Did you ever ride on a snow-plow? Not the pet and pony of a thing that is attached to the front of an engine, sometimes, like a pilot, but a great two-storied monster of strong timbers, that runs upon wheels of its own, and that boys run after and stare at, as they would after, and at, an elephant. You are snow-bound at Buffalo. The Lake Shore Line is piled with drifts like a surf. Two passenger trains have been half-buried for twelve hours somewhere in snowy Chautauqua. The storm howls like a congregation of Arctic bears. But the Superintendent at Buffalo is determined to release his castaways and clear the road to Erie. He permits you to be a passenger on the great snow-plow, and there it is, all ready to drive. Harnessed behind it is a tandem team of three engines. It does not occur to you that you are going to ride upon a steam-drill, and so you get aboard.
It is a spacious and timbered room, with one large bull's-eye window--an overgrown lens. The thing is a sort of Cyclops. There are ropes and chains and a windlass. There is a bell by which the engineer of the first engine can signal the plowman, and a cord whereby the plowman can talk back. There are two sweeps or arms, worked by machinery on the sides. You ask their use, and the Superintendent replies, "when, in a violent shock, there is danger of the monster's upsetting, an arm is put out on one side or the other, to keep the thing from turning a complete somerset." You get one idea, and an inkling of another. So you take out your Accident Policy for three thousand dollars, and examine it. It never mentions battles nor duels nor snow-plows. It names "public conveyances." _Is_ a snow-plow a public conveyance? You are inclined to think it is neither that, nor any other kind that you should trust yourself to, but it is too late for consideration.
You roll out of Buffalo in the teeth of the wind, and the world is turned to snow. All goes merrily. The machine strikes little drifts, and they scurry away in a cloud. The three engines breathe easily, but by-and-by the earth seems broken into great billows of dazzling white. The sun comes out of a cloud, and touches it up till it outsilvers Potosi. Houses lie in the trough of the sea everywhere, and it requires little imagination to think they are pitching and tossing before your eyes. The engines' respiration is a little quickened. At last there is no more road than there is in the Atlantic. A great breaker rises right in the way. The monster, with you in it, works its way up and feels of it. It is packed like a ledge of marble. Three whistles! The machine backs away and keeps backing, as a gymnast runs astern to get sea-room and momentum for a big jump; as a giant swings aloft a heavy sledge that it may come down with a heavy blow. One whistle! You have come to a halt. Three pairs of whistles one after another, and then, putting on all steam, you make for the drift. The Superintendent locks the door, you do not quite understand why, and in a second the battle begins. The machine rocks and creaks in all its joints. There comes a tremendous shock. The cabin is as dark as midnight. The clouds of flying snow put out the day. The labored breathing of the locomotives behind you, the clouds of smoke and steam that wrap you as in a mantle, the noon-day eclipse of snow, the surging of the ship, the rattling of chains, the creak of timbers as if the craft were aground, and the sea getting out of its bed to whelm you altogether, the doubt as to what will come next--all combine to make a scene of strange excitement for a land-lubber. You have made some impression upon the breaker, and again the machine backs for a fair start, and then altogether another plunge and shock and heavy twilight. And so, from deep cut to deep cut, as if the season had packed all his winter clothes upon the track, until the stalled trains are reached and passed, and then with alternate storm and calm and halt and shock, till the way is cleared to Erie.