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Vol. 1.

 

“LET EVERY STHP BE AN ADVANCE.”

Promontory Point, Utah, Monday, June 27, 1870.

No. 8S.

 

Ghe Crans-Gontinenta,
Published Daily on the Pullman Hotel Express,
Between
Boston and San Francisco.
W. R. STEELE, Editor.

KS Communications and Exchanyes for

this paper should be addressed, TRANS-
CONTINENTAL, 46 State Street, Chicago.

 

 

BOSTON TO SAN FRANCISCO.

 

The following salutatory verses from
Boston to San Francisco, from the pen
of our contemporary and fellow-excur-
sionist, Curtis Guild, editor of the Bos-
ton Commercial Bulletin, which appeared
in the San Francisco Bulletin of the 24th,
are timely and appropriate as well as
expressive:

How weak are mere words
To the heart overflowing,
To tell its emotions or seek to convey
Thoughts that thrill all its chords
When with true warmth ‘tis glowing,
And every base passion has faded away.

*Tis thus that we stand
To respond to your greeting,
Fellow-countrymen, all ‘neath our ban-
ner of stars;
And we stretch forth each hand
To clasp yours at meeting,
Our brothers in peace and our comrades
in wars.

Where the granite shaft, gray,
Of Bunker Hill rises
To tell where our fathers braved tyran-
ny’s shock,
Where the sparkling spray
Of the blue wave baptizes
The shore of our birthplace and old Ply-
mouth Rock.

Where the rising sut’s ray
Lights the streets of old Concord,
And Lexington’s plain lies in peaceful
repose,
There shines Plymouth Bay,
Where the Mayflower was anchored,
‘Tis old Massachusetts that every one
knows.

But why need I tell
Of these spots all so hallowed—
America’s story on history’s page?
You know it full well,

 

And you mark what has folowed—
The triumph of freedom the march of
the age.

Searce a century’s flow
Our country’s veins filling,
In age ‘mid the nations mm infancy yet;
But the beams on her brow
_ To the old world is telling,
Our pole star is Progress—that never
shall set.

Like the wonder of dreams,
Or some old Eastern story,
one aes seem rising at; magic’s be-
1es
But learning’s light gleams,
Art shines in its glory,
The sae pn of enterprise point to the
Fest.

When treason awoke,
And war’s desolation
Wrote ruin and death with its fingers of
flame;
When we gazed through the smoke,
There the flag of our nation,
Unfurled in the Golden State floated the
same.

Ah! what loyal heart
But then thrilled with emotion,
At the stars faintly seen in the fair sun-
set glow?
What shall sever apart,
Stretched from ocean to ocean.
The strong bonds of Union uniting us
now?

War’s thunders have ceased,
Peaceful skies are o’erarching ;
Section’s hate and fierce feuds may we
never recall;
But North, South, West and East,
‘Neath our old flag still marching,
United we stand but divided we fall.
San Francisco, June 24, 1870.
—_———-—~<2e>

THE MAIDEN’S GRAVWE.

 

The Trans- Continental Guide in describ-
ing the early history of the country near
the Palisades, about 435 miles from Sae-
ramento, which we passed yesterday,
narrates the following:

“In the early times spoken of, a party
of emigrants from Missouri were en-
camped here, waiting for the water to
subside. Among them were many fam-
ilies, women and children, who were

 

 

accompanying their protectors to the
land of gold. While here, the daughter
of the train-master, an estimable young
lady of 18 years, fell sick and despite
the watchful care and loving tenderness
of friends and kindred, her pure spirit
floated into that unknown mist which
enwraps the earth, dividing the real
from the the ideal, the mortal from the
immortal. Her friends reared an humble
head-board to her memory, and in
course of time—among the new life open-
ing to them on the Pacific slope—the
young girl’s fate and grave were alike
forgotten by all but her immediate
relatives. When the advance guard of
the Central railroad—the graders and
culvert men—came to Gravelly Ford,
they found the lone grave and the fast
decaying head-board. The sight awoke
the finer feelings of their nature and
aroused their sympathies, for they were
men, these brown, toil-stained labor-
ers. The ‘culvert men’ (masons) con-
cluded that it was not consistent with
Christian usage to leave a grave exposed
and undefended from the incursion of
beasts of prey. With such men, to
think was to act, and in a few days the
lone grave was enclosed with a solid
wall, and a cross—the sacred emblem of
immortality—took the place of the old
head-board. In the day when the final
reckoning between these men and the
recording angel is adjusted, we think
that they will find a credit for that deed
which will offset many little debits in
the ledger of good and evil. Perhaps a
fair spirit above may smile a blessing
on their lives in recompense of the noble
deed. Bare the head reverently in pass-
ing this grave—not alone in honor of
her who is buried here, but also in honor
of that higher spirit of humanity which
recognizes in a stranger’s grave an ob-
ject too sacred to be passed lightly by,
and pays to it the tribute of respect due
the last resting place of the dead.”