Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 6).djvu/213

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FROM LONDON TO CHICAGO.
213

we have passed rapidly through the State of New Jersey. We pause but a short time in the great station at Broad Street, Philadelphia, but such as are interested find there the latest stock and produce quotations, posted for consultation in the smoking-room. The train glides out once more into the open country, and still speeding along through Delaware, Chester, and Lancaster counties, and passing Harrisburgh, the capital of the State, we approach the first of the great Alleghany range of mountains, and, bending to the west, the train thunders across the Susquehanna River on a bridge 3,070 feet in length. To the right rise gigantic ridges, sundered by the waters in their passage, but leaving numerous rocks in the channel to break the river into rapids and fret it into foam; while to the left the stream sweeps away, with its wooded islands, towards Harrisburgh, whose steeples can still be seen in the distance.


Cable Ferry near Lacolle.
From a Photograph.

A halt is made at the Altoona station, where are located the great workshops of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and then, once more on the way, the train begins the ascent of the heaviest grade on the line. The valley beneath sinks lower and lower until it becomes a vast gorge, the bottom of which is hidden by an impenetrable gloom: now commences the circuit of the horse-show curve, one of the most triumphs of engineering ever accomplished. As the enormous bend, sweeping first north, then curving westward,