Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 7.djvu/308

 out lurid lights, its sharp bell, its cow-catcher, extending out like a spur, mingled its shrieks and bellowings with the noise of the torrents and cascades, and twined its smoke in the dark branches of the firs.

There were few or no tunnels or bridges on the route. The railroad turned the flank of the mountains, not seeking in a straight line the shortest route from one point to another, and not doing violence to nature. About nine o'clock, the train entered the State of Nevada, through the Carson Valley, always following a northeasterly direction. At noon it left Reno, where the passengers had twenty minutes for breakfast. From this point, the iron road, skirting Humboldt river, passed a few miles to the north. Then it bent to the east, and did not leave the stream until it reached the Humboldt range, where the river takes its source, nearly in the eastern end of the State of Nevada. After breakfasting, Mr. Fogg, Aouda and their companions took their seats again in the car. Phileas Fogg, the young woman, Fix, and Passepartout, comfortably seated, looked at the varied country passing before their sight, vast prairies, mountains whose profiles were shown upon the horizon, and creeks tumbling down, a foaming mass of water. Sometimes, a large herd of bisons, gathering in the distance, appeared like a moving dam. These innumerable armies of grazing animals frequently oppose an insurmountable obstacle to the passage of trains. Thousands of these animals have been seen moving on for several hours in close ranks across the railroad. The locomotive is then forced to stop and wait until the path is clear again.

The same thing happened on this occasion. About three o'clock in the afternoon a herd of ten or twelve thousand blocked the railroad. The engine, having slackened its speed, tried to plunge its spur into the flank of the immense column, but it had to stop before the impenetrable mass.

They saw these buffaloes, as the Americans improperly call them, moving with their steady gait, frequently bellowing terribly. They had a larger body than those of the bulls of Europe, short legs and tail, a projecting saddle forming a muscular bump, horns separated at the base, their heads, neck, and shoulders covered with long, shaggy hair. They could not think of stopping this moving mass.