Strangers who stopped in early El Paso nearly all
met the Count and many mentioned him afterward. Richard Cobden,4
famed British orator and leader in Parliament, twice mentioned him in his
diary. Making an all day visit to El Paso on May 10, 1859, Cobden wrote
that night, perhaps on one of the Count's tables,
May 10, (1859) Elpasso.5 Slept in the car on a siding,
and in the morning breakfasted at a little hotel at the station kept by
an old Polish refugee called the "Count", the same that gave me some prairie
birds on my former visit.
This former visit had been made on March 23, 1859, and during the intervening
weeks he had covered every foot of the Illinois Central's tracks so he
might take back a report of its possibilities to British
Page from the Cobden Diary. (by courtesy of the London Museum and Mr.
W. H. G. Armytage of Sheffield University)
Page 59
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