102 MY FIRST " DIFFICULTY." 



their necessities nor their funds would permit of such 

 precautions for the public safety. The public needed a 

 speedy transit ; and, as the public desired and required 

 the utmost go-ahead haste to reach a given spot, why, 

 they got it on the only terms it could be afforded, and 

 the public must take care of themselves. Lives, com 

 pared with mercantile interests, or with the possibility 

 of reaching the most distant settlements, were not con 

 sidered. If a dozen men were killed, there were hun 

 dreds more ready to fill their places, and hence the power 

 to " go ahead" and nothing but that power was the 

 chief object of the United States. 



During this journey to St Louis, however, I met with 

 my first " difficulty, " as the Americans would call it, 

 with a thing called a man in one of the baggage vans. 

 There were two fellows in this van, who seemed so little 

 disposed to pay attention to the safety of my dogs that 

 George Bromfield, the place being crammed with lug 

 gage, asked. me again to put myself in evidence, or he 

 feared some accident might otherwise occur. On this I 

 left the cars and travelled with my dogs. I had not 

 been long so stationed ere I had reason to watch the 

 conduct of the two unmitigated scamps to whose tender 

 consciences the property of all those travelling by rail 

 was, for the time being, intrusted. Piled up in heaps 

 were the trunks and boxes of gentlemen, and perhaps 

 affluent merchants and tradesmen, and among them the 

 well-worn and ill-secured little all of some poor emi 

 grant. My trunks and boxes, too, were there, and when 

 compared with those of the better class of Americans, I 

 at once became aware that where my packages had one 

 hoop of iron to protect them, those of my fellow-travel 

 lers had ten, with the corners of their trunks rounded 



