16 



THE SEA. 



(i.e., twenty-five cents, the fourth of a dollar) for any small drink, fifty cents for a very 

 small bottle of Bass, and wines expensive in proportion. Still you dine at your ease and 

 leisure, instead of rushing out with a crowd at the " eating- stations," where the trains 

 usually stop three times a day. We have the authority of Mr. "W. F. Rae for stating 

 that " no royal personage can be more comfortably housed than the occupant of a Pullman 

 car, provided the car be an hotel one." * 



At Omaha, on the Missouri, the Pacific Railway proper commences, although the various 

 New York and other lines, as we have seen, connect with it. The river, irreverently known on 



A PULLMAN RAILWAY CAK. 



the spot as "The Great Muddy/' from the colour of its water and its numerous sand and 

 mud banks, is crossed at this point by a fine bridge. Apropos of the said banks, which are 

 constantly shifting, a story is told of a countryman who, years ago, before the age of steam 

 ferries, wanted to cross the Missouri near this point. He did not see his way till he observed 

 a sand-bank " washing-up," as they call it, to the surface of the water near the shore on 

 which he stood. He jumped on it, and it shifted so rapidly that it took him clear across 

 the river, and he was able to land on the opposite side ! The story is an exaggerated version 

 of fact. The shifting sand-banks make navigation perilous, and good river pilots command a 

 high figure. 



The literature of the railway has hardly yet been attempted. It is true that scarcely 

 a day passes without something of interest transpiring in connection therewith : now some 

 grand improvement, now a terrible accident or narrow escape, and now again the opening of 

 some important line. The humours of railroad travel good and bad often enliven the 



# " Westward by RaU." 



