The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1896-08-19
Notes OF Travel

The prominent thought which rail-
roads strangely seek to inculcate on
passengers is the peril of travel by
rail. In big letters over the ticket
Office is sign about Accident In
surance.' We buy our ticket and the
accommodating ticket agent kindly puts
it in an envelope on which is printed
General Accidents buy Our Ac-
cident Insurance Ticket" t"-"Ask
Your Agent for Ticket in the -
of Hartford" To US it is passing
strange that the railroads themselves
should thus seek to impress upon the
travelling public the deadly peril Of a
Journey over their own roads. In
stead of advising the tourist to TASK
the agent for ticket to one of the
delightful summer resorts, or one of
the great centers of business, they in
innate that he may not survive the
ordeal of entering one of their palace
cars, and kindly offer to sell him an
accident insurance ticket which will
entitle his family to $4,000 if they
should kill him, or 1880 per week in
demnity' if they should break his
limbs or injure and mangle him so as
to con6ne him to his room.
Is it strange then that many who
are not,used to travelling, regard the
railroads as peculiarly dangerous, and
feel as though they should first make
their wills before setting out on a
journey? And are not the railroads
themselves partly responsible for this
ungroupded timidity about them?
Railroad travel instead Of being one Of
the most dangerous, is one of the SAT-
est modes Of transportation. The
railroads of this country carry about
six hundred million passengers year.
Less than three hundred, on an aver
age, out of this large number are kill
ed. The probabilities of passengers
being killed on railroad journey are
therefore about one in two million !!
This represents a railroad journey
every day in the year nearly six thous-
and years
We do not think of danger in con-
nection with walking. But could a
thousand men start from the Atlantic
seaboard to walk across the continent
to the Pacific coast and make the
Journey of three thousand miles over
dusty or rocky roads, fording streams,
crossing rivers: pushing through
swamps, scaling the mountains, pene-
trating the forests, traversing the
deserts, plodding over the weary
wastes, without sickness or serious
accident to any one of the number?
Could it be done on horseback or in
vehicle without casualty? Yet on the
railroads thousands make this journey
in safety every day in the year.
But the speed of the train is so
rapid as to suggest accident. Rail
roads are rapid only as compared with
other forms sof human locomotion.
They are speedy as contrasted with
the donkey trains of Persia, which
make only fifteen miles day, or the
camel caravans of Africa. or the OK
cart of America, or even the stage
coaches Of our fathers; but they are
slow indeed as compared with those of
nature. From the mountain top,
where we can obtain view Of the
track for fifteen or twenty miles, the
trains seem to crawl with motion al
most too slow to be appreciable. We
watch the train in the distance for
several seconds before we can tell
whether it is actually moving. The
winds, the sound, the light, the elec-
trio current, the earth itself-how
much faster do they all travel. The
express train makes only forty or fifty
miles an hour, but the earth turning
on it's axis carries US around $4,000
miles in "a hours, nearly a thousand
miles an hour-about twenty times as
fast-and yet we are unconscious of
our rapid movement. 1t takes a whole
night to go from Louisville to St.
Louis by rail. Gould we ascend in a
balloon and apply some contrivance to
interrupt that fo.ce of nature which
carries us around with the earth, SO
as to remain stationary above while
the earth moves on beneath us, we
would make the journey in less than
half an hour. The voyage to China
would in like manner be accomplished
in about twelve hours. This would
be rapid transit indeed, yet not the
fastest which the world may witness.
We are travelling with the earth in
its orbit around the sun at the rate of
a million, six hundred thousand miles
a day-that is more than eighteen
miles second. Could some system
be devised by which we could leave
the surface Of the earth and remain
perfectly at rest, while the earth hast
ems on in it's yearly career, and, at
will, drop down to mother earth again,
it would take US only six seconds to
make journey of hundred miles.
In less than q minute we could drop
in at the house of friend who lives
thousand miles away! Strange as
may seem the paradox of remaining
absolutely at rest while travelling at
the rate of thousand miles minute,
we have not yet reached the limit of
what human engenuity may accomp-
lish.
The sun, with all the planets, our
entire solar system, IS revolving
around the unknown center of the uni
verse with a speed we know not how
much greater than the earth is cours-
ing through its orbit round the sun,
and the mind stands in awe in con-
temptation of the speed with which
our relative position to any specified
locality in this world would change
could we but elude the grasp of the
strong, invisible arms of gravitation,
while our earth in company with the
sun and the other planets, is sweep
ing through space at speed of which