Instead, it evinced a decided preference for intermediate signal posts.
It was described as an express, but a tortoise's crawl would be a gallop
in comparison. It travelled at only a little more than a walking pace
and the stops were maddeningly frequent.

The women and children speedily betrayed painful evidences of the
suffering they were experiencing, which became accentuated as we
advanced. The close confinement rendered the atmosphere within the
carriages extremely oppressive. The weaker men and the women commenced
to faint but no assistance could be extended to them. One could move
barely an arm or leg. The afflicted passengers simply went off where
they were, sitting or standing, as the case might be, and prevented from
falling by the closely packed passengers around them, to come round as
best they could when Nature felt so disposed. The wails of the children
were pitiful. Many were crying from cramp and hunger, but nothing could
be done to satisfy them, and indeed the men took little notice of them.

The arrival--in time--at the frontier station at Goch somewhat revived
the distressed and drooping. Everyone seized the opportunity to stretch
the limbs, to inhale some fresh air, and to obtain some slight
refreshment. The Customs officials were unusually alert, harrying, and
inflexible. There was the eternal wrangling between the passengers and
the officials over articles liable to duty and it was somewhat amusing
to me, even with war beating the air, to follow the frantic and useless
efforts of old and experienced travellers to smuggle this, that, or
something else through the fiscal barrier.

The Customs were so far from being in a conciliatory mood as to be
absolutely deaf to entreaty, cajolery, argument, explanation or threat.
They cut the operations summarily short by confiscating everything