Towards five o’clock Michigan Lake came into view and spread before us as broad as the sea, with tides coming in and going out, and steamships gliding on the blue water. At the last station before Chicago a boy came into the car piled up to his head with advertisements, which he scattered over us; he was followed by a man with a metal placard on his chest, who thrust into our hands a card setting forth the virtues of Savoie Hotel, and promised to occupy himself with our luggage. Most of the passengers left the train at Hyde Park, the first stoppage at Chicago, but we pushed on to Central Station. Over the city hung a sky laden with smoke; everywhere black chimneys rose in the air.
Savoie Hotel is situated on the European place, the liveliest quarter of Chicago. We took an apartment in the second storey, for 2 dollars ahead, with board and lodging.
Desirous to keep the strictest incognito, we registered our names in the hotel-book, “Mr. and Mrs. Sergius,” for fear of spies. Dr. Pokrovski took the name of “Castorio,” which suited his profession admirably.
Our four days’ stay at Chicago seemed very short to me. Every morning we went to visit Chicago’s World Fair. The exhibition commemorated the fourth century of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. The day was Sunday. A holiday crowd pushed and elbowed about the various attractions, middle-class people for the most part, and negro beauties and dandies. We walked through the sections of the Exhibition, where nearly all the exhibited objects are provided with the curt warning: “Hands off!” The Americans in general, do not shine for their politeness! Whilst standing before a show-window, a policeman approached us and asked what nation we belonged to. We said we were a company of French tourists who had come to see the World’s Fair.
Midway Pleasance is the most animated part of the Exhibition. We entered a theatre where a Japanese play was going on. The actors’ faces were covered with terrifying masks, and they were all making atrocious grimaces. After the play a troup of native musicians, sitting on the floor, played “Yankee Doodle” and “God save the Queen” on their national instruments. The spectators in the first row took off their coats and remained in their shirt sleeves without ceremony. Close to the Japanese theatre the Esquimaux performed marvels in the way of throwing lances through rings. They invited the passers-by to enter their enclosure and compete with them in a curious sport, consisting in breaking big sticks into small bits by the means of a long whip. The Esquimaux came from Greenland; they are American subjects but do not speak English, they can say only: “Give money!”
On the quay where stands the monument of Christopher Columbus, the largest elevator in the whole world brought us in the space of one minute, on the roof of the “Liberal Arts,” where we visited a beautiful picture gallery containing the works of the most renowned painters of different countries. The Russian pictures occupy the first place, but our manufactory section is very poorly represented. In one of the pavilions of the United States we saw vegetables and fruit piled about in profusion. The fruit of California is three times larger than in any other country; tempting-looking apples and pears, coming from Los Angeles, were enormous in proportion, but quite tasteless.
Foreign artists are greatly appreciated in America, and very highly paid. When walking through the musical section we were agreeably surprised to hear a first-class artiste play one of Chopin’s nocturnes in a masterly manner, with a faultless technique and a perfect phrasing.
“Beauties” brought over from all parts of the world black, white and yellow, are exposed in a large hall, in stalls behind a railing, just like wild beasts. One of the prettiest girls, dressed in our Russian national costume, appeared to be a Polish Jewess, who had taken the first prize in a recent “Beauty Competition.”
A picture of “Nana,” the heroine of Zola’s last novel, painted by Soukharowski (a Russian painter), is exhibited in Chicago, and much is made of that canvas.
We went to see a Museum of wax-figures, and saw among other curiosities, a big giant and a negress dwarf with no arms, who played the drum with her toes, and wrote her autograph holding a pen between her toes. Next to her a pretty white-skinned dwarf resembling a pretty wax-doll, attired in a beautiful evening dress, was exhibited, who looked with disdain, mixed with jealousy, at her dusky companion who attracted more attention than her dainty little person. In the adjoining room a gipsy fortune-teller told people’s future through examination of the palms of their hands. I wanted my hand read and asked Mr. Shaniavski to accompany me to her booth. From the very beginning the old gipsy woman made formidable mistakes, taking Mr. Shaniavski for my husband. Nevertheless she predicted a lot of charming things to me, and I left her booth with a smiling face. After dinner we went to a Venetian Feast organised on the central basin of Michigan Lake, which was transformed into a Venetian canal. Gondolas floated on the lake, lit up by Chinese lanterns.
Chicago is a dirty, noisy commercial town, and looks a tremendously busy place. The smoke of the factories blacken the sky; the soot stains the sparrows, making them look quite black. We walked through the broad, straight streets of the Great Grey City, stopping before the shop windows. We saw a shop bearing the inscription “Food and dog’s medicine.” In a hair-dressing shop a woman was sitting on a high seat with her back to the window with wonderfully splendid hair falling down to the ground. We entered the shop to see if the woman’s face corresponded to her beautiful golden hair, but, alas, she appeared to be very unattractive. Her hair served as advertisement for a patent elixir to make the hair grow. How people have sometimes to earn their bread and butter.
The heat is intense. Everybody grumbled at the weather being so hot. The head-porter of our hotel, who is a grand personage, too languid to talk, in order not to be obliged to answer a hundred times a day to the same complaint of the visitors about the heat, “Awfully hot, isn’t it?” stuck a placard over the entrance door saying, “Yes, it is very warm to-day!”
Mme. Beurgier couldn’t sleep for the heat, and went one night for a stroll on the outskirts of Michigan Common. She saw heaps of rags here and there on the grass; she touched one of them with her foot, and oh, what a jump she gave when from the rags strange and somewhat terrifying sounds proceeded, that indicated a drunken sleep. It appeared that the whole place swarmed with houseless vagrants, evidently prepared to camp out-of-doors till morning.
During our four days’ stay at Chicago there had been three awful accidents at the Exhibition. First: A collision between two steamboats on the lake. We were crossing the bridge at that moment and saw a man extracted from the water with broken legs. Second: A terrible fire had broken out in the very centre of the Exhibition. An immense building was burnt to the ground. Dr. Pokrovski saw people jumping down from the eighteenth storey and killed on the spot. Third: A captive-balloon had burst, causing the death of all the passengers.
2nd July.—We left Chicago this morning. Our train rolls rapidly towards San Francisco. We have six days of railway. The temperature being very hot, everyone put himself at his ease; my travelling-companions also took off their coats—American fashion. We drink iced-water the whole day to refresh ourselves. Our “Johnny” lay full stretched on the sofa in the private saloon; Mme. Beurgier tried to make him take a more correct attitude, but to make remarks to the darkie was as fruitless as to sponge his nigger face white. He paid no attention whatever to her reproofs and continued his dolce far niente, munching an apple with beautiful white teeth.
Our train rolls on full speed. We are tossed about as on the sea. “Johnny” came to make our beds early in the evening. We had to lie down directly, for when the beds were made, there was no place to sit down.
3rd July.—The railway line is uninteresting and monotonous and the heat something dreadful. At five o’clock dinner was served in the restaurant-car, consisting of broth and roast beef surrounded by slices of oranges.
4th July.—We crossed the Mississippi in the night, and are rolling through fields of Indian wheat and beetroot. The heat has still increased and our car is like an overheated stove; the dust entering through the windows transformed us into chimney-sweeps.
We cross now the States of Nebraska and Wyoming. The villages and towns are all illuminated with electricity. We read now and then the word “Saloon” gambling house written on the front of the houses. I have remarked that at the railway-stations nearly all the doors bear the inscription “Entrance forbidden.” It is curious how many things are forbidden in this “Free Country!” It is also very odd that the carriage-roads are not closed before the passage of trains; there is only an inscription on wooden poles “Look out for the cars!”
5th July.—I woke up in the night shivering with cold. The train was rolling through the states of Utah, across the Great American Desert. The country is bare and dull, and very poorly peopled; not a tree or a blade of grass is to be seen. The great want in the place is water. A chain of snow peaks appeared on the horizon. We are crossing the Cordilleras mountains and find ourselves at eight thousand feet above the level of the sea. Soon after lunch the Valley of Salt Lake spread before us. Our train runs amid green pastures. We pass little hamlets and orchards, which seem very green and beautiful to me after the long weary stretches of the desert we had just left. Thatched ranches (farms) and bungalows peeped from beneath the trees. We are in the legendary “Far West.” Here is a long haired Red Indian, from Cooper’s Books, galloping on the road on a small lean pony, followed by a cow-boy wearing a broad-brimmed hat. It only wants “Buffalo-Bill” in person to complete the picture. Whilst stopping at a station we saw a young Indian “squaw” (woman), sitting cross-legged on the platform, wrapped up in a red blanket, carrying on her back her papoos (baby), lashed up in its hammock. American travellers ought to be accustomed to Red-Indians, nevertheless they surveyed with great interest the young savage female, who showed her nursling to them for the sum of 15 cents. She refused outright to show her “papoos” to a passenger who offered only five cents to her. The local colour begins to disappear in the “Far West,” the Red-Indians throw off their plumes and deer-skins for a flannel shirt and a felt hat. They were plentiful enough about here some years ago, but the railroad, with its settlements has swept them back. The railway-line was being built during five years, the Red-Indians destroying it continually. In the olden days, a touch of adventure was lent to the journey by the fear of an attack from hostile Indians. We are told that even now there is danger on the line from Indian bandits. Our train passes with illuminated “Pullmans” in the centre of the plains, and my imagination getting the better of me, I seem to see our train on that lone prairie, surrounded by Red Indians. When I went to sleep, visions of fighting savages woke me up with a suppressed scream, as I fancied I was being scalped, and I find that it is only the shriek of the locomotive, and the war-whoop of the Indians are only the outcries of our pacific “Johnny” announcing that we were approaching Salt Lake City. The capital of the Mormons’ State is surrounded by an amphitheatre of hills, over which the Mormons’ Hierarchy still dominates. In 1890, Welford Woodruff, the President of the Mormon Church, received, it is said, a revelation from God, commanding that all Mormons should give up their plural wives, and they are satisfied now with one consort.
We are in a long, narrow pass: above us hang abrupt rocks and below flows a serpentine river. Our train makes right angle turns, and it seems as if we were turning all the time on the same spot. Towards night we entered the States of Sierra Nevada; we are now at only a day’s journey from Mexico. The towns, rivers and mountains have Mexican names. A Mexican pedlar selling curios and silver filigree jewellery, entered our car. Sergy bought me a finely worked brooch in the form of a mandoline. We enter a narrow wooden tunnel built to protect the line from stone avalanches, which took a whole hour to go through.
6th July.—At dawn we speeded through the ranches of California, and soon approached the town of Sacramento. Our train dashes now on its way to the Pacific. We felt already the sea breeze, and soon appeared the Gulf of San Francisco and the waters of the Pacific Ocean. Our train was pushed by workmen along an artificial dike to the station of Bonifacio, after which we rolled towards Oakland, where our train after having been divided in three parts, was put on a ferry. When we touched the other shore the train was made up again, and took us straight to San Francisco.