Page:Micheaux - The Conquest, The Story of a Negro Pioneer (1913).djvu/113

 each other for expressions of theories, and ways and means of injecting enthusiasm into the local situation. Thousands of theories were given expression, consideration, and rejection, and the old one that all railroads follow valleys and streams was finally adhered to. I was singled out to give corroborative proof of this last, by reason of my railroad experience.

I was suddenly seized with a short memory, much to my embarrassment, as I felt all eyes turned upon me. However, the crowd were looking for encouragement and spoke up in chorus: "Don't the railroads always follow valleys?" It suddenly occurred to me, that with all the thousands of miles of travel to my credit and the many different states I had traveled through, with all their rough and smooth territory, I had not observed whether the tracks followed the valleys or otherwise. However, I intimated that I thought they did. "Of course they do", my remark was answered in chorus.

Since then I have noticed that a railway does invariably follow a valley, if it is a large one; and small rivers make excellent routes, but never crooked little streams like the Monca. When it comes to such creeks, and there is a table land above, as soon as the road can get out, it usually stays out. This was the situation of the C. & R. W. It came some twenty-five or thirty miles up the Monca, from where it empties into the Missouri. There are fourteen bridges across in that many miles, which were and still are, always going out during high water.

It came this route because there was no other way to come, but when it got to Anona, as has been said, it climbed a four per cent grade to get out and it stayed out.