Iowa voter. [volume] (Knoxville, Iowa) 1867-1874, 1871-12-14
Miscellany.
The Sensation Of Riding on a Loco
mOtiye-HOw it Feels.

The sensation Oh riding on q Loco.
mOtive-HOw it Feels.
4 MOST graphic sketch of the sensation
n riding on an engine is one contributed
10 the Independent by the Rev. Dewitt
Talmadge, who tried the experiment
while journeying in the Rocky Noun
tains. He says:
MAY / get on with you?" | asked an
engineer on the Pacific Railroad, at sta
hon six or seven thousand feet above the
level of the sea. Certainly" he said,
"but hold fast tight or you may fall off -
foot, toot," went the whistle, and the
long anaconda Of a railroad train first
went crawling along the rocks but soon
hook on fearful momentum. Sitting in
"Pullman's Palace Car" looking out of
HE window, the passengers get no idea of
the speed of the train; but close by the
Engineer, and feeling the nervous culver
Ind Jump of the iron cOurser, you see the
FOUNTAINS skip like rams, and the hills
Ike lambs.
The door of the locomotive furnace
angs open and the flames rave as if
lev would leap out to devour, and the
reman Jars the coal into the raging jaw
II the monster The engineer has his
hand on the iron bit that controls the
kpeed. and seems to use no exertion more
hhan doctor feeling the pulse of child.
Indeed, the locomotive, to the engineer, is
hot mere machine; but an animate. He
&talks to it, seems to pat it lovingly on the
[neck. He is proud of it. There is a
#Fwarm understanding between the two,
land in occasional spurts of steam the To-
locomotive seems to take voice and answer
Eits rider An engine never hurts its mas
Eter, save in the effort to throw the passen-
&gers.
But the engineer, though sitting SO
{placid, is wide-awake. He is kept on
duty only 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
We plunge into snow-shed with infin-
lite clatter, every board and seam beating
back the deafening roar of the Pacific Elk
press. AS we rush on, the prairie dogs
kulk into their holes. or sit on their hind
quarters, with fore feet lifted, as if to say,
What next?" The antelopes scamper
yer the plains. We ride unimpeded,
khere less than two years ago the butfa-
oes stopped the train as the herds STAN
heded across the track and along here the
avages cantered on their ponies. You
see here and there groups OF red men, with
long hair, and cheeks dashed with war
paint, ringcd ears, and a superiority OF
dirt that buries your last romantic notion
about the "noble red men Of the forest
FThe air is laden with the breath of cedar,
madrona, manZanita, and buckeye. Here
i've are passing through what seems the
ruins of castles and temples and cities,
and calling up to mind Petra and Pompeli,
and Nineveh and Thebes; but these ruins,
ION either side of our track, must have
been water abodes, where giants might
have lived till the Titans began here 10
play leap-frog and to turn somersaultS.
Now the whistle lets off a wild scream;
COW and calf on the track. The COW we
cut in halves. and the calf, with broken
legs, tumbles over into the ditch. | won
der If that man Just ahead will get of in
time. Perhaps he is deaf; perhaps he IS
crazy, and wants to be run over. In time
to save himself, he switches off and robs
the coroner.
Hold ysur breath Ravine thousand
feet deep on this side. Embankment a
thousand feet up the other. As we turn
the curve the engineer pulls the steam
valve, and the silence that chiefly relgns
here for six thousand years lets slip all its
sounds of echo and reverberation.
Whew! how we fly If bolt break, or
a truck fall, or rock dislodge, we are In
eternity Innumerable variety OF flowers
break their alabaster at the feet 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
The pressure of the train. A tunnel!
Ink black, midnight doubled, dampness
That never saw the sun; while far ahead Is
hint of sunlight peering through hole
That looks about the size OF the arch OF
nouse-trap, but which widens till at last
is large enough to let whole train es-
cape into the golden day.
Out there is the old emigrant road, with
occasionally skeleton of cow or horse,
Or the wreck of wagon, that hopelessly
broke down on the way; and here small
mound and rough stone at the head OF
Il, that shows where some worn traveller
ninished his journey, in those days when,
IN one year, across these heights went
quo wagons, pulled by 1000 mules and
ooW0 yoke of oxen.
And now the night begins to fall and
II SoCS pioNii t'io"Sh
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
grosbeck, the eagle, that kept aloof while
sie DAY shone, may venture nearer now,
II they dare. Oh, how we fly The
rush of the wind, the jamming OF the car
couplings, the changing Of the wheels, the
aeam hiss, the fierce shower OF sparks
asat set the night on fire, the shooting pas.
u rocks five hundred feet high, followed
wa ,precipice thousand feet deep. make
ane breath short, and the heart thump,
ana the very scalp lift
How the shadows shuttle How the
eiags SILVER How the echoes rave An
ss1press train at night on the Rocky
fountains The irresistible trampllne
,ne imnovable Yet the way is smooth,
e e.;S down by human engineering. Then II
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