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 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
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NEW YORK: 
 
 D. APPLETON & CO., PUBLISHERS 
 
A D VER TISEMEXTS. 
 
 PULLMAN HOTEL-CARS 
 
 ARE RUN ALONE WEST OF CHICAGO BY THE 
 
 hicago &L Northwestern Railway. 
 
 THEY RUN DAILY BETWEEN 
 
 CHICAGO AND COUNC IL BLUFFS. 
 
 Oil this line you take your Hotel along with you, and can enjoy all the luxuHes 
 
 of the season ivhlle traveling. 
 
 -0=0 nMLIIL.E3S -A^TSr HOXJI^! 
 
 |lt^"Over the Smoothest and Best Track there is in the West. „,^ 
 
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 Iiitrrlnr of Pullman Hotel t »r The Chi. ico ^ North \\ cstern 
 
 liuilwiiy l» the only road that runs J'nl'nian or uny other 
 
 form of Hotel, lUninc or Ke«taurnat tar TIIKOtOU 
 
 between Chlvaeo and the Missouri Kiver. 
 
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 BEAR IN MIND! 
 
 No otlier Road runs i'ulliiiiin Hotel-Cars, Pullman Diiilnf!;-Cars, 
 or any other form of Hotel, Dining, or Restaurant Cars, 
 THROUGH between Chicago and tlie Missouri River. On no other road can you get all the meals 
 you require between Chicago and Omaha, -without leaving the car you start in. This is the only line that 
 iias THROUGH eating-cars of any sort The charges for berths in these elegant moving Hotels are the 
 same as in any other Pullman Sleeping-Car. For meals you are charged only for what you order, and their 
 charges are very reasonable. All Ticket Agents sell tickets by this route. 
 
 MARVIN HUGHITT, 
 
 General Manager, Chicago. 
 
 L F. BOOTH, 
 
 Gen. East'n Ag't, ^15 Broadway, New York City. 
 
 W. H. STENNETT, 
 
 Gen. Pass. Ag't, Chicago. 
 
SCENERY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS, 
 AND COLORADO. 
 
 h C<);f^/Ct.-J^j 
 
 WITH MAP, AND SEVENTY-ONE ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. D. WOODWARD. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 
 
 549 AND 551 BROADWAY. 
 
COPYRIGHT BY 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 
 
 1878. 
 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 UNION PACIFIC DEPOT AT OMAHA ........ 5 
 
 PLATTE RIVER, NEAR NORTH PLATTE . . . . • ■ • 6 
 
 GLEN DOE, COLORADO 7 
 
 LONG'S PEAK, COLORADO 8 
 
 GLIMPSE OF DENVER, COLORADO ........ g 
 
 MOUTH OF SOUTH BOWLDER CANON, COLORADO ..... lo 
 
 BOWLDER RIVER, COLORADO I2 
 
 FALLS, NORTH BOWLDER CANON, COLORADO 13 
 
 DOME ROCK, COLORADO . . • • ' . • • • 14 
 
 IDAHO SPRINGS, COLORADO 15 
 
 GREEN LAKE, COLORADO .......... 16 
 
 SNAKE RIVER, COLORADO ......... 17 
 
 GRAY'S PEAK, COLORADO .......... 18 
 
 CLEAR CREEK CANON, COLORADO 19 
 
 PIKE'S PEAK, COLORADO .......... 20 
 
 MONUMENT PARK, COLORADO ........ 21 
 
 TOWER OF BABEL, MONUMENT PARK, COLORADO ..... 22 
 
 MAJOR DOMO, GLEN EYRIE, COLORADO ....... 23 
 
 WILLIAM'S CANON, COLORADO 24 
 
 RAINBOW FALLS, UTE PASS, COLORADO 26 
 
 BLACK HILLS, NEAR SHERMAN ......... 27 
 
 MAIDEN'S SLIDE, DALE CREEK ........ 28 
 
 EMIGRANTS' CAMP, LARAMIE PLAINS ........ 29 
 
 RED BUTTES, LARAMIE PLAINS ....... 30 
 
 ELK MOUNTAIN 31 
 
 LAKE COMO 33 
 
 BANKS OF PLATTE RIVER 34 
 
 VIEW ON PLATTE RIVER ......... 35 
 
 MINERS' HUTS, ROCK SPRINGS 36 
 
 GIANT'S BUTTE, GREEN RIVER ........ 37 
 
 CLIFFS, GREEN RIVER 38 
 
 UINTAH MOUNTAINS ......... 40 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHURCH BUTTES, WYOMING 41 
 
 BEAR RIVER VALLEY 42 
 
 CASTLE ROCK, ECHO CANON ... ...... 45 
 
 HANGING ROCK, ECHO CANON ........ 46 
 
 PULPIT-ROCK, ECHO CANON • . -47 
 
 ECHO CANON 49 
 
 DEVIL'S SLIDE, WEBER CANON 50 
 
 WITCHES' ROCKS, WEBER CANON 51 
 
 DEVIL'S GATE, WEBER CANON 52 
 
 WEBER CANON ... 53 
 
 OGDEN RIVER ............ 54 
 
 OGDEN, AND WAHSATCH RANGE 55 
 
 BLACK ROCK, GREAT SALT LAKE 56 
 
 CLIFFS, GREEN RIVER 57 
 
 OLD MILL, SALT LAKE CITY ......... 58 
 
 SALT LAKE CITY 59 
 
 BEAR RIVER, UTAH 61 
 
 GREAT SALT LAKE, FROM PROMONTORY RIDGE ..... 62 
 INDIAN CAMP IN THE GREAT AMERICAN DESERT . . . .62 
 
 HUMBOLDT WELLS, AND RUBY MOUNTAINS 63 
 
 DEVIL'S PEAK, HUMBOLDT PALISADES ....... 64 
 
 LAKE TAHOE 66 
 
 DONNER LAKE, FROM THE SNOW-SHEDS 68 
 
 DONNER PEAK ........... 69 
 
 LAKE ANGELINE 70 
 
 EMIGRANTS CROSSING THE SIERRAS 71 
 
 CEDAR CREEK, BLUE CA530N 72 
 
 LOWER CASCADE, YUBA RIVER 73 
 
 GIANT'S GAP, AMERICAN CANON 74 
 
 GREAT AMERICAN CANON "75 
 
 CAPE HORN 76 
 
 HYDRAULIC MINING .......... 77 
 
 CENTRAL WHARF, SACRAMENTO 78 
 
 CHINESE QUARTERS, SACRAMENTO 79 
 
 THE CLIFFS, SAN FRANCISCO BAY 80 
 
 CENTRAL PACIFIC WHARF . . 81 
 
 LAKE MERRITT, OAKLAND ^82 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO, FROM GOAT ISLAND ....>... 83 
 
 CHINESE QUARTER, SAN FRANCISCO 84 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS 
 
 The Union Pacific Depot at Omaha. 
 
 AFTER having traveled many thousand miles in the far West and Southwest with the unusual 
 opportunity for careful observation afforded by the Wheeler Exploring Expedition, the writer 
 is prepared to say that the scenery of the Pacific Railways embraces nearly all the memorable and 
 curious phases of the whole Western country'. The sage-plains of Colorado and New Mexico are 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 repeated wearisomely between Omaha and Cheyenne, and in the great Humboldt Desert ; the 
 miraculous mesas, or table-lands, of the Black Hills and the Yellowstone, with their broadly-defined 
 strata of crude color, have their counterparts on the borders of Green River ; the fantastic erosions 
 of sandstones that have made Monument Park famous crop out on the line so frequently, that they 
 cease to excite any wonder ; and the grandeur of the abrupt cafions that cleave the heart of the main 
 Rocky range may be judged from the sheer walls and purple chasms of Echo, Weber, and the 
 American River. 
 
 The first revelation of the mountains is inspiring, indeed, and one is conscious of a thrill of 
 ecstasy as the solemn line of peaks slowly rises above the sharp horizon with its patches of intensely 
 
 The Platte River, near North Platte. 
 
 white snow, that seem iridescent in the sunshine. A stranger marvels when he is told how distant 
 and immensely high the nearest of the pinnacles is, and that from one of them a hundred and fifty 
 others, each over 1 2,000 feet high, can be seen. Yet they seem to be neither very high nor very far 
 off. No mountains in this land of lucid skies ever do, and it is only by reference to experience that 
 we can convince ourselves of their truly great altitude. As we continue to look at them — the hollows 
 holding pools of blue haze — and the innumerable intermediate ridges become visible, it dawns upon 
 us by degrees how vast they are. 
 
 The desert between Ogden and Truckee is duller than that between Omaha and Cheyenne — 
 duller than Sahara itself — a sterile basin locked in by sterile mountains, and overcast by the brooding 
 despondency of a wintry sea. Who, left to himself, is proof against ennui here .'' Who is not 
 affected, more or less, by the melancholy desolation of the purple mountains.'' It is a fortunate thing 
 that the length of the journey admits of a degree of intimacy between the passengers, and that the 
 outward ugliness may be forgotten in social intercourse. A great river is sucked into the thirsty 
 sand, and all Nature shows a resolute opposition to fertility. 
 
 One of the curious rocks of Green River, Echo, or Weber Cafion, set up in England, or any part 
 of Europe, would make a popular resort ; but abnormal geological developments are multiplied 
 indefinitely along the line of the Pacific Railways — and we soon learn that the mere oddities of 
 creation have no lasting charm. In these two canons, however, there is superlative grandeur, both 
 in the enormous bluffs a thousand or more feet high, and in the barriers of rock that would seem 
 impenetrable were it not for the positive evidence of the long tunnels, cuttings, and bridges. 
 Probably this is the grandest railway scenery in the world, and it certainly is among the grandest 
 scenery of the American Continent. From the yellow-green plains we are borne down a steep slope 
 into the very heart of the Wahsatch Mountains ; through a red-walled ravine, by a frothing mountain- 
 stream, among wind and water worn miracles of sandstone and granite, and out into the beautiful 
 valley of the Great Salt Lake, as the warm haze of sunset is mellowing the circling peaks and 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 -^^ 
 
 Hooding the gardens of Ogden 
 with its gold. Whatever the ter- 
 ritory may be beyond, the belt of 
 Utah traversed by the Union Pa- 
 cific Railway is the best-looking 
 agricultural country between Iowa 
 and California. Yellow hay-ricks, 
 verdant meadows, waving fields 
 of corn, and plethoric orchards, 
 make a most grateful relief to 
 the wonder-land of rocks through 
 which we have come ; but they 
 are soon passed, and we wind out 
 from Ogden into a white alkali - 
 plain bordering the Salt Lake. 
 The next day's ride is the most wearisome of all. The train whirls through the Humboldt 
 Desert in a stifling cloud of dust, pausing every hour or so at little sandy stations, which apparently 
 have no other reason for existence than a bar-room, and no other support than a few besotted miners. 
 During the evening and night we cross the Sierra Nevada, and on the next day, the last of the 
 journey, we make the passage of American Cafion, Cape Horn, and the fertile valley of the 
 Sacramento. 
 
 This, in epitome, is the ground we propose to go over in detail. The Union Pacific road begins, 
 as all travelers know, at Omaha, on the western bank of the Missouri River— where it is " fed " by 
 
 Glen Doe. — Cache-a-la-Poudre River, Colorado. 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 ill 
 
 'S-,^': 
 
 seven other lines, three of which have their termini at Chicago : namely, the Chicago, Burlington & 
 Quincy, the Chicago & Northwestern, and the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific. From Omaha it 
 proceeds 516 miles westward in an almost straight line over the plains to Cheyenne, and it ends at 
 Ogden, 1,033 ™iles from Omaha, the Central Pacific road completing the distance to San Francisco. 
 
 Omaha is a prosperous city of 
 over 20,000 inhabitants, the popu- 
 lation having increased some 15,000 
 in ten years. It is on the western 
 bank of the Missouri River, which is 
 spanned by a bridge 2,750 feet long, 
 and its principal industries are in 
 breweries, distilleries, brick - yards, 
 smelting and refining works. The 
 Union Pacific depot is a handsome 
 structure, that was built a few years 
 ago. It contains every convenience 
 for the traveler, including waiting- 
 rooms, restaurants, a money - ex- 
 change, and ticket-offices. The scene 
 of the departure and arrival of the 
 trans-continental train is of the live- 
 liest kind. There is a mingling of 
 many races and many costumes. 
 Sleeping-car porters and conductors, 
 1 brakesmen, news-agents, railway- 
 
 j police, emigrants, soldiers, plains- 
 
 -3- men, fashionable tourists, commer- 
 £ cial travelers, and occasional Indians, 
 
 ? give spice and variety to the ensemble. 
 ,_ Towns-people crowd in to share the 
 
 i excitement. But the consequences 
 « of the confusion are ameliorated by 
 
 \ the admirable system for the recheck- 
 c" ing of baggage, etc., and the intel- 
 ^ ligence of the railway attendants. 
 
 The least experienced of travelers 
 is sure to find himself comfortably 
 seated when the train starts, leaving 
 the city behind and entering the rich 
 farm-lands of Nebraska without a 
 care, as far as the journey is con- 
 cerned, on his mind. 
 
 The verdant farm-lands are soon 
 succeeded, however, by the plains, 
 the monotony of which is excessive. 
 Billow follows billow of land into 
 the uncertain gray of the horizon, 
 speckled with rings and tufts of faint 
 green, and jeweled with little patches 
 of wild-verbena. On the dreariest 
 day at sea the tossing of the waves 
 gives an exhilarating sense of motion, 
 and the eye is gratified by the pris- 
 matic flashings of sunbeams among 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 A Glimpse of Denver. 
 
 the spray. On the plains the hilly waves are repeated, but they are paralyzed and dumb, and 
 communicative of blight only. The prevailing color is a greenish-yellow ; the sense touched is that 
 of vacancy. 
 
THE PACIFIC RAIL WA YS. 
 
 Occasionally the land seems to sink into a basin surrounded by "hogsbacks," a form of rock 
 which presents a steep and rough escarpment on one side, and on the other slopes off by easy 
 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 gradations to the level. But no great elevation is visible to convey an idea of space by its contrasts, 
 and the impression received by the spectator is one of contraction rather than of immensity. 
 
 At intervals of twenty or thirty miles, a red tank, with a creaking windmill, marks a water-station, 
 at which the passengers alight to gather prairie-flowers, and, still farther apart, some white little 
 towns, with names reminiscent of frontier-life, tell a story to which the mendicant Indians crowding 
 the depots are a suggestive antithesis. In some places a wagon-road runs parallel with the railway, 
 and long trains of caravans are left behind with the companies of emigrants toiling in their dusty 
 wake. 
 
 At Omaha the elevation above the level of the sea is 966 feet, and it gradually though imper- 
 ceptibly increases, until at Cheyenne it is 6,041 feet. The stations between these two places, and 
 the distances from Omaha, are as follows : Summit Siding (altitude 1,142 feet), 4 miles ; Gilmore 
 (altitude 976 feet), 10 miles ; Papilion (altitude 972 feet), 15 miles; Millard (altitude 1,047 feet), 
 21 miles; Elkhorn (altitude 1,150 feet), 29 miles; Waterloo (altitude 1,140 feet), 31 miles; 
 Valley (altitude 1,147 feet), 35 miles; Riverside (altitude 1,120 feet), 42 miles; Fremont 
 (altitude 1,176 feet), 47 miles; Ames (altitude 1,270 feet), 54 miles ; North Bend (altitude 1,259 
 feet), 62 miles; Rogers (altitude 1,359 feet), 69 miles; Schuyler (altitude 1,335 feet), 76 miles; 
 Richland (altitude 1,440 feet), 84 miles ; Columbus (altitude 1,432 feet), 92 miles; Jackson 
 (altitude 1,470 feet), 99 miles; Silver Creek (altitude 1,534 feet), 109 miles; Clark (altitude 
 1,610 feet), 121 miles; Lone Tree (altitude 1,686 feet), 132 miles; Chapman (altitude 1,760 feet), 
 142 miles; Lockwood (altitude 1,800 feet), 148 miles; Grand Island, named after a large island 
 in the Platte River (altitude 1,850 feet), 154 miles; Alda (altitude 1,907 feet), 162 miles; Wood 
 River (altitude 1,974 feet), 170 miles; Shelton (altitude 2,010 feet), 178 miles; Gibbon (altitude 
 2,046 feet), 183 miles; Kearny (altitude 2,106 feet), 191 miles; Kearny Junction (altitude 2,150 
 feet), 196 miles; Stevenson (altitude 2,170 feet), 201 miles; Elm Creek (altitude 2,241 feet), 212 
 miles; Overton (altitude 2,305 feet), 221 miles; Josselyn (altitude 2,330 feet), 225 miles; Plum 
 Creek (altitude 2,370 feet), 230 miles ; Coyote (altitude 2,440 feet), 239 miles ; Cozad (altitude 
 2,480 feet), 245 miles; Willow Island (altitude 2,511 feet), 250 miles; Warren (altitude 2,570 
 feet), 260 miles ; Brady Island, named after another island in the Platte (altitude 2,637 feet), 268 
 miles; McPherson (altitude 2,695 feet), 278 miles; Gannett (altitude 2,752 feet), 285 miles; 
 North Platte (altitude 2,789 feet), 291 miles; Nichols (altitude 2,882 feet), 299 miles ; O'Fal- 
 lon's (altitude 2,976 feet), 308 miles; Dexter (altitude 3,000 feet), 315 miles; Alkali (altitude 
 3,038 feet), 322 miles; ROSCOE (altitude 3,105 feet), 332 miles; Ogalalla (altitude 3,190 feet), 342 
 miles; Brule (altitude 3,266 feet), 351 miles; Big Spring (altitude 3,325 feet), 361 miles; Barton 
 (altitude 3,421 feet), 369 miles; Julesburg (altitude 3,500 feet), 377 miles; Chappell (altitude 
 3,702 feet), 387 miles ; LODGE POLE (altitude 3,800 feet), 397 miles ; Colton (altitude 4,022 feet), 
 407 miles; Sidney (altitude 4,073 feet), 414 miles; Brownson (altitude 4,200 feet), 423 miles ; 
 Potter (altitude 4,370 feet), 433 miles; Bennett (altitude 4,580 feet), 442 miles; Antelope 
 (altitude 4,712 feet), 451 miles; Adams (altitude 4,784 feet), 457 miles; Bushnell (altitude 4,860 
 feet), 463 miles; Pine Blufe (altitude 5,026 feet), 473 miles; Tracy (altitude 5,149 feet), 479 miles; 
 Egbert (altitude 5,272 feet), 484 miles; Burns (altitude 5,428 feet), 490 miles; Hillsdale (alti- 
 tude 5,591 feet), 496 miles; Atkins (altitude 5,800 feet), 502 miles; and Archer (altitude 6,000 
 feet), 508 miles. 
 
 Nearly all these stations have the same characteristics : they are of rapid growth, and have 
 populations varying from several thousands to a score or less. Between them the plains rise and 
 fall monotonously, keeping the traveler's interest only half-awake by prairie-dog villages and herds 
 of antelope; buffaloes have disappeared, and the passengers rejoice when the undulations are broken 
 by the first glimpse of the Rocky Mountains, which is obtained near Hillsdale. The train passes 
 between snow-fences and under snow-sheds, and presently stops at Cheyenne, where the Denver 
 branch of the Kansas Pacific Railway connects with the Union Pacific, affording tourists an oppor- 
 tunity to visit the famous resorts of Colorado. 
 
 Cheyenne is built on the plains, the mountains forming a massive background. In July, 1867, 
 there was one house here ; six months later there were 3,000 houses. The building-lots were first 
 sold for $150 each, and resold within three months for twenty times that amount. In spite of the 
 uninteresting situation, we are amazed at the vitality that has lifted this city out of the sand of the 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 Bowlder River, Colorado. 
 
 plains, and the work is not yet complete. The air resounds with the tap of the mason's trowel, and 
 the wooden buildings are rapidly being replaced by more substantial structures of brick and iron. 
 The population is close on 7,000, mostly tradesmen, stock-raisers, miners, and soldiers. 
 
 From Cheyenne the overland tourist can make the dJtour to Colorado, which, with its mountains, 
 springs, and sandstones, its rich mines and salubrious cHmate, urgently invites his attention. 
 
 Between Cheyenne and Pueblo, Southern Colorado, a distance of some two hundred and twenty- 
 six miles, the Rocky Mountains attain the greatest altitudes in their whole length from the Arctic 
 Circle to Central America. From almost any peak hundreds of other peaks can be seen— all over 
 10,000 feet and many 14,000 feet above the level of the sea. The highest and best known are 
 Long's, Gray's, and Pike's, the former being farthest north, and the latter farthest south. Says a 
 well-known geologist, describing a view from Mount Lincoln, which is situated to the southwest of 
 Cheyenne : 
 
 " To the east, far distant, is distinctly seen Pike's Peak, with the contiguous ranges which extend 
 northward to Long's Peak, all of which are granitoid. On the west and northwest is a vast group 
 of high mountains gashed down on every side with deep, vertical gorges. To the southward can be 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 seen the granite nucleus, a remark- 
 able range ot mountains, the Sa- 
 watch, which, with its lofty peaks, 
 among them Mounts Yale and 
 Harvard, looms up like a massive 
 wall, with a wilderness of conical 
 peaks along its summit — more 
 than fifty of them rising to an 
 elevation of 13,000 feet and over, 
 and more than two hundred rising 
 to 12,000 feet and over. Probably 
 there is no other portion of the 
 world, accessible to the traveling 
 public, where such a wilderness 
 of lofty peaks can be seen within 
 a single scope of vision." 
 
 A thrill of vivid pleasure passes 
 through us as we gaze for the first 
 time upon these famous moun- 
 tains, but the inexpressibly arid blank of the plains mitigates our transports, and leaves an impres- 
 sion of disappointment whicli is not soon or easily overcome. 
 
 Falls. — North Bowlder Canon, Colorado. 
 
14 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 Taking the Denver Pacific road 
 from Cheyenne southward to Den- 
 ver, the tourist has the mountains 
 in view all the time, and succes- 
 sively passes Summit, io miles 
 from Cheyenne ; Cass, 2 1 miles ; 
 Pierce, 41 miles; Greeley, 55 
 miles ; Evans, 59 miles ; John- 
 son, 75 miles ; and Hughes, 
 miles. Greeley, which is named 
 after the founder of the New York 
 Tribune, is a flourishing little town 
 on the banks of the Cache-a-la- 
 Poudre River. It is watered by 
 an excellent system of irrigation, 
 and is well wooded. No intoxi- 
 cating liquors are sold within its 
 limits. The population is over 
 2,000, and the annual crops some- 
 times exceed $200,000 in value. Fifty miles or so back from the plains is Glen Doe, 
 valley inclosed by high bluffs and dense woods of hemlock, fir, pine, and larch, which 
 
 Dome Rock, Middle Bowlder CaRon, Colorado. 
 
 a beautiful 
 crowd the 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 15 
 
 hill-sides with their sombre foliage, except where a mass of naked granite or basalt juts out with a 
 storm-beaten and sand-eroded face. But the tourist who visits Glen Doe does not exhaust the 
 picturesque scenes in the vicinity of Greeley. Proceeding thence in almost any direction, he will 
 find spots of equal or greater grandeur. — The twin peaks of Long's stand out very clearly from 
 Greeley, and invite the ascent, which all who intend to see the best of Colorado will make. The 
 ascent of Long's Peaks is usually made from Estes Park, from which some lovely views of the 
 mountain are obtained, excelled only by those near Lily Pond, a lake about a mile in diameter, with 
 a mirror-like surface, and borders of profuse wild-flowers. 
 
 Returning to the railway the traveler arrives, 106 miles from Cheyenne, at Denver, from which 
 five railways diverge — the Kansas Pacific, 636 miles eastward to Kansas City, the Denver & Rio 
 Grande to Trinidad, etc., the Bowlder Valley road to Bowlder, the Colorado Central to Idaho 
 
 Idaho Springs, Colorado. 
 
 Springs, and the Denver Pacific to Cheyenne. Denver has a population of some 16,000, and many 
 really handsome and substantial buildings. It is located on the open plain, 13 miles from the 
 Rocky Mountains, the sharply-accentuated summits and their blue foot-hills looming in a wonderful 
 panorama visible from nearly all parts of the town. There are several hotels of unusual excellence ; 
 and invalids, whose stay for mountain-air is prolonged, can find good boarding-houses at reasonable 
 prices. 
 
 The Bowlder Valley Railway, which diverges from the Denver Pacific at Hughes, takes us to Bowl- 
 der City, which is situated near the three cafions of the Bowlder, which are known as the North, Mid- 
 dle, and South, and through which three streams flow in an easterly direction. The Middle Cafion 
 has a stage-road running through it, but the two others are not easily explored. Their characteristics 
 are abrupt walls, diverging in some instances not more than a few feet in a thousand from a vertical 
 line— walls of basalt and granite, sometimes vividly colored, which are exalted from the narrow bed 
 
i6 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 of a stream to awful heights, and occasionally split by transverse chasms, into which a ray of sunshine 
 never creeps. In places the cliffs above overarch and almost form a tunnel, and again they widen 
 into a picturesque valley. About eight miles from Bowlder City, at the junction of the North and 
 Middle Canons, a cascade pours its avalanche over a ledge sixty feet high, and impending over this 
 spot is an immense dome-shaped cliff of barren rock. Branch railways diverge southward from 
 Bowlder to Golden, and northward to Longmont. 
 
 The stage-road through the Middle Canon crosses the stream many times before it emerges, and 
 near the western end it brings us close to the Dome already mentioned, which consists of a detached 
 column of crystallized granite nearly 400 feet high. Under its eastern side is a recess not unhke a 
 piazza, which affords welcome protection from the passing storm. Marvelous forms worked by wind 
 and water appeal to the imagination with the oddest suggestions, and before you have gone far you 
 
 Green Lake, Colorado. 
 
 are probably willing to concede a certain miraculous quality to Rocky Mountain scenery which neither 
 the Himalayas nor the Alps can claim. 
 
 Passing the Dome, the traveler next arrives at Nederlands, and can continue by stage thence to 
 Central City, which is surrounded by mines. This is a prosperous and vigorous little town, too, which 
 has risen within a year from the ashes to which it was reduced by a destructive conflagration, and now 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 17 
 
 presents finer buildings than it ever possessed before. Located in a gulch, which rises 1,500 feet in 
 three miles, it is one of a string of village-cities — Black Hawk, Mountain, Central, and Nevada — each 
 one greater in altitude than the other, and having together a population of about 7,000 souls. 
 
 Snake River, Colorado. 
 
 A stage-road to Georgetown from Central follows the north branch of Clear Creek, which flows 
 through a wooden trough and is utterly faithless to its name. All the peculiar features of a gold- 
 mining region are here. Little water-courses in board-troughs run upon stilts in various directions, 
 skeleton undershot and overshot water-wheels abound, and the hills on each side are broken by 
 the mouths of tunnels and deserted claims. Here and there the bottom of the ravine is choked 
 with mills, furnaces, and other buildings, which stand among the rocks and are often perched in 
 almost impossible places. 
 
 The history of one of these mines, says an entertaining writer, may be traced thus : The forma- 
 tion, or country rock, is a common gneiss, apparently of the Laurentian age ; a vein or lode in it is 
 found exhibiting "blossom-rock," a yellow, spongy mass, charged with iron-rust formed by the 
 oxidation of the pyrites. The discoverer stakes out his claim, and, if the " dirt pans well," the rest 
 of the lode is soon taken up. At length the " top quartz " or blossom-rock is worked out, and even 
 iron mortar and pestle fail to pulverize sufficient of the now hard and refractory ore to pay the pros- 
 pector for his trouble. Water, too, invades the mine and drives him out. 
 
 Now comes another phase : either the claim-owners effect a consolidation — a mining company 
 being formed— or the capitalist steps in and purchases. Lumber and machinery are then brought 
 over the mountains : presently buildings appear, and true mining is begun. Shafts are sunk ; levels, 
 drains, and tunnels made out ; and the ore is put through a " stamp-mill." 
 
 The product of the mill would not readily amalgamate with pure mercury. It issues from beneath 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 the heavy stamps in a grayish, spari<ling, thin mud, and flowing over gently-incUned sheets of amal- 
 gamated copper, bright with quicksilver, passes off under the name of " tailings," leaving the gold- 
 dust amalgamated and fixed to the wide copper trough-plates. From the surface of these plates the 
 amalgam, thick with gold, is wiped at regular intervals, and when sufficient is collected it is placed 
 In a cloth, the ends of which are gathered together and twisted. Upon squeezing the bag thus 
 formed much of the mercury passes out through the pores of the cloth, while a heavy, pasty mass 
 of gold, still silvered by mercury, remains within. This last, with the cloth holding it, is now placed 
 in a cast-iron crucible to which a flat iron top is fastened, a small bent pipe passing out of the centre 
 and forming the neck of the retort. AVhen heat is applied to this the mercury is e.xpelled and collected 
 under water at the edge of the tube for future use. The gold remaining in the cloth is burned out, 
 
 Gray's Peak, Colorado. 
 
 and, if the heat be not raised to a height sufficient to melt it, it retains the impression of the folds, 
 seams, and te.xture, in which condition it is deposited with the banks. 
 
 Idaho Springs, which may be reached from Central by the Colorado Central Railway, is a quiet 
 little village (altitude 7,800 feet) in the valley of Clear Creek, whose shallow, sparkling waters sever it, 
 and give occasion for a rude, picturesque wooden bridge. 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 '9 
 
 Clear Creek Canon, Colorado. 
 
 The springs for which it is famed are three in number, and the steaming- alkaline water, issuing 
 from the rock at a temperature of 109° Fahr., trickles down and forms a healing brook of soda, said 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 to be remarkably curative in cases 
 of rheumatism and paralysis. The 
 locality is surrounded by romantic 
 scenery, embodying ravine, moun- 
 tain, lake, and valley. A lofty ridge 
 of peaks forms the southward pict- 
 ure, with the Old Chief, Squaw, 
 and Papoose Mountains especially 
 prominent. Sixteen miles away are 
 the Chicago Lakes, in the neigh- 
 borhood of which Bierstadt found 
 the inspiration that expressed itself 
 in one of his most popular works 
 — " The Storm in the Rocky Moun- 
 tains." They are the most pict- 
 uresque sheets of water in Colorado, 
 and are embosomed on the slopes of 
 Mount Rosalie at a height of 11,995 feet above the level of the sea and 2,200 feet below the summit 
 of the peak. Georgetown and Idaho Springs are equidistant from them, and, though the trail by 
 which they are approached is rough, they are visited by many tourists during the summer months. 
 
 
 Pike's Peak, from the Garden of the Gods, Colorado. 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 Such Alpine lakes are a common feature of the Rocky range. Ten or twelve thousand feet above 
 the sea-level, three or four thousand feet above the highest foot-hills, the mountaineer unexpectedly 
 finds them glittering in marshy basins, fed by a hundred streamlets of freshly-melted snows — at night 
 crusted, even in midsummer, with a thin ice that yields as the day warms and admits the vision into 
 twelve or fifteen feet of dazzlingly pure, bluish water, with a bright-yellow bottom. The snow presses 
 
 Monument Park, Colorado. 
 
 on the margin, and from this white and chilly bed a lovely variety of delicately-formed flowers spring, 
 whose colors are only rivaled by the splendors of the speckled trout which shoot through the sapphire 
 depths. 
 
 We will continue the journey by a newly-finished railway from Idaho Springs to Georgetown, 
 an important mining settlement with a population of 3,500, situated on South Clear Creek, at an 
 altitude of 8,412 feet — the highest town in the world — five thousand feet nearer the sky than the 
 glacier-walled valley of the Chamounix — higher even than the famous hospice of St. Bernard. It is 
 inclosed in a perfect amphitheatre of hills, and mountains, and cliffs, and is laid out with broad streets, 
 and divided by the creek, which winds through it like a ribbon of burnished metal from the moun- 
 tain's silver veins. 
 
 There are many romantic spots in the neighborhood, deep gorges and ravines intersecting the 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 mountains in every direction. Just above the town is the famous Devil's Gate, a deep chasm, cliff- 
 walled, through which a branch of Clear Creek foams and leaps. 
 
 Another attractive resort for the tourist is Green Lake, two and a half miles distant, which is 
 as clear as crystal — so clear, indeed, that objects eighty feet below the surface are visible. The water 
 is a bright-green in color — this effect being due to a coppery sediment on the rocks at the bottom. A 
 
 dense growth of pines fringes the 
 edges, and innumerable peaks clus- 
 ter around, their snows sometimes 
 seeming to be reclaimed by the 
 lowering clouds that sweep them. 
 
 At Georgetown the traveler finds 
 the best approach to Gray's Peak, 
 which is one of the highest, if not 
 the highest, in the whole range. It 
 is 14,251 feet above the level of the 
 sea, and was named after an emi- 
 nent botanist by Dr. Perr\'. 
 
 The ascent has been vividly de- 
 scribed by Mr. Verplanck Colvin. 
 The road winds westward and up- 
 ward out of the town until wide 
 fields of snow are reached. This 
 is in October ; earlier in the season 
 little snow is seen. The groves of 
 aspen are left far below, and tall, 
 majestic pines, gleaming silver-firs, 
 and the slender, graceful Douglass 
 spruces appear. An extensive up- 
 land valley opens to the mountain- 
 eers as the forest grows thinner 
 and the trees smaller. To the left, 
 sheer and rugged, rises Mount Mc- 
 Clellan, and at the height of 12,000 
 feet the Stevens Silver -Mine is 
 passed. Now the timber-line is 
 gained, and the forest ceases, reach- 
 ing forward in short strips like cou- 
 rageous, undaunted squads of infan- 
 try. How wonderful a war between 
 natural forces — how obstinate the 
 contest where they meet ! The few daring trees that stand forth higher on the mountain than their 
 fellows have been seized by some strong, invisible power and twisted and contorted almost to death. 
 Their tops resemble dry and weather-beaten roots, and all their vitality is near the ground, where 
 some branches creep out horizontally, groveling to obtain the growth and breadth denied to them 
 above. 
 
 The valley finally closes in and the twin peaks of Gray's impend, the nearer one dark, stern, and 
 precipitous ; the other still far off, soft in outline, and sloping easily down to a great bed of ice and 
 snow — the hidden, shadow-loving remnant of a glacier. 
 
 Another half-hour of climbing brings the jaded explorers to a precipice, with deep drifts surround- 
 ing it. The soft new snow of unknown depth looks treacherously calm and beautiful, and where it 
 meets the opposite mountain-wall has the aspect of a iih>d glacier, upholding fallen bowlders, and 
 scored with a long drift of rock and gravel cast down from overhanging cliffs. The precipice itself 
 descends six hundred feet or more, and is terribly dark and dizzy. 
 
 This passed, a long, steep slope of snow-clad rocks rises before the traveler, and a narrow trail. 
 
 Tower of Babel, Garden of the Gsds, Colorado. 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 23 
 
 winding in short, precarious zigzags on its face, leads toward the summit. The horses are exhausted, 
 and it becomes no longer safe to ride them. The rest of the journey is made afoot ; and suddenly, 
 but not without desperate exertions, the summit of the nearer peak is attained. 
 
 Below, walled in by a vast mountain-chain, whose average height exceeds 13,000 feet, whose 
 passes are from 8,000 to 11,000 feet above the sea-level — far below, sketched out like a vast topo- 
 graphical map, is the Middle Park, with all its subordinate mountain-ranges and numerous streams 
 and rivers ; the springs of the west and north are Mount Lincoln, Pike's, Long's, and other peaks 
 without number — a white sea of shrouded mountains. 
 
 Our illustration of Gray's Peak (page 18) is taken from the wagon-road near the timber-line. 
 There are two or three ways to the summit — one of the best leading to Kelso Cabin — three miles 
 from the top, and thence the ascent may be completed on horseback. 
 
 Descending the peak on the western side, the tourist reaches Snake River, which, until it 
 joins the Blue, twenty miles away, leaps over a succession of rocky ledges and forms cataract after 
 cataract, pool after pool, and rapid 
 after rapid. Its course for some 
 distance is through a deep gorge, 
 and then through a grassy valley, 
 wooded with dark evergreens. 
 
 Returning to Idaho Springs 
 from Georgetown, we continue by 
 the Colorado Central Railway to 
 Denver, in reaching which city 
 we pass through Clear Creek 
 CA5fON, which is of the kind that 
 Western surveyors have classified 
 as the " box." The " open " canon, 
 in contradistinction, is usually in- 
 closed by rounded hills and em- 
 bankments resembling an English 
 railway-cutting, but the "box " ca- 
 non is a closely-imprisoned ravine, 
 with sheer or overarching cliffs, 
 and walls of seemingly loose rock 
 lying at the extremest possible an- 
 gle, their perpendicularity broken 
 only by thg detritus scattered about 
 their feet. It might be expected 
 that, lying so far down in the 
 earth, the rocks would be moist- 
 ened by springs and wrapped in 
 verdant mosses, but in reality they 
 are as angular as crystals, and in 
 most instances as parched as sand. 
 
 The almost complete absence 
 of fresh verdure is very trying to 
 the newly-arrived visitor in Colo- 
 rado. Occasionally the most beau- 
 tiful tints that ever came from the 
 sun are seen in sharply-defined rib- 
 bons running through the basalt and the sandstones, but the eye wearies of the pallid gray and faded 
 yellow that are the characterizing colors. The marvelously lucid and thirsty Western air has a harsh 
 influence upon everything. 
 
 Taking the Denver & Rio Grande Railway southward from Denver, the tourist passes several 
 small stations, each of which is over 5,000 feet above the sea-level, one being over 7,000 feet above 
 
 Major Domo, Glen Eyrie, Colorado. 
 
24 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 the sea-level. Sixty-seven miles from Denver he alights at Monument, the station of Monument 
 Park, which is celebrated for the singular erosions of its sandstones. There are many parts of the 
 Rocky Mountain country, from tne Yellowstone in the far north to Tierra Amarilla in New Mexico, 
 which strike us as being the creation and abode of some fanciful race of goblins, who have twisted 
 everything, from a shaft of rock to an old pine-tree, into a whimsical and incredulous shapelessness. 
 The eroded sandstones impress us as the result of a disordered dream — the preposterous handiwork 
 of a crack-brained mason, with a remembrance of Caliban's island lingering in his head. 
 
 Those in Monument Park are ranged in two rows lengthwise through an elliptical basin. They 
 
 William's Canon, Colorado. 
 
 are cones from twelve to twenty-five feet in height, and may be said to resemble mushrooms at the 
 first glance, though an imaginative person will soon find himself transfiguring them into odd-looking 
 men and animals. Think of several sugar-loaves with plates or trays balanced on their peaks, or 
 of several candle-extinguishers with pennies on top, and you will obtain an idea of what these geo- 
 logical curiosities are. Each pillar is capped with a conglomerate of sand and pebbles cemented by 
 iron, and this, being so much harder than the underlying yellow sandstone, has resisted the eroding 
 influences, and in some cases extends continuously over several pillars, thus forming a natural colonnade. 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 25 
 
 Nine miles from Monument, and seventy-six miles from Denver, we reach the town of Colorado 
 Springs, which seems to be within an easy ride of the summits of Pike's Peak, Cheyenne Mountain, 
 and Cameron's Cone. The town has a population of about 2,500, the streets are tidy and shaded by 
 trees, and the views, in every direction, except the east, are so unspeakably grand that we incline to 
 the belief that all living within their influence must either be poets or trivial dunces. At one side of 
 the depot is a convenient little tavern, called the Old Log Cabin, where a good dinner is served in a 
 plain and wholesome fashion, and after refreshing ourselves here we climb into the box of the United 
 States mail-coach, run by Wells, Fargo & Company, which by its appearance and accommodations 
 vividly recalls to mind the exhilarating manner of travel on the plains before the Pacific Railways were 
 completed. The road to Manitou Springs is about six miles long, and in fair weather is usually in 
 good condition. Half-way along is COLORADO City, the oldest town in the State, which was 
 founded by the gold-seekers of 1858, but which has faded into insignificance, while its neighbors have 
 been advancing in repute and prosperity. Reaching Manitou our anticipations meet the long-deferred 
 realization, and we are at last at the true base of Pike's Peak, though the summit is still far off— 
 a realization fraught with the abundant pleasures which the picturesque situation of this famous resort 
 affords. 
 
 Eastward we look upon the arid plains, swelling with an unbroken monotony of form and color 
 into the vague distance. Westward the settlement creeps up to the portals of Ute Pass, which, with 
 its overhanging walls and precipices, leads to the treasure-mines of the Upper Arkansas and the Rio 
 San Juan. 
 
 Manitou Springs is as animated as an Eastern watering-place, and in the season has a round 
 of "hops," and like festivities, night after night. There are three handsome hotels to choose from, 
 and several medicinal springs, with a temperature varying from 45° to 60°, inclosed in tasteful pavil- 
 ions and surrounded, by pretty cottages. The first spring is close to the road, and the violent bubbling 
 of the water seems to indicate a large supply, though there is hardly a gallon a minute. About a 
 hundred yards above, on the right side of the creek, is another and larger spring, which gushes out 
 of the rock with great turbulence. The chemical properties of the water are principally carbonate 
 of lime and magnesia. 
 
 The neighborhood of Manitou is exceedingly interesting, and comprehends all varieties of scenery. 
 A day's excursion allows the tourist time for the ascent of Pike's Peak, on the topmost pinnacle 
 of which he may stand, and let his heart fill with the emotion that the majestic outlook is sure to 
 inspire ; on the silent billows of the plains, and the chaotic, gashed, and knife-like peaks, before 
 whose feet these endless yellow waves have ceased to beat, like an eager living creature struck with 
 despair at omnipotent opposition. The sky itself seems to be attained, as ascending the trail on the 
 mountain-side we glance through a clearing in the timber on the gorges far below. The pines and 
 firs sway to and fro tempestuously with the roar of a great waterfall. The frail human body palpi- 
 tates and labors as the poignant air strains the exhausted lungs. But what struggle, what hazard, 
 what cost, is not repaid when the path makes its last curve, and leads to one of the grandest altitudes 
 in all the Rocky range ! 
 
 The surveyors have shown us that the elevation of Pike's Peak is not so great as that of Gray's 
 or Long's, but it seems to be higher, as it stands out alone and sweeps upward from the foot-hills to 
 a crystalline pinnacle, 14,147 feet above the level of the sea. It is visible miles and miles away over 
 the plains. The emigrants of old saw it long before its companions appeared above the horizon, and 
 they gathered fresh courage as the blazing sun transmuted its tempest-torn granite into a pillar ot 
 gold. As far north as Cheyenne, and as far south as Trinidad, on the borders of New Mexico, it can 
 still be seen, its boldness subdued in the gray of the distance ; and, as we glance at it through lapses 
 in the hills at its base, from the windows of the car, we seem to be under its very shadow when it is 
 in reality thirty or forty miles off. 
 
 A few miles from Manitou is Cheyenne Cai^ON, lying gloomily in the heart of the mountains, 
 with many wonders to attract the tourist ; and also within easy distance is William's CaSon, in 
 which solid masses of rock have yielded to the action of the elements until they have been hollowed 
 and broken into a vivid resemblance of some ruinous old castle. Bear Creek, rushing from the 
 region of summer snows ; and Ute Pass, locked between its walls of red granite — neither of these, 
 nor the Garden of the Gods, nor Glen Eyrie, nor the Rainbow Falls, should be neglected by the 
 
26 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 visitor, who can readily 
 reach them from Manitou. 
 A little way from the en- 
 trance to the Pass, and 
 about three-quarters of a 
 mile from the village, the 
 creek breaks in a white 
 rage upon the rocks in its 
 course, and suddenly falls 
 sixty feet in a beautiful ava- 
 lanche, to which the poetic 
 name of Rainbow Falls has been 
 guen 
 
 The Garden of the Gods 
 is situated about half-way between 
 Manitou and Colorado Springs, and 
 is reached by a road which is re- 
 maikable for an enormous bowlder 
 standmg at one side — standing, or 
 rather balanced, on so fine a point 
 that one marvels how it retains its 
 position. The Gateway to the Gar- 
 den IS about a mile from this land- 
 mark, and is distinguished by two 
 high, precipitous cliffs, with a large 
 detached tower standing almost ex- 
 actly between. Glancing through the 
 opening between the cliffs you ob- 
 tain a fine view of Pike's Peak in its hoary magnificence, and the Garden itself abounds with curious 
 and grand rocks, such as the TowER OF Babel, which we illustrate. 
 
 A short drive thence will bring you to Glen Eyrie, where more of these astonishing geological 
 
 Rainbow Falls Ute Pass Colorado 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 27 
 
 fantasies aie seen, the most 
 
 notable being tlie Organ, 
 
 so called on account of its 
 
 likeness to a church-oigan, 
 
 and the Major Domo, which uses to a height of 120 fett 
 
 while at its base it is not more than ten feet in diameter 
 
 The longer a traveler remains in Colorado, and the 
 more he sees of it, the higher will be his appreciation of 
 it. The first impressions are apt to be unfavorable, as he 
 finds dust, painfully-brilliant sunshine, scarcity of vegeta- 
 tion, and bleakness, where indiscreet puffery has taught 
 him he would find balmy air and a paradise of flowers. 
 But there are compensations for every disappointment, 
 and for this as well as others — compensations that will 
 make a summer visit to Colorado a memorable pleasure. 
 The invalid may depend upon almost every comfort and 
 convenience obtainable in an Eastern hotel of average 
 excellence. There are good carriage-roads, and livery- 
 stables well supplied with horses and vehicles. 
 
 •^'^^^y'''!>K'^''\'Wj^Ji^ ' 'P/y 
 
 -■& 
 
 Black Hills, near Sherman. 
 
 Having exhausted Colorado, the traveler returns to Cheyenne, and thence continues his over- 
 land journey. The grade of the railway rapidly increases west of that town, but the ascent is imper- 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 Ltptiblc Wc piss Haz- 
 ard (altitude 6,325 feet), 
 522 miles from Omaha ; 
 Otto (altitude 6,724 feet), 
 531 miles; Granite Canon (altitude 7,298 feet), 536 
 miles; and Buford (altitude 7,780 feet), 543 miles. 
 The snow-fences and snow-sheds, a few of which were 
 passed east of Cheyenne, become more frequent, and 
 the preparations made for protection indicate how ter- 
 rible the winter storms are. A plaintive look of appre- 
 hension may be seen on the faces of the emigrants in 
 the forward cars, and an occasional mutter of disappoint- 
 ment is heard. A stock-raiser points out an ominous 
 little valley in which several thousand sheep were frozen 
 to death in one night, and a scattering of bleached bones 
 confirms his stoiy. Here we cross a shallow cafion, and 
 tiie track is hedged on both sides by a fence. The wind 
 blows with such fury in winter that it lifts the snow up 
 out of this ravine and over the bridge on which the rail- 
 way is carried. Bleak and profitless hills of loose sand, strewed with bowlders and ribbed with 
 buttresses of weathered granite, limit the prospect ; and the high peaks of Colorado, which were 
 
 Maiden's Slide, Dale Creek 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 29 
 
 I'isible as we approached Cheyenne, are hidden by the intermediate ridges. But in the neighbor- 
 hood of Sherman, 33 miles from Cheyenne, these superb mountains reappear, stretching a hun- 
 dred miles or more to the southward, bathed in white vapor near the summits, profoundly blue as 
 they slope down to the foot-hills, checkered with broad streaks of light, dazzling snow-fields, and 
 voluminous shadows. A description of them serves not at all in their identification. Their appear- 
 ance during one hour eludes recognition the next. At one season and in one condition of the atmos- 
 phere they are huge masses of unlovely and unsentimental rock, noticeable only for their Titanic size ; 
 again, they are dense masses of blue thrown up against the horizon like an impending storm ; and, 
 on a clear evening, the passionate western sun inflames them with an effulgent crimson that quickly 
 changes to a pallid gray before the approaching night. 
 
 The Black Hills that we are gently ascending, and that extend into the north, have little or 
 no poetic charm. They are insignificant in height and dull in color. A few stout pines and firs, 
 dwarfed by the inclemency of the weather, crawl out of the crevices between detached masses of 
 tempestuous rock, and these are the only touches of vegetation that can be discovered. 
 
 Sherman, the next stopping-place west of Buford, is 549 miles from Omaha, and has an altitude 
 of 8,242 feet. It is one of the highest railway-stations in the world, but the ascent of the road is so 
 
 Emigrants' Camp, Laramie Plains. 
 
 gradual that the traveler finds it hard to realize how great the height is. From Sherman the train 
 descends to the Laramie Plams, passing the stations of Tie Siding (altitude 7,985 feet), 555 miles 
 from Omaha; Harney (altitude 7,857 feet), 558 miles; Red Buttes (altitude 7,336 feet), 564 miles; 
 and Fort Sanders (altitude 7,163 feet), 570 miles. These stations, except Sanders, which is a 
 military post, are used for signal and other telegraphic purposes of the railway only, but between 
 them the traveler is carried through an amazing region of rock diablerie, where the granite and 
 sandstones are cast in such odd shapes that they seem to be the work of goblin architects, or the 
 embodiments of a madman's fancy. Pillars which caricature the form of beast and human ; circular 
 and square towers that might have been part of a medisEval stronghold ; massive structures that have 
 no small resemblance to the fortress itself; and preposterous creations, unlike anything else seen on 
 earth or heard of in heaven, barricade the track on both sides. The geologist's explanation of them 
 is simple : they were once angular, cube-like masses, and have been worn into their present form in 
 the process of disintegration by exfoliation. Sometimes they are honeycombed with tiny cells like a 
 worm-eaten piece of wood from the tropics ; sometimes they are a yellow-ochre in color, or a pale 
 yellow tinged with green ; and again they are a vivid crimson, or the several strata are marked by 
 many different tints. They abound in Dale Creek Ca5Ion, two miles west of Sherman, which the 
 
30 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 railway crosses at a height of 127 feet by a trestle-work bridge 650 feet long. Here, among others, 
 is a great pile of rocks, called, for some occult reason, the Maiden's Slide, and in the same 
 neighborhood is another pile bearing the ghastly name of "Skull Rocks," which is justified by a 
 resemblance resulting from erosion. A flashing trout-stream threads the cafion, and contributes in 
 the end to the Cache-a-Ia-Poudre River. 
 
 Near the western terminus of the bridge the road has been drilled and blasted through a compact 
 
 Red Buttes, Laramie Plains. 
 
 and massive red granite, that is said to be susceptible of a high polish like the Scottish syenite ; and, 
 as we reach the plains again, a large number of strange rock-formations, a bright crimson in color, 
 appear on the right side of the track, these being known as the Red Buttes. The soil is also 
 dyed red, and gives the country a warm and hospitable appearance. 
 
 The great Laramie Plains, which we are now crossing, are about 40 miles wide on an average, 
 and 100 miles long, bounded by the Black Hills and the Medicine Bow Mountains. They are over- 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 31 
 
 run by enormous flocks of sheep, and are said to afford the best grazing in the United States ; a 
 non-resident wool-grower — an authority hkely to be unprejudiced — assuring me that he considered 
 them better than the celebrated grama grass-regions of New Mexico. On January i. 1876, 168,000 
 
 
 Elk Mountain. 
 
 head of stock were grazing in one county alone, and these represented an aggregate of nearly 
 $2,200,000. 
 
 The Medicine Bow Mountains are a range of wild, acute, snowy peaks, and, as the traveler 
 looks west from Laramie City, the most prominent elevation is Sheep Mountain, near which is Mount 
 Agassiz. Elk Mountain, the northern spur, is the highest peak in the range, however, and has 
 an elevation of 7,152 feet above the level of the sea. 
 
 The emigrant-road follows the railway closely, and canvas-covered wagons drawn by ox-teams 
 are often passed, sometimes alone and sometimes in trains of five or more. The whole establishment 
 of a migrating family — women, children, furniture, cattle, and pets — is included in the caravan ; and 
 in the evening it is a common thing to see the wanderers drawn up by the side of a brook or spring 
 
32 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 for the night, the women busying over the camp-fire, and the men attending to the cattle, or smokino- 
 under the shelter of their wagons. The Indian wigwam, that in the early days of the railway might 
 have been discovered in the rear of the newly-settled town, has disappeared, and the Indian himself, 
 even the degenerate Digger who was content to beg for coppers at the depot, is nearly as obsolete 
 as the buffalo-herds that once blackened the plain. 
 
 Laramie City is 572 miles from Omaha, and 7,123 feet above the sea-level. It is located on the 
 Laramie River, and has a population of about 3,000. The streets are laid out at right angles from 
 the railway, and are adorned by many handsome public buildings of brick and stone. Its prospects, 
 like the prospects of all cities on the railway, are said to be very brilliant ; and it is a fact that, within 
 30 miles of it, there are deposits of antimony, cinnabar, gold, silver, lead, plumbago, and several other 
 minerals. The first town-lots were sold by the railway company, and over 500 buildings were erected 
 on the site within two weeks. 
 
 Soon after passing Laramie, and while we are still rolling over the fertile Plains, the night sweeps 
 up from the east in a smoky-looking cloud, and overtakes the speeding train. But, before the relapse 
 of light into final darkness, there is the momentary glory of the western sunset, with its barbaric 
 splendors of crimson and gold, and its dying pathos of opaline light and peaceful blues and grays. 
 No ugliness can assert itself in this parting look of the day. The mean little dug-out and the bizarre 
 hovel of the mines are redeemed from their squalor and unshapeliness, and changed until they become 
 inoffensive to the sight. The low-lying plain and the swampy stream meandering it borrow color 
 from the expiring light ; the plain is a red-brown, and the river is overcast with a skim of brassy 
 yellow. The distant mountains are folded in a wonderful blue or purple — which it is we can scarcely 
 tell — and every bend and peak in their serrated summit-line is emphasized with startling distinctness. 
 The clattering train does not break the spell of silence and loneliness that settles with twilight on the 
 land, despite its suggestiveness of civilization and the fast-beating pulse of commerce ; on the contrary, 
 it adds weirdness to the scene as it twists among the hillocks, disappearing under a snow-shed for a 
 minute, and reappearing with a roar and a blaze. It is like a ship adrift at sea : whence it has come 
 is only indicated by the clogging wreath of smoke that hangs low upon the earth behind it, and its 
 destination is unforeshadowed by the gleam of a human habitation in the dusk ahead. At this time 
 the achievement of the railway company in projecting an iron pathway into so wild and desolate a 
 region impresses us as it has not impressed us before. 
 
 We pass from stretch to stretch of plain, bounded by the same whited peaks, and not different in 
 any important particular from the stretch before it. The telegraph-poles are the only projections 
 nearer than the mountains, and a flock of birds, or sheep, or a herd of cattle in the neighborhood of 
 a roughly-timbered ranch, is the only reward of the patient tourist, who sits in pensive martyrdom 
 at the car-window with a praiseworthy but fatuous resolve to comprehend the whole countr}\ The 
 wheels of the train beat their humdrum on the iron rails ; the novel is again taken up ; and the game 
 of whist, euchre, or casino, is resumed. 
 
 The next stations are HowELL (altitude 7,090 feet), 581 miles from Omaha ; Wyoming (altitude 
 7,068 feet), 588 miles; Cooper's Lake (altitude 7,044 feet), 602 miles; Lookout (altitude 7,169 
 feet), 606 miles; Miser (altitude 6,810 feet), 614 miles; Rock Creek (altitude 6,690 feet), 623 
 miles ; WiLCOX (altitude 7,033 feet), 630 miles ; and COMO (altitude 6,680 feet), 638 miles. Como 
 is near a lake of that name in which lizards abound, and which is much frequented by sportsmen for 
 the duck-shooting it affords. Crossing the MEDICINE Bow River, which has its rise in the Medi- 
 cine Bow Mountains, the train next stops at the station of that name, 645 miles from Omaha and 
 6,550 feet above the level of the sea ; and 11 miles farther west it reaches Carbon, which is one of 
 the many providential circumstances that favor the maintenance of the road, and is situated, as its 
 name implies, over a deposit of coal. A shaft has been sunk to a depth of 120 feet, and veins six 
 feet thick have been opened. 
 
 Simpson, the next station (altitude 6,898 feet), 663 miles from Omaha, is simply a side-track ; 
 and Percy, the next (altitude 6,950 feet), 668 miles, is named after an officer of the United States 
 Army, who was killed at this point by the Sioux Indians while the railway was being surveyed. 
 Percy is the nearest starting-place for Elk Mountain, which is a short distance away, and at the 
 foot of which are the remains of old Fort Halleck. The scenery is tedious, and the passengers 
 drowse and yawn. It is hard to realize what the overland journey would be without the Pullman car. 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 33 
 
 When night falls at the close of a long day's ride over the Plains, the contrast between the outer 
 darkness and the warmth and light, the cheerful plush and veneer, of the interior strikes home, and it 
 is still more salient when we pass through the ordinary cars in which people who cannot afford a 
 Pullman are carried. 
 
 Near Percy a race once took place between a locomotive and a herd of red deer, which when the 
 railway was opened were plentiful along the line. The locomotive had entered a narrow valley, and 
 the engineer discovered the herd drinking on the banks of a rivulet. Startled by the sudden apparition 
 of the thunderous "iron horse," the timid creatures fled before it with extraordinary fleetness ; the 
 engineer increased his speed and blew his whistle ; but the deer kept ahead until they reached more 
 open country, when they sprang to one side and ran to a distance beyond the range of a rifle, where 
 they stood and gazed with dilated eyes at their fast-disappearing enemy. 
 
 We have spoken before of the sociability that springs up from the common interests of the 
 passengers, breaking the frosty bars of conventionality and leaving a freedom that does not wait for 
 an introduction. Another characteristic of the overland journey, as may be imagined, is the bringing 
 together of many oddly dissimilar people, and the relief into which their personality is brought. One 
 of the inevitable characters, if such a well-bred, wholesome, and unassuming gentleman can be called 
 so, is a young Englishman. He may be an earl or a viscount with a pedigree as old as the Norman 
 Conquest, or he may be a simple baronet or a commoner, but as one or the other he is pretty sure 
 to occur at some point on the Pacific Railway, and his countrymen have no reason to be ashamed 
 
 ^ A^ 
 
 Lake Como 
 
 of the appearance and impression he makes among republicans. A rubicund triumph of matter over 
 mind is stoutly embodied, and success in another caste is illustrated in the hale, blunt, plethoric 
 farmer of Herefordshire or Hampshire, who, with his wife and dahlia-like daughter, is taking the 
 holiday of a lifetime, and who, though he is as English as the Tower of London, is amazed beyond 
 measure when he finds that strangers recognize his nationality. His praise and blame of what he 
 sees are divided between the depth of the soil and the height of impudence attained in the charges 
 of the restaurants. Usually the travelers include one who is on his way around the world ; and, since 
 the time of passage between San Francisco and Sydney has been reduced to twenty-seven days, 
 Australians are often met with on the road. 
 
 Quiet inattention to what is passing outside marks the passengers who have made the journey 
 before from those to whom it is a new thing, and to whom everything is a matter of frank surprise ; 
 and a veteran traveler over the road soon acquires an enviable position of respect among the fresh 
 ones by his narratives of terrible snow-storms and his knowledge of the places on the route. In the 
 earlier years of the railway, before the snow-sheds and snow-ploughs were as complete as they are 
 now, the detentions between San Francisco and Omaha in winter were sometimes a month long; 
 but a few hours, or, at the worst, days, is the most the company now requires to overcome the 
 heaviest snow-fall. 
 
 St. Mary's, 681 miles from Omaha (altitude 6,751 feet), and Walcott, a side-track, 689 miles 
 
34 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 (altitude 6,800 feet), are the next stations ; and about ten min- 
 utes befoie midnight, when all the couches have been trins- 
 formed mto snug sleepmg-berths, and the little smoking-room 
 in the rear has been left by the last lingering smokei, the 
 westw aid-bound tiain halts again — this time at I OKI Fri D 
 SlFril, and if the night is clear, c^ny one peeping through 
 the cuituns of his bed will see a broad rner flowing on near 
 
 the lailwa) We touched the 
 _ ^ s line luei the Noith Phtte, 
 
 600 niiks neuer Om ih i whcie 
 
 *^?»^*^^"f^2^^t^T^\^^^i , 
 
 of Piatt. 
 
 it was muddy, shallow, and sluggish, while 
 
 here it is clear and deep, and as unsullied 
 
 as it is at its source among the perpetual 
 
 snows of Long's Peak in the North Park of Colorado. The 
 
 fort is a fort in name only, and is simply a shelter for troops 
 
 and a store for supplies, and in contrast with its primitive 
 
 log-walls is the orderly arrangement of the interior. Not an 
 
 obsei-vance exacted in the most populous and magnificent fort in the East or in Europe is omitted 
 
 from the discipline of this isolated outpost ; the reveille is beaten and the guard mounted at the 
 
 same hour and with the same unerring punctuality as at Governor's Island and San Francisco, and 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 35 
 
 both officers and men are as careful and as neat in their dress as a regiment marshaled for review 
 before the commander-in-chief. 
 
 After Fort Steele comes Granville (altitude 6,560 feet), 703 miles from Omaha, and Granville 
 is succeeded by Rawlins (altitude 6,732 feet), 710 miles from Omaha, a station named after General 
 Grant's first Secretary of War, which has a population of about 600, mostly railway employes. These 
 mechanics have invested their savings in some mines, forty miles to the north, which are said to yield 
 gold, silver, and copper mixed with iron. They penetrated a vein with a shaft, and obtained ore at 
 about sixty feet below the surface ; then they bored a tunnel, and in the course of two years expended 
 $24,000 in their enterprise. At a depth of 365 feet they struck the vein, and in all the little cabins 
 around Rawlins there are fluttering hopes that the copper and silver now being obtained will run out, 
 and that gold will soon be found. Rawlins contains the usual number of bar-rooms, which means 
 that it has a whole street full of them. We see settlement after settlement along the railway-line that 
 might be wiped out without detriment to the country; the first sign of life in them is the bar-room ; 
 
 View on the Platte River. 
 
 the success of the first establishment of this kind entails several others, and, if civilization survives 
 these developments, a few cottages and a church follow. Half the towns on our way have no better 
 excuse for existence than the gratification of the bad tastes of the ranchmen, who flock in for occa- 
 sional debaucher}'. But Rome began with Remus and Romulus ; and as great a civilization, with 
 greater endurance, may have its seed in a vagabond of the plains. 
 
 Next to Rawlins is SUMMIT (altitude 6,821 feet), 714 miles from Omaha; next to Summit, 
 Separation (altitude 6,900 feet), 724 miles; next to Separation, Fillmore (altitude 6,885 feet), 
 731 miles; and next to Fillmore, Creston. Three miles farther west is the divide that turns one 
 part of the water of the continent into the Pacific, and the other part into the Atlantic ; but it is 
 unimpressive both in appearance and in actual altitude. 
 
 Latham, Washakie, Red Desert, Tipton, Table Rock, Agate, Bitter Creek, Black 
 BuTTES, Hallville, POINT OF RoCKS, THAYER, Salt Wells, and BAXTER, each about seven 
 miles apart, are left behind, and 831 miles from Omaha we reach RoCK SPRINGS, one of the subjects 
 ■of our artist's illustrations, where all the coal used by the Union Pacific Company and much of that 
 consumed in towns along the line are obtained. The coal is said to surpass anthracite, having 
 neither clinkers in its ashes nor heavy soot in its smoke : 104,427 tons were shipped in 1875, ^^''"^' '^''^'O 
 veins, one six and the other nine feet thick, are now being worked. 
 
 Next beyond Rock Springs is Lawrence (altitude 6,200 feet), 840 miles from Omaha, and we 
 then reach Green River (altitude 6,140 feet), 846 miles from Omaha. The river, which receives its 
 name from the color of the shales through which it runs, has its rise in the Wyoming and Wind 
 River Mountains, and flows in a southerly direction until it unites with the Colorado. The scenery 
 is characterized by very extraordinary, and, in some instances, very beautiful, sandstones, which crop 
 out in close proximity to the railway. These formations are known to scientific men as the Green 
 
36 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 River shales, the different sediments being arranged in regular layers, varying from the thickness of a 
 knife-blade to several feet. The castellated cliff and the Giant's Butte, both of which are shown in 
 
 the accompanying illustrations, 
 are prominent landmarks to all 
 travelers, and are characteristic 
 rocks of the region. The broad 
 and well-defined bands of color, 
 looking as though they had been 
 applied by a painter's brush ; 
 the countless spires and turrets 
 eroded in the front of the main 
 rock, and the grotesque ele- 
 ment that finds expression in a 
 hundred inconceivable and in- 
 describable shapes, force us to 
 believe that we have left earth 
 behind, and have strayed into 
 goblin-land. 
 
 Beautiful impressions of fish 
 are seen on the shales, some- 
 times a dozen or more within 
 the compass of a square foot. 
 The moulds of insects and wa- 
 ter-plants are also found, and 
 occasionally a greater wonder 
 still, such as the feather of a 
 bird, can be traced in the heart 
 of a rock several hundred feet 
 high. 
 
 At Flaming Gorge the 
 water is of the purest emerald, 
 with banks and sand-bars of 
 glistening white, and it is over- 
 looked by a perpendicular bluff, 
 banded with the brightest red 
 and yellow to a height of 1,500 
 feet above the surrounding level. 
 When it is illumined by the full 
 sunlight. Flaming Gorge fully 
 realizes its name ; and it is 
 the entrance to the miraculous 
 Red Caj^ON, which furrows the 
 mountains to a surpassing depth. 
 We would advise every tour- 
 ist, who has time, to alight at 
 Green River, and remain " over" 
 a .day. The accommodations 
 are not much to speak of, but 
 they are fairly comfortable, and 
 the sights are such as no oth- 
 er countrj- than the far West 
 affords. 
 Another remarkable rock is the Giant's Club, a towering mass, almost round, that rises to a 
 great height, and was at one time, according to geologists, on the bottom of a lake. In the strata 
 
 Miners' Huts, Rock Springs. 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 jjtte, Green River. 
 
 of sandstone many fossils of insects and plants have been discovered, and also the remains of fishes 
 belonging to fresh water and of extinct species. 
 
38 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 Outfits for either hunting- or fishing parties can be obtained at the station, and the country around 
 has a good reputation among sportsmen for its deer, elk, and trout. 
 
 Cliffs, Green River. 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 39 
 
 Thirteen miles from Green River, and two hundred feet higher than that station, is Bryan, where 
 the raihvay touches Black's Fork, a stream which finds a way, from its source in the Uintah Moun- 
 tains to its junction with the Green, through an unlovely valley of sage-brush and greasewood — two 
 shrubs which, instead of amplifying the earth with the brightness of vegetation, overspread it with a 
 tangle of unsightly gray and sinewy branches. The sage-brush is the key-note of much Western 
 scenery. So pallid and parched is it, that its life-sap might have been absorbed in those heart- 
 burnings of the earth whose external consequences are seen in many a pile of volcanic rock ; its 
 small, pale leaves are never fresh, and its fibrous limbs are always twisted and gnarled ; but, despite 
 these symptoms of scant virility, it holds to the soil with extreme tenacity, and it crops out in super- 
 abundance over miles and miles of territory, upon which it allows no closer semblance to greenness 
 than itself to provoke comparison. Among the foot-hills and along the river-bottoms there are knots 
 of pines and firs, and groves of aspens and cottonwoods — not enough, however, to relieve the dead- 
 weight of the sage-brush, which spreads itself over the landscape to the farthest horizon like a stratum 
 of mist. 
 
 About this time, while the train is moving through tedious miles of desert, we are prepared to 
 agree with Hawthorne, that meadows are the most satisfying objects in natural scenery. " The 
 heart reposes in them with a feeling that few things else can give, because almost all other objects 
 are abrupt and clearly defined ; but a meadow stretches out like a small infinity, yet with a secure 
 homeliness which we do not find either in an expanse of water or of air." 
 
 The apology usually offered for the least attractive land in the far West is, that, no matter how 
 sterile it may be to look at, it is " rich in the primary elements of fertility," a fine-sounding phrase, 
 which, though we listen to it at first with divided feelings of amusement and incredulity, proves on 
 investigation to have some truth in it. No plain is so sandy and barren that it is not amenable to the 
 irrigating ditch, and the introduction of a little stream of water is often followed by an outbreak of 
 what seems to be spontaneous verdure, wonderfully bright and persistent, which shows how fruitful 
 the soil may become under favorable treatment. At Fort Bridger, eleven miles south of Carter, the 
 third station westward from Bryan, three hundred bushels of potatoes have been raised from half an 
 acre of ground, and the ground there is as hopeless to all appearances as that in view from the railway. 
 
 Beyond the yellow and gray undulations of the nearer land, among which strange-looking masses 
 of rock occasionally outcrop, the Uintah Mountains, extending eastward and southeastward from 
 Utah, now loom up, and bound the prospect with a line of deep, dark blue. They are visible for hours ; 
 sometimes when the train rolls over a commanding crest they are revealed from their purple bases to 
 their snowy summits, and then, as it descends into the hollow, they are hidden in all save the highest 
 tips. The peaks, or cones, dark as they seem at this distance of seventy or eighty miles, are most 
 distinctly stratified, and rise 2,000 feet above the springs that feed the streams in the foot-hills below. 
 They are vast piles of compact purplish quartzite, resembling Egyptian pyramids on a gigantic scale, 
 without a trace of soil, water, or vegetation. Such, at least, the peaks are ; but the lower slopes are 
 covered with arborescent vegetation, which is succeeded nearer the timber-limits by pines that have 
 been dwarfed down to low, trailing shrubs, and the ridges inclose some extensive basins of exquisitely 
 clear water. One of these, called Carter's Lake, is held in on one side by a semicircular wall of 
 sandstones and slate, and on the other side by a dense growth of spruce-trees. The depression for 
 the accumulation of the water, says a United States geologist, was caused by an immense mass of 
 rock sliding down frorh the ridges above ; spiings oozed out from the sides of the ridge, snows 
 melted, and so the lake was formed. Carter's Lake is 350 yards long, 80 yards wide, and 10,321 
 feet above the level of the sea ; and it is characteristic of the many other natural reservoirs embosomed 
 in the valleys of these mountains. 
 
 One of the highest peaks in the mountains — Gilbert's Peak — is named after General Gilbert, 
 and is plainly marked by strata of red-sandstones and quartzites inclining to the southeast. It is 
 uplifted abruptly from a lake about fifty acres in extent, and has the remarkable elevation of 13,250 
 feet above the sea-level, the lake itself being 11,000 feet high. Another notable peak springs out in 
 isolation from the pyramid already mentioned, and has been called, from its resemblance to a Gothic 
 church, Hayden's Cathedral. The foot-hills are clothed with pines, varied by that most beauti- 
 ful of all Western trees, the quaking asp, which, with its silver-gray bark and tremulous, oval, emerald 
 leaves, stands out in luminous contrast to the melancholy foliage of the evergreens. 
 
40 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 Beyond Bryan is Marston, 867 miles from Omaha, and Granger is 10 miles farther westward. 
 Church ButteS (altitude 6,317 feet), 887 miles from Omaha, takes its name from a fragment of the 
 celebrated Mauvaises Terres, or Bad Lands, on the old overland stage-road, 10 miles to the south. 
 The modern pathway of iron touches the old road from time to time in its sinuous course ; and the 
 glory of the days when the pony-express, the fast coaches, and the hundreds of emigrant-teams 
 passing every day, raised the dust that now lies deep in the ruts, becomes a reminiscence in the 
 
 Uintah Mountains. 
 
 tottering telegraph-poles, out of use and unstrung, and in the deserted ranches, which once provided 
 cheer and rest for the wearied travelers. 
 
 Church Buttes are 150 miles east of Salt Lake, and have an elevation of 6,731 feet. They consist 
 of deposits of soft sedimentary sandstones, and marly clays^ in perfectly horizontal strata, and very 
 remarkable paleontological remains are found in them. Professor O. C. Marsh, in his expedition of 
 1870, discovered the fossils of a rhinoceros, some turtles, some birds, the areodott and the titanothe- 
 riu»i—i\it jaw of the latter measuring over four feet in length. Rattlesnakes were also found in 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 41 
 
 
 extraordinar)' numbers, and their humming, says one 
 member of the expedition, soon became a familiar tune, 
 which excited little alarm or attention. 
 
 The characteristic features of Church Buttes and the 
 Bad Lands are the bands of color formed by the succes- 
 I ^ ~ ' -^ J" * ^ ' sive zoological strata, which in some instances, as at Green 
 
 River, are exceedingly vivid, and seem to have been drawn 
 by a human hand. As we stand upon one of the sum- 
 mits it is difficult, indeed, to convince ourselves that the architecture, as well as the decoration, is not 
 the result of human workmanship. The elements striving with the centuries may lapse into vagaries 
 of expression, but it is incredible that senseless rain-drops and gritty sand, without mind and without 
 a special design, can have shaped the symmetrical amphitheatres, colosseums, and temples, that appeal 
 to our eyes with the grandeur of an ancient Rome or an Athens — incredible that the mere process 
 of "weathering," as the geologists call it, can have evolved such masterpieces out of chaotic rock. 
 The very pillars that clasp the portico of that temple yonder and dwindle away, through their hun- 
 dreds, into a throbbing perspective, are apportioned with exactness, and uphold a filigree cornice 
 whose dainty cai-ving bespeaks the chisel of a sculptor. The isolated pilasters and obelisks are 
 without flaw ; the domes that cap some of the buildings are perfect demi-spheres ; the flutings of 
 the columns are uniform in depth and width, and the broad terraces of steps are equidistant. The 
 desert's sand-blast and the persistent action of the rain-drops may have worn the rocks on Laramie 
 Plain and Dale Creek into their present uncanny suggestiveness, but we cannot reconcile the scien- 
 tific theory and the entrancing testimony of our sight as we look down from the distance upon the 
 miraculous architecture of the Bad Lands. A nearer view, however, dissipates our illusion; then 
 we notice defects that were not visible before, and observe how spouts and drops of water have 
 furrowed the pliant constitution of the rock, tunneling and grooving with resistless industry, and 
 imparting the color of the strata to the surrounding streamlets. But it is not all illusion ; the 
 resemblances often prove to be real, and are marvelous beyond the possible conception of any one 
 who has not seen them. 
 
 Hampton is a side-track, and the next station westward is Carter, 904 miles from Omaha. 
 
42 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 Twenty miles to the northwest, three veins of excellent coal, eighty-seven feet thick, have been 
 discovered, and seven miles north of the station are some white sulphur and chalybeate springs. We 
 are steadily ascending now; at Bryan the altitude was 6,317 feet, and at Bridger, the next station, 
 it is 6,780 feet. Bridger was named after a celebrated hunter and guide, and five miles beyond it we 
 reach Lerov, 7,123 feet above the level of the sea, and 919 miles from Omaha. The country is wild 
 and broken by swelling ridges, among which the train 
 
 winds and winds; we rush through the darkness of 
 
 snow-shed after snow-shed, and are gradually attaining 
 the second highest point on the Union Pacific Railway 
 — the highest being at Sherman. The Uintah Moun- 
 tains limit the horizon, and the foreground of foot-hills 
 is covered with bushy, yellow-green grass. 
 
 At Piedmont, the next station (altitude 7,540 feet), 
 929 miles from Omaha, the traveler's attention is at- 
 tracted by groups of dome-shaped furnaces which are 
 used in the manufacture of charcoal for the smelting- 
 works of Utah ; the Chinaman, also, makes his first 
 
 Bear River Valley. 
 
 appearance here, and recurs multitudinously 
 during the rest of the journey as railway- 
 laborer, cook, washer-man, and boot-black. 
 
 The stations following are Aspen (alti- 
 tude 7,835 feet), 938 miles from Omaha ; HiL- 
 LIARD (altitude 7,310 feet), 943 miles; and 
 MiLLis (altitude 6,790 /eet), 947 miles. At 
 Hilliard there is another large nest of charcoal furnaces, which are often mistaken for Indian wig- 
 wams or Chinese huts. Another thing, as to the use of which Eastern people venture queer con- 
 jectures, is a high, narrow trestle-work bridge supporting a V-shaped trough — an object familiar 
 enough to residents of the Pacific coast. This is a " flume," and the wood used in the kilns is floated 
 through it for a distance of twenty-four miles from the mountains. Over 2,000,000 feet of lumber 
 were necessar)' in its construction, and from its head to its mouth it falls 2,000 feet, the stream 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 43 
 
 rushing through it and sweeping the logs on its bosom with a rapidity and ease that mal<e us wonder 
 why people ever haul wood in cumbrous wagons. The mill at the head— where the pine-trees are 
 reduced from their original proportions to the trim, convenient shape in which they arrive at Hilliard 
 
 has a capacity for sawing 40,000 feet of lumber every twenty-four hours, and the kilns consume 
 
 2,000 cords a month, producing 100,000 bushels of charcoal in the same time as a result. In Nevada, 
 and in all other parts of the far West, where the lumber-business is extant, the flumes are as common 
 a sight as the roads or the trails ; but few of them, however, are as long as this one at Hilliard. 
 
 A little way beyond Millis the railway crosses Bear River, the valley of which is interesting both 
 on account of its natural beauties and its game. The tributary brooks are said to be as full of trout 
 as the forests are full of deer, bear, foxes, wolves, grouse, and quail ; besides which, rarer animals, 
 such as the panther, the wolverine, and the catamount, may be found occasionally ; and, if we believe 
 the common report, a sportsman, or naturalist, might wander through the region forever without 
 languishing an hour for something to shoot at. Northward, at the Big Bend of the river, there is a 
 group of warm soda-springs, which occupy an area of six square miles, and nearer the railway, sixty 
 miles north of Evanston, which is the next station, there is a lake, ten miles long and from five to 
 eight miles broad, which surpasses the Yellowstone in the exquisite coloring of its rocks. The 
 boundary-line of Idaho and Utah crosses the lake from east to west at an elevation of nearly 6,000 
 feet. Compared with their former greatness, the springs are now few in number, but they are still 
 the most interesting group on the continent. About three miles up a small tributary of the Bear 
 River we come upon a formation consisting of the basins of old springs long extinct. They are called 
 " petrifying " springs by the settlers, from the abundance of calcareous tufa existing in the basins, and 
 some of them contain large masses of plants coated with this material, which retains the form of leaf 
 and stem to perfection. 
 
 The Bear River has its source in the Uintah Mountains, and runs in a northerly direction to the 
 great soda-springs of Idaho, about 120 miles from Echo City; it then turns to the southwest and 
 empties into the Great Salt Lake near Corinne, Utah Territory. 
 
 Evanston (altitude 6,770 feet), 957 miles from Omaha, is a dinner-station and the seat of Uintah 
 County, the most engaging of which two facts is the former. The relative merits of the eating- 
 houses on the road are often the subject of much discussion among the passengers. If we are not 
 mistaken, hotel-cars were run at the opening of the road, and the traveler could have his morning 
 cocktail in bed and rise in time to find his breakfast set for him with exquisitely white linen and 
 shining silver-ware. But restaurants have taken the place of these, and an asterisk opposite the names 
 of certain stations in the time-bill indicates the stoppages made for breakfast, dinner, and supper, 
 the uniform charge being one dollar for each meal. The keen, pure air of the plains and mountains 
 gives a remarkable edge to the appetite, and, as a train enters an eating-station, the platforms are 
 crowded with passengers, the younger of whom do not wait for it to stop, but jump from it while it is 
 still in motion, and rush into the restaurant in search of good places at the table. There are also 
 lunch-counters at which tea, coffee, sandwiches, and pies, are sold at reasonable prices. The propri- 
 etor of the lunch-counter sometimes combines his business with that of a mineralogist and paleontolo- 
 gist, and exhibits above the platters of apple, peach, and cranberry pies, and the steaming urns of 
 coffee, cabinets of fossils obtained from neighboring rocks and specimens of scarce minerals. 
 
 At Evanston we are introduced to the first installment of Chinese waiters, who ghde around the 
 tables in the whitest of white blouses, and are politely attentive in their manners, and extremely 
 cleanly in their appearance. The cooks, also, are Chinamen, and are not more atrociously incapable 
 than the Irishmen and negroes at some of the other stations on the line. 
 
 Evanston is the last town on the railway-line within Wyoming, and has a population of about 
 1,500. Three miles off there is a deposit of coal, which yielded nearly 99,000 tons, or io,ooo car- 
 loads in 1875, and a much greater quantity in previous years, one mine alone giving out 150,000 tons. 
 Forty-one miles northward is another deposit, the veins of which are four and a half feet thick on the 
 ground-level, and very much thicker above. 
 
 The country beyond is high, breezy, and rolling, and four miles from Evanston we cross the 
 boundary-line of Utah and Wyoming, a small sign-board marking the spot. We are rapidly 
 approaching Echo and Weber Cafions, which comprise the grandest scenery on the road, and there 
 is a flutter of anticipation among the passengers. Formerly an open observation-car was added to 
 
44 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 the train during this part of the journey, but it is no longer used, and the rear platforms are now 
 selected by tourists who are anxious to obtain a good view. At Wahsatch, a telegraph-station 
 (altitude 6,879 feet), 968 miles from Omaha, we cross the divide between Bear River Valley and Echo 
 Canon, thence descending into a region of unsurpassed grandeur. 
 
 We are now in Utah Territory, which, when the Mormons first invaded it, was a part of 
 Mexico; it was acquired by the United States in 1848, through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 
 l)ut the Federal Government was lax, and the Mormons, who had been driven out of Illinois, appro- 
 priated it to themselves, and named it the State of Deseret. The name was changed to Utah by 
 Congress in 1850, at which time the Territory included all of the present State of Nevada. 
 
 The area is about 54,000,000 acres, of which about 347,750 acres are under cultivation, and the 
 value of all agricultural products in 1875 was $8,236,022. The products are principally grain and 
 fruit, including apples, pears, peaches, plums, and grapes, in abundance ; but in the valley of the 
 Rio Virgen cotton, figs, and pomegranates, are also grown. The climate is variable, but the hottest 
 days are followed by cool, refreshing nights. The aggregate yield of gold, silver, and lead, between 
 1868 and 1875, was $22,117,122. The surface of the land is elevated ; the valleys are from 4,000 to 
 6,000 feet above the level of the sea, and the highest peak is about 13,000 feet. 
 
 Idaho and Wyoming bound Utah on the north, Wyoming and Colorado on the east, Nevada on 
 the west, and Arizona on the south. The famous Colorado River is formed within the Territory, and 
 its chaotic channel, hedged in with unutterable grandeur and desolation,, is the key-note in which the 
 tone of much of the scenery is struck. The population is about 125,000, including about 1,000 
 Indians, and the average number of persons to a family is five. There are ten railways, with a total 
 length of 500 miles. The Union and Central Pacific roads are the longest, and cross the Territory 
 near its northern border. 
 
 After this statistical digression, let us now return to our itinerary : The grandest scenery of the 
 Union Pacific Railway is crowded into the next sixty miles, and for four hours there is not a lagging 
 moment to the tourist, whose search is for the picturesque, nor to the more scientific traveler, whose 
 eyes are open to the marvelous geological revelations of ECHO, Weber, and Ogden Cai^ONS. 
 
 All down the southern side of Echo Canon the boundary is a well-rounded range of hills with 
 enough grass upon them to hint of a superficial soil, and with a few emphatic projections of rock here 
 and there. Another range of similar hills would make a characteristic " open canon." But all down 
 the northern side there is a sheer bluff or escarpment from 500 to 700 feet in height, and of a red- 
 dish color, which increases in warmth until it seems to glow with living heat. The contrast goes 
 further. The opposite southern rocks are yellow, and the soil has slipped away in places, leaving a 
 broad patch of the naked sandstone visible in the surrounding green. Occasionally a valley inter- 
 sects the main cailon, and, looking through it, we can see the white tips of the Wahsatch and Uintah 
 Mountains with the upper slopes of dark-blue or purple. 
 
 The scene has every element of impressiveness — strong, determinate color, majestic forms, and a 
 novel weirdness. Further, the descent into the canon begins soon after dinner, at Evanston ; the 
 air coming from the mountains is inspiriting ; the afternoon light is growing mellower, and all other 
 conditions are favorable to the highest enjoyment. 
 
 That most amusing of travelers, the Baron de Hiibner, has described his impressions of this part 
 of the overland journey as follows : " The descent to the Salt Lake is done without steam, merely by 
 the weight of the carriages, and, although the brake is put upon the wheels, you go down at a fright- 
 ful pace, and, of course, the speed increases with the weight of the train ; and, the train being com- 
 posed of an immense number of cars and trucks, I became positively giddy before we got to the 
 bottom. Add to this the curves, v/hich are as sharp as they are numerous, and the fearful precipices 
 on each side, and you will understand why most of the travelers turn pale." 
 
 There is a good deal of unconscious exaggeration in this picture, and the impressions are those 
 of a highly-nervous person ; but the real experience is sufficiently exciting as the train sweeps down 
 and sways from side to side with increasing speed, now threatening to hurl itself against a solid cliff, 
 then curving off like an obedient ship in answer to her helm. 
 
 Just eastward of the head of the canon the country is undulating and breezy ; farther westward 
 it becomes more broken ; the foot-hills present craggy fronts ; and detached masses of rock, curiously 
 weathered, crop out. 
 
THE PACIFIC RAIL WA YS. 
 
 45 
 
 \k^^ 
 
 
 -t^j 
 
 '^- 
 
 Castle Rock Echo Canon 
 
 Two miles from Wihsatch the tram 
 rrosses i trestle-work bri(Jj:^c 450 feet 
 long md 75 feet high inci immedi itely 
 afterward it crashes into the longest tun- 
 nel on the road, and through masses of 
 reddish and purple clays. 
 
 He must be a veiy rapid observer 
 indeed who can comprehend all of the 
 varied beauties and curiosities that fol- 
 low. The high, abrupt wall on one side, so smooth that it 
 might have been cut by a saw, the lofty hills on the other side, 
 and the glimpses of mountains whose snows never melt, are 
 impressive and interesting ; but they are not the only things that 
 make a journey through Echo Cafion memorable for a lifetime. 
 
 The stupendous rocks frequently assume the appearance of 
 an artificial object, as at Green River and among the Bad Lands ; 
 it seems, as we round some butte of castellated form, that we 
 are not in a region that twenty years ago was almost unknown, 
 
 but in a much older country ; feudal labor, and not the patient toil of the rain-drops, must 
 half disposed to think, have shaped the pinnacles which taper with such fineness, and the tow 
 
 ^^Mm. 
 
 :^M^- 
 
 we are 
 ers that 
 
46 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 :^r 
 
 \ J- 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 seven miles 
 5,974 feet a 
 
 Hanging Rock, Echo Canon. 
 
 are so perfectly round. The uncommon 
 forms are not so amazing nor so numer- 
 ous as those in the Bad Lands, but they 
 bear a close inspection, and still resem- 
 ble somewhat man's handiwork. 
 
 At the head of the caiion, particu- 
 larly, there is a formation called Castle 
 Rock, which imitates an old, dismantled 
 fortress, and near by is another formation, called the Pulpit, on 
 account of its likeness to the object of its name, and on account of 
 a tradition that from it Brigham Young preached to the Mormons 
 as he led them into their promised land. Castle Rock station is 
 975 miles from Omaha, and 6,290 feet above the level of the sea. 
 The railway curves around Pulpit Rock, and an outstretched 
 arm from the car might touch it. Next comes Sentinel Rock, 
 an obelisk of conglomerate about 250 feet high, which shows the 
 influence of "weathering," i. e., the action of the elements; and 
 from Castle Rock is Hanging Rock, the station of which is 982 miles from Omaha, and 
 bove the level of the sea, the rock itself being verj- interesting. 
 
 ^% 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 47 
 
 Isi^'^ 
 
 Pulpit-Rock, Echo Canon. 
 
 From such a point of view as Hangint _^^ 
 
 Rock, or the ridges above it, a much better • t^^^ 
 
 idea of the tumultuousness of the surrounding - - . •■^ - 
 
 country can be obtained than from the bed ot 
 the canon. The earth is split by a score of 
 transverse ravines, which extend like blue veins from the main 
 artery and map the face of the country with shadow ; isolated 
 columns, positive and brilliant in color, stand alone in their 
 chromatic glory without a visible connection with the main rock 
 from which they were originally detached ; odd groups of con- 
 glomerate, much like inverted wineglasses in shape, and plainly 
 
 banded with several strata of color, sprout out like so many petrified mushrooms ; and, clasping all 
 within their basin, are the circling mountains of the Wahsatch and Uintah ranges — silvered with 
 perpetual snow on their acute peaks, and impenetrably blue where the pines are. These two chains 
 are among the most picturesque of all the Western mountains. They fairly bristle with peaks and 
 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 lateral ridges, and they soar from the plain at a bound, so to speak, without the concealment and 
 dwarfing effect of foot-hills. 
 
 The swift water of Weber River winds by the track through a channel overhung with bright 
 shrubs ; and the immigrant road, upon which large cavalcades are still found traveling, crosses and 
 recrosses the iron pathway, which from one of the neighboring heights appears like a fine thread of 
 silver, while the train with its locomotive and lofty Pullman-cars becomes a toy in contrast with the 
 Titanic rocks among which it is rushing. 
 
 The cedar seems to thrive on an astonishingly poor soil, and crops out among the rocks in pro- 
 fusion, giving them a peculiar mottled appearance. These and a few pines strive for sustenance on 
 the least accessible ledges, and are satisfied with never so small a hold on the rock. — A sharp curve 
 around an immense sandstone or conglomerate butte on the right hand or northern side of the canon 
 now changes the scene. The cafion opens into a wide valley completely surrounded by mountains ; 
 but, wherever tillage has been possible, the land has been cultivated, and a number of settlements 
 have sprung up. 
 
 The train stops at the little town of ECHO, 993 miles from Omaha, and 5,315 feet above the level 
 of the sea; and the next station is Upper Weber Valley, whence a narrow-gauge railway turns 
 off to Coalville, the site of an extensive deposit. The farmhouses are tidy and cheerful ; the land has 
 been fertilized by irrigation, and otherwise made the most of. 
 
 The most prejudiced opponent of the Mormons must acknowledge that they have done wonders 
 in agriculture, and that, whatever else they may be, they are industrious, energetic, and thrifty. 
 
 Pushing through the valley, between Echo and Weber Caiions, we can now see the portals of the 
 latter flanked on the southwest by a stupendous dome-shaped abutment of brilliant red, nearly 1,000 
 feet high, which is the first in a chain of similar formations extending southward, and presenting 
 abrupt fronts all the way down. There are small alcoves between them, and they jut out obliquely, 
 like the prows of a fleet of iron-clads. The idea of this belt of flaming red amid the verdurous sur- 
 roundings, and with the gray and white mountains above it, will impress the reader as an extraordi- 
 nary contrast, but it is in just such contrasts as this that the wonderful element of Western scenery' 
 consists. 
 
 While the curious erosions of Echo Caiion are still in mind, we are inclined to reiterate what we 
 have said before of the unsatisfying enjoyment which the phenomenal in Nature affords. It is to be 
 granted that a mere curiosity will attract the multitude, when a thing of beauty passes unnoticed ; 
 and people who could gaze on one of the empurpled peaks of the Wahsatch range, or on one of the 
 terrific cliffs of Echo, without a touch of feeling, go into ecstasies in the contemplation of a bizarre 
 rock with a supernatural likeness to something not in the least heavenly. It is noticeable how per- 
 sistently the crowd of observers on the rear platform of the car in passing through the cafions let slip 
 the sublime and grasp what is merely odd, just as, with some audiences in the theatre, Hamlet's 
 unquenchable sorrows are immediately forgotten in the humorous loquacity of the two grave-diggers. 
 These vagaries of rock give the utmost delight to the average spectator, and it would be a pity to 
 overlook them, as they are especially characteristic of the West ; but they soon weary the better taste, 
 and it is a still greater pity when they are allowed to monopolize the whole attention. 
 
 It is impossible, however, for the most frivolous observer to pass unawed the cliffs of Weber 
 CaSon, between which the train is now running. They are absolutely perpendicular walls of rock ; 
 the prevailing color is a bronze green, but green is not the sole color. Masses of bright-red conglom- 
 erate, pale-gray limestones, bluish granites, and vari-colored stratifications, also crop out in towers, 
 crags, and caverns. We plunge into tunnels cut through the solid mountains ; the high peaks that 
 have hitherto been distant descend into the canon at an angle of 80°, and loom, directly above us ; 
 lateral ribs of rock project from the slopes, and some of them are of prismatic or fan-like formation. 
 The Weber River flashes through the ravine, and breaks into a wrathy white as it leaps from ledge 
 to ledge ; even above there is no calm, and the clouds are torn into shreds, and contribute to the 
 general tumultuousness of the scene as they drift to the east. 
 
 The geology as well as the picturesqueness of the WahsatCH range, by which we are sur- 
 rounded, is interesting. The basis rocks are a series in alternating layers of quartzose, mica, and 
 hornblendic schists. Above these rests a heavy bed of quartzites, with very regular and distinctly- 
 marked stratifications. Above the quartzites is a bed of ashen-gray limestones, probably of the 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 49 
 
 Silurian age, and a group of shales, clays, and quartzites, intervenes between this and another bed 
 of limestone, which belongs to the Carboniferous age. 
 
 Echo Canon, Utah. 
 
50 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 In Weber Cafion, and on 
 the east side of the range from 
 Ogden, there is a large group 
 of quartzites, passing up into 
 siliceous limestones and capped 
 with red sandstones, and these 
 are overcast by bluish -gray 
 limestones containing Jurassic 
 fossils. 
 
 In all probability, says a 
 well-known authority, the vast 
 area usually described as the 
 Great American Desert, be- 
 tween the Wahsatch Moun- 
 tains on the east and the Sierra 
 Nevada on the west, was one 
 great lake, in which the moun- 
 tains rose as islands, and the 
 lakes, large and small, which 
 are scattered over the basin 
 at the present time, are only 
 remnants of the former inland 
 sea. The deposits which cover 
 the lowlands are mostly cal- 
 careous and arenaceous beds, 
 and these are often filled with 
 fresh-water and land shells, in- 
 dicating a very modern origin. 
 The range extends, with intervals in its continuity, far 
 northward of the railway into Montana and Idaho, and many 
 of the peaks are within the region of perpetual snow. The 
 canons are the result of erosion, and there are hundreds of 
 them with vertical walls from 1,000 to 2,000 feet in height. 
 
 The Thousand-Mile Tree, on the left side of the rail- 
 way-track, marks the thousandth mile west of Omaha ; and 
 near this is a notable formation called the Devil's Slide, 
 two parallel ledges of granite, fourteen feet apart, projecting 
 from the mountain-side to a height of fifty feet. One thou- 
 sand and one miles from Omaha is Weber Quarry, from 
 which quantities of red sandstone are obtained for building- 
 purposes ; and seven miles farther is the town of Weber, a 
 thrifty Mormon settlement. 
 We soon emerge from the caiion into another fertile valley, in which the river widens and courses 
 through several channels. The vegetation is abundant here, and there is some breathing-space 
 between the mountains. Children offer apples, peaches, and pears, for sale in the stations ; and as 
 the writer passed through, on a warm, hazy afternoon of August, the orchards were bowed down with 
 fruit. This pastoral element in the midst of such uncompromising sterility and wildness as the moun- 
 tains suggest is a grateful relief and surprise — a relief, because the giant cliffs and buttes of the cafion 
 are oppressive ; and a surprise, because the shallowness of the soil is very apparent. When we again 
 passed through it was late in November, and the winter had set in. The orchards were bare ; the 
 pastures were yellow and empty, and, the mask of verdure being removed, it was easier to see and 
 appreciate the difficulties with which the farmers contend. But we are not sure that the mountains 
 did not look better under the chill gray sky of November than in the warm effulgence of the mid- 
 summer. The pines were the same black, inflexible bars on the slopes, and the peaks and inter- 
 
 Devil's Slide, Weber Canon. 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 51 
 
 vening ridges were edged with a steely sharpness. A light snow had fallen and spread an exquisite 
 web over the purple rock, and in the hollows were floods of ultramarine blue. 
 
 The next stations are PETERSON (altitude 4,963 feet), 1,015 miles from Omaha; Devil's Gate 
 (altitude 4,870 feet), 1,019 miles; and Uintah (altitude 4,560 feet), 1,024 miles. 
 
 The length of the valley is soon traversed, and in a few minutes we pass through Devil's Gate 
 into Ogden CA5fON, another chasm held in by walls from 1,000 to 2,500 feet in height. Ogden 
 Cafion emerges in the Salt Lake Valley, and at about five o'clock in the afternoon the westward- 
 bound travelers change cars 
 at Ogden, the terminus of the 
 Union Pacific Railway, 1,033 
 miles from Omaha, and 5,340 
 feet above the level of the sea. 
 
 Ogden is the second town 
 of importance in Utah, and 
 contains a population of about 
 6,000. It is situated on a high 
 plateau, with mountains on 
 every side of it, and is by far 
 the best-looking attempt at a 
 city that we have discovered 
 since leaving Omaha. Not 
 only the Union Pacific, but 
 the Central Pacific, the Utah 
 
 r- 
 
 Central, and the Utah Northern Railways have their ter- 
 mini here ; and the scene in the depot on the arrival of 
 the overiand train is full of life and color. Baggage has 
 to be rechecked ; new berths must be obtained in the 
 sleeping-cars, as the Pullman coaches go no farther, and all the changes which the through passen- 
 ger experiences at Omaha are repeated. The palace-cars of the Central Pacific Railway are much 
 the same as those of Pullman, but, unlike the latter, they are supervised by the train-conductor, who 
 directs the porters. Their upholstery and decorations are handsome, and many contain separate 
 smoking-compartments. 
 
 A delay of an hour and a half occurs in making the transfers, and during this time the depot- 
 platform, as we have said, presents a very lively scene. Passengers are flitting hither and thither. 
 
52 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 promenading, or looking after their tickets ; newsboys vociferate the New York papers ; eager brokers, 
 with their hands full of coin, ply the travelers with offers of exchange for currency ; dining-room 
 
 The Devil's Gate, Weber Canon. 
 
THE PACIFIC RAIL WA YS. 
 
 53 
 
 Weber Canon. 
 
 m 
 
 1^^Ss*'ftt 
 
 
 
 \% 
 
 
 gongs are booming furiously, 
 and hotel-agents are earnestly 
 soliciting custom. The mov- 
 ing throng is cosmopolitan in 
 
 dress, manner, and language. The Ute Indian, wrapped up in 
 resplendent blanket, and bedaubed with vermilion, rubs elbows 
 with the sleek Chinaman in blue blouse, cloth shoes, and bamboo 
 hat; the negro and the Spaniard, the German and the Irishman, 
 the gorgeously-arrayed "swell" of Paris and Vienna, and the 
 Scandinavian peasant, mingle in the most picturesque contrasts. 
 But what gives the scene emphasis and novelty is not the crowd 
 itself, nor the variety of costume, but the situation — the grand, 
 vivid hills on every side tinged with fiery light, the broken out- 
 lines of the peaks that are glowing with passionate heat, the 
 mountain-fields of perpetual snow, the green lowlands, and, 
 above all, the iridescent sky which is changing color every 
 
 moment. There are few lovelier sights than Ogden in a summer's sunset ; and if, as the traveler 
 proceeds on his westward journey, the moon should be near its full and should follow the splendors 
 of the dying day with its chastening light, silvering the wide expanse of the lake and turning to a 
 whiter white the low rim of alkaline shore, it will seem to him that he is leaving paradise behind. 
 
54 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 i- ■^■'~-'f-iP->-j:' 
 
 Ogden River. 
 
 The town spreads out from 
 both sides of the depot in broad, 
 watered shaded streets ; the white 
 houses are set in gardens ; thrift, 
 neatness, and industry, are em- 
 bodied everywhere. What wonder 
 that the mhabitants, Uke nearly all 
 Mormons, are attenuated, weazen, 
 and dejected-looking ? To say 
 that they are lightly built would 
 not be correct lor they are not built at all, but appear to be 
 hung together by invisible wires Every vegetable that is grow- 
 ing and every acre that is green has cost them untold labor, 
 and whatever success they have attained has been wrested from 
 the earth in a desperate struggle. 
 
 How much they have done may be seen to better advantage, 
 however, in the capital, 37 miles south of Ogden. The trains of the Utah Central Railway connect 
 with those of the Union and Central Pacific, and the detour to Salt Lake City may be made in one 
 (lay. The country between the latter place and Ogden is quite thickly settled, except within the first 
 seven miles, and stoppages are made at four Mormon villages, with nothing in particular to charac- 
 
 
 L. 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 55 
 
 terize them, except the cooperative stores, with an open eye and the legend "Holiness to the Lord" 
 painted over the doorways. Their names are Kaysville, i6 miles from Ogden ; Farmington, 
 i\\ miles; Centreville, zz^\ miles; and WOOD'S CROSS, 27J miles. 
 
 The depot at Salt Lake City is fenced in with verdure, and the little cottages near the track, 
 on the outskirts of the city — such cottages as in other cities present pictures of the meanest squalor- 
 are rustic with the vine and trellis. The first street into which we emerge is an example of all the 
 streets that divide the city into handsome squares or blocks ; the roadway is firm and smooth ; the 
 sidewalks would be no discredit to London or Paris. Clear streams of water trickle along the curb 
 at both sides, and feed the lines of shade-trees, not yet fully grown, that are planted with the same 
 exactness of interval as cogs are set upon a wheel. Nothing is dilapidated ; everything shows care 
 
 Ogden, and Wahsatch Range. 
 
 and watchfulness ; the unpleasant loafer, whom we have come to look upon as a large part of the far 
 Western railway town, is invisible ; the horse-car and omnibus conductors are impressively civil ; the 
 crowd at the station and in the streets is a most respectable crowd. 
 
 The generosity of space is magnificent. All the streets are one hundred and thirty-two feet wide 
 between the fence-lines, including twenty feet of sidewalk on each side. The blocks contain about 
 eight lots apiece, each lot measuring about one acre and a quarter, and the builders have been 
 required to set their houses at least twenty feet back from the front fences of their lots. Fifteen or 
 twenty years ago there was scarcely a structure of superior material to the convenient adobe ; but 
 now, when the harvest of the almost superhuman toil of pioneer-days is being reaped, wood, brick, 
 iron, granite, and stucco, are brought into use. The population of the city is about 25,000; six news- 
 
56 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAIL WA YS. 
 
 papers (five dailies and one weekly) are published ; the theatre is a popular institution, and a freedom 
 of speech is allowed to Gentiles which in times past would have cost them their lives. 
 
 Every householder cultivates the land environing his dwelling, and this fact has been expanded 
 by Fitzhugh Ludlow in the following felicitous paragraph : 
 
 " In some instances, the utilitarian element, being in the ascendant, has boldly brought the vege- 
 table-garden forward into public notice. I like the sturdy self-assertion of those potatoes, cabbages, 
 and string-beans. Why should they, the preservers and sustainers of mankind, slink away into back- 
 lots, behind a high board fence, and leave the land-owner to be represented by a set of lazy bouncing- 
 bets and stiff-mannered hollyhocks, who do nothing but prink and dawdle for a living — the deport- 
 ment Turveydrops of a vegetable kingdom .'' Other front-yards are variegated in pretty patterns 
 with naturalized flowers — children of seed brought from many countries : here a Riga pink, which 
 reminds the Scandinavian wife of that far-off doorway, around which its ancestors blossomed in the 
 short northern summer of the Baltic ; here a haw or a holly, which speaks to the EngHsh wife of Yule 
 
 Black Rock, Great Salt Lake. 
 
 and spring-time, when she got kissed under one, or followed her father clipping hedgerows of the 
 other ; shamrock and daisies for the Irish wife ; fennel — the real old ' meetin'-seed ' fennel — for the 
 American wife ; and in some places where tact, ingenuity, originality, and love of science, have 
 blessed a house, curious little Alpine flowers of flaming scarlet or royal purple, brought down from 
 the green dells and lofty terraces of the snow-range, to be adopted and improved by culture. Of all, 
 I liked best a third class of front-courts, given up to moist, home-looking turf-grass, of that deep 
 green which rests the soul as it cools the eyes — grass, that febrifuge of the imagination which, coming 
 after the woolly gramma and the measureless stretches of ashen-gray sage-brush, makes the traveler 
 go to sleep singing." 
 
 In summer the atmosphere would be sickly with the combined aromas, were it not for the stirring 
 winds that are constantly blowing from the mountains ; and many of the houses in the business- 
 quarter of the city are covered by sweet-briers and vines, which give them a countrified air in forcible 
 contrast to the iron-and-brick realities of the mercantile stores adjacent to them. 
 
 The march of improvement has effaced most of the shabbier buildings, but the seeker for the 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 57 
 
 Cliffs, Green River 
 
 picturesque will find many such attractive relics ot early days in the Territory, as the old mill, with 
 the tabernacle in the background, which Mr. Woodward shows in one of his drawings. The oval 
 dome of the tabernacle is visible from nearly all parts of the town, and this edifice is one of the first 
 objects for which the traveler usually inquires. 
 
58 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 The Utah Western (nar- 
 row-gauge) Railway, which 
 was built in 1874, connects 
 the city with the lake, travers- 
 ing ci (lull belt oi country, the first station being Millstone 
 PoiNi, III miles from the city. The second station is Black 
 Rock, 17^ miles from the city, so called from a weathered 
 bowlder of peculiar shape, projecting boldly into the lake at the 
 s./^'^^;^ -bg ,v ~^'~^- extremity of a low reach of shingle, of which we give an illus- 
 
 ^ "~ . - ^ tration. Black Rock is the farthest northern extremity of the 
 
 Oquirrh Mountains, a lofty ridge to the westward of the city, 
 - - _ which, with the loftier snow-range of the Wahsatch running 
 
 -Z^J-^^ - - "-^^^ '<■ jiarallel on the east, forms the cradle of the Mormon capital 
 
 and the fertile valley of the river Jordan. Church and Fre- 
 mont Islands take up the broken line of the range and carry it 
 nearly across to the great promontory which projects many miles into the lake from the northern 
 shore and forms Bear River Bay. The islands are mountainous and barren, and they so divide the 
 lake that its full extent cannot be realized by the observer on the shore. 
 
 The first glimpse of the Great Salt Lake is invariably pleasing. The waves are short and 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 59 
 
 crisp ; the air refreshes with 
 the scent of brine. The 
 visitor usually expects to 
 see a sullen waste of lime 
 stagnating along low, reedy 
 shores, " black as Acheron, 
 gloomy as the sepulchre of 
 Sodom ; " but, should he 
 leave the city by the early 
 train, and arrive on its bor- 
 ders in the fullness of a fair 
 summer's morning, he will 
 be surprised by a very dif- 
 ferent apparition. I have 
 said the islands are moun- 
 tainous and barren ; so they 
 are, but the atmosphere 
 distills rainbow-hues upon 
 them and beautifies them 
 by magic. " Nothing on 
 the palette of Nature," says 
 Ludlow, "is lovelier, more 
 incapable of rendition by 
 mere words, than the rose- 
 pink hue of the mountains, 
 unmodified by any such fil- 
 tering of the reflected light 
 through lenses of forest 
 verdure as tones down and 
 cools to a neutral tint the 
 color of all our eastern 
 mountains, even though 
 their local tint be the 
 reddest sandstone. The 
 Oquirrh has hues which in 
 full daylight are as posi- 
 tively ruby, cgral, garnet, 
 and carnelian, as the stones 
 which go by those names 
 themselves. No amount of 
 positive color which an ar- 
 tist may put into his brush 
 can ever do justice to the 
 reality of these mountains." 
 There is very little verd- 
 ure on the shore ; the beach 
 and the flats behind it are 
 crusted with white alkali, 
 and the charm of the scene 
 comes from the impalpable 
 tints lent by the atmosphere 
 
 to sterile soil and rocks. The circumference ot the lake is 291 miles ; its greatest length is 75 miles, 
 and its maximum width is 35 miles. It contains six islands, the sum of whose circumference is 96 
 miles. Church Island is the largest, having a maximum length of about 16 miles, a maximum breadth 
 
6o THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 of five miles, and an altitude in its loftiest peak of about 3,000 feet above the lake-level. A shoal 
 of compact sand connects it with the mainland. Some ten miles to the north of Church Island is 
 Fremont Island, 1,000 feet high and 14 miles in circumference; and 15 miles from this is Stansbury's 
 Island, the second in size of the group, 12 miles long, 30 miles round, and 3,000 feet above the level 
 of the lake. The three other islands are named Carrington, Hat, and Dolphin. 
 
 The water of Salt Lake is only exceeded in density by that of the Dead Sea, the latter containing 
 24.580 of solid contents in 100 parts by weight, and the former 22.422, as follows : chloride of sodium 
 20.196, sulphate of soda 1.834, chloride of magnesium 0.252, and chloride of calcium 0.140: total, 
 22.422. Bathing facilities exist at several points, and the effect of immersion is said to be one of the 
 most tonic sensations imaginable. 
 
 From Salt Lake City the Utah Southern Railway extends to Little Cottonwood, 7 miles ; 
 Junction, 12 miles; Sandy, 13 miles; Draperville, 17 miles; Lehi, 31 miles; American 
 Fork, 34 miles; Pleasant Grove, 37 miles; Provo, 48 miles; Springville, 53 miles; Spanish 
 Fork, 58 miles; Payson, 60 miles; Santaquin, 71 miles; and York, 75 miles. The American 
 Fork Cai5on is said to surpass both Echo and Weber, and it certainly will amply repay the tourist 
 for the time and expense of a visit. 
 
 From Salt Lake City the traveler returns to Ogden and resumes his westward journey. Many of 
 his fellow-tourists from New York, Boston, and Chicago, who have also made the detour to the Mor- 
 mon capital, are again with him in the Central Pacific sleeping-car, and the pleasant intimacies that 
 have been broken for a day are renewed with greater fervor than ever. 
 
 The next station beyond Ogden is Bonneville, 871 miles from San Francisco; and the second 
 is Brigham, nine miles farther westward and 4,220 feet above the level of the sea — neither of which 
 is notable except for the studies it presents of Mormon life. But the third station, Corinne, 857 
 miles from San Francisco, engages the attention as the largest Gentile town in the Territory, and it 
 may be regarded as a forecast of the suppression awaiting polygamy. The early settlements of the 
 Gentiles in Utah were opposed, not by fair means alone, but by lawless violence, and the penalty oi\ 
 an earnest utterance against Mormon institutions was assassination. Even in the present time a 
 Gentile tradesman in a Mormon town is fought at every point, and every ordinance that can injure 
 him is turned against him. But, however much they hate his kind, the Mormons dare not resort to 
 the means of punishment that found a terrible instrument in Porter Rockwell, "the avenging angel; " 
 and, however much he may tread upon their feelings, they can only answer him in bloodless debate. 
 Corinne, to all appearances, is a well-ordered, prosperous town, flourishing on monogamy, with 
 polygamy surrounding it. It has three churches, a good school, a flouring-mill, and a large number 
 of stores. The Mormons revile it, but the most they can do is to leave it alone, and, left alone, it 
 thrives very well. Bear River is seen near Corinne. 
 
 The next station is BLUE Creek (altitude 4,379 feet), 838 miles from San Francisco, so called 
 after a flashing stream of water, and thence the train winds among the Promontory Mountains, 
 bringing the Wahsatch range, the silvery expanse of the lake, and the towns of Ogden and Corinne, 
 into the prospect. Near here, at a station called Promontory, the Union Pacific Railway coming 
 from the east met the Central Pacific coming from the west on May 10, 1869, and the great trans- 
 continental route was opened with much rejoicing. The last tie was made of California laurel 
 trimmed with silver, and the last four spikes were of solid silver and gold. 
 
 The next stations are Rozel, where passenger-trains meet ; Lake, near which are some flats 
 and marshes; Monument (altitude 4,227 feet), 804 miles, from which point a comprehensive view 
 of the Great Salt Lake may be obtained ; Seco, quite unimportant ; Kelton (altitude 4,223 feet), 
 790 miles, which is the depot of freight for Idaho, and the point of departure for tourists who wish 
 to visit the SHOSHONE FALLS; Ombey, 778 miles; Matlin, a side-track; Terrace, 757 miles, 
 population 300 ; BoviNE, 10 miles farther west ; LuciN (altitude 4,486 feet), 734 miles ; Tecoma 
 (altitude 8,212 feet), 724 miles, the nearest station to the celebrated Tecoma mines; Montello 
 (altitude 5,010 feet), 715 miles; Loray (altitude 5,960 feet), 704 miles; Toano (altitude 5,973 feet), 
 698 miles, the depot of several mining districts; Pequop (altitude 6,184 feet), 689 miles; OteGO 
 (altitude 6,154 feet); Independence (altitude 6,007 feet), 676 miles; and Moore's (aUitude 6,166 
 feet), 669 miles. The distances given are from San Francisco. 
 
 We cross the Utah boundary-line between Lucin and Tecoma, and enter the " Desert State," 
 
THE PACIFIC RAIL WA YS. 
 
 6l 
 
 Bear River, Utah. 
 
 which is true to its name. The dreariest day of the seven occupied in the overland journey is spent 
 in crossing Nevada. Geologists tell us that the Great Salt Lake is probably the mere residue of a 
 
62 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 greater sea which spread from the Wahsatch Mountains in the east to the Sierra Nevada on the west. 
 The recession of that sea has left a wilderness than which Sahara is not more desolate, nor a furnace 
 more parched. Out of a vast tawny plain rise a few broken ranges of mountains, which are only 
 beautiful as they recede in the distance, and take purples and blues from the atmosphere. The earth 
 
 Great Salt Lake, from Promontory Ridge. 
 
 is alkaline and fine, and is whirled up by the least wind in blinding clouds of dust. Rivers disappear 
 in it, and it yields no lovelier vegetation in return than the pallid artemisia or sage-brush. It seems 
 to have been desolated by a fire, which has left it red and crisp ; the blight which oppresses it is 
 indescribable. The towns along the railway do not enliven the prospect. A disproportionate num- 
 ber of the buildings are devoted to liquor-selling, and a disproportionate number of the inhabitants 
 are loafers. The phase of civilization presented makes one doubt whether such civilization is prefer- 
 
 Indian Camp in the Great American Desert< 
 
 able to the barbarism of the Piute and Shoshone Indians, who swarm near the depots, and whose 
 numerous encampments dot the plain. 
 
 At Humboldt Wells, the next station to Moore's, 66i miles from San Francisco, there are 
 some thirty springs in a low basin about half a mile west of the station. Some of the springs have 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 63 
 
 been sounded to a depth of 1,700 feet without revealing a bottom, and it is supposed that the whole 
 series form the outlets of a subterranean lake. This oasis in the desert, with the strong background 
 of the Ruby Mountains, was a source of great relief to emigrants in the old days of overland 
 travel, who here found plenty of pure water and excellent grass for themselves and their worn 
 animals. 
 
 Then comes Tulasco (altitude 5,482 feet), 654 miles; Bishop's (altitude 5,412 feet), 649 miles; 
 Deeth (altitude 5,340 feet), 642 miles; Halleck (altitude 5,230 feet), 631 miles, so called after 
 Camp Halleck, which is 13 miles away; Peko (altitude 5,204 feet), 626 miles; and OsiNO (altitude 
 5,132 feet), 614 miles from San Francisco. Beyond Osino is Elko (altitude 5,063 feet), 606 miles, 
 which is an important town, having a population of about 1,200. It has a large brick court-house 
 and jail, one church, a public school, and the State university. The latter was opened in 1875, and 
 its buildings, which are situated amid 40 acres of ground, cost $30,000. Several mining districts are 
 tributary to Elko, and over $400,000 is paid annually to the railway company on the freight shipped. 
 
 We next pass Moleen (altitude 4,982 feet), 594 miles; Carlin (altitude 4,897 feet), 585 miles; 
 Palisade (altitude 4,841 feet), 576 miles, the name of which is derived from the magnificent cliffs 
 known as the Humboldt Palisades, through which the train now passes ; Cluro (altitude 4,785 
 feet), 565 miles; Beowawe (altitude 4,695 feet), 556 miles, the depot of the Cortez mining district; 
 
 Humboldt Wells, and Ruby Mountains. 
 
 Shoshone (altitude 4,636 feet), 546 miles; Argenta (altitude 4,548 feet), 535 miles; Battle 
 Mountain (altitude 4,511 feet), 524 miles; Piute, 519 miles; Coin, 511 miles; Stone House 
 (altitude 4,422 feet), 504 miles, a former station of the overland stage company ; Iron Point 
 (altitude 4,375 feet), 491 miles; Golconda (altitude 4,385 feet), 478 miles; TuLE (altitude 4,313 
 feet), 469 miles ; Winnemucca (altitude 4,332 feet), 463 miles — named after the celebrated Piute 
 chief— a town of some notability, having two daily newspapers, a brick court-house, a flouring-mill, 
 a quartz-mill, a foundery, a ptiblic school, and a population of about 1,200, including many Chinamen 
 and Indians ; Rose Creek (altitude 4,322 feet), 453 miles ; Raspberry (altitude 4,327 feet), 443 
 miles; Mill City (altitude 4,225 feet), 435 miles, which is not a city at all; and Humboldt 
 (altitude 4,236 feet), 423 miles from San Francisco. 
 
 The desert extends from Humboldt in every direction — a pallid, lifeless waste, that gives emphasis 
 to the word desolation ; mountains break the level, and from the foot to the crest they are devoid of 
 vegetation and other color than a maroon or leaden gray ; the earth is loose and sandy ; Sahara itself 
 could not surpass the landscape in its woe-begone infertility ; but here at Humboldt, a little intelli- 
 gence, expenditure, and taste, have, by the magic of irrigation, compelled the soil to yield flowers, 
 grass, fruit, and shrubbery. Perhaps the vegetation is not greener at Humboldt than at any other 
 place in the world ; contrast may be the force that makes it seem so to the dust-covered railway- 
 
64 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 passengers, but it is abundant, grateful, and refreshing. An ornamental fountain, in the pool of 
 which gold-fishes disport, trickles and bubbles in front of the depot-hotel ; on the east side there are 
 
 locusts and poplars ; on the north 
 vegetables grow, and a five-year- 
 old orchard bears good-looking and 
 fine-tasting apples. No wonder, 
 then, that the traveler takes Hum- 
 boldt away with him in an inefface- 
 able remembrance. 
 
 But at the next station, Rye 
 Patch (altitude 4,257 feet), 411 
 miles from San Francisco, we are 
 surrounded by desert again, and 
 scarcely a blade of grass can be 
 seen. We pass Oreana (altitude 
 4,181 feet), 400 miles; Lovelock's 
 (altitude 3,977 feet), 389 miles ; 
 
 Devil's Peak, Humboldt Palisades, 
 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 65 
 
 Granite Point (altitude 3,918 feet), 380 miles; Brown's (altitude 3,929 feet), 373 miles; White 
 Plains (altitude 3,894 feet), 361 miles; Mirage (altitude 4,247 feet), 355 miles; Hot Springs 
 (altitude 4,072 feet), 346 miles; Desert (altitude 4,018 feet), 335 miles; Two-Mile (altitude 4,156 
 feet), 329 miless and Wadsworth (altitude 4,077 feet), 328 miles from San Francisco. The Hum- 
 boldt River is over 500 miles long, and is the recipient of several confluent streams, but such is 
 the dearth of the land, that it disappears in a " sink," after flowing through Humboldt Lake, near 
 Brown's, with the waters of the Carson River. 
 
 The contrast could scarcely be sharper than it is between the country in which we go to .sleep on 
 the fifth night of the overland journey and that in which we awake on the sixth morning. The 
 scorched, verdureless, uninspiring mountains, and the flat, fallow plains of the Humboldt, are replaced 
 in the view from the car-window by the pine-clad Sierras ; the misty blue of deep cafions ; the con- 
 tent of pasture-land ; the cold, brilliant surface of Alpine lakes ; and the rosy and white tips of pre- 
 eminent peaks. 
 
 At sunset we were in a region unutterably silent and desolate, upon which the intrusion of a rail- 
 way seemed anomalous, so far-reaching and uncompromising was the barrenness. The sunset cast 
 an evanescent warmth on the blighted soil, and a small patch of reluctant green marked the pool in 
 which a wide river disappeared. We have traveled steadily on through the night, stopping at a few 
 stations, which hold on to existence by a thread ; and passengers, awaking while the train has been 
 still, have been startled by the complete silence of these outposts. The drought and infertility have 
 spread as far west as the eastern slope of the Sierras ; we have cut through the mountainous barrier 
 by the cailon of the Truckee River, and have crossed the line which separates California from 
 Nevada. 
 
 When the curtain of night is lifted, we are spinning around huddled foot-hills at an exhilarating 
 altitude ; the earth is densely green, the sky intensely blue, and the atmosphere electrical. We are 
 in the very heart of the Sierras, upon which the snow falls to a depth of thirty feet, and in which the 
 immigrants of old met the last obstacle before reaching the golden lowlands of California. 
 
 Comparisons are suggested between the Sierras of Nevada and the Rocky Mountains, the 
 latter being much superior in altitude, and rougher in conformation, while the former are more 
 imposing in the view from the passing train ; the railway threading them by more difficult passes 
 than those near Sherman, by which the eastern range is crossed. Another point of contrast is in the 
 vegetation. A scattering of stubby cedars and dwarf-pines, exhausted from the effort to sustain 
 themselves, are the limit of verdure in that section of the Rocky Mountains penetrated by the rail- 
 way ; but in the Sierras the pines are plethoric in numbers and phenomenal in growth, streaking the 
 steepest mountain-sides with their straight, inflexible shafts, and toning the landscape with their som- 
 bre dark-green. Eighty, one hundred, and one hundred and twenty feet are not uncommon heights 
 for those forest stoics, which seem to grow for the love of the mountains, independent of nutrition. 
 Again, while the peaks are not as high, the track approaches them nearer than it does those of the 
 Rocky Mountains, and the traveler may find himself among their snows when the lowlands are hot 
 in August. 
 
 " For four hundred miles," says Clarence King, who has made extensive surveys of the region, 
 " the Sierras are a definite ridge, broad and high, and having the form of a sea-wave. Buttresses of 
 sombre-hued rock, jutting at intervals from a steep wall, form the abrupt eastern slope ; irregular 
 forests, in scattered growth, huddle together near the snow. The lower declivities are barren spurs, 
 sinking into the sterile flats of the Great Basin. Long ridges of comparatively gentle outline charac- 
 terize the western side ; but this sloping table is scored from base to summit by a system of parallel 
 transverse canons, distant from one another often less than twenty-five miles. They are ordinarily 
 two or three thousand feet deep — falling at times in sheer, smooth-fronted cliffs ; again in sweeping 
 curves, like the hull of a ship; again in rugged, V-shaped gorges, or with irregular, hilly flanks — 
 opening, at last, through gateways of low, rounded foot-hills, out upon the horizontal j^lain of the 
 San Joaquin and Sacramento." 
 
 We are now in the Valley of the Truckee, and the next stations are Salvia, 6 miles west 
 of Wadsworth; Clark's (altitude 4,263 feet), 313 miles from San Francisco; and ViSTA (altitude 
 4,403 feet), 301 miles. At Reno (altitude 4,507 feet), 293 miles from San Francisco, connections are 
 made with the Virginia & Truckee Railway for Carson and Virginia City, the former 30 and the 
 
66 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 latter 50 miles distant ; and at Carson stage connections are made with Lake Tahoe, which is fixed 
 in the writer's memory as one of the exceptional revelations of Nature to which the most ardent 
 enthusiasms of Art cannot give undue praise nor exaggerated interpretation. After the stage has 
 been toiling up-hill for two or three hours along a dusty road about thirteen miles long, partly strung 
 
 Lake Tahoe. 
 
 across a precipice, upon which swarm pines, firs, oaks, willows, and many strongly mdividualized 
 shrubs, such as vianzanita, with its brilliant crimson berries and birch-colored stalks, and pale 
 white-thorn, which in contrast with the former resembles a withered old man side by side with an 
 exuberant country-girl ; after two or three hours of travel, each moment of which has widened the 
 outlook, and brought a stronger and colder wind, with a greater pungency of resin, into the face- 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 67 
 
 the traveler attains the summit of the divide, and becomes the master of a visual situation command- 
 ing two extensive and very dissimilar pictures. 
 
 His gaze turned to the east, he sees the smoky-red desert, with spiral columns of dust rising out 
 of it — a relief-map washed with one color — that color an inarticulate expression of dejection ; the 
 surface of the earth is crumpled with mountains to the extreme horizon, and the mountains have no 
 other beauty, no other variation to their prevailing maroon tint, than an occasional patch of snow. 
 Now let him face the westward. Again there are mountains, a visibly accentuated chain drawn fron. 
 the farthest north to the farthest south. But these are of imposing height, sharper modeling, and 
 varied coloring — blue, purple, olive, and gray. The flat, wide valley of Clear Creek is interposed, and 
 beyond this Lake Tahoe is discovered — cold, lucid, quivering with light, and encircled by an edge 
 of snow-tipped peaks. No view of the Sierras from the railway is so fair and impressive as this, 
 which is one of the grandest in all the far West. 
 
 A rapid descent through an "open" caiion, thickly studded with pines and firs, brings us to 
 GlenbrOOK, on the shore of the lake, and thence the water may be circumnavigated by means of a 
 little steamboat, which makes daily trips between May and October. 
 
 Tahoe is about twenty-two miles long and ten miles wide. One-fourth of it is in Nevada, and 
 three-fourths in California. The circumference is about seventy miles, allowing for the indentures 
 of the shore. The water has been sounded to a depth of over 1,600 feet, and is marvelously clear. 
 Near the shore it is a transparent emerald, flecked with the white of rounded granite bowlders 
 imbedded in yellow sand, and in deeper places it is a blue — not such an indigo-blue as the Atlantic, 
 but an unusual shade resembling the turquoise, its motion being as heavy as that of oil, and the low 
 waves falling from the prow of a boat like folds of silk. There is a gloomy theory that the human 
 body sinking in this serene depth is ingulfed forever, and it is a fact that the bodies of the drowned 
 have never yet been recovered. Marvelously clear as the water actually is in the shallows, moreover 
 — the boats floating upon it seeming to be suspended in the air as we look down upon them from the 
 landings, and nothing save a thin sheet of glass seeming to intervene between the eye and the bottom 
 • — it is apparently opaque in the greater depths, an illusion which is only dispelled by the iridescence 
 of a stray trout sporting at a depth of thirty or more feet. 
 
 The lake is over 6,000 feet above the level of the sea, and at times is so fiercely ruffled by the 
 winds from the mountains that navigation has to be abruptly closed. 
 
 If the tourist avoids Tahoe, he will miss some of the grandest scenery in all the West — scenery, 
 too, that is accessible at a small expenditure of time and money, and without any inconveniences. 
 His best plan is to take the Virginia & Truckee Railway from Reno directly to Virginia, where the 
 famous mines of the Comstock lode can be seen, and the marvelous city that is built over them — a 
 city marvelous for its vitality, its v/ickedness, its wealth, and its brilliancy. 
 
 Virginia City now has a population of about 25,000, including one-half the whole number of 
 voters in the State of Nevada. Few pictures of it give a correct idea of its position. In photographs 
 it appears to be at the foot of the mountain, while it is in fact built across the mountain's face, and 
 the peak that rises 2,000 feet above it also extends 2,000 feet below it. It is so environed and con- 
 fined by mountains that the railway which connects it with the Central Pacific at Reno has curves 
 enough to describe a circle of 360° seventeen times; the distance to Reno in a bee-line is 16 miles, 
 and the distance by the railway (which cost $2,000,000) is 52 miles. 
 
 The pitch of the ground is such that what is the first story of a house in front becomes the second 
 or third story in the rear, and looking eastward, northward, or southward, the eye meets an unvaried 
 prospect of chain after chain of interlocked peaks. 
 
 The people are ultra-Californian in their nature and habits, excessively fond of display, lavishly 
 hospitable, impetuous in business, and irrepressible in speculativeness. On October 26, 1875, ^ ''''^ 
 swept the city from end to end, and $10,000,000 worth of property, including all the mining-works 
 on the surface, went up in the flames. Within sixty days the most important mines had renewed 
 their buildings and machinery, and within six months the whole city had been rebuilt. 
 
 To guard against a recurrence of the disaster, a system of reservoirs and hydrants was estab- 
 lished, and it would be easier now to flood the city than to burn it. The Virginians are proud of 
 the quality and abundance of their water-supply. The works cost over $2,000,000, and the water is 
 brought a distance of 31^ miles from Marlette's Lake, in the Sierras. 
 
68 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 Donner Lake, from the Snow-Sheds. 
 
 What is most surprising to the stranger is the proportions of the constant rushing crowd on C 
 Street, the principal thoroughfare, and the cosmopolitan character of its elements. Piute and Washoe 
 Indians in picturesque rags. Chinamen in blue-and-black blouses, brawny Cornishmen, vehement 
 Mexicans, and many other people from far-apart countries, mingle and surge along in the stream. 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 Donner Peak. 
 
 There is nothing provincial or shabby. The stores are well stocked, and the show-windows glitter 
 with the attractiveness of their wares. The men around you are men of the world, who have traveled, 
 and in many instances made money. 
 
 From Virginia City the tourist can return to Carson, the capital of Nevada, from which pomt 
 
70 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 Lake Angelina. 
 
 Stages start daily for Glenbrook, on the shore of the lake, and from Glenbrook the lake may be cir- 
 cumnavigated in the steamer Governor Stanford— the queerest and crankiest little side-wheeler the 
 writer has ever seen. Landing from the Stanford at Tahoe City, you can take a stage from that place 
 to Truckee, and there resume the journey by the Central Pacific Railway. The ride from Tahoe 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 71 
 
 "' City to Truckee is 
 
 charming. You pass 
 through a character- 
 istic canon, in which densely- 
 wooded slopes are alternated 
 by overarching cliffs of richly- 
 colored basalt and granite, and 
 through which a rushing trout- 
 stream flows. 
 
 Between Reno and Truckee 
 
 the stations on the railway are 
 
 as follows: Verdi (altitude 
 
 4,895 feet), 283 miles; Bronco 
 
 (altitude 5,340 feet), 273 miles; and BoCA (altitude 5,531 feet), 
 
 267 miles from San Francisco. 
 
 Truckee, the next station (altitude 5,819 feet), 259 miles 
 from San Francisco, has a population of about 2,000, and is 
 the most important town in the mountains. It was burned down once in 1868, once in 1869, twice 
 in 1870, and once in 1874, but it has risen again in many showy buildings, and it is now quite impos- 
 ing, considering its situation among the snowy peaks. 
 
 About three miles away is Donner Lake, a crystal sheet of water embosomed in the lap of the 
 
 Emigrants crossing the Sierras. 
 
72 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 hills, which, though unequal in beauty to Tahoe and some of the small lakes surrounding Tahoe, 
 will be a revelation to the Eastern tourist. The origin of the name is a familiar story. In the winter 
 
 of i846-'47 a party of eighty-two 
 immigrants were overtaken here by 
 snow ; their provisions gave out, 
 and thirty-six perished. Among 
 the survivors, when relief arrived, 
 was a Mrs. Donner, whose hus- 
 band was so ill that he could not 
 be moved ; she insisted upon re- 
 maining with him, and a man 
 named Keysbury chose to stay 
 with her. The others went to San 
 Francisco, and when, in the spring, 
 a party was sent to look for her, 
 Keysbury alone was found alive 
 and living on her remains, his mo- 
 tive in staying with the Donners 
 having probably been plunder and 
 murder. A leading event in Bret 
 Harte's novel of " Gabriel Conroy " 
 was based on this tragedy, and 
 the opening chapter of the same 
 work contains a very graphic de- 
 scription of a snow-storm in the 
 Sierras. 
 
 Within a convenient area there 
 are several other lakes, all of them 
 offering inducements to the sports- 
 man and to the lover of Nature : 
 Lake Angeline, of which Mr. 
 Woodward has made a striking 
 illustration ; Cascade Lake, near 
 Tahoe ; Silver Lake, from which 
 the water-supply of Virginia City is 
 drawn ; Palisade Lake, famous 
 for trout ; and Fallen - Leaf 
 Lake, which, to the writer's mind, 
 is the prettiest of all. All of these 
 are accessible from Truckee. 
 
 " There can be no more perfect 
 scenery than that of the western 
 slope of the Sierras," a contem- 
 porary has written. " The railway 
 winds along the edges of great 
 precipices, and at sunrise the shad- 
 ows are still lying in the deep 
 cafions below. The snow-covered 
 peaks above catch the first rays of 
 the sun, and glow with wonderful 
 color. Light wreaths of mist rise 
 up to the end of the zone of pines, 
 and then drift away into the air and are lost. The aspect of the mountains is of the wildest and most 
 intense kind — for by that word ' intense ' something seems to be expressed of the positive force there 
 
 Cedar Creek, Blue Canon. 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 73 
 
 is in it that differs utterly from the 
 effect of such a scene as Hes pas- 
 sive, for our admiration. This is 
 grand ; it is magnetic ; there is no 
 escaping the wonder-working in- 
 fluence of the great grouping of 
 mountains and ravines — of dense 
 forests and ragged pinnacles of 
 rock." 
 
 But in winter the overland 
 trains pass over this part of the 
 journey long before sunrise, and 
 in summer the passenger must 
 leave his bed very early in order 
 to see it. 
 
 A moonlight night, however, 
 with unapproachable witchery, 
 lends the greatest enchantment 
 to the scene, surpassing the sun- 
 glare of local daylight, and the 
 stronger colors of evening. To 
 
 stand on any commanding point of the mountains when the 
 moon is at the full, and the sky is clear, reveals a tenderness in 
 the nature of the Titanic rocks at variance with their aspect at 
 any other hour. In the first place, the sky itself never seems to 
 be so marvelously blue and clear elsewhere as it does over the 
 Sierras ; it is a watery ultramarine, almost the blue of daylight ; 
 and the stars bespangle it as thickly as the phosphorescence 
 bespangles a tropical sea. The mountains are enveloped from 
 peak to foot in a misty mantle of blue, and a knife-like edge of 
 light traces their outlines in the aureole. Their ponderability is 
 lost : massive and solid as they are in reality, they seem to be- 
 come mere shadows, and the snow on the summits is like the 
 daylight breaking over them. 
 
 The observer need not be a man of sentiment, or sensitive- 
 ness, to feel the influence of such a scene, which appeals not 
 only to the common sense of beauty, but also, in a more mys- 
 terious way, to an inner and deeper feeling. 
 
 Two hundred and forty-four miles from San Francisco the 
 station of Summit is reached, and thence the descent is made into the Sacramento Valley, from the 
 great altitude of 7,017 feet. If the traveler is wise, and has time, he alights here, and climbs to the 
 top of a neighboring peak for a comprehensive view of the Sierras. There are several mountains 
 which may be easily attained within a short distance, and, standing on the summit of one, the tourist 
 may form an individual idea of what a vast expanse of rugged country looks like from a great altitude 
 — and the individual idea is the most satisfactory one to its possessor in all cases. 
 
 The writer has been on peaks in the Sierras, from which the outlook was as dull as the outlook 
 on a brickyard ; the peak itself has been for the last two hundred feet of its height a clumsy accumu- 
 lation of granitic or basaltic blocks of various sizes, some clothed with a dry moss, others perfectly 
 naked, and all thrown together at every possible angle. In every direction the surrounding country 
 had a diy, fallow, yellowish-gray appearance, like a muddy ocean. The apex of other peaks has been 
 gained through forests of evergreens growing smaller as the altitude became greater ; through groves 
 of small oaks and cottonwoods ; over brightly-green basins holding marvelously clear lakes, and bor- 
 dered by the most variegated wild-flowers — and, when vegetation has ceased, the rocks, gathering 
 other colors from the weathering process, have duplicated the colors of the flowers, and illustrated 
 
 Lower Cascade, Yuba River. 
 
74 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 them in wonderful forms. The true condition of the country has very little to do with its appearance 
 from an immense height. The water-courses in view may indicate whether it is fertile or barren, but 
 the greatest transformations are made by distance and atmosphere. 
 
 Two hundred and thirty-nine miles from San Francisco the station of CASCADE is reached, south 
 
 Giant's Gap, American Canon. 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 75 
 
 of which are Kidd's Lakes, which 
 pour into the South Branch of the 
 South Yuba River ; and four miles 
 farther west is Tamarack, a sig- 
 nal-station, below which the Yuba 
 has worn a deep gorge, with strik- 
 ing bluffs, which are called New 
 Hampshire Rocks. 
 
 Cisco, the next station, is 231 
 miles from San Francisco, and 5,939 teet above the level ot the 
 Pacific. At one time it was the eastern terminus of the Central 
 Pacific Railway, and had a population of 7,000 ; but when the 
 road was carried farther east it was abandoned, and it has not 
 since been revived. 
 
 West of Truckee the snow-sheds become more frequent, and 
 in one instance they are nearly twenty-nine continuous miles in 
 length. They are of two kinds : the flat root, built to hold the 
 in depth of snow, or to slide it down the mountain, and the 
 them varied from $8,000 to $10,000 per mile, and where it was 
 masonry the cost was $30,000 a mile. 
 
 weight of twenty-five or thirty feet 
 steep roof. The cost of building 
 necessary to add retaining walls of 
 
76 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 
 Cape Horn 
 
 Eight miles west of Cisco 
 thetravelci leaches Emigranis' 
 Gap, a notable point in the days 
 \\ hen the only \ ehicles that crossed 
 the Sierras were the canvas-cov- 
 ered wat^ons of the pioneers and 
 the parlor-car was an undreamed- 
 of luxur)^ The old emigrant-road, 
 which occasionally edges on the 
 railway, is not wholly deserted 
 The capacious wagons, with their arched roofs of white 
 canvas, loaded ten feet high with furniture and stores, are now 
 and then seen toiling along at a pitifully slow rate, a small herd 
 of cattle following, and the youngsters of the family running a 
 long way ahead, and skirmishing among the bordering woods 
 for squirrels, or anything else to shoot at. 
 In spring, when the farmers and stock-raisers of the Sacramento Valley are taking their herds 
 into the more luxuriant mountain-pastures, and at the beginning of winter, when they are retreating 
 before the early snows into a safer region, the road is lively with traffic, but not with such traffic as 
 was known between the years 1850 and i860. At frequent intervals the old taverns are found, their 
 
THE PACIFIC RAIL WA YS. 
 
 77 
 
 ample apartments vacant, their windows and doors out, and their spacious emptiness reminding us 
 of their former prosperity. The bar-room survives, in many cases, when all other parts of the estab- 
 lishment are closed, and the bar-keeper often has the whole house to himself. 
 
 At the Gap the road makes a sharp descent, in which the wagons were formerly lowered by ropes 
 fastened to the pines, which are of immense 
 girth and height. 
 
 The next station is Blue CaNon (altitude 
 4,693 feet), 217 miles, which is a shipping-point 
 for six saw-mills, and through which flows Cedar 
 Creek, the subject of one of Mr. Woodward's 
 illustrations. There is not a moment, except 
 under the snow-sheds, when the traveler, look- 
 ing in any direction, has not a magnificent view 
 before him of great hills, heavily timbered with 
 pine, and broken into sharp peaks, 
 upon which the snow endures all the 
 year round. How thick the pines are, 
 and how they streak the steep embank- 
 ments upon which they have embattled 
 
 themselves! What an air 
 
 i of impenetiable gloom and 
 
 ni)ster) they ha\e! Upon 
 
 some an emerald-green moss 
 
 has grown in rings and irregular patches 
 
 — a moss having the appearance of an 
 
 ostrich-feather, which makes a striking 
 
 contrast to the dark green of the prickly 
 
 foliage, and the dull red of the bark. 
 
 In the distance the pines are blue, and 
 
 at night they are intensely black. 
 
 Blue Canon is the snow limit, and 
 
 its water is considered the best in the 
 
 mountains. Westward of the station it 
 
 becomes deeper and deeper, and the 
 
 grade of the railway increases to about 116 feet in every mile. Two miles farther China Ranch is 
 
 passed, that being the name of a small settlement of Celestials. 
 
 Two hundred and twelve miles from San Francisco is Shadv Run, and near it the train rounds 
 
 Hydraulic Mining, Gold Run, California. 
 
78 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 Central Wharf, Sacramento. 
 
 Trail Spur, beyond which is seen the junction of Blue Cafion Creek and the North Fork of the 
 American River. This, with the Giant's Gap, is one of the grandest scenes on the road. A great 
 chasm appears, worn by glaciers to a depth of 2,000 feet, and extending about a mile to the junction 
 of the South Branch, the walls narrowing, and becoming perpendicular, and the mountains inclosing 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 79 
 
 Chinese Quartets, Sacramento. 
 
 it in denser clusters than ever. The suddenness of the approach and the grandeur of the prospect 
 are not easily described. Two thousand feet below flow the quiet waters of the AMERICAN River. 
 
8o 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 The chasm stretches westward, and southward the distance is broken by regiments of peaks on 
 which the pines swarm in forests that are steeped in perpetual twilight. 
 
 The evidences of glacial action are numerous. " Looking from the summit of Mount Diablo, 
 across the San Joaquin Valley," a Californian geologist has written, "after the atmosphere has been 
 washed with winter rains, the Sierra is beheld stretching along the plain in simple grandeur, like 
 some immense wall, two and a half miles high, and colored almost as bright as a rainbow, in four 
 horizontal bands — the lowest rose-purple, the next higher dark purple, the next blue, and the top- 
 most pearly-white — all beautifully interblended, and varying in tone with the time of day, and the 
 advance of the seasons. The rose-purple band, rising out of the yellow plain, is the foot-hill region, 
 
 The Cliffs, San Francisco. 
 
 sparsely planted with oak and pine, the color in a great measure depending upon argillaceous soils 
 exposed in extensive openings among the trees ; the dark purple is the region of the yellow and sugar 
 ])ines ; the blue is the cool middle region of the silver-firs ; and the pearly band of summits is the 
 Sierra Alps, composed of a vast wilderness of peaks variously grouped and segregated by stupendous 
 caiions, and swept by torrents and avalanches. Here are the homes of all the glaciers left alive in 
 the Sierra Nevada. During the last five years (iSyo-'ys) I have discovered no fewer than sixty-five 
 in that portion of the range embraced between latitudes 36° 30' and 39°. They occur scattered 
 throughout this region singly or in small groups on the north sides of the loftiest peaks, sheltered 
 beneath broad, frosty shadows." 
 
 The next station is Alta, 208 miles from San Francisco, and we now strike the slope of Bear 
 River, following it among the hills until we near Cape Horn. Two miles farther west is Dutch 
 Flat, where all the water of the neighborhood is utilized in placer or hydraulic mining, being con- 
 veyed thereto by ditches and flumes where the natural course turns in an opposite direction. 
 
 Placer Mining and Hydraulic Mining are much the same things, on a different scale. 
 With a pick, a spade, and a dust-pan, his complete outfit packed on the back of a tiny burro, or 
 donkey, the poorest miner can go into the mountains, "prospect" the rocks, and, if he strikes a rich 
 lead, work it alone until it is exhausted, or the water drowns him out. Then he prospects further, 
 or enlists capital, which is used in building a quartz-mill and pump over the mine. The bullion 
 " dirt " which he finds in his first operations is put into tin or iron vessels called dust-pans, over 
 which a stream of water is allowed to flow ; when it is completely saturated, it is stirred, and the 
 bullion gradually settles to the bottom, the top dirt being poured off from time to time, until nothing 
 remains except the gold and silver, and a fine black sand, which is afterward separated from the 
 precious metals by a magnet. The rocker or cradle is another machine, of very simple design, used 
 in winnowing gold and silver. It is literally a cradle. The dirt is tlirown in upon a screen at one 
 end ; water passes over it, and, after setting the gold free, which falls to the bottom, carries the 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 worthless residue away. The "long Tom" answers the same purposes. It is a box or a sluice, 
 into which the dirt is thrown and carried by a stream of water to a screen at the end, where the gold 
 settles to the bottom. The sluices are sometimes very long, and several of them are ranged side by 
 side; what appear to be streams of gray mud are constantly flowing through them, and at night the 
 strong rays of a locomotive head-light are thrown upon them to prevent pilfering. The deposits 
 of auriferous dirt are occasionally several hundred feet deep, and the pick and shovel are substituted 
 by a hose, which tapers from a diameter of eight inches at the butt to two inches at the orifice, and 
 from which a jet of water is thrown upon the embankments of earth with such force that immense 
 bowlders and tons upon tons of detritus are displaced. The force of the stream is sufficient to kill a 
 man ; and a country thus torn and denuded by hydraulic mining has an exceedingly ragged and 
 unprepossessing appearance. When gathered in c[uantities, the ore is treated in the quartz-mills, and 
 the result is delivered to the mints in bullion-bricks. Sometimes the water used in mining has to be 
 brought ten or twenty miles, and is conducted in long, wooden troughs erected on trestle-work, and 
 called "flumes," which are also used in floating lumber from the mountains to the plains. 
 
 The next station is Gold Run, 204 miles from San Francisco. Five miles farther is Cape 
 Horn Mills, a side-track, at which the train stops for a few moments; after which we are whirled 
 round that apparently dangerous point in the road called Cape Horn. The surrounding country, 
 aside from its superb picturesqueness, has many novel features. 
 
 The marks of placer mining are seen frequently m long, V-shaped troughs carried over valley and 
 mountain on trestle-work, and in barren tracts of earth having the denuded appearance of land-slides. 
 Chinamen appear to be as common as whites. They are met with as railway-laborers and as miners, 
 and they are invariably industrious and quiet. Their capacity for silence and application recommends 
 
 Central Pacific Wharf. 
 
 them to the stranger, who becomes too familiar with a peculiar type of the "white man," as the 
 American chooses to call himself, in contradistinction to the Celestial — a type with loaferism as the 
 most salient characteristic. 
 
 The excitement attending the descent of Echo Canon is renewed in the passage of Cape Horn, 
 which is calculated to make an impression on the most experienced traveler ; not on account of any 
 actual danger, but on account of the daring and skill by which this section of the road was con- 
 structed. The Cape is a precipitous bluff, rising to a height of over 2,000 feet above the level of the 
 river; and the ledge along which the railway is carried was so inaccessible in its natural condition, 
 that the first workmen had to be lowered by ropes to it from the top of the bluff. Standing by the 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 river's side, and looking upward, we see the rugged wall of rock reaching toward the sky ; at the 
 base massive bowlders are piled, a few twisted evergreens clinging to the detritus ; mountains appear 
 in every direction ; and the train, spinning along the ledge under the trail of its own smoke, is 
 dwarfed by the magnitude of the rocks over and under it to the size of a snake. 
 
 When the Cape is rounded. Rice's Ravine is seen on the left, and Colfax on the right. At 
 the head of Rice's Ravine the train crosses a trestle-work bridge 113 feet high and 878 feet long. 
 
 Lake MerriU, Oakland. 
 
 Colfax is a town of about 700 inhabitants, 193 miles from San Francisco, with an altitude of 
 2,422 feet. 
 
 The stations following are New England Mills (altitude 2,280 feet), 189 miles Jrom San Fran- 
 cisco ; Clipper Gap (altitude 1,759 feet), 182 miles; Auburn (altitude 1,360 feet), 175 miles; and 
 Newcastle (altitude 936 feet), 170 miles, every citizen of which place is a Good Templar. As we 
 approach Newcastle the Marysville Buttes are seen. Beyond it the valley of the Sacramento opens 
 to our view, and Mount Diablo, which is one of the highest peaks in the range, rises on the left. 
 
 We are now fairly in California : settlements are more frequent ; the aspect of the country is 
 milder, and orange-trees grow luxuriantly in beautiful groves near the track. Flowers crop out in 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 83 
 
 iiliilyiiiiiiiiiMiiiliiiiili]iiili,'ti^ 
 
 M 
 
 profusion, and are offered for sale ; and the fertile soil manifests its fecundity in all sorts of phenome- 
 nal garden-produce. The atmosphere is no longer the same as that of the interior of the continent. 
 There is no more transparency, no more of that extraordinary light which annihilates distance. It is, 
 as one enthusiastic traveler has said, the sky of Andalusia, with a blue', vapory, hazy horizon, mingling 
 
84 
 
 THE PACIFIC RAIL WA YS. 
 
 with the purple curtain of the mountains. The pines disappear, and the oaks take their place. The 
 air, in favorable seasons, is full of powdered gold, deliciously balmy and mysteriously translucent. 
 
 Penryn is a side-track, near a valuable quarry; and PiNO, the next station, is also in a granitic 
 region. ROCKLIN does not call for particular mention; and Junction, 157 miles from San Fran- 
 cisco, is where the Oregon di- 
 vision of the Central Pacific 
 Railway leaves the main line. 
 The soil of the neighborhood 
 is light and gravelly, but it pro- 
 duces an abundance of wild- 
 flowers, among them being the 
 lupin and the California poppy. 
 Having passed Antelope, ten 
 miles west of Junction, we ar- 
 rive at Arcade, where a fence, 
 extending ten miles and mark- 
 ing the boundary of a Mexican 
 land-grant ranch, may be seen ; 
 and four miles from Sacramen- 
 to we retouch the American 
 River, which degenerates into 
 a muddy and unpleasant-look- 
 ing stream, with no trace of 
 its former grandeur. At about 
 1 1 A. M., on the seventh day 
 out from New York, we roll 
 into Sacramento, the capi- 
 tal of the State, with a popula- 
 tion of some 20,000, 139 miles 
 from San Francisco. The city 
 contains many broad streets, 
 lined with charming cottages 
 and villas, and shaded by rows 
 of handsome trees. The Cap- 
 itol building is well worth a 
 visit. It has a front of 320 
 feet, and a height of 80 feet. 
 The dome is 220 feet high, and 
 is surmounted by a temple of 
 Liberty and Powers's bronze 
 statue of California. The ma- 
 terial is granite and brick. 
 From Sacramento the trip to 
 San Francisco may be made 
 by boat, the time being about 
 eight hours ; but the overland 
 traveler will probably remain 
 on the train. Continuing our 
 Journey over the iron road, we 
 pass Brighton, 134 miles 
 from San Francisco ; Florin, 
 131 miles; Elk Grove, 123 miles; McConnell's, 119 miles; Galt, 112 miles; Acampo, 107 
 miles; LODi, 104 miles; Castle, 97 miles; and Stockton, 91 miles. Stockton is only 25 feet 
 above the level of the Pacific, and has a population of about 12,000. 
 
 Chinese Quarter, San Francisco. 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 85 
 
 The country which we are now traversing is of matchless fertility. Far-reaching cattle-ranches 
 are varied by vineyards and orchards. Fruits and flowers are as common as in the tropics, and yet 
 the climate is moderate. Neat white houses dot the landscape, and the prosperity of which we have 
 heard so much is visible everywhere. 
 
 Beyond Stockton is Lathrop, 82 miles from San Francisco ; San Joaquin Bridge, the cross- 
 ing of the San Joaquin River, 79 miles; Bantas, 74 miles; Ellis, 69 miles; Medway, 64 miles; 
 Altamont, 56 miles; Livermore, 47 miles; Pleasanton, 41 miles; SuNol, 36 miles; Niles, 
 30 miles; Decoto, 27 miles; Haywards, 21 miles; Lorenzo, 18 miles; San Leandro, 15 miles; 
 Melrose, ii miles; Brooklyn, 9 miles; and Oakland, 2 miles, the terminus of the route, whence 
 passengers are transferred across the bay in luxurious ferry-boats to San Francisco. Oakland's most 
 attractive feature is its foliage, embowered in which are hundreds of beautiful villas erected by busi- 
 ness men of San Francisco ; but, besides this, it acquires importance from the possession of 20,000 
 inhabitants, two national banks, three savings-banks, the State University, excellent public schools, 
 three flouring-mills, four planing-mills, two potteries, and several other industrial establishments. 
 Geraniums, roses, fuchsias, callas, verbenas, and many tropical plants and flowers, grow luxuriantly, 
 and between nearly all the buildings there are interspaces of green. The drives are charming, and 
 none is more popular than that to Lake Merritt, a beautiful sheet of water, of which we give an 
 illustration (page 82). 
 
 The terminal facilities of the railway are capacious and admirable, it being possible to load eight 
 sea-going ships at the wharves simultaneously. 
 
 The Bay of San Francisco, which we cross by ferry-boat, is large enough to harbor the com- 
 bined navies of the world, and it is bordered by mountain, city, and plain. As we leave the Oakland 
 wharf we see Goat Island on the right — a military reservation ; the Golden Gate is northward, and 
 Alcatraz, a naval station, is at the end of the gate. Angel Island, north of Alcatraz, is another 
 military reservation ; and northwest of this the towering peak of Mount Tamalpais may be seen. 
 Southward, the view extends over the bay toward San Jose ; and everywhere, except where the city 
 stands, and through the Golden Gate, it is shut in by mountains. 
 
 In San Francisco we are landed at the Market Street wharf, where transfer-vehicles are ready 
 to convey us in any direction. The population of the city is about 275,000; it covers a territory of 
 forty-two square miles, and those forty-two square miles are said by the inhabitants to comprise a 
 larger proportion of wealth, beauty, and intellect, than the same area in any other city. San Fran- 
 cisco is undoubtedly very charming. Its people are lavish in their hospitality and in all their expendi- 
 tures ; the hotels are palaces ; the places of amusement are numerous and liberally conducted. There 
 are two systems of streets. Market Street being the dividing-line. The wholesale business of the city 
 is done along the water-front and north of Market Street ; and retail business of all kinds is found in 
 Kearny, Montgomery, Third, and Fourth Streets. The sidewalks are wide, and are principally of 
 wood, though some are of asphalt and stone. The roadways are of various materials. One notice- 
 able feature is the number of bay-windows in the houses, which, however agreeable they may be to 
 the occupants, are often not so judiciously arranged as to avoid spoiling the architectural effect. 
 Among the pleasure-resorts of the city are the Seal Rocks, at the mouth of the Golden Gate, where 
 seals may be seen disporting from the balcony of the Cliff House ; Woodward's Gardens, a combina- 
 tion of museum, menagerie, theatre, aquarium, and botanic garden ; Lake Merced ; and Golden Gate 
 Park, which embraces about 1,100 acres. 
 
 Within the city is the Chinese quarter, which presents some very interesting studies. 
 
 Concluding our tour, we are inclined to repeat what we said in the beginning : that the scenery 
 of the Pacific Railway embraces examples of nearly all the memorable and curious phases of Nature 
 in the whole Western country — the fantastically-eroded sandstones, the Bad Lands, the sage-plains, 
 the wonderful canons, and the various kinds of mountains. It is frequently tedious, but the few hours 
 spent in crossing the Rocky Mountains, in descending Echo and Weber Cafions, in winding among 
 the chromatic rocks of Green River, and, finally, in cutting the Sierras, repay us, especially in retro- 
 spect, for the sear vacuity of the plains, and the dismal rudeness of the unsettled towns on the route. 
 
86 THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 CONNECTIONS OF THE UNION AND CENTRAL PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 The extraordinary rapidity with which railways are projected, built, and extended west of the Mis- 
 souri River, makes a table of the branch connections of the main line imperfect very soon after its 
 preparation. Not many months ago the writer was at Fort Garland, Southern Colorado, which was 
 then over eighty miles from any railway, and it seemed to be the loneliest of outposts. It was a three 
 days' ride from the nearest town, and only received a mail twice a week. A narrow-gauge road has 
 since linked it with Eastern and Western civilization, and it is now surrounded by a growing city. In 
 the same way, places that at present seem very remote, may soon be in steam communication with the 
 principal lines of transcontinental travel ; for, work that in older countries would take years to complete, 
 is done in the great protoplastic West in months. The following numerous connections are in opera- 
 tion, however, at the time of writing (April, 1878) : 
 
 UNION PACIFIC RAILWA V. 
 
 At Omaha, with the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, and 
 the Chicago & Northwestern Railways to and from the East; the Kansas City, St. Joseph & 
 Council Bluffs Railway southward to Kansas City ; the Sioux City & Pacific, and the Omaha & 
 Northwestern Railways northward, and the Omaha & Southwestern to Lincoln, the capital of 
 Nebraska, etc. 
 
 At Sidney, with daily stages, six-horse Concord, for Deadwood, Custer, and other cities in the Black 
 Hills, via Red Cloud Agency, Buffalo Gap, and Rapid City. 
 
 At Cheyenne, with the Denver Pacific branch of the Kansas Pacific Railway southward to Denver, 
 with the Colorado Central Railway, completed late in 1877, to Denver wa Longmont, Boulder, and 
 Golden, and with six-horse Concord stages to Fort Laramie, Deadwood, Custer, the Big Horn, and 
 Powder River regions. The Colorado Central, which had not been extended northward when the 
 body of the text of this book was written, affords tourists a very near view of the mountains. Estes 
 Park, Long's Peak, and Peabody Mineral Springs, are reached by stages from Longmont Station ; 
 Boulder Canon from Boulder Station, and Clear Creek Canon is followed from Golden to Central and 
 Georgetown. Table Mountains, Chimney Gulch, and Bear Creek Canons, are near Golden, and James's 
 Peak is only 18 miles from Central. Gray's Peak, Green Lake, Cascade Creek, Middle Park, and 
 and the Mount of the Holy Cross, are all to be reached from Georgetown, and the hot and cold soda- 
 baths and sulphur springs of Idaho City are within five minutes' walk of the railway. It is anticipated 
 that during the summer of 1878 a railway will be built northwest from Cheyenne to Fort Laramie, 
 opening the wonderful country beyond. 
 
 At Bryan, with stages for the Great Sweetwater Mining District. 
 
 At Carter, with stages to Fort Bridger. 
 
 At Ogden, with the Utah Northern Railway to Franklin and the north ; with the Utah Central 
 Railway to Salt Lake City, and with the Central Pacific Railway to San Francisco. The Utah North- 
 ern Railway is being extended with such energy that it is impossible to state where the terminus is ; its 
 ultimate destination is Helena, Montana, with which thriving city it is now connected by stages, and 
 it is already across the Bear River. 
 
 CENTRAL PACIFIC RAIIWAY. 
 
 At Corinne, with stages for Montana Territory. 
 
 At Kelton, with stages for all points in Idaho Territory, Washington Territory, and Oregon. 
 
 At Wells, with tri-weekly stages for Pioche, Nevada, Sprucemont, and Cherry Creek. 
 
 At Elko, with daily stages northward to Taylor's, Tuscarora, Independence Valley, Grand Junc- 
 tion, Cornucopia, Bull Run, and Cope. Also with semi-weekly stages southward to Bullion City, 
 the town of the Railroad Mining District, and with weekly stages to the South Fork and Huntington 
 Valley. 
 
 At Palisade, with the Palisade & Eureka Railway to Box Springs, Garden Pass, and Eureka, 
 distance 90 miles. Also with stages to the celebrated White Pine Mining District of Nevada. 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 87 
 
 At Battle Mountain, with daily stages to Austin City and Belmont, the former 90 miles and the 
 latter 180 miles distant. 
 
 At WiNNEMUCCA, with daily stages to Silver City, 210 miles, and to Boise City, Idaho, 275 
 miles distant, with semi-weekly stages to Paradise Valley, 45 miles, and with daily stages to Jersey, 
 65 miles southward. 
 
 At Reno, with the Virginia & Truckee Railway to Carson City and Virginia City, about 52 miles. 
 
 At Truckee, with daily stages to Tahoe City and Donner Lake; with daily stages to Campbell's 
 Hot Springs on Lake Tahoe ; with tri-weekly stages to Randolph, 28 miles ; Sierraville, 29 miles ; 
 Sierra City, 60 miles; Downieville, 72 miles; Jamison City, 55 miles; and Eureka Mills, 58 miles ; 
 and on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, there are stages to Loyalton, 30 miles, and to Beckwith, 
 45 miles. 
 
 At Junction, with the Oregon Division of the Central Pacific Railway to Redding, 170 miles. 
 
 At Sacramento, with the California Pacific Railway to Williams, 61 miles. 
 
 At Galt, with the Amador Branch Railway to lone, 28 miles distant. 
 
 At Stockton, with the Stockton & Copperopolis Railway to Peters, Milton, Farmington, and 
 Oakdale, extreme distance 34 miles. 
 
 At Lathrop, with the Visalia Division Railway to Tulare, 1 57 miles, and with the San Joaquin 
 River steamer. 
 
 At NiLES, with the San Jose Branch Railway. 
 
 At San Francisco with steamers to China, Japan, India, Sandwich Islands, South-Sea Islands, 
 New Zealand, Australia, and to ports on the Northwestern and Southwestern coasts of the United 
 States, Mexico, Central and South America. 
 
 The total mileage of the Central Pacific, with its connections in California alone, is 2,362 miles. 
 
 A FEW HINTS TO OVERLAND TRAVELERS. 
 
 No matter how thoroughly he is " coached " and generally advised, everybody who makes the 
 transcontinental journey is quite ready at the end of it to supplement all that has been said before with 
 fresh ideas of his own ; and, notwithstanding the fact that before starting he avails himself of the coun- 
 sel of a most experienced friend, he invariably discovers many little things that ought to be arranged 
 by intending travelers which have never been mentioned to him, and which, according to his mind, are 
 essential to full enjoyment and comfort. The few hints that we have to offer are, therefore, presented 
 — not with any air of infallibility, but simply as personal suggestions which may or may not be followed 
 with advantage, though the writer's private belief is that no one will do amiss in giving ear to them. 
 
 The fare from New York, Boston, or Philadelphia, is about $137, and the cost of the sleeping-car, 
 which is almost indispensable, must be added, although some tourists have sufficiently vigorous consti- 
 tutions to endure the journey without more repose than they can get in the ordinary first or second 
 class car. The sleeping-car fare for one berth is five dollars to Chicago ; two dollars and fifty cents 
 from Chicago to Omaha by the Rock Island, and three dollars by either the Chicago, Burlington & 
 Ouincy or the Northwestern route ; eight dollars from Omaha to Ogden, and six dollars from Ogden 
 to San Francisco, making a total of twenty-two dollars. A section is double and a drawing-room 
 about quadruple these rates, the drawing-room having accommodations for four persons, and affording 
 privacy and great luxury to its inmates. If four persons are traveling together they should by all 
 means secure a drawing-room, by which they will realize the perfection that railway locomotion has 
 attained in America. The Pullman cars go no farther west than Ogden, but the Central Pacific road 
 runs commodious sleeping-cars of its own to and from that point. In order to secure good locations, 
 the lower middle berths being preferable, it is advisable to request them by telegraph in advance, espe- 
 cially as passengers cannot obtain a through sleeping-car ticket from New York to San Francisco, 
 and must rebook themselves at Chicago, Omaha, and Ogden. All baggage also is rechecked at 
 Ogden ; and, speaking about baggage, we urge everybody to take as little of it as possible, for the reason 
 that it is always an impediment, and also because anything in excess of one hundred pounds costs 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 about twenty cents per pound extra from Omaha to the Pacific coast. Crossing the continent some 
 time ago, our sympathies were enlisted by an English lady, who was vernacularly " stuck " to the 
 amount of sixty dollars by extra baggage, which might have been left behind ; and we beg to remind 
 the reader that in pleasure-traveling as well as armies mobility is a most excellent thing. It always 
 seems to us that the young men one meets in the Pacific Railways who carry a small hand-bag are the 
 happiest creatures on the train ; and unquestionably the unhappiest are those who, encumbered by such 
 unwieldy equipments as Saratoga trunks contain, are frequently compelled to lighten their pocket- 
 books in settling accounts with the baggage-master. At the same time it is wise to carry wraps and 
 overcoats ; for if you leave Omaha with the thermometer at 90° on Monday, it is quite possible that, 
 even in July, the air becomes chilly as you rise above the billows of the Plains and pause under the 
 shadow of the Rocky Mountains at Cheyenne on Tuesday. In summer the common linen or alpaca 
 " duster " is indispensable, the dust of the Plains, especially between Elko and Hum-boldt. being ruinous 
 and dense. A pair of Lisle-thread or cotton gloves add much to one's comfort, and also give one the 
 incomparable satisfaction of having clean hands. 
 
 In regard to the commissaire, the train stops three times a day for meals, which are usually plain 
 but good, and in some instances they are excellent. It is a novel and interesting experience to alight 
 at sun-down on the platform of a little station in the wilderness with no projection between the sky 
 and the land as far as one can see, and to be ushered into a clean and substantially-furnished apart- 
 ment, with tables handsomely set for supper, the attendants being ruddy-faced, neat, modest girls, and 
 the silver-ware and crystal-ware and linen being irreproachable. The inevitable hurry takes away from 
 the enjoyment, but the food is ample. Old travelers over the Pacific Railways are in the habit of pro- 
 viding themselves with lunch-baskets, which may be obtained and filled at either end of the route. 
 There is much comfort and security in a lunch-basket. You may not be disposed to sit down at the 
 regular table for meals ; perhaps you are tired of the recurrent menu, or have not an appetite ; and then 
 the wicker repository, which, if it has been filled with discretion, must surely contain many good things, 
 is a consolation and a delight. The porter will adjust a small table in your section of the car, and 
 forthwith you spread your napkin and contentedly sit down to so simple a lunch as a biscuit and a glass 
 of sherry (let us hope that the sherry is genuine), or something more elaborate, in the way of 
 sardines, boned-turkey, and a bottle of Extra Dry. You have full possession of the car, probably, and 
 can smile as you think of the haste and clatter that are going on in the dining-room of the depot. In 
 winter the lunch-basket is to the overland traveler what the life-preserver is to the traveler on a dan- 
 gerous ocean. It is not safe to go without it, and it is all the better if it includes a spirit-lamp ; for 
 accidents arising from snow and bad weather often disturb the culinary arrangements of the best- 
 managed eating-houses. Both wicker-baskets and their " furniture " may be purchased reasonably at 
 Oakland, Sacramento, and Omaha. The invariable price for the table dliote at the stations is one 
 dollar, but there are lunch-counters at which ten cents is charged for a cup of coffee or tea, and 
 twenty-fiv^e cents for a cut from a cold joint. 
 
 Many side-trips, which will not only break the monotony of the continuous journey, but also afford 
 views of interesting life and scenery, may be made by those who have time and money to spare. The 
 hunter will do well to try the sport in the neighborhood of Evanston, and the lover of the picturesque 
 and the scientist, especially the geologist or paleontologist, should by all means spend a few days at 
 Green River. The tavern expenses will not be more than two or three dollars a day, and riding-horses, 
 guides, and vehicles, may be hired at fair prices. Alighting at Cheyenne, you should take the Colorado 
 Central Railway as far as Denver, calling at the many interesting points on the line and ascending 
 Gray's or James's Peak if the weather is favorable. A good idea of what a wonderful State Colorado 
 is with its mountains, canons, and mines, can be obtained at an expenditure of fifty dollars. Above 
 all things, do not omit a run from Ogden down to Salt Lake City. The trains from the East arrive 
 at the former station about 6 p. m., and connect with trains on the Utah Central road, which run 
 by the borders of the lake to the city, the time being about two hours, and the fare three dollars. 
 Returning to Ogden, the tourist leaves Salt Lake City at about four o'clock in the afternoon, and con- 
 nects at six o'clock with the overland train. The side-trip to Virginia City and its mines requires 
 more time and money, and at the time of writing there is no direct connection at Reno. 
 
 THE END. 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 Colorado covers an area larger than New England, and its muuntain-thains attain a length ot' 
 more than five hundred miles. The ordinary mountain-ranges of other lands are tame beside the 
 vast upheaval of the Rocky Mountains. Rising a thousand times into snow-clad peaks from two to 
 three miles above the sea-level and breaking into profound and picturesque canons, it is simply impos- 
 sible to depict their vastness and grandeur. Throughout their entire length are distril)uted enormous 
 deposits of gold, silver, copper, iron, and coal. Precious stones and rare fossiliferous remains abound. 
 Within the mighty convolutions of these mountains are embraced large and beautiful parks, glittering 
 lakes, sparkling cascades, and tumultuous rivers. 
 
 Mineral waters, possessing great curative qualities, bubble forth from hidden kiboratories. Almost 
 constant sunshine prevails. The atmosphere is dry, pure, and invigorating, and its effect upon pulmo- 
 nary diseases is as remarkable as it is effective. Asthma disappears as if by magic, and cunstituiions 
 weakened either by disease or predisposition are wonderfully invigorated by a residence in this climate. 
 In short, Colorado is the great sanitarium of America. It is impossible, in a work of this size, to de- 
 scribe or even enumerate the popular health and pleasure resorts of Colorado ; and our illustrations, 
 thouo-h selected with care, give but a faint idea of the e.xtent, variety, and unsurpassed grandeur, of 
 Colorado scenerv. 
 
 ^--r"" ^ X, X-mMf 
 
 V ^ g^i^a fi#3. 
 
 
 Union Depot of -the Kansas Pacific Railway, at Kansas City, IVlo. 
 
 We cannot close our work, howev'er, without calling attention to the principal avenue by which the 
 Colorado resorts are reached. The Kansas Pacific Railway is the great highway ot commerce and 
 travel between the Missouri River and Denver, and we take pleasure in presenting to our readers an il- 
 lustration of its new and elegant Union Depot at Kansas City, Missouri, into which all the great through 
 passenger lines from the East run their trains, making close connection with the fast Denver express- 
 trains of the Kansas Pacific Railway, which leave every morning for Denver and the Rocky Moun- 
 tain resorts. Striking the Kansas (or Kaw) River at Kansas City, within sight of its intersection with 
 the Missouri, the Kansas Pacific follows the windings of this beautiful stream for nearly two hundred 
 miles, and affords one of the most delightful rides in the country. The route of the Kansas Pacific 
 extends through the central portion of Kansas, and gives an opportunity to view the principal cities 
 and towns of the State as well as its famous wheat and corn fields and immense cattle-ranges. At 
 this time (June, 1878) there may be seen an immense number of fields of golden wheat along the line 
 of this road, and extending as far back as the eye can reach, some fields alone containing over 3,000 
 acres. In fact, it may almost be said that the line of the Kansas Pacific is one continuous " golden 
 belt " of wheat as far west as the virgin prairie has been broken. At " First View," if the day be 
 clear, you obtain your first view of the Rocky Mountains. Towering against the western sky, more 
 than one hundred and fifty miles away, is Pike's Peak, standing out in this rarefied atmosphere with a 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 clearness which deludes the tourist, if it be his first experience, into a belief that he is already in close 
 proximity to the mountains. Henceforth you feel, in the presence of the mighty peaks which disclose 
 themselves one after another, that you have entered a new world — a land of unapproachable beauty 
 and grandeur — and you reach Denver having before you an unobstructed panorama of mountains, 
 snow-clad peaks, and plain, more than three hundred miles in length. There is no change of cars 
 from the Missouri River to the mountains. In fact, the Kansas Pacific is the only road running 
 through cars from Kansas City to Denver, and its equipment of Pullman drawing-room and sleep- 
 ing palaces is unsurpassed in the country. 
 
 The Rocky Mountains. 
 
 The health and pleasure resorts within a short distance of Denver are numerous, and offer to the 
 tourist a series of delightful excursions. Nearly all of them are reached directly by railway, and may 
 be visited in a single day, or weeks may be spent with pleasure in wandering amid the grand and 
 sublime scenery which spreads out on every hand. At many of these popular resorts the most fash- 
 ionable people congregate in great numbers, while others are more retired, and offer especial induce- 
 ments to invalids and to persons seeking rest and recuperation. The hotels and boarding-houses at 
 all the resorts are first class, and the cost of living depends largely upon the inclination of the visitor. 
 Denver is the objective point of ninety-nine hundredths of all tourists who go to the mountains, because 
 all the lines of travel to the various health and pleasure resorts radiate from it. It is the most beauti- 
 ful and unique city in America, has 25,000 inhabitants, and is the principal outfitting point for miners. 
 Every trade, business, and profession, is well represented, and its appearance and characteristics are 
 decidedly metropolitan. First go to Denver over the Kansas Pacific Railway, which is 116 7niies 
 shorter from the Missouri River to Denver than any other line, and then select your excursion as 
 your time and means warrant, as from Denver you have all Colorado to select from. 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS. 
 
 The Kansas Pacific Railway is emphatically the " tourists' line." By taking this route you are sure 
 of making- close connection with all the railway lines leading from Denver, and thus save much time 
 and annoyance. 
 
 The following are some of the places of interest which tourists should visit : Boulder Cailon, Hot 
 Sulphur Springs, Middle Park, Greeley, Estes Park, North Park, Georgetown, Idaho Springs, Clear 
 Creek Canon, Caribou, Black Hawk, South Park, Colorado Springs, Manitou, Garden of the Gods, 
 Pike's Peak, Arkansas Cailon, La Veta Pass, Wagon-wheel Gap. These are but a few of the innu- 
 merable attractions offered to the visitor. All of these popular resorts, together with many others, are 
 fully described in the " Colorado Tourist for 1878," which will be sent free upon application to P. B. 
 Groat, General Passenger Agent, Kansas City, Missouri, or to any agent of the Kansas Pacific Rail- 
 way. 
 
 I e~^ . ^^jE^^^^l^i?^v r 
 
 Gateway to Garden of the Gods. 
 
A D VEE TISEMEN'TS. 
 
 PETER MOLLER'S 
 
 (KNIGHT OF THE ORDEKS OF VASA AND ST. OLAF) 
 PUREST NORWEGIAN 
 
 ^^OB-LIVER 0/4 
 
 Gained the ONLY 
 FIRST PRIZES at the 
 
 Great Exhibitions, 
 
 LONDON, PARIS, VIENNA, 
 
 PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 It iM now nbout oij?ht years since we accepted the sole agency for North *" ^^^ ^ 
 America for this article; we did so only after a very careful examination *r\ 
 of the facts connected with its manufacture, as we had reason to believe that a large proportion of the 
 Cod-Liver Oil which is sold is prepared in so careless a manner as to render it unfit for use. 
 
 Immediately upon its introduction into this country it took front rank as a pure and strictly reliable 
 article, and we feel warranted in claiming it to be, leyond any question, the lest and most reliable 
 Cod -Liver Oil in the irorld. 
 
 Vytnii an orerw/ieltninf/ mass of Medical Evidence as to its superiority, the following Testimonials 
 
 have been selected: 
 
 Lewis A. Sayre, M. D., New York, Professor of Orthopedic Surgery, says : " Moller, of Christiania, 
 Norway, prepares an oil which is perfectly pure, and in every respect all that can be wished." 
 
 MOLLER';S^ 
 
 Dr. J. Marion Sims says : " For some years I had given up the use of Cod-Liver Oil altogether ; 
 but, since my attention was called by Dr. Sayre to Moller's Oil, I have prescribed it almost daily, and 
 have every reason to be perfectly satisfied with it." 
 
 De Besohe, M. D., Physician-in-Ordinary to H. M. the King of Sweden and Norway, says: "I can 
 unhesitatingly recommend Peter Moller's Cod-Liver Oil as, in my estimation, the very best ever pre- 
 pared for medicinal purposes." 
 
 Dr. Ruddock, M. D., L. R. C. P., M. R. C. S. : Extract from tlie Report on Cod-Liver Oil in his 
 '' Vade Mecum," Part IV. : ''The oil we invariably recommend for its easy assimilation, agreeable- 
 ness, and high nutritive value, is Moller's Purest Norwegian Cod-Liver Oil. We are glad to be able 
 to give our emphatic recommendation to so pure a preparation." 
 
 Abbotts Smitft, M. D., M. R. C. P., late Physician to the North London Consumption Hospital, 
 says: "It is more easily assimilated, and is productive of more immediate benefit, than the other 
 kinds of oil are." 
 
 W. H. SCHIEFFELIN & CO., 170 & 172 William Street, New York, 
 
 SOLE AGENTS FOR THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 
 SOLD BY DRUGGISTS. 
 
AD VERTTSEMEN'TS. 
 
 R, ESTERBROOK & CO.'S 
 
 Celebrated American-Made 
 
 Steel Pens 
 
 Jiiiy/AT^ ^l^^i"^ '^9^;' 
 
 LEADING NUMBERS OF PENS. 
 
 048 - 14 - 130 " 606 - 333 444 - 128 ^ 161. 
 
 JlLJVJlJTS -ASK. FOR " ESTERBROOK' S. 
 
A TRIP ON THE HUDSON RIVER. 
 
 To get the full enjoyment of this sail, you must take it up-river the first trip of the Mary 
 Powell. For the Mary Pcnuell is the belle of the Hudson. The day that she comes up is gala-day 
 along the river. Bells are rung, cannons are fired, handkerchiefs waved, and at every landing glad 
 greetings are brought to ihe bird that brings the word that winter is fairly and fully over, and a new 
 spring is ushered in. 
 
 And she deserves her popularity. She runs at an average of twenty miles an hour, has made a run 
 for the whole ninety miles of her course at the rate of twenty-four miles an hour. She takes no freight, 
 and sits on the water like a duck. Her boilers, of cast-steel, enable her to attain the speed of a race- 
 horse without the dangers of a race. Her company is one always of ladies and gentlemen. Often as 
 I have traveled to and fro upon her, sometimes when she was crowded from stem to stern with her 
 living freight, I have never seen a drunken man, a brawl, or even so much as an altercation. I hear 
 of floating palaces. The Mary Powell is a floating parlor. And her captain, who is also her owner, 
 is as proud of her as my friend Phanuel Pholly is of his fast horse, and as sure to keep her credit fair, 
 I suppose the time will come when she will become superannuated and laid aside ; but as to ever see- 
 ing her sold to do the drudgery of a tow-boat, I should as soon think of seeing my friend Deacon Sole 
 sell his old family horse to a street-car corporation. 
 
 
 THE STEAMFR " MARY POWELL " ENTERING THE GATES OF THE HIGHLANDS. 
 
 The steamer Mary Powell has been thoroughly overhauled in a manner to make her virtually a 
 new boat, $75,000 having been expended on her hull, boilers, and engine. Steel boilers and a 
 large cylinder have taken the place of her old ones, with which she can work with one-third less 
 pressure than formerly, although accomplishing the same speed for which she has been noted. 
 
 Tourists who wish to see the beauties of the river to advantage, should take the trip 
 
 " THROUGH THE HIGHLANDS OP THE HUDSON BY DAYLIGHT." 
 
 For Landings, Time-Tablc, etc., of Mary Powell, see Appletons' Railway Guide and 
 Appletons' Hanu-Books. 
 
AD VEETISEMENTS. 
 
 D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 
 
 54r9 &c 551 BROADWAY, NEV^ YORK, 
 
 HAVE JUST PUBLISHED: 
 
 THE AEIIES OF ASIA AND ETJEOPE: 
 
 EMBKACING 
 
 OFFICIAL REPORTS 
 
 OP 
 
 THE ARMIES OF 
 
 Japan, Clina, IMia, Persia, Italy, Russia, Austria, Gemaiy, France, anS Enilanil. 
 
 Accompanied ly Letters descriptive of a Journey from Japan to the Caucasus. 
 Bv EMORY UFTON, 
 
 BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL, UNITED STATES ARMY. 
 
 1 vol., 8vo. Cloth Price, $3.00. 
 
 The present volume comprises an account of a professional tour made by General 
 Upton, under orders from the War Department, for the purpose of examining and 
 reporting upon the organization, tactics, discipline, and the manoeuvres of the armies of 
 Japan, China, India, Persia, Italy, Russia, Austria, Germany, France, and England. It 
 possesses peculiar interest at the present time, on account of the attitude of European 
 Governments on the Russo-Turkish question. 
 
 The reports on the military organizations of the various countries are followed by 
 some interesting letters of a descriptive character. 
 
 Sent free hy mail to any address, on receipt of the price. 
 
AD YERTISEMEXTS. 
 
 CUION LINE 
 
 UNITED STATES MAIL STEAMERS. 
 
 FOR LIVERPOOL 
 
 From Pier New 38, North Itiverf New YorK', 
 
 EVERY TUESDAY. 
 
 V/YOMING 3,716 Tons. 
 
 NEVADA 3,125 
 
 V/ISCONSIN 3,720 '' 
 
 MONTANA 4,320 Tons. 
 
 ARIZONA 3,300 " 
 
 UTAH (building)... .5,300 
 
 1^^ These Steamers are built of Iron, in water-tight compartments, and are fiirnislied witli every 
 requisite to make the passage across tlie Atlantic both safe and agreeable, having Bath-room, Smok- 
 ing-room, Drawing-room, Piano, and Library ; also, experienced Surgeon, Stewardess, and Caterer, 
 on each Steamer. 
 
 The Slale-rooms are all on Deck, thus insuring those greatest of all 
 luxuries at Sea, perfect Ventilation and Light 
 
 CABIX PASSAGE, according to State-rooms, $60 to $80. 
 INTERMEDIATE $40. | STEERAGE 
 
 .$26. 
 
 Offices, No, 29 Broadway, New York. 
 
 WELLIAMS tc CUION. 
 
AD VERTISEMENTS. 
 
 TO TOURISTS AND TRAVELERS. 
 
 Go to the Grand Trunk Railway Ticket-Office, 
 
 No. 285 Broadway, New York, 
 AND GET RATES OF FARE AND ROUTES 
 
 FOR THE 
 
 EXCURSION SEASON, 
 
 X « !?^ O ^ 
 
 From ISTEA^^ YORK via 
 
 Niagara Falls, Lake Ontario, the Thousand Islands, and Rapids 
 
 OF THE St. Lawrence, 
 
 To Montreal, Qaehec, River Saguenay, Cacouna, White Mountains, Lake Cham- 
 ^ plain, Lahe George, Saratoga, Portland, Profile House, Crawford House, 
 Lake Memphremagog, Boston, J^'ewport, Jfeiv York, etc., etc., via 
 
 Grand Trunk Railway and Royal Mail Line Steamers. 
 
 THE GRAND TRUNK RAILWAY 
 
 AND THE 
 
 Richelieu and Ontario JVamgalio7i Co/s 
 
 EOYAL MAIL LISE OE STEAMERS 
 
 Offer better inducements to the Traveling Public than ever before. 
 
 The Grand Trunk Railway has been relaid with "steel rails," and been equipped with new locomotives and 
 first-class cars. Pullman's Palace Drawing-room and Sleeping Cars are run on all Day and Night Trains. 
 
 The favorite Steamers of the Richelieu and Ontario Navigation Co.'s Royal Mail Line have been thoroughly 
 overhauled, refitted, and refurnished, and an addition of several new comj)Osite Steamers have been added to the 
 Line. 
 
 Tickets for sale at Greatly Reduced Rates at the General Agency, 285 Broadway, N. Y. 
 
 ALEX. MILLOY, Traffic Manager, W. WAINWRIGHT, Gen. Pass. Agent, 
 
 Royal Mail Line, Montreal. Grand Trunk Railway, Montreal. 
 
 E. P. BEACH, General Agent, 285 Broadway, New York. 
 
AD VERTISEMENTS. 
 
 THE T KC I n ID "V O Hi TJ nVE E OF 
 
 THE LIFE 
 
 OF 
 
 THE PRINCE CONSORT 
 
 By THEODORE MARTIN. 
 
 Vol. III. 12mo. ------ With a PoHmit. 
 
 Price, cloth, $2.00. Vols. I. and II., price, $-2.00 each. 
 
 This work increases in interest as the Prince advances in experience, knowledge, and 
 influence. 
 
 Few readers will regret the fullness with which the period now reached is treated. 
 Three years are covered by this volunu>, but they were the years of the Crimean War, the 
 antecedents and circumstances of which were followed with grout attention by the Prince ; 
 and the papers left by him, especially his most dignified reply to the King of Prussia's 
 private letter of March, 1854, are exceedingly interesting just now. In sharing the domi- 
 nant English policy of the time, the Prince had to quarrel with many of his own kindred 
 and friends ; and the drafts of letters in his handwriting, though signed by the Queen, as 
 well as his own avowed correspondence, show what plain language he used to exalted 
 personages. 
 
 One side of his character comes out with quite new force in this volume — his thorough 
 naturalization. Here is abundant proof of the constant zeal and tact with which he did 
 the peculiar and important work that devolved upon him, as a sort of royal diplomatist, a 
 personal agent of the Crown in its dealings with foreign courts and the English people. 
 
 D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 
 
 549 & 551 Broadway, New York. 
 Sent/ree to any address on receipt of tlie price. 
 
AD VER TISEMENTS. 
 
 Belting and Packing Company, 
 
 The oldest and largest manufacturers in the United States of 
 
 VULCANIZED RUBBER FABRICS, 
 
 IN EVERV FORM, 
 
 OOMPBISING 
 
 MACHINE BELTING with smooth metallic rubber surface. 
 STEAM PACKING in every form and variety. 
 LEADING AND SUCTION HOSE, of any size or strength. 
 PATENT "SMOOTH BORE" RUBBER SUCTION HOSE. 
 
 " TEST " HOSE. This extra quality of Hose is made expressly for Steam Fire-Engine 
 
 use, and will stand a pressure of 400 lbs. per square inch. 
 
 ANTISEPTIC LINEN HOSE, a cheap and durable Hose for mill and factory purposes. 
 
 ANTISEPTIC RUBBER-LINED LINEN HOSE, the lightest Hose manufactured for use on Hand or 
 Steam Fire-Engines. Will stand a pressure of 300 lbs. per square inch. 
 
 CAR SPRINGS of a superior quality, and of all the various sizes used. 
 
 SOLID EMERY VULCANITE WHEELS for grinding and polishing metals— the ORIGINAL Solid 
 Emery Wheel, of which all other kinds are imitations and greatly inferior. 
 
 CAUTION. 
 
 Our name is statnped in full on all our best Standard Belting, Packing, and 
 Hose. Buy that only, TJie best is the cheapest, 
 
 WAREHOUSE, 37 k 38 PARK ROW, NEW YORK. 
 
 JOHN H. CHEEVER, Treasurer. 
 
 Pricelistfi and further information may oe obtained by mail or otherwise on application. 
 
AD VERTISEMENTS. 
 
 WX?TT"Z1?X? 
 ^ J!ilj J: AJlilx 
 
 ( ( 
 
 HOLD 
 
 firmly to the great principle, that in sickness Nature should be assisted, not prostrated. It 
 is because Tarrant's Effervescent Seltzer Aperient refreshes and invigorates the 
 system, while it removes, without pain, all obstructive matter from the bowels, that it has 
 become a standard alterative, and is 
 
 FAST 
 
 superseding all the stereotyped purgatives which have heretofore racked, and scourged, 
 and weakened the human frame. The tonic, cathartic, and antibilious ingredients so 
 hai)pily blended in the waters of the celebrated Seltzer Spring, as well as the ebullience 
 peculiar to that natural corrective and febrifuge, impart 
 
 TO 
 
 this chemical counterpart of the German Spa a purifying, renovating, and regulating in- 
 fluence, which does not exist in any other medicinal preparation in use. It quiets the 
 disturbed stomach, promotes perspiration, quickens the action of the kidneys, and 
 superinduces 
 
 THAT 
 
 delightful tranquillity of the nervous system which is hailed by every invalid as a certain 
 indication of convalescence. The saline elements of the Seltzer Aperient, being taken 
 up by the absorbents, have also a salubrious effect upon the secretions and the blood. 
 This is the i^reparation 
 
 WHICH IS 
 
 now being prescribed by physicians everywhere as a superior cathartic, nervine tonic, 
 and blood depurent. Violent drugs have had their day. The faculty and the sick alike 
 discard them, and, having proved the excellence of the Aperient, are determined to 
 '■'■hold fast to that which is 
 
 GOOD." 
 
 The preparation will keep for a length of time, and all that is necessary to convert 
 the powder into a sparkling, foaming, thirst-quenching, and delicious draught, is the 
 addition of a little cold water. Thus may every invalid have a duplicate of the Seltzer 
 Spa at his elbow, although the natural fountain bubbles from the earth in Prussia, four 
 thousand miles away. 
 
 SOLD BY ALL DRUGGISTS. 
 
AD VEBTISEMEyrS. 
 
 THE 
 
 DmON AID CENTRil PACIFIC RAMOAD LIl, 
 
 VIA OMAHA. 
 T/ie only Direct all-rail Route to 
 
 SALT LAKE CITY, SACRAMENTO, SAN FRANCISCO, 
 
 AND ALL POINTS IN 
 
 UTAH, NEVADA, CALIFORNIA, OREGON, IDAHO, MONTANA, etc. ; 
 
 TO D PJ :n A^ E R , 
 
 AND ALL POINTS US' 
 
 COLORADO AND NEW MEXICO 
 
 The rXIOX PACIFIC RAILROAD, in connection with the COLORADO CENTRAL RAIL- 
 ROAD, recently completed to Cheyenne, offers a line possessing unrivaled advantages. 
 
 This new route, passing through the fertile and highly-cultivated agricultural district of Colorado, 
 at the hase of the Rocky Mountains, and in constant view of tlie far-famed Snowy Range, affords the 
 traveler a wonderful panorama of some of the most extraordinary and magnificent scenery on the 
 continent. 
 
 coisTisrEoxioisrs- 
 
 At SIDXET and CHEYENNE, with the only lines running daily tirst-class Stages to tlie Cold 
 Districts of the Black Hills throughout the year. 
 
 OGDEN, with Utah Central Railroad for Salt Lake City and Southern Utah, and with Utah & 
 Northern Railroad and its Stage Connections for Montana and Idaho and the Yellowstone National 
 Park. 
 
 RENO, with Virginia & Truckee Railroad for Carson and Virginia City, the location of the 
 famous "Comstock Lode" and the "Big Bonanza" Mines. 
 
 TRUCKEE, for Lake Tahoe, fourteen miles. 
 
 SUMMIT, or TRUCKEE. for Donner Lake, three miles. 
 
 GALT, with Stages for the Calaveras Big Trees. 
 
 LATIIROP. with Visalia Division Central Pacific Railroad, for the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees 
 and the far-famed Yosemite Valley. Also, ria Southern Pacific Railroad to Southern CJifornia and 
 New Mexico. 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO, with Steamers to Oregon, Washington Territory, and all Pacific ports. ^ 
 
 Excursion rates for parties of ten or more, proportiimed to number in party, may be obtained by 
 application, in advance, to the General Ticket Department at Omaha. 
 
 THOMAS L. KIMBALL, 
 
 (reiieraf Passenger and Ticket Agent, Union Pacific Railroad, Omaha, Ntb. 
 
 T. H. GOODMAN, 
 
 General Fassemjer and Ticket Agent, Central Pacific Railroad, San Francisco, Cat. 
 
A D VER TISEMENTS. 
 
 WINDSOR HOTEL 
 
 FIFTH AVENUE, 
 
 46th .f 47th Sts., 
 
 i<T:Erv^ -^o:bjisl. 
 
 HAWK, WAITE. & WETHERBEE, 
 
 PROrRIETORS. 
 
 The Windsor is more niagnificeut and commodious, and contains more real com- 
 forts, than any other Hotel in America. 
 
 Its location is deliglitiul, being surrounded by the most fashionable residences in 
 New York; it is also near the famous Central Park, and within three minutes' walk of 
 the Grand Central Railway Station. The rooms, witli all the modern improvements, are 
 especially adapted for travelers; this Hotel also has elegant apartments, en suite for 
 families, permanent or transient. The light, ventilation, and sanitary qualities, are per- 
 fect, and are not excelled by any hotel on either continent. Its table is of unexception- 
 able excellence. 
 
 SAMUEL HAWK. 
 
 CHARLES C. WAITE, 
 
 Of Brevoort House. 
 
 GARDWER WETHERBEE. 
 
AD VERTISEMENTS. 
 
 D. ^I^I'DIETON ^ CO.'S JSr^EW^ I>lJBLICJ^TION. 
 
 STUDIES 
 
 CREATIVE WEEK. 
 
 By Rev. GEORGE D. BOARDMAN, D. D. 
 
 1 vol., 12ino Cloth. $1.25. 
 
 THE LECTURES, FOUETEEN IN NUMBER, EMBRACE THE FOLLOWING TOPICS: 
 
 1. Introduction. 
 
 2. Genesis of the Universe. 
 
 3. Of Order. 
 
 4. Of Light. 
 
 5. Of the Sky. 
 '6. Of the Lands. 
 
 7. Of Plants. 
 
 8. Of the Luminaries. 
 
 9. Of Animals. 
 
 10. Of Man. 
 
 11. Of Eden. 
 
 12. Of Women. 
 
 18. Of the Sabbath. 
 
 14. R6sum^ and Conclusion. 
 
 "We see in the Lectures more than the sensation of the hour. Thej v.ill have a 
 marked effect in defining' the position of the believer of to-dav, in certifying both to disci- 
 ple and to skeptic just what is to be held against all attack ; and the statement of the case 
 will be in many cases the strongest argument. They will tend to broaden the minds of be- 
 lievers, and to lift them above the letter to the plane of the spirit. They will show that 
 truth and religion are capable of being defended without violence, without denunciation, 
 without misrepresentation, without the impugning of motives." — National Baptist. 
 
 " Revelation and Science cannot really conflict, because ' truth cannot be contrary to 
 truth ;' but so persistent have been the attacks of men, who, looking to pure science for 
 the solution of every problem, incline to the nihilism of the present century, on time- 
 honored orthodoxy, that the believer in Revelation has long demanded an authoritative 
 work on the first chapter of Genesis. In response to this wide-spread feeling, the Rev. 
 George Dana Boardman, D. D., the learned pastor of the First Baptist Church, Philadelphia, 
 was recently requested to deliver a course of lectures covering this debatable ground." 
 
 D. APPLETON & CO., 549 & 551 Broadway, New York. 
 
AB VERTISEMENT8. 
 
 Is perfectly PURE— UNIFORM and STRONGER than any other. 
 THE BEST and MOST ECONOMICAL in the WORLD. 
 Ask for KINGSFORD'S, and BE SURE YOU GET IT. 
 
 KINGSFORD'S OSWEGO GORN STARCH 
 
 For Puddings, Blanc Mang-e, Cake, etc. 
 
 I>I^EFE£i.A.BLE TO B E li IvI XJ 33 -A. -A. I^ E, O "Vv7" - 1^ O O X- 
 
 ' Inferior and epurious articles are often sold for Klngsford'is. _^1 
 
 To avoid GROSS IMPOSITION, see that T. K.INGSFORD & SON is on each box and on each package. 
 
AD VERTISEMENT8. 
 
 GREAT TRUNK LINE AND FAST MAIL ROUTE. 
 
 OXTIi'S' DZHECT I.ZXTS: 
 
 Til WlWt 
 
 lOETlWliSf, 
 
 CONTINUOUS TRAINS, WITH THROUGH PULLMAN CARS, 
 
 TO 
 
 CHICAGO, -:- CINCINNATI, -:- ST. LOUIS, -:- LOUISVILLE, 
 
 Connecting all Principal Eastern, Western, and Southern Cities. 
 
 GREATEST RAILWAY COMBIJYATIOjY IJV THE WORLD. 
 
 CONSTRUCTION UNEQUALED, EQUIPMENT UNRIVALED, 
 
 TIME UNAPPROACHED, SCENERY GRAND, 
 
 ACCOMMODATIONS PERFECT. 
 
 FARE AS LO^V AS BY ANY OTHER ROUTE. 
 
 TICKETS FOR SALE IN 
 
 NEW YORK at 1 ^^^ Broadway, 944 Broadway, 1 Astor House, 8 Battery Place, Depot Foot of Des- 
 ! brosses St., Depot Foot Courtlandt St., Depot Jersey City, Busch's Hotel, Hoboken. 
 BROOKLYN at No. 4 Coiirt Street; Brooklyn Annex Depot, Foot of Fulton Street. 
 
 The NEW YORK TRANSFER COMPANY will call for and check baggage from Hotels and Residences to 
 destination, on application at 944 Broadway, cor. 42d St. and Sixth Ave., N. Y., and No. 4 Court St., Brooklyn. 
 
 FRANK THOMSON, SAM'L CARPENTER, L. P. FARMER, 
 
 General Manager. GenH Eastern Passenger Agent. GcnH Passenger Agent. 
 
THE 
 
 pew ^ork pife insurance Company, 
 
 346 & 348 BROADWAY, N£W YORK. 
 
 AN OLiD COMPAITK-. 
 Organized 1845. Purely Mutual, 
 
 (no btockiiolders,) 
 Dividends Annually. 
 
 A LARGE COMPANY. 
 
 Policies issued, - - - over 132,000. 
 iiilorce. - - $128,000,000. 
 
 A PROGRESSIVE 
 COMPANY. 
 
 The Thirty-third Annnnl Re- 
 port, 18?.S, nhows an Increase ol" 
 AHHctH; ttii increufle of ^«iirpluH; 
 en liicreaHe In ntiuiber of l'oli<<le8 
 in force und amount insured, over 
 previous years. 
 
 A STBONG COMPANY. 
 
 AccMnlalel Assets, over $35,000,000.00. 
 Yearly lEcome, - over $7,500,000 casli. 
 SURPLUS, - - - over $6,000,000, 
 
 BY NEW YORK 8TATB BTANDARD. 
 
 The Company's Building and Home Office, 346 &. 348 Broadway, New York. 
 
 THE NEW YORK LIFE IXSURANCE COMPANY completed (he thirtu~third year of its existence, 
 Januan/ 1, 1878. At that time its hustory icas in brief and in round nninhers as follows: 
 The acceptance ni One Huntlred and Tliirfif-two Thonsand Mftnhers (so distributed over tlie healthful sections 
 of the WOIthI>, that the most favoraljle average results of iDortalitv are obtained); the receipt of Seventji-four Million 
 J)ollurs in I'rcniiunis ; the paynicnt of nearly l-Uffhtecn Million Dollars in l^olirif-rlaints to the representa- 
 tives, of the insured, and u[)ward of Tivenfii-fireMillinn Jtollars in returned premiums and Dividruds, During- this 
 period the .-l.v.sffs have augmented constantly, and offer f/7»sorj/ff .scruritj/ in the sum of X/* j»'^i/-/ife Million Itollars, 
 safely invested and inereasinjj. The present condition of the Company, and the magnitude of its business annually, are shown in de- 
 tail by the Annual Report. 
 
 H^gr-^ ATTFNTIfllV ''^ invited to the significant fact that, at several periods in the history of this Company, its INTEREST 
 ■--^^ aI llill llUll earnings alone have been sufficient to pay the D EATU-C LAIMS maturing 'under its policies. 
 EXAMPLE. 
 
 Death.CIaim.s paid, 187.j, - $1,521,815. 
 Death-Claims paid, 187G, . 1,517,618. 
 Death.Claims paid, 1877, - 1,038,128. 
 
 Income from Interest, 1875, $1,870,658. 
 Income from Interest^ 1876, 1,906,950. 
 Income from Interest, 1877, 1,867,457. 
 
 1^" Such excellence can be attained only by the greatest care in selection of risks and 
 most judicious investment of funds. 
 
 Z^^ Tlte adrnntafios offered bj/ this Conipattif to those dcsirimj T,ife Insurance are unsurpassed 
 by any other Institution of the kind. 
 
 The great crperienee of its officers and managers renders it one of the strongest, most prosperous, and most trust- 
 worthy companies in the world. 
 
 Having always been a purely mutual Company, policy-holders receive their insurance at cost, and, beiner ably and economically 
 managed, that cost is low. The Company is conducted in the interests of policy-holders alone. In the decision of questions in- 
 volving their rights, the invariable rule is to consider, not alone the technical legality of a claim, but its real justice. 
 
 The non forfeiture sifsteni of policies originated with tliis Company, in 1S60, and has since been adopted — though sometimes in 
 questionable forms — by all other companies. This feature saves millions of dollars every year to pol icy-holders 
 in this country, and for this they are indebted to the NEW XOHK. LIFE. The system as now perfected by 
 the NEW YORK LIFK secures safety to the Company (without which all interests .are jeopardized), and JUSTICE to the insured. 
 Every desirable form of policy issued, on practical plans and favorable terms. 
 
 MORRIS FRANKLIN, President. WILLIAM H. BEERS, Vice-Pres. and Actuary. 
 
:ti<C'<iV 
 
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 MMm^ 
 
 
 
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 _^^?,^*^/';i 
 
 CC<C 
 
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