An American Hobo in Europe

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE JOURNEY OVERLAND. The distance from 'Frisco to New York overland, is over three thousand miles, and by water it is much more than that, but such little trips are a trifle to me, as they are to every well- conditioned wayfarer. I started out happily enough one fine day at dawn to make the...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE JOURNEY OVERLAND. The distance from 'Frisco to New York overland, is over three thousand miles, and by water it is much more than that, but such little trips are a trifle to me, as they are to every well- conditioned wayfarer. I started out happily enough one fine day at dawn to make the long journey and though I did feel a qualm or two the first few days after leaving Billy, the feeling soon wore off. I chose the central route, which is the shortest via Sacramento, Reno, Ogden, Omaha, Chicago, Niagara Falls and New York, and I anticipated having lots of fun along the way. I was out for sight-seeing and adventure and believed I would have a good time. I didn't have any money to speak of, for, though I had worked several months I had saved nothing. Anyway, it wasn't safe to travel hobo style with money, for if anyone suspects you have any, it may be possible that you'll get knocked on the head or murdered outright for it.Such things are a common occurrence. I got as far as Sacramento in good shape and when the freight train I was riding on got to Newcastle, which is a town in the foothills of the Sierra mountains, a long halt was made to attach a number of refrigerator cars to it. These cars were laden with fruit. Had I wished I could have crawled into one of them and made the journey east in ten days, or less, for they are laden with perishable goods and travel as fast, almost, as a passenger train, but I didn't care to travel that way, for the reason that I didn't like it. These refrigerator cars have heavy air-tight doors at the sides which are hermetically sealed when the cars are loaded, making the cars as dark as a pocket. When in them one can't see anything and can hardly turn around. There are no conveniences whatever. One must take a sufficiency of ...