RAIL-ROADS. 561 



BENEFITS OF RAILWAYS TO OUR UNION. 



The influence of such works upon the Atlantic, as 

 well as upon the Western Slates of the Union, forces it- 

 self upon our consideration. The object of Virginia, 

 Maryland, Pennsylvania, New-York and Massachusetts, 



the cars aro laden with passengers, and then drawn by a stationary 

 engine through a chirk tunnel of 300 to 400 feet, into a deep and 

 rectangular ba-in, itself open to the heavens but sunk about titty 

 feet in the same solid rock, topped and inclosed with artificial bat- 

 tlements of heavy masonry. 



' Tlii- immcn <e artificial chasm is a beautiful, as well as a stupend- 

 ous work. The deep cut in the rock continues, with gradual de- 

 creaso, a large moiety of a mile. The basin above describe I is the 

 etartinjj arid arriving point or the goal. Here the locomotive en- 

 gine i< a'iached. am! away it goes at the precise moment, and soon 

 the p:i.s.-n;.i>r feels himself on 'wing*. If he looks at the nearest ob- 

 jects, he i-" dizzy in an instant. He cannot endure it. And for re- 

 lief, he throws out his eye upon the fields, and trees, and country 

 around. The motion of "the car, in its rapid flight, is so much like 

 that of a coach running swiftly over smooth ground, itself being a 

 dose carriage, and the twitching so exactly similar to that of hoi-sea 

 on a full jump, that in spile of the evidences to the contrary around 

 me today, as 1 was whirled along, I several times imagined fully 

 for a moment, that our horses were running to destruction with loose 

 rein and startled at the thought. 



*Th?re are two separate trains for passengers, one of the first 

 da??, (ho other of the second each making three trips a day to and 

 fro. The first is a close carriage or a train of coaches, each ac- 

 commodating eighteen passengers in three separate apartments 

 running through a distance of thirtytwo miles, in one hour and thir- 

 ty miu'iA-s. "The second class is composed of open cars runs 

 through in two hours fare three shillings and sixpence sterling. 

 Fare for the first class five shillings. The-e trains often carry from 

 200 to 300 passengers. The average number of passengers per day, 

 between Liverpool and Manchester, for the last two weeks, ha* 

 been 2.200. 



' I started this morning in the first class, with six coaches in train, 

 and about one hundred passengers. The first halfway we passed 

 in fine style, and high spirits, and having replenished the water 

 for the engine, were soon under full speed again. I had frequently 

 put my head out of the coach to look backward and forward, and 

 abroad to make such observations, as curiosity, and the novel in- 

 terest of the scene, prompted. Sometimes a train, coming from the 

 opposite direction, might be seen ahead, and soon it would brush by 

 us, at a distance of three feet, with such velocity, that, pent up as 

 we were, we could no more count the number of coaches, than the 

 ^>okes in a woman's spinning wheel, when buzzing in its swiftest 



