atmosphere which obscures all scenery; added to which, the unfortunate foreknowledge that we were doomed to fifteen or sixteen hours of these combinations of misery, made it indeed a wretched day.  My only resource was to open a window, which the moment I attempted, a hulking fellow, swaddled up in coats and comforters, and bursting with health, begged it might be closed as “It was so cold:”  the thermometer, I am sure, was ranging, within the car, from ninety to a hundred degrees.  He then tried to hector and bully, and finding that of no use, he appealed to the guard.  I claimed my right, and further pleaded the necessity of fresh air, not merely for comfort, but for very life.  As my friend expressed the same sentiments, the cantankerous Hector was left to sulk; and I must own to a malicious satisfaction, when, soon after, two ladies came in, and seating themselves on the bench abreast of mine, opened their window, and placed Hector in a thorough draught, which, while gall and wormwood to him, was balm of Gilead to me.  As I freely criticise American habits, &c., during my travels, it is but just I should state, that Hector was the only one of his countrymen I ever met who was wilfully offensive and seemed to wish to insult.

The engineering on this road was so contrived, that we had to go through an operation, which to me was quite novel—­viz., being dragged by wire ropes up one of the Alleghany hills, and eased down the other side.  The extreme height is sixteen hundred feet; and it is accomplished by five different stationary engines, each placed on a separate inclined plane, the highest of which is two thousand six hundred feet above the level of the sea.  The want of proper arrangement and sufficient hands made this a most dilatory and tedious operation.  Upon asking why so ’cute and go-ahead a people had tolerated such bad engineering originally, and such dilatory arrangements up to the present hour, I was answered, “Oh, sir, that’s easily explained; it is a government road and a monopoly, but another road is nearly completed, by which all this will be avoided; and, as it is in the hands of a company, there will be no delay then.”—­How curious it is, the way governments mess such things when they undertake them!  I could not help thinking of the difference between our own government mails from Marseilles to Malta, &c., and the glorious steamers of the Peninsular and Oriental Company, that carry on the same mails from Malta.—­But to return from my digression.

I was astonished to see a thing like a piece of a canal-boat descending one of these inclined planes on a truck; nor was my astonishment diminished when I found that it really was part of a canal-boat, and that the remaining portions were following in the rear.  The boats are made, some in three, some in five compartments; and, being merely forelocked together, are easily carried across the hill, from the canal on one side to the continuation thereof on the other.[L]