A SKETCH ON THE PACIFIC RAILROAD.

Grey River Argus, Volume XI, Issue 921, 10 July 1871, Page 2

A SKETCH ON THE PACIFIC RAILROAD.

We take the following vigorous sketch, from the letter of a correspondent of the Southern Gross: — I wrote just now that I thought the quoted warning against long descriptions comprised an excellent rule. Shall Ibe voted guilty of breaking it ? The charge must be risked by some attempt at describing — or sketching, rather. The afternoon of a fine winter day had well advanced when we entered on the track known as the "Foot Hills," at the western base of the Sierra Nevada. Beautiful were the glimpses amongst bush on the bold spurs, which we got as the cars? rushed on; but darkness was "falling - fast" when we were fairly on the rise of; the mountain range. Two or three times, " by flattening our noses against the windows, so as to shut out the lamp light, , we could see well down the sides of almost sheer descents ; the giant trees near the bottom looming not largely but weirdly in the gloom which the partly reflected light failed to pierce. Just before., night's curtain veiled the grandeur of the mountains from us, a travelled friend pointed out to us Cape Horn. - Great, abrupt, heavily timbered, standing out cone-like from our then point of view .. was Cape Horn. High away above us, we could see a shadowy line — not like a scar, or a rent, or a slip— but a mere line ; up there was the "road," there were the "metals;" there was the place to which, - : by a series of curves, with hundreds of feet seeming plumb fall, we had to pass. And did pass, though we saw it not. That glimpse of Cape Horn was the last but L one we have of the Sierra Nevada. . The grandest scenery, the most fearfut^'ia- , ducts, and altogether the most dating engineering, are said to be on the eastern : slope. . ■'. v : > The last glimpse was when we were at the summit station— Truckee, 7500 feet i high, if I remember rightly. That was a f strange glimpse, or stare, rather. We 3 ought to have been there at eleven o'clock, - but for an hour or two we went slowly.f 1 There had been a telegram that a great * woodshed at Truckee was on fire, and it was doubted whether we should be abie 3 to pass until morning. The line was being I burned up, it was said, 1 and other things • I pleasant indeed to railway travellers on * the Sierra Nevada during a winter's night 1 were talked of as to happen. Long before we reached Truckee we were wrapped in the glare of the fire. Snow was falling. The side of the steep rise to the left of 3 the line was sheeted, white. Snow sheds were dimly yet pervadingly illuminated. We could see the zigzag snow fences over which the soft, insidious flakes were eddyk ing and heaping, silently but surely. At '> last the cars were pulled up at Truckee. I- The village, struggling along the foot ofj* n the rise, had lights visible in every housed Visible, but how weirdly they looked. l " The falling snow, the fallen snow MEhat 16 lay clinging together, the drifting snow, 1 y the great white ghastly screen behind the Le village, the red fitful light from the huge, , pile of burning wood, all combined to' l " modify the lights from candles and lamps c " that shone from the Truckee windows, r- -rf ,f -rfrvfr ™™vvjnadeJiQiook iifc e steely- -- blue Tights, pervactecTDy a of rich orange-color. How sharply all the lines ;r of each of the wooden buildings stood out. 33 The store, the shop, the dwelling-house, n the shanty, stretching in a strangely- •> )o broken line, could each be identified.^ p And the wind soughed, and the snow i. fell with a snow-hiss, and the cars stood [- there shivering in the warm light that ] >r had all the warmth taken out of it. "It ; it is certain readers never can " have •s any clear idea of places described! Ah, c well ! True, no doubt. But those who a saw Truckee, at the top of the Sierra is Nevada, as I saw it, will really never ,f forget the sight, and will never recall it ij without a Btrange pleasure. When the c cars were allowed to proceed, the engine c solemnly puffed until we had crawled up .. to, and had passed, a great stack of glowe ing embers, 100 yards long, perhaps, five s yards deep, and six feet or eight feet high, s with little jets of flame shooting out over - every few inches of surface, and a fierce r " smoor" rising high above it. The line a, had not been injured; and we ran on— . into the night, and down the eastern slope s of the Sierra Nevada. The crossing of the Kocky Mountains is E a swindle. I don't doubt that the point * at which the crossing is effected is some f 8300 feet above the sea, or 800 feet or i 900 feet higher than Truckee. The ; whole affair is a swindle, in a picturesque , sense, because the track is mainly over ; hard red gritty ground, with no rocks (again in the picturesque sense) within ■ miles of you. One gets to be thankful when the summit is reached, though the practical-minded vendor of certain ? "bitters" has taken advantage of the only bit of rock-proper on the summit to adver-' tiae his confounded stuff. The man who mounted against the side of thatrockj ; brush in hand, and with his red-ochre pot by his side, and scrawled the words there to be seen, perpetrated a bit of high art, in one sense ; but he must have felt -him- f self a tarnation skunk. »• Beautiful it is, skimming along over the metals through such canons as those named Echo and Weber, with a pure stream deviously crawling through each to the torment of the engineers of the line, but to the gladenning of the traveller Queer is " The Devil's Slide,"lwp huge '" ribs which start out of the hill side and run to the valley level, keeping singularly parallel ; common-place enough is the Pulpit Rock ; but beautiful indeed are the canons. And how the engineers mnst have joyed when they "struck" the Humboldt and other plains, where, all daylight through, the train runa on, over what are practical deserts, but where no more was needed in the way of levelling than to pitch aside a few barrow-loads of earth, now and then, and where bridges viaducts, and tunnels are unknown But ■-* weariful to the traveller are these plains —unless he can contrive to forget all but - the sense of motion, and the name of the station at which he is to get his next meal. Pleasant memories only have I of the trip east of San Francisco. May those memories be not effaced, if ever 1 co * west ! . £ f