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Cosmic Bubbles JRM
Cosmic Bubbles JRM
Cosmic Bubbles JRM
 Cosmic Bubbles:
Amazonian Dictations
The Black Book
M-Theory for Everything
The Grand Arrangement
Hums with Joy
Huesos Huecos
Breathe Joy In
Breathe Magic Out
Sowing Intentions

Celeste Books
Cosmic Bubbles: Text & Artwork © 2024 JRM
Library of Congress Control Number: 13420932031

First edition: January 2024

 Contents

Life Is Sacred 5 Permission. Much obliged. 86

How Did We Get Here? 7 How Does Magic Happen? JRM! 91
Genesis 11 Disentangle 93
Prayers 14 Birth-Death Meditation 96
Pause 18 Becoming Infinite 101
Pro-Life 19 Disposable Jobs 105
The Blinding Light 23 Non-Self 108
You Are a Billionaire 26 Impermanence 110
Let Us Hum 28 Nothing Will Be the Same Again 111
Thunder Rumble: Oneself vs. One-Self 31 Make Me One with Everything 115
Curse You, Coca-Cola! 34 Sacred Sensuality 119
En-Joy 37 Sola Como Una Ola 123
Gorillas 40 CCC: Cannibalistic Cultural Constructs 127
NFL & Socialism 42 Little Mindfulness 131
Converting Fear into Joy 45 The GIG Economy 132
From Bears to Bees 51 Culling Us 136
Meaning of Life 55 Survival Game 139
Till Death Do Us One 59 Book of Numbers 140
Magical Moments 63 BEM: Body, Emotion and Mind 146
Two-by-Four, American Home 67 Leave to Live 148
Laugh on the Path Less Traveled 70 Bring It On! 150
There Is Joy 73 Cosbubs 152
Wipe This Stupid Smile off My Face 74 Ya No Me Atrevo a Pedir Perdón 156
Death by a Thousand Cuts: Lingchi 79 List of Drawings 159
There Is Magic 83

Cosmic Bubbles JRM 3

Cosmic Bubbles JRM
 Life Is Sacred
The universe is omnipotent. Any
"Life is sacred," "the universe is divine," and doubts? Supernova anyone? Tsunami. Stroke.
"nature is holy" are reflections on the miracle Life and death.
of the every day, everywhere.
The universe is omniscient; that is, the
If you believe that God, or gods, created universe knows it all. The universe hums with
the universe, then the universe must be divine joy to the tune of sacred songs, which we call
as it is the creation of the divine. If we set aside universal laws or laws of nature. Nature knows
whether we believe in a god creator of the how to divide cells, draw and erase mountains,
universe, we can still sense that the universe is and create and annihilate stars. Nature teaches
divine; we can feel life is sacred. birds and whales how to sing, rivers how to
roar, and Arctic foxes how to nose dive into the
What are the attributes of divinity
snow.
across religions? The divine is omnipresent. The
divine is omnipotent. The divine is omniscient.
Beyond rational arguments, we might
Big words, but simple words because they are
feel the divine character of the universe by
two-part words: omni-something, the prefix
looking at the night sky. There are about a
"omni" meaning all. Like "omni-vore," an
hundred billion stars in each of a trillion
organism that eats everything. Or the archaic
galaxies, equivalent to thousands of stars for
omnibus or bus for all. Growing up, we called
each grain of sand on Earth. Cannot see the
the bus omnibus, pronounced "omneeboos" in
night sky? Find a tree feeding from carbon in
Spanish. Forty-year-old Leyland Tiger
the air and gifting the oxygen we breathe, the
omnibuses with a million miles on their wooden
sacredness of life. No trees around you?
bones, leftovers of British dominance in our
Contemplate the miracle of your birth. From a
corner of Latin America.
tiny egg and sperm most improbable encounter
to turning head down and bottom up for
The omnipresence of life is evident
roughly six weeks before being expelled from
because life is everywhere at all times. We are
the womb—Paradise.
part of life. We are immersed in nature. The
omnipresence of life does not have that
The universe as a whole, along with
unsettling feeling of a god watching every one
every being in it, is sacred. Furthermore, the
of our moves—and apparently doing little to
purpose of every being in the universe is also
stop us from the worst in us. The omnipresence
sacred. Fulfilling our purposes is, therefore,
of the universe is benevolent and comforting.
sacred too. Unlike stars, trees, and eggs, we no
The air we breathe in and out. The joy we
longer have a clear sense of our purpose in life,
breathe in and out. It is the wind swaying the
which leads us to babble from cradle to grave
trees right now.
without fulfilling our divine destiny.

Cosmic Bubbles JRM 5

Cosmic Bubbles JRM 6
 How Did We Get Here?
5,000,000,000: Earth shone first as a ball of
fire approximately five billion years ago, nearly
ten billion years after the Big Bang. Baby Earth
might have had a little sister planet, Theia.
Siblings collided and, as a result, created the
moon. There is further beauty in the moon
being the same apparent size as the sun in the
sky and dancing with such synchronicity that
we see nearly the same side at all times.
Radical life changes demanded a vast time
scale: it took roughly one billion years for water
to persist on a cooling Earth and for the first
organic life forms to surface. Comets and
meteorites might have brought water and early
life forms, though other theories abound.
Another billion and a half years passed before
oxygen and bacteria became abundant.
Cyanobacteria built colonies resembling rocky
cauliflowers (stromatolites) that still pump
oxygen into the atmosphere through
photosynthesis. Life took approximately
another billion years to achieve the wondrous
fusion of bacteria into complex cells (eukaryotic
cells) with inner mechanisms like mitochondria.
Through this epic journey, life labored over
three billion years to create the instruments for
the grand arrangement: water, oxygen, and
complex cells singing together.
500,000,000: Removing a zero from
five billion years ago brings us to five hundred
million years ago when life flourished on Earth
during the Cambrian explosion into most
known groups in the animal, plant, and fungus
kingdoms. Apex predators were already an
essential part of life as catalysts for evolution.
The largest, about two or more feet long, was
Anomalo-caris, an enigmatic marine creature
feasting on other sea beings. Meanwhile, prey
Cosmic Bubbles
species developed defenses, such as
exoskeletons on the abundant trilobites. Deep
down, solidifying the Earth's innermost iron
core to the right degree was crucial to creating
the magnetic fields that protect us from the
solar wind, the continual particle bombardment
from the sun. Mass extinctions, such as the
Great Dying 250 million years ago caused by
massive volcanic activity, have halted the
proliferation of life multiple times. Five of these
events wiped out as many as three-quarters of
species. Spiders, beetles, dragonflies, snails,
coral, and jellyfish still represent some of the
survivors who endured it all.
50,000,000: Fifty million years ago,
trees and dinosaurs dominated Earth. The
planet had undergone a massive change in
appearance in the last 100 million years after
continents broke apart from the
supercontinent Pangea and drifted close to
their current locations. Top predators from this
age, such as Tyrannosaurus, are legendary and
the subject of our fascination. Despite their
might, or perhaps because of their might, they
were gone in the last mass extinction the planet
has witnessed.
5,000,000: Five million years ago, the
landscape was more like what we see today,
and mammals were now predominant. Seas
separated the Americas because the Isthmus of
Panama had not yet formed. Hawaiian islands
were about to emerge. One of our earliest
ancestors dates to this early era: Lucy, over
three million years old, was 3.5 feet tall and
weighed about 60 pounds.
JRM 7
 500,000: Five hundred thousand years
ago, early human ancestors were on the move,
as when Neanderthals left Africa for Europe via
Asia. These migrations, the expulsion from
Paradise, might have been prompted by
environmental changes in the African continent
or simply by an increasing population searching
for new foraging grounds. Traces of human-
made fires date to this period, proving that we
were developing further skills. We have cooked
with wood fires for about half a million years
but have used gas stoves for only 200 years.
50,000: Fifty thousand years ago,
glaciers blanketed one-third of the Earth's land.
The ice was in places thousands of meters thick,
making sea levels over a hundred meters lower
than they are today. This created passages that
allowed humanity to reach as far out as the
Americas across the Bering Sea. Homo Sapiens
was out of Africa and on the mend from a
genetic bottleneck likely due to the Toba
volcano super-eruption that had reduced the
human population to a few thousand
individuals. We had become the top predator in
the world, having contributed to the extinction
of the pale Neanderthals. Tools compensated
for any lack of brute force, making us fearsome
predators. We were also making art in the form
of cave paintings and Venus figurines, marking
our new dominant status.
5,000: Five thousand years ago, our
role as apex predators was well established,
and we had reached nearly every corner of the
planet. Evolution allowed us to excel as the top
predator as long as taking out other creatures
was necessary to foster evolution. However, we
overdid it and ran out of mega-prey such as
wooly rhinos, mammoths, giant elk and bears in
Cosmic Bubbles
Europe and Asia, and giant kangaroos in
Australia. In the Americas, around ten thousand
years earlier, humanity had wiped out the
largest animals, from mammoths to giant
armadillos and sloths. We reached remote
islands and eradicated their megafauna. The
world population 5,000 years ago was about 10
to 100 million people or as little as 1/1000 of
what it is today. That corresponds to roughly 1
square kilometer of habitable land per
individual, equivalent to a population density
comparable to those of Amazonia, Mongolia,
and Siberia today. The large amount of land
was, however, less than what it has been
estimated necessary for a hunter-gatherer
lifestyle (at least ten sq km per person).
Our large numbers and an ecosystem collapsing
for a hunting and gathering lifestyle forced us
to settle to harvest crops and raise cattle in
sweet spots like the crossroads out of Africa
(Egypt and Mesopotamia), the funnel of
Mesoamerica, and the end of migration routes
(Andes, Japan, Europe). Our civilizations had all
the familiar characteristics: cities, agriculture,
written language, sky-father gods, and people
with mutated blue eyes. Despite these changes,
we never abandoned our predatory ways. We
never became truly civilized. It took a long time
for us to evolve as top predators, and settling
down 5,000 years ago into a different way of
life did not alter our predatory nature. Our
genes evolved to make us predators, a purpose
no longer needed. Eight billion kin trafficking
and teeming, we still operate with a predatory
mentality of taking and killing. We have not
resolved this contradiction between what we
evolved to be millennia ago and what is needed
now.
JRM 8
 500: Five hundred years ago, there
were twenty times fewer humans (about 400
million) and ten times more fish. Europeans
were colonizing the rest of the continents while
glorifying a Eurocentric culture that implicitly
deemed Europeans superior. The so-called
Renaissance focused on celebrating European
art, food, architecture, and other cultural
expressions while neglecting its buildup on the
decimation of nature and non-Europeans. It
was one civilization preying on all others.
Meanwhile, we continued to wipe out other
species, from large trees and bison to
passenger pigeons.
50: The world population 50 years ago
was about half that of today. Two world wars
had decimated about 100 million people from
Earth. The loss of roughly 5% of the world
population led to the muffling of our predatory
ways from all-out wars while continuing to
obliterate all other beings on the planet. This
"cold war," the stalemate between capitalist
and communist superpowers, manifested as
the accumulation of nukes, the sending of giant
rockets to the moon, and the proliferation of
third-inferno conflicts. Operation Condor,
sponsored by the US, brought about military
dictatorships in most Latin American countries,
culminating with the bombardment of the
Chilean Presidential Palace on 911, 1973, while
the democratically elected president was in his
office. Most of the present technologies have
been developed or envisioned. More
importantly, fear suppressed a budding joy
revolution, cutting radical change short. From
hippies to birth control, the establishment
tamed manifold forces into what became the
current globalized capitalism.
Cosmic Bubbles
5: You can reflect on your life five years
ago. You can also fill in what happened five
months ago, five weeks ago, five hours ago,
even five seconds ago. I challenge you next to
imagine the future: five hours, five days, five
weeks, five months, five years, and fifty years
from now. Where will you be as an individual?
Where will we be as a society? Will pandemics
and climate catastrophes continue to come in
increasing waves? Will we revert to massive
wars? Will we remain in our cultural predatory
ways while refraining from mutual destruction?
Or will we practice a radically different way of
living that protects the grand arrangement of
life?
500: Five hundred years from now, will
we still be around, or will only the eroding
concrete of our cities remain? Are civilizations
doomed to a short life due to their inability to
shed the predatory behaviors that led to their
dominance? Is that why we don't hear from
extraterrestrials, the professed Fermi Paradox?
5,000,000,000: Earth is only halfway
through her life, as she will still be around for
another five billion years. The galaxy
Andromeda, having merged with our own, will
brightly illuminate the sky at that time. Will
human civilization be a mere blip, existing for
just a few thousand years out of ten billion? Is
this the fate of the top predator on any planet?
To evolve rapidly and rabidly, grow in
overwhelming numbers, and ultimately
collapse in exhaustion?
JRM 9
Cosmic Bubbles JRM
 Genesis
If you learned the Genesis creation stories as a
child, like I did, the narrative becomes
mythological. The book of Genesis is, after all, a
monotheist adaptation of Babylonian myths. "A
river watering the garden flowed from Eden;
from there it was separated into four
headwaters." [The Bible, Genesis 2:10] Judaism
and Islam interpret the rivers figuratively as
carrying milk and wine. Literal interpretations
identify two rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, which
geographically defined Babylonia.
When I embarked on this Rio Negro
journey, the boat that brought me a thousand
kilometers up from Manaus was appropriately
named Genesis. The Amazonian jungle
surrounding the Rio Negro is what the planet
would have looked like if trees had been
completely dominant. Tannin-rich acidic waters
lead to few insects hatching their eggs—no
mosquitoes here. The lack of insects makes for
few, if any, birds, reptiles, and mammals—
including humans. Paradise.
Yes, Abel and Cain and the great flood,
but the Genesis story I have always found the
most striking, particularly as a child, is the story
of the expulsion from Paradise. How Adam and
Eve live in perfect happiness and harmony
while there is only one rule they must follow:
not to eat the forbidden fruit. Not surprisingly,
that is what they end up doing. They are
encouraged by the snake according to the
Bible, but not in other sacred books like the
Quran. Upon eating from the forbidden tree,
Cosmic Bubbles
Adam and Eve feel the wrath of God, and they
are expelled from Paradise.
The moment man and woman acquire
"knowledge," they become aware of their
nakedness and feel shame. Then God shows up
and calls the man out of hiding. The man
blames the woman, who, in turn, blames the
snake. God then delivers punishment to the
snake first, the woman next, and the man last.
Paradise is then lost. Then and only then, the
woman is named by the man, "Adam named his
wife Eve, because she would become the
mother of all the living." [3:20] Then they
"made love." [4:1]
That is a fundamental story. We can
take it literally as a test of loyalty to God, but
we could also find other meanings. The tree is
supposed to be the tree of knowledge. If you
eat from this tree, you gain knowledge, and
gaining knowledge brings expulsion from
Paradise. The snake shares this fruit with a
woman and a man in what could be seen as a
compassionate act. Genesis 3:20 also quotes
God as saying, "The man has now become like
one of us, knowing good and evil." God adds,
"He must not be allowed to reach out his hand
and take also from the tree of life and eat, and
live forever." Why are we expelled from
Paradise by gaining knowledge? Just because
we violated the rule God established? Or
because we tried to be godlike? Or is it that
knowledge itself brings the expulsion from
Paradise? Is the apple tree perhaps
representing language? What is the "tree of
life" that brings eternal life?
JRM 11
 Language is the gift that allows us to
speak about what is not here. That is a
portentous gift, but at the same time, language
is a curse because I can be oblivious to the
wonders of this place here by the river and
instead think and talk about what is not here.
What is not here can be good, like silence
instead of the music intruding into my space
now. But I am also thinking about what is not
here, which creates anguish in me, and I lose
Paradise. I think what is not here are people
who celebrate nature. People who are mindful
and who are not here, and then I fall into
anguish and anxiety. I end up suffering because
I think about the good that is not here.
What is here right now is a warm
breeze. A tree I sit under. A tremendous river
carrying love, energy, and peace for all. And
clouds forming to bring rain again for the river
to keep coming up. But my mind is constantly
going to what is not here. I have a phone
nearby, and I can use it to check the rest of the
world for many things that are not here. I can
check on friends and lovers and even markets.
Could it be that Genesis, the expulsion from
Paradise, the gaining of knowledge, is the
gaining of language? That is what the forbidden
fruit might be: a warning from God not to
acquire language, but it is our nature to seek
knowledge and to learn language.
The snake, how powerful she is. The
snake often represents a means to gain
knowledge or power. Carl Jung uses the black
snake as an image of magic in "The Red Book."
By accepting a scepter shaped like a black
snake, we accept magic. When I got the Red
Book for the first time, I opened it with my eyes
Cosmic Bubbles
closed to a random page looking for an omen.
Upon opening my eyes, I was facing a drawing
showing the magical serpent on page 129,
which is also my birthday! The snake in Genesis
is magical because she brings knowledge. Do
we misuse magic because it is not for our
solace or the solace of others? And that is what
brings the expulsion from Paradise, the misuse
of magic?
Recovering Paradise is central to
Arcadian and Utopian beliefs. Paradise can be
recovered by returning to an idyllic rural past or
moving forward to a Utopian future where
Paradise is recreated through our technologies.
However, we might not need to embark on a
quest to recreate Paradise if we acknowledge
that Paradise is already here and always has
been. This universe embodies Paradise, but we
don't see it because we think constantly about
what is not here. We think and talk about
Paradise somewhere in heaven when there is
Paradise on earth. We see Paradise in a distant
past or an ideal future when Paradise is in the
present. This is Paradise, and it does not
revolve around us.
JRM 12
Cosmic Bubbles JRM 13
 Prayers
Our Father, who art in heaven.
Our Mother, who art on earth.
Hallowed be thy joy.
Thy queendom endure.
Thy will be done in heaven,
As it is done on the land and at the sea.

Our Mother, who art on earth.

Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
Let us not fall into fear
And free us from ourselves.
Amen.

Padre nuestro que estás en el cielo.

Madre nuestra que estás en la tierra.
Alabada sea tu alegría.
Perdure tu reino.
Hágase tu voluntad en el cielo,
Como lo es en la tierra y en el mar.

Madre nuestra que estás en la tierra.

Danos hoy el pan nuestro de cada día.
Perdona nuestras ofensas,
Así como nosotros perdonamos aquellos que nos ofenden.
No nos dejes caer en el miedo
Y líbranos de nosotros mismos.
Así sea.

Cosmic Bubbles JRM 14

 The preceding prayers emerged over two years
of praying in a forest while living off the grid
many miles from any other human being. There
was what I called a "cathedral" next to the
house, where an open section of the forest the
size of a football field was surrounded by tall
trees. The trees reached high and bent into the
"nave," creating a living vault. I prayed daily in
that cathedral. In the beginning, I uttered
childhood prayers. Over time, the words
evolved into the prayers I still recite daily.

Prayer loses its power when learned by

memory and repeated mechanically. However,
searching for your own prayer is meaningful.
Prayer is a way of asking for permission and
giving thanks. The repetition of phrases such as
"much obliged heart," "much obliged tree,"
"much obliged sun," and so on can be a form of
prayer.

Prayer can show respect, adoration, and

honoring. Sometimes, prayer can be just a
gesture. I have seen local people come to the
river here [in the Amazonia] and make the sign
of the Cross before entering the water. That's a
way of honoring the river. It is a way of
honoring life. It is a way of asking for
permission. It is a way of showing humility. It
might just be a superstition to keep evil spirits
away, but it is still a form of singing praise.
Chanting can be a powerful form of praying,
even when no words are spoken:

[Chanting]

Prayer is a pause.

Cosmic Bubbles JRM 15

Cosmic Bubbles JRM 16
Cosmic Bubbles JRM 17
 Pause

The seven-day
Millstone
has turned
once more
It is time to pause
Pause
The Sunday morning pause
Time to wipe
sweat off brows
Time to let
tears break through

Time to laugh at me
Pause
Time to pause
Past broken
Milestones
It is time to
Pray for
Pray to
those who do not
pause any more
It is time to look
West and East
Past and Forwards
Time to pause
It is time
Pause

Cosmic Bubbles JRM 18

 Pro-Life

There are causes whose names make a huge

difference in conveying what they are about or
sometimes masking what they are about,
thereby gaining supporters just because the
name is appealing, like when the anti-abortion
movement defines itself as "pro-life."

When we embrace the cause of

protecting the land and life in general, we use
uninviting words. Instead, we speak of "climate
change" and "global warming." First of all, such
terms have very negative connotations. Climate
change is happening, global warming is
happening, but we're reminding people that
negative things are happening, which is a turn-
off for many. Then there are things that we can
refute; we can start arguing about whether
there is climate change or how much there is,
how much global warming there is, how much
is really happening, how much it happened
before, and what about this or that. So, these
are not very strong ways to convey a message
or set an intention.

I don't want climate change, but what

does it mean to say that? Essentially, I am
asking, how can I invoke magic to ensure life
endures?

We can talk about "Collapse," a

powerful word referring to the collapse of
ecological systems and civilizations, as Jared
Diamond has used it. We could describe our
times as "The Great Derangement," as Amitav
Ghosh eloquently does. But again, we elicit
strong negative connotations. We could use

Cosmic Bubbles JRM 19

terms like Earth destruction, planet
obliteration, environmental collapse, or, more
closely related to people's hearts, we could talk
about home collapse, home exploitation, home
destruction... All these expressions, however,
continue to convey very negative meanings.
How can we share a positive meaning, a
positive mindset? Something that we can
embrace and sow intentions for and pray for,
invoke magic for? And I have come to like
saying, "I am pro-life." Pro-life: I am pro-life.
Yes, I do want to protect the life of an unborn
child. Yes, I want to protect a fetus. Yes, I want
to guard a human embryo, even when it's just
one day old. Whatever kind of life there is, we
want to protect it. But then, obviously, there
are many other considerations about what a
woman needs in her life, and that's her decision
to make.
I am pro-life. I am pro-life, and I'm
protecting all forms of life. I'm pro-life because
I protect these trees in front of me. I want them
to endure. I want them to live on. I want the
children who are already born to have a
fulfilling life, a healthy life, a life free of trauma,
free of poverty, free of hunger. I want grown-
ups to be free of suffering because they don't
have access to health care. And I want all other
beings to endure, to receive love, and to be
protected: trees, whales, cows. I am pro-life.
So, I am not going to eat a cow because
I'm pro-life. Why would I eat a cow? The horrid
operation of raising a cow, transporting it in
trucks, and slaughtering cattle—if you haven't
seen it in person, find a video about it. Can you
still eat beef after seeing that? Would you do
Cosmic Bubbles
that? Can you shoot a cow in the head, quarter
it, and deal with the bloody mess? Can you do
that to eat meat? If you can do it, go ahead and
eat the beef. I don't want to eat salmon. Yup,
salmon is delicious... but southern resident
orcas are dwindling on the West Coast of the
United States because there are fewer and
fewer salmon, and we still sell wild-caught
salmon. There are many other options available
for our nutrition while remaining pro-life.
How about bacon? How about ham? Have you
heard the child-like searing screams of pigs
being slaughtered? "Yeah, right, Lisa. A
wonderful, magical animal."
I am pro-life. I protect all forms of life. I
will make bumper stickers that say "Pro-Life" in
letters with elephants, cows, flowers, trees,
bison, salmon, and fetuses. Alternatively, the
letters can be solid green or blood color, with a
background featuring forests, oceans, skies,
mountains, and monarch butterflies.
I am pro-life. Let's be pro-life. Let's
retake those words and expand them into pro-
life as meaning protecting life, all forms of life.
Yes, protect the fetuses, protect cows, protect
whales. Do you value a one-day embryo more
than a whale? What gives us the right to do
that? Do you think "God" has given that one-
day-old embryo a soul and has neglected the
whale, the elephant, the rhinoceros, the cows,
the horses, the dogs, and the trees? Those are
also divine beings who we must protect.
Yes, pro-life. I am Pro-Life.
JRM 20
Cosmic Bubbles JRM 21
Cosmic Bubbles JRM 22
 The Blinding Light
Sometimes, I have used, and still find myself
ready to use, metaphors of darkness as eliciting
bad and light as good. "There is a dark side to
this situation" is an ominous phrase for most.
"Dark thoughts," "dark ages," and "dark
secrets" make a trifecta of negativity associated
with darkness. "Dark" as "bad" is sometimes
replaced by "night" or, even more patently, by
"black."
When searching for similar words to
"black," one first finds synonyms for black in a
physical sense, such as moonless. When it
comes to emotional significances for black,
Oxford Languages relentlessly lists the
following: tragic, disastrous, calamitous,
catastrophic, cataclysmic, ruinous, devastating,
fatal, fateful, wretched, woeful, grievous,
lamentable, miserable, dire, unfortunate,
awful, terrible, and direful.
Darkness is mentioned about 150 times
in the Bible, most instances with a negative
connotation. From Genesis 1:4, "God saw that
the light was good, and he separated the light
from the darkness," to the much-quoted John
1:5, "The light shines in the darkness, and the
darkness has not overcome it." The Quran
mentions darkness about 50 times. Darkness is
often referred to as the "depths of darkness."
The second and longest surah of the Quran,
named Al-Baqara ("The Cow"), is about the
Israelites' reluctance to follow Moses'
command to sacrifice a cow to solve a murder.
Verse 257 reads in part, "Allah is the Protector
of those who have faith: from the depths of
darkness, He will lead them forth into light."
Cosmic Bubbles
It's no surprise that even the iconic
Michael Jackson, towards the end of "Will You
Be There?", recited, "In our darkest hour / In
my deepest despair." (The lines can be heard in
the version of the song as recorded in the
album Dangerous and as performed in
concerts. The version for the movie Free Willy
and the song's video stop short of the words
associating darkness with despair. The words
recited by Michael Jackson were played during
his memorial in 2009.)
But now I find myself saying, "Oh, there
is a dark side to this situation," when I mean
there is something positive in the situation.
Conversely, the bright side is the blinding bright
side. I respond similarly in actions, finding much
comfort in the darkness. I frequently find
myself switching off lights. Perhaps because the
glare of bright lights on my face feels like an
interrogation. Or because I grew up in a dimly
lit basement surrounded by love.
Remember Monty Python singing,
"Always look on the bright side of life," when
they were referring to all the suffering and
upheaval that life brings on. They were being
sarcastic, but then maybe they were indirectly
saying that the bright side of life is the one with
suffering. Kahlil Gibran enters into a dialog with
the night in "Night and the Madman" that
begins with "I AM like thee, O, Night, dark and
naked;" and ends with "Yea, we are twin
brothers, O, Night; for / thou revealest space
and I reveal my / soul."
JRM 23
 Maybe the unnatural dichotomy
between light as good and darkness as bad was
a way to consecrate a bright God in heaven.
The actual sky on Earth can be equally light or
dark over time. There is no moral judgment in
either. We need both. We know the sun brings
energy to Earth, but the goodness is attributed
to a male god in heaven. But the heavens have
many light sources and a multitude of darkness.
We have actually learned the universe is
predominantly, as much as 95%, dark matter
and dark energy. Dark matter pulls the cosmos
together while dark energy pushes it apart.
Even though dark skies are the natural
state of night, we associate night lighting with
security in obsessive ways. We learn dangers
lurk in the dark. In reality, artificial lighting
might encourage criminal activity. Witness our
cities flooded by lights, giving us a false sense of
security and creating light pollution that keeps
us from seeing stars, disrupts our sleep, and
confuses wild animals and trees.
We are bombarded with cliches about
the goodness of light, as for "the light at the
end of the tunnel," signaling hope instead of an
approaching train. On the other hand, we
neglect the wondrousness of the dark side of
life. The womb is dark. Death is dark. We start
in darkness; we pass into darkness. Darkness is
the nexus to cycles of life. Birth and death are
our true and sublime darkest hours. Love-
making and dream time tend to be also dark
hours. Darkness is a companion in most
moments when our ego dissolves, something
we tend to fear.
Cosmic Bubbles
The seed sprouts in darkness. It does
seek the light, but the roots remain in darkness.
There's no dichotomy of good and bad for light
and darkness. I am just using the bright side as
a negative to compensate for the
overwhelming reinforcement in our culture of
light as redeeming and dark as miserable.
There's a light side and a dark side to almost
every situation. It can be good or bad. But right
now, I am siding with darkness. I am under the
waterline. I am in the womb. I am entombed. I
am with chocolate, with graphite, with the
night...
Let's bask in the glory of the dark side of life.
∞
Obsidian Voices
Let me praise the black of anthracite
The black of soothing nights
The richness of black soil
Blackness of slave arms
The black of Navy cooks
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
under the waterline. Let us
Praise the black of heavens
The black of wombs
Blackness from love's shadows
The black in trumpets and drums
Let me praise the dark about us
JRM 24
Cosmic Bubbles JRM 25
 You Are a Billionaire
You are a billionaire by the time you reach the
age of thirty. Not only are you a billionaire, but
you are a billionaire in a precious currency:
heartbeats. Beats like in Beatcoin®.
Our hearts beat about 60 times a
minute, usually a bit more, but 60 beats per
minute is easy to remember, just like the
number of seconds in a minute. There are 60
minutes in an hour and 24 hours a day, so if you
multiply 60 times 24, there are about 1400
minutes in one day. Multiply the daily minutes
by 60 beats per minute, and you end up with a
whopping 86,000, or roughly 100,000
heartbeats per day. Multiply that by 365 annual
days, and we are talking over 30 million
heartbeats each year. Your heart is going to
beat over thirty million times each year!
Hopefully, you exercise some or at least get
excited from time to time, so the number of
heartbeats in one year is going to be even more
than that. Therefore, every three years, your
heart beats a hundred million times!
So remember this: a hundred million
heartbeats every three years. Our hearts beat
even more when we are infants. Then, we can
conclude that by your thirtieth birthday, your
heart has beaten at least ten times a hundred
million or an American billion. What we call
billionaires in the US are thousand-million-
dollar tycoons. Similarly, we achieve a
billionaire milestone in heartbeats by the time
we reach thirty years of age. Once you are over
sixty, you have more than two billion
heartbeats.
Cosmic Bubbles
We share our riches with hummingbirds
and whales. Hummingbird hearts can amazingly
reach 1,200 beats per minute. They also have
long resting periods, and their lifespan is just 3
to 5 years. We can easily calculate that a
hummingbird is also remarkably a billionaire
because their hearts beat about one and a half
billion times in their lifetime. Blue whales have
slow hearts at about 35 beats per minute and
as low as 2 bpm when deep diving. Despite
their slow hearts, long lives approaching 90
years allow them to accumulate also close to a
billion heartbeats. Therefore, hummingbirds,
humans, and blue whales are all gifted with
billionaire hearts during a lifetime.
Such an abundance is easy to take
lightly. How much would a heartbeat be worth
if it were a currency? Wouldn't you pay a dollar
for a heartbeat? I would pay a lot more not to
miss a single heartbeat. Some of the dollar-
billionaires may pay one of their billions for just
one heartbeat not to be missed. You are a
billionaire in a very precious currency by the
time you are thirty years old. Enjoy your billion.
[Background sound: Frogs singing in the
Amazonia]
JRM 26
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 Fig. 18. The De Witt Clinton Train
If we study the De Witt Clinton train, we shall learn several
things. Both the engine and the coaches were small and light
compared with those used now. With the great speed of to-day, all
the parts of a train must be very heavy in order to cling to the track.
The engine of those days had four light driving wheels, and the
engineer, it would seem, had to operate his engine while facing wind
and storm. The cab looks very much like a common express wagon
made heavier than usual; and if we look at the passenger wagons,
we shall see why passenger cars are called coaches. The first ones
were coaches, and every picture of an old passenger train shows
that the cars were modeled after the coaches of the stage lines of
that age, except that the wheels were made with flat rims, with
flanges to keep them on the track. The passengers certainly could
not move about, and the high perches on the top look somewhat
dangerous. One would think that the wind and the smoke of the
locomotive could not have been pleasant. The men could not go into
a smoking car, and if they had luncheon they must have brought it in
their pockets. Nor could they tuck themselves snugly into a berth and
sleep all night. These things, however, were not needed upon a
railroad that was only eighteen miles long. To this day dining cars
and “sleepers” are not so much used in England as in this country.
Millions of people travel there, but the land is small, they go swiftly,
and can usually eat and sleep at their journey’s end. They still speak
of the “wagons” of the “goods train,” and English freight cars look
almost like toys by the side of ours in America. This shows us how
closely the railways and cars are related to common roads and
vehicles.
People laughed at railroads in these early days and had about
as much faith in them as we now have in flying machines. A few
years ago men would have had the same sport about wireless
telegraphy, or about talking between New York and Chicago with a
telephone. Mrs. Alice Morse Earle, who has written much about early
life in New England, says that the farmers did not like railroads, for
they thought that horses would soon be useless and would then be
killed, and that there would be no demand for oats or hay. They were
afraid, too, that the noise would frighten the hens so that they would
not lay, that the sparks from the engine would burn up everything,
and that the people would go crazy.
There was some excuse for not enjoying railway travel, for the
roadbeds were often made of solid rock, and the cars did not always
have springs. The tracks were made of strap iron spiked down to
wooden stringers. These iron straps would sometimes become
loose, and had an unpleasant way of curling up and piercing the floor
of the coach where people were sitting.
In these days it is more comfortable and probably safer to ride in
a railway train than behind a horse. The Empire State Express runs
from New York to Buffalo in eight hours and twenty minutes. It makes
but four stops on the way and covers more than fifty-three miles an
hour. When we compare this with the packet-boat time-table of
seventy-five years ago we see how much time is now saved.
To-day a man can board the Twentieth Century Limited in New
York City at 2.45 in the afternoon and be set down in Chicago the
next morning. He can do business nearly all of one day by the sea,
and nearly all of the next day on the shore of lake Michigan. On the
way he will find easy chairs, books and papers, a good bed, a fine
table, a place to write, to be shaved, or to take a bath, and he may
even read from time to time the prices of stocks as they are sent
over the wire from New York and Chicago. But our comfortable
traveler should not despise the early days. Perhaps he misses some
of the good times that the great-grandfathers had in the Mohawk
boats and along the Genesee road.
To go so fast and so far means that much has been done since
the first small train came across the sand fields to Schenectady. Five
years later the trains ran up to Utica. This was two hundred and two
years after Arent Van Curler’s journey along the same river. In two
years more a little road, twenty-five miles long, had been finished
between Syracuse and Auburn; but it was not until 1839, when
another winter had passed, that the link between Utica and Syracuse
was completed. This ran much of the way through woods and
swamps, and in some cases timbers or piles had to be driven deep
to hold up the track.

Fig. 19. The Twentieth Century Limited

These roads were built by different companies, with no idea of
joining them all into a through line. When, in time, there was talk of
this the Utica people did not like it. They thought that it would ruin the
business of their town if passengers and freight need not be
changed there and if trains went rushing through. But after a while all
the links between New York and Buffalo were forged into one chain,
or became a “trunk line,” to put it in the modern way. Of course it
would cost less to haul Genesee flour or Niagara county apples to
New York if they could go through in the same car in which they were
first locked. This soon became so plain that there was no further
question as to uniting the various roads. We shall see how they all
became one.
Cornelius Vanderbilt was of Dutch descent and was born on
Staten island in 1794. He grew up in the steamboat business, and by
industry and foresight became the owner of various lines plying on
the Hudson, along the coast, and even across the Atlantic. He had
so much to do with shipping that at length he was known as
“Commodore” Vanderbilt, although this was a nickname and not a
real title. By and by he began to buy railroads, and by 1869 he was
able to unite those of the Hudson and those west of Albany into the
New York Central and Hudson River Railroad. His descendants have
bought or leased many other roads, which, taken together, are often
called the Vanderbilt system. This reaches far westward into many
states and joins other great cities to the metropolis by lines of steel.

Fig. 20. Rounding the Noses, Mohawk Valley

Railways in Michigan and Ohio were tied to Vanderbilt’s road,
and wheat and many other products came to Buffalo not only on cars
but by ships on the Great Lakes, and were then sent to New York
and across the ocean. So the canal gradually did less business and
the railroad did more, for people could travel faster by rail, and some
things, like meat and fruit, must be carried swiftly or they will spoil on
the way. Now, instead of ten-ton boats on the Mohawk, or the slow-
going craft of “Clinton’s Ditch,” great freight trains rush down the
Mohawk valley, bearing nearly a hundred thousand bushels of grain
behind one engine. Such a load would have fed George
Washington’s armies for a long time. After a while one track was not
sufficient for so many trains going east and west. Too much time was
lost in waiting on sidings and there was danger of collision. For this
reason a second track was put down, then a third and a fourth, and
now all the way from Albany to Buffalo there are two tracks for
passenger trains and two for freight. Down the Hudson there are but
two tracks, because the space between the river and the uplands is
so narrow. Many years ago a rival road, called the West Shore
Railway, was built along the west bank of the Hudson, and then
westward to Buffalo. This with its two tracks was bought by the
owners of the Central road, so that now they have six tracks across
the state. Even these are hardly enough, for every year the great
West has more people, raises more grain to ship to eastern cities
and to Europe, and requires more goods from mills and factories
along the Atlantic coast.
There are many local trains that run between New York and
Albany, or Albany and Syracuse, or Syracuse and Buffalo. These are
convenient for the smaller towns and cities. Then there are many
through trains whose destination is Buffalo, Detroit, Chicago,
Indianapolis, or St. Louis. Quickly changing cars at lake Michigan or
the Mississippi river, the traveler is hurried on to the Rocky
mountains, the Pacific ocean, Alaska, or the lands of Asia or
Australia across the sea.
The New York Central is not the only great road that runs
westward through the state. The Erie road was built through the
southern counties from New York to lake Erie, partly because the
townships through which it runs were jealous of the privileges which
the great canal gave to the people farther north. The Delaware,
Lackawanna and Western also comes from New York through the
coal region of Pennsylvania, and runs near the Erie road to Buffalo.
The larger cities and the greater number of towns are, however,
along the Central Railway. Going up the Hudson and the Mohawk,
the traveler will hardly pass one busy town before he is in sight of
another. When he looks across the river and sees Newburg he will
remember that in a plain old house in that city General Washington
had his headquarters. When he comes in sight of Albany he will see
the great Capitol building standing high over all others. At
Schenectady he will think of Arent Van Curler and the old boatmen
and the dreadful French and Indian massacre. At Utica he will pass
the ford where thousands waded the river as they went to the
wilderness. At Rome he will be reminded of the famous carry of Fort
Stanwix, of St. Leger, and of the heroes who drove him back to the
north. At Syracuse he will ride through miles of closely built streets,
and as he leaves the city on the west he will see ancient vats with
low sliding roofs. In these vats countless bushels of salt have been
made, as the sun has slowly drawn off the water of the brine in
vapor. There were buildings, too, with chimneys and great boilers for
making salt; but in the main the city has other interests now. It has
mills and large stores, and is a railway center.
At Rochester our traveler crosses the Genesee, and remembers
the hardy pioneer who left comfortable old Hagerstown to build a city
in the swamp and forest. Colonel Rochester could have had no idea
of the fine city he was starting, or of the orchards, nurseries, and
wheat fields that would be around it, but he lived long enough to see
the flour mills at the falls doing a thriving business. Thus wheat and
flour made Rochester as salt made Syracuse, and first the canal and
then the great railway took these useful things to market.
An hour or two more and the train pulls into Buffalo, the second
city of New York, looking on the lake and stretching out its hands to
the great world of inland sea and prairie. To Buffalo come coal and
iron and meat and wheat and corn. Here great elevators receive
grain from the ships and load canal boats and railway cars for the
east. Here some of the New York Central trains turn north and go by
Niagara through Canada to the west, while others pass off to the
south and west and go to Cleveland, Toledo, and Chicago. Since the
day when the two kegs were filled with water from lake Erie, Buffalo
has become a large city, a gateway of the East and West. And since
the De Witt Clinton train crept from Albany to Schenectady, the New
York Central Railway has become great also, for every day hundreds
of trains of goods and men are coming and going between the Lakes
and the city by the sea.
 CHAPTER VI
OLD JOURNEYS FROM PHILADELPHIA TO
THE WEST

The people of New York City like to say that Philadelphia is slow,
and would almost make one think that all the men there wear Quaker
hats and act like William Penn. The citizens of Philadelphia,
however, are not much troubled by this, for they have a great and
busy city, and they like to remind the men of New York that
Philadelphia is a “city of homes,” and that the people do not live in
great tenement houses nor do all their business in “sky scrapers.”
The Liberty Bell hangs there, the Continental Congress sat there,
and the home of the federal government was there before it was in
Washington. For a long time the Quaker City was the metropolis of
America, but as New York and Baltimore grew they took away some
of the trade that otherwise would have gone to the city on the
Delaware. It also ceased to be the capital of the nation and thus had
to depend more on its shipping and inland business. Now to do
much inland business it was necessary not only to reach the rich
lowlands at hand but also to send out across the mountains. This
could not be done without roads.
When men went from New York City across the mountains they
found the Great Lakes and the rich plains on their shores. So
Philadelphia, looking over her mountain wall, saw the noble valley of
the Ohio river and the young Pittsburg at its gateway. As New York
found a route to the West, so Philadelphia sought out its highways to
the country beyond the Appalachian mountains. In this chapter and
the next we shall see where these highways ran.
The first roads were little like those of to-day, and the stage
drivers had to be steady, cool-headed men. There were many
stumps and logs in what was called a road, and the teams were
guided less by reins than by shouts in a kind of language which the
horses understood. A traveler between Philadelphia and Washington
said that often the driver would call to the passengers to lean out of
the carriage on one side or the other, so that their weight might keep
the balance even. He would say, “Now, gentlemen, to the right!” and
the men would lean out as far as they could; or, “Now, gentlemen, to
the left!” and over they would swing to the other side.

Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania Railroad —————
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad +-+-+-+-+-+
National Road ---------
Turnpike from Philadelphia to Pittsburg -·-·-·-·-·-·-·-
 It took strong wagons to travel such roads, and sometimes the
wheels were cut solid by sawing off short sections of the butt of a
great tree, much as the wheels of a toy cart have been made by
many boys. When a driver was stuck in the mud he had to wait for
other teams to come up, when they would hook on with him and drag
him out upon hard ground again. They were a rough but sociable
company, the teamsters of those days, feeding their horses and
cracking their jokes at the taverns which lined the turnpikes. They
would stand by one another loyally, but when they met some fine
gentleman on the road they did not object to taking off a wheel or
crushing the frame of his light carriage.

Fig. 21. Penn Square, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, looking East

along the “Lancaster Pike”
Out of West Philadelphia to-day leads a street known as
Lancaster avenue. It is the eastern end of the old “Lancaster pike,”
the town which gave name to the road being sixty-six miles to the
west. This is the oldest turnpike road in the United States. When the
pioneers were clearing up the forests and building the Genesee road
in New York this region was already well settled. If you ride from
Philadelphia to Lancaster to-day, you will see that it is an old country,
and you will not think it strange when you learn that so long ago as
1730, two years before the birth of Washington, some of the
inhabitants were moving out beyond Lancaster. This means that they
went west of the Susquehanna, for Lancaster is only about twelve
miles east of that great river.
Many of the earlier settlers of this lowland region west of
Philadelphia were Germans. William Penn had invited some of these
people to come, and they had settled near by in the place now
known as Germantown. In time many others settled both around
Lancaster and farther west. Hence we hear of “Pennsylvania Dutch,”
although they were not really Dutch, which is a term belonging rather
to Hollanders and their descendants. There were also some Scotch-
Irish, as they were called,—descendants of Scotch people who had
migrated to the north of Ireland, whence their children had come to
America. These were Presbyterians, and some of them had settled
in New Jersey, where they founded Princeton College.
The country between Philadelphia and the Susquehanna is one
of the richest and most fertile regions in the world. Most of it is low,
with gently rolling fields and a few higher hills. One fine farm joins
another, and the great stone houses look as strong and as solid as if
they had grown up out of the ground. Huge chimneys rise from the
roofs and make one think of the warm fire-places and well-spread
tables of the thrifty German farmers who built these houses and lived
in them. The barns, like the houses, are large; they are often built of
stone and whitewashed, and they still hold great harvests. One side
of the barn usually reaches several feet beyond the high foundation,
and is called an “overshoot.” As the doors to the stables are under
this, it seems to have been planned as a protection against storms.
An English traveler went over the Lancaster pike in 1796 and
found it worthy of praise. He said that it was paved with stone,
covered with gravel, and could be traversed in any season of the
year. About one mile east of the public square in Lancaster a fine old
arched bridge of stone carries the turnpike across Conestoga creek,
a stream flowing southward into the Susquehanna. It takes its name,
which has become famous in American history, from a small tribe of
Indians who lived on its borders. The early inhabitants made the
water deeper by building dams with locks, and sailed their boats with
loads of produce down to the Susquehanna. In the common phrase
of that time, they spoke of it as the “Conestoga navigation.”

Fig. 22. Bridge on the “Pike” crossing Conestoga Creek One

Mile East of Penn Square, Lancaster, Pennsylvania
But the most interesting thing to which the name Conestoga was
given was a wagon that was invented in this region. It was made
very large and strong, to carry freight, and was drawn by four, seven,
or even a dozen horses. Hundreds of these wagons were to be seen
on the Lancaster pike and on the other great roads of that time. They
were built, as freight cars are now, to carry heavy loads long
distances in safety.
 Fig. 23. Tollhouse Eight Miles East of Lancaster,
Pennsylvania
These wagons were unusually long, and the boxes curved
upward at the ends, so that inside and out they were shaped
somewhat like a canoe. The advantage of this was that the loads did
not slide, but rode steadily when the wagons went up and down
steep hills. The wheels were big and had wide tires, so that the
heavy loads would not cut the roads. The story is told that one of
these wagons with its load of tobacco weighed more than thirteen
thousand pounds, or almost seven tons.
They were painted red and blue, and were covered with a
canopy of cloth, so that they looked like the “prairie schooners”
which in later days were the emigrant wagons of the western plains.
Each wagon had a tool box fastened at the side, and a tar bucket
and a water pail hung beneath. The horses were well fed, well
matched, and strong, with good harnesses and many jingling bells.
The drivers were rough-and-ready men, who snapped their whips in
the daytime, told stories in the evening, and slept at night on little
mattresses of their own in front of the barroom fire.
 Hundreds of these wagons were going and coming on the roads
in the days when people were not dreaming of freight trains, and no
doubt the Conestoga seemed as important then as the chief freight
lines now appear to us. In the French and Indian War, when there
was great need of wagons to carry Braddock’s stores, Benjamin
Franklin was asked to get some of these famous conveyances. He
succeeded, for many were to be found in this part of Pennsylvania,
and he sent on more than one hundred and fifty of them. He nearly
lost his fortune in consequence, for he told the farmers he would see
that they were paid if the wagons and horses were not returned. It
cost the old patriot twenty thousand pounds, but fortunately the
government afterwards paid the money back to him. Not long ago
the writer saw one of these wagons, with a boat-shaped box, but
without a canopy, in use on a farm near Lancaster.
Following the pike westward for twelve miles from Lancaster, the
traveler crosses the Susquehanna river at Columbia. The old bridge
was destroyed long ago, but the present one, although it looks new,
is hardly used in a modern way. It is narrow, with a plank floor, and it
serves for railway trains and wagons, as well as for foot passengers.
There is no separate place for any of these, so when a train or
wagon goes on at either end a telegram is sent to the other end to
keep cars and carriages from entering the bridge there.
 Fig. 24. Hambright’s Hotel, on the “Pike,” Three Miles West
of Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Along the “Pike” is an electric road, which carries people more
swiftly and doubtless with less dust and jolting than did the old
stages. Hambright’s Hotel, shown in the picture above, is on this
road, and, with its big chimneys and high, long-handled pump,
shows how many of the ancient hotels looked. They seem lonely
enough now, but they were gay and busy places then. It is very
appropriate that the company which runs all the street cars in and
about Lancaster calls itself The Conestoga Traction Company.
Westward from the Susquehanna, in what we shall know in a
later chapter as the Great Valley, are some comfortable old towns
bearing the names of Carlisle, Shippensburg, and Chambersburg.
The pike passes through these and on to the old town of Bedford.
Then it enters a high, rough strip of land that was covered with forest
long after Philadelphia had become a city and the farmers about
Lancaster had built their great houses and barns. At the other end of
this wilderness was Pittsburg. The road from Bedford to Pittsburg
was cut through the woods in 1758, in the time of the French and
Indian wars, and is sometimes called Forbes’s road, from the
general who directed the making of it. It was used in the time of the
Revolution, and many forts were built to guard it.
 Fig. 25. Old Road House, One Mile West of Chambersburg,
Pennsylvania
This roadway was so important that the Pennsylvania
government, a few years after the Revolutionary War, took it in hand
and improved it. Thus there was a line of travel over the older
highway to Lancaster and Bedford, and thence over the newer road
to Pittsburg. The whole road led from the seaboard to the Ohio river
and was often called the Pittsburg pike.
We have now learned of two great, well-trodden routes from east
to west,—the route of the Hudson and the Mohawk through New
York, and the route through the southern parts of Pennsylvania from
Philadelphia to Pittsburg.
In laying out such roads the pioneers almost always followed
trails that the Indians had made. For long generations the red men
had followed the same paths, beating them smooth and deep in the
forest earth. The white men widened the trail by using pack horses,
loading the beasts well with all sorts of things. The next step was to
cut away trees, take out the stones, and make roads for wagons.
Carrying by pack horses, however, had become a great business,
and the horse owners were very angry when the wagons began to
take away their trade.
 In 1830 a Pennsylvania citizen, then nearly a hundred years old,
told of seeing the first wagon reach Carlisle, and he remembered
how furious the “packers” were because they feared that they would
lose their business. It did not occur to them that they could harness
their horses into teams, buy strong wagons, and be ready to make
money in the new way instead of the old. The horse owners were
quite as angry about stagecoaches, and they sometimes destroyed
the coaches and injured the passengers to vent their spite.
Moreover, as people often like an excuse for doing wrong, and for
harboring mean feelings, these men said that the stage business
was bad for the cloth makers and tailors, because people could ride
in coaches without spoiling their fine clothes, whereas when they
rode on horseback they soon ruined them and had to buy new ones.
Almost any excuse will serve those to whom no way seems good
except their own.
Philadelphia now had its connection with Pittsburg and the Ohio
river and the rich lands bordering it, as New York had its way leading
to Buffalo and the Great Lakes and the prairies. But the southern
road crossed a rougher country than did the northern one, and so it
was less easily kept in order and was harder to travel. Hence
Philadelphia, like New York, sought better means of communication
with the country on the other side of the mountains.
 CHAPTER VII
THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD

A horse railroad had been built from Philadelphia to the

Susquehanna river, and the big Conestoga wagons were running
along the pike to Pittsburg; but this was not enough. New York had
stirred the whole country by its great canal, and the people along the
Potomac were thinking of similar schemes. Pennsylvania could not
rest idle, and decided to have a canal of its own.
In 1826 the ditch was begun at Columbia, where the railroad
ended, and, following the custom of the times, those in charge
started the work on Independence Day. In four years they had dug
the canal, let in the water, and were running boats as far as
Harrisburg.
A few miles above Harrisburg the canal turned away from the
main river and followed its great western branch, the Juniata. This
river cuts through the high ridges, or flows between them as best it
can, taking a very winding course. The valley is often narrow and its
sides are steep and rugged. Still it has no heavy grades along the
bottom, and it led the canal diggers far into the mountains, to a
village called Hollidaysburg.
Here the highlands are so steep that the canal had to stop. The
Allegheny Front is almost fourteen hundred feet above
Hollidaysburg, and on the other side the Conemaugh river rushes
swiftly down past the city of Johnstown, which is seven hundred and
seventy-one feet below the summit. Hollidaysburg and Johnstown
are thirty-eight miles apart, and the uplands lying between are so
steep and high that to cut through them was out of the question. But
those who were interested in the canal were not to be beaten, and
they kept on digging both to the east and to the west. Beyond
Johnstown they carried the canal to the Ohio river at Pittsburg.

Fig. 26. Freight Locomotive, Pennsylvania Railroad

Meantime the high grounds on the divide were not neglected. A
famous road, the Allegheny Portage Railway, was built with several
inclined planes. Stationary engines pulled the cars up each slope,
but on the level parts of the road they were drawn by horses.
The road was not carried to the top, but nearly two hundred feet
below a tunnel was cut about a mile long. The entrance to one end
of this tunnel is shown in Fig. 27.
 Fig. 27. Entrance to Tunnel, Old Portage Railway
The two great sections of the canal and the Portage Railway
were finished in 1835. Goods then went by rail from Philadelphia to
Columbia on the Susquehanna river. There the boats took them to
the east end of the Portage road. The next haul was over the
Allegheny Front, with its lofty forests, to Johnstown. Then the boats
received the merchandise and landed it in Pittsburg, whence other
boats could carry it to any town on the Ohio river.
The Hit or Miss was one of the boats that came up to
Hollidaysburg. It was desirable to take this particular boat over the
heights, so a car was built which would fit its keel. The car was
dragged up the east side of the mountain and down to Johnstown,
where the boat was put into the water again and sent off to the