St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1878-08-16
From Vermont to the Golden Gate

All night and all day
Shifting space in the flank
And no token those clouds
Will ever break rank
Still the engines bright arms
Are barred to the shoulder
In the long level pull
Till the mountains grow bolder.
We strike the Great Desert
With its wilderness howl,
With its cactus and sage,
With its serpent and owl
We swing round a headland
Oh the track is not therel
1t has melted away
Like rain bow in air.
Oh we creep round ledge,
On the worlds very edge,
On shelf of the rock
Where an eagle might nest
And the hearts double knock
Dies away in the breast,
We have rounded Cape Horn
Grand Pacific, good mOrn"
And thus-only good deal more of it
did our train speed its way over the
North estern, the Union Pacific and
the Central Pacific railroads, to the
Golden Gate. And so, thousands and
thousands of people have sped on from
the Atlantic to the Pacific coast, and
hundreds and hundreds have written
their books or their newspaper letters,
telling the public all about it, so what
is left for me to tell the readers of the
CaledOnian And some of you have
tried it for yourselves, and know all
about the great busy cities, and the
quiet villages, the wonderful valleys
carpeted with wild flowers, "fields sown
thick with sunflowers like an English
field with buttercups )" the grand noun
tains with snowy tops, looking down
upon the swift rushing trains as calmly
as they looked, when only Goods cattle"
and Americas Aborigines roamed over
the wide plains, spreading far away
into the unseen vistas of the north"
You know too, all that one riding in
a palace car, can know of prairie dogs
and owls, and sage brush. Only the
emigrant, toiling slowly on, day after
day, encamping on the alkali plains
night after night, can know all about
these. And only those old pathfnders
of Forty-nine, can know all about the
canyons and ravines; and yet scores
and scores of travellers, English and
American, have written their books, to
swell the number of printed pages that
even the Uorld could not contain, if
many of them were not like man, born
to die. And after all, only the red
man (-'Lo, the poor Indian" "wrap-
ping the drapery" of his government
blanket around him, a few stains of the
war paint on his face, and a few feath-
ers in his hair, slowly and sullenly
marching on, "going west," not because
of the aduice of Horace, or anybody
else, but because he is compelled to leave
the happy hunting grounds of his faith
ers,) could he write at all, could write
book telling the whole story. The
story of plains of alkali, of sage brush
and prairie dogs-of flowers and grass
es, and of bloody Indian massacres.
The story of mountain, plain and can
yOn, from which the buffalo and ante
lope, as well as himself, are being fast
driven away.
In such a journey as that "Across the
Continent" it is not only the landscapes
that interest, but the travellers, all the
travellers! When there is monotony
without, there is variety enough within,
not only variety of dress and features,
but of characters. Every grade of in
tellect and orthodoxy, from Theodore
Cuyler, TO the blatant infidel of the Bob
lngersol style, were represented in our
car. A car which only a week before
had been entered by masked robbers in
the night, proofs of whose presence re-
mained in the bullet holes, and in
another car, one of the robbers, with
his keeper going to his trial. But with
us were three men (9) with no masks to
cover their faces, and when plenty of
whisky had been drank, the masks
slipped off from their characters and
their designs. There was material
enough for drama. 1t might have
been a tragedy-but what seemed an
accident saved one victim from the
snare of the evil ones, for awhile at
least.
And so we, coming from Canada and
Maine, and from the sunny south, and
from many places between, rode on day
after day, and night after night, till we
reached the coast" The coast s'where
the places are all saints and the people
all sinners" Where Kearney and his
followers say ''The Chinese must 60"
Where the street cars are covered with
placards bearing the same words:
"The Chinese must CO." Where a mem
Der of Congress and others in official
places, having no aviues, no home life,
say the Chinese do not bring their fam
ities with them, therefore "the Chinese
must CO." Where torch light process
sions, bearing alOft banners with the
same device: ''The Chinese must go.n
Professions where ranks are filled with
men who are wasting their time, their
money and their health in dens of vice
and iniquity. Men who, unmindful of
the shame of their own lives, say the
Chinese bring paganism and prostitutes
they corrupt the youth of our Chris
tian land, therefore "The Chinese must
go" Consistency, art thou found on
this wonderful coast?