En
Roughing it, de Mark Twain, los
viajeros se internan en Kansas. Llevan dos o tres mantas, pipas, tabaco y una
bolsa de monedas de plata. La carreta es tirada por seis caballos y el
conductor que se encarga de la correspondencia y de los pasajeros…
…We took two or
three blankets for protection against frosty weather in the mountains. In the
matter of luxuries we were modest—we took none along but some pipes and five
pounds of smoking tobacco. We had two large canteens to carry water in, between
stations on the Plains, and we also took with us a little shot-bag of silver
coin for daily expenses in the way of breakfasts and dinners.
By eight o'clock
everything was ready, and we were on the other side of the river. We jumped
into the stage, the driver cracked his whip, and we bowled away and left
"the States" behind us. It was a superb summer morning, and all the
landscape was brilliant with sunshine. There was a freshness and breeziness,
too, and an exhilarating sense of emancipation from all sorts of cares and
responsibilities, that almost made us feel that the years we had spent in the
close, hot city, toiling and slaving, had been wasted and thrown away. We were
spinning along through Kansas, and in the course of an hour and a half we were
fairly abroad on the great Plains. Just here the land was rolling—a grand sweep
of regular elevations and depressions as far as the eye could reach—like the
stately heave and swell of the ocean's bosom after a storm. And everywhere were
cornfields, accenting with squares of deeper green, this limitless expanse of
grassy land. But presently this sea upon dry ground was to lose its
"rolling" character and stretch away for seven hundred miles as level
as a floor!