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BY WASHINGTON IRVING.

I HAVE read with great interest `The First
Locomotive.' It throws light upon an incident
which has long been a theme of marvel in the Far
West. You must know that I was one among the
first band of trappers that crossed the Rocky Mountains.
We had encamped one night on a ridge of
the Black Hills, and were wrapped up in our blankets,
in the midst of our first sleep, when we were
roused by the man who stood sentinel, who cried
out, `Wild fire, by —!' We started on our feet,
and beheld a streak of fire coming across the prairies,
for all the world like lightning, or a shooting star.
We had hardly time to guess what it might be, when
it came up, whizzing, and clanking, and making a
tremendous racket, and we saw something huge
and black, with wheels and traps of all kinds; and
an odd-looking being on top of it, busy as they say
the devil is in a gale of wind. In fact, some of our
people thought it was the old gentleman himself,
taking an airing in one of his infernal carriages;

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others thought it was the opening of one of the seals
in the Revelations. Some of the stoutest fellows fell
on their knees, and began to pray; a Kentuckian
plucked up courage enough to hail the infernal
coachman as he passed, and ask whither he was driving;
but the speed with which he whirled by, and
the rattling of his machine, prevented our catching
more than the last words: `Slam bang to eternal
smash!' In five minutes more, he was across the
prairies, beyond the Black Hill, and we saw him
shooting, like a jack-a-lantern, over the Rocky Mountains.

The next day we tracked his course. He had cut
through a great drove of buffalo, some hundred or
wo of which lay cut up as though the butchers had
been there; we heard of him afterward, driving
through a village of Black Feet, and smashing the
lodge of the chief, with all his family. Beyond the
Rocky Mountains, we could hear nothing more of
him; so that we concluded he had ended his brimstone
career, by driving into one of the craters that
still smoke among the peaks.

This circumstance, I said, has caused much speculation
in the Far West; but many set it down as a
`trapper's story,' which is about equivalent to a traveller's
tale; neither would the author of `Astoria'
and `Bonneville's Adventures' admit it into his
works, though heaven knows he has not been over
squeamish in such matters. The article in your last
number, above alluded to, has now cleared up the
matter, and henceforth I shall tell the story without
fear of being hooted at. I make no doubt, this supposed
infernal apparition was nothing more nor less

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than Jabez Doolittle, with his Locomotive, on his
way to Astoria.

`Who knows, who knows what wastes
He is now careering o'er?' as the song goes; perhaps scouring California; perhaps
whizzing away to the North Pole. One thing
is certain and satisfactory; he is the first person that
ever crossed the Rocky Mountains on wheels; his
transit shows that those mountains are traversable
with carriages, and that it is perfectly easy to have a
rail-road to the Pacific. If such road should ever be
constructed, I hope, in honor of the great projector
who led the way, it may be called the `Doolittle
Rail-road;' unless that name should have been given
as characteristic, to some of the many rail-roads
already in progress.