FELLOW-PASSENGERS
At Ogden we changed cars from the Union Pacific to the Central
Pacific line of railroad. The change was doubly welcome; for,
first, we had better cars on the new line; and, second, those in
which we had been cooped for more than ninety hours had begun to
stink abominably. Several yards away, as we returned, let us say
from dinner, our nostrils were assailed by rancid air. I have
stood on a platform while the whole train was shunting; and as the
dwelling-cars drew near, there would come a whiff of pure
menagerie, only a little sourer, as from men instead of monkeys. I
think we are human only in virtue of open windows. Without fresh
air, you only require a bad heart, and a remarkable command of the
Queen's English, to become such another as Dean Swift; a kind of
leering, human goat, leaping and wagging your scut on mountains of
offence. I do my best to keep my head the other way, and look for
the human rather than the bestial in this Yahoo-like business of
the emigrant train. But one thing I must say, the car of the
Chinese was notably the least offensive.
The cars on the Central Pacific were nearly twice as high, and so
proportionally airier; they were freshly varnished, which gave us
all a sense of cleanliness an though we had bathed; the seats drew
out and joined in the centre, so that there was no more need for
bed boards; and there was an upper tier of berths which could be
closed by day and opened at night.
I had by this time some opportunity of seeing the people whom I was
among. They were in rather marked contrast to the emigrants I had
met on board ship while crossing the Atlantic. They were mostly
lumpish fellows, silent and noisy, a common combination; somewhat
sad, I should say, with an extraordinary poor taste in humour, and
little interest in their fellow-creatures beyond that of a cheap
and merely external curiosity. If they heard a man's name and
business, they seemed to think they had the heart of that mystery;
but they were as eager to know that much as they were indifferent
to the rest. Some of them were on nettles till they learned your
name was Dickson and you a journeyman baker; but beyond that,
whether you were Catholic or Mormon, dull or clever, fierce or
friendly, was all one to them. Others who were not so stupid,
gossiped a little, and, I am bound to say, unkindly. A favourite
witticism was for some lout to raise the alarm of "All aboard!"
while the rest of us were dining, thus contributing his mite to the
general discomfort. Such a one was always much applauded for his
high spirits. When I was ill coming through Wyoming, I was
astonished - fresh from the eager humanity on board ship - to meet
with little but laughter. One of the young men even amused himself
by incommoding me, as was then very easy; and that not from ill-
nature, but mere clodlike incapacity to think, for he expected me
to join the laugh. I did so, but it was phantom merriment. Later
on, a man from Kansas had three violent epileptic fits, and though,
of course, there were not wanting some to help him, it was rather
superstitious terror than sympathy that his case evoked among his
fellow-passengers. "Oh, I hope he's not going to die!" cried a
woman; "it would be terrible to have a dead body!" And there was a
very general movement to leave the man behind at the next station.
This, by good fortune, the conductor negatived.
There was a good deal of story-telling in some quarters; in others,
little but silence. In this society, more than any other that ever
I was in, it was the narrator alone who seemed to enjoy the
narrative. It was rarely that any one listened for the listening.
If he lent an ear to another man's story, it was because he was in
immediate want of a hearer for one of his own. Food and the
progress of the train were the subjects most generally treated;
many joined to discuss these who otherwise would hold their
tongues. One small knot had no better occupation than to worm out
of me my name; and the more they tried, the more obstinately fixed
I grew to baffle them. They assailed me with artful questions and
insidious offers of correspondence in the future; but I was
perpetually on my guard, and parried their assaults with inward
laughter. I am sure Dubuque would have given me ten dollars for
the secret. He owed me far more, had he understood life, for thus
preserving him a lively interest throughout the journey. I met one
of my fellow-passengers months after, driving a street tramway car
in San Francisco; and, as the joke was now out of season, told him
my name without subterfuge. You never saw a man more chapfallen.
But had my name been Demogorgon, after so prolonged a mystery he
had still been disappointed.
There were no emigrants direct from Europe - save one German family
and a knot of Cornish miners who kept grimly by themselves, one
reading the New Testament all day long through steel spectacles,
the rest discussing privately the secrets of their old-world,
mysterious race. Lady Hester Stanhope believed she could make
something great of the Cornish; for my part, I can make nothing of
them at all. A division of races, older and more original than
that of Babel, keeps this close, esoteric family apart from
neighbouring Englishmen. Not even a Red Indian seems more foreign
in my eyes. This is one of the lessons of travel - that some of
the strangest races dwell next door to you at home.
The rest were all American born, but they came from almost every
quarter of that Continent. All the States of the North had sent
out a fugitive to cross the plains with me. From Virginia, from
Pennsylvania, from New York, from far western Iowa and Kansas, from
Maime that borders on the Canadas, and from the Canadas themselves
- some one or two were fleeing in quest of a better land and better
wages. The talk in the train, like the talk I heard on the
steamer, ran upon hard times, short commons, and hope that moves
ever westward. I thought of my shipful from Great Britain with a
feeling of despair. They had come 3000 miles, and yet not far
enough. Hard times bowed them out of the Clyde, and stood to
welcome them at Sandy Hook. Where were they to go? Pennsylvania,
Maine, Iowa, Kansas? These were not places for immigration, but
for emigration, it appeared; not one of them, but I knew a man who
had lifted up his heel and left it for an ungrateful country. And
it was still westward that they ran. Hunger, you would have
thought, came out of the east like the sun, and the evening was
made of edible gold. And, meantime, in the car in front of me,
were there not half a hundred emigrants from the opposite quarter?
Hungry Europe and hungry China, each pouring from their gates in
search of provender, had here come face to face. The two waves had
met; east and west had alike failed; the whole round world had been
prospected and condemned; there was no El Dorado anywhere; and till
one could emigrate to the moon, it seemed as well to stay patiently
at home. Nor was there wanting another sign, at once more
picturesque and more disheartening; for, as we continued to steam
westward toward the land of gold, we were continually passing other
emigrant trains upon the journey east; and these were as crowded as
our own. Had all these return voyagers made a fortune in the
mines? Were they all bound for Paris, and to be in Rome by Easter?
It would seem not, for, whenever we met them, the passengers ran on
the platform and cried to us through the windows, in a kind of
wailing chorus, to "come back." On the plains of Nebraska, in the
mountains of Wyoming, it was still the same cry, and dismal to my
heart, "Come back!" That was what we heard by the way "about the
good country we were going to." And at that very hour the Sand-lot
of San Francisco was crowded with the unemployed, and the echo from
the other side of Market Street was repeating the rant of
demagogues.
If, in truth, it were only for the sake of wages that men emigrate,
how many thousands would regret the bargain! But wages, indeed,
are only one consideration out of many; for we are a race of
gipsies, and love change and travel for themselves.
