Railway Travelling.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 431, 25 December 1889, Page 4

Railway Travelling.

Sir Ei>u ix Akkoj/d writes : — We have just accomplished, in five days and five nights and five hours, without fatigue or discomfort of any kind, the extraordinary railway journey from the Atlantic to the Pacific, which so many people perform nowadays without so much as reflecting upon the vast advance of civilisation and the amazing human enterprise which it betokens. Between aftornoon tea on Thursday, Octooer 3rd, and supper time on Tuesday, October Bth, we have securely and pleasantly travelled over 3,640 miles in a continuous course, passing through thirteen or fourteen of the States of the Union, crossing, among many great streams and rivers, the Mississippi and the Misssouri, and exchanging for the view across Boston Harbour and the Atlantic, an outlook, through the Golden Gates, over the Pacific Ocean. It is not feasible to achieve this remarkable transit in one and the same carriage. But for three whole days and nights we were domiciled permanently ' on boaid ' one Pullman car, the ' Paraiso,' in ample comfort. By day a little table, fixed between the luxurious seats, enables you to read, write and study at ease. There are smoking, toilet and dining 1001ns attached, and 1 append you the imim of one of our breakfasts, cooked on board the train, and admirably served while the carriage was going at thirty -fi verailesan hour : — Breakfast : Fruit, Canteloupe melons; oatmeal, coffee, English breakfast tea, chocolate, dry toast, hot rolls, dipped toast, plain bread, Boston brown biead toast, corn bread, griddle cakes with maple syrup, stewed oysters, raw oysters, broiled whitefish, salt mack erel ; tenderloin steak, plain, mushrooms, or tomato sauce ; sirloin steak, boiled ham, breakfast bacon ; mutton chops, plain, or with tomato sauce ; calves' liver with bacon ; veal cutlets, breaded ; sausage, frisd chicken, sliced tomatoes, broiled Spanish mackerel ; eggs — boiled, fried, scrambled ; omelette, plain with parsley or jelly ; potatoes — fried, baked, stewed. Price 25 cents. At night the African 'porters' swiftly and ingeniously let down the roof of the car, and transform that and the seats below into wholly commodious sleeping berths. Rocked by the slight vibration of the speed, you slumber peaoefully and awake to find a totally new region flying past your window. Prairie-dog villages, perhaps, insteap of big cities ; or a desert of rolling sage-brush, whero yesterday all was maple, maize fiold, and painted farmhouses.