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SNOW BLOCKADES. 257 
i 
ace, their effect upon the new trade from Asia to Europe 
Ae ross the United States, would be very damaging; they 
WW ould characterise the route as one not to be relied on for 
@ternational commerce.” 
) It is comparatively easy to roof the line across a snow-belt 
f thirty miles through the Sierra Nevada, where timber is 
abundant ; it is impossible to cover 300 miles of rail in 
the Rocky Mountains, where timber is either entirely absent 
mr very scarce. As I remarked in a preceding chapter, I 
ould not proceed eastward by the Platte route in March, 
1868, even from Cheyenne City, on the plains, and was 
obliged to proceed southward by Denver, and strike the 
K ansas Pacific. The latest accounts from America confirm 
the gravest doubts of the Senate committee. | 
’ Last February there was a snow blockade for twenty days 
at Cheyenne, and on the Laramie plains traffic was completely 
stopped for five weeks, so that orders had to be given for all 
mails from New York to San Francisco to be sent for the 
tim e round by Panama. 
_ Can anything be much more miserable than to 2 snowed 
‘ ip for a month in the Bitter Creek country? Yet this did 
0 cur as late as last March; fifty of the passengers arrived 
| Laramie Station, after walkie ninety miles through the 
ws, at an elevation of over 7,000 feet above the sea ; 150 
sengers were left behind, and had not been rescued at the 
e I received the above information, although on April 
Ist through traffic had not been resumed. 
ty 
