Across America by rail, by Thomas Elphick

An original piece of travel writing written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

This extract comes from a travel book published in 1873, in which an English traveller describes crossing the United States by the new railway from the east coast to California.

The traveller who sets out from New York for San Francisco may expect to pass seven days and nights upon the cars, and he will be told by everyone he meets that he will be bored to death. I was told so myself at least a dozen times, and I came to believe it, and so I laid in a stock of novels, a chess board and a pound of peppermints against the coming tedium.

Of the comfort of the journey there can be no question. The sleeping car in which I travelled from Omaha was fitted up like a little drawing room on wheels, with walnut panelling, plush seats, looking glasses and a small library, and at night a porter of great dignity converted the whole into two rows of curtained berths with clean linen, so neatly and swiftly that I never once caught him at it. We dined at long tables in a car of their own, upon antelope steak and fresh trout, and a gentleman from Ohio assured me that he had eaten worse in the best hotel in Chicago.

For three days after leaving the Missouri the prairie is all that one has been promised. It is grass, and then it is more grass, from the window on one side to the horizon on the other, under a sky so large that it makes the train look like a caterpillar crossing a tablecloth. I read two novels. I lost eleven games of chess to a Presbyterian minister. I ate a great many peppermints. Once a herd of antelope ran beside us for a mile, and every passenger rushed to the windows, and when they were gone we all sat down again and the minister set out the board.

Then came the mountains, and I did not open a novel again. Beyond the plains the line climbs into a country of red rock and black pine, through cuttings blasted out of the living stone and over wooden trestles that stride across ravines on legs as thin as a heron’s. On one of these I made the mistake of looking down. The river at the bottom was a white thread, and the whole structure seemed to sway beneath us like a ladder held by a nervous man. In the Sierra we ran for miles through long wooden sheds built over the track to keep off the snow, so that the day flickered past in stripes of light and dark, and when we came out of the last of them the whole valley of California lay below us in the evening sun, green and gold, like a promised land.

I have heard it said that the railway has taken the adventure out of crossing America. Those who say so have perhaps not crossed a trestle. It is true that one may now travel from one ocean to the other without danger, discomfort or exertion. It is not true that one may do so without wonder.

“The writer presents his railway journey across America as comfortable but dull.”

To what extent do you agree with this statement?

You should comment on:

• what is said
• how it is said

You must refer to the text to support your comments.