Through the night hours it sped on, past lonely ranches and infrequent
stations, by and across shallow streams fringed with cottonwood trees,
over the greenish-yellow buffalo grass; near the old trail where many a
poor emigrant, many a bold frontiersman, many a brave soldier, had laid
his bones but a short time before.
Familiar as they may be, there is something strangely impressive about
all night journeys by rail; and those forming part of an American
transcontinental trip are almost weird. From the windows of a
night-express in Europe, or the older portions of the United States, one
looks on houses and lights, cultivated fields, fences, and hedges; and,
hurled as he may be through the darkness, he has a sense of
companionship and semi-security. Far different is it when the long train
is running over those two rails which, seen before night set in, seemed
to meet on the horizon. Within, all is as if between two great seaboard
cities; the neatly dressed people, the uniformed officials, the handsome
fittings, the various appliances for comfort. Without are now long,
dreary levels, now deep and wild canons, now an environment of strange
and grotesque rock-formations, castles, battlements, churches, statues.
The antelope fleetly runs, and the coyote skulks away from the track,
and the gray wolf howls afar off. It is for all the world, to one's
fancy, as if a bit of civilization, a family or community, its
belongings and surroundings complete, were flying through regions
barbarous and inhospitable.
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