53

5 Now perhaps a sketch of our journy from
Newport News will interest you

We left N N. at 5 o'clock PM Thursday and
landed at Baltimore at 4 o'clock
Friday night we saw a curious [concr?]
on the way called a fence. Slept in
the boat & waited in the city till
5 o'clock saturday night when we
loaded on to the cars & trundled
along over the Baltimore & Ft. Wayne Penn. Central RR
RR. halted at York & got a good
cup of coffee, furnished by the
citizans. Sunday morning at
daylight we found ourselves riding
along the banks of the Susquehanna
30 miles west of Harrisburg it
was very cold & the snow 6 inches
deep. When I thought we were then
only one degree south of Boston con-
cluded you had cold weather her
there. We rode on through a mountain-
-ous country till we got to Altoona
a beautiful city at the foot of the

[page break]
Mts. here we had some nice hot 6
coffee & they put on another engine before
and one behind I was at a loss to
know where in time they ment to
run us; but soon found they were
shoving us over up on to the Alleghany
mountains, by a zigzag semicircular
course, it was a surprising up grade
and the mountains of black smoke
from the enjines and the speed our
long train wound wound like a
snake along the side of the moun-
tains showed what steam could
do, before reaching the summit we
went through two tunnels
I never knew how pleasant it
was riding on the underground
RR. before, but now concluded it
was rather dark on that line of RR.
Here the trees were short & scrubby like
those I saw half way up Mt. Washington
The two extra engines were taken off