e. About one mile a minute--sixty
miles an hour! Sometimes it goes a little faster, sometimes a little
slower, according to the nature of the ground; for a railway is by no
means a level-way, the ascents and descents being occasionally very
steep. Those who travel in the carriages form but a faint conception of
the pace. To realise it to the full you must stand on the engine with
John Marrot and Will Garvie. Houses, fields, trees, cattle, human
beings, go by in wild confusion--they appear only to vanish. Wind is
not felt in the carriages. On the _Lightning_ you are in a gale. It
reminds one of a storm at sea. The noise, too, is terrific. We once
had the good fortune to ride on the engine of the "Flying Dutchman," and
on that occasion had resolved to converse with the driver, and tried it.
As well might we have tried to converse amid the rattling of ten
thousand tin kettles! John Marrot put his mouth to our ear and
_roared_. We heard him faintly. We tried to shout to _him_; he shook
his head, put his hand to his ear, and his ear to our mouth.

"Does--it--not--injure--your--hearing?"

"No--sir--not--at--all. It's--worst--on--our--legs."

We subsided into silence and wonderment.

We had also resolved to take notes, and tried it. Egyptian
hieroglyphics are not more comprehensible than the notes we took. We
made a discovery, however, near the end of the journey--namely, that by
bending the knees, and keeping so, writing became much more possible--or
much less impossible! We learnt this from John, who had to fill up in
pencil a sort of statement or report-ticket on the engine. It was
interesting and curious to note the fact that of the sentences thus
written, one word was pencilled in the grounds of the Earl of Edderline,
the next opposite the mansion of Lord Soberly, the third in the midst of
Langly Moor, the fourth while crashing through the village of Efferby,
and a full stop was added at the mouth of the great Ghostly Tunnel.
Think of that, ye teachers of "penmanship in twelve lessons," and hide
your diminished heads.

John Marrot's engine, of which we have said much, and of which we mean
to say still more, was not only a stupendous, but a complex creation.
Its body consisted of above 5,400 pieces, all of which were almost as
delicately fashioned, and put together with as much care, as watch-work.
It was a confirmed teetotaller, too. The morning draught which John
had given it before starting, to e