Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 January 1876 — The Excursionists--—What They Saw. [ARTICLE]

The Excursionists--—What They Saw.

Indianapolis had been designated as the rendezvous from whence were to depart the representatives of the new-spaper press of Indiana, upon an excursion that would vi?it New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore and intermediate cities, towns, stations and places of interest connected in line of travel by.the great Pennsylvania Central railroad route. Hotel Bates, the toneyest caravansary in all Indiana, w-as the rallying point of those Bohemians who had volunteered or been drafted to make this mid-win-ter pilgrimage to the first capital, the chief commercial metropolis, and the present seatj of government of our glorious, century-old Vepublic. Friday, 14th instant, was the appointed day for this hegira of intellect, beauty and innocence upon their journey of sight-seeing. At five o’clock in the evening a company of two hundred and sixtyfive persons, of w-bom sixty-four were wives and daughters of gentlemen connected with the press, boarded a special train, which moved majestically, out of Union Depot, and was soon hurrying full speed through the darkness of night. Nothing was seen of the eastern portion of Indiana nor of Ohio as we sped along. Soon the coaches that had resounded with joyous laughter, and buzzed with the undertone of conversation, were hushed to the sound of human voices, and naught was heard in those dimly-lighted save the clatter of revolving wheels, and occasionally the protesting snore of an uncomfortable sleeper. As dawn began to break over the eastern mountain-tops, and stars were drowning in the flowing tide of morning light, our train crossed the Alleghany river, and crept along the hillside into the city of Pittsbugh. Peering out of the car window upon the thousands of coke ovens through whose orifices blueish flames of smouldering fire constantly broke and quivered in the semi-darkness of the valleys below, while a sulphur tainted air was being breathed, it required no vivid imagination to suggest that we were winding along the verge of a Miltonic hell. Stretching over the city from moun-tain-side to hill-top, rested a funereal panoply of coal-smoke; and a fine, black, impalpable dust was settling over everything, as it were an exceedingly light fall of ebon snow. All along the river banks as far as can be seen are cabled huge, grim barges of coal. Train after tram of stoutly constructed cars, loaded with black diamonds, are constantly passing over the railroads. Hundreds of furnaces, foundries, shops and factories are in constant operation, day and night, reducing iron ore, and manufacturing the metal into every conceivable article for which it is used. The sound of hammers and clangor of anvils never ceases, and fiercely-burning fires never expire in this busy, dirty, dismal city. After breakfast, the train moved onward with its begrimed freight, up the narrow little valley into the highlands beyond and out of the smoke. From* Pittsburg to Harrisburg, the scenery is of ever varying, constantly changing grandeur. To one accustomed all his life to the monotonous land-, scapes of northwestern Indfapa, the mountain passes, narrow defiles, steep hillsides, rugged rocks, beetling crags, awful precipices, swift-ly-running streams and romantic valleys ot middle Pennsylvania are a source of constant astonishment and pleasure. The eye never wearies of looking at, nor the mind of contemplating, scenery where nature has lavished those objects and iningle/1 those combinations which make the picturesque, magnificent, grand, stupendous and sublime. The Triumvirate.

The Clinton, lowa, Herald tells the bad luck of a Rensselaer boy as follows: Willie Sears, son of F. J. Sears, recently of this city but now residing in Rensselaer, Ind., has been in Clinton spending the holidays among old friends. The other morning he started to go home. While waiting for the train bound east he had his valise stolen from the waiting room of the Northwestern depot. YoungSearshad left his valise only for a moment, but in that brief interval it vanished, and his subsequent thorough search, as well as that of the officers, failed to reveal

its whereabouts. Im4he valise was all his clothing, a\s2s cornet, and other things to the value of s6s—quite a loss, and one that seriously annoys