blocks as defies descrip-
tion. We were fairly staggered by the dimensions of the boulders,
and scarcely less surprised by the elevation and mass of the lateral
moraines, whose presence showed that the continental ice-sheet
had once stood here at least ten thousand feet above the sea.
The hills around us were pierced to their very summits with little
burrows and seamed with white, yellow, or grey mining tips, while
delicate, zigzag lines, betokening trodden paths, branched down-
wards to the valley, and stretched from mine to mine. Green
Lake is a small basin hidden among tall pines, holding water as
green as grass, and full of mountain trout ; but this moraine-
dammed pond was tame indeed compared with the superb views
of the range which now presented themselves in every direction.
The hills bend round Georgetown in three-fourths of an almost
perfectly symmetrical circle Mount Evans, Gray's Peak, and
James's Peak, some of the highest summit?, being included in the
view ; while they are seen without reference to the plain, which
elsewhere seems to partially bury and consequently dwarf their
masses. The afternoon storm had lingered longer than usual,
lightning flashing and thunder growling during the whole of our
walk ; but just as we turned to descend, great indigo wreaths
gathered themselves together in the south, capping Mount Evans
MANITOU PIKE'S PEAK. 139
with almost terrifying gloom, while the sun shone brightly over
the pines and crags of the most inspiring view we had yet seen
in the Cordilleras.
The train swept us rapidly down the grades and past the pre-
cipices of Clear Creek Canon to Golden, and thence across the
hot and dusty plain to Denver, where we dined before starting for
South Colorado by the Denver and Rio Grande Railway. I
mention this dinner because it was made remarkable by the fact
that we accidentally sat down, six Englishmen, at one table in the
Windsor Hotel. Three of the six were settled in the state, and
whatever may have been their temptation to belong to the Yankee
nation, they certainly all remain enthusiastic Englishmen. This
fortuitous concurrence of atoms fraternized and made itself merry,
and whether by good-fellowship or champagne I do not know, but
we got the national balloon which burst at Washington repaired,
and took in a fresh charge of patriotic gas, sufficient we hope to
float us to the misty portals of the Golden Gate.
CHAPTER XVIII.
MANITOU PIKE'S PEAK.
July 21-29.
EIGHTY miles south of Denver lies Manitou, a mountain " health
resort," famous for its mineral springs, and the point whence the
ascent of Pike's Peak is usually made. It is six thousand three
hundred feet above sea-level and stands among the tilted strata
which everywhere rest against the eastern flanks of the Rocky
Mountains, whose granite core has intruded through the once level
beds of mesozoic and tertiary age which lie beneath the drift of
the plains. Manitou is quite a fashionable little place, always
crowded during the summer with American tourists and invalids ;
140 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
it has several large hotels, and the native exquisite of both sexes
is seen here in full bloom at this time of the year.
Certainly American ladies dress in a very prononce way. Their
breakfast toilets are good enough for the dinner-table, while for
dinner they dress as we do for the opera. They are great on
ornamental hose and tiny French shoes, and having pretty feet are
quite disposed to let the world know it. Their jewellery, if too
abundant, is costly and beautiful in its design, which stands
between the lightness of French and the solidity of English work.
American ladies never walk, but they go out " buggy-riding " in
dancing shoes and ball dresses, or amble about on ponies in highly
ornamental riding habits. All this seems very odd among the
mountains, where the surroundings, as at the Riffel or upon
Dartmoor, would suggest serge walking dresses and stout Balmoral
boots to Englishwomen. The men too are curiously lazy about
walking ; both tourists and invalids sit about the piazza, talking
dollars, smoking, and spitting almost all day ; but no one treats
his holiday as an occasion for taking exercise. If athletics were
a cult in America, as with us, there would probably be fewer men
here who, though in the prime of life and having no specific ail-
ment, suffer from some " trouble," usually of digestion, often of
nerves, and spend their time drinking mineral waters, weighing
themselves, and discussing their daily progress.
Men and women are never seen to advantage in a fashionable
watering-place, and neither at Scarborough nor Trouville is society
at its best. But fashionable life in Manitou seems more frivolous,
not to say faster, than at similar places in the Old World. It may
be that what appears to us licence is only the natural result of
women's greater freedom, and certainly social propriety is as
rigidly observed in the States as in Europe, but while the men are
more solemn and shoppy, the women are decidedly gayer and
more openly anxious for attentions than with us. The billiard-
room and the bowling alley are brilliant with beautiful toilettes
every evening, and there are as many ladies as gentlemen with
cues in their hands. Representing domestic duties by business
MANITO U-P1KE 'S PEAK. 141
cares, men and women seem to have changed places ; the woman
is the pleasure-seeker, while the man gravely revolves his home
affairs.
Although parties of Americans make the ascent of Pike's Peak
almost daily in the summer they characteristically prefer riding to
walking, and we astonished our guide by declaring our intention
of going up on foot. He on the other hand said he " wouldn't
take twenty dollars to walk it," and rode. This mountain is
fourteen thousand two hundred feet above sea-level, and its summit
is occupied by a United States meteorological station, where two
observers are constantly stationed. Such an arrangement would
of course be impossible at a similar elevation in Europe ; but here
there is seldom snow enough to block the trail which leads to the
signal station, and men can live there very comfortably in the
winter. Besides the Government trail as it is called, a second
route leads to " Seven Lakes," where, at an elevation of eleven
thousand feet, there is a small mountain ranch, and here we
determined to sleep for a night, so as to be ready to attack the
peak in time to see the sun rise, returning to Manitou on the
evening of the second day.
The trail is very steep for the first three miles, rising thirteen
hundred feet in the mile, and following Ruxton Canon, the bed of
whose roaring stream presents a scene of the wildest confusion.
The gorge is very narrow, having precipitous flanks covered with
patches of pine, but cumbered at the bottom with masses of fallen
rock, many of which are as big as a large house. The rock is
granite, which has all the appearance of being bedded in lines
crossing the valley at a moderate angle. These " beds " are very
variously affected by the weather, some crumbling readily, while
others waste but little. On the side of the valley where the beds
hang towards the stream, the wear of the softer strata leaves vast
overhanging masses of rock, which, when undermined beyond a
certain point, break off and fall into the canon. Where the rocks
are most friable the flanks of the valley and the hills themselves
are covered with great " sand-slides," or tali of granitic debris, and
142 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
the juxtaposition of softer with harder granite gives rise to most
fantastic weathered forms, which line the sides and crown the
precipices of the canon with spires and pyramids, quaint profile's,
and the images of strange beasts. The daily storm burst upon us
about two o'clock, and instead of clearing as usual, stuck by us
for the rest of the day. The lightning playing among the pines
around us was very fine, and the thunder reverberated, as it
seemed for minutes. The ascent became much less steep after
the first four miles, and thence to Seven Lakes the trail, though
difficult to find in places, was little more than a long and toilsome
walk in the wet.
These mountain canons are all alike in one respect ; their beds
are steepest and their sides most precipitous near the plain, but at
elevations of about nine thousand feet their flanks widen, becom-
ing like those of an ordinary river valley, and the ascent sinks to
an easy grade ; often indeed the canon leads up into smooth and
level basins many miles in extent. The narrow and precipitous
gateways of the canon however are clearly no accidental cracks
convenient for the escape of water flowing from above, for, when
viewed from such a distance that general characters prevail over
particulars, they have each the appearance of having been cut by
the stream itself. When this first began to flow over the hill-side
it must have been dammed in many places by irregularities of
surface giving rise to lakes of greater or smaller area, the overflow
from each of which never ceased cutting its way backwards,
through the retaining bank until the lake was drained. The beds
of such old lake-like expansions of the stream are found in the
upper reaches of every canon, and sometimes afford space
enough, as in the case of Idaho Springs, for the building of a
town.
The pine is very characteristic of American mountain scenery,
and gives it a peculiar tone which is not agreeable at first. Seen
from a distance the hill-sides appear to be clothed with scaffold
poles, while a cold grey, rather than a green tint distinguishes the
forest, unless the trees are thickly massed in ravines, when they
MANITOU PIKE'S PEAK. 143
look almost black. Within the forest itself the pines are still more
like scaffold poles ; all of them are bare of branches up to a great
height ; many are dead, and fallen trees are so numerous as
seriously to impede the way whether of horseman or pedestrian.
Burnt patches frequently occur, and the charred trunks and
blackened underwood give a repulsive character to the scene.
The Seven Lakes are a series of large ponds, dammed by
glacial moraine, and occupying a depression which is almost
entirely surrounded by bald peaks, rising from five hundred to a
thousand feet above a well-defined timber-line. Here we found
comfortable quarters in a log house built by a man named Welch,
who, with a strange taste for isolation, has taken up land in this
remote spot and is stocking the lakes with mountain trout, in order
to supply the Manitou hotels with fish. Meanwhile he entertains
such tourists as prefer to make the Pike's Peak trip in two days
rather than in one, and we had to thank him and his wife for
much kindness during our stay, which was unexpectedly prolonged
by the indisposition of one of our party. Three days indeed were
thus thrown on the hands of half the expedition, who whiled them
away by tramps to Bald Mountain in search of topaz ; in fruitless
pursuit of deer-trails across the sand-slides ; in rowing a crazy boat
over the lake, which was crowded with great external-gilled newts ;
in playing quoits with old horse-shoes ; watching the tricks of the
half-tame chipmunks, or painted squirrels ; playing euchre ; or
listening to Indian stories told by the guide.
At length the invalid riding we were able to start for the
summit, which was reached after a few hours' stiff walking, and
here we were welcomed by the signal service observers. These
men are soldiers, well-educated and intelligent fellows like the
privates of our Royal Engineers. They live in a stone hut where,
if luxuries are absent, there is no want of substantial comfort.
The station is connected with Washington, and therefore with all
the world, by a telegraphic wire which serves to despatch ob-
servations as soon as they are made. There is a capital library,
and if the position is lonely in winter, there are daily visitors from
144 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
Manitou all through the summer. The men are frequently
relieved and seem to like the service. As might be expected
from the great elevation, there is little electrical equilibrium be-
tween the summit and the lower levels, and the telegraphic
instruments were constantly snapping like the excited conductor
of an electrifying machine.
Many of the highest peaks in the Rocky Mountains occur quite
independently of the watershed, and Pike's Peak is several miles
eastward of it, rising indeed only just without the upturned strata
which flank the range and lie in great " hog-backs," as they are
called, against the granite uplift of which the peak is a part. A
heavy snowstorm accompanied with thunder and lightning
signalized our arrival at the hut and threatened for a long time
to deprive us of any view ; but after a couple of hours the cloud
was withdrawn, displaying the beauties of the scene in quite
a theatrical manner. The whole of the northern and western
horizon was filled with the serrated profiles of hills, many of them
still nameless, belonging to the Continental Divide. These
merged in the south-west into the Sangre de Cristo range a
spur of sufficient importance to have been separately named.
In the south rose the " Spanish Peaks," conical hills almost as
high as Pike's Peak itself; while eastward the eye ranged over the
sea-like plains, flecked with the purple shadows of a thousand
clouds. Immediately at our feet lay a wide expanse of tumbled
mountains, bare for nearly two thousand feet below, and clothed
with dark forests thence to the plain. It was a beautiful picture ;
but in spite of their immense mass, the mountains have not the
sublimity as they have none of the grace of the Swiss Alps.
The country between Denver and Manitou forms a low divide,
separating the streams flowing towards the Platte and Arkansas
rivers respectively, and the " Fontaine qui bouille," which runs
through Manitou, finds its way by the latter route to the Father of
Waters. This "boiling spring," so called from its turbulence,
rises on the flank of the granite upheaval only a few miles west of
Manitou and in its course towards the plain crosses at one place
MANITOU PIKE'S PEAK. 145
the edge of a hogback lying against the hill-sides. The latter
consists of a thin bed of extremely hard sandstone, which, stoutly
resisting weathering, gives a peculiar and interesting character to
the canon. Throughout that portion of its course which lies
among the granite, the stream flows in an open valley flanked
by low and gently sloping hills ; but it traverses the hogback in a
deep, precipitous gorge and in a series of cascades. It is clear
that the hard capping has determined the section of the canon by
preserving the friable rock beneath it from degradation. If the
protecting bed were absent, these rocks would have weathered, as
they have done higher up the stream, into an open V-shaped
valley ; but the tough sandstone has prevented their wasting, and
hence the deep U-shaped gorge, whose precipitous sides contrast
so strangely with the undulating country immediately above.
Here then we have a canon still in course of excavation by means
of an overflow which is cutting its way backwards in the manner
already suggested ; together with an example of the influence
which the juxtaposition of hard and soft rocks may exercise in
producing widely different profiles of river valleys.
The hogbacks of mesozoic and tertiary rocks lying against the
granite core of the range are turned up at all angles. Those
which lie immediately on the core itself partake of its slope, but a
little further off others are seen which are quite perpendicular.
The effects produced by erosion among these vertical beds are
very remarkable. The " Garden of the Gods " is a fanciful but
inappropriate name given to a little valley where rock pillars and
needles, some of which rise to a height of three hundred and fifty
feet, abound. One of these is a hundred and twenty feet high,
while its base is not more than ten feet in any direction ; but this
obelisk-like form is exceptional, the beds usually rising from the
ground in wall-like masses which must be viewed edgewise to look
like aiguilles. Thus seen, especially at sunset, these columns of
red sandstone have a singularly artificial and weird appearance as
they flame out like copper in the red evening light.
But bizarre as they are, these examples of erosion are surpassed
L
146 AN ENGINEERS HOL1DA Y.
in strangeness by the columns of " Monument Park," situated
among undisturbed tertiary strata some ten miles from the foot of
the hills. Here the plain, consisting of a loosely compacted
white sandstone, is dotted with tapering pillars, from six to
fifty feet high, each capped with a flat overhanging stone of dark
colour. They stand sometimes in closely associated groups,
sometimes alone, and look like sugar-loaves wearing college caps.
They are of the same material as the soil, from which they have
evidently been shaped ; and the flat stone at top is a fragment of
a thin bed of similiar sandstone, indurated by the percolation of
water containing iron. Here and there the ferruginous layer is
continuous, though for the most part it is broken up into plates
more or less separated from each other ; but however it occurs, it
locally stops that degradation of the surface which is constantly
going on under the influence of wind. Whenever this blows it
scatters the slightly coherent sands of the soil to great distances,
and thus gradually degrades the plain ; but as the surface beneath,
a protecting plate cannot be carried away, a pillar necessarily
results from the lowering of the surrounding soil. The pillar
again assumes a tapering form because the erosive forces have
been at work longer upon its neck than its base, and the former
indeed becomes in the course of time a mere stem upon which
the widely overhanging flat stone appears to totter. Finally the
latter falls, and the pillar, no longer protected above, moulders
down and disappears, while beneath the fallen cap, now pro-
tecting another spot, a new and similar column begins to grow.
When the hard bed is continuous it gives rise to cliffs, and the
groups of columns are usually found on their flanks ; the question
of column or cliff being determined by the continuous or broken
condition of the hard vein. Examples of every stage of growth
and decay abound, and the simple process can be traced from
its first to its last stage, while its apparently artificial results
excite the liveliest interest.
When Monument Park and the Garden of the Gods have been
seen, and Pike's Peak ascended, there is nothing to be done at
GRAND CANON OF THE ARKANSAS LEADVILLE. 147
Manitou beyond sitting on the hotel piazza, admiring the brilliant
and ever-changing toilettes of the gay American girls, and wonder-
ing at the portentous gravity of the men. But for two pedestrians
in good condition this was tedious work, and our worn tweeds and
heavy walking boots seemed out of place in the well-dressed
crowd. Already this charming state had held us much longer
than we had anticipated, and the Grand Canon of the Arkansas,
together with Leadville, the last mining miracle and a really
" rough " camp, had to be seen before Southern Colorado was
exhausted. Within an hour after coming to this conclusion we
had said good-bye to more than one pleasant table friend, and
were en route for the stupendous gateway by which the Arkansas
river breaks through the range and enters on the plain.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE GRAND CANON OF THE ARKANSAS LEADVILLE.
"July y)-August z.
THE Arkansas river rises on the flanks of the continental water-
shed, and after a course of more than a thousand miles pours its
water into the Missouri. For the first hundred miles of its
existence this stream is a mountain torrent, fed by the snows of
the range, from whose foot-hills it issues to the plain through
a narrow gorge, having precipitous sides nearly three thousand
feet in height. This is the " Grand Canon " of the Arkansas, to
reach which from Manitou the traveller skirts the mountains,
following the southward course of the " Fontaine qui bouille " to
its junction with the Arkansas at Pueblo, and then turns due west
along the valley of the latter river to Canon City. Before Pueblo
is reached the drift which covers the plain everywhere to the
northward begins to thin out and finally disappears, revealing the
L 2
148 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
underlying cretaceous rocks, which are here composed of a white,
friable limestone. At a distance of a few miles from the range
these beds lie horizontally, but on the flanks of the hills they have
been tilted upwards by the granite upheaval like the rocks of
mesozoic age at Manitou. Streams traversing the level beds of
the plain give rise to peculiar valleys, whose flanks are formed by
flat-topped cliffs called "mesas," to which the horizontal lines
of stratification lend the appearance of masonry. The mesas are
deeply buried in the rubbish which falls from their sides, and look
exactly like railway cuttings capped with dwarf walls. The valley
of the Arkansas is bounded on both sides by these natural walls
whose remoteness from the present river-banks shows how widely
the stream has wandered since it first began to flow. But stranger
appearances are presented by the vertical beds of the tilted series
as the train approaches the range. The edges of the soft strata
have been worn down to the level of the plain, while the hard beds
stand up exactly like artificial walls. These walls again are not
continuous, but have been breached here and there by streams,
and the approach to Canon City has consequently all the appear-
ance of having been once defended by military works which are
now in partial ruin.
Canon City lies on the plain but is very near the hills, and
viewed from one of the neighbouring hogbacks has a strangely
Oriental aspect. A group of white, flat-roofed houses occupies a
small space in the midst of a yellow desert, sparsely covered with
tall branching cacti. A green streak, representing the cotton-
wood trees which line the river Arkansas, winds across the plain
and through the town, being finally lost in the distance. Bare,
serrated peaks, rising from the shoulders of mountains, themselves
deeply sunk in the sea-like plain, carry the eye to a far-distant
horizon. The air is full of a yellow dust haze which seems to add
to the glare of what might well be a Syrian sun. It is the East
itself reproduced in the deserts of the West. In the early days of
gulch mining Canon City flourished wonderfully. Standing in the
gateway of the hills, it formed a base of operations for the diggers
GRAND CANON OF THE ARKANSAS LEADVILLE. 149
who were working in every mountain valley of the Arkansas river,
and was the point where the rush from the plains concentrated.
It became quite suddenly a town of six thousand inhabitants ;
but the gravels were soon washed out, the Ute Indians " made
trouble," and Canon City, like so many other western mining
centres, burst like a bubble. Coal and oil however have brought
back men whom the failing gulches could not keep ; the river has
been tapped, land irrigated, farm produce and fruit raised ; a brisk
trade with Leadville, the new mining camp on the headwaters of
the Arkansas, established, and a fair amount of prosperity still
attends the little town which now numbers about two thousand
souls.
Five miles west of Canon City the Arkansas issues from the
hills, and the last six miles of its course among them is justly
called the " Grand Canon." Throughout the whole of this dis-
tance the river flows between precipitous rocky walls which tower
in some places as much as three thousand feet above its bed. One
part of this extraordinary channel, called the " Royal Gorge," has
absolutely vertical sides two thousand feet high and not much
more than fifty feet apart. From above the traveller can look
directly down upon the river foaming through the narrow chink ;
while below he could jump, if he dared, across the deep but
narrow stream. Although so trench-like at first, the canon widens
after a few miles into a comparatively open valley, but even its
straitest and deepest portions give evidence of having been exca-
vated by the action of water.
Originally the work of streams, all the canons of the Rocky
Mountains have been partially shaped by the ice which filled them
during the glacial period. That they were so filled is amply
proved, as at Idaho, by the lateral moraines still lying on the
flanks of their upper valleys, and by the huge travelled blocks
which cumber their beds ; and, this being so, it is not a little sur-
prising at first to find so few of the ordinary marks of glaciation in
these rocky gorges. But the friable granites, universally present
; n the Coloradan hills, weather so rapidly that grooves and striae
ISO AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
must soon have disappeared, and only a hard bed here and there
now retains the scratched and polished surfaces which undoubtedly
characterised every valley in the Rocky Mountains at the close of
the great ice age. Glaciated rocks occur at intervals throughout
the Grand Cation, sometimes so smoothly polished that they
reflect the sun's rays like a mirror ; and everywhere the hog-
backed outlines of ice-worn surfaces appear, bespeaking the
passage of a glacier as plainly as if grooves and striae were
present.
Walking leisurely through six miles of this astounding scenery,
astonishment grows with every step at the stupendous character
of the work which has been accomplished by means apparently so
feeble. The tool and the finished job stand side by side, only the
chips have been swept away ; but looking from one to the other
of these, it seems impossible to believe that a thin thread of running
water has ploughed out this tremendous trench. The mountainous
portion of the Arkansas Valley is however very remarkable. Its
western flank is formed by the continental watershed, and its
eastern flank by a parallel range or spur, equalling the great ridge
itself in elevation and distant from it about twenty miles. At the
junction of these two great chains of hills stands Mount Lincoln,
fourteen thousand three hundred feet high, upon whose sides the
Arkansas river rises, and the vast depression in question, forming
the mountain bed of the stream, is more than a hundred miles from
source to mouth. That mouth was once dammed by a cross
range of hills which retained, as with an embankment three
thousand feet higher than the plain, all the water above it, and,
where that water found an overflow, the work was begun which
did not end until the cross range was cut through from flank to
flank, and the Grand Canon completed.
Near the head-waters of the Arkansas and standing almost upon
the Continental Divide, at an elevation of more than ten thousand
feet above the sea, is the city of Leadville, the greatest mining
marvel in America. Four years ago its site was a bare mountain
side, but to-day its population is variously estimated at from
GRAND CANON OF THE ARKANSAS LEADV1LLE. 151
fifteen to thirty thousand souls. At the time of which I write the
Arkansas Valley Railroad had reached within a few miles of the
town, and so rapidly was the line advancing that though I staged
three miles from its terminus to Leadville on a Saturday night
I left the city in the cars on the following Monday. Of the rail-
way journey from Canon City to Leadville it is difficult to speak
without appearing to exaggerate its beauties. Leaving the wall-
like scenery of the canon, we entered upon an open valley, whence,
rosy and golden long after we were in shadow, the peaks of the
range came successively into view as we swept rapidly past their
feet, while later, when the moon had risen, their cold white cones
glittered in the silver light. It was a journey never to be for-
gotten. Contrary to what would be supposed until the character
of canons and their higher valleys is understood, mountain rail-
roading is much easier at its highest than at its lowest levels. In
the canon proper the track must be blasted out of wall-like rocks,
while at higher elevations open valleys and gentle grades make
the work almost as easy as on the prairies, and certainly easier
than over ordinary hilly country.
California, Stray Horse, Evans, and Iowa Gulches all famous
in the early mining history of Colorado are situated near the
head-waters of the Arkansas. The first was prospected in 1860,
and, the gravels proving very rich in gold, a rush followed, which,
in the course of a short time, crowded all the gulches in question
with gold-diggers. The tiny affluents of the river, feeble because
so near their sources, hardly furnished water enough for the sluices,
and, extensive methodic workings being thus prevented, the surface
washings were soon exhausted, so that six years after the rush
these gulches were almost deserted. In 1874 however water was
brought from the Arkansas itself, a distance of twelve miles, by
two miners, for the purpose of systematically working their claims
in California Gulch. Operators in this valley had always been
troubled by the presence of very heavy sand in the sluices, which
filled the riffles without yielding gold ; but it never occurred to
anybody to have this unwelcome deposit assayed until 1876, when
152 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
one of the men in question, named Ward, proved it to be carbo-
nate of lead carrying a great deal of silver. Thus for sixteen
years had the gold-diggers of California Gulch, like the miners of
Georgetown and Central, failed to recognize silver in the rubbish
which they abused for the trouble it gave them in the sluices.
Finally, in the ridges which separate the gulches in question, and
at no great depth from the surface, the lead carbonates themselves
were found in situ, not occuring in fissures as mineral veins gene-
rally do, but disposed in thick horizontal, or rather undulating,
layers of considerable extent.
The value of this find was not at once apparent, and by
January, 1878, there were not more than three hundred men
working in the " Sand-Mines," as their claims were contemptuously
nicknamed by the fissure-vein miners. In that month however a
meeting was called to organize a town, and was attended by
eighteen men who, after considerable discussion, selected the
name of Leadville, and a fortnight afterwards, a mayor and
recorder having been elected, the infant city came to the birth on
January 26, 1878. Six months later two prospectors, named
Rische and Hook, being at the moment completely hard up, asked
the new mayor, who sold groceries in the camp, to supply them
with the necessaries of life while opening a new claim, upon con-
dition of his sharing with them anything they might find. The
mayor's name was Tabor, and a short time after breaking ground
Rische and Hook struck the mine now known throughout the
world as the "Little Pittsburg." Within two months they had
sold out their joint interests for half a million dollars, while
Mr. Tabor stuck to the mine, became a millionaire and is now
the Governor of Colorado State. All the fat was in the fire ;
other lodes were found, and, though the new town was a hundred
and twenty miles from any railroad and without a stage line, the
latter was at once established, the former was commenced, and
the daily arrivals were soon counted by hundreds. In the
twinkling of an eye Leadville has become a city. Two railways
have reached it, spite of its remote and elevated position ; sub-
GRAND CANON OF THE ARKANSAS LEADVILLE. 153
stantial houses have arisen ; banks, hotels, even a great opera-
house, built by Mr. Tabor, have been opened ; churches have
been erected, waterworks and fire stations organized, and news-
papers started ; and this at an elevation of two thousand feet
above the Alpine snow-line, and where all supplies must be drawn
from the plains, a hundred and twenty miles away.
The Leadville carbonates occur in so abnormal a manner that
it is doubtful whether they will prove permanently valuable. It is
thought that they merely occupy pockets, and the recent failure
of one mine after another seems to favour this view. In the mean
time the Leadville find is the most astounding incident which has
yet occurred in the history of mining for the precious metals,
as the rush which followed it surpassed all that had previously
taken place.
The social aspects of Leadville are as extraordinary as its
situation and history. It is a "hard" mining camp, but it is
not lawless. All the restless elements of western life are present,
curiously blended with eastern method and perseverance. The
crowd which throngs the streets is like no other crowd in the
world, it is so rough yet so very much in earnest. Only a few
women are visible, and the men might be taken for ruffians but
for their conspicuous look of self-reliance and self-control. The
first of these qualities, the child of self-help, is almost universal
among the pioneer population of the west ; while the last comes
perhaps of every man knowing that the revolver in his pocket
shoots no straighter and is reached no quicker than that of his
neighbour. Take a ruffian then with a character modified by
respect for the weapon of another, and dignified by self-confidence ;
dress him in a wide-brimmed felt hat, a blue flannel shirt, brown
canvas " pants " tucked into high-heeled Wellington boots which
have seen neither blacking nor brushes since their birth ; put a
broad leather belt round his waist ; give him long and dusty hair ;
fill his mouth with tobacco juice and extravagant profanity ; and
you have a picture of the men who crowd the streets and saloons
of Leadville from morning till night, or rather from morning till
154 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
morning, for night, as a season of rest, is almost unknown in this
wicked town, where there are perhaps six or seven thousand men
actually engaged in mining and prospecting, and an equal, if not
larger, number of gamblers, rowdies, gaming-house and saloon
keepers, thieves, and prostitutes assembled to prey upon them.
The American miner is a gamester pur sang. Keno, faro, and
roulette are his favourite games and these are openly played in
public gambling-houses on the main street. All three are games
of pure chance, and seemingly very poor amusement ; yet the
rooms are nightly crowded with the characters already described,
who play in perfect silence (barring a " difficulty ") well into the
morning hours. In the side streets are " dance-houses," where
girls in ballet costume perform within a ring, outside of which a
mob of miners looks on. Sometimes the women " rope in " a few
male dancers from among the spectators and then the fun grows
fast and furious. Elsewhere, standing at the open doorways of a
whole street, women, sometimes in stage costumes and painted up
to the eyes, solicit passers-by ; while the gaping front doors and
brilliant lighting of other houses bespeak the homes of a higher
grade of the prostitute's profession. Music halls, where fast songs
are sung, abound, and there are several theatres giving variety
entertainments, chiefly of an indecent character. At the Tabor
Opera-House highly coloured melodrama sometimes finds a home
for a few weeks, but this sort of thing must be mixed with a good
deal of firearms in order to attract. At all these places the
audience is alike a crowd of slouch-hatted, independent men,
full of strange oaths, and having a freedom of manner which is
very striking to a stranger. Every man drinks whisky, smokes
a cigar (never a pipe) and spits as freely as he swears. Drunken-
ness, though by no means absent, is not conspicuous, and I saw
no quarrelling. The various amusements go on till three o'clock
in the morning, and the traveller arriving, as I did, at two
o'clock a.m., finds the town brightly lighted and as much alive
as at noonday. The stores are open and newspapers are pub-
lished on Sundays, when, however, a number of well-dressed
GRAND CANON OF THE ARKANSAS LEADVILLE. 155
people, sprung one knows not whence, attend the various places
of worship. I went alone into many of the saloons, gaming and
dance houses, and found them orderly ; but lest I should take
away too good an impression, there was a "man for breakfast"
on the morning after my arrival, making two such repasts served
up within a week.
The city itself lies in an open, park-like valley, once heavily
timbered but now entirely bare of trees, which have been felled
for house-building and smelting purposes. It is circled with
snowy-peaks, and the air is keen, although the sun is hot, while it
freezes at night even in midsummer. There is but one street of
substantial houses, all the rest consist of rough log huts, and the
stumps of the primeval forest still stand in the roadways. To
drive a buggy through such a chevaux de frise seemed impossible,
nevertheless I found myself in the trap of a new friend, threading
Leadville streets at a brisk trot, within a few hours of my arrival.
The mines lie to the north-east of the town, among the ridges of
which I have already spoken. The " Little Pittsburg " and the
" Chrysolite " are the most famous lodes, but there is so much
talk about exhaustion that strangers are rigidly excluded from the
workings, possibly lest they might be spies sent out to ascertain
whether the land be naked or no. A characteristic sight occurs
near the town, where a wide space of ground, several acres in
extent, is entirely covered by empty meat-tins. The mining
camps of the west depend on canned provisions, but, in spite
of a now intimate personal acquaintance with this useful form
of food, the stretch of tin-drift, glittering like a great mirror in the
sun, and diversified with blackened tree-stumps, was a surprising
spectacle.
Georgetown, Central, and Idaho, are quiet, humdrum old places
in comparison with Leadville, which reproduces the old Califor-
nian days of '49, though shorn of their wickedest features ; and it
is the only place in the world at the present moment where that
most strange and characteristic sight, a rough American mining
camp, can be seen. Leadville is booming at the time this is
156 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
written, but already the geologist thinks he sees the handwriting
on the wall ; and it may be that, after the pockets of the moun-
tains are once emptied of their carbonates, the city will wither as
it rose, in a night ; and the tourist of a few years hence, following
the Arkansas to its mountain sources, may find the " roaring
camp :> of to-day absolutely deserted, and slowly strewing the
lonely shoulders of Mount Lincoln with its ruins.
The railway was completed to Leadville during my stay, and I
steamed out on the first train that ever left the mountain city,
returning direct to Denver by the Denver and South Park Rail-
road a line which, leaving the Arkansas Valley at Buena Vista,
climbs a low pass in its left flank and, crossing South Park, falls
into and follows the narrow and tortuous canon of the South
Platte river, running thence across the plain to the Coloradan
capital. Like all mountain railroad trips, this journey had its
own peculiar attractions. South Park is another Estes Park in its
structure, being evidently the bed of an old lake once imprisoned
among the spurs of the range but now drained by the Platte
river. Its wide levels are, however, tame and uninteresting, and
I was glad when we left them to clamber over Kenosha Summit,
and drop into the canon of the South Platte. Kenosha Summit
is ten thousand one hundred feet above sea-level, and the highest
ridge yet scaled by the railway in North America. The descent
winds down by a series of zigzags, and from the car one sees
below the road to be travelled, while above is the one already
traversed ; and far, far down, the river valley, into which it seems
as if the train might fall at any moment. It is a magnificent ride,
but exciting, on account of the many mishaps that have occurred
on the road ; the curves are very sharp, and it is no uncommon
occurrence for the engine to leave the rails. But we reached the
bottom safely and then twisted for many miles through the narrow
canon, shut in by high walls of granite and gneiss, and accom-
panied by the brawling Platte ; till, reaching the plain at sunset,
and unwillingly breathing once more its hot and yellow air, we
sped over the desert flats to Denver.
SALT LAKE CITY. 157
CHAPTER XX.
SALT LAKE CITY.
August 3-9.
THIRTY-SIX hours spent in a Pullman car carry the traveller from
Denver to Salt Lake City. The Union Pacific line is rejoined at
Cheyenne, soon after leaving which town the train crosses the
watershed of the continent, eight thousand feet above sea level
and about two thousand feet higher than Cheyenne. This is no
ridge, but a wide plateau, reached by gentle grades, and, but for
a painted board on which the railway company have thoughtfully
inscribed the words " Summit of the Rocky Mountains," there is
nothing to indicate that the Continental Divide has been reached.
The rocks are composed of the same friable granite as in Colo-
rado, and fantastic weathered shapes abound. Snow-sheds are
built in the depressions to protect the line from drifts, but the
snow-fall is so small that the winds clear the hills, and cattle
range in search of open ground, or drift before the severer storms,
during the whole winter. After crossing the summit the railroad
descends gently into the " Laramie Plains," which are covered
with short nutritive grasses and tenanted by innumerable herds of
cattle. If Wyoming is, as our friend the ranchman declared,
" God's own footstool for cattle," then the Laramie Plains are its
cushion. The eastern and western flanks of the Rocky Mountains
are strongly contrasted in regard to vegetation, the former being
brown and bare while the latter are green and fruitful. Game, of
which we saw nothing in Colorado, was plentiful on these plains,
where, from the train itself, we saw many antelopes and " grouse."
By-and-by the granite gives way to mesozoic rocks, sometimes
Jurassic, sometimes cretaceous, and these are succeeded by level
beds of eocene age, which, being soft and horizontally bedded,
weather into the strangest castellated shapes. To these, as to the
158 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
mesas, the stratification gives the appearance of masonry, while
the erosion, as in the case of Monument Park near Manitou, is
almost entirely due to the action of the wind, which scours the
country in tremendous gusts, sweeping away the loose soil, or
flinging it, like a sand-blast, against the crumbling cliffs.
Echo Canon is a valley cut through these soft beds, and its
sides are carved from end to end with fantastic forms, sometimes
monumental, sometimes architectural, the whole having a singu-
larly artificial appearance, in consequence of the level bedding.
Echo Canon leads to Weber Canon, where a series of beds
ranging from the top of the Jurassic to the bottom of the coal
measures, is exposed, rising more or less vertically from beneath
the flat tertiaries, and reposing on the flanks of the Wahsatch
range. The train runs for many miles through the picturesque
and varied scenery to which this uplift gives rise, and presently
issues from the canon into an open country of level meadows,
once evidently an old lake-bed, across which, in company with the
Weber river, it approaches a magnificent mountain wall standing
square across the path and seeming to bar the way of both road
and stream. This is the Wahsatch range, whose snow-capped
and serrated profile stretches away north and south until its out-
line is lost in the hazy distance on either hand. On its farther
side is Salt Lake, into which we know the Weber falls, but we
look in vain for indications of the spot where the stream breaks
through the apparently continuous rampart before us. Finally we
are close upon the " Devil's Gate " before we see it, and acknow-
ledge that the name has been appropriately given to the narrow
portals of shattered gneiss, through which the river has forced a
passage. This mountain gateway opens on a plain which is at
once recognized as the bed of a vanished inland sea, of which
indeed Salt Lake is but the bitter and dwindling dregs. The
western flanks of the Wahsatch range are terraced to a height of
nine hundred feet above the plain, each terrace marking a pause
in the gradual subsidence of the water. The lake-bed itself looks
as if it had been drained yesterday, no vegetation in this arid
SALT LAKE CITY. 159
climate having yet covered its deposits of loess. The line runs
across its levels for fourteen miles, to Ogden, where the Union
Pacific Railroad ends and the Central Pacific begins, and where
also is the junction for Salt Lake City, which lies about forty miles
south of the transcontinental route.
The City of the Saints is like no other in America. Seen from
a distant standpoint in the hills, it wears the same quasi-Oriental
aspect as Canon City, but in all other respects it is sui generis.
It stands at the feet of the mountains, on the edge of an ap-
parently boundless plain, with Salt Lake shining in the sun twelve
miles away. The plain is cultivated near the hills; but only a
few miles beyond the city, it becomes a desert, where nothing
grows except wild sage and great sunflowers. Detached white
houses, each standing in a garden of its own, gleam from among
thick foilage which is furrowed here and there by rectangular lines
of yellow dust, marking the courses of travelled streets. The oval
dome of the great tabernacle, and the rising mass of the new
temple, dominate the town, which is overarched by a sky of the
tenderest blue and enveloped in an atmosphere of indescribable
purity. On a near approach the Saints' houses are found to be
surrounded with orchards and trees, which almost entirely hide
them from view. They are built for the most part of " adobe,"
or unburned bricks ; and architectural taste is conspicuously
absent even in the most ambitious residences. The same may
be said of the tabernacle, which is a hideous oval building,
crowned with a kind of shingle dish-cover ; while the new temple,
built of a beautiful local granite, is hardly worthy of a carpenter in
design. In fact it may be taken for granted that cultured taste,
whether in architecture or decoration, does not exist among the
Mormons. The wide streets are bordered with " shade trees " of
cotton-wood, and in every gutter a swift little stream of mountain
water bustles gaily along. Only the shops thrust themselves on
the notice of passers-by, and these are numerous, well-stocked,
clean, and, wonder of wonders in America, cheap. No American
towns, except Philadelphia and Washington, can compare with
160 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
Salt Lake City for cleanliness ; its roads are excellent, and there
is evidently no slackness in the performance of their municipal
duties by the saints. Perched on the hill-side, high above the
town, is Fort Douglas, a small stronghold built by the United
States Government after the Indians had been driven out from
Bear Creek in 1873, ostensibly to guard against their further
incursions, but really to overawe the Mormon capital. When the
fort was first located, Young sent word to the lieutenant that he
forbade him the flanks of the Wahsatch, and got a curt reply from
that officer, whereupon the prophet followed his message with a
threat. The lieutenant's second answer consisted of three shells,
which, entering the roof of the tabernacle, finally closed an argu-
ment that has not since been reopened.
Joe Smith, the founder of Mormonism, was born in Vermont in
1805, and received his first "revelation" at the age of eighteen.
Four years later he became, according to his own account,
miraculously possessed of the Book of Mormon, a collection of
metal plates, engraved in "Egyptian" character, which the
seer translated by the supernatural aid of the " Urim and
Thummim." It need hardly be said that this book is a farrago of
nonsense, but it formed a basis for the organization of a Church
of the " Latter-Day Saints" which was first established in 1830 at
the town of Fayette in the state of New York. Affiliated Churches
soon arose in other states, and a considerable Mormon settlement
was formed in Missouri, which was however attacked by a mob
and destroyed in the same year. The fugitives made a second
home at Clay, in the same state, whence they were again violently
driven in 1836 by a mob, and the same thing was repeated in
another county two years later. At length, in 1839, the exiles fled
to the then remote state of Illinois, where they found a friendly
home, took up land, built their city of Nauvoo, and enjoyed
religious freedom for a time. In 1844 however they were again
threatened by a mob and the prophet Smith was imprisoned, but
before he was brought to trial, a band of men, with blackened
faces, surrounded the gaol, and, overcoming the State authority,
SALT LAKE CITY. 161
shot Smith and his brother Hyram dead, and wounded Taylor, the
present Mormon president, who was confined with them. Pre-
viously to this, Smith had been brought before judicial tribunals
nearly fifty times, but had always been acquitted, and, from first to
last, he and his community suffered nothing at the hands of the
law, but everything from violence. The assassins were brought to
trial but were acquitted, and the Mormon persecution went on
until, in the fall of 1845, a mob, which the Sheriff of Hancock
County vainly tried to control, commenced house-burning at
Nauvoo. Shortly after this the Mormons agreed to quit the state,
and asked to be left unmolested while they made their preparations
for departure. The exodus began in February 1846, when more
than a thousand families crossed the Mississippi Valley on the ice,
hoping by their timely flight to allay the excitement against those
who were not able to leave in the winter. Brigham Young, who
became president on the death of Joe Smith, directed the opera-
tions of the emigrants, and having established a temporary town
in Nebraska and a great waggon encampment on the Missouri,
he, with a hundred and forty pioneers, started west in the spring
of 1847, seeking a permanent settlement. By midsummer, the
pioneer party, " led by the inspiration of the Almighty," camped
in the great Salt Lake Valley, but the main body of Mormons did
not arrive until the fall of 1848, and winter overtook them still at
the foot of the Wahsatch range. Young's original intention un-
doubtedly was to reach California and establish the saints in
Mexican territory, but during the halt at Salt Lake the Mexican
war had ended in favour of the Union; California, as well as
Utah, had been ceded to the Americans, and further advance
became useless. In the spring of 1849 therefore a provisional
government was organized under the name of the " State of
Deseret," and the foundations of Mormon power in the west
established. In the following year Utah became a " territory " by
Act of Congress, and such it still remains, although the population
has long been large enough to justify its conversion into a state.
This step the United States Government, in spite of Mormon
M
1 62 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
pressure, have hitherto refused to take, wisely preferring to retain the
power of appointing the governor, land agent, and judges, instead
of surrendering all control into the hands of a purely Mormon
state legislation. There is no question that the same policy will
continue to keep the saints in check, and safeguard the growing
Gentile interests of Utah until either Mormonism itself dies of
inanition, or is dealt with by American law. Such is an outline
of the history of the Latter-Day Saints from their establishment
by Smith to the foundation of Salt Lake City, which, commenced
in the year following the arrival in Salt Lake Valley, has grown to
a town of twenty thousand inhabitants, nine-tenths of whom are
Mormons, and become the capital of a territory having a popula-
tion of a hundred and forty-three thousand, of whom no more
than twenty thousand are Gentiles.
Before regarding either the theocratic government or religious
character of the Mormon community, it will be useful to examine
what it has accomplished from the point of view of material pro-
gress, and learn something of what these men are from what they
have done. It is the boast of Mormon leaders that they have
made the " wilderness blossom as the rose," replacing sterility with
fertility in a quite exceptional manner, and that the Church swells
in numbers as no other religious body has ever done. But, touch-
ing cultivation in the first instance, the new-comer from Colorado
cannot fail to be struck with the difference between the irrigation
works of this state and those of Utah. The Mormons have
watered the fringe of land lying at the very feet of the hills, using
the simplest means for this purpose, but they have undertaken no
important works such as should long ago have spread cultivation
over the still desert area stretching between the city and Salt Lake.
In Colorado, on the other hand, organized ten years later than
Utah, immense sums of money have been spent on scientific
irrigation, with the result that while less than a million acres of
land have been taken up in Utah during the last ten years, nearly
two millions have come under the plough in Colorado in the same
period. Still more striking results appear on comparing the
SALT LAKE CITY. 163
Mormon territory with Kansas and Nebraska, where, though both
these states were settled four years later than Utah, thirteen
million and nine million acres were taken up respectively between
1870 and 1880. Mormon theocracy boasts of its desert roses, as
if the saints alone could raise flowers in the wilderness, but for
every bloom which Utah has put forth, Colorado shows two,
Nebraska eight, and Kansas ten.
And if we push economic inquiries in various directions a
similar answer attends them all. Thus, while the total popula-
tion of Utah, settled in 1850, is a hundred and forty-three
thousand ; that of Colorado, settled in 1861, is a hundred and
ninety-five thousand ; of Nebraska, settled in 1854, four hundred
and fifty thousand ; and of Kansas, settled in the same year as
Nebraska, nine hundred and ninety-five thousand. Or, reducing
these figures in each case to show the annual increase of popula-
tion, while Utah grows at the rate of four thousand eight hundred
souls yearly, Colorado gains ten thousand ; Nebraska twenty-
eight thousand ; and Kansas thirty-nine thousand per annum, and
this in spite of polygamous competition. Similarly, while Utah has
made six hundred miles of railway, Colorado has built twelve
hundred, Nebraska sixteen hundred, and Kansas three thousand
miles. Or, turning from material to intellectual progress, it
appears that Utah spends nine-tenths of a dollar per annum per
head on the education of her school population, Colorado and
Kansas spend each one dollar and a tenth, and Nebraska two
dollars and a tenth for the same purposes. The traffic returns of
the Utah Central Railway, by which all exports and imports leave
or reach the New Jerusalem, are equally significant. In the year
1873, a total of one hundred and nine thousand tons of goods
were received and twenty-seven thousand tons despatched by the
line in question; while the imports fell to a hundred and one
thousand tons and the exports to twenty-three thousand tons in
1879, i n s pi te f tne yearly increasing consignments of metals
which are now being made by Gentile miners.
The day after our arrival, being Sunday, we visited the
M 2
164 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
tabernacle, a huge and hideous building, large enough to hold
several thousands of worshippers, but containing no more than
fifteen hundred on the day of our visit. We placed ourselves
where a good general view of the congregation could be obtained,
and found the Mormon faces even more commonplace in
character than we had anticipated. The American type was not
to be seen anywhere, but the people looked like, what they
indeed are, the dregs of Britain and Scandinavia. In form, the
service was similar to that of an English Nonconformist chapel,
both prayers and sermon however being extremely commonplace,
though free from any special Mormonite doctrine. A curious
feature of the ritual consisted in handing the Eucharistic elements
round to the whole congregation, exactly as if they were refresh-
ments, during the progress of the sermon.
Enough has perhaps already been written about the theocratic
government and religious aspect of the New Jerusalem, which,
together with its prophet, has been treated too much as a prodigy.
It is no doubt an extraordinary fact that Brigham Young should
have succeeded in creating and upholding in the very centre of
the American continent, a state of things which is entirely
opposed to the ideas of our race and our time, but this result has
really been reached by very simple means. It must be admitted
that Young was a man of vast ambition, a great organizer, fertile
in resource, selfish, unscrupulous and a born tyrant. But he pos-
sessed the magic of cordiality, and a magnetic presence which
controlled while it seemed to persuade, and inspired devotion
among people who were really his slaves. It must also be
remembered that, after the last exodus from Illinois, the Mormon
community was not again disturbed in its remote mountain home,
and had already consolidated into an imperium in imperio before
America had any ground for thinking that her deserts were
destined to be brought within the fold of civilization. This
immunity from external interference, while giving scope to
Young's powers and leading him to developments little dreamed
of at first, has ended in presenting the Mormon difficulty to
SALT LAKE CITY. 165
America in an aggravated shape; a disagreeable, if not, as
some think, a dangerous legacy from the unwise violence of
1844-45.
Contrary to what is usually supposed, polygamy formed no
part of the Mormon faith as preached by Joe Smith. Smith
himself had but one wife, and the same thing was true of Young
for some years after the settlement in Salt Lake. Brigham was
" no saint," as the phrase goes, but it was not until he was firmly
established as the inspired prophet, absolute sovereign, and
military chief of the Mormon community that he ventured on
promulgating the " Revelation on Celestial Marriage." It was in
1852 that Young first produced a document, bearing the above
title, whose contents he declared had been revealed to Joe Smith
a year before his death. Smith's widow and son denounced
the story as apocryphal, but such was the influence of the prophet
at this time, that the " revelation " was accepted at a meeting of
Mormon delegates, and its doctrines became the leading feature
of the Mormon faith from that time. Polygamy however was not
the bait by which proselytes were in the first instance attracted to
the New Jerusalem, nor indeed did it become so even after the
promulgation of the " Revelation on Celestial Marriage." Young's
want, like that of America at the present time, was labour, and in
order to procure this he established missions in almost every
European country, in Australia, and even in India and China.
The last were soon abandoned, but religious labour agencies were
prosecuted with the utmost energy in Britain and Scandinavia,
whence, especially from Wales and Denmark, a constant stream
of emigration flowed to the head-quarters of the saints. Only the
lowest classes were sought by the Mormon missionaries, and to
these poor toilers the gospel of "labour and faith" sounded
attractive enough when the New Jerusalem, painted in glowing
colours as a land flowing with milk and honey, was declared free
to all and within the reach of all. Such a message, backed by
material assistance, and delivered with enthusiasm by men selected
for their devotion to the prophet's person, could have but one
166 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
result, and emigrants, drawn from the lowest and consequently
most credulous classes, repaired by thousands to Salt Lake Valley.
The movement had no specially religious stimulus whatever, but
the proselytes were simply led, as in the case of other emigrants,
by the hope of improving their condition in life. They were for
the most part penniless, and of course utterly without the means
of cultivating the portions of land on which they were settled
upon their arrival in the Far West. It was Young who supplied
every want of the new-comers, whether for building houses, or
breaking up the soil, taking payment in liens on the various farms.
Thus, from the moment of his settlement, the emigrant became
the debtor, and practically the slave of the prophet, whose
powerful character, aided by unfailing bonhomie, established an
extraordinary influence, half fear half faith, over the partially
developed minds of his people, who thought of him, not as a
creditor, but as a beneficent being of supernatural powers in direct
communication with the Almighty.
As a matter of fact however Utah became a prison; for
though, by dint of constant labour, the Mormon farmer gained a
livelihood, it was rarely indeed that he succeeded in discharging
his obligations. To leave the valley, even if he wished it, was
impossible without money ; and purchasers of farms in a commu-
nity burdened with debt and deprived of any surplusage by heavy
Church tithes were few indeed. Young riveted these chains in
many ways. The administration of justice, ostensibly a function
of the Church, was practically in his hands and, like all spiritual
tyrants, he wielded a secret system of espionage which kept him
informed of everything passing even in the obscurest households.
He disposed absolutely of a considerable military force and of the
devoted services of a mysterious body called the "Avenging
Angels," who secretly executed his decrees. Discountenancing
the use of money, he made it a matter of religion to conduct all
commercial transactions by barter. He prohibited mining in the
neighbouring mountains, declaring that the tilling of the soil was
the only work approved of by God. He even tried to introduce a
SALT LAKE CITY. 167
Mormon language, in which if he had succeeded, the children of
the original settlers would have lost the power of reading anything
but Mormon literature. No schools, properly so called, were esta-
blished, but only " ward-meeting houses," where the Book of
Mormon formed the whole educational curriculum. While however
the prophet aimed at producing mental stagnation among his
people, he took care that they were both occupied and amused.
"Labour and faith" was the creed he unceasingly preached,
but he made leisure agreeable by amusements and the drama. The
theatre played a role only inferior to the tabernacle in New Jeru-
salem, where they worked, believed, and laughed, but did not think.
Given then, on the one hand, an isolated, credulous, and
ignorant community, bound almost equally in the chains of super-
stition and poverty, and on the other, an able, suave, and unscru-
pulous autocrat like Young, whose hand of iron was never un-
gloved with velvet except openly to strike the foes of the common-
wealth, or secretly to smite where he feared private danger, there
is little to excite surprise in the general phenomena of Mor-
monism. With regard to its special feature, polygamy, Brigham
created a fanatical community in spite rather than by means of
this doctrine ; and his ascendancy would perhaps have remained
more unquestioned if he had never promulgated the " Revelation
on Celestial Marriage." For the bulk of the Mormons were after
all too poor to have more than one wife, and though the prophet
probably pleased the priesthood, who lived in comparative wealth
on the tithes, and whose co-operation was essential to his super-
stitious system, by the institution, his hold on the masses did not
depend on the doctrine of plural marriage. The commonplace
clay of which his bishops, elders, and prosperous traders were
made, was no doubt well pleased to gratify passion under the
sanction of religion, but Mormonism as a system was weakened,
not strengthened, by the introduction of polygamy. Within
twenty years after its establishment there was serious insubordina-
tion in the camp. Young girls made vows against marrying
polygamous husbands, and the children of first marriages treated
168 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
the issues of later unions as illegitimate. Force and fear entered
the community, creating a crisis whose gravity Young himself
appreciated, and whose end he perhaps secretly dreaded. After
his death polygamy became a less prominent feature of Mormon
faith, apart from which tenet however it would be difficult for
any man intelligibly to formulate this strange creed.
All the world asks " What will be the end of Mormonism ? "
and some say " Why does not the American Legislature interfere
to put an end to this scandal ? " But, during the time when distant
Utah was treated with the natural neglect already referred to,
a great population of ignorant, bigoted, and credulous people has
arisen, whom the Americans of to-day are much too wise to treat,
whether lawfully or unlawfully, in the spirit of persecution. The
soul of Mormonism died with Young, and its body is rotting.
Gentile miners, whom Brigham hated, and while he yet had
power forbade the territory, are raising twenty thousand dollars'
worth of bullion a day in the Wahsatch range. Gentile traders
have settled under the protecting guns of Fort Douglas, to supply
the wants of these men. Gentile newspapers are published.
Gentile schools have been opened. Money has taken the place
of barter. The rich mining men of Idaho and Montana come
here to spend their winters agreeably, crowding the hotels, spend-
ing money freely, and unconsciously distributing ideas. Railways
to the mining camps will follow, and by-and-by it will be found
that the bottom has dropped out of Mormonism, before the world,
or the Mormons themselves for that matter, are aware of it. Such
is the view of the practical average Yankee, who has a boundless,
if not noisy, faith in the gospel of selfishness, and who cannot
conceive of a superstitious creed proving stronger than dollars.
America believes that railroads, newspapers, and schools will
prove more than a match for polygamy and priestcraft, and on
this occasion will undoubtedly " let all things grow together till
the harvest " which common sense will one day reap, even in Salt
Lake Valley. But for the follies committed in Illinois in 1844 and
1845, a crowd of inconsequent sectaries could never have become
LAKE TAHOE VIRGINIA CITY. 169
important, or Brigham Young have risen to be a power in the
state ; but man, especially fanatical man, is so much wiser than his
Maker that he always tries to improve on the methods of providence.
A dip in the dense brine of Salt Lake is a curious experience.
Swimming is difficult, for the heels float above the surface and
strike at the air, but one can sit in a natural posture in the water
without making any movement. A bathers' train runs daily to
the lake, giving magnificent views of the Wahsatch range on the
way, and carrying a crowd of saints, together with some sinners,
who, in all sorts of becoming and unbecoming costumes, splash
about in the limpid blue water till the locomotive shrieks a
summons to the bank.
The hill-sides around Salt Lake are scored, like the Wahsatch
range, up to great heights with many terraces, some conspicuous
and others obscure, but all suggesting that the vast inland seas
which covered Central America after the close of the glacial
period have disappeared by gradual evaporation, the arid climate
of a later period being even now engaged in draining the last drops
of sweet water from the ever brinier depths of the great Salt Lake.
CHAPTER XXL
LAKE TAHOE VIRGINIA CITY.
August 10-19.
LEAVING Salt Lake City, the railroad enters upon the great
American desert, those desolate plains so well characterised by
Bret Harte
" Alkali, rock and sage,
Sage brush, rock, and alkali, ain't it a pretty page ?
Sun in the east at morning, sun in the west at night,
And the shadow of this 'yer station, the on'y thing moves in sight."
From Ogden to the feet of the Sierra Nevada the cars traverse
a succession of old lake-beds, whose floors, now dry, are covered
with a thin crust of alkaline efflorescence derived from the
170 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
moisture of the sub-soil, which, creeping upwards by capillary
attraction and loaded with saline matter, evaporates on reaching
the surface and leaves the deposit in question. Vegetation
entirely fails in the desert basin, save for scattered bunches of
sage brush, whose roots, holding the earth together, preserve the
soil here and there from erosion by wind, and give rise to great
hummocks, sometimes five or six feet high, upon whose leeward
slopes the ragged sage branches huddle together. Life, like
vegetation, totally disappears, not even ants or prairie dogs
being able to pick up a living in such a wilderness. The surface
of the ground is parched and yellowish-brown in colour ; there
are no streams and great rivers, like the Humboldt and Truckee,
which, rising in the snows of the Eastern Sierran slopes, lose
themselves in the bitter and thirsty levels of the desert basin. The
desolate scene is margined by high mountains, whose waterless
flanks, bare of all vegetation, are terraced for hundreds of feet
above the plain, every terrace marking a pause in the process of
desiccation which has deprived Western America of its ancient
inland seas. A fine white dust, disturbed by the passage of the
train, rises in clouds and covers everything within the cars with
a thick alkaline coating, penetrating into trunks and portmanteaux,
while dust-storms, shaped like water-spouts, travel slowly across
the plain, looking like great whirling columns of smoke. Still,
the desert basin is far from uninteresting to the traveller with
an eye for geological changes. To him the dry sea-floors and
terraced hill-sides suggest a far-distant time when Western America
consisted of a group of islands, the summits of the present ranges,
which, enjoying a moist and moderate climate, lifted their steeply
sloping and densely wooded sides from a sea whose waters
mingled with those of the Arctic Ocean.
After leaving Ogden, Indians were seen at almost every depot,
and the train was never without a few red-skinned passengers
during this part of the journey. These were chiefly Shoshones
and Piutes, contrasting most unfavourably in appearance with
the clean and intelligent-looking Sioux whom we met in Chicago.
LAKE TAHOE VIRGINIA CITY. 171
The men were degraded-looking wretches, plentifully smeared as
to their faces with red and yellow ochre, and dressed for the most
part in blankets ; while the women who, with babies strapped to
their backs, squatted on the platforms begging, and eating such
food as was thrown them from the cars, were as much like
monkeys as human beings in their ways and movements.
The future of the American Indians is not difficult to divine.
Everything favours their extinction, and nothing tends to prolong
the life of this unhappy race. War, fire-water, disease, and cross-
breeding with whites, perpetually diminish their dwindling ranks.
America on the other hand is careless and unjust in her dealings
with the red man, and too often allows the " agent " charged with
his protection to become the grave-digger of his race. It is
notorious that these officials grow rich by withholding from the
natives goods which it is their duty, in execution of treaty obliga-
tions, to distribute. Annoyed at such treatment, a tribe, it may be,
makes a formal complaint, and an inquiry is ordered at Washing-
ton. Under these circumstances and determined that no investi-
gation shall take place, an agent has been known to represent the
intervention of government as an act of hostility directed against
the tribe. An Indian attack or outrage follows, whereupon troops
are ordered into the district, and a " little " war ensues, in the
course of which a number of white men are scalped, and some
white homes destroyed, but in the result the tribe is nearly exter-
minated, and the inquiry abandoned.
Twenty hours from Ogden the ascent of the Sierra Nevada
commences, the railroad in the first instance following the course
of the Truckee river, whose valley opens into smiling meadows
soon after the desert plain is left, while pines again begin to cling
to the mountain-sides. Before rising far, and when still some fifty
miles from the summit, we stopped at Reno, and diverged thence
to Carson City, lying about twenty miles south of the transconti-
nental route. From the desert levels surrounding this town we
could see the bare brown summits of the Washoe chain, and
beyond and above them the snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada
172 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
itself. On the other side of the nearer range lies Lake Tahoe,
for which we took the stage at Carson, and clambering first to the
Washoe summits, wound down thence through forests of magnifi-
cent Californian pines to the lake-shore. The axe, which has
already stripped so many hills to supply the wants of Nevada
mines, is busy among these glorious trees, and in a few years the
green frame now encircling the lake will be destroyed, and one of
the most beautiful bits of scenery in the world robbed of half its
charm. A great saw-mill has been established on Tahoe, and
timber is being transported in immense quantities by a mountain
railroad to the Washoe summit, where it is thrown, stick by stick,
into a snow-fed flume, or trough, which winds along the mountain-
sides, sometimes by gentle slopes, sometimes in steep inclines, to
Carson City. A constant stream of logs is thus delivered to the
great lumber-yards of that town, twenty miles distant, and, as the
flume follows the stage road for the greater part of that distance,
the operation is frequently in view from the top of the coach. It
is curious to observe that upon the steep inclines the logs travel
faster than the water in the flume. The falling fluid is retarded
by friction against the sides of the trough, but the baulks of timber,
travelling with the water, suffer no such retardation, and conse-
quently, where the descent is rapid, drive the lagging liquid in a
wave before them, spilling it over the edges of the trough.
A famous mountain driver, named Hank Monk, handled the
lines on the day of our making the journey ; the same man who
once gave Horace Greeley a terrific ride from the summit of the
Sierra down to Placerville, a mining town in the western foot-hills,
where the philosopher-politician was going to give an address.
The road was bad, the time short, and Greeley became not a little
anxious about his arrival, as the stage crept slowly up the moun-
tain-side, but once on the down grade, Monk drove at such a
headlong pace that his distinguished passenger thrust his head
again and again out of the window to remonstrate ; Hank's only
answer to every caution being " Keep your seat, Horace, keep
your seat ; I'm agoing to get you there on time."
LAKE TAHOE VIRGINIA CITY. 173
Lake Tahoe is perhaps the most beautiful sheet of water in the
world. It lies on the eastern flank of the snowy range, about six
thousand feet above the sea, in an oblong trough-like bed, parallel
with the axis of the mountain chain ; a very unusual position for
a valley. To say that Tahoe is embosomed in mountains would
be to use a figure better suited to the lakes of Italy than to this,
which is more correctly described as buried in the range, whose
crests rear themselves as much as three thousand feet above its
surface on either side. The lake is a sheet of transparent water,
green where shallow, and azure blue where deep, set like emerald
and turquoise in the glittering silver of snow-clad peaks. The sky
that overhangs it is cloudless, and rain in summer is unknown ;
the surrounding rocks are of grey granite which give a cold look
to the scenery, except when the last rays of sunset, or the first of
sunrise, light them up with the splendid tints of the " Alpen-glow."
The great pines which fringe the shores and clothe the mountains
give a peculiar beauty, but add little grace to the landscape, their
foliage, though dark green near at hand, looking ashy grey on dis-
tant hill-sides. Many of these glorious trees are seven or eight feet
in diameter and tower up to heights of two hundred feet and more,
while the largest of them cannot be less than a thousand years old.
We quartered at the head of the lake in a rough but comfort-
able hotel kept by a character named Clements, universally known
throughout the neighbourhood as " Yank." He came here more
than twenty years ago, when both California and Nevada were
full of Indians ; took in land, and built himself a board house,
which, now that Tahoe is visited for its beauty, has grown into
a rambling tumble-down hotel, standing on the edge of the lake
and surrounded . by gigantic pines. Among the last, the white
tents of summer " campers " are scattered, and at night, when a
score of camp fires are lighting up the red stems of the trees, it is
both picturesque and pleasant to stroll, always a welcome guest,
from one forest home to another, admiring the fickle illumination
of the trees, and chatting, here with a trout-fisher, there with a
grouse-shooter, or again with a family party spending its holiday
under canvas.
174 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
Once a week Yank gives a " ball," when people who look like
artisans, but may be mining millionaires, arrive with parties of gay
wives and gayer daughters, in wonderful buggies, drawn by still
more wonderful four-horse teams. As evening approaches, neigh-
bouring ranchmen; folks from the saw-mill; others from Tahoe
City a town on the lake, of at least a dozen houses and Yank's
male helps appear, "fixed" for the occasion. The dignified
young person who waits at table in a wide hat and Dolly Varden
dress gets into her war-paint, while guests like ourselves rummage
their portmanteaux for something more becoming than tweed
suits ; and the band, arriving in excellent time, is importuned
to take drinks. The ball-room is built expressly for dancing,
having a spring floor which plies in the centre, while a fixed margin,
three or four feet wide, is left for the chaperones, if such things are
in the West, where they may sit " solid " while the gay crowd is
gently heaving like ships on a quiet sea. Etiquette, as at the
Denver " social hop," is strictly observed, and behaviour is as
punctilious as in a London drawing-room ; while for real enjoy-
ment I would back these light-hearted pleasure-loving westerners
against even the French themselves.
We take our meals at Yank's in a bare boarded room, and
sleep on bare boards cunningly disguised with blankets; the
kitchen and Chinese cook are conspicuous parts of the establish-
ment, and we see our dinner daily cut from a tough buck hanging
on a pine branch outside. The ranch-helps and grooms, lounge
independently, and spit casually about the piazza. The campers,
in shirt-sleeves and high boots, drop in now and then for drinks
and friendly conversation, and Yank himself lays wait for us in the
bar, to tell for the fiftieth time an endless yarn beginning with
" I settled this valley two and twenty years ago," at the sound of
which words experienced men have been known to leave the most
seductive cocktail and fly. But life is a thing to be thoroughly
enjoyed at Yank's landing. A morning swim in the cold blue
water, is followed by a tramp to some neighbouring Sierran
summit, or to one of the smaller lakes with which the district
abounds. Or we shake out a sail and troll for great trout, or,
LAKE TAHOE VIRGINIA CITY. 175
boarding the pleasure steamer which calls daily at the primitive
pier, make a tour of the whole lovely lake. At night, failing a
"ball," we stroll through the lighted forest, or chat with the
campers, lying on couches of odorous pine needles, with eyes
that wander from the flashing camp fires up the dark shafts of
stately trees to the quiet stars shining out of a violet-black sky.
From Yank's we made the ascent of Mount Teliae, a peak ten
thousand two hundred feet above sea-level, lying east of the
Sierran summit and somewhat lower than the crest of the range.
This mountain is glaciated from the bottom almost to the top,
exposing in some places acres of bare white granite, polished like
a mirror, and reflecting the sun's rays dazzlingly. From its
shoulders, two lateral moraines, gently graded and symmetrical as
railway embankments, sweep down to Lake Tahoe. No model,
contrived for the purpose, could better illustrate the former
existence of a glacier on the flanks of Tallace, while, as if to
make the picture of what has been more complete, masses of snow
lying between the dark walls of the lateral moraines, simulate the
vanished ice-flow. The number of butterflies, and variety of wild
flowers met with during the ascent surprised us not a little. The
former were fluttering gaily on the very summit of the mountain,
and we gathered no less than thirty species of flowering plants, to
say nothing of ferns which were almost equally numerous, on the
way. Such snow as remained unmelted varied from a few feet to
a few yards in thickness, and was tinted here and there at the
higher elevations with bright pink patches, for which, in the
probable absence of the Arctic snow fungus from such a locality,
we could in no way account. The view from the crest, looking
west, embraced a magnificent line of the Sierran peaks, while
southward we were hemmed in by lower, but still snowy, spurs of
the main range, and eastward, the eye ranged away to the Carson
Desert. Although the sun was extremely hot we suffered no incon-
venience from his rays, so cool and dry is this mountain air, but a
natural spring of sparkling soda water, occurring by the way,
found favourable critics both on the upward and downward
journey.
1 76 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
Nevada is the greatest mining state in the Union, and Virginia
City, its capital, the greatest mining city in the world. It lies
among the foot-hills of the Sierra at an elevation of six thousand
two hundred feet, on the eastern face of Mount Davidson, whose
summit is seven thousand seven hundred feet above the sea, and
is separated from Tahoe by the Washoe range, over whose crest
we climbed on our way to the beautiful lake. The city clings so
closely to the flanks of the lower hills that the Sierran summits
lying to the westward are hidden, but eastward, the landscape is
made up of innumerable interlocked mountains, conical in out-
line, red-brown in colour, and perfectly bare of all vegetation.
These stretch as far as the eye can reach to where the snowy tops
of the Humboldt peaks stand against the sky, and the terrible
sterility of the scene is enhanced, rather than relieved, by the thin
meanderings of the Carson river, whose course is marked by a
narrow green line, looking like grass from the city, but really
consisting of cotton-woods. This is the only sign of water visible
in the arid panorama, whose bare red cones are steeped all day in
dust haze, and lighted for a few moments at sunset by an " Alpen-
glow" which dyes the countless peaks in as countless gradations
of rosy light. Through this labyrinth of interosculating hills the
railway from Carson to Virginia City is built ; not following the
course of a valley as railways usually do, but skirting the hill-sides
like a contour-line on a map, and sweeping around them in great
S-like curves, which sometimes almost return upon themselves in
joining two points, scarcely more than a gunshot asunder, but
parted by a valley perhaps a thousand feet deep. The valleys are
as dry as the hills, and though the country has evidently been
shaped by the action of running water, the streams have all com-
pletely disappeared. The mountains are of volcanic origin, and
the railway cuttings expose rocks of the most varied and brilliant
tints, sometimes dark purple, sometimes bright red in colour.
Virginia City began to be a town in July 1859, when silver was
first discovered by two Irishmen in the Ophir Mine, and the rush
from California which ensued, on the find becoming known in that
state, soon made the now world-famous Comstock Lode a busy
LAKE TAHOE VIRGINIA CITY. 177
place. A straggling village of canvas houses, tents, and brush
shanties grew up at once ; before a year had passed, adobe and
brick buildings began to make their appearance, and the bare
slopes of Mount Davidson were soon whitened with the dwellings
of a great camp. This was totally destroyed by fire in 1875, a f ter
which the place was systematically rebuilt, and is now a handsome
town numbering about twenty thousand inhabitants. Virginia
City is more orderly, cleaner, and better kept than many eastern
cities ; while the crowd which falls its well-paved streets, though
cosmopolitan to the last degree, is prosperous, well dressed, and
well behaved. It comprises keen-faced Americans, in store clothes
and stove-pipe hats ; Chinamen, in pig-tails and blue and black
blouses ; Piute and Washoe Indians, in paint and rags ; hard-
headed Cornishmen, with, here and there, a wild Mexican; but
totally unlike Leadville, Virginia City looks as finished as New
York or Philadelphia, its dwellings and the mills connected with
the silver-mining industry being remarkable for a neatness and
order, which is quite foreign to mining districts generally.
The Comstock Lode extends through the whole length of
Virginia City and for some miles on either side of it. This great
"fissure vein" varies from twenty feet to three hundred feet in
thickness, and yields quartz containing both silver and gold. The
shafts are very deep, averaging from thirteen hundred to fifteen
hundred feet, but there are some which are sunk vertically as much
as two thousand five hundred feet below the surface. The mineral
vein is the richest in the world, having yielded more than
^60, ooo.ooo worth of gold and silver since its discovery in 1859 ;
and two shafts in particular, the Consolidated Virginia, and
California, called the " Bonanza " mines, yield together nearly six
and a half millions of the precious metals annually.
The operations of the Comstock Lode are unusually interesting
on account of the extraordinary perfection of the appliances used,
both above and below ground, which, together with an admirable
organization, offer a striking contrast to the primitive machinery
and unsystematic management of mines in general. Excellent
N
1 78 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
permanent buildings contain the hoisting machinery and engines
for winding and pumping. The former consist of large drums,
provided with well-considered arrangements for indicating the
position of the cages throughout their ascent and descent, together
with scientific signalling apparatus ; the whole being of excellent
workmanship. The winding-engines are the best that can be pro-
cured ; powerful, easily controlled, and trustworthy. Ordinary
pumping-engines have proved unsatisfactory in raising water from
such great depths, and, as " a stop costs more than an engine "
in these deep mines, the ingenuity of the best American engineers
has been taxed to produce the splendid motors in use for this
purpose. The only fuel in Virginia City is wood, and, the sources
of supply being distant, this is dear, so that all these fine engines
have been built as much for economy as efficiency, and are pro-
vided with scientific valve-gear for reducing the expenditure of
steam to a minimum. The miners descend the shafts in iron
cages, each of which carries twenty-seven men. These are fitted
with safety catches, and lowered by wide iron bands, instead of
ropes or chains, and so perfect are all the arrangements for this
important service that no accidents have ever occurred. Indeed
it is impossible to admire too much the overground machinery of
the Bonanza mines, and the same remark applies underground,
where compressed-air engines, steam and air drills, blowers for
ventilating heated drifts, and every device that skill can suggest,
whether for the easier extraction of ore, or the miners' safety, is
found in operation.
The Comstock mines form a sort of underground city, whose
numerous drifts and cross-cuts intersect each other like the streets
of a town; and, like them, they are paved with planking, and
lighted by lamps. The heat in the workings is very great, avera-
ging 130 and reaching in some places i57Fahr. Labour in these
temperatures is extremely exhausting, and for new hands painful;
but the men get acclimatized after a few weeks and remain in the
mines for the four-hour shift without serious discomfort. They
drink large quantities of iced water while at work, and four or five
LAKE TA HOE VIRGINIA CITY. 179
tons of ice a day are consumed in the Consolidated Virginia Mine
alone. Large and convenient dressing-rooms, fitted with baths,
are provided for the miners, each man has a locker for his clothes,
and everything in this department is kept in "apple-pie" order.
At the time of a shift, the men congregrate from the dressing-
rooms in the hoisting-houses, and, at a given signal, file with
soldierly regularity by threes into the cage. When a cage has
received its full complement of twenty-seven, a bell rings ; the
great winding-engine begins to turn, and the cage sinks rapidly
down \ while the mouth of the shaft, which is guarded by a sub-
stantial railing, is closed at the same moment. For the visitor
who does not object to losing a few pounds' weight by perspira-
tion, a trip to the lower levels is interesting. There is not much
to be seen, but the pit is " full of noises ; " and the reports of
blasts fired in rapid succession, the bark of the air-engines, the
roar of the blowers, the rumble of the cars, the rattle of the
pumps, and heavy falls of ore in the chutes, lend an air of
mysterious activity to the dim scene.
The quartz of the Comstock Lode contains both silver and gold,
and is called " free milling ore," because it does not require to be
desulphurized by roasting, but goes at once to the stamps. These
convert it, by pounding with water, into liquid mud, which, after
being strained through fine wire gauze, runs by a long wooden
flume to the " pan-mill." This is an independent establishment,
where the precious metals are recovered by amalgamation, and
run into "unparted" ingots, or blocks containing a mixture of
silver and gold, in which condition they are sold to the mint.
The silt flowing from the stamps is ground for several hours
between iron millstones with sulphate of copper and common salt,
and when the silver sulphurets of the ore have been desulphurized
by the action of these chemicals, mercury is added to the mass,
and the grinding continued until the precious metals have
amalgamated with it. The semi-fluid mud is then transferred to a
"settler," where the amalgam, by reason of its greater weight^
sinks to the bottom of the vessel. Thence it is drawn off into
N 2
l8o AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDA Y.
canvas bags, through which the freeme;cury is squeezed by hydrau-
lic pressure, leaving a semi-solid residue, composed of one part
bullion and four parts quicksilver, in the bag. Finally, the amalgam
is heated in a retort until all the mercury has been driven off in va-
pour, and the pure bullion is then melted and run into ingots ; the
quicksilver being recovered in a metallic condition by condensation.
The pan-mill works for hire, receiving nine dollars a ton for
milling, and being bound to return seventy per cent of the
declared assay value of the ore operated upon. In practice it
usually returns eighty per cent., and, if the pan-miller takes great
care that his operatives do not steal his amalgam, he nets large
profits from the business. The larger mills grind from three
hundred to five hundred tons of ore per week, and employ from
seventy to a hundred hands, each of whom earns from three and
a half to four dollars a day. Like everything else connected with
the Comstock industries, the pan-mills are models of efficiency
and order. Their engines and equipment are of the highest class,
the shops and yards are neatness itself; even the rubbish -heaps
are tidy, while the operatives, whether in the mills or the mines,
are an orderly, respectful, and self-respecting body of men.
Virginia City does honour to the rich mine-owners who direct
and control the operations of the Comstock Lode. They have
imparted a spirit of enterprise, economy, and order, both to the
municipality and the workshop, such as I have never seen in any
other industrial town, rarely in any private establishment, and
which certainly does not exist in any other mining district in the
world. The credit of all this belongs to the " Bonanza kings "
Mr. J. W. Mackay and Mr. J. G. Fair, gentlemen who, although
they probably do not know how many millions of dollars they are
worth, are as energetic and attentive to business as if they were
struggling men. There is perhaps no industry whose methods
and appliances are generally so rude and unscientific as ihose of
mining, and it is therefore all the more a delightful surprise to the
engineer, to find how royally his craft is entertained by the silver
kings on the remote hill-sides of the Sierra Nevada.
SAN FRANCISCO. 181
CHAPTER XXII.
SAN FRANCISCO.
August 20-31.
RETURNING from Virginia City we slept for a night at Truckee, a
station on the Central Pacific Railroad, fourteen miles from the
sum nit of the Sierra Nevada. Here the night was cold and frosty,
but the sun rose hot and bright as usual. The Truckee river runs
out of Lake Tahoe. and, flowing eastward through a deep
picturesque canon, is finally lost in the sands of the desert basin.
The railway follows its course to " Summit," the ascent beginning
at VVadsworth, where, as already mentioned, the alkali plains are
exchanged for mountain slopes, diversified by streams and
scattered groups of pines. Between Truckee and summit, and for
many miles beyond the latter point, the track is covered by snow-
sheds, which are almost continuous for nearly forty miles on
one or the other side of the divide. Summit is not more than
seven thousand feet above sea-level, but so much more snow falls
in the Sierras than among the Rocky Mountains, that the railroad
not only requires protection from avalanches but is obliged to
avoid the canons, which are liable to be blocked by heavy drifts.
Hence, as in the case of the road from Carson to Virginia City,
the track descends from Summit by skirting the hill-sides, thus
giving magnificent views of densely wooded mountain slopes, and
affording occasional dizzy glimpses into gorges, two and even
three thousand feet below the road.
The Sierra Nevada is by far the grandest of the many mountain
chains which, folded in broad corrugations, form the western
margin of the continent of America. In the words of Mr.
Clement King, it is " a long and massive uplift, lying between the
arid deserts of the great basin and the Californian exuberance of
grain-field and orchard ; its eastern slope is a defiant wall,
plunging abruptly down to the plain ; the western, a long grand
182 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
sweep, well watered, and overgrown with cool stately forests ; its
crest a line of sharp snowy peaks, springing into the sky and
catching the ' Alpen glow ' long after the sun has set for the rest
of America. For four hundred miles the Sierras are a definite
ridge, broad and high and having the form of a sea-wave.
Buttresses of sombre-hued rock, jutting at intervals from a steep
wall, form the abrupt eastern slopes ; irregular forests, in scattered
growth, huddle together near the snow ; the lower declivities are
barren spurs sinking into the sterile flats of the great basin. Long
ridges of comparatively gentle outline characterize the western
side, but this sloping table is scored from summit to base by a
system of parallel, traverse canons, distant from one another often
less than twenty-five miles. They are usually two or three
thousand feet deep, falling at times in sheer smooth-fronted cliffs,
again in sweeping curves, like the hull of a ship, again in rugged
V-like gorges, or with irregular hilly flanks, opening, at last,
through gateways of low rounded foot-hills out upon the horizontal
plain of the San Joaquin or Sacramento. Every canon carries
a river, derived from constant melting of the perpetual snow,
which threads its way down the mountain a feeble type of
the vast ice streams and torrents that formerly discharged the
summit accumulation of ice and snow, while carving the canons
out of the solid rock.
" The western descent, facing a moisture-laden aerial current
from the Pacific, condenses on its higher portions a great
amount of water which is piled upon the summits in the
form of snow, and is absorbed upon the higher plateau by an
exuberant growth of forest. This prevalent wind strikes first on
the western slope of the coast range, a chain of hills of no great
elevation, skirting the very margin of the Pacific, and there
discharges a very great sum of moisture, but, being ever re-
inforced, it blows over their crests, and hurrying eastward, strikes
the Sierras at about four thousand feet above sea-level. Below
this line the foot-hills are oppressed by an habitual dryness, which
produces a rusty tone throughout the large conspicuous vegetation,
SAN FRANCISCO. 183
scorches the red soil, and during the long summer, overlays the
whole region with a cloud of dust. Dull and monotonous in
colour, the oak-clad hills of this lower zone wander out into the
great plain-like coast promontories enclosing bays of prairie.
Above this zone of red earth, with its softly modelled undulations
and dull grey groves, its chain of mining towns, and scattered
ranches and vineyards, rise the swelling middle heights of the
Sierras, a broad billowy plateau, cut by sharp, sudden canons, and
sweeping up with its dark, superb growth of coniferous forest to
the feet of the summit peaks.
" Strikingly contrasted are the two countries bordering the
Sierra on either side. Along the western base is the plain of
California, an elliptical basin four hundred and fifty miles long by
sixty-five broad ; level, fertile, well watered, half tropically
warmed ; chequered with farms of grain, ranches of cattle,
orchard, and vineyard, and houses of commonplace opulence,
towns of bustling thrift. From the Mexican frontier on the other
hand, up to Oregon, a strip of actual desert lies under the east
slope of the great chain, and stretches eastward, sometimes as far
as five hundred miles, varied by successions of bare white ground
effervescing under the hot sun with alkaline salts, plains covered
by the ashy-hued sage plant, high, barren, rocky ranges which are
folds of metamorphic rocks, and piled-up lavas of bright red or
yellow colours ; all overarched by a sky which is at one time of
hot metallic brilliancy, and, again, the tenderest of evanescent
purple or pearl." Between these two regions, lifted equally
above the bustling industry of the plains and melodramatic
mining theatre of the foot-hills on the one hand, and the stark,
glaring desert, with its chains of bare and corpse-like hills
on the other, shine the white peaks of the High Sierra, their
heads bathed in the ethereal blue, their feet swathed in dark
luxuriant woods.
At last, the summit of the Sierra Nevada crossed, we were in
California, the land of romance, whose treasures are guarded by
entrances as wonderful as the gates of a true fairyland. From
184 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
Summit to Sacramento is rather more than a hundred miles, and,
within that distance, the train descends from an elevation half that
of Mont Blanc, almost to sea-level ; passing successively through
the splendid forest "belt of the Sierran flanks, the arid foot-hill* of
the range, and finally emerging into the valley of the Sacramento
river, whose wide flats form one great grain-field. At Summit the
traveller shivers in an overcoat, but he learns how shrewdly the
sun of California bites before reaching the plain, where, however,
the transparent air and vibrating light of the great altitudes dis-
appear; the horizon becoming lead-coloured, and the sky soft,
while the atmosphere recalls the pearly air of Holland.
The valley of the Sacramento is thickly dotted with wealthy
homesteads, well built and comfortable looking, like the farm-
houses of Lincolnshire, and frequent wind-mills help to remind us
of the English fen country. Harvest is over, and wheat in bags
lies at every railroad depot, or piled in the fields where, though
not under cover, it is safe from rain which is quite unknown at
this time of the year. Here and there, lie the great " headers,"
or reaping-machines, twenty feet wide, which take off only the
ears of the grain and deliver them to the thrashing-machine while
the cutting proceeds. Elsewhere stand immense mounds of straw,
useless except as fuel for the straw-burning steam-engine, and
waiting a favourable calm to be fired and destroyed. The culti-
vation throughout the Sacramento Valley alternates between wheat
and lucern, or " alfalfa " grass, but grain is often grown for many
years in succession. The soil is a rich alluvium which carries
heavy crops sometimes amounting to fifty or sixty bushels per
acre. The farms, contrary to the rule in America, are very large,
holdings of twenty and even forty thousand acres being no un-
common thing. These great tracts of land are for the most part
held under Mexican titles, many of which have doubtless had
rather shady origins, but at the close of the Mexican war the
United States Government respected the rights of owners in
possession, and great farms remain the rule in the valley of the
Sacramento.
SAN FRANCISCO. 185
The San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers enter the harbour of
San Francisco together by the Straits of Carchenas, across which
the train is ferried, a distance of nearly three miles, on a huge
steamboat. This vessel is four hundred and fifty feet long and a
hundred and thirty feet wide, and on her deck are laid four lines
of way which can accommodate as many as fifty cars at a time.
The train is put on board so easily, and the transit made so
quietly, that a stranger, crossing at night, would hardly be aware
of anything beyond a long stoppage having taken place. Leaving
the Carchenas Straits, the railway skirts the eastern shore of San
Francisco harbour, a long, narrow, and lakelike expanse of water,
landlocked by the hills of the coast range, except at one point,
where the Golden Gate opens its narrow and rocky portals to the
Pacific. On the southern jamb of this continental doorway stands
the city of San Francisco, facing the enclosed harbour, and climb-
ing thence backward up the steep slopes of the hills which separate
the anchorage from the ocean.
Arrived at Oakland, a flourishing suburb of the western metro-
polis, situated on the eastern side of the harbour, we left the train,
which pursued its way southward to San Jose, and crossed, in a
great ferry-boat, to the city. A fleecy fog was flowing in through
the Golden Gate, the sun, no longer brilliant as at the great alti-
tudes, or glaring, as on the plains, shone with a soft delicious
lustre, the air was cool, almost cold, and the white buildings of the
city of romance stole out of the mist as we advanced. We had
good reason, as we well knew, to enjoy the temperature. Fifty
miles inland the cultivated plain was reeking in tropical heat ;
fifty miles farther back, the arid foot-hills were lying, like the
corpses of a once living land, buried in hot red dust ; and still
fifty miles farther eastward, the white teeth of the Sierra were
chattering in the snow. Meanwhile, for us, a cool exhilarating wind
was blowing, and a sun, as much silver as gold, shone from a sky
of pearl. The westerly wind blows steadily and continuously from
the Pacific, loaded with fog, with which the sun struggles daily at
San Francisco, sometimes with more, sometimes with less success.
186 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
The solar rays are thus tempered during the summer, while, in
winter, the aerial current brings the warmth of the Pacific to the
city, which then enjoys the temperature of an English May. Fires
are not needed at any time of the year, but an overcoat is pleasant
both morning and evening all the year round. Frost is almost
unknown, and the whole city turns out to look at a hailstorm.
The history of San Francisco covers a period of only thirty-five
years. A house was built where the city now stands in 1835,
around which, in the course of time, a small Californian village,
called Buena Yerba, sprang up. The Americans changed this
name to San Francisco in 1847, and the population in 1848, just
prior to the discovery of gold, was a thousand souls. About half
of this number were Americans, who, on the termination of the
Mexican war, came here either to trade or take up land in the
Sacramento Valley ; the rest were Californians. The native
houses were of unburnt bricks, and their owners were quite
Spanish in appearance, wearing high steeple-like hats, jackets of
gaudy colours and velvet breeches. Cattle-breeding was the only
industry, and the surrounding hill-sides were dotted with scattered
ranches, whose white buildings and garden patches were the only
visible signs of man in an otherwise desolate country. The farm-
houses were built of stakes, driven into the ground, and interlaced
with boughs, plastered with mud, and whitewashed. The interior
was bare and cheerless, the soil, beaten hard, formed the floor,
the furniture comprised only the simplest necessaries of life, and
a few gaudily coloured prints of saints were the only ornaments.
In 1848, Colonel Mason, the first American Governor of Califor-
nia, was stationed with a few troops at Monterey, a small town upon
the coast south of San Francisco, whence he directed the affairs
of the newly acquired and sparsely populated territory. On the
8th of May in that year a rumour came to San Francisco that
gold had been found in the American river, a tributary of the
Sacramento, about a hundred miles inland. For two days nothing
was talked of in the little place but the new gold " placer," as the
half-Spanish natives called it, and, on the icth, some ardent spirits
SAN FRANCISCO. 187
had already started, pick and pan in hand, for the diggings.
Before a week was over San Francisco was in a furor of excite-
ment. All the workmen had struck, ships in the harbours were
deserted by their crews, and storekeepers, merchants, lawyers,
mechanics, and labourers alike, were making preparations for
moving on the American river. By the end of another week the
fever reached and decimated Monterey, Colonel Mason's soldiers
deserting and joining the rush. It was at first supposed that
Mason would take possession of the mines on behalf of the
United States Government, but, if such a course was ever contem-
plated, it could not have been carried out because his force was
insufficient, and he could not keep his men together ; while, in
addition, it was soon ascertained that the gold occupied many
miles of ground, and was not confined to any particular place.
Within a fortnight of the news first arriving in San Francisco, the
town was practically emptied of its inhabitants, only a few of the
longer heads remaining to organize means for supplying the various
wants whose early growth and immense extent they had the sense
to foresee.
The actual discovery of gold was made by a Mr. Marshall who
had built a saw-mill on the American river, a few miles above its
junction with the Sacramento, for a settler named Sutter, whose
farm lay on the banks of the latter stream. In May, 1848,
Marshall had occasion to widen the tail-race of the mill, and, with
this view, he let the whole of the water in the darn through the
channel at once, thus enlarging the passage-way, and carrying off
a mass of detritus by the force of the torrent. Next morning,
while walking along the newly crumbled bank, Marshall saw some-
thing glittering among the rubbish, and, to use his own words, " I
debated within myself whether or not I would take the trouble to
bend my back and pick it up. I had decided on not doing so
when another glittering morsel caught my eye which I conde-
scended to pick up, and, to my astonishment, found it was a scale
of what appeared to be pure gold." While beginning actively to
dig and wash for the treasure thus discovered, Sutter and Marshall
1 88 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDA Y.
vainly tried to keep the find a secret, but the report soon spread,
and crowds of people flocked from San Francisco, Monterey, and
the various ranches, to the Sacramento and American rivers. A
pioneer party of Mormons entered California just as the affair
became known, and, halting at once, commenced operations which
were soon reported far to the eastward of the Sierra Nevada.
What followed on Marshall's discovery is now a matter of history.
The adventurers of both worlds rushed to the new El-Dorado,
and, whether across the then trackless deserts and mountains, or
by the gate which opens seaward on the golden land, a surging
stream of turbulent men of all nationalities overflowed California,
which had hardly yet passed into the hands of the United
States, and was still so distant and dissevered from the central
authority that executive government was powerless to control
its new subjects. If, under these circumstances, anarchy pre-
vailed for a time, and life and property were held by the pistol,
it is not to be wondered at. The marvel is, that out of such
elements as constituted society in the " early days" of California,
order ultimately, and, to a very great extent, spontaneously
arose.
In the mean time San Francisco, the natural centre of the
territory, grew rapidly. At the time of the gold discovery its
population, as we have seen, was not more than a thousand, but
two years later, when the influx from the east and Europe had
fairly commenced, it contained twenty-five thousand inhabitants.
Since that date (1850) it has doubled its numbers in every suc-
ceeding ten years, and now contains nearly three hundred thousand
souls. The city was incorporated in 1850, but municipal govern-
ment was for some years so bad, and the administration of the
criminal laws so corrupt, that vigilance committees were at length
organized who summarily executed or banished the worst offenders
without judicial formalities. Judge Lynch, however, resigned in
favour of lawful tribunals in 1860, and, at the present moment,
but for some acts of violence against the Chinese, too much in
vogue unhappily elsewhere, San Francisco might be called one of
SAN FRANCISCO. 189
the most orderly towns in America. The gold which created it has
long since been washed out of the Californian foot-hills, and the
successors of the lawless " forty-niners " are peaceful growers, of
wheat, wine, and fruit, and importers of lumber, coal, coffee, tea,
rice, and sugar, while local manufacturers already begin to supply
their general wants.
The city is beautifully situated with its back resting on the hills
of the Coast range which separate it from the Pacific, and its face
turned towards the lake-like harbour, beyond which rise the
mountains of the Contra Costa range. The streets are rect-
angularly arranged, as usual, and the houses are generally of wood,
painted white, and always furnished with bay windows, to catch
as much sun as possible. All of them have some pretensions to
architectural beauty, and there are a number of mansions, belong-
ing to wealthy men, which, though built entirely of pine, rival the
finest dwellings of London or Paris. No American city is so un-
American as San Francisco. Its population is extremely cosmo-
politan, and contains only a small proportion of native Americans.
The people speak without a nasal twang, and, new as it is, the town
is more finished and home-like than the older but cruder eastern
cities, which interest, but do not charm, the visitor from Europe.
If a delicious temperature, abundance of fruits and (lowers, dainty
cleanliness, streets quaintly diversified by Chinese houses and
dresses, shops displaying, in addition to much excellent native art,
the treasures of Japan and the far East if these things make a
city pleasant, San Francisco is a pleasant town. Then the place
is redolent of mining romance. The neighbouring foot-hills are
still dotted with camps such as those which Bret Harte has
invested with a melodramic interest. The palaces of California
Street, to which reference has already been made, belong to men
who were miners yesterday and are millionaires to-day. A
sanguine, light-hearted, and courageous people, who know how to
recukr pour mieux sauter, throng the streets. The very nurse-
maids hope to become rich by lucky investments of their savings
in mining stock. There are no old men or women, but every one
190 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY.
is in his first youth, and the " Queen's English " is spoken more
generally than usual in the States.
The Coast range, to which allusion has already been made,
forms the extreme margin of the continent, and stands with its feet
in the Pacific Ocean. It is the western, as the Sierra Nevada is
the eastern wall which flanks the valleys of the Sacramento and
San Joaquin ; but it is neither so high nor so massive as the Snowy
Range ; its loftiest peaks being under five thousand feet in elevation.
The two ranges join both towards the north and south, and com-
pletely enclose the plain of Central California, which has already
been referred to as an elliptical basin of fertile flats nearly thirty
thousand square miles in extent. The Coast ranges were elevated
at a later period than the Sierra Nevada, and have suffered great
disturbance in very recent geological times. None of their rocks
are older than the chalk, and most of them are composed of soft
tertiary deposits, which have weathered into mountain forms pos-
sessing outlines of peculiar softness and delicacy. These are made
conspicuous by the general absence of vegetation, which hides in
the canons, or sometimes crowns the crests of the hills, but leaves
the hill-sides quite bare.
While such is the character of the scenery surrounding the bay
of San Francisco, no pen, and scarcely any brush, could faithfully
represent the peculiarly beautiful atmosphere which invests the
landscapes of the Coast range with an altogether indescribable
charm. On days when there is no fog, the panorama from
Telegraph Hill, one of the highest points in the city, is mag-
nificent. The lake-like bay, lost at either end among the windings
of the hills, lies at the observer's feet, and joins the misty Pacific
by the narrow opening of the Golden Gate. This rocky portal is
a precipitous gash in the Coast range, whose bare, red, and softly
outlined hilis run north-west and south-east, meeting at either
extremity of the bay the mountains which hem in its opposite
and not distant shore. The latter constitute the Contra Costa
range, at whose feet, fronting San Francisco and lining the water's
edge, shine the white houses of Oakland, San Antonio, Alameda,
SAN FRANCISCO. 191
and San Leandro, forming an almost continuous line of towns
more than ten miles in length. Behind the Contra Costa range
rise the twin cones of Monte Diablo, bounding the eastern
outlook ; while westward, at the back of the observer, the city
itself reposes on the flanks of the Coast range which narrowly
separates it from the ocean. The scene, fine in itself, is informed
with magical beauty by the colouring, to attempt a description of
which is like trying to seize the very atmosphere whose peculiar
quality gives to each distance a new tint of amethyst or opal,
softer and sweeter than any words can paint.
Gold, as we have already seen, first led the Californian '' forty-
niners " into a country which well repays cultivation. Of its vast
wheat-fields I have already spoken, but wine and fruit are only
second to breadstuffs in commercial importance on the Pacific
slope. The vine thrives admirably in California, and, although
native Americans are too impatient of careful industries and
deferred profits to become wine-growers, the Germans are on the
way to make the valleys north of San Francisco rivals of France
md the Rhine. Excellent white and red wines are already grown
in the Napa and other districts, and the demand, which is con-
stantly increasing, is already larger than the supply. It would
become overpoweringly so if the Americans themselves drank
native clarets, hocks, and champagnes ; but it is the fashion to
prefer foreign wines to the home productions. This state of
things, based as it is on mere affectation, will only be temporary,
but in the mean time the Californian wine-grower has to seek a
European market. As, however, a great deal of his wine goes to
Hamburg, there is probably more of it drunk, under French
names, at ostensibly fastidious Eastern dinner-tables, than is gene-
rally supposed. We visited the well kept and extensive cellars of
Mr. Lachman, and found his hocks and clarets excellent, but the
ports and sherries were as luscious as liqueurs; these however
find a ready sale in Central America, though they are much too
cloying for our taste. The grape was introduced into California
by the Spanish Jesuit missionaries who, like the French in the
192 AN" ENGINEER 'S HO LID A Y.
north-west, were early labourers in this field for the conversion of
the natives. Wine made from the " mission grape " is however
thin and poor, and a vine much better suited to the soil and
climate is now generally grown. The wine trade suffers at present
from the characteristic American hurry to get rich. The growers
are not capitalists, and neither care, nor can afford, to mature
their wines before throwing them upon a greedy market. The
growth of a home demand will remedy this evil by stimulating
with high prices the practice of keeping wines, and nothing but
American consumption is wanted to give an enormous develop-
ment to this already important Californian industry.
Fruits and vegetables of all kinds grow most luxuriantly on the
Pacific slope. Peaches and apricots were selling wholesale at
twopence a pound during our visit, but the former in good yeirs
are not worth more than a halfpenny a pound. " Bartlett " pears,
similar to our jargonelles, cost three halfpence a pound, and black
Hambro' and Muscat grapes twopence a pound, melons of seven
pounds weight are sold at twenty-five shillings the hundred, and
water-melons may be had for asking.
With fruit at such prices, canning has become an important
trade, and, although confined chiefly to peaches, pears, and
apricots, employs nearly three thousand people in California.
This industry is carried on in factories, sometimes employing
several hundred hands. Women peel and halve the fruit in the
first instance, and throw the slices into tubs of water, which is
constantly being renewed. Other women pick up the slices,
rejecting all the bad ones, and pack them carefully in tins which,
when full, are hermetically closed and boiled for ten or fifteen
minutes. Leaky cans are discovered by their bubbling during
this process, and the sound ones are pierced, each with a tiny
hole in the cover, from which steam and air rush violently out
together in a small jet. The hole is closed with solder while
vapour is still issuing, and, a vacuum being thus secured, the cans,
when cool, are ready for labelling and despatch. There are ten
large fruit-preserving establishments in San Francisco which confine
SAN FRANCISCO. 193
their attention solely to canning, leaving the French in possession
of the trade in high class " glass goods," no fruit being put up in
bottles in California because there is no fine white glass made in
the western states, or indeed, thanks to the protective system,
in America.
Six miles from San Francisco is the " Cliff House," a favourite
pleasure resort of the citizens, standing on the shore of the Pacific
immediately opposite the famous " Seal Rocks." The road to it
lies over great hills of blown sand, now being reclaimed and
converted into a beautiful park, but the Pacific coast when
reached proves extremely disappointing. The sea horizon is
rarely visible on account of the fog, and mild waves of by no
means translucent water break on a desolate shore whose sandy
levels stretch tamely away on either hand into misty obscurity.
The ghosts of ships steal out at intervals through the Golden
Gate, but neither these nor the curious Seal Rocks, with their
strange population of basking and roaring sea-lions, give animation
to the " vicinity of a melancholy ocean."
Newspaper advertisements soon make a visitor aware that
spiritualism is a great cult in San Francisco, the number of clair-
voyants, mediums, and " spirit healers " who parade their super-
natural powers being legion. Many of these people have a
regular clientele, who attend their seances, especially on Sunday
evenings, just as a congregation might meet for religious service.
The handsome rooms and residences in which these reunions
take place testify to the profitable character of the spiritual
business, while the attitude of the medium towards his, or her,
visitors, proves how much consideration the profession enjoys.
We joined a noted circle one Sunday evening, and found about
thirty respectably dressed people, sitting round a large and hand-
somely furnished room, and looking very serious, not to say
devotional. The medium, who was a lady, sat at a green table,
and commenced the seance by asking each visitor to write the
names of dead friends or relations on slips of paper, which were
then folded and thrown in a heap on the table. Taking up one
o
194 AN ENGINEER 'S HOLIDA Y.
of these, apparently at random, she asked of the air, "Is this
spirit present ? " and was answered either by silence or by three
raps on the table. If by raps, the paper was opened, and the
writer requested to put any questions he pleased to the spirit who
was present. The devotees, with almost all of whom the medium
seemed on intimate terms, had usually a whole string of inquiries
written out and numbered which were propounded to the unseen
presence as Question No. i, No. 2, and so on ; the answer con-
sisting of three raps for " yes " and two for " no." Whether this
system was arranged to secure privacy for the questioner, or an
easy time for the medium, we could not determine, but it certainly
did away with any need of intelligence on the part of the oracle.
Ours was a " writing medium," whom the spirits, when exception-
ally powerful, and sufficiently well educated, can " control to
write " their replies, which are rapidly traced in inverted cha-
racters by a pencil held in the wonder-worker's fingers and
operated by the spirit. The audience, seemingly aware that it
is the practice of the unseen world to write backwards, accepted
this tour de force as a convincing proof of supernatural agency,
and asked, in simple good faith, for advice on personal or family
matters with the evident intention of acting on the hints of their
ghostly, and therefore presumably omniscient, relatives. It is
hardly necessary to say that when, towards the end of the seance,
a spirit invoked by one of our party appeared, it proved extremely
incoherent and incorrect in its statements; but it was a little
remarkable to find the medium's accustomed circle anxious to
help her out of her difficulties, and ready to lay the blame of the
spirit's fatuity at the door of our want of faith. There are hun-
dreds of these quacks driving a flourishing trade in San Francisco,
and it is not many years since a wave of spiritualism rolled over
the United States, puzzling Europe, as we were puzzled, to
reconcile the easy credulity we witnessed with the proverbial
'cuteness of the American character.
The Chinese problem, whose consideration has been purposely
deferred, presents itself to the traveller at every step of his progress
SAN FRANCISCO. 195
throughout Western America. There is a large Mongolian popu-
lation in all the western towns, where the whole of the humble,
and much of the skilled labour is performed by men of the yellow
race. They are largely employed as labourers on the Central
Pacific Railroad; they are scattered broadcast throughout the
Californian gulches, washing over again the gravels left by the
whites ; they raise fruit and vegetables with much success on
the Pacific slope; and household work is a Chinese monopoly
throughout California, where every dinner is cooked and every
shirt washed by Chinamen. The Chinese question is one of great
moment for the United States, and in view of its importance I
reserve for a separate chapter both a description of " Chinatown,"
the Mongolian quarter of San Francisco, and any discussion of
the rights of the Chinese in America.
Once more, and for the last time, we turned our faces towards
the Snowy Range upon whose western flanks we had yet to seek
the famous " Big trees," and the Yosemite Valley. This was our
last American trip, and, as the Pacific mail steamer would receive
us immediately on our return to San Francisco, to start was like
taking a farewell of the city, which it would be ungrateful to leave
without a few kind words for its people. The lawless origin of
Californian society has already been glanced at, but faithfully to
paint the pandemonium which existed on the Pacific coast for ten
years after the first advent of the gold-seekers would need a palette
full of the darkest colours. " For a few years the solemn pines
looked down on a mad carnival of godless licence, in whose
picturesque delirium human character crumbled and vanished like
dead leaves."* If the genius of Bret Harte has found some traits
of humanity among the reckless populations which thronged the
gulches of the foot-hills from 1849 to *86o, it is because, like the
miners so skilfully depicted in his stories, he knows how to sift a
few grains of pure gold from a mass of rubbish. But the inferno
of '49 has gone, and scarcely a flicker of its old flames lights the
mining camps of to-day, while California now contains a popula-
* " Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada," by Clarence King.
O 2
196 AN ENGINEER'S HO LID A V.
tion which respects law and order as much as any other state in
the Union. In estimating the people it is a mistake to link the
past too closely with the present. The lawlessness, if not the
crime, of the " early days " was the result of circumstances, but
the establishment of order was the act of the people. Meanwhile,
as Bret Harte touchingly shows, society, even at its worst, was
never without some salt, and at least one virtue, that of generous
hospitality, flourished throughout the foot-hills. In addition to
this a certain gaiety and cheerfulness characterized the camps, as
it now characterizes the whole state. The Californians are a gay,
light-hearted people, among whom the long faces and sedate
manners of New England are unknown, who love to "seize the
day " and bask in the sunshine of life. Their delicious and
stimulating climate, rather than their reckless ancestry, is the
cause of this pleasant characteristic, which, for a stranger who
himself drinks exhilaration with their air, makes the West much
pleasanter than the East. It may be that there is little intellectual
aspiration, and less desire for cultivation than for wealth ; but the
East also worships dollars, while it is less able than the West to
enjoy what dollars bring.
Although civilization, properly so called, is not more than
twenty years old on the Pacific slope, the West has already pro-
duced a number of original and imaginative writers of quite
exceptional powers. There are also artists in San Francisco, who
are painting the peaks and forests of the Sierras with extraordinary
vigour and feeling. In matters of business the Californians are
distinguished by an energy and splendid audacity which is all
their own, and if, socially, there is room for the criticisms of over-
fastidious Bostonians and New Yorkers, the foreign visitor loses
sight of such trifles, in view, not only of what these bold bright
people are, but of what they promise to be.
THE CHINESE IN AMERICACHINATOWN. 197
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE CHINESE IN AMERICA CHINATOWN.
THERE are a hundred and twenty thousand Chinamen in the
United States, of whom about twenty thousand live in San Fran-
cisco, while the remainder are widely distributed throughout
America, being thickest in California, where they form a con-
spicuous part of the population, and thinnest in the eastern states
and cities. There is a manufactory in Massachusetts which is
run entirely by Chinese labour, and the Chinese have almost a
monopoly of the laundry business of New York, but the traveller
does not see many Mongolians until the Rocky Mountains are
passed, after which they appear in increasing numbers all the way
to the Pacific. The Chinaman is usually only a humble worker,
who thankfully eats of the crumbs which fall from the rich table
of white labour; but in San Francisco there are Chinese merchants,
manufacturers, and brokers, as well as washermen, artisans, and
labourers.
The Mongolian quarter is called " Chinatown," and consists of
half a dozen blocks of houses, abutting on the best part of the
city, and exclusively occupied by Chinese warehouses, manufac-
tories, shops, and dwellings. Chinatown is a fragment of the
Celestial Empire itself, planted in the midst of an American city.
The influences which absorb Teutons and Celts alike into the
national life of the New World leave the Chinaman absolutely
untouched. Such as he is in the streets of Canton, he remains in
Chinatown, while he transforms the wooden houses of America
into excellent imitations of those he has left behind him. All this
makes a ramble through the Chinese quarter of San Francisco a
most interesting experience, and it may be undertaken alone and
at night by any visitor who has the courage to disregard the
absurdly alarming cautions which he is sure to receive as soon as
1 98 AN ENGINEER 'S HO LID A Y.
he begins to make inquiries on the subject. The city police are
in the habit of chaperoning strangers who desire to see the
Chinese quarter, and have an interest in giving the worst possible
impression of it. Fortified against a host of imaginary dangers
by an escort which cost us five dollars, and prepared for seeing all
sorts of horrors, we were led through the slums of Chinatown
without experiencing a single thrill of disgust, or finding anything
half so shocking as we should have done in similar quarters of
London or New York.
The Chinese give a national character to their streets by adding
balconies of carved wood to the houses, which they cut up into
small sections, and by hanging up handsome vertical sign-boards,
lacquered with vermilion, and carrying the name of each merchant
and shopkeeper in gilded Chinese characters. The provision
shops display an extraordinary variety of strange eatables, includ-
ing dried fish from Japan, sea-slugs, edible seaweed, split ducks,
and duck cutlets, eggs preserved in black earthy envelopes, and
tiny portions of strange green vegetables. Above the roofs of
such shops hang strings of thin mottled sausages, drying by
thousands on high wooden frames. Here is a fraction of a house,
forming a tailor's shop, behind whose tiny window a grave China-
man is at work upon blue and black calico garments. Below is a
cellar occupied by a barber, who is busy with his narrow razors
and tweezers taking every hair from the scalps, ears, and nostrils
of his patient customers. Opposite, is a restaurant, decorated
with quaintly carved wooden screens, and full of gay company,
busy with bowls, chopsticks and tiny tea and samsu cups. Next
door is a merchant's warehouse, piled with tea-chests or packages
of rice, and in charge of two or three spotless and serious clerks
who calculate with a little frame of sliding wood buttons, and
make entries in stitched books of filmy yellow paper with a
camel's-hair brush and Indian ink. Then comes a jeweller's shop
with three feet of frontage, and within, the art craftsman, whose
long, flexible fingers, each ending in an inch of nail, are cleverly
twisting gold and silver wire into filigree, or who sells a pair of
THE CHINESE IN AMERICA CHINATOWN. 199
green jade ear-rings to the passing belle Chinoise. Here is a joss-
house, or temple, from whose open door comes the heavy scent of
incense, and here a curiosity shop, crowded with carved ivory,
china dragons, curious silks, and nameless nicknacks. Along the
side walks steals a silent but considerable stream of sedate
pig-tailed Mongolians, dressed in blue blouses and black calico
pants, gathered in at the ankle upon white hose. They are for
the most part workmen ; but how quiet, intent, and methodic is
the crowd ! No white men are to be seen, and the visitor might
easily suppose himself in Canton, so entirely national is the picture
before him.
From such a street we dived in the first instance into a base-
ment forming a pawnbroker's shop, where goods, we were told,
are pledged for a song by that inveterate gambler the coolie, and
sold, in case of non-redemption, at profits of a hundred per cent.
The place was dark and dirty, but it was very orderly, and " my
uncle " looked like a quiet man of business, and was probably no
worse than some of his London brethren. Thence we were taken
to an " opium-den," a small room with two tiers of bunks running
around it, as in a ship's cabin. These were about six feet square,
carpeted with clean India matting, and furnished with a couple of
little footstools serving for pillows. In the centre of each stood
a large tray carrying two opium-pipes, a small oil lamp, a little
horn box, holding the drug, and a few wires like knitting-needles.
The pipe-bowl is of earthenware, shaped like the rose of a
watering-pot, but having only one central hole, and mounted on
a bamboo stem. Two men reclining at length, with the tray
between them, occupy each bunk, and the smoker commences
operations by dipping one of the knitting-needles into the opium-
box and taking up a small quantity of its viscid contents. He
heats and reheats this over the flame of the lamp, rolling it
cleverly between whiles on the convex surface of the pipe, until
he has fashioned it into a tiny cylinder which is finally stuck
concentrically on the hole in the bowl, and then lighted. Over
this delicate process of preparation the smoker lingers lovingly,
200 AN ENGINEER 'S If OLID A Y.
but two or three slow, voluminous puffs exhaust the opium, and
the operation of modelling a new pellet recommences. After five
or six. such doses, sleep supervenes, and the man lies for an hour
or so enjoying his dreams. Then he gets up and goes about his
business, apparently none the worse for the indulgence, and
certainly a much more respectable person than the dram-drinker.
I am credibly informed that not more than ten per cent, of the
Chinamen in San Francisco are habitual opium-smokers, but the
majority drop into the " den " now and again for a smoke just as
the whites take a drink. The name of " opium-den " seems to be
singularly misapplied. There is absolutely nothing to shock the
most sensitive person in a roomful of silent and recumbent figures
quietly enjoying the Chinese equivalent for a "whiskey straight"
without the latter's common accompaniments of rowdyism and
profanity.
From the opium-house we adjourned to a restaurant kept by a
very business-like Chinaman, named Sam-Li, who spoke English
well and was a man of considerable property. Sam-Li entertained
us with cigars and tea and showed us over his establishment with
some pride. In one large room a number of working men were
supping together in celebration of some feast-day. The guests
sat around a table where, while each convive had his own tiny
cup of scalding tea and another of samsu, the company ate with
chopsticks out of a common bowl, replenished at every course
with mysterious delicacies. Here we were pledged in samsu and
tea, the latter being delicious and the former like a sweet and
fiery sherry. We were much struck with the air of enjoyment
shown by these people, who seemed as happy as children in their
social intercourse. In a smaller room was a select supper party
of six, three of whom were girls, magnificently dressed, but
looking like children, with hair elaborately banded and faces
delicately painted bright rose and white. The women were
probably high class courtesans, but the utmost propriety reigned,
and there was the same appearance of simple enjoyment as
characterized the larger party of men. We left our smiling host
THE CHINESE IN AMERICA CHINATOWN. 201
Sam-Li to visit one of the lodging houses, where operatives and
domestic servants sleep. A dwelling had been partitioned oft
into a number of small rooms, in each of which were wall-shelves
arranged like the steerage bunks in a ship. Here the men lay,
closely packed indeed, but not more crowded than in an emigrant
vessel, while, beyond a scanty supply of air, there was nothing to
shock the most fastidious person. The Chinese do not care for
much light, whether natural or artificial, in their dwellings. Al-
though gas and petroleum are both cheap, they prefer, as still
cheaper, their own lamps, little open vessels of oil, whose smoking
wicks blacken the walls and ceilings of the houses, giving our
anti-Chinese guide occasion to remark on the dirty habits of the
people. In the matter of cleanliness, however, the Mongols are
not nearly so black as they are painted. They wash themselves
all over daily ; the cooking is done in the open air outside of the
crowded rooms, and they dispose of sewage matters in the prac-
tically cleanly, though offensive, national manner.
From the lodging-house we walked through a narrow street
entirely given up to a low class of prostitutes. Here the subdivi-
sion of houses appeared to have reached its limit, the women
inhabiting rooms which are little better than cells. Each door
opening on the street is fitted with a wire grill through which the
painted tenant stares at the passers-by. Even this quarter exhi-
bited nothing worse than what may be seen in low districts of
American and European cities, while the total absence of drunk-
enness and rowdyism, was distinctly in favour of the Mongolian.
The number of Chinese prostitutes in San Francisco, though
grossly exaggerated by the anti-coolie party, does not exceed two
hundred and fifty, a surprisingly small total among an adult male
population of nearly twenty thousand.
Every street in Chinatown has its Buddhist joss-h6use, or
temple, usually consisting of a room in a tenement house, con-
taining half a dozen shrines, with the god of peace, wealth, or
plenty in place of a Virgin or saint. Before each image burns a
" joss-stick " of incense and .a small swinging lamp. The atten-
202 AN ENGINEER "S HOLIDA Y.
dants, as in the Christian churches of Italy, make a profession
of begging, and, from the poor appearance of both priests and
temples, it seems that there is not much religious enthusiasm in
Chinatown.
We visited the theatre, of which there are two, and found a
large building, decorated externally with great lamps and quaint
Chinese devices, and crowded within by a shaven and pig-tailed
audience, grave, quiet, and orderly. The back of the stage, whose
proscenium was ornamented with strange paintings, was occupied
by the " band," consisting of two agonizing Chinese fiddles, and
several tom-toms or drums. " Music " accompanied the action
almost continuously, and a great many intolerably tedious solos
were sung, the play appearing to be some kind of musical farce,
very monotonous and seemingly very stupid, for the audience
neither laughed nor applauded. The ars celare artem is quite
disregarded in the conduct of the Chinese drama. Scene-shifting,
such as it is, was accomplished before the audience, the stage-
carpenter making his exits and entrances when and where he
pleased. Tea was brought to the musicians and actors in the
same unceremonious way, and when the place grew too full, the
crowd overflowed on to the stage, which seemed almost as much
at the service of the public as of the actors. Our presence was
hardly noticed, and, if I compare this concourse of Chinese
coolies, drawn for the most part from the humblest, not to say
lowest, ranks of society, with the audiences of the theatres in
Leadville, candour compels the confession that the Mongolian
audience shines by the contrast. The Chinese operative is no
rowdy, and as he drinks nothing stronger than tea, his behaviour
is excellent ; perhaps similar classes among whites would be as
orderly if their diet were as simple and drink as harmless as the
Chinaman's.
Apart from the white working classes with whom the Chinese
compete, and who hate them cordially, no unprejudiced person
has a word to say against the yellow race. On the contrary, the
universal testimony of American merchants, municipal officers,
THE CHINESE IN AMERICA CHINATOWN. 203
ministers of religion, and employers of labour declares that, while
their mercantile men are exceptionally able and honourable, the
masses are no less moral, while they are cleaner, more orderly and
more industrious, class for class, than the whites. Crime is less
frequent in Chinatown, disease less fatal, and the death-rate lower
than among the native population of San Francisco. The Chinese
have built railways, reclaimed land, and established a number of
manufacturing industries in California which would have been
quite impossible in their absence, while the character of American
home life has been raised, to the great satisfaction of San Fran-
ciscan housewives, by their universal employment as domestic
servants. In a word, the Chinese operative in America is distin-
guished by the possession of the very qualities whose rarity among
our own working classes we are always so pathetically deploring.
He is abstemious in regard to food, an abstainer as to drink,
industrious to the last degree, requiring no supervision when he
knows his work, docile, clean, patient, quiet, and respectful. His
honesty, so recklessly impugned, is negatively proved by the City
police reports, and positively by the uniformly favourable testimony
of those who employ Chinese servants in their houses and about
their persons. The Chinese merchants and manufacturers of San
Francisco bear the highest character among their American con-
freres. They are noted for fair dealing, prompt payments, correct
accounts, truthful statements, and aversion to litigation. The
word of a Chinese merchant is thought as good as his bond.
Many of these men are wealthy, and their charity is evidenced by
the fact that the number of poor Chinese seeking public alms is
very small indeed.
This favourable picture of the Chinese in America is no fancy
sketch. By the joint action of the two Houses of Congress a
special committee was appointed in July 1876 " to investigate
the character, extent, and effect of Chinese immigration to
America, with power to visit the Pacific coast for that purpose."
This committee sat at San Francisco, and, as might be expected
in a city the bulk of whose voting population is violently anti-
204 AN ENGINEER 'S HO LID A Y.
Chinese in feeling, the evidence received was of the most con-
tradictory character. Disregarding, however, the statements of
politicians and aspirants for public offices, who trim their sails,
no less in America than in other countries, to catch the wind of
popular favour, unprejudiced minds will receive the independent
evidence of judges, bankers, merchants, manufacturers, farmers,
clergymen, physicians, missionaries, and consuls as indisputably
favourable to the Chinese.
Such then are the immigrants whom, in defiance both of
humanity and treaty obligations, a Californian mob assaults with
impunity, and Californian law oppresses. The report of a select
committee, appointed by the state of California to inquire into
the Chinese question, states it as " a well-known fact, that there
has been a wholesale system of wrong and outrage practised upon
the Chinese population of this state which would disgrace the
most barbarous nation upon earth." This was in 1862, but
matters had not mended in 1876, when the following uncontra-
dicted statement was made by Colonel Bee, an American spokes-
man for the Chinese, before the Congressional Committee already
referred to : " Acts of brutal violence against the Chinese which
are a disgrace to civilization, have transpired in the streets of San
Francisco. No country and no government in the world has ever
permitted indignities to be cast on any race such as those which
are permitted by the government and municipality of San Francisco
and the state of California."
In view of these admissions, it is needless to describe how the
Chinese in America have been murdered, assaulted, and maltreated
with impunity; the facts are not disputed, and they cannot be
stigmatized in stronger terms than those which have already been
quoted from official sources. But the acts of rowdies and mobs
have been almost paralleled by those of the state and municipal
authorities of California, who at various times have harried the
Chinese with oppressive ordinances, some of which have since
been set aside by the superior courts as in contravention of treaty
obligations, and unconstitutional. Such were the capitation, and
THE CHINESE IN AMERICA CHINATOWN. 205
foreign miner's taxes, the tax on the export of embalmed bodies,
the tax on the handbaskets in which Chinamen carry home
washing, and the hair and queue ordinances. Of the two last-
named acts, the former made it illegal for any one to sleep in a
room containing less than five hundred cubic feet of air per man,
and the latter ordained that the hair of every person arrested for
any offence should be cut within two inches of his scalp. Under
the first of these shameful ordinances, which, though ostensibly
of general application, only touched the Chinaman, the gaols were
suddenly crowded to overflowing with unoffending men whose
only security against a loss which they considered a bitter and
lasting degradation, was the payment of a heavy fine.
The persecution of the Chinese in California is ostensibly
directed against paganism, filth, a lower civilization, the depletion
of American wealth, and the danger of Mongolian supremacy.
Three-fifths of these charges concern matters of fact, and have
already been sufficiently answered by American evidence, but the
remaining two, which are purely supposititious, have been so
dressed up with fancy and exaggeration that many people in
America believe they are serious national dangers instead of mere
bogies. In an address to the people of the United States, issued
by a committee of the Californian legislation, it has been stated
that the Chinese labourers of California have abstracted the
equivalent of a hundred and eighty million dollars from the
money wealth of the state, while they have contributed nothing
to the national wealth. This statement was bandied about the
halls of Congress, and the eastern cities, and, coming from an
official source, was widely believed, although its absurdity can
easily be demonstrated. It is the custom of the Chinese to send
a large part of their savings home, but, as the whole number of
Chinamen in California has never exceeded ninety thousand, to
credit them with having abstracted the sum in question from the
state, is to allow at least two thousand dollars for the remittance
of each individual. But it is not long since the Chinese became
numerous on the Pacific coast, and, if each labourer saved so
206 AN ENGINEER 'S HOLIDA Y.
large a sum as two thousand dollars from his wages in a few
years, it must be confessed that these people far surpass other
nations in economy and thrift, qualities which are highly esteemed
in a population. The grand total of precious metals sent to
China since the gold discoveries to the present time does not
exceed seventy millions of dollars, and it is ridiculous to assert
that ninety thousand Chinese operatives have remitted a hundred
and ten millions more than was required during this time to
balance the entire Chinese trade with the Pacific coast. With
regard to the statement that the Chinese have contributed nothing
to the state or national wealth, it has been already stated that
railroads have been made, land reclaimed, and industries estab-
lished which would have been impossible without their abundant
and cheap assistance. Americans themselves admit this, and the
Congressional Committee's report avers that " the resources of
California and the Pacific coast have been more rapidly developed
with the cheap and docile labour of the Chinese than they would
have been without, and so far as material prosperity is concerned,
it cannot be doubted that the Pacific coast has been a great
gainer." The Chinaman earns a dollar a day, the white operative
from two to three dollars a day, and as there are, at the present
moment, about seventy-five thousand Chinese in California, the
state clearly gains a sum of at least a hundred thousand dollars
per diem from the presence of the yellow race. Is this nothing
added to the state or national wealth ? But, granted that the
Chinaman sends his surplus earnings home, they are his own
property, which he may dispose of lawfully as he will. If the
Chinese are depleting America, how much more are the Irish,
who, during the last fifty years, have sent home millions upon
millions of dollars ? It has been estimated that twenty millions
of dollars have been spent in Europe by rich American tourists
during the last ten years, but no one accuses these gentlemen of
depleting the country of wealth.
The last bugbear, that of Mongolianization, is finely portrayed
in a message of Governor Irwin, delivered on the 6th of Decem-
THE CHINESE IN AMERICA CHINATOWN. 207
ber, 1877. "It is unnecessary," says his excellency, "that I
should make an argument to demonstrate the evils of Chinese
immigration. In this state, and everywhere on this coast, they
are universally conceded; nor are these evils of any ordinary
character. The presence of the Chinese in this state in large
numbers, with steady additions thereto from the exhaustless hive
of China, not only threatens an irrepressible conflict between the
American and Chinese civilizations, but has already initiated such
a contest. If the right of unlimited immigration, conceded under
the Burlinghame Treaty, is continued ; if Chinese immigrants are
guaranteed the same rights that immigrants from the most favoured
nations are, as is the case under this treaty, what is to prevent
the triumph of their civilization in its conflict with ours ? I go
further and say that this triumph is as certain as any event can be
which is yet in the future if the Chinese are to enjoy perfect and
absolute protection here." These are strange words from a high
official of a country dedicated to the proposition that all men,
irrespective of race or colour, are born free and equal. Admitting,
however, that national policy must be governed by expediency
rather than by theory, let us endeavour to see how far the fear of
being swamped by the Mongolian is a reality or a sham. If you
should ask any merchant or manufacturer in San Francisco, not
a politician or an office-seeker, whether he is afraid of Mongolian
supremacy, he would laugh in your face. He regards the Chinese
simply as labour-saving machines, and he would as soon expect
to be dominated by steam-engines or reaping-machines as by this
race. Like the Jew, who requires a country already settled for
the practice of his useful national callings, and who would perish
to-day, as of old, in a wilderness without supernatural aid ; so the
Chinaman may subserve white schemes of development but
cannot initiate them. Hence the Chinese flow, whether towards
America, Australia, or the Straits, not as a dominant race, but as
the servants of the dominant race. Chinese immigration to
America, again, has hitherto been confined to the single province
of Canton, and every emigrant has sailed from the British port of
208 AN ENGINEER 'S HOLIDA Y.
Hongkong. Their numbers have been grossly exaggerated, but
it is a well-known fact, easily verifiable by the customs returns of
arrivals and departures at the port of San Francisco, that the
Chinese have been coming forward for some years in smaller
numbers than they leave. The immigrants, who are almost
exclusively adult males, do not indeed come to the States intend-
ing to remain. They have for the most part left behind them
either parents, wives, children, or friends whom they look forward
to rejoining after having put by a little money, while, so well
informed and sensitive is the Chinese labour market, that when-
ever trade is bad in America the returning stream outnumbers the
inflowing one.
The Chinaman's real offence is that he works for a dollar
a day, and he can afford to undersell his white competitors
because he is more abstemious and economical than they. Im-
pelled by the fear that his accustomed luxuries are threatened, the
American labourer thinks
"We are ruined by Chinese cheap labour,
And he goes for that heathen Chinee"
with arms which are a disgrace to Christianity and civilization.
Meanwhile the politicians mount the stump, and fan a convenient
flame, with the result that Chinese treaty rights have been totally
disregarded and justice has leagued itself with popular violence to
oppress an industrious and unoffending race.
By the treaty of 1844, confirmed by the Burlinghame Treaty of
1867, America and China mutually guaranteed complete protec-
tion of life and property, entire freedom of religion, education,
and sepulture to subjects of either power resident in the other's
country. This treaty, like our own with China, was not sought
by, but was forced upon the Chinese, for Asia desires seclusion
from the Western nations while these desire commerce with Asia.
When Mr. Burlinghame returned from San Francisco to Pekin in
1866, he reported to the Chinese that a million of labourers could
find employment on the Pacific coast. The Pacific Railway was
THE CHINESE IN AMERICA CHINATOWN. 209
not then completed, and capitalists engaged in that and other
public and private works were eager to obtain labour from China
at a cheap rate. Everything in fact was done on the part of
America to encourage and regulate the immigration of the Chinese,
while the latter, who have been immigrating for centuries to the
Straits and elsewhere, were willing to come, the more so as they
were protected by solemn treaty engagements. The Chinese
were treated well in California as long as American citizens could
make money out of their cheap labour, and when the hopes of
getting a large portion of the China trade were encouraging, but
they have since been abandoned to the mercy of the mob.
Still sheltering myself behind the highest American authorities,
I close this too lengthy discussion by quoting from an address on
"Our Relations with the Chinese Empire" by the well-known
Dr. Wells Williams, late Secretary of the American Legation at
Pekin. " One cannot but feel indignant and mortified at the
contrast between the way in which the Chinese have treated us in
their country, into which we have forced ourselves, and the way
in which we have treated them in this country, into which we
have invited them. We have used them as if they had no rights
which we were bound to respect, and refused that protection as
men and labourers which the existing treaties guaranteed them.
Is it necessary in order that we should carry out our own treaty
obligations that we wait for a Chinese minister at Washington
to officially inform the Secretary of State how they have been
violated ; or for a Chinese consul at San Francisco to complain
to its mayor that his countrymen are stoned, robbed, and set
upon, and no one punished, no one arrested for such deeds ? Is
our Christian civilization not strong enough to do right by
them ? "
210 AN ENGINEER 'S If OLID A Y.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE " BIG TREES " YOSEMITE VALLEY.
September 2-13.
IN the spring of 1852, a man named Dowd was engaged in
supplying meat to a party of canal excavators who were bringing
water to the gold-diggers of Murphy's camp, a productive but dry
gulch in the foot-hills of Calaveras County, California. Dowd's
hunting camp being pitched one night about sixteen miles above
Murphy's, and near the Stanislaus river, his attention was arrested
by the immense size of some of the forest trees, which towered
for a hundred feet or more above even the gigantic yellow and
sugar pines to which he was accustomed. He carried such a
wonderful account of these vegetable monsters down to Murphy's,
that the miners laughed at him, but on his story being verified, it
soon spread through the newspapers, and was reported, for the
first time in Europe, by the London Athenceum in 1853. Through
some unaccountable remissness on the part of American botanists,
Dr. Lindley was the first to publish a scientific description of the
big tree, of which specimens had been imported to England by
Messrs. Veitch, and he named it Wellingtonea gigantea. A subse-
quent examination by M. Decaisne showed .that the tree was not
generically new, as Lindley supposed, but a species of redwood,
a genus already known to botanists under the name of sequoia.
Properly speaking therefore the Californian big tree is called
Sequoia gigantea, although in England the name of Wellingtonea
gigantea still clings to the numerous specimens which have been
planted in the British Islands.
The sequoias never form groups by themselves, but are always
scattered among a much larger number of other trees. They are
strictly confined to the great pine belt which clothes the western
flanks of the Sierra Nevada, and occur only between the thirty-
sixth and thirty-eighth parallels of latitude, never descending below
five thousand, or rising above seven thousand feet of elevation.
THE "BIG TREES" YO SEMITE VALLEY. 211
Only eight groups of the big trees have yet been discovered, all in
the state of California, and, of these, the groves of Calaveras and
Mariposa counties are the most important and best known. The
former, which is most northerly in situation and contains the largest
trees, was chosen for our visit because it can be taken en route to
the Yosemite Valley.
Leaving San Francisco then, a party of three for the cosmo-
polite, newly arrived from the Yellowstone Park, had now joined
the socialist and cynic we took train to Stockton, a town in the
San Joaquin Valley, not far south of the capital. Here we lay the
first night, closely besieged by a combined force of mosquitoes and
small water-beetles, the latter being so numerous that playing
billiards was impossible without crushing them by hundreds on
the cloth. Next day the railroad carried us to Milton, on the
very edge of the cultivated plain of Central California, where we
took stage for the big trees, distant about fifty miles. This ride
occupied the whole day, the road, after leaving the San Joaquin
Valley, ascending, in the first place gently, through the foot-hills
of the range, whose low volcanic ridges " wander out into the
plain like coast promontories enclosing bays of yellow prairie."
Hills and plain are both oak-covered, the trees standing in clumps,
as if arranged by a landscape gardener, and giving a park-like
aspect to the scene. The road, like the soil, is carpeted with a
thick layer of fine red or yellow dust, which rose in clouds from
under our wheels and flowed steadily with the wind towards the
range, so completely enveloping the stage that it was sometimes
impossible to see the leaders. On the way we met three large
flocks of sheep which, as they passed, were quite invisible from
the top of the coach, but their dust was seen, like a column of
smoke in the air, more than a mile away.
When we had risen about a thousand feet, pines began to
mingle with the oaks, the first species to appear being the digger,
or nut pine (Pinus sabiniana), the seeds from whose cones are
eaten by the Digger Indians. Its foliage is pale and parched
looking, evidencing the arid climate, and the tree, like the oaks
p 2
212 AN ENGINEER 'S HO LI DA Y.
which keep it company, seems to exist with difficulty in so dry a
region. At two thousand feet elevation the oaks and nut pines
alike disappear, and the scattered vegetation gives place to the true
forest. This in the first instance is chiefly composed of yellow
pines (P, ponderosa), magnificent trees five or six feet in diameter
and two hundred feet high. These are soon joined by the sugar
pine (P. Lambertiana) , which, appearing first at three thousand
feet of elevation, becomes perfectly developed at five thousand feet,
and dies out at seven thousand feet, while the hardier yellow pine
endures up to timber-line. The sequoias apart, it is impossible to
imagine a more beautiful conifer than the sugar pine. Its smooth,
brown shafts, six or eight feet in diameter, rise with a gentle taper
to a height of two hundred and twenty feet, while from its far-
reaching and graceful branches hang great cones fifteen inches in
length. Masses of exuded resin, sweet to taste and golden in
colour, cling to its trunk, and through its resonant needles the
wind sings a grand woodland air. A little higher we come upon
the Douglas spruce (Abies Douglasii), which thrives throughout
the main pine zone, attaining a diameter of six or seven feet and
a height of two hundred feet. The white pine, the silver fir, and
the arbor vitae now help to swell the forest which, at this elevation,
displays a vigour, symmetry, and distribution that is absolutely
perfect. The trees are neither crowded nor in too open order,
but each has room to display its stately beauty without ceasing to
be a member of a group. There is no undergrowth, as in tropical
jungles, but the enchanted traveller may wander at will through
the half-shaded, half-sunlit aisles of this glorious natural colonnade,
satisfying three senses at one and the same time with beauty,
odour, and music.
Such is the character of the great pine belt, more than four
hundred miles long and forty miles wide, which stretches from end
to end of the Sierra Nevada ; its lower margin formed of scattered
and thirsty oaks and pines, its centre a zone of profuse luxuriant
life, and its upper edge a ragged rank of hardy trees struggling for
a. foothold with the snows of the summit peaks. Lengthwise, as
transversely, the forest is distinguished by zones which fade into
THE "BIG TREES" YO SEMITE VALLEY. 213
one another by imperceptible gradations, through possessing well-
marked characteristics at either end. Towards the south, it is
more open, and single trees reach their greatest perfection. North-
ward, it grows gradually denser, until on the shores of British
Columbia the pines are crowded as closely as canes in a jungle,
and become wandlike in growth. It is in the centre of the belt,
both along and across it, that the forest is finest, and here, as if
nurtured by a combination of conditions most favourable to
vegetable life, the big trees are found.
Only on good soil amply supplied with moisture is such a
natural phenomenon as the pine belt in question possible, and it
is not, at first sight, clear how these conditions have come together
in arid Western America, and upon the stark granite flanks of the
Sierran uplift. But the prevailing westerly wind, which blows
continuously from the Pacific, is deflected upwards by the hills of
the Coast range, whose feet, as already mentioned, stand in the
ocean ; and the moisture-laden current of air, passing over Central
California and the foot-hills, strikes the Sierra Nevada at a point
about four thousand feet above sea-level, and distils in rain and
snow upon its flanks and summit. With regard to the soil, a close
examination of the forest discloses the fact that its pines are every-
where rooted in morainic debris. As the glaciers which, in a
colder age, poured out of every Sierran glen, crept slowly back-
wards before the advent of a warmer climate, their terminal
moraines were left by the retreating ice at successively higher and
higher levels upon the flanks of the range. This process took
place so slowly that the glacial detritus became pretty evenly
spread over the hill-sides, ending however at the base of the
summit peaks; often at the feet of abrupt, bare rocks, which
still retain the grooves and polish left by the passage of ice.
Wherever this old moraine extends the forest follows, where it
terminates the pines end also, and where, within the moisture
belt, its drift soils are richest and deepest the trees are finest.
Darkness fell before we reached the hotel in the Calaveras
Grove, and never shall I forget the impressions received during
2 14 AN ENGINEER 'S HO LID A Y.
the last few miles of this drive. The night, as usual, was still
and starlit; the road, carpeted with odorous pine needles, and
shrouded with gloom, seemed to open as we advanced, leading
one knew not where, through avenues of dark columns whose
unseen capitals were hidden in star-spangled obscurity. Balsamic
aromas filled the air, which stirred at intervals in soft pulsations,
half scent, half music, along the mysterious aisles. Suddenly the
enchanted forest opened to a clearing, and we pulled up before a
wooden hotel, sentinelled by two magnificent sequoias, where,
though buried in the heart of the pine belt, we were registered
and lodged as promptly and prosaically as if we had been in New
York or Philadelphia.
The valley, or rather depression, in which the Calaveras Grove
of big trees is situated, contains nearly a hundred sequoias, not
including those of from one to ten years' growth. They occupy a
space about a thousand yards long, and two hundred and fifty
yards wide, and are accompanied by hundreds of sugar and pitch
pines of astonishing proportions, which, anywhere else, would be
regarded as vegetable monsters, but are here completely dwarfed
by the big trees. The grove is nearly five thousand feet above
the sea, and occupies in this respect a point where the Sierran
Forest finds its highest development. In 1853, shortly after
Dowd's discovery, one of the largest trees was cut down. Five
men worked twenty-five days in felling it, boring the trunk
through with closely apposed auger holes and toppling the tree
over with wedges. The stump was then smoothly levelled, six
feet from the ground, and a pavilion built over it. This room
is twenty-seven feet across and has accommodated thirty-two
dancers. Theatrical performances have been given in it, and,
in 1858, a newspaper called the Big Tree Bulletin was printed
within its walls. The diameter of the trunk itself is twenty-four
feet, but the bark, which has been removed, was eighteen inches
thick. The age of the tree, as determined by the annual rings of
growth, is more than thirteen hundred years. A step-ladder of
twenty rounds leads to the summit of the fallen log, whose
THE "BIG TREES" YOSEM1TE VALLEY. 215
dimensions, as compared with ordinary timber, begin to be
appreciated while mounting this staircase. On top is a bowling
alley, or rather two alleys side by side, stretching along the
levelled upper surface for eighty feet, while from the point where
these terminate it is a walk of nearly a hundred yards to the end
of the stem. The largest trees in the grove are named after
American and other celebrities. Four of them, viz., " Keystone
State," " General Jackson," " Mother of the Forest," and " Daniel
Webster," are more than three hundred feet high, Keystone State
being three hundred and twenty-five feet, and the tallest, though
not the stoutest, of the group. The biggest tree now standing is
Mother of the Forest, three hundred and fifteen feet high and
sixty-one feet round at six feet above the ground, measured
without the bark, which was stripped for exhibition several years
ago and perished in the fire at the Crystal Palace. The Key-
stone State is the tallest tree yet measured on the American
continent ; there are stories of trees having once stood in this
grove over four hundred feet in height, but when we observe, as
Professor Whitney has pointed out, how regularly and gradually
the trees diminish in size, it becomes evident that no sequoia has
ever overtopped all the others by seventy-five feet and more.
The average elevation of the mature trees in the Calaveras Grove
is two hundred and seventy feet and their average girth, measured
six feet above ground, is forty-one and a half feet. The sequoia
is beaten in age by some English yews ; in height by the
Australian eucalyptus which, though slenderer, overtops it by a
hundred and fifty feet ; and in diameter by the baobab, whose
height however is insignificant ; but no tree except the blue gum,
height and thickness both considered, approaches the sequoia in
magnificence.
The foliage of the big tree is very thin for its vast size, and
looks totally inadequate to the nourishment of its enormous
product The cones also are insignificant, and it is upon the
trunk of the sequoia that Nature seems to have spent all her art.
The shafts of these trees are simply perfect for symmetry, texture.
2 16 AN ENGINEER 'S HO LI DA Y.
and colour. Where twins or, as in some cases, triplets occur, the
tapering parallel shafts are grouped with indescribable grace. The
wood is light and dry, strong and straight grained, coloured like
cedar, and slightly scented, while the bark is very thick and of a
soft spongy structure. There are many fallen trees in the grove,
one of which, "The Fallen Monarch," has been down for centuries.
It is still eighteen feet in diameter, though not only the bark
but much of the wood of the trunk has decayed. What is left
is perfectly sound, but the upper half of the tree, shivered into
fragments by the fall, has mouldered away, and sequoias nearly
a hundred years old are growing where the top fell. The " Father
of the Forest " is another fallen tree whose trunk has been hol-
lowed by fire into a great tube, or tunnel, through which one can
walk for two hundred feet, finally emerging at a knot-hole, big
enough to admit the stoutest man. Some trees, which are still
flourishing above, have been completely gutted by fire below, and
in one of these, " The Miner's Cabin," we spent Sunday morning
writing and reading, our party of three having ample room for
chairs, tables, and accessories.
Fully to appreciate the magnificence of the Sierran Forest, one
should live, as we did, for a few days among the trees themselves.
To watch the light of sunrise adding a rosy tint to the chocolate
columns of the scattered sequoias, a purple to the close-knit
brown shafts of the sugar pine, and a flaring red to the great
flakes of the pitch pine bark ; or to lie, in the starlight, on the
scented needles, letting one's eyes climb little- by little up the
long tapering masts into the very vault of heaven ; that is the
way to realize the grandeur and beauty of the big trees.
We left the Calaveras Grove with much regret, and taking the
stage, drove again for a whole day down through the forest
belt to Murphy's, the mining camp already mentioned, where we
slept a night before starting for the Yosemite Valley. The aspect
of the country around Murphy's, where many square miles of the
surface have been washed for gold, is very curious. All the soil
has been stripped from the bed rock, which consists of curiously
THE "BIG TREES" YOSEMITE VALLEY. 217
weathered limestone, honeycombed into fantastic crypts and
arches by the action of water. The earth's very ribs seem to be
bared, and a ghastly skeleton of stone lies bleaching under the
glaring Californian sun where once was a park-like country,
sprinkled with live oak and nut pine. Nature does her best to
repair damages, and has already thrown a thin green covering
over the naked rock here and there, but such growth is slow in
this arid climate, and it will be long before these mining scars
are hidden.
Next morning, the stage started at six o'clock, and, keeping to
the foot-hills, crept southward along the range all day, passing
through country almost the whole of which has been washed for
gold. Hardly any mining is now in progress, for the gulches
were practically exhausted within half a dozen years after the first
discovery of gold, and the precious metals, as we have seen, are
now obtained almost entirely from the lodes, or " fissure veins,"
of Nevada and Colorado. Here and there, however, a group of
patient Chinamen is seen, working old gravels over again; or
banks of detritus, too poor to pay for hand-washing, are being
attacked by powerful jets of water, issuing from nozzles like those
of a fire-engine. Hydraulic mining, as it is called, is the most
effective means ever employed for washing auriferous gravels. It
requires an ample supply, and a great head of water, together
with a disposition of the ground favourable to the escape of vast
masses of rubbish. Where these conditions are combined, the
melting snows of the Sierra are caught and tanked high up in the
mountains, and great pipes, strong as steam boilers, bring the
water down into the valley. The nozzles employed are some-
times as much as six inches in diameter, and from them issue
streams having the solidity of an iron bar, and the strength of
gunpowder. Before their attack high cliffs of debris give way like
sand, and great boulders are tossed about in the stream like leaves
in the wind. The gold is saved, as in ordinary gulch mining, by
allowing the turbid water to escape through sluices furnished with
riffles, charged with mercury for amalgamation.
2 1 8 AN ENGINEER 'S HO LI DA Y.
But not even hydraulic mining, which, in the hands of the
" forty-niners," would have cleared the gold from the foot-hill
valleys in six months instead of six years, can revive camps now
dead or dying. The stage passes through towns of weed-grown
streets and empty houses, whose doors swing wide, whose windows
are broken and unshuttered, and within whose desolate rooms
furniture too bulky for easy removal still stands. Here is the
post office with dusty racks holding a few unclaimed letters, and
there the saloon with its billiard tables still in place, but aban-
doned as if a sudden panic had driven away the people. Such a
scene of desolation is often accented by a Chinese occupation of
some outlying street, whose houses have been divided into dark
and smoky boxes, where yellow men and women pack close, while
poverty, pigs, and foul smells haunt the filthy roadway. So the
day passes, driving through a stripped and corpse-like country, or
towns from which enterprise has drifted away to more prosperous
mining centres, and where the helpless few who remain look like
fishes stranded by an ebb tide. Things have changed vastly in
the Californian foot-hills since the "fifties," and the sights and
sounds of to-day are strangely contrasted with those of the
" roaring camps " in the " early days."
After fourteen hours' staging we arrived at " Priest's," where
we passed the night, and, starting next morning at four o'clock,
turned our faces from the foot-hills towards the range, reaching
the lower edge of the pine belt in about three miles. Thence to
the Yosemite Valley the road leads through forest, now a succes-
sion of open plantations, and again a thick grove of magnificent
pines. At an elevation of about six thousand feet, a group of
sequoias occurs which, though less important than that of Cala-
veras, comprises some splendid trees. One of these, named
" The Dead Giant," is actually traversed by the track, the stage
passing right through the trunk, a third of whose bulk remains
untouched on either side of the way to form the walls of this
strange tunnel. Through this fitting gateway we finally passed
away from the big trees, and continued roughly bumping upwards,
THE "BIG TREES" YOSEMITE VALLEY. 219
over rocks of grey granite, till we reached the divide between the
Tuolumne and Merced rivers, from which point, nearly seven
thousand feet above sea-level, the road descends for the rest of
the way, giving occasional glimpses of the Yosemite precipices,
grouped by distance into a single beautiful and astonishing
picture.
The Yosemite Valley is a great trough, hollowed in the western
flank of the Sierra Nevada nearly at right angles to the trend of
the range. Its floor is a level area, six miles long, and varying
from half a mile to a mile in width, sunk almost a mile perpen-
dicularly below the general level of the region in which it occurs,
and its sides are vertical or almost vertical walls of white granite.
This trough, in the words of Professor Whitney, "is quite irregular,
having several square and angular recesses let back as it were
into sides, and at its upper end it divides into three branches
through either of which we may, going up a series of gigantic
steps as it were, ascend to the general level of the Sierra. . . .
Down each of these branches, or canons, descend streams, forks
of the Merced coming down the steps in a series of stupendous
waterfalls ; while at its lower end the valley contracts into a
narrow gorge/' through which the river foams on its way to the
San Joaquin.
The stage approaches this extraordinary depression from above,
and, descending the face of its northern wall by a dizzy winding
road, finally turns the traveller out at the doors of one of three
hotels built on the floor of the trough. Here the stupendous
character of the cliffs which hem in the valley is first realized, the
eye vainly trying to estimate their height, which, relatively to the
width of the depression, is enormous. These walls, for such they
are, look smooth and white, no vegetation clings to their sheer
surfaces, and the pines which cap them might be blades of grass,
so dwarfed are they by distance. The floor of the valley is
covered with magnificent pitch pines and cedars, springing from
an undergrowth of manzanita and wild raspberries; the river-
banks are thickly set with alders, spruce, and fragrant white
220 AN ENGINEER 'S HO LID A Y.
azalea; and the steeply sloping banks of rock piled against the
feet of the cliffs are clothed with live oak, maple, and Californian
laurel.
Cascades, without rivals in the world, pour over these wonder-
ful walls, swelling into mad torrents when the sun begins to melt
the winter snows, but shrinking almost to nothing after the
summer's heats are over. Of the five chief falls in the valley the
lowest is four hundred feet and the highest two thousand six
hundred feet high, the last, or "Yosemite Fall," surpassing in
vertical height any cascade in the world, and possessing acces-
sories of grandeur and beauty which neither pen nor pencil can
adequately describe. The " Bridal Veil " is another fall, perhaps
even more beautiful in general effect than the " Yosemite," but
having a drop of only nine hundred feet ; while the " Vernal "
and " Nevada " waterfalls are two of the plunges, one four hun-
dred, the other six hundred feet deep, made by the Merced river
on its way down the " gigantic steps " leading up from the valley
to the Sierra, and are probably, all things considered, the grandest
cataracts in the world.
All the famous points of which one hears under the names of
" El Capitan," the " Half-Dome," " Cathedral Spires," " Cloud's
Rest." and others, are simply the most striking or loftiest features
of the Yosomite walls. El Capitan is a single block of granite
which projects from the cliff into the valley, like a squarely cut
stone with a sharp and almost vertical edge, three thousand three
hundred feet in elevation. It is quite impossible to realize the
enormous dimensions of this rock, which can be seen in clear
weather from the San Joaquin plains, a distance of fifty miles.
The Half-Dome is even more astonishing than El Capitan. It is
a crest of granite nearly five thousand feet high, shaped on one
side like a helmet, but cut down sheer on the other for nearly
half its height, and falling off thence in a very steep slope to the
bottom of the valley. This slope, which looks exactly like a
talus of fallen rubbish, is really solid rock, and the mass appears
to have been originally a dome-shaped elevation, one-half of which
THE "BIG TREES" YO SEMITE VALLEY. 221
has been split off and disappeared. These are but two among a
hundred other salient features of precipices, which are everywhere
stupendous, and often sublime, in the combination of their spires,
domes, and buttresses, with forest, and waterfall. From a par-
ticular spot, called Inspiration Point, all the striking features of
the valley are seen at one time, and perhaps there is nowhere in
the world a more astonishing view, yet, in spite of the extra-
ordinary character of each element in the picture, something is
felt to be wanting. Rocks, pines, and waterfalls have done their
best, but the walls of white granite are grim; the summits are
cold in colour, and the ridges which sweep upwards from one to
the other are bare and forbidding. The forest itself is dressed in
greens so pale that they look grey in the distance, and the mind,
recovering from its first thrill of wonder, yearns for the subtler
charm of the Alps.
The parapets of the Yosemite walls are accessible from below
at several points, and the whole valley can be circumambulated
above. We climbed the northern rampart at Glacier Point, three
thousand five hundred feet above the Merced river, and, arrived
at the top, lay with our heads over the sheer cliff, looking down
upon pines which, though nearly two hundred feet high, appeared
like the trees of a Noah's ark ; horses which were moving specks ;
and the hotel which seemed a toy house. If, from such a point
on the summit of Yosemite walls, the eye turns from the dizzy
brink towards the Sierra, it travels over a region of rolling ridges,
and great granite domes, the hollows between which contain
shallow layers of soil, nourishing scanty forests of pine ; above
and beyond which long bare ridges stretch upwards to the snowy
peaks of the range.
The dome-shaped mountains which specially distinguish the
Sierra Nevada, form one of the most curious and notable features
of the region around Yosemite. The granite composing them is
arranged in concentric layers, like the coats of an onion, and the
domes, while accurately circular or elliptical in plan, have semi-
circular, or nearly semicircular profiles, so steep as to be perfectly
222 AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY,
inaccessible to an unaided climber. Such a cupola is the North
Dome, a rounded mass of rock, rising three thousand five hundred
feet above the valley, made up of huge concentric plates of
granite ; and such is, or rather was, the Half-Dome already men-
tioned, once a dome-shaped mountain, towering five thousand feet
above the Merced river, but now a helmet-shaped crest, whose
western half has been split off and removed.
This extraordinary mass, which is unique in the Sierra Nevada,
and probably in the world, cannot fail to suggest the question,
asked almost as peremptorily by the Yosemite walls everywhere
How has this trough-like valley been formed ? The canons which
seam the flanks of the range at every few miles of its length, have
nothing in common with the Yosemite. These are all more or
less V-shaped in section, and their sides never present such
angular forms, such squarely cut re-entering angles, as those of
the valley itself; while the Half-Dome is a perfectly inconceivable
product of erosion by running water. It is equally impossible to
suppose that the work was done by ice, for the passage of glaciers
results in rounded surfaces and smoothly flowing outlines, of
which there are none here. Professor Whitney has offered a
singular explanation of this interesting problem which, strange as
it sounds, is probably the true one. Dismissing erosion, whether
by water or ice, as out of the question, and, having conclusively
shown that the valley is no mere crack in the rocks of the range,
he says, " In short, we are led irresistibly to the adoption of a
theory of the origin of the Yosemite in a way which has hardly
yet been recognized as one of those in which valleys may be
formed ; probably for the reason that there are so few cases in
which such an event can be absolutely proved to have occurred.
We conceive that, during the process of upheaval of the Sierra, or
possibly at some time after that had taken place, there was at the
Yosemite a subsidence of a limited area, marked by lines of fault,
or fissures, crossing each other somewhat nearly at right angles.
In other and more simple words, the bottom of the valley sank
down to an unknown depth, owing to its support being with-
THE "BIG TREES '" YOSEM1TE VALLEY. 223
drawn from underneath, during some of those convulsive move-
ments which must have attended the upheaval of so extended
and elevated a chain, no matter how slow we may imagine the
process to have been. By the adoption of this theory we are
able to get over one difficulty which appears insurmountable with
any other. This is the very small amount of debris at the base
of the cliffs, and even, at a few points, its entire absence. There
is no way of disposing of the vast mass of detritus which must
have fallen from the walls of the Yosemite since the formation of
the valley except by assuming that it has gone down to fill the
abyss which was opened by the subsidence which our theory
supposes to have taken place. What the depth of the chasm
may have been we have no data for computing, but that it must
have been very great is proved by the fact that it has been able
to receive the accumulations of so long a period of time. The
cavity was undoubtedly occupied by water, forming a lake of
unsurpassed beauty and grandeur, until quite a recent geological
epoch. The gradual desiccation of the whole country, the dis-
appearance of the glaciers, and the filling up of the abyss to
nearly a level with the present outlet, where the valley passes
into a canon of the usual form, have converted the lake into a
valley, with a river meandering through it."
The most elevated region of the Sierra Nevada, called the
High Sierra, where the passes exceed twelve thousand feet, and
the peaks rise to nearly fifteen thousand feet, occurs about a
hundred miles south of the Yosemite, but the mountains which
border the valley are hardly less imposing than those of the
culminating portion of the range, and these Californian Alps offer
every inducement to mountaineers for a visit. There are peaks,
many of them still unsealed and unnamed, as difficult to conquer
as any in Europe, and there is a type of scenery totally different
to that o
