RAILWAY OVEE THE ALLEGHANY MOUNTAINS. 81 



widely spread through certain classes in the United 

 States, and I attribute it to the simply mercantile spi 

 rit that completely engrosses the mind of many a good 

 man. 



We passed Cresson House, an hotel open only in sum- 

 mer, fifteen miles above Altoona, and from what 'I saw, 

 and also from what was told me (though I am far from 

 putting faith in hear-say), I can conceive that hotel being 

 a very healthy and a rational and an amusing place in 

 the heat of summer, both for the gun of the ornithologist 

 or the hand-net of the entomologist, as well as for the 

 rod and line of the fisherman, as there must be trout in 

 the mountain streams. We now approached that curve 

 in the line I was so anxious to see, and I do not know 

 that I can describe it better than in likening its shape to 

 that of the fore-foot of a donkey. A little narrow valley 

 bites into the mountains, and when you are railing along 

 one side of that valley, you see your road within rifle 

 shot on the contrary side, and the train, to keep on its 

 given way, absolutely has to describe a very limited half 

 circle at the end of the little valley in the side of the hill, 

 with a great depth beneath it, and an inaccessible height 

 above. / 



I stood outside the carriage and thought of what 

 would happen if some reckless go-ahead engine-driver, 

 supposed by my countrymen to be so prevalent in America, 

 should get one drop too much excited -by whiskey from 

 a secret flask a fault to which a man even in the best- 

 regulated family may occasionally be prone ! A very 

 decreased rate of speed was all that kept us from de 

 struction. For a length of way we wound up and then 

 down through this magnificent scenery, stopping as 



