When the bisons have adopted a course, nothing could swerve them from it or modify it. They are a torrent of living flesh which no dam could hold.
The travelers, scattered on the platforms, looked at this curious spectacle. But Phileas Fogg, who ought to be the most in a hurry, had remained in his seat, and was waiting philosophically until it should please the buffaloes to open a passage. Passepartout was furious at the delay caused by this mass of animals. He wanted to fire all his revolvers at them.
"What a country!" he cried. "Mere cattle stop trains, and move along in procession without hurrying, as if they did not impede travel! Parbleu! I would like to know if Mr. Fogg had foreseen this mischance in his programme! And what an engineer, who does not dare to rush his engine through this impeding mass of beasts!"
The engineer had not attempted to overcome the obstacle, and he acted wisely. He would undoubtedly have crushed the first buffaloes struck by the cow-catcher; but, powerful as it was, the engine would have soon been stopped, and the train thrown off the track and wrecked.
The best course, then, was to wait patiently, ready to make up the lost time by an increase of the speed of the train. The passage of the bisons lasted three full hours, and the road was not clear again until night-fall. At this moment the last ranks of the herd crossed the rails, whilst the first were disappearing below the southern horizon.
It was then eight o'clock, when the train passed through the defiles of the Humboldt range, and half-past nine when it entered Utah Territory, the region of the Great Salt Lake, the curious Mormon country.
CHAPTER XXVII
IN WHICH PASSEPARTOUT FOLLOWS, WITH A SPEED OF TWENTY MILES AN HOUR, A COURSE OF MORMON HISTORY
During the night of the 5th to the 6th of December, the train went for fifty miles to the southeast, then it ran upwards about as far northerly, approaching the Great Salt Lake.
