Yet more expressive was the medley upon the covered platforms for the reception of freight. Eleven of these, each one hundred and sixty by twenty-four feet, admitted of the unloading of fifty-five freight-cars at once. At this rate there was not left the least room for anxiety as to the ability of the Commission and its employés to dispose, so far as their responsibility was concerned, of everything presented for exhibition within a very few days. The movements of the custom-house officials, and the arrangements of goods after the passing of that ordeal, were less rapid, and there seemed some ground for anxiety when it was found that in the last days of March scarce a tenth of the catalogued exhibits were on the ground, and for the closing ten days of the period fixed for the receipt of goods an average of one car-load per minute of the working hours was the calculated draft on the resources of the unloading sheds. Home exhibitors, by reason of the very completeness of their facilities of transport, were the most dilatory. The United States held back until her guests were served, confident in the abundant efficiency of the preparations made for bringing the entertainers to their side. Better thus than that foreigners should have been behind time.
When the gates of the enclosure were at last shut upon the steam-horse, a broader and more congenial field of duty opened before him. From the rôle of dray-horse he passed to that of courser. Marvels from the ends of the earth he had, with many a pant and heave, forward pull and backward push, brought together and dumped in their allotted places. Now it became his task to bear the fiery cross over hill and dale and gather the clans, men, women and children. The London exhibition of 1851 had 6,170,000 visitors, and that of 1862 had 6,211,103. Paris in 1855 had 4,533,464, and in 1867, 10,200,000. Vienna's exhibition drew 7,254,867. The attendance at London on either occasion was barely double the number of her population. So it was with Paris at her first display, though she did much better subsequently. Vienna's was the greatest success of all, according to this test. The least of all, if we may take it into the list, was that of New York in 1853. Her people numbered about the same with the visitors to her Crystal Palace—600,000. Philadelphia's calculations went far beyond any of these figures, and she laid her plans accordingly.
Some trainbands from Northern and Southern cities might give their patriotic furor the bizarre form of a march across country, but the millions, if they came at all, must come by rail, and the problem was to multiply the facilities far beyond any previous experience, while reconciling the maximum of safety, comfort and speed with a reduction of fares. The arrangements are still to be tested, and are no doubt open to modification. On one point, however, and this an essential one, we apprehend no grounds of complaint. There will be no crowding. The train is practically endless, the word terminus being a misnomer for the circular system of tracks to which the station (six hundred and fifty by one hundred feet) at the main entrance of the grounds forms a tangent. The line of tourists is reeled off like their thread in the hands of Clotho, the iron shears that snip it at stated intervals being represented by the unmythical steam-engine. The same modern minister of the Fates has another shrine not far from the dome of Memorial Hall, where his acolytes are the officials of the Reading Railroad Company.
Care for the visitor's comfortable locomotion does not end with depositing him under the reception-verandah. The Commission did not forget that a pedestrian excursion over fifteen or twenty miles of aisles might sufficiently fatigue him without the additional trudge from hall to hall over a surface of four hundred acres under a sun which the century has certainly not deprived of any mentionable portion of its heat. Hence, the belt railway, three and a half miles long, with trains running by incessant schedule—a boon only to be justly appreciated by those who attended the European expositions or any one of them. His umbrella and goloshes pocketed in the form of a D.P.C. check, the visitor, more fortunate than Brummel or Bonaparte, cannot be stopped by the elements.
FAÇADE OF THE SWEDISH DIVISION, MAIN BUILDING.
We shall have amply disposed of the subject of transportation when we add that the neighborhood or city supply to the thirteen entrance-gates is provided for by steam-roads capable of carrying twenty-four thousand persons hourly, and tram-roads seating seven thousand, besides an irregular militia or voltigeur force of light wagons, small steamers and omnibuses equal to a demand of two or three thousand more in the same time. It was not deemed likely that Philadelphia would require conveyance for half of her population every day. Should that supposition prove erroneous, the excess can fall back upon the safe and inexpensive vehicle of 1776, 1851, 1867 and 1873—sole leather.
Let us return to our packing-cases, and see where they go. To watch the gradual dispersal of a congregation to their several places of abode is always interesting. Especially is it so when those places of retreat bear the names and fly the flags of the several nations of the globe. This stout cube of deal, triple-bound with iron, disappears under the asp and winged sphere of the Pharaohs. That other, big with rich velvets and broideries, seeks the tricolor of France. Yonder, a wealth of silks and lacquer finds a resting-place in the carved black-walnut étagères of Japan. Here go, cased in the spoils of the fjelds, toward a pavilion seventy-five paces long and twenty wide, the bulky contributions of the Norsemen. Swedish carpentry in perfection offers to a deposit separate from that of the sister-kingdom a distinct receptacle. Close at hand stand the antipodes in the pavilion of Chili, that opens its graceful portal to bales sprinkled mayhap with the ashes of Aconcagua. There "crashes a sturdy box of stout John Bull;" and Russia, Tunis and Canada roll into close neighborhood with him and each other. A queer and not, let us hope, altogether transitory show of international comity is this. Many a high-sounding, much-heralded and more-debating Peace Congress has been held with less effect than that conducted by these humble porters, carpenters and decorators. This one has solidity. Its elements are palpable. The peoples not only bring their choicest possessions, but they also set up around them their local habitations. It is a cosmopolitan town that has sprung into being beneath the great roof and glitters in the rays of our republican sun. In its rectangularly-planned streets, alleys and plazas every style of architecture is represented—domestic, state and ecclesiastical, ancient, mediæval and modern. The spirit and taste of most of the races and climes find expression, giving thus the Sydenham and the Hyde Park palaces in one. The reproductions at the former place were the work of English hands: those before us are executed, for the most part, by workmen to whom the originals are native and familiar. In this feature of the interior of the Main Building we are amply compensated for the breaking up of the coup d'oeil by a multiplicity of discordant forms. The space is still so vast as to maintain the effect of unity; and this notwithstanding the considerable height of some of the national stalls, that of Spain, for example, sending aloft its trophy of Moorish shields and its effigy of the world-seeking Genoese to an elevation of forty-six feet. The Moorish colonnade of the Brazilian pavilion lifts its head in graceful rivalry of the lofty front reared by the other branch of the Iberian race. In so vast an expanse this friendly competition of Spaniards and Portuguese becomes, to the eye, a union of their pretensions; and a single family of thirty-three millions in Europe and America combines to present us with two of the handsomest structures in the hall.