• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

I cannot pass over this time in my life, however, without wanting to share some of my impressions. Naturally I am proud of what we accomplished, especially in such primitive circumstances compared to the comforts of today. Our planned route involved an average travel of one hundred and ten miles every day, as well as the giving of two entertainments! To those who are used to more modern ways of travel and hospitality, this may not seem much of a feat. However, the last spike had just been driven in the Union Pacific railroad only a little over a month before we embarked upon it. The West was newly open, raw and unforgiving. Cities which today conjure up images of cultured civility—Salt Lake City, Omaha, Reno—were little more than canvas camps at the time, sprouting up along the newly built railway like prairie flowers. Many more of these temporary cities—hotels, restaurants, post offices, even, made of dirty canvas flaps draped over wobbly wooden frames—have now faded from memory, vanished in the dust of the trains that roared on ahead, once the tracks were laid.

We confidently expected to see Indians, and indeed, even as the train was pulling out of Omaha, nervous passengers were looking out the windows for the red man. Mr. Bleeker packed a pistol; so, too, did Charles, although it was a ridiculously tiny one given to him by Queen Victoria, with custom bullets so small they could scarcely hurt a prairie dog, let alone an Indian on a pony. Yet he strutted about, stroking his beard with one hand, patting his breast pocket with the other, just as he saw the other men doing—acting as if he had enough firepower to take out an entire band of ferocious savages.

While sleeper cars were now in use on eastern trains—a platform could be raised to join two facing seats into one bed, while above, a bunk was lowered from the arched roof of the car—those first trains to go west from Omaha were not outfitted in this way. Hence, on extended legs—our longest was twenty-six hours of continuous travel—we had to sleep, to use the word loosely, upright upon the hard seats. Even though they were upholstered in horsehair—an improvement over those hard wooden seats from my first train trip to Cincinnati back in the fifties—they made for very uncomfortable sleeping, indeed. Although for once, we little folk had the advantage of our companions, as we could curl up easier than they could!

As always, it was impossible to keep oneself clean and tidy; even with the windows pushed up, the dust from the prairie and the cinders and grit from the tracks managed to seep inside the cars. Not to mention that it was very hot, as we left Omaha in July of 1869. While there was a dining car on the train, the food was not well prepared or even fresh, and there was never any ice for water. In the primitive water closets, where I had to lug my steps with me so that I could reach the basin, the water in it was already so gray with other people’s grime that I never wanted to splash it upon my face. And the smell in that hot, stuffy little cell was intolerable.

But the scenery, as we sped across the great prairie, was always interesting, always majestic; I’d never seen a sky so big, not even upon the sea. The tall, waving grasses, undulating in the wind, were as hypnotic as any ocean waves. Prairie dogs popped up and down like children’s toys, and herds of antelope raced along the train, as did immense herds of buffalo. We could see them from a distance; at first, they resembled a swarm of flies moving now away, now toward, the tracks; as we got closer, we could actually feel the thundering of their hooves through the floor of the train. At the first sighting, more than a few passengers decided to use them as target practice; with cries and whoops, men pulled out their pistols or rifles and thrust them through the windows, the ringing from the shots practically piercing my eardrums.

We reached Cheyenne, our first stop, almost exactly twenty-four hours after leaving Omaha and without having seen a single Indian,