Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-01-11
CHAPTE'a VIII.

On the fifth day, by rail and by sea and
by horse, saw what seemed to be beauti-
ful mirage OF the desert-fashing streams of
water, cool woods, waving cornfelds and
far away in the midst of it all a cleaning
city OF indescribable glory.
sit is not the mirage" said Father Blank,
as he rode at nv side down the grassy slope
toward little village or rather railway Sta
ton in a grove of banana trees.
But l surely have been here be ore.
Yonder on the brow OF that ridge far away
against the sun is lone cactus there that I
surely remember well, and then this pecu-
liarly intoxicating atmosphere; ah, too,
there is indeed the mirage as saw it of old;
the same, surely the same" And 1 lifted
my eyes.
mirage. But like the real and the ideal the
city OF the earth and the city of heaven so
nearly blend together here that it is not
always that even one who lives here can dis
tinCuish the two Let US say that the one
is what We call life and the other what we
call death-the one melting into the other -
By this time we had passed in under the
grateful broad leaves of the banana trees;
and, dismounting, we left our ponies with
their noses buried in the great glass water
troaghs. How different from the place
where I had pitched camp and spent the
thirsty night more than 80 years before
with the Mexican horse tradersl A train
was waiting, and such tlainl A train of
glass, each car an airy, fiery castle, gliding
away, a city and a sea of glass. There we're
no tickets, no conductor, nothingi
We glided forward; by gravitation pos
sibly. We did not roll l know. We swept
on and on noiselessly as a bird, swift and
straight as an arrow, guided by the feathers
of an eagle.
Fields of corn, cane, cotton, lane of
banana trees that shut out the sun from our
gliding palace of glass. And all this had
been only an arid sea of cleaning sand and
baked mud quarter Of a century before.
The Princess" began the priest, found
rain hard TO produce when she first came;
but she had been prudent enough to bring
with her something better than rain, in
telligence, and COLONY OF scientific men
apd women. We now have rain whenever
IL is needed"
/ think the priest said something about
the use of explosives, and the conclusion
from a salt petre mine on a mountain to the
windward of the new city to make rain; but
1 do not remember distinctly. The fact is,
was confused by the bewildering beauty of
the car.
YES" said the priest, Eve make glass
houses, railway ties, railway tracks and
even railway cars, as you see here
'And they don't break?"
''Glass is not only elastic, as all know,
but glass, by our scieG:ists' discovery, is
made as malleable as colE or copper, and so
now"
L hardly know what more the priest said
or may have said as we glided down the
grooves OF glass under the great banana
trees. For just then 1 caught glimpse
through the car of glass of party gathering
bananas. They were girls. all girls; up in
the trees among the birds, buried in the
broad leaves, an arm thrusting up after the
yellow fruit there, brown limb .thrusting
out below, drawn back, bound around and
twined around bush to hold fastl All, I
forgot that the priest was with me.
Many stations, many short stops, then on
and on through Ihe continuous and seeming