I see over my own continent the Pacific railroad surmounting every barrier, I see continual trains of cars winding along the Platte carrying freight and passengers, I hear the locomotives rushing and roaring, and the shrill steam-whistle, I hear the echoes reverberate through the grandest scenery in the world, I cross the Laramie plains, I note the rocks in grotesque shapes, the buttes, I see the plentiful larkspur and wild onions, the barren, colorless, sage-deserts, I see in glimpses afar or towering immediately above me the great mountains, I see the Wind river and the Wahsatch mountains, I see the Monument mountain and the Eagle’s Nest, I pass the Promontory, I ascend the Nevadas, I scan the noble Elk mountain and wind around its base, I see the Humboldt range, I thread the valley and cross the river, I see the clear waters of lake Tahoe, I see forests of majestic pines, Or crossing the great desert, the alkaline plains, I behold enchanting mirages of waters and meadows, Marking through these and after all, in duplicate slender lines, Bridging the three or four thousand miles of land travel, Tying the Eastern to the Western sea, The road between Europe and Asia. Samuel Bowles Travels on the Union Pacific During the summer before the railroad was finished, the editor of the Springfield, Massachusetts, _Republican_, Samuel Bowles, visited the West. He traveled over the Union Pacific from Omaha, which he noted had become a boom town since he had visited it last in 1865. He describes his ride along the same route followed by the Oregon Trail and the Overland Stage. The day’s ride grows monotonous. The road is as straight as an arrow. Every dozen or fifteen miles is a station—two or three sheds, and a waterspout and wood-pile; every one hundred miles or so a home or a division depot, with shops, eating-house, “saloons” uncounted, a store or two, a few cultivated acres, and the invariable half-a-dozen seedy, staring loafers, that are a sort of fungi indigenous to American railways. We yawn over the unchanging landscape and the unvarying model of the stations, and lounge and read by day, and go to bed early at night. But the clear, dry air charms; the half dozen soldiers hurriedly marshalled into line at each station, as the train comes up, suggest that the Indian question is not disposed of yet; we catch a glimpse of antelopes in the distance; and we watch the holes of the prairie dogs for their piquant little owners and their traditional companions of owls and snakes—but never see the snakes.