COMMENCEMENT OF RAILWAYS. 



III. RAILWAYS. 



5. The phenomena of transport so unexpectedly developed on 

 the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, and the 

 miracles of swift locomotion there exhibited, had no sooner been 

 announced, than the Americans, with their usual ardour, resolved 

 to import this great improvement; and projects of passenger rail- 

 ways, on the vast scale which characterises all their enterprises, 

 were immediately set forth. 



Some lines of railway in isolated positions, around coal-works 

 and manufactories, had been, as in England, already for some 

 years in operation. It was not, however, until after 1830 that the 

 railway system began to assume in America the character which 

 it had already taken in England. A few years were sufficient to 

 bring it into practical operation in several parts of New England 

 and in the State of New York; and, once commenced, its progress 

 was extremely rapid. 



As might naturally be expected, the chief theatre of railway 

 enterprise is the Atlantic States. The Mississippi and its tribu- 

 taries have hitherto served the purposes of commerce and inter- 

 communication to the comparatively thinly scattered population 

 of the Western States so efficiently, that notwithstanding the extra- 

 ordinary enterprise of the people, the railway system has hitherto 

 made comparatively small progress in these vast forest- covered 

 plains and open prairies. Nevertheless they have not altogether 

 escaped the operations of the engineer ; and the traveller already 

 feels the benefit, even in these remote regions, of the new art of 

 transport. These railways consist as yet of detached and single lines, 

 unconnected with the vast network which we shall presently notice. 



To the traveller in these wild regions, the aspect of such artificial 

 agents of transport in the midst of a country, a great portion of 

 which is still in the state of native forest, is most remarkable, and 

 strongly characteristic of the irrepressible spirit of enterprise of 

 its people. Travelling in the backwoods of Mississippi, through 

 native forests, where, till within a few years, human foot never 

 trod, through solitudes, the silence of which was never broken, 

 even by the red man, we have been sometimes filled with wonder 

 to find ourselves transported by an engine constructed at New- 

 eastle-on-Tyne, and driven by an artisan from Liverpool, at the 

 rate of twenty miles an hour. It is not easy to describe the 

 impression produced by the juxtaposition of these refinements of 

 art and science with the wildness of the country, where one sees 

 the frightened deer start from its lair at the snorting of the 

 ponderous machine and the appearance of the snake-like train 

 which follows it. 



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