Jules Verne · a new plain-English translation from the original language
«Ocean to Ocean»—thus the Americans say—and these three words ought to be the general designation of the «grand trunk» that crosses the United States of America at their greatest breadth. But in reality the «Pacific rail-road» divides into two distinct parts: «Central Pacific» from San Francisco to Ogden, and «Union Pacific» between Ogden and Omaha. There five distinct lines join up, putting Omaha in frequent communication with New York.
New York and San Francisco are thus joined today by an unbroken ribbon of metal that measures fully 3,786 miles. From Omaha to the Pacific, the railroad crosses a country still frequented by Indians and wild beasts—a vast stretch of territory that the Mormons began to colonize around 1845, after they had been driven out of Illinois.
Formerly, in the most favourable circumstances, it took six months to go from New York to San Francisco. Now it takes seven days.
It was in 1862 that, despite the opposition of the deputies from the South, who wanted a more southerly line, the route of the rail-road was fixed between the forty-first and the forty-second parallels. President Lincoln, of such lamented memory, himself set, in the state of Nebraska, at the city of Omaha, the head of the line of the new network. The works were begun at once and pursued with that American energy which is neither red-tape-bound nor bureaucratic. The rapidity of the labour was in no way to harm the good execution of the road. On the prairie they gained a mile and a half of track each day. A locomotive, rolling over the rails of the day before, brought up the rails of the next day, and ran along their surface as fast as they were laid.
The Pacific rail-road throws off several branches along its course, in the states of Iowa, Kansas, Colorado, and Oregon. Leaving Omaha, it follows the Platte River's left bank up to the mouth of the north branch, follows the south branch, crosses the lands of Laramie and the Wahsatch Mountains, skirts the Salt Lake, reaches Lake Salt City, the capital of the Mormons, plunges into the valley of the Tuilla, runs along the American desert, the Cedar and Humboldt ranges, the Humboldt River, the Sierra Nevada, and comes back down by Sacramento to the Pacific, without this route ever exceeding a grade of a hundred and twelve feet per mile, even in the crossing of the Rocky Mountains.
Such was that long artery that the trains covered in seven days, and that was going to allow the honourable Phileas Fogg—so he hoped, at least—to take, on the 11th, at New York, the Liverpool steamer.
The car occupied by Phileas Fogg was a kind of long omnibus resting on two trucks of four wheels each, whose mobility allows curves of small radius to be tackled. Inside, no compartments: two rows of seats, arranged on each side, perpendicular to the axis, and between which was left a passage leading to the toilet cabins and others with which each car is provided. Along the whole length of the train, the carriages communicated with one another by footbridges, and the travellers could move from one end of the convoy to the other, which put at their disposal saloon-cars, observation-cars, dining-cars, and coffee-cars. All it lacked was theatre-cars. But one day there will be some.
On the footbridges circulated ceaselessly sellers of books and newspapers, hawking their wares, and vendors of liquor, of eatables, of cigars, who did not lack for customers.
The travellers had left the Oakland station at six in the evening. It was already night—a cold, dark night, with an overcast sky whose clouds threatened to dissolve into snow. The train did not run at great speed. Taking the stops into account, it covered no more than twenty miles an hour, a speed that should, however, allow it to cross the United States within the scheduled times.
Little was said in the car. Besides, sleep would soon overtake the travellers. Passepartout found himself placed beside the police inspector, but he did not speak to him. Since the latest events, their relations had noticeably cooled. No more sympathy, no more intimacy. Fix had changed nothing in his manner, but Passepartout, on the contrary, kept himself on extreme reserve, ready at the slightest suspicion to strangle his former friend.
An hour after the train's departure, the snow fell—fine snow, which could not, most fortunately, delay the convoy's progress. Nothing could be seen any longer through the windows but an immense white sheet, against which, unrolling its coils, the locomotive's steam appeared greyish.
At eight o'clock, a «steward» came into the car and announced to the travellers that the hour for bed had struck. This car was a «sleeping-car,» which, within a few minutes, was turned into a dormitory. The backs of the benches folded down, carefully packed berths unrolled by an ingenious system, cabins were improvised in a few moments, and each traveller soon had at his disposal a comfortable bed, which thick curtains defended against any prying eye. The sheets were white, the pillows soft. There was nothing left to do but lie down and sleep—which everyone did, as if he were in the comfortable cabin of a steamer—while the train sped at full steam across the state of California.
In that portion of the territory that extends between San Francisco and Sacramento, the ground is little broken. This part of the railroad, under the name of «Central Pacific road,» first took Sacramento as its point of departure, and advanced eastward to meet the one that started from Omaha. From San Francisco to the capital of California, the line ran directly to the north-east, skirting the American River, whose waters empty into San Pablo Bay. The hundred and twenty miles between these two important cities were covered in six hours, and toward midnight, while they slept their first sleep, the travellers passed through Sacramento. So they saw nothing of this considerable city, seat of the legislature of the state of California, neither its fine quays, nor its wide streets, nor its splendid hotels, nor its squares, nor its temples.
On leaving Sacramento, the train, after passing the stations of Junction, Roclin, Auburn, and Colfax, entered the massif of the Sierra Nevada. It was seven in the morning when the Cisco station was passed. An hour later, the dormitory had become an ordinary car again, and the travellers could glimpse through the windows the picturesque views of this mountainous country. The train's route obeyed the caprices of the Sierra, here clinging to the mountain's flanks, there hanging above the precipices, avoiding abrupt angles by bold curves, hurling itself into narrow gorges that one had to think were without an exit. The locomotive, sparkling like a reliquary, with its great headlamp casting tawny gleams, its silvered bell, its «cow-catcher» jutting out like a spur, mingled its whistlings and bellowings with those of the torrents and cascades, and twisted its smoke through the black boughs of the firs.
Few or no tunnels, nor any bridge along the route. The rail-road wound around the flank of the mountains, not seeking in the straight line the shortest path from one point to another, and doing no violence to nature.
Toward nine o'clock, by way of the Carson valley, the train penetrated into the state of Nevada, still following the north-east direction. At noon it left Reno, where the travellers had twenty minutes to breakfast.
From this point, the railway, skirting the Humboldt River, rose for a few miles toward the north, following its course. Then it bent eastward, and was not to leave the watercourse again before reaching the Humboldt Ranges, which give it birth, almost at the eastern extremity of the state of Nevada.
Having breakfasted, Mr. Fogg, Mrs. Aouda, and their companions took their places again in the car. Phileas Fogg, the young woman, Fix, and Passepartout, comfortably seated, watched the varied landscape passing before their eyes—vast prairies, mountains outlined on the horizon, «creeks» rolling their foaming waters. Sometimes a great herd of bison, massing in the distance, appeared like a moving dyke. These innumerable armies of ruminants often set up an insurmountable obstacle to the passage of trains. Thousands of these animals have been seen filing past for several hours, in close ranks, across the rail-road. The locomotive is then obliged to halt and wait until the way has become clear again.
That is even what happened on this occasion. Toward three in the afternoon, a herd of ten to twelve thousand head barred the rail-road. The engine, after slowing its speed, tried to drive its spur into the flank of the immense column, but had to stop before the impenetrable mass.
One saw these ruminants—these buffaloes, as the Americans improperly call them—march thus at their tranquil pace, sometimes uttering formidable bellowings. They were of a size greater than that of the bulls of Europe, with short legs and tail, a jutting withers that formed a muscular hump, horns spread apart at the base, the head, neck, and shoulders covered with a mane of long hair. There was no thinking of stopping this migration. When the bison have adopted a direction, nothing could either check or alter their march. It is a torrent of living flesh that no dyke could hold back.
The travellers, scattered on the footbridges, watched this curious spectacle. But the one who ought to have been the most hurried of all, Phileas Fogg, had stayed in his seat and waited philosophically for the buffaloes to be pleased to give him passage. Passepartout was furious at the delay this gathering of animals was causing. He would have liked to discharge his arsenal of revolvers at them.
«What a country!» he cried. «Mere oxen that stop trains and go filing along there in procession, no more hurried than if they were not hindering the traffic! By Jove! I would dearly like to know whether Mr. Fogg had foreseen this setback in his schedule! And that engineer who does not dare drive his machine through this cumbersome cattle!»
The engineer had not tried to knock the obstacle over, and he had acted prudently. He would no doubt have crushed the first buffaloes struck by the locomotive's spur; but, however powerful it was, the engine would soon have been stopped, a derailment would inevitably have occurred, and the train would have been left stranded.
The best course, then, was to wait patiently, ready afterward to make up the lost time by an acceleration of the train's progress. The filing-past of the bison lasted three good hours, and the way became clear again only at nightfall. At that moment, the last ranks of the herd were crossing the rails, while the first were disappearing below the southern horizon.
It was therefore eight o'clock when the train threaded the defiles of the Humboldt Ranges, and half past nine when it entered the territory of Utah, home to the great Salt Lake, that curious country of the Mormons.