mattress on springs, fine linen sheets, and costly California
blankets. The twenty-four inmates of the car were all invisible,
asleep behind rich curtains. It was a true Temple of Morpheus.
Profound sleep was the object to which everything was dedicated.
Four silver lamps hanging from the roof, and burning low, gave
a dreamy light. On each side of the center passage, rich rep
curtains, green and crimson, striped with gold, hung from silver
bars running near the roof, and trailed on the soft Axminster
carpet. The temperature was carefully kept at 70 degrees. It
was 29 degrees outside. Silence and freedom from jolting were
secured by double doors and windows, costly and ingenious
arrangements of springs and cushions, and a speed limited to
eighteen miles an hour.

As I lay down, the gallop under the dark pines, the frosty moon,
the forest fires, the flaring lights and roaring din of Truckee
faded as dreams fade, and eight hours later a pure, pink dawn
divulged a level blasted region, with grey sage brush growing out
of a soil encrusted with alkali, and bounded on either side by
low glaring ridges. All through that day we traveled under a
cloudless sky over solitary glaring plains, and stopped twice at
solitary, glaring frame houses, where coarse, greasy meals,
infested by lazy flies, were provided at a dollar per head. By
evening we were running across the continent on a bee line, and I
sat for an hour on the rear platform of the rear car to enjoy the
wonderful beauty of the sunset and the atmosphere. Far as one
could see in the crystalline air there was nothing but desert.
The jagged Humboldt ranges flaming in the sunset, with snow in
their clefts, though forty-five miles off, looked within an easy
canter. The bright metal track, purpling like all else in the