Knoxville weekly chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1875, 1871-11-29
On \ Locomotive.

We never saw more graphic sketch of
the sensation of riding on an engine than
one contributed to the Independent, by the
Rev. I. Dewitt Talmadge, who tried the
experiment while journeying in the Rocky
Mountains. He says:
MAY / get on with you ~ / asked an
engineer on the Pacific Railroad, at sta
ton six or seven thousand feet above the
level of the sea. Certainly he said
"but hold tight, or you may fall off,"
"Tootl toot!n went the whistle, and
the long anaconda of rai-train first went
crawling along the rocks, but soon took
on fearful momentum. Sitting in "Pull-
mans Palace Car" looking out at the
window, the passenger gets no idea of the
| speed of the train but close by the engi-
| neer, and feeling the nervous culver and
jump of the iron courser, you see the
| mountains skip like rams, and the little
hills like lambs.n
The door of the locomotive furnace
clangs open and the flames rave as though
they would leap out TO devour, and the
| fireman jars the coal into the raging jaws
| of the monster. The engineer has his
| hand on the iron bit that controls the
| speed, and seems to use no more eXertion
| than doctor feeling the pulse of u child.
| Indeed the locomotive, to the engineer, is
not machine, but animate. He talks to
! it, seems almost to pat 1t lovingly on the
neck. file is proud of it. There is a warm
understanding between the two, and in
| occasional spurts of steam the locomotive
seems to take voice and answer its rider.
| An engine never hurts its master, save in
the effort to throw the passengers.
| But the engineer, sitting so placid, is
wide awake. He is kept on duty four
| hours in the day. and all the energies of
| body and soul cluster in his vigilant eye
| and quick thumb. Two hundred lives
hang on his wrist. s
We plunge into the snow-shed with in
I .A1.,N 81
! ing back the deafening roar of the Pacific
] Express. AS we rush on, the prairie-dogs
| skulk into their holes, or sit on their hind
quarters, with fore feet lifted, as much as
to say, "what next!' The antelopes
scamper over the plain. We ride unim-
peded, where, less than two years ago, the
! bul1aloes stopped the train as the herds
stamped across the track and along here
the savages careered on their ponies. You
| see here and there groups of Red Men,
with long hair, and cheeks daubed with
! war paint, ringed ears and superfiuity of
| dirt that buries your last romantic notion
! about the "noble red men of the forest.p
| The air is laden with the breath of the ce-
| dar, madrona, manzanita and buckeye.
| Here we are passing through what seem
! the ruins of castles and temples and cities,
and calling up to mind Petra and Pompeii
and Nineveh and Thebes but these ruins
! on either side of our track must have been
! vaster abodes, where giants might have
lived till the 1jtans began here to play
| leap-frog and turn somersault. Now the
! whistle lets off a wild scream a COW and
| a calf on the track. The COW we cut into
halves, and the calf with broken legs tum-
| bles into the ditch. | wonder if that man
just ahead will get off in time. Perhaps
he is deaf! Perhaps he is crazy and wants
to be run over! Neither. In time to save
himself, he switches Off and robs the coro-
| ner.
Hold your breath! Ravine .thousad
| feet deep on this side! Embankment a
thousand feet up on the otherl AS we
| turn the curve the engineer pulls the steam
! valve, and the silence that reigned here for
six thourand years lets slip all its sounds
of echo and reverberation.
Hew how we fly! If bolt break, or
| truck fall, or a rock dislodge, we are in
eternity Innumerable varities of flowers
break their alabaster at the foot of the
| cliffs but yonder the mountain tops are
| blooming into the white lily of everlast-
| ing snow. Bridges, high, narrow, ire
| mendous, that creak and tremble under
| he pressure of the train. A tunnel! Ink
! black, midnight doubled, dampness that
never saw the sun while far ahead is a
| hint of sunlight peering through hole
| that looks about the size of the arch of q
mouse trap, but which widens till at last it
| is large enough to let whole train escape
| into the golden day.
| ouJ UlltIt Is Jllt Olu lOeiut VIVA
| occasionally the skeleton of cow or horse,
| or the wreck of a wagon that hopelessly
| broke down on the way in days gone by;
| and here a mound, and a rough stone at
| the head of it, that show where some worn
traveller finished his journey, in those
! times when in one year across these
| heights went five thousand wagons, pulled
by seven thousand yoke of oxen.
And now the night begins to fall, and
| the train goes blowing through the dark
ness. The great burning eye of the loco
motive peers through, and flashes far
ahead upon the wild scene.
The grizzly bear, the panther, the night
| hawk, the cormorant, the pelican, the gros.
beck, the eagle, that kept aloof while the
| day shone, may venture nearer now, II
| they dare. Oh! how We fly! The rush
| of the wind, the jamming of the car-coup-
| ling, the clang of the wheels. the steam
hiss, the fierce shower of sparks that set
the night ON fire, the shooting past of rocks
five hundred feet high, followed by preci-
pice thousand feet deep, make the breath
short, and the heart thump, and the very
scalp lift
How the shadows shuttle! How the
crags shiver! How the echoes rave
An express train at night on the Rocky
Mountain The irresistible tramping the
immovable! Yet the way smoothed down
by human engineering. Then it will not
be so difficult to prepare the way for o
grander coming when the mountains shall
be made low, and the crooked straight,