One who sees that throng pass to-day back and forth, to and from
the valley and the ocean, must know that there are no Alleghanies in our
continental topography, as Washington saw and as Webster stated there
could not be in our politics. If one makes the journey from the ocean in
the night, one may hear, if one wakes, the puffing of two engines, as in
the Jura Mountains, but there will be nothing else to tell him that the
shaggy Alleghany Mountains have not been cast into the midst of the sea--
nothing except the groaning of the wheels.
The Indians near Pittsburgh, I have said, prayed the messenger of Onontio
that they might keep their English smith--and the prayer seems to have
been abundantly answered, for Pittsburgh appears at first to be one vast
smithy, so enveloped is it in the smoke of its own toil, so reddened are
its great sky walls by its flaming forges, so filled is the air with the
dust from the bellows, and so clangorous is the sound of its hammers. It
is a city of Vulcans--a city whose industry makes academic discussions
seem as the play of girls in a field of flowers.
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