about nine o'clock
The locomotive , its great funnel emitting a weird light , with its sharp bell , and its cowcatcher extended like a spur , mingled its shrieks and bellowings with the noise of torrents and cascades , and twined its smoke among the branches of the gigantic pines . There were few or no bridges or tunnels on the route . The railway turned around the sides of the mountains , and did not attempt to violate nature by taking the shortest cut from one point to another . The train entered the State of Nevada through the Carson Valley about nine o'clock , going always northeasterly . At midday it reached Reno where there was a delay of twenty minutes for breakfast . From this point the road , running along Humboldt River , passed northward for several miles by its banks . Then it turned eastward , and kept by the river until it reached the Humboldt Range , nearly at the extreme eastern limit of Nevada .