Wichita eagle., 1890-02-09

racine.
While the latter road Gncluding the Union
Pacifc) was being finished in 1866, the
winter was SO mild that work was scarcely
checked-all the grading and much OF the
track laying through Utah was done In the
dead of winter The next two seasons were
but little colder. Nature seemed to want
give the new enterprise a chance. Then came
the "good old fashioned winter" Of 1S71-72.
Snow fell every day for three weeks. For
five weeks were the trains blockaded on the
Union Pacific, while, strange to say, the Gen.
tral Pacific lat that time the part between
Ogden and San Francisco) was free, and the
result was that about 2,000 returning tourists
''wintered with the MormonsI" The route
had Just become popular; Englishmen from
China, India, Australia chose it in preference
to long sea voyage, and with them came
embassies from various Oriental countries TO
the United States. They got to Utah, but
could get no farther. 1t was the gayest WIN
ter Salt Lake City ever experienced, but 1t
was rough on the railroad.
The suffering in those days was proportion
ately much greater than now, as there were
long stretches Of road with no settlements ad-
jacent, and man had devised no effective
methods Of breaking the blockade All that
winter the Union Pacific kept hundreds Of
men constantly shoveling the old fashioned
way. Then the snow plow was tried, and
the practice of 'bucking'-running a loco
motive hard against the ice pack to break it
up. Five years ago the rotary steam plow
was invented and soon superseded everything
else. 1t literally bores into the ice pack. cut
ting off the ice in great shavings and whirl-
ing them far away from the track.
Snow slides followed and remain a per
manent danger in all the Rocky mountain
region. Miners are swept away with their
cabins or imprisoned in tunnels, and many
true and affecting accounts are given of him
thus shut in for days: but the snow admits
air and excludes cold, and SO the imprisoned
generally come out alive if reached before
starvation kills them.
The ocean record is more fearful still The
whole Atlantic north of the tropics has been
swept by gales and lashed to fury; every YES
sci comes into port with tales of disaster;
from every prominent port come reports Of
vessels gone ashore and breaking up, and
many, very many, whose friends were afloat
in steamers now Overdue" are feeling that
"hope deferred which maketh the heart
sick" A single quotation from the service
report will iilustr ate better than many para
graphs the slow agony of such waiting. Here
it is:
National liner Erin-twenty-four days
out from New York and not sighted-usual
time in winter sixteen days. Had about
eighty men on board and cargo of cattle.
Another National liner, the Egypt, with
steerage passengers only, is overdue at New
York"
And if one studies the case for comfort or
encouragement he finds but little in such pas
sageS as this:
''The weather on the North Atlantic, al
ways boisterous in January, has been phe-
nomenally SO this year. The photographic
office cannot recall anything like it, and the
ship captains unanimously pronounce it the
worst they have ever weathered. A seriesof
awful westerly gales has been bowling off the
Banks of Newfoundland for the last five
weeks. The nature and origin of these gales
will be the subject of a special essay by the
photographic office in its next report.