Part 2 (2/2)
How you are supposed to know which is which, beats my comprehension.
Having settled yourself with all your small parcels, you suddenly find you are not in your right cla.s.s, and have all the trouble of changing!
When the train stops, be it for meals or otherwise, you are not warned beforehand, and no notice is given when about to start again.
Not even a whistle when it _does_ start! How different this from our plan, or the one on the Continent. The object in the States would seem to be to try and leave pa.s.sengers behind. This uncertainty also diminishes the advantage of stoppages, especially when meals are in the case.
I omitted, when describing the carriages, to dilate on the advantages of the stoves. These warm the cars most thoroughly. With the thermometer outside 20 or 25 below zero, the interior will be, say, 60! Here the most we get is a foot-warmer, and must needs s.h.i.+ver!
The Americans certainly score against us in all as regards the carriages and their comforts.
In England there are porters at all stations. In the States there are very few. Luggage once ”checked,” that is registered, you have no further trouble with it, but you will find no one to help you with what you keep by you. Changing trains with mattresses, bedding, baskets with food, &c., &c., is often very difficult. You carry your belongings, or rather as much as you can, to the new train, there is nothing to indicate the cla.s.s, so you place them in any carriage, and rush back for the rest, doubtful how much may be stolen at either end. Perhaps three trips are necessary, and you know not how long before the new train starts. No one thinks of helping you. Darkness, possibly, adds to your difficulties, for you can't find your last carriage, or the train you came in has been shunted. You are lucky if, after gymnastic performances with luggage which is a new experience, and wis.h.i.+ng, as no porters exist, barrows were supplied, for then you could carry all in one trip, the new train has not started, without you, but with a share of your belongings!
I have seen ladies with children, emigrant women with their little all in peril, nearly insane in such cases. I have done their porter work more than once myself, and broken my s.h.i.+ns in doing it. It is very shameful that it should be so; more shameful the fact that if on railroads, in such cases, you ask for information or help, the chances are you are answered _a la_ Yankee, i.e. rudely, and no a.s.sistance or information given you. Oh, this beastly want of courtesy in America, how I did loathe it!
The rail wars in the States are a grand feature--grand in the sense that they produce great results, some of them very absurd. One line tries to swamp the other by lowering its rates; the other retaliates, and quotes still lower figures. The first comes down more still, and the second follows suit. This goes on for months, to the advantage of the public, to the ruin of the lines. At last the _reductio_ is truly _ad absurdum._ 1500 miles for $5! Then the companies agree, and, presto, the rate is $50!! On a line there may be compet.i.tion at either end, not in the middle, e.g. the Denver and Rio Grande Railway above. Then is it cheaper to take a ticket right through than for half the distance, and get out at your destination if you can, for they often try to prevent your doing so! The Americans may be, nay, they are, ”cute,” but common sense would be more to the purpose in cases like the above.
Cut-rate-offices exist in all the large towns. The meaning of the term is an office where rail tickets can be bought under the existing rates. This is accomplished legitimately, and also by fraud; the first, by the fact that the companies think it worth their while to give such agents a commission on tickets sold, and they allow you a portion of such commission; the second, by selling you, often at a large reduction, the return ticket of another, who on arrival has found it unnecessary, and sold it for what he could get. As such tickets are not transferable, you have, after buying such, to personate on the return journey the original possessor, and sign his name. But the Yankees think nothing of this. Thank goodness, all Americans are not Yankees!
The object ”far west” being population, emigrant carriages are supplied westward, in order that this said poor cla.s.s shall go cheaply; but having arrived, it is wiser to keep them there, and _ergo_, if they return they must do so first, or at least second-cla.s.s, for there are no emigrant fares back, i.e. eastward. I presume they are supposed to make so much money by even a short sojourn in the west, that economy can be no object on their return!
In England luggage is not registered, why, I never understood, for there is practically no safety in our plan. The boxes are labelled for their destination, and are thus safe so far; but if from any cause you are not then by to claim them, any one can walk off with any portion, and consequently the smallest delay on arrival is dangerous. Strange that losses are not more frequent. _For_, or _on_ the Continent, it _is_ registered through, and you get a receipt for the number of packages. So far good, but if you are obliged to stop _en route_, you cannot obtain the luggage or any part of it. Only at its destination can it be claimed by the production of the receipt.
The Continental plan is better than ours, but inferior to the American. They use bra.s.s labels with numbers; one is attached to the package, one given to the owner. Presenting this label, he can claim the baggage it represents at any time _en route_. The said labels are convenient enough, thin bra.s.s plates about half an inch square, and can easily be carried in a purse. The corresponding label is attached to the package in an excellent way. It is fastened to a leather strap, some six inches long, and in this, at the opposite end, is a slit; the strap is pa.s.sed through the handle of portmanteau or carpet-bag, or under the cord of any box, the label pa.s.sed through the said slit, and the strap drawn tight. It cannot possibly come off. On the label attached is the destination besides the number. On arrival there it is kept until claimed by the production of the corresponding ticket. It is by far the best arrangement for luggage I have ever seen.
Before arriving at any large town the train is boarded by what are called express-men. If you deliver to one of these your labels he gives you a receipt for them, and telling him where your baggage is to be sent, you will receive it there, without fail, in a couple of hours. There is no risk whatever in doing so, and the plan is very convenient; but as regards their charges the said express-men are most extortionate. They think nothing of fifty cents for each article, however short the distance may be, but half that amount if the things are few and large, one quarter if many and small, is enough, and when they find you won't give more, they agree.
Still you are then not quite safe. Having been ”done” once or twice by express-men to a considerable amount, I, on one occasion, when leaving Denver, the capital of Colorado, made a bargain with an express-man to take my baggage to the rail for a certain sum. He brought it to the station, delivered to me what I supposed was all, and I had it duly ”checked,” as described. I then tendered him his payment; he asked half as much again, saying the amount agreed to was not enough. I objected. He replied, ”I kept back one thing till you paid me; it is in the waggon outside, and I shall not give it up.” I appealed to the rail officials; they answered curtly that it was no business of theirs, and that I had better go to the police. This was impossible, for the train was just leaving. I had my son with me, and I thought I could take it from his waggon by force, but there were many of his cla.s.s by, and I did not fancy a free fight. ”Pay the money,” said some one, ”take his number and report him to the superintendent of police,” and I thought this the better way and did so. I did report the case fully, and offered to return to Denver to prove it by my son's evidence, but the said superintendent was not even courteous enough to reply. The express-men are licensed by the police, and accountable to them, but many told me, e'er I wrote, I should get no redress, for unless prepared to spend money in the case I should not get a hearing. The law on every point is most lax in the States, for bribery and corruption are acknowledged on every side to be the rule, and cases promising no profit are pa.s.sed over. Still I must add the above was an exceptional case, I having always found the express-men act up to their bargains. I think, therefore, a bargain made with them will be completed.
But all this does not advance the journey from New Orleans to San Francisco. If you look them up on the map you will see how far they are apart--some 2500 miles as the crow flies, and by rail, say, 3000 miles. You traverse the states of Louisiana, Texas, a little of New Mexico, Arizona, and California. A state in America is, speaking generally and leaving out the smallest, as large as England, some much larger, twice as big. Thus it was no small journey; it took me five days' and nights' incessant travel by rail. But what must the distances in America have been before the days of railroads. Here in England, between the old waggon era and the rail time, we had an interregnum of coaches, which for speed were the best in the world.
Thus from one end of the kingdom to the other was then only an affair of three or four days. It was different in the United States. As far as I could ascertain there never had been a coaching-time, except for short distances. The long ones were done by waggons, at the rate of, say, fifteen miles a day, the pa.s.sengers sleeping in or under the said vehicles at night. From New York to California at that time took a good six months. It is now done by the direct route in something less than that number of days.
Louisiana, the first state we traversed on leaving New Orleans, is an uninteresting and swampy country, and must be very unhealthy. The vegetation is luxurious and semi-tropical. Mosquitoes exist in swarms. Some of the jungle we pa.s.sed through (it has that character) reminded me of the jungles in the south-east of Bengal. Louisiana cannot be a good state for emigrants.
Texas, the next, is very different. No swamps, indeed not much water.
Vast and interminable plains of gra.s.s, very thinly inhabited, and almost entirely dest.i.tute of trees. The soil in many parts seemed good; the climate, though hot, is not bad, and millions of emigrants might find homes here. This is the largest cattle-breeding state, and the ranches there are of enormous size. I have said much on this head previously, so we need not linger here.
New Mexico comes next. We only traversed a corner of this; it was all desert, and from this point, all through Arizona and well into California, there was nothing else as far as the eye could reach on either side but sand, sand, desert sand, and not a drop of water. If I remember right, we were nearly two days and nights traversing it. I was astonished beyond measure; I had read much about the United States, and I knew that there was a desert around Salt Lake, the abode of the Mormons, but I had never heard of any other. When later, both from what I saw and what was told me, I found that a very considerable part of the States is desert, I wondered more that such a great and important fact is not at all known in England, and that none of the numerous writers on America have brought it forward.[5]
In the following, I may in one or two cases be open to correction, but substantially I know I am right, for most cases are the result of my own experience.
A great, if not the best part of Arizona, Nebraska, Nevada, and Utah are mostly desert.
More or less of California and New Mexico are the same.
A small part of Daho and Texas may, I believe, be included, but my information on these is from hearsay.
There may be much more than the above. I cannot doubt, from what I have seen in the parts I traversed, that there is, but the above is enough to justify my a.s.sertion that ”a very considerable part of the States is desert.”
I would I could give a map here of the States with all the deserts painted yellow. No map extant delineates these vast wastes. I am afraid to hazard a guess what proportion the said painted parts would bear to the whole, but enough, I am sure, to make the reader wonder as I did.
How enormous these deserts are may be judged of by the fact that the four first states in the list above are together roughly about one third larger than France ... and that the far greater part of them, to say the least, are howling wastes!
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