“From ocean to ocean,” the Americans proudly called it.
That was the name given to the great railway stretching across the entire United States.
In reality, the Pacific Railroad was made up of two major lines. The Central Pacific ran from San Francisco to Ogden, while the Union Pacific continued from Ogden to Omaha. From Omaha, five major railway lines connected with New York.
Together, they created an uninterrupted railway route of about 3,786 miles between New York and San Francisco.
The journey that had once taken at least six months could now be completed in only seven days.
The railway crossed enormous prairies, mountains, deserts, and territories where wild animals and Native American tribes still lived. It also passed through areas settled by the Mormons after they had been driven from Illinois in 1845.
The construction of the railroad had begun in 1862.
American engineers and workers pushed the line forward with remarkable speed. In some places, they laid more than a mile of track in a single day.
A locomotive would travel on rails laid only the previous evening, carrying more rails for the next day’s work. As soon as those rails were put into place, the locomotive moved forward again.
The railroad crossed Iowa, Kansas, Colorado, and other territories through a network of connecting lines.
From Omaha, it followed the Platte River, crossed the Laramie and Wahsatch Mountains, passed around the Great Salt Lake, and reached Salt Lake City, the Mormon capital.
Then it continued through valleys and deserts, crossed more mountain ranges, passed through Sacramento, and finally descended toward the Pacific coast.
Even in the Rocky Mountains, the railway had been built with surprisingly gentle slopes.
This was the road Phileas Fogg now had to cross in seven days.
If everything went according to plan, he would reach New York in time to catch the Atlantic steamer to Liverpool on November 11.
The railway cars were unlike the ordinary carriages they had known in Europe.
They were long, spacious cars with rows of seats facing each other across a central aisle. There were platforms at both ends, allowing passengers to walk through the entire train.
There were also comfortable dining cars, smoking cars, and special cars with balconies.
Book and newspaper sellers constantly moved through the aisles, along with vendors selling food, drinks, and cigars.
At six o’clock in the evening, the train left Oakland.
Night had already fallen.
The sky was dark and covered with thick clouds, and the cold air suggested that snow might soon arrive.
The train did not travel especially fast. Including all the stops, it averaged only about twenty miles an hour.
Still, that was fast enough for Mr. Fogg’s carefully calculated schedule.
The passengers were unusually quiet.
Before long, many of them had fallen asleep.
Passepartout happened to be sitting beside Fix.
But neither man spoke.
Their relationship had changed completely after everything that had happened.
Fix still behaved calmly, but Passepartout kept his distance. He was so angry with his former companion that the smallest provocation might have made him lose his temper.
An hour after leaving Oakland, snow began to fall.
Fortunately, it was light snow and did not interfere with the train.
Through the windows, the passengers could see almost nothing except an enormous white landscape. The smoke from the locomotive looked gray against the snow.
At eight o’clock, a steward entered the car.
“It’s time to go to bed,” he announced.
Almost immediately, the entire car was transformed.
The backs of the seats folded down. Hidden beds were pulled out by a clever mechanical system, and comfortable berths appeared one after another.
Thick curtains gave each passenger some privacy.
The sheets were clean, and the pillows were soft.
There was nothing left to do except sleep.
And that was exactly what the passengers did while the train continued racing across California.
The country between San Francisco and Sacramento was relatively flat.
The Central Pacific began at Sacramento and ran eastward toward the railway coming from Omaha.
The 120 miles between San Francisco and Sacramento took only six hours.
Around midnight, the sleeping passengers passed through Sacramento without seeing anything of the city.
Sacramento was an important place. It was the capital of California, with broad streets, fine hotels, churches, squares, and impressive riverfront facilities.
But the travellers slept through it all.
After leaving Sacramento, the train passed through several towns before entering the Sierra Nevada mountains.
At seven the next morning, they reached Cisco.
An hour later, the sleeping car was changed back into an ordinary passenger car.
Now the travellers could finally see the spectacular mountain scenery around them.
The railway twisted through narrow mountain passes.
Sometimes it ran close against the mountainside.
Sometimes it seemed to hang above deep cliffs.
The track curved boldly around sharp bends, then disappeared into narrow valleys that seemed to have no way out.
The locomotive roared through the mountains.
Its great funnel glowed strangely in the darkness, while its bell rang sharply.
Its cowcatcher projected from the front like a huge metal spur.
The engine’s whistles and heavy pounding mixed with the sound of rushing rivers and waterfalls.
Smoke from the locomotive drifted among the branches of enormous pine trees.
There were surprisingly few bridges and tunnels.
Instead of cutting directly through the mountains, the railway followed their natural shape.
The train entered Nevada through the Carson Valley at about nine o’clock.
An hour later, the travellers reached Reno, where the train stopped for twenty minutes so everyone could have breakfast.
After breakfast, Mr. Fogg and his companions returned to their seats.
The scenery changed constantly as they continued eastward.
Vast prairies stretched toward distant mountains.
Small rivers and streams flashed across the landscape.
And sometimes enormous herds of buffalo appeared in the distance.
Thousands of these animals could move together in such dense groups that they looked like a living wall.
When a herd crossed the railway, trains could be forced to stop for hours.
And now the same thing happened to Mr. Fogg’s train.
Around noon, an enormous herd appeared ahead of them.
There must have been ten or twelve thousand buffalo.
The engineer slowed the locomotive and tried to push the animals away with the cowcatcher.
But there were simply too many of them.
The buffalo continued moving calmly along the railway, occasionally producing deafening roars.
There was no way to make them change direction.
Once such a huge herd began moving, it was like a river of living animals. Nothing could easily stop it.
The passengers gathered on the platforms to watch the extraordinary sight.
Everyone was fascinated except Phileas Fogg.
He had more reason than anyone to be impatient, yet he simply remained in his seat and waited calmly.
Passepartout, however, was furious.
“What a country!” he shouted.
“Animals can stop an entire train, and they just keep marching along as if nobody else had anywhere to go!”
“Parbleu! I wonder whether Mr. Fogg included this little disaster in his calculations!”
“And look at that engineer! He doesn’t even dare to drive the locomotive straight through them!”
The engineer had no intention of doing such a thing.
And he was absolutely right.
The cowcatcher might have crushed the first few buffaloes, but the sheer weight of the herd would soon have stopped even the powerful locomotive.
The train could have been pushed off the rails, leaving everyone stranded in the middle of nowhere.
There was only one sensible choice.
Wait.
Once the buffaloes had gone, the train could make up the lost time by travelling faster.
But the herd showed no hurry whatsoever.
For three entire hours, the buffaloes continued crossing the railway.
It was already night before the last of them finally disappeared.
The front of the herd had vanished far to the south, while the final animals were still crossing the tracks.
At last, the railway was clear.
The train continued on its way.
At eight o’clock, it passed through the narrow defiles of the Humboldt Range.
And at half-past nine, it entered Utah—the land of the Great Salt Lake and the remarkable Mormon settlement.