"Transcontinental" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... passes, today, not far from the site of General Trednoke's ranch. But the events now to be narrated occurred some years before the era of transcontinental railroads: they were in the air, but not yet bolted down to the earth. The general, therefore, was a pioneer, and was by no means overrun with friends from the East in search of an agreeable winter climate. The easiest way to reach ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona—through tangled forests, across broad rivers, morasses, and desert stretches beset by wild beasts and men; but ever spurred on by vague reports of a colony of their countrymen to the southwest. At last (May, 1536), the miserable wanderers, first to make the transcontinental trip in northern latitudes, reached the Gulf of California, where they met some of their fellow countrymen, who bore them in triumph to the City of Mexico, as the guests of ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... and compelling. "We can turn out seventy-five thousand tons of pulp a year at a profit of six dollars a ton. There is an abundance of hard wood for veneer mills. I have five hundred acres of land adjoining the power canal; it is crossed by the Transcontinental Railway; I have been to Ottawa and am promised a bonus of ten thousand dollars a mile for such railways as we may build. The balance of the cost will be met by the sale of lands thus developed, and ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... not quite so successful as he imagined, but her eyes shone. She had never even been in a sleeping car! For her delectation he launched into an enthusiastic description of these vehicles, of palatial compartment cars, of limited, transcontinental trains, where one had a stenographer and a barber at ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Oregon Trail was nature's way, man and commerce made it their way. Road sites are not like city sites—made to order; they are discovered. For that reason the pioneer railway transcontinental also followed this trail. The Union Pacific marks with iron what so many of the emigrants marked with their tears and their graves. From the mouth of the Platte to the heart of the Rocky Mountains and beyond is a ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... the smooth-running editorial machine broke down. A cog must have slipped or an oil-cup run dry, for the postman brought him one morning a short, thin envelope. Martin glanced at the upper left-hand corner and read the name and address of the Transcontinental Monthly. His heart gave a great leap, and he suddenly felt faint, the sinking feeling accompanied by a strange trembling of the knees. He staggered into his room and sat down on the bed, the envelope still unopened, and in that moment came understanding to him how people suddenly fall ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... in feminine beauty, however, I need not have undertaken the expense and fatigue of journeying from Albany on the Hudson out to Omaha on the plains side of the Missouri River; thence by the Union Pacific Railroad of the new transcontinental line into the Indian country. There were handsome women a-plenty in the East; and of access, also, to a youth of family and parts. I had pictures of the same in my social register. A man does not attain to twenty-five years without having ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... events determine policy, in place of policy controlling events. He could not deny the Grand Trunk's ambitions, but he obliged it to submit to modifications demanded by political pressure which turned its project, perhaps practicable in its original form, into a huge, ill-thought-out transcontinental enterprise. Equally he could not hold the ambitions of Mann and McKenzie in check. The advisability of a merger of these rival railway groups was obvious at the time, but Laurier let them each have their head, dividing ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... to-day! Six transcontinental railroads now deliver their trains in the Puget Sound cities. These are: The Northern Pacific, which was the first trunk line to reach the Sound; the Great Northern; the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy; the Chicago, Milwaukee & Puget Sound; the Oregon-Washington (Union ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... outlined in Whitney's machine. The complex and intricate sewing machine of to-day, with its various attachments to meet the needs of the modern seamstress, is not the crude machine that came from the brain of Elias Howe; the giant locomotives that now speedily cover the transcontinental distance between New York and San Francisco bear but slight resemblance to the engine that Stephenson first gave us. In fact, the first productions of all these pioneers, while they disclosed the principles and laid the foundations upon which to build, resemble ...
— The Colored Inventor - A Record of Fifty Years • Henry E. Baker
... of this tale should feel drawn to visit Sycamore Ridge, he will find a number of interesting things there, and the trip may be made by the transcontinental traveller with the loss of but half a dozen hours from his journey. The Golden Belt Railroad, fifteen years ago, used to print a guide-book called "California and Back," in which were set down the places ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... of mine lived at the Transcontinental Hotel. The partition between his room and mine didn't come clear to the ceiling, so when I arrived home late I uset to heave a boot over on top of him and have a chin. He was a nice feller, Hadds. A pale, thin sort of man, very red-headed—that is to say, not red-headed ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... Government had been attempting, since 1859, to build a canal across the Isthmus. I believe surveys were made earlier than that, but bribery and corruption and "graft" enabled the friends of transcontinental railroads to stop the canals. It would be a disadvantage to the railroads to have a canal across the Isthmus. So in some mysterious way the canal, which the people wished, has not been built, and will not ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... utility and convenience, and not for comfort. The day will come, I suppose, when modern improvements will be introduced, and the long journeys which are necessary to reach any part of the vast empire will be made as pleasant and luxurious as transcontinental trips in the United States. Just now, however, the equipment is on a military basis of simplicity and severity. Passengers are furnished with what they need, and no more. They are hauled from one place to another at reasonable rates of speed; they are given ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... the Great War it became necessary for the Federal Government to take over both the National Transcontinental, running from Moncton in New Brunswick to Winnipeg, and the Canadian Northern, running from ocean to ocean, and to incorporate both, along with the Intercolonial, in the Canadian National Railways, a system fourteen ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... the transcontinental journey I did not take Europeans with me. It is not easy to find men who can stand the strain of so long a journey. I was also not surprised, although I was disappointed, not to be able to obtain ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... "an honor intended to be conferred only on such as were well qualified by their literary acquisitions to discharge its responsible duties." He was also a prominent agitator against the fugitive slave law, and organizer and corporator of the Illinois Central Railroad, the first transcontinental line projected. John Jay McGilvra (1827-1903), of Scots parentage, took part in many prominent enterprises for the public benefit in Washington State, and forced the Northern Pacific Railroad to restore five million acres to public domain. Lawrence ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... while the interesting conversation continued. There was talk of woman's rights, of temperance, and of spiritualism, which was attracting many new converts. There were thrilling stories of the opening of the West and the building of transcontinental railways; but most often and most earnestly the discussion turned to the progress of the antislavery movement, to the infamous Kansas-Nebraska bill, to the New England Emigrant Aid Company,[53] which was sending free-state ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... 36,114 km; note - there are two major transcontinental freight railway systems: Canadian National (privatized November 1995) and Canadian Pacific Railway; passenger service provided by government-operated firm VIA, which has no trackage ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Starting a transcontinental tour in the summer of 1924, I spoke before thousands in the principal cities, ending my western trip with a vacation in ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... siren of the Sunset Sea still beckons him and whispers: "This is the final barrier; cross it, and I am yours." The transit is not difficult, however, in days like these; for the whole distance from Chicago to the coast can be accomplished in seventy-two hours, and where the transcontinental traveler of less than half a century ago was threatened day and night with attacks from murderous Apaches, and ran the risk of perishing of thirst in many a waterless "Valley of Death," the modern tourist sleeps ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... at home had been conquered. The transcontinental railroads had been built; the steel industry, the oil industry, the coal industry, the leather industry, the woolen industry and a host of others had been organized by a whole generation of industrial organizers who had given ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... decided to join the French air service. Once he told us his history at great length. He had been a scout in the Philippine service of the American army. He had been a roustabout on cattle boats. He had boiled his coffee down by the stockyards in every sizable town on every transcontinental railroad in America. In the spring of 1916 he had employment with a roofing company which had contracted for a job in Richmond, Virginia, I think it was. But Richmond went "dry" in the State elections; the roofing job fell through, ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... signature and the Wall Street address and Mary Fortune saw with sudden clearness what had been mystery and moonshine for months. W. H. Stoddard was Whitney H. Stoddard, the man who controlled the Transcontinental Railroad. His name alone in connection with the Tecolote would send its stock up a thousand per cent. And what a stroke of business that was—to make a feeder for his railroad while he built up a great ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... other than Germany. Zimmermann, in the early part of his career, had been consul at Shanghai; and, on his way back, had passed through America, spending two days in San Francisco and three in New York. He seemed to think that this transcontinental trip had given him an intimate knowledge of American character. Von Jagow, on the other hand, almost as soon as war began, spent many hours talking to me about America and borrowed from me books and novels on that ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... a high moral stand on the treaty it was said among Republican Senators that he was thinking more of the transcontinental railroads which were fighting competition by water than he was of the sanctity of international engagements. The probability is that he was probably thinking more of John Hay and Elihu Root than he was of either. He was in the Cabinet when John Hay as Secretary of State made the treaty. Senator ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... coming to have a mysterious and shuddery reverence for this girl; nowadays whenever she pulled out from the station and got her train fairly started on one of those horizonless transcontinental sentences of hers, it was borne in upon me that I was standing in the awful presence of the Mother of the German Language. I was so impressed with this, that sometimes when she began to empty one of these sentences on me I unconsciously took the very attitude ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a crowd gathers, he'll be up again and the crowd gone before a girl from Riverside Drive can come a hundred miles in a Pullman. But when the job falls down, the strike crowd sticks together for days. This gives the crack-brained lady opportunity to catch the Transcontinental limited and get there in time to pound their ears with her oratory. She prefers a foreign crowd that can not understand English; they are slower to balk on her. Not understanding what she says, it ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... sublime, as that which may be viewed from the car windows of the magnificent trains of the Union Pacific Railway. They swiftly course over almost the identical pathway once followed by the overland stage-coach, the pony express, and the slowly plodding ox caravans in the days when the possibility of a transcontinental trail of steel was ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... the platforms, except that of the Constitutional Union party, touched upon other topics besides the question of slavery in the Territories; the tariff, native Americanism, acquisition of Cuba, a transcontinental railway, public lands, internal improvements, all found mention. The Know-Nothing party still by occasional twitchings showed that life had not quite taken flight, and endeavors were made to induce Lincoln to express his views. But he evaded it.[108] ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... The transcontinental train from the East rarely made its great climb up the Two Forks divide on time, and to-day it was more than usually late. A solitary figure long since had begun to pace the station platform, looking anxiously up and down ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... from 7 to 3-1/2 in. at Mile 230 (Plate V) is on account of delivering water to the Santa Fe's new transcontinental low-grade line which crosses the El Paso and Southwestern Railway at Vaughn, and has a division point there. On its adjacent divisions, the Santa Fe had the same trouble with local waters which compelled the El Paso and Southwestern to find a better ...
— The Water Supply of the El Paso and Southwestern Railway from Carrizozo to Santa Rosa, N. Mex. • J. L. Campbell
... shoulders resolutely and swung his chair more towards his own window, which did not afford a view of the lake. He wanted to see this new railroad route through the Cascades. This Pass of Snoqualmie had always been his choice of a transcontinental line. And he was approaching new territory; he never had pushed down the eastern side from the divide. He had chosen this roundabout way purposely, with thirty miles of horseback at the end, when the Great Northern would have ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... Lincoln, my last annual report, embracing among other valuable matters the most interesting and condensed report of Colonel O. M. Poe, A. D. C., of the "original conception, progress, and completion" of the four great transcontinental railways, which have in my judgment done more for the subjugation and civilization of the Indians than all other causes combined, and have made possible the utilization of the vast area of pasture lands and mineral regions which before were almost inaccessible, for my agency ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... His clothing, which had been donated to him piece-meal by citizens of different height, but same number of inches around the heart, was not yet as uncomfortable to his figure as those specimens of raiment, self-measured, that are railroaded to you by transcontinental tailors with a suit case, suspenders, sills handkerchief and pearl studs as a bonus. Without money—as a poet should be—but with the ardor of an astronomer discovering a new star in the chorus of the milky way, or a man who ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... tests are the transcontinental trips which are undertaken so frequently nowadays that they no longer attract attention. One such trip which shows what very little trouble an automobile gives when handled with reasonable care was that made in 1909 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... promising character, while railway progress has been highly encouraging. The building of the Canadian Pacific Railway was a remarkable enterprise at the time of its construction. Recently Canada is approaching a position of rivalry with the United States in this particular, a new transcontinental line, the Grand Trunk Pacific, having been completed in 1914, while the Canadian Northern is ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... to get up early on summer mornings and, with his faithful mongrel Jack, with the ridiculous curly tail, walk and run a mile to the railway-station to see the Transcontinental stop and pass on. How the sun shone down the empty streets before any one was up! Strange how his whole life seemed to be coloured by the newly-risen sun! And the long train with the mysterious, luxurious sleeping-cars, ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... of the Fraser or the Columbia to come down to the lower settlements for the purpose of bringing to an issue, or making more difficult, this question of the joint occupancy of Oregon. As a matter of fact, ultimately we won that transcontinental race so decidedly that there never was admitted to have been ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... three per cent on the subsidy. The transcontinentals were specially favoured. The Grand Trunk system was given large guarantees and cash subsidies for its westward expansion, and the Government itself constructed the National Transcontinental to ensure the opening up of the north, and to prevent the traffic of the west being carried to United States rather than to Canadian Atlantic ports. The Canadian Northern was assisted in its prairie construction by both federal and provincial guarantees. The Laurier ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... motor boat ride down to this point, and up to Moab, Utah, a little Mormon town on the Grand River. A short ride by automobile from Moab to the D. & R.C. railway would complete a most wonderful journey; then the transcontinental ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... something to heredity. Musical ability, greater or less, may at all events be traced back in her family for a considerable period. Madame Cole's first distinct success in public was gained with Mr. Theodore Thomas, during that gentleman's first "grand transcontinental tour from ocean to ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... salt waterways, with 75 miles of shore lands, and its navigable fresh water lakes, there are centering in the county coming in from all directions seven transcontinental lines of railroads, making King county and its metropolis a great distributing center for the commerce between the American continent and the continents of Asia and the islands of the Pacific. Besides these steam roads, electric trolley lines are making a network of ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... also a model of one of the original Stephenson locomotives—the "Rocket." The Railway Division of France comprised exceedingly interesting French locomotives, a car, and many models. In the Canadian exhibit, a complete transcontinental train compelled admiration. Its cars built of solid mahogany, and lighted by electricity, were constructed and equipped by the Canadian Pacific Railroad Company. Other foreign nations made their contributions ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... know," said the Major. "I fancy that Wyman must have come into it somehow. Didn't you notice in the papers the other day that the contracts for furnishing rails for all his three transcontinental railroads had gone to ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... to the station and see if it can be done," said Uncle Dick, "and I'll foot the bill. Get your berths for the next Transcontinental west to Vancouver, and reserve accommodations for Moise and me going east. Leo and George, I'm thinking, will want to wait here for a while; with so much money as he has as grizzly premiums and wages, Leo is not going ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... total; two major transcontinental freight railway systems—Canadian National (government owned) and Canadian Pacific ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... one of a series of natural depressions in a succession of mountain chains on the thirty-second parallel route, all the way from New Orleans to San Francisco over a distance of nearly twenty-five hundred miles. The Southern Pacific Railroad is built upon this route and has the easiest grade of any transcontinental line. ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... in the sixth level, which was entirely for high-speed traffic of commercial and government vessels making transcontinental or transoceanic voyages, we were the only adventurers in sight—we and the convoyed liner we were following. The speed indicator showed six hundred miles an hour, and the tiny spot of light that traveled over the chart to indicate ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... a car from the rear of the lately-arrived Alton, and was sending it down the outbound track to a coupling with the Transcontinental Limited. Adams stepped back and let it miss him by a hand's-breadth, and as the car was passing, Winton read the ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... development of the central West, a treeless plain—prior to this period much of the farm land in the United States had been hewn out of the forest, tree by tree; (b) the consolidation of the steam railways into transcontinental lines; and (c) the introduction of the self-binding harvester. Formerly it took at least five men to do what is done today by one man ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt
... bo, if you're stranded in this hole with a busted plane, yuh better not take on any contract of arguing with Abe Smith. He'll stall yuh off till you forget how to fly." He turned his pale stare to Johnny with a new interest. "You aren't making a transcontinental, ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... small station on one of the transcontinental lines winding among the mountains far above the level of the sea, the burning rays of the noonday sun fell so fiercely that the few buildings seemed ready to ignite from the intense heat. A season of unusual drought had added to the natural desolation ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... westward by the great transcontinental railroad of America must remember the joy with which he perceived, after the tedious prairies of Nebraska and across the vast and dismal moorlands of Wyoming, a few snowy mountain summits along the southern sky. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... valley and accepted a boundary line which satisfied her earlier ambition by uniting the whole of her territories in North, West and Central Africa into a homogeneous whole, while effectually preventing the realization of her dream of a transcontinental empire from west to east. By this declaration it was agreed that the dividing line between the British and French spheres, north of the Congo Free State, should follow the Congo-Nile water-parting up to its intersection with the 11th parallel of north latitude, from which point it ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to describe adequately the far- reaching effect upon China and the Chinese of this extension of modern railways. We have had an illustration of its meaning in America, where the transcontinental railroads resulted in the amazing development of our western plains and of the Pacific Coast. The effect of such a development in China can hardly be overestimated, for China has more than ten times the population of the trans-Mississippi ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... lonely posts of the Hudson Bay fur-traders. Suddenly under the magic steel of the plough, that immense waste of land woke up from its age-long slumber. The desolate prairie became within a few years the greatest granary of the world. The Indian trail gave place to transcontinental highways, to those "long, long, and winding," steel trails that have led the youth of our Country and the exiles of Europe "into the lands of their dreams." These trans-Canada roads have conquered distances and linked the Atlantic to the Pacific. ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... appropriations required to meet the obligations of the Government under the contracts may be made promptly, so that the lines that have entered into these engagements may not be embarrassed. We have had, by reason of connections with the transcontinental railway lines constructed through our own territory, some advantages in the ocean trade of the Pacific that we did not possess on the Atlantic. The construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the establishment under large subventions ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... hands that devastate and hands that heal! There are the long fingers of the cable and telegraph that pry through earth's hidden places, gathering choice bits of international gossip and handing them out to all the breakfast tables of the Great Neighborhood. There are the swift fingers of transcontinental train and ocean liner, pushing the dweller from the West into the Far East, the man from the prairie into the desert. There are the devastating fingers of war that first fashion and then carry infernal ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... Palmerston, which was expected to become the queen city of North Australia, Port Darwin is no whit behind Sydney Harbour in beauty and capacity. The navies of the world could ride safely in its waters. A railway of 150 miles in length, the first section of the great transcontinental line, which was to extend from Palmerston to Port Augusta, was built to connect Pine Creek, where there was gold to be found, with the seaboard. South Australia was more than ever a misnomer for this ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... may be, there is something strangely impressive about all night journeys by rail; and those forming part of an American transcontinental trip are almost weird. From the windows of a night-express in Europe, or the older portions of the United States, one looks on houses and lights, cultivated fields, fences, and hedges; and, hurled as he may be through the darkness, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... follows," as the good professor used to say at college, as he emerged from a hopeless labyrinth of postulates and preliminaries an hour long, that the guests who abused the courtesy of their hosts, upon the late transcontinental trip to drive the golden spike, may have been persons of social eminence, but were in ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... been surveyed from Mojave up through the valley, passes through Fresno. Then there are three local lines that have the place for a terminus, notably the mountain railway, which climbs into the Sierra, and which it is expected will one day connect with the Rio Grande system and give a new transcontinental line. Here are also building round houses and machine shops of the Southern Pacific Company. These, with new factories, packing houses, and other improvements, go far to justify the sanguine expectations of the residents. There has never been a boom in Fresno, but a high ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... the Pacific railroads did not appear to appreciate the wisdom of mitigating, so far as was in their power, the evil which had resulted from their own policy, by giving free transportation to the laborers who had been stranded on the Pacific coast. Hence all the transcontinental roads were soon blocked by lawless seizures of trains, and suffered losses far greater than they saved in transportation. Indeed, the requisite transportation of destitute laborers eastward would have cost the roads practically nothing, while their losses ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... through the forest to Spearhead? Was it not going to build a fleet of steamers to ply upon the lakes and rivers in that section? And was it not going to build a line of railroad to the town itself in order to connect it with the new transcontinental and thus put it in communication with the great commercial centres of the East and the West? In fact, he also impressed upon me that Spearhead was a town created for young men who were not averse to becoming wealthy in whatever line of business they might choose. It seemed that great riches ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... of the Lakes, had declared in 1863, after four years of careful labour in the field, that, thanks to the choice of the 49th parallel as Canada's boundary, there was no possibility of ever building a transcontinental railway exclusively through British territory. The man chosen for the task of achieving this impossibility was Sandford Fleming. Appointed engineer-in-chief in 1871, he was for nine years in charge of the surveys, though for half that time his duties on the Intercolonial ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... May and June was well-nigh half over. The old semaphore of Telegraph Hill would have worn itself out signaling sidewheel steamers had it still been in operation. The transcontinental railway was stretching out up the valley of the Platte toward the center of the continent, but Wells-Fargo, and the pony express charging a dollar a letter, were the only transcontinental rapid transit of the day. People still went to and from the distant East ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... nation through the construction of the transcontinental railways, the financing of the western farms, and the building of our cities is largely due to the old New England doctrine that laziness and extravagance are sins. In some western communities it is popular to laugh at these ...
— Fundamentals of Prosperity - What They Are and Whence They Come • Roger W. Babson
... within a few months of the signing of the armistice. It required but fifty hours of flying-time, just a fraction over two days. At that time no attempt was made to obtain speed, as the purpose of the trip had been to locate landing-fields and make aerial maps for future transcontinental flights. ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... means of publicity. Thank Heaven, the money to pay for all this is not lacking. If my good father, when he piled up his fortune from the profits of the Transcontinental Aerian Company, could have foreseen the use to which his son would put it for the benefit—what do I say, for the benefit? nay, for the salvation—of mankind, he would have rejoiced in ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... making a rail-water line across the center of the continent. The railroad from Lobito Bay was extended eastward to Katanga, a rich mineral region of the Belgian Congo, and, with the road already reaching the Indian Ocean at Beira, gave a second east and west transcontinental line. A permanent standard gauge railroad was laid by the British Expeditionary Forces from ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... he piped, "makes a fellow pause and study. I've seen fifty-three years of the old century—seen the electric light, the telephone, the phonograph, the fast printing press, the transcontinental railroad, the steam thresher, the gasoline engine—and all its wonders clear down to Judge Tom's devil wagon. That's a good deal for one short life. I've seen industry revolutionized—leaving the ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... favoring the free coinage of silver and the issuance of "all paper money direct to the people." The demand for railroad regulation was accompanied by a statement that "the ultimate solution of the transportation problem may be found in the ownership and operation by the Government of one or more transcontinental lines"; and the immediate acquisition of the Union Pacific, then in financial difficulties, was suggested. Other resolutions called for government ownership and operation of the telegraph, improvement of waterways, restriction of the liquor traffic, industrial education in the ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... railroad contractors who were constructing the Pacific railways and they imported large numbers. In 1866 a line of steamships was established to run regularly between Hong Kong and San Francisco. In 1869 the first transcontinental railway was completed and American laborers from the East began to flock to California, where they immediately found themselves in competition with the Mongolian standard of living. Race rivalry soon flared up and the anti-Chinese sentiment increased ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... urging these claims, and thousands of men planned to try some one or the other of these "side-doors." The movement overland seemed about to surpass the wonderful transcontinental march of miners in '49 and '50, and those who loved the trail for its own sake and were eager to explore an unknown country hesitated only between the two trails which were entirely overland. One of these led from Edmonton to the head-waters of the Pelly, the other started from the ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... of it. It was not made, to be sure, as Herbert would have preferred it, in a long train of picturesque prairie schooners, drawn up in a circle each night to repel attacking Indians, as his storybooks described all transcontinental journeys; but in an overfull tourist-car on the railroad. Herbert's most vivid memories of the week's journey are of the wonderful lunch baskets and boxes filled with fried chicken, boiled hams, roast meats, countless pies and layer-cakes, caraway-seed cookies, and great red apples. ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... arm ached from answering them. What car did you drive? Where d'y' get gas in the desert? What's the best route? And thus et cetera. So now I have wrote me a slender essay answering everything that anybody can ask on this or other transcontinental subjects. Mr. Lorimer will publish, and who knows—as they say in fiction—it might make ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... construction of the Canadian Pacific railway, and in 1876 the non-fulfilment of this promise and the apparent indifference of the government at Ottawa to the representations of British Columbia created [v.04 p.0601] strained relations, which were only ameliorated when the construction of a transcontinental road was begun. In subsequent years the founding of the city of Vancouver by the C.P.R., the establishment of the first Canadian steamship line to China and Japan, and that to Australia, together with ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... by Orenburg, Akmolinsk, Minoussinsk, Abatoni and Vladivostock. When these six thousand kilometres of rails are laid, Petersburg will be within six days of the Japan Sea. And this Transsiberian, which will exceed in length the Transcontinental of the United States, will cost no more than ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... and had managed the interests of foreign investors after 1873. He gained control of the partly finished Northern Pacific and the local lines of Oregon through a holding company known as the Oregon & Transcontinental. In September, 1883, he took a special train, full of distinguished visitors, over his lines to witness the driving of the last spike near Helena, Montana. On the way out, they stopped at Bismarck to ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... The construction of three transcontinental lines of railway, all in successful operation, wholly within our territory, and uniting the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans, has been accompanied by results of a most interesting and impressive nature, and has ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... largest coal-market in the States; manufactures include all iron goods, steel and copper, glassware, and earthenware; its position at the eastern limit of the Mississippi basin, its facilities of transport by river and rail—six trunk railroads meet here—give it enormous trade advantages; its transcontinental business is second in volume only to Chicago; in early times the British colonists had many struggles with the French for this vantage point; a fort built by the British Government in 1759, and called after the elder Pitt, was the nucleus of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... first gazed upon the bight, the transcontinental lines had not yet begun to consider the thrusting of their tentacles into southwestern Washington, and, with the exception of those regions where good harbors had partially solved the problem of transportation, timber in Washington was very cheap. Consequently, since Hector McKaye was ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... one-way skyway he rocketed, along it over the suburbs and into the transcontinental super-highway. Edging inward, lane after lane, he reached the "unlimited" way—unlimited, that is, except for being limited to cars of not less than seven hundred horsepower, in perfect mechanical condition, driven ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... other hand, your tourist is unfortunate enough to get left at some North Woods railway station where he has descended from the transcontinental to stretch his legs, and suppose him to have happened on a fur-town like Missinaibie at the precise time when the trappers are in from the wilds. Near the borders of the village he will come upon a little encampment of conical tepees. At his approach the women and children will disappear ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... and the party under his command achieved the object of this side of the Expedition. For the depot that was the main object of the Expedition was laid in the spot that I had indicated, and if the transcontinental party had been fortunate enough to have crossed they would have found the assistance, in the shape of stores, that would have been vital to the success of their undertaking. Owing to the dearth of stores, clothing, and sledging equipment, the depot party ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... one else seemed more fortunate in winning her favour than he. The only strange male who attained to the privilege of addressing her was a long-winded and elderly gentleman of the British perpetual-travelling type, at least one representative of which is found on every transcontinental train, and it was plain enough ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... the western distance, unapproachable, but close at hand, neighborly, sheltering, for we nestle under their very shoulders. Here, to the west, just behind us, no great day's walk away and seemingly far nearer, in jagged outline against the blue of heaven, are the guardians of the old transcontinental pass. Here, to the west, where you see the rugged spurs jutting out from the range, runs the old trail which the engineers have followed, and carried the Union Pacific to its greatest altitude between the oceans. Far out there among the ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... his contempt for it by calling it "a few arpents of snow." The St. Lawrence route was regarded as a doubtful line for steamships, Rupert's Land was called a Siberia, but all this is changing with our Transcontinental and Hudson's Bay railways in prospect. In territory, resources, and influence the opening up of the West is making Canada complete. And, if so, we owe it to Lord Selkirk and to Selkirk Settlers, who stood true to their flag and nationality. Very willingly will ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... mountainous character, there being but one—that from Nogales, at the boundary with Arizona, to the port of Guaymas on the Gulf of California, about 255 miles long, connecting to the north of Nogales with the Southern Pacific Transcontinental Railway of the United States. There are several good roads and a telegraph system. Timber and water are plentiful in some parts of the state; in others scarce or absent. The capital of the state is Hermisillo, with a population ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... been reading the discussion in the Senate over your resolution in regard to the competition of the Canadian railways with our transcontinental railway freight charges. It is well enough perhaps to inquire into the matter, but I have a notion that the sharp competition is of great benefit to the masses. I know that I am a little heterodox in looking at the interest of the consumers instead of railroad plutocrats, of the ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... says he, "das leetle Spencer gal ban all rite. She say she go by me to das party. Ve ban goin' stylish tu, Aye bet yu." Then he saw Frankling and went over to him with his hand out. "Don't yu care, Master Frankling," he said, with one of his transcontinental smiles. "Aye tak yust sum good care by her lak Aye ban ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch |
