on entertainment while the journey
lasted. Having failed with me, he pitched next upon another emigrant,
who had come through from Canada, and was not one jot less weary than
myself. Nay, even in a natural state, as I found next morning when we
scraped acquaintance, he was a heavy, uncommunicative man. After trying
him on different topics, it appears that the little German gentleman
flounced into a temper, swore an oath or two, and departed from that car
in quest of livelier society. Poor little gentleman! I suppose he
thought an emigrant should be a rollicking, free-hearted blade, with a
flask of foreign brandy and a long, comical story to beguile the moments
of digestion.

_Thursday._--I suppose there must be a cycle in the fatigue of
travelling, for when I awoke next morning, I was entirely renewed in
spirits and ate a hearty breakfast of porridge, with sweet milk, and
coffee and hot cakes, at Burlington upon the Mississippi. Another long
day's ride followed, with but one feature worthy of remark. At a place
called Creston, a drunken man got in. He was aggressively friendly, but,
according to English notions, not at all unpresentable upon a train. For
one stage he eluded the notice of the officials; but just as we were
beginning to move out of the next station, Cromwell by name, by came the
conductor. There was a word or two of talk; and then the official had
the man by the shoulders, twitched him from his seat, marched him
through the car, and sent him flying on to the track. It was done in
three motions, as exact as a piece of drill. The train was still moving
slowly, although beginning to mend her pace, and the drunkard got his
feet without a fall. He carried a red bundle, though not so red as his
cheeks; and he shook this menacingly in the air with one hand, while the
other stole behind him to the region of the kidneys. It was the first
indication that I had come among revolvers, and I observed it with some
emotion. The conductor stood on the steps with one hand on his hip,
looking back at him; and perhaps this attitude imposed upon the
creature, for he turned without further ado, and went off staggering
along the track towards Cromwell, followed by a peal of laughter from
the cars. They were speaking English all about me, but I knew I was in a
foreign land.

Twenty minutes before nine that night, we were deposited at the Pacific
Transfer Station near Council Bluffs, on the eastern bank of the
Missouri river. H