seven o'clock
There was nothing to do but to go to bed and sleep , which everybody did as if they were on board ship , while the train rushed on across the State of California . The territory between San Francisco and Sacramento is not very hilly , and the railroad runs in a north-easterly direction along the American river which falls into the Bay of San Pablo . The hundred and twenty miles ' distance between these cities was accomplished in six hours , and as it was midnight when they passed through Sacramento , the travellers could see nothing of the city . Leaving Sacramento and passing Junction , Rochin , Auburn , and Colfax , the railroad passes through the Sierra Nevada range , and the train reached Cisco at seven o'clock . An hour afterwards the sleeping-car was retransformed to an ordinary carriage , and the passengers were enabled to look out upon the magnificent scenery of this mountainous country . The track followed all the caprices of the mountains , at times suspended over a precipice , boldly rounding angles , penetrating narrow gorges which had apparently no outlet . The engine , with fire gleaming from the grate and black smoke issuing from its funnel , the warning-bell ringing , the `` cow-catcher '' extending like a spur , mingled its whistlings and snortings with the roar of torrents and waterfalls , and twining its black smoke around the stems of the pine-trees .