So that when it is twelve o'clock, midday,
in New York city, it is eleven in Chicago, ten o'clock in Denver,
and nine o'clock in San Francisco. You adapt yourself, however, very
readily to these changes of time, in your hours of sleep and in other
matters.
One of the places of special interest through which we passed before
leaving Utah is Promontory. Here the last tie was laid and here the
last spike was driven, on the 10th of May, 1869, when the Central
Pacific and the Union Pacific Railways were united and the great
cities of the Atlantic seaboard and San Francisco at the setting sun
were brought into communication with each other by an iron way which
has promoted our civilisation in a marked degree. A night ride over
the Alkali Plains of Nevada, famous for their sage brush, was a
novelty, and in the clear atmosphere they looked like fields of snow.
At Wadsworth, where our train began to ascend the lower slopes of the
Sierra Nevada Mountains, were several Piute Indians. They sell beads,
blankets, baskets, and other mementoes. A papoose, all done up in
swathing bands, aroused no little curiosity, and when some venturesome
passenger with a kodak tried to take a picture of the infant, the
mother quickly turned away.
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