As if they had not broken through long, long ago! What if the old
Grecian gods should come to life? should leave their marble temples, and
gaze about on the world as it is at present? If Pallas Athene were told
of America? If Helios Apollo could listen to Wagner's operas, and Zeus
Jupiter might look into the great tube of the London Observatory,
wondering what had become of that milky way which had been formed out of
the milk spilled by Amalthea? If we could show him that we had caught
and harnessed his heavenly lightning to draw our vehicles and carry our
messages, and that, with the help of fire-eyed leviathans, we break
through the rocky womb of his great mountains? And yet, how easy it
would be for them, with a simple sneeze of their most illustrious and
omnipotent noses, to raise such a tempest that earth and sea would rise
and destroy man and his pigmy works at one fell stroke! I wonder if they
never awake? I rather think they sometimes get up and shake their mighty
fists at us. These cyclones look very suspicious to me!

The huge iron leviathan turns and twists itself like a Gordian knot;
disappears and reappears, almost on the same spot, but higher up on the
mountain, and then glides rapidly on along the brinks of fearful
abysses, over long iron bridges looking like some fanciful filigree
work, some giant spider's web, extending across great valleys, chasms,
and precipices, over which great mountain rivers splash down, roaring
and foaming in gigantic falls. What giant power has cleft the way for
these waters--Vulcan or Neptune? Or was it laid down in Euclid's
adventurous age, when the Titans went into bankruptcy?

The train increases its speed to regain the time lost in uncoupling the
disabled parlour-car, and this increased speed is chiefly felt at the
tail of the great iron dragon. I have to cling tightly to the brass rod
in front of the windows. We pass the central station without stopping,