If rich, or if poor, or whatever thou be, Keep truth thy companion, and honor thy guide. 5. Then, though sickness may come and misfortune may fall, T. H. Bayly. LESSON XXXII. THE HARDEST TIME OF ALL. 1. There are days of deepest sorrow There are wild, despairing moments; 2. Youth and love are oft impatient, Seeking things beyond their reach ; 3. We can bear the heat of conflict; 4. Yet, at last, we learn the lesson, Makes the spirit calm and blest ; For the changes of our fate, When our hearts will thank Him meekly LESSON XXXIII. FROM OMAHA TO SAN FRANCISCO. 1. From the hour you leave O'maha you will find everything new, curious, and wonderful. There are the plains, with their buffaloes, antelopes, and prairie-dogs; the mountains, which, as you approach Cheyenne,* lift up their glorious, snowclad summits; the deep cañons and gorges which lead from Wah'satch into Ogden, and whose grim scenery will seem to you, perhaps, to form a fit entrance to Salt Lake; the indescribable loveliness and beauty of the mountain-range which shelters * Cheyenne (shi-en'), the capital of Wyoming Territory, on the line of the Union Pacific Railroad. the Mormon capital; and the extended, apparently sterile, but really fertile alkali and sage-brush plain. 2. Then, as you ascend the Sierra, you come to the snowsheds which protect the Central Pacific; and, on the last day of your journey, there is the grand and exciting rush down the Sierra from Summit to Colfax, winding around Cape Horn and half a hundred more precipitous cliffs, down which you look out of the open "observation-car" as you sweep from a hight of 7000 feet to a level of 2500 in a ride of two hours and a half. 3. A grander or more exhilarating ride than that from Summit to Colfax, on the Central Pacific Railroad, you can not find in the world. The scenery is various, novel, and magnificent. You sit in an open car at the end of the train, and the roar of the wind, the rush and vehement impetus of the train, and the whirl around curves, past the edge of deep chasms, among forests of magnificent trees, fill you with excitement, wonder, and delight. 4. When we had seen the Wahsatch cañons we thought the glory of the journey must be over, but the lovely mountains about Salt Lake gave us new delight; and last, as though nature and man had conspired to prepare a series of surprises for the traveler to California, comes the grand, stormy rush down the Sierra, followed, as you draw near the lower levels, by the novel sights of men actually engaged in gold-mining. Here long flumes, in which they conduct the water for their operations, run for miles near the track; and as you pass below Gold Hill, you may see men setting the water against great hills, which they wash away to get out the gold from the gravel which bears it. 5. The entrance into California is to the tourist as wonderderful and charming as though it were the gate to a veritable fairy-land. All its sights are peculiar and striking: as you pass down from Summit the very color of the soil seems different, and richer than that you are accustomed to at home; the farm-houses, with their broad piazzas, speak of a summer climate; the flowers, brilliant at the roadside, are new to Eastern eyes; and at every turn in the road fresh surprises await you. 6. On the plains and in the mountains the railroad will have seemed to you the great fact. Man seems but an accessory; he appears to exist only that the road may be worked; and I never appreciated, until I crossed the plains, the grand character of the old Romans as road-builders, or the real importance of good roads. We, too, in this generation are roadbuilders. Neither the desert nor the sierra stops us; there is no such word as "impossible" to men like Huntington; they build railroads in the full faith that population and wealth will follow on their iron track. 7. And they seem to be the best explorers. The "Great American Desert," which school-boys a quarter of a century ago saw on the map of North America, has disappeared at the snort of the iron horse; coal and iron are found to abound on the plains as soon as the railroad kings have need of them; the very desert becomes fruitful; and at Humboldt Wells, on the Central Pacific Railroad, in the midst of the sage-brush and alkali country, you will see corn, wheat, potatoes, and fruits of different kinds growing luxuriantly, with the help of culture and irrigation, proving that this vast tract, long supposed to be worthless, needs only skillful treatment to become valuable. 8. One can not help but speculate upon what kind of men Americans will be when all these now desolate plains are filled; when cities shall be found where now only the lonely depot or the infrequent cabin stands; when the iron and coal of these regions shall have become, as they soon must, the foundation of great manufacturing populations; and when, perhaps, the whole continent will be covered by our Stars and Stripes. No other nation has ever spread over so large a territory or so diversified a surface as ours. From the low, seawashed shores of the Atlantic, your California journey carries you over boundless plains which lie nearly as high as the summit of Mount Washington. 9. Americans are digging silver ore in Colorado, three thousand feet higher than the highest point of the White Mountains. At Virginia City, in Nevada, one of the busiest centers of mining, the traveler finds it hard to draw in breath enough for rapid motion; and many persons, when they first arrive there, suffer from bleeding at the nose by reason of the rarity of the air. Again, in Maine half the farmer's year is spent in accumulating supplies for the other and frozen half; all over the Northern States the preparation for winter is an important part of our lives: but in San Francisco the winter is the pleasantest part of the year; in Los Angeles they do not think it needful to build fire-places, and scarcely chimneys, in their houses. |