CHAPTER XL. 



Construction and Management of Railways in America. Journey by Long 

 Island from New York to Boston. Whale Fishery in the Pacific. 

 Chewing Tobacco. Visit to Wenham Lake. Cause of the superior 

 Permanence of Wenham Lake Ice. Return to Boston. Skeletons of 

 Fossil Mastodons. Food of those extinct Quadrupeds. Anti-war De 

 monstration. Voyage to Halifax. Dense Fog. Large Group of Ice 

 bergs seen on the Ocean. Transportation of Rocks by Icebergs. Danger 

 of fast Sailing among Bergs. Aurora Borealis. Connection of this 

 Phenomenon with drift Ice. Pilot with English Newspapers. Return 

 to Liverpool. 



May 21, 1846. IN the construction and management of 

 railways, the Americans have in general displayed more prudence 

 and economy than could have been expected, where a people of 

 such sanguine temperament were entering on so novel a career 

 of enterprise. Annual dividends of seven or eight per cent, have 

 been returned for a large part of the capital laid out on the New 

 England railways, and on many others in the northern states. 

 The cost of passing the original bills through the state parliaments 

 has usually been very moderate, and never exorbitant ; the lines 

 have been carried as much as possible through districts where 

 land was cheap ; a single line only laid down where the traffic 

 did not justify two ; high gradients resorted to, rather than incur 

 the expense of deep cuttings ; tunnels entirely avoided ; very little 

 money spent in building station-houses ; and, except where the 

 population was large, they have been content with the speed of 

 fourteen or sixteen miles an hour. It has, moreover, been an 

 invariable maxim &quot; to go for numbers,&quot; by lowering the fares so 

 as to bring them within the reach of all classes. Occasionally, 

 when the intercourse between two rich and populous cities, like 

 New York and Boston, has excited the eager competition of rival 

 companies, they have accelerated the speed far beyond the usual 

 average ; and we were carried from one metropolis to the other, 



