344 Beyond the Siej'ras. 



railroad, twisting around tlie mountain summits, and rushing up and up- 

 ward, through the very clouds and snow! It is cold at this great height. 

 Here we are, at la.st, amid the bleak sublimity of the pass itself. We are 

 1U,S56 feet above the level of the sea. Conversation has ceased; the hand!> 

 of many of the piissengers are swollen; and the faces of some are livid from 

 the outbursting blood. As for myself, 1 experienced no sensation except a 

 slight tendency to drowsiness. But I notice that the action of the lungs is 

 accelerated and abnormally vigorous. Now it is that if you have a good 

 breathing apparatus it stands you well in hand. You are among the incipi- 

 ent glaciers of the Rockies. Tour train winds round and round; the heavens 

 spin, and the earth totters, but regains her balance, and stands fast. Fain 

 would the conductor, who is used to view on every trip these tremendous 

 aspects of nature, call your attention to this and that. You answer him not. 

 Y'ou have enough. I confess that my recollection of these magnificent 

 heights is a kind of glamour which does not resolve itself into clear outlines 

 of form and substance. 



Over the crest you go. Your second engine is cut loose, and flies ahead, 

 plunging downward at the rate of 211 feet per mile. Presently you see the 

 little giant in a valley away below you, and coming back, apparently, to the 

 train. Here is the track and yonder is the track ; above you is the track 

 and below you is the track; and even j'our own train seems to go in all 

 directions at once. But down you go, and your excited respiration begins 

 to subside, and the world comes back, and with it the current of your natural 

 thoughts. 



If I had any reserved fragment of language or list of images for what 

 may be considered a special emergency and demand, I should now, once for 

 all, draw upon the same, in the hope of conveying to the reader my impres- 

 sions of the Black Canon and Royal Gorge. But I have no unexhausted 

 resource, and the vision will have to pass without a transcript. Still, the 

 vision is before me. It rises above all others of its kind, and is conspicuous 

 in the halo and vista of memory as something not to be duplicated or com- 

 pared. At the bottom of the great chasm, narrow, dark, and ominous, lies 

 the little double band of iron, riveted to the rocks by the puny hands of 

 man. The rushing stream, new-born out of the mountain snows, plunges 

 and foams by the side of the track ; and the abys.s winds before you and 

 behind you, through a labyrinth of shadows. 



It is gloomy here. Specters and spirits, and even dragons of the nether 

 world, might arise out of the cavernous recesses and somber notches in the 

 granite clifls beside you. The roar of the little train is swallowed up in the 

 oblivion of the gorge. On eithsr hand the almighty clifls rise perpendicu- 

 larly from the edges of the river and the track, to the height of 3,000 feet. 

 Thirty tall trees, standing one above the other, would not reach from the 

 bottom to the open air and heaven on high. The granite battlements over- 

 hang the way. They form a bridge above you. They shut out the light. 

 The sky above is only a narrow ribbon of blue. Down here are silence and 

 darkness— and might be death. 



