Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/238

 of pleasurable excitement. The universal and somewhat critical circumstances had begun to be known everywhere, and to arouse the greatest possible interest. On the way, authorities and people alike, at the different places the expedition successively passed through, in Italy itself, in Switzerland, in Germany, in France, gave the excursionists the most specially cordial greeting. As they approached the old but exploded Alpine barrier, the trains divided, some to take one or other of the various tunnels, the others to ascend the various mountain lines, whose steeps were then easily overcome by the adequate electric locomotive appliances of the day. Many of the lively young travellers preferred the grand mountain scenery, which they could comfortably enjoy beneath the protective over-all glass surrounding. Indeed, in all the more northern latitudes also, by this time, the custom was general of enclosing even the entire railway line with glass, which was either the ordinary toughened cheap article of the kind, found to be quite strong enough for all usual emergencies, or, at a trifle more cost, the thin light diamond sheet, so sparklingly clear, and of such defiant strength against the hail and tempest that still characterized our earth's meteorology. The great work which we, of the twenty-ninth century, have since accomplished, of filling up the most part of our ocean surfaces, had not yet advanced so far as very perceptibly to mitigate the old world's climatologies.

The Italian embassy at London, it is recorded, had indulged largely in bets, and at heavy odds, upon the results of their fair countrywomen's mission.