II \U UP Ira DRAWN WITH PEN AND PENCIL I!Y THE / REV. SAMUEL MANNING, LL.D., AUTHOR OF "SWISS PICTURES," "THOSE HOLY FIELDS," ETC. THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY, 56 PATERNOSTER Row, 65 ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD, AND 164 PICCADILLY. NEW AND REVISED EDITION. " The beaver builds No longer by these .streams, but far away, On waters whose blue surface ne'er gave back The white man's face among Missouri's springs, And pools whose issues swell the Oregon, He rears his little Venice. In these plains The bison feeds no more. Twice twenty leagues Beyond remotest smoke of hunter's camp, Roams the majestic brute, in herds that shake The earth with thundering steps yet here I meet His ancient footprints stamp'd beside the pool." W. C. BRYANT. Bancroft U IN THE YOSEMITE VALLEY. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Reno Station, Nevad:i, on the Central Pacific Railway Lake Mohonk . . . . . . In the Yosemite Valley ..... Frontispiece. . page iv. HOW IT f:>TF(IKE A $TF(ANQER. The Celtic crossing the Atlantic in Winter page 10 Headpiece At Hohokus . . . . .11 Martha's Vineyard, off the Coast of Massachusetts 12 Long Island, and Staten Island . . . 13 Broadway, New York, from Trinity Church. . 14 Barber's Shop ...... 15 On the Erie Railway . . . . .16 Lewiston Narrows, on the Juniata River. . 18 Ice-harvest on the Hudson . . . .20 A Bayou in Florida f. . . . . 21 Harper's Ferry ..... page 21 Hills of New England. . . . . 2 j Natural Bridge, Virginia . . . . -25 House lately standing at Providence, said to have been used by Roger Williams for Prayer-Meetings 2(5 Carrying the United States Mail across the Sierra Nevada, 1870 . . . . . .28 Carrying the United States Maii across the Prairies, 1860 ....... 29 Tailpiece Nantucket Lighthouse . . 33 J_(0ui TO DENVER. Headpiece Crossing the Prairies . . -33 Great Steel Bridge at St. Louis, crossing the Mississippi ...... 34 A Homestead in Kansas . . , . .35 Prairie Fowl . . . . Bullock-waggon crossing the Cjreat Plains Buffalo Hunting. . . Sioux Village. .... 36 37 38 39 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Indian Burial-ground .... f-age 40 Street in Denver . . . . . -41 Map of Country round Denver. ... 42 Colburn's Butte . . . . . -43 In the Garden of the Gods .... 45 Entrance to the Garden of the Gods . . -46 Clear Creek Canon, in the Rocky Mountains 48, 49 Monument Park ..... 51 Middle Park 52 George Town, Rocky Mountains Distant View of Pike's Peak . Traditional Buttc . Ancient Watch-tower . . Cliff House, M ancus Canon Cliff House, Mancos Canon . Ruins on the Hovenweep. Tailpiece Glen kis Falls 53 55 56 56 57 58 59 60 THE Headpiece Indians west of the Rocky Mountains . 61 Old Post Station on the Prairie ... 62 The Narrows, Utah . . . . -63 The Devil's Slide 65 Inspection Car on Pacific Railway approaching the Great Salt Lake . . . . . 67 Salt Lake City in 1850 .... 69 Waggon load of Mormons at Ogden Canon . . 70 Salt Lake City ...... 71 The Tabernacle in Salt Lake City . . 73 Crossing the Rocky Mountains . . . '74 Residence of Brigham Young, Salt Lake City . 75 Fort Douglas Camp, and Red Buttcs Ravine, near Salt Lake City The Narrows, North Fork of the Rio Virgen, Utah Brigham Young ...... Townsefcd House, Salt Lake City . . . Tailpiece Eagle Gate at the School-house of Brigham Young ... ... THE NEW EL DORADO. Ifeat1f!eceCM\c Ranch in California . . 83 Silver Mining in Nevada .... 85 Silver City, Nevada 86 Street in Virginia City, Nevada ... 87 Hydraulic Mining . . . . . .88 Cape Horn, on the Pacific Line ... 83 Trestle-bridge on the Pacific Railway . . .89 Trestle-bridge viewed from beneath. . . 90 ^Snow-sheds on the Pacific Line . . . -90 Cisco Station, California .... 91 Pollard Station upon Lake Donner . . .93 Crystal Lake, near the Cisco Station, 5,907 feet above the level of the Sea .... 94 San Francisco, 1849. . . . . . 95 Street in San Francisco . . . . . 96 New City Hall, San Francisco ... 97 The Golden Gate . . . . . -97 Bird's-eye View of San Franci.co, 187"; . . 98 Alley in Chinese Quarter . . . . . 99 Chinese Opium Den ..... 100 Chinese Theatre, San Francisco . . . 101 Sea-liens on rocks off San Francisco . . 102 Mount Shasta, the Northern Peak of the Sierra Nevada ....... 103 Tree in Petrified Forest .... 104 Vulcan's Steam Works ..... 104 The Devil's Canon ..... 105 Tailfiece Bridge over Pluton Creek . . . 106 THE YdgEMITE AJ^D YELLOW3TONE. Headpiece Waterfall in the Yosemite. First Log Hut in Mariposa Grove . On the Way to the Big Trees . Result of Woodpeckers' Industry . The Sentinels, Calaveras .... In the Pine Forest ..... The Pioneers' Cabin, " Room for twelve inside "...... The Fallen Monarch ..... Preparing to Fell Big Tree Augur-holes in Tree ..... The Keystone State, 325 feet high Cathedral Rocks, 3,660 feet .... Entrance to Yosemite Valley Cap of Liberty, 4,000 feet .... El Capitan, 3,300 feet .... Bridal Veil Fall, 630 feet .... The Yosemite Falls, 2,600 feet . North Dome, 3,568 feet South, or Half Dome, 4,737 feet Mirror Lake ..... Sentinel Rocks, 3,043 feet Nevada Falls, 700 feet. . . . Tower Falls, and Column Mountain . Rock Pinnacles above Tower Falls. Hot Wells on Gardiner's River (Upper Basin) Hot Wells on Gardiner's River (Lower Basin) . Upper Falls of the Yellowstone . . Lower Falls of the Yellowstone Yellowstone Lake ..... The Great Yellowstone Gorge Grotto Geyser . . . . . The Giantess Geyser of Yellowstone Tailpiece Prairie on fire .... CHICAGO TO 141 142 Headpiece- Clark's River Fall, Lake Superior. The Upper Missouri . . . . Wabash Avenue, Chicago .... The City Hall, Chicago ..... ,45 Clark Street, Chicago ..... 147 First House built in Chicago . . . .148 The Sherman Hotel ..... 149 Moose Hunting in the North-West Territory . 153 6 Pictured Rocks of Lake Superior The Great Cave. ..... Niagara from the Suspension Bridge Suspension Bridge ..... At the Foot of the American Fall . The Whirlpool below the Fall . Niagara from the edge of the American Fall Father Hennepin's Sketch of Niagara, 1677 . 1 19 120 12O 121 122 I2 3 126 I2 7 128 12 9 130 131 '33 "35 136 '37 140 '55 156 158 >59 160 161 163 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. NEW Headpiece New Hampshire Scenery . . page 165 Initial Bible and other Relics brought over in the MayJIoiver 165 Pilgrim Fathers going to Church . . .167 Landing-place of the Pilgrims, at Plymouth . 169 Evening in New England. .... 171 Monument on Bunker's Hill . . 173 Old State House . . . . . .174 Faneuil Hall . . . . . .174 Boston, from Bunker's Hill . . . . 175 Old Street in Boston Liberty Tree, Boston Common Gore Hall, Harvard College . Yale College In the White Mountains . Pepperill, near Boston, the Home of Prescott the Historian ...... Salem, Massachusetts . Nantucket Wharf ..... Ta apiece Near Hancock. . Page 177 . 178 179 1 80 183 184 185 THE Headpiece Portage Falls and Bridge . . . 187 Mouth of the Hudson ..... 188 Grain Fleet in New York Harbour . . 189 Ferry-boats by Night ..... 191 Excursion Steamer on the Hudson . 192 New Amsterdam ..... 193 New York in 1673 ...... 193 Castle Garden and Battery Park . . . 194 A Squatter Village, in the Outskirts . . . 195 Broadway at St. Paul's .... 195 St. Mark's Church . . . . . .196 Old House in New York .... 197 The Fifth Avenue 198 Washington Heights ..... 199 Trinity Cemetery ...... 159 Central Park Drive ..... 200 Lake in Central Park 201 Bridge in course of construction between Brooklyn and New York ..... 202 Sandy Hook, from the Lighthouse . . 203 Turtle Bay and Blackwell's Island. . . 203 Spuyten Duyvil Creek ..... 204 Headwaters of the Hudson in the Adirondacks. 205 Arbor Vita; Grove on the Hudson . . 207 Foot of the Storm King .... 207 The Palisades on the Hudson . . . .207 Vassar College 209 The Observatory . . ... -20 The Gymnasium . . .21 Ithaca, and the Cornell University . . .22 Anthony's Nose, and the Sugar Loaf . 23 Glen's Falls 23 Entrance to the Flume . . .24 The Flume . . . -24 Horse Shoe Falls 24 Sentinel Rock and Table Rock . . . .24 In the Catskills 2 5 The Dudley Observatory, Albany . .25 Falls on the Ramapo . . . 216 PHILADELPHIA AND Headpiece On the Delaware Arch Street, Philadelphia Public Ledger Building The Court House . 217 218 219 220 Baltimore The Capitol . Tailpiece The White House, Washington 222 223 \ AMERICAN CENTENNIAL HYMN. OUR fathers' God ! from out whose hand The centuries fall like grains of sand, We meet to-day, united, free, And loyal to our land and Thee, To thank Thee for the era done And trust Thee for the opening one. Here, where of old, by Thy design, The fathers spake that word of Thine, Whose echo is the glad refrain Of rended bolt and falling chain, To grace our festal time, from all The zones of earth our guests we call. Be with us while the New World greets The Old World thronging all its streets, Unveiling all the triumphs won By art or toil beneath the sun ; And unto common good ordain This rivalship of hand and brain. Thou who hast here in concord furled The war-flags of a gathering world, Beneath our Western skies fulfil The Orient's mission of good-will, And, freighted with love's Golden Fleece, Send back its Argonauts of peace. For art and labour met in truce, For beauty made the biide of use, We thank Thee ; but, withal, we crave The austere virtues, strong to save, The honour proof to place or gold, The manhood never bought nor sold ! Oh ! make Thou us, through centuries long, In peace secure, in justice strong ; Around our gift of freedom draw The safeguards of Thy righteous law ; And, cast in some Diviner mould, Let the new cycle shame the old ! May, 1876. JOHN G. WHITTIER. ,,i. .9 - ISKB&t naaacc&iayttnmonaoaaa^ ^^^&S^^45^t^ m j^^i^^sjgssilk^fc - I^tiis^--"-^'*-'' ' ""- "-*; ,,-- turers ; shores CHARLES LYELL commences the narrative of his Second Visit to the United States by saying, "On leaving the wharf we had first been crammed into a diminutive steamer, which looked like a toy by the side of the larger ship of twelve hundred tons in which we were to cross the ocean. I was reminded, how ever, that this small craft was more than three times as large as one of the open caravels of Columbus in his first voyage, which was only fifteen tons burden, and without a deck. It is indeed marvellous to reflect on the daring of the early adven- for Frobisher, in 1576, made his way from the Thames to the of Labrador with two small barks of twenty and twenty-five tons, HO IV IT STRIKES A STRANGER. not much surpassing in size the barge of a man-of-war, and Sir Hum phrey Gilbert crossed to Newfoundland, in 1583, in a bark of ten tons only." In the quarter of a century which has elapsed since these words were written, the size of the steamers plying between Liverpool and New York has gone on continually increasing, and the vessel of twelve hundred tons, of which Sir Charles speaks, would be dwarfed by the side of the Celtic, of three thousand nine hundred tons, in which I crossed the Atlantic, or the MARTHA'S VINEYARD, OFF THE COAST OF MASSACHUSETTS. Britannic, of four thousand five hundred tons, in which I returned. In these floating palaces, with their spacious and splendidly-furnished saloons, their sumptuous cuisine, their bath-rooms, and all other appliances for comfort, the inconveniences of ocean travel are reduced to a minimum, and Dr. Johnson's dictum becomes almost absurd : " No one goes to sea, sir, unless he's obliged. It is being in prison with the additional chance of being drowned." A voyage to America so closely resembles a voyage to any other part of the world that there is no need to dwell upon it here. For a week or ten days we are in the centre of the same vast circle. Day by day the log FIRST IMPRESSIONS. tells us that we have advanced three hundred or three hundred and fifty miles on our course, but we have the same dome of sky above us, the same boundless waste of waters around us. The only changes which break in upon the monotony of the voyage are the alternations of storm and calm, clouds or sunshine. A bird alights upon the rigging ; a ship is sighted in the distance ; icebergs are seen in perilous proximity ; a shoal of porpoises are gambolling in our wake ; little details like these are hailed as exciting events and awaken an interest altogether disproportionate to their importance. At LONG ISLAND, AND STATEN ISLAND. length, the welcome cry ot Land ahead is heard, the coast of Long Island or of Massachusetts comes into view, and in a few hours more we set our feet on the shores of the New World. The first impressions of English visitors to America vary so greatly, according to the idiosyncrasies of the individual, that no two exactly coincide. I went, expecting to find the Old World reproduced in the New, and that Boston, or New York would be little more than a new London, or a new Liverpool on the other side of the Atlantic. The reality was something altogether different. I was surprised by NEW YORK. the unlikeness of America to England. There is, of course, a general similarity. But the many points of comparison only serve to throw out the points of con trast into more marked prominence. In Asia, or Africa, or Southern Europe, we see little to remind us of home. We might almost be in another planet. But in America we have a New England, which, with a basis of iden tity has widely di verged from the ori ginal type. In the cities, the perfect clear ness of the atmosphere, the absence of smoke, the brilliant colouring, the vivacity and dress of the people, the style of street architecture, are rather French than English. Walk ing up Broadway, I could understand how it is that New Yorkers commonly feel them selves more at home in Paris than in Lon don. The hotels are upon the Continental model. Differences in the names of common things give a sense of strangeness shops FIRST IMPRESSIONS. are "stores," railway stations are "depots," carriages are "cars," shopmen are "clerks," a good-tempered person is " clever," a bad-tempered person is "ugly ;" we "mail " a letter, and "wire" a telegram ; a direct railway route is an "air line," and a fast train " a lightning express." The mysterious letters C. O. D. constantly appearing in tradesmen's signs greatly perplexed me, till I found that they represented Cash on Delivery In the barber's shop we ascend a throne, and rest our feet upon a high stool, so as to bring our head and chin and boots within easy reach of the operator. Who in England ever saw buckwheat, or corn- cakes, with maple-syrup at breakfast ? Who in America ever sawabreak- fast without them ? We, in England, regard ice as a luxury, to be rarely in dulged in, save by the few. In America, it is so much a necessary of life, that on Black well's Island, the prison and poor-house of New York City, the aver age consumption is a ton per week the whole year round ; and on one hot day in June, the stock- keeper of the Fifth Avenue Hotel supplied six tons for the require ments of the house. These are trifles which seem to be unworthy of serious record, but it is the constant recurrence of these trifles which makes the visitor feel that, though the Americans are " brethren in blood, brethren in language, brethren in religion," they are not a mere reproduction of ourselves. Soon after landing in New York, I began to make arrangements for crossing the continent to San Francisco. It was now that I gained my first adequate impression of the immense extent of the United States.* Our * I said to the well-known Brooklyn preacher, " Mr. Beecher, they tell me that I shall have no sense of the American continent till I have crossed it." He replied, " Doctor, when you have crossed it you'll have no sense left at all." ON THli ERIE RAILWAY. ocean run had been three thousand and fifty- four miles, as shown by the log ; a distance sometimes accom plished in seven days. The overland journey from the eastern to the western coast exceeds this by two hundred and fifty miles in a nearly straight line, and occupies the same time, travelling night and day. Cities of half a million inhabitants, such as Cincinnati, St. Louis, or Chicago, are passed ; moun tain chains and mighty rivers are crossed, a thousand miles of prairie are traversed, and still the goal is not reached. We lie down at night, we wake in the morning ; we spend the day in such amusements as the American railway train affords, and still we are rushing on. A whole week must elapse before the waters of the Pacific, rolling in through the Golden Gate, gladden our eyes. EXTENT OF TERRITORY. ThouQfh no accumulation of arithmetical figures can communicate a sense o o of the vastness of the continent, a few statistics may be given. To people the Mississippi Valley with the same density as Great Britain would require a population of six hundred millions of human beings ! The State of Texas alone covers an area of two hundred and fifty-seven thousand five hundred and four square miles considerably more than twice that of Great Britain. The whole area of the United States, including lakes and rivers, is about four millions of square miles ; a hundred thousand miles more than that of the whole continent of Europe. A curious and characteristic anecdote is told in the biography of Dr. John Breckenridge, an eminent American clergyman. When travelling in England some years ago, he was asked by a stage-coach companion, " Pray, sir, have you any river in America equal to the Thames ?" He replied, "Why, sir, I reside, when at home, on the banks of a river, formed by the confluence of two rivers, which, coming from opposite directions, unite after flowing, each of them, four hundred miles ; the united stream then rolls on one thousand miles, with mighty cities on its shores ; when it meets a river which has come from another direction three thousand miles to meet it ; and these flowing on together, soon take in another, which has come two thousand miles from another direction, and these five rivers make the Mississippi, which now rolls about fifteen hundred miles farther on, and there disembogues itself by thirty mouths into the sea !" Dr. Breckenridge adds, " My English friend settled himself into his corner and declined any further conversation, fully believing that I was romancing." But the statistics are literally true. The Alleghany and Monongahela form the Ohio, which empties into the Missouri, which soon meets the Mississippi, and the united rivers bear the latter name to the Gulf of Mexico. One effect of this vast extent of territory has been to foster in the American mind an admiration for mere bigness. Let a thing be big enough, and it becomes at once an object of patriotic pride. The peculations of "Boss Tweed" are spoken of by New Yorkers with a scarcely-veiled admiration, they were so immense. To have fought through the bloodiest war, and incurred the heaviest debt of modern times, is matter of boasting. A citizen of Chicago said to me : " Our city is the biggest thing on the planet. We've had the biggest fire. We lifted the city eight feet out of the mud. We made a river run up hill : it wouldn't go where we wanted it, so we turned it end and end about. And it's the only city on earth every inch of which is covered three inches deep in mortgages." This love for the gigantesque reminded me of the earlier stages of art, the Egyptian for instance, where the hero is represented as of colossal proportions, whilst inferior persons are pigmies reaching no higher than his ankles, bulk being the symbol and representative of high and noble qualities. HOW IT STRIKES A STRANGER. A more obvious consequence of the territorial extent of the republic is the unparalleled variety of its natural productions. . It includes almost every range of climate. The newly-acquired territory of Alaska runs far up into the Arctic Ocean, whilst the southern extremity of Florida is in close proximity to the tropics. The Iruits and vegetables indigenous to each of these zones ICE-HARVEST ON THE HUDSON. have not to be imported from abroad, or forced by artificial cultivation at home, but are " native to the soil." The ice-harvest of the Northern States vies in importance and value with the rice crops of the Carolinas. The orchards of New England bear enormous quantities of apples, pears, cherries, and other fruits of a temperate clime. In Delaware and the Central States peaches ripen to perfection in the open air. Whilst in the VARIETY OF NATURAL PRODUCTIONS. Gulf States bananas, oranges and semi-tropical fruits grow in wonderful profusion. The "Great South" can supply the world with cotton, the Middle States with tobacco, Nevada and California with the precious metals. The vineyards of the West bid fair at no distant date to supplant the wines of France and Spain in the home market. One has but to glance at A BAYOU IN FLORIDA. the map, and remember the degrees of latitude and longitude which the continent covers, to know that this must be so ; and yet it was with a constant and ever-growing surprise that this boundless and inexhaustible variety of production was observed. The natural scenery of America, though in many parts tame and flat, HOW IT STRIKES A STRANGER. has the same characteristic of immensity. Everything is projected on a vast scale. The great lakes of the North are inland seas. At Niagara the drainage of half a continent pours down over a single wall of rock. In crossing the prairies, a feeling is produced not unlike that of crossing the ocean. We have the same measureless expanse around us, its level surface only broken by long wave-like undulations, which call to mind the Atlantic rollers. Not only is the Mississippi navigable for two thousand two hundred miles from HARPER S FERRY. its mouth, but it has more than fifteen hundred navigable branches. We may therefore sail for weeks along these inland waters, traversing distances greater than in many ocean voyages. Visitors to the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky may, so it is said, travel for two hundred miles along its different labyrinths and avenues beneath a roof of rock rising to one hundred feet above them. The cliffs of the Yosemite Valley are absolutely perpendicular, and from five thousand to six thousand feet high. The "big NATURAL BRIDGE, VIRGINIA. trees" in its neighbour hood attain an altitude of over three hundred feet two-thirds the height of the great pyramid of Egypt. We cannot wonder that the inhabitants of a country where nature works upon so vast a scale should be prone to indulge in " tall talk." To the general tameness and flatness of the American landscape there are some remarkable excep- tions. The picturesque beauty of the hills and valleys of New HOW IT STRIKES A STRANGER. England babbling brooks, hanging woods, hillsides as brightly green as those of the old country, lakes glittering in the sunshine, the whole dominated by the White Mountain range reminded me of the finest parts of Derbyshire or Wales. The traveller by the Erie or Pennsylvania Central Railroads will pass many points of rare attractiveness. In Maryland and Virginia, we find a succession of scenery of the very highest order, ranging from the rounded hills and fertile valleys of the former to the grand mountain forms of the latter. Harper's Ferry memorable from its connection with John Brown's raid, and as the scene of some of the most exciting events of the war well HOUSE LATELY STANDING AT PROVIDENCE, SAID TO HAVE BEEN USED BY ROGER WILLIAMS FOR PRAYER-MEETINGS. deserves a visit, apart from its historical associations. And the Natural Bridge of Virginia is in the centre of a district of extraordinary beauty, which no tourist in the States should omit to see. The grand scenery of the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada, Niagara, the Hudson River, and the great lakes will receive more extended notice in subsequent pages. Still the general feeling produced on the mind of the traveller in America is that of vast and somewhat monotonous plains, over which he may travel for days without seeing a landscape which greatly impresses itself on his memory. This general unimpressiveness of American scenery is, no doubt, greatly RAPIDITY OF DEVELOPMENT. increased by the almost total absence of historical associations. Everything is spic-and-span new. No halo of romance, no glamour of ancient legend, invests the landscape with a mysterious charm. The venerable edifices or ivied ruins which dignify many a mean, poor village in England are wanting. A building which dates from the time when " George the Third was king," is the extreme limit of antiquity which we can reach, and even these are rare. But in the enormously rapid development of the country we find a new element of interest. If there is nothing to remind us of the past, the present is full of intense energy, and the future opens before us with possibilities which overwhelm the imagination. In our boyhood we were thrilled by tales of perils and adventures in the Alleghany Mountains. Lonely trappers and backwoodsmen led lonely lives amongst these primeval forests and impenetrable fastnesses. Now the Alleghanies are pleasure resorts for the citizens of the coast towns. In the year 1832, Chicago had no exist ence ; Fort Dearborn, a trading post in the Indian country, marked the spot where a city of half a million inhabitants now stands. Twenty years ago Chicago was the great city of the west. It is now to all intents and purposes an eastern city. In subsequent pages of this volume, the marvellous growth of the cities of the Western States will be traced. Districts which thirty years ago were only kno\vn by the reports of adventurous travellers or fur traders have been organised into States, with hundreds of thousands of inhabitants. In 1849, San Francisco was only a mission station, occupied by the Jesuit fathers. In 1855, Omaha was an Indian trading post on the frontier. In 1859, Denver was but a cluster of tents and wigwams. These are at the present day large and wealthy cities, carrying on commercial transactions with every part of the civilised world. Not many years ago the United States mail was carried across the prairies by stage-coach, guarded by troops to protect it against the attack of Indians, in districts which are now traversed by railroads, and are the centre of peaceful and prosperous industry. Noting everywhere this rapid progress, it was impossible not to remember the prophetic lines of Bishop Berkeley, written a century and a half ago, when the settled population of America formed but a narrow fringe upon the eastern coast : " Westward the course of empire takes its way ; The four first acts already past, A fifth shall end the drama with the day; Time's noblest offspring is the last." It does not enter the plan of this volume to discuss the moral and religious condition of the American people. A traveller passing hastily through the country has not the means of forming an accurate and well- considered judgment upon questions which require a patient investigation HOW IT STRIKES A STRANGER. and a wide induction of facts. But in quoting the hopeful augury of the good bishop, it is scarcely possible to avoid asking whether it has been fulfilled, or is in process of fulfilment ? In other words, Do we find in America the noblest product of the ages, or what is likely to become so ? If the question refer to material prosperity, the answer must, I think, be, Yes. But I am only repeating the opinion of the wisest and best men whom I met, when I express a doubt whether this is true of the highest interests of humanity. To the intense energy thrown into religious move ments, and the liberal, almost lavish, expenditure incurred for their promotion, I must bear admiring testimony. The efforts made by all sections of the Church to overtake the spiritual wants of the rapidly increasing population are worthy of all praise. But the keen pursuit of wealth, the tendency to estimate everything by its marketable value, the restless and feverish activity which prevail on every side, are unfavourable to the higher life of the intellect and the spirit. Even the rural and agricultural districts are not free from this evil. One longed to repeat the words of the Divine Teacher, as quoted by St. Mark, " Come ye yourselves apart . . . and rest awhile : for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat." Only thus can the inner life of the soul be maintained. Only as we withdraw somewhat from the excitement of the things which are "seen and temporal," is it possible for us to realise the things which are "unseen and eternal." There are, indeed, multitudes in America whose " fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ," to whom the cross of Christ is the supreme object of delighted contemplation, and in whose tranquil spirits the Spirit of God finds His fitting abode. But I only echo the feeling which I often heard expressed, when I say that if America is to be " Time's noblest offspring," the graces of character which flourish in quietness and retirement must be cultivated far more extensively than they are at present. NANTUCKET LIGHTHOUSE. OT. Louis, my starting-point for ^ Denver, a distance of upwards of nine hundred miles, is a city which can boast of the venerable antiquity of a century. In the year 1764, it was a village of one hundred and twenty inhabitants. "In 1790, a St. Louis merchant was a man who, in the corner of his cabin, had a large chest which contained a few pounds of powder and shot, a few knives and hatchets, a little red paint, two or three rifles, some hunting shirts of buckskin, a few tin cups and iron pots, and, perhaps, a little tea, coffee, sugar and spice." In 1811, the population had risen to one thousand four hundred ; a market house was built, and two schools were etablished, one French, the other English. Two years later, the first brick house was erected. The city now covers an area of twenty square miles, with a population which falls little short of half a million. A great steel bridge has been flung across the Mississippi, at a cost of ten million dollars. A line of ST. LOUIS .TO DENVER. steamers a mile and a half in length may be seen lying at the wharves. " St. Louis, sitting like a queen on the banks of the great Father of Waters, will be the central city of this people, the tidal waves of whose civilisation will roll to China and Japan on the west, and to the Bosphorus on the east ; and with her continental railroad system, her telegraphs over mountains and under oceans, her vast water communication, will radiate law and order, and become the leading national, mining, and commercial metropolis of the Western hemisphere." These statistics of the past and prophecies for the future, I take from a document published by " Order of the St. Louis County Court." They have therefore official sanction and authority. It seems strange that a city which can boast of an antiquity so remote, a progress so vast, and a future so astounding should be sneered at by its younger rival Chicago as slow and stupid and GREAT STEEL BRIDGE AT ST. LOUIS, CROSSING THE MISSISSIPPI.* conservative. Yet so it is and Chicago, in this respect, only echoes the general sentiment of the continent. St. Louis, however, retorts that she trades on realised capital, whilst Chicago depends on mortgages and ac commodation bills, and that wealth is cautious, whilst credit is reckless. " Chicago," says the document from which I have already quoted, "is a depot for speculators in grain, and Cincinnati abounds in hogs ; but this is the end of their glory. . . . St. Louis is destined at no distant day to be the great vitalising heart of the world's civilisation ! " Crossing the Mississippi by the great bridge, which, with its approaches, is a mile and a quarter in length, and traversing the State of Missouri, we enter Kansas. This state was formerly known as Bleeding Kansas, gaining the soubriquet from the fact that for some years it formed the battle-field * From the Rocky Mountains Guide, issued by the St. Louis and Kansas City Railway Company. 34 BLEEDING KANSAS. A HOMESTEAD IN KANSAS. on which the struggle between freedom and slavery was fought out. The Missourians resolved that the new State should be organised with a slave- holding constitution. For this purpose they occupied large tracts of territory, and issued a declaration stating that " We will continue to lynch and hang, tar and feather any white-livered abolitionist who dares to pollute ST. LOUIS TO DENVER. our soil." Undeterred by these threats, a number of free-soilers from the New England States established themselves under a semi-military organisation on the banks of the Kansas River. Bloody battles were fought between the Northern immigrants and the Missourian fire-eaters. But the stern determination and fearless courage of the Massachusetts farmers triumphed, and Kansas entered the Federal Union as a free State. It was in these feuds that John Brown, then known as Ossawatomie Brown, rose into notice, and gave proof of that reckless daring which prompted his famous raid on Harper's Ferry. When I passed through the territory it was being devastated by a scourge of locusts, or grasshoppers, as they are here called. In many places they covered the soil with a moving mass, and filled the air like snow-flakes on a snowy day. At a roadside station, the train was not able to start till they had been swept from the track. The grow ing crops were cut off, the trees strip ped of their leaves, and the cattle were starving for want of food. The alarming extension of this insect pest, which has ravaged Kansas, Nebraska, and the neighbour ing States for the last two or three years, is plausibly explained by the destruction of winged game on the prairies. The nidus of the grasshoppers is the sage-brush desert, at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Their flight westward was checked by myriads of prairie-fowl, which devoured them greedily. The opening up of rapid railway communication between the western country and the eastern sea-board has led to these birds being killed in countless numbers for sale in the New England States, and for exportation to Europe. The barrier which previously existed to the spread of the locusts was thus removed. It affords a curious illustration of the intimate relation ships which now unite distant nations, to find that an addition to our supply of food in England should bring disasters to cultivators of the soil at a distance of five thousand miles. The journey across the prairies, though monotonous, is by no means 36 I'RAIRIE FOWL. FAUNA AND FLORA OF THE PRAIRIES. devoid of interest. The vast herds of buffalo which used to roam over the expanse have indeed almost disappeared. In the Great Plains between St. Louis and Denver the trains were sometimes compelled to stop for an hour or more, whilst they crossed the track in one unbroken mass. Now it is a rare thing to see a large herd at all. The Indians are likewise rapidly disappearing. But antelope and elk abound. Villages of prairie dogs are frequent. These amusing little creatures resemble the marmots of Switzerland. They may be seen by thousands frisking and gambolling at the entrance of their burrows, till at the first alarm they vanish into their holes, BULLOCK-WAGGON CROSSING THE GREAT PLAINS. which they are said to share with the prairie owls and rattlesnakes. That they live in the same burrows and on friendly terms with the owls is certain ; but I suspect that the snakes are unwelcome intruders, and that they live upon their hosts rather than with them. The absence of trees on the prairies is compensated by the profusion and beauty of the flowers. A broad expanse stretches to the verge of the horizon, tinged with red, or blue, or yellow, from the predominant flora of the spot. The atmosphere is of such exquisite purity, that Buffalo meat laid out upon the grass does not putrefy, but dries up into charqm, in which condition it keeps good for months. The sunsets are of marvellous splendour, and, except in Egypt and Arabia, I have never ST. LOUIS TO DENVER. seen anything to compare with the glories of the night. When the veil of light has been withdrawn, the firmament is disclosed to view a lustrous depth of azure, studded with innumerable stars, shining with a liquid radiance compared with which the skies of Italy are opaque and dim. When I crossed the prairies, trouble with the Indians was apprehended. Their reserves in the Black Hills had been encroached upon by groups of miners, attracted by alleged discoveries of gold. There were rumours that the Arapahoes and Sioux were on the war-path. Spotted Dog and White Cloud were mustering their braves for a desperate resistance to the whites. BUFFALO HUNTING. A band of emigrants, whom we had seen the night before toiling across the plain, were said to have been scalped, and their cattle driven off. Even the friendly Utes were reported to be making common cause with their brother redskins. These flying rumours were repeated or listened to with various feelings. The frontier men rejoiced that a favourable opportunity had now arrived for "clearing out the Injuns;" and it was hoped that not one of the "varmint" would be left alive. The more serious and thoughtful among the passengers lamented the doom impending over the aborigines, but they believed it to be inevitable. The extermination of the red man from the American con tinent seems to be only a question of time. They melt away and disappear 38 INCIDENTS OF PRAIRIE TRA VEL. before the advance of the whites like the buffalo on which they subsist. An outbreak like that apprehended can only accelerate the process which is going on day by day. Early on the second morning after leaving St. Louis, our train came to a sudden standstill, and a loud noise of escaping steam was heard from the engine. " Guess our bulgine's busted up," said my neighbour, a miner from SIOUX VILLAOE. New Mexico. So it proved, and the damage was so great that it could not be repaired. We were out in the open prairie. No house was in sight. It was some distance to the next station, and probably no engine could be found nearer than Denver, a hundred and seventy miles away. As hours must elapse before we could move, I started with a companion for a ramble over the prairie. We had not proceeded very far when we discovered a rude shanty. It proved to be the hut of a hunter, who only the day before '. LOUIS TO DENVER. had killed a young buffalo. In a few minutes an abundant supply of steaks, cut from the hump-ribs, were frying for our breakfast. Our appetites," sharpened by the keen morning air, prepared us to do full justice to the extemporised meal ; but even an epicure would have pronounced the meat delicious. Strolling along to pass away the time, we reached the summit of one of those long undulations, like the rollers of the ocean in a calm, which give rise to the name of a rolling prairie. From this point we caught sight of a pinnacle of rock, glittering like a huge diamond on the horizon. It was our first view of the snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains, at least a hundred and fifty miles distant. Seen through the clear bright atmosphere, and INDIAN BURIAL-GROUND. radiant in the light of the morning sun, it looked too beautiful to belong to earth ; and when, a mile or two farther on, we saw the whole sky-line cut by a serrated ridge of mountain-tops, their snow-crowned summits glistening in the sunshine, it was as though we, like the Seer of Patmos, had beheld the New Jerusalem descend out of heaven. A portable battery having been connected with the wires, telegraphic communication was established, and in two hours an engine arrived to take the place of our disabled locomotive. Nearer and nearer we drew to the grand mountain chain, the first view of which had filled us with such admiring wonder ; higher and higher the peaks rose into the sky, and before nightfall we found ourselves at the city of Denver. DENVER AND ITS HISTORY. Amongst my fellow-travellers was one of the first settlers in Colorado, locally known as "a fifty-niner." It was in the year 1859, only sixteen years before that he had constructed the first loghouse on the spot, which up STREET IN DENVER. to that time had been merely an Indian trading post. He had been absent for some years, and it was with profound astonishment that he found a large railway station, with a line of half-a-dozen omnibuses at the door waiting to convey us to as many hotels. In what^ is now the main street of ST. LOUIS TO DENVER. a city of thirty thousand inhabitants, he pointed out the site of the first house, and the spot where stood the now historical tree, on which he had helped to hang seven horse thieves in a single night, sentenced to death by lynch-law. I extracted from the Denver Directory the following particulars, which may serve to illustrate the wonderful growth of the city in six teen years : Five daily papers, Six weekly papers, Twenty churches, Five fire-engine sta tions, Ten banks, eight rail ways in connection, amint, a board of trade, and street railways running along every street. The rise and early pro gress of the city were due to the fact that it formed the great centre for the mining operations of Colorado. But it is now visited by large numbers of tourists in search of beauty, and sportsmen in search of game. The Canons of Colorado, a few years ago only known from the enthusiastic de scriptions of a few daring explorers, are now easily reached, and they well deserve their fame. It would be difficult to exaggerate the beauty of MAP OF COUNTRY ROUND DENVER. the vieW from DcttVCr. The eye ranges over a broad sweep of level prairie, intersected by one or two rivers, and then is arrested by the chain of the Rocky Mountains, which stretch along the whole horizon from north to south, as far as the eye can reach. The forms are less massive than those of the Alps ; there is less snow, and no glaciers, COLBURN'S BUTTE. VIEW FROM DENVER. But, as seen from Denver, they rise more directly from the plain, and the view of the distant peaks is not obstructed by intervening heights, as is the case in Switzerland. The perfect clearness of the atmosphere is the cause of a curious optical delusion to strangers. Objects a hundred miles away seem to be close at hand. A favourite story in Denver is that of an English tourist, who proposed a stroll to Long's Peak. His hosts, to humour the joke, assented. They started after an early breakfast, and having walked for IN THE GARDEN OF THE GODS. some hours, he inquired how much farther they must go. " About seventy miles," was the reply. At this point an irrigation ditch crossed the road. He sat down and began to undress. "What are you doing?" they asked. " I'm going to swim across this river," said he. They explained that it was not a river, but a gutter which he could step over. " I am bound to believe you," was his rejoinder; "but my senses tell me that if it is seventy miles to yonder peak, it cannot be less than seventy feet to the opposite bank." A brief reference to the geology of the district is an almost necessary ST. LOUIS TO DENVER. introduction to a description of the scenery of Colorado and the Rocky Mountains. The thousand miles of prairie, over which we have passed since leaving the Mississippi Valley at St. Louis, seem to the traveller to be a dead level, except for those long undulations to which reference has been made. But in fact we have risen five thousand feet. The elevation, how ever, is so gradual and constant as to be imperceptible. But we now reach a line of violent disturbance. The mass of the Rocky Mountains has been ENTRANCE TO THE GARDEN OF THE GODS. thrust up to a height of from ten to fourteen thousand feet above the level of the sea. This mighty upheaval has lifted and burst through the stratified rocks which lay above the granite, tilting them up, so as to form a continuous line of foot-hills along the base of the central chain. These foot-hills are now intersected by magnificent gorges and ravines locally known as Canons which are sometimes clothed with the richest verdure, but more often are bleak and bare. In the glacial period the torrents which rushed down the mountain sides formed vast lakes in the hollows and depressions of the plateaux. 46 CLEAR CREEK CANON, SCENERY OF COLORADO. These have since dried up, and their beds, here called parks, covered with rich alluvial soil, are of extraordinary fertility. The old Spanish name of this district, adopted as that of the State, Colorado, is taken from the extraordinary colours of the upturned rocks. The prevailing tint is red, varying from a deep crimson to a delicate pink. But there are masses of black porphyry, magne- sian limestone purely white, and serpentine in all its mult i tu d i n ou s shades of green. These, especially as seen by the light of the rising or setting sun, have a | weird and fairy- like effect, unlike 5 anything of earth ; and the shapes are ? as strange as the colours. The fri able rocks, worn away by aqueous and atmospheric action, assume the most grotesque forms. Here are battlements which seem to have been reared by the Titans of old. There we pass through a narrow portal where only two or three persons can walk abreast between mighty masses which rise perpendicularly to a height of many hundred feet. Elsewhere, as in Monument Park, Glen Eyrie, and the Garden of the Gods, are detached pyramids, obelisks and shafts, which it seems scarcely possible to regard as mere freaks ST. LOUIS TO DENVER. of nature, so much do they resemble the products of barbaric art. Some have the form of inverted pyramids, resting on a base so slender, with the upper part overhanging so perilously, that one almost fears to walk under them, lest a gust of wind should overthrow the ill-balanced mass. It is at Glen Eyrie, the residence of General Palmer, that this extra ordinary effect is seen most finely. ______ Here, at the point where some of the wildest and most savage canons in Colorado converge, O ' there is a glen of exquisite beauty, irri gated by perennial streams from the surrounding moun tains. The bed of the valley is laid out as a garden, and abounds in choice plants and flowers. The rocks on either side are of fantastic shapes, and range in colour from brilliant red, through orange and yellow, to a dazzling white. Slender shafts and pinnacles rise from the valley to a height of two hundred feet, some of these rest ing upon bases so worn by torrents that they are only a few yards in circumference. The wonder is that the overhanging mass has not long ago toppled over. Amongst the innumerable canons within easy reach of Denver or Colorado Springs, each of which deserves a visit and will well repay the MIDDLE 1'AKK. CLEAR CREEK CANON. tourist who can devote some weeks to explore their beauties, there is one which claims special mention Clear Creek Canon. The gorge is so narrow that in many places the torrent which roars along the bottom fills up the whole space. Often the mountains seem to close in upon its tortuous windings, so as to leave no more possibility of entrance or exit than if we were in the crater of a vast volcano, till, by some sudden turn, a passage is discovered. Far overhead are peaks covered with perpetual snow, standing out in strong relief against the clear blue sky beyond. Yet along the bottom of this ravine, Yankee ingenuity has constructed a railroad. It is of the narrowest possible gauge, so that the cars look like a toy train, never intended for actual work. The track doubles backwards and forwards, following the windings of the ravine, with curves so sharp that it is a pardonable exaggera tion when we are told that the driver on the engine can shake hands with the guard at the other end _^______ of the train. Only when we reach the terminus at Black Hawk and Central City do we discover the reason for this extraordinary engineering feat. At the head of the canon are some of the richest mines of Colorado. The hills are honey combed with mines, the annual product of which is over two million dollars. The streets of Central City are said to be paved with gold, being macadamised with the refuse from the mines, from which the ore has been but imperfectly extracted. A school-house, superior in size, architectural pretensions, and internal fittings to those recently erected by the London School Board, occupies a commanding position. The churches are numerous and well-filled. In one of these I heard a sermon which, though rude in style and abounding in illustrations somewhat offensive to a refined taste, was yet most forcible in thought, and full of excellent truth, setting forth Christ as the only hope and refuge of the sinner. It was listened to with earnest and devout attention by a congregation of miners, who evidently appreciated and rejoiced in the saving truths which they heard. The reckless and lawless character which prevailed amongst the early gold diggers seems to be passing away as they come under the influence of settled habits and religious teaching. GEORGETOWN, ROCKY MOUNTAINS. ST. LOUIS TO DENVER. Like most of the towns in America, Central City, though only a few years old, has been more than once devastated by fire. About a year and a half ago a large district of the city was thus destroyed. But, with charac teristic energy, the process of rebuilding was commenced before the flames had been entirely extinguished. Amongst the new edifices erected upon the site of the ruins is a large hotel. The bill of fare on the day I dined there is a curiosity in its way, as showing how sumptuous a repast is prepared, even in a mining village in the States. DINNER BILL OF FARE. Central Cify t Co/., Tuesday, June i, 1875. SOUP. Vermicelli. FISH. Mackerel, Butter Sauce. BOILED. Fresh Beef, Tomato Sauce. Corned Beef. Mutton, Caper Sauce. Tongue. ROAST. Ribs of Beef, Brown Sauce. Loin of Beef. Veal with Dressing. COLD. Mutton. Roast Beef. Tongue. Corned Beef. Pork. ENTRIES. Braised Brisket of Mutton, Egg Sauce. Baked French Beans with Salt Pork. Fricandeau of Veal, Tomato Sauce. Stewed Tripe, a la Financier. Fried Calves' Liver, Brown Sauce. RELISHES. Worcestershire Sauce. New York Cheese. Ohio Cheese. Cumberland Sauce. Pepper Sauce. Cucumber Pickles. Tomato Catsup. Horseradish. VEGETABLES. Tomatoes. Rice. Sweet Corn. Mashed Potatoes. Boiled Potatoes. Browned Potatoes. PUDDING. Tapioca Pudding, Vanilla Sauce. PASTRY. Whortleberry Pie. Green Apple Pie. Blackberry Pie. CAKE. Pound Cake. Jelly Cake. Chocolate Cake. Cocoauut Cake. Lafayette Cake. DESSERT. Ice Cream. Gooseberry Tarts. Peach Tarts. Blanc mange. Apples. TEA. COFFEE. A vivid contrast to the intensely active life of the mining towns of Colorado is afforded by the prehistoric remains in which the territory abounds. Those recently discovered are especially interesting, as showing that at some remote period the continent was occupied by a race much higher in civilisation than the nomads who held it at the time of its dis covery in the fifteenth century. They consist of buildings of hewn stone, the masonry of which is well executed, each successive layer breaking joints with the one below it. The two storeys of which the houses generally consisted are divided by cedar beams. The decorations of the walls, abundant fragments of broken pottery, and obsidian implements, show that the builders had attained a certain amount of artistic taste and domestic luxury. Some of these remains are found in valleys and open plains, and, from PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES IN COLORADO. their extent, suggest that towns of considerable size once stood where now all is silence and desolation. Others are on the edge of bluffs, and seem to have served as strongholds to which the people might retire ' when attacked by their enemies. The following description of these curious relics of a race which has disappeared and left no other trace of their existence is from a series of articles by Dr. Peale in the Illustrated Christian Weekly of New York. ' Traces of an old stairway cut in the rock were found leading to the narrow ledge upon which the house was built. The depth of this ledge DISTANT VIEW OF PIKE'S PEAK. was about ten feet, the length twenty feet. It was overhung by the rocks of the cliff, the intervening space being about fifteen feet. Part of the ledge was reserved as a sort of esplanade, a portion of the wall separating it from the ledge beyond still remaining. The house consists of two storeys, and has a total height of twelve feet, leaving two or three feet space between the top of the wall and the overhanging rock. The roof, if any ever existed, has been removed. A ground plan would show a front room about six by nine feet, and back of it two smaller ones, the left-hand one projecting beyond the front room in an L. These rooms were each five by seven feet, and have the face of the cliff as a back wall. ST. LOUIS TO DENVER. upon them. Directly opposite was another which opened into a large reservoir or cistern, the upper walls of which came nearly to the top of the window. This cistern was semi circular, having a capacity of about two and a half hogsheads. Extending from the window to the bottom of the reservoir was a series of cedar pegs about a foot apart, forming a rude sort of staircase. The stones of the front walls, although not laid in regular courses, were all squared and smoothly faced, ranging in 56 In the lower ^ front room were two apertures, one twenty by thirty inches, serving as a door, opening on the esplanade. This had its lower sill about two feet from the floor. The other opening was a small out look about twelve inches square, near the ceiling, and overlooking the canon or valley. In the upper storey was a window corresponding in size, shape, and position to the larger opening below, both commanding an extended view down the canon. The upper lintel was of small, straight cedar sticks, laid close to gether, the masonry resting ANCIENT WATCH-TOWER. PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES IN COLORADO. size from fifteen inches in length and eight inches in thickness to a very small size. Perpendiculars were regarded, the angles squared, and about the corners and windows considerable care and judgment were evident in the overlapping of the joints. The back walls were built of rough stone, firmly cemented, the interstices between the larger stones carefully chinked in with smaller bits. The partitions were similar to the front walls, both presenting the appearance of having been rubbed smooth after being built. The apertures leading from room to room were small, corresponding in -size and position to those outside. The walls of the lower and upper first rooms were plastered CLIFF HOUSE, MANGOS CANON. with a layer of firm cement about an eighth of an inch in thickness, of a deep maroon colour, with a dingy white band eight inches broad running around floor, sides, and ceiling. The floor had also been levelled with a cement similar to that on the walls. I have given a detailed description of this house because it illustrates the wonderful perseverance and ingenuity of its builders. It also proves them possessed of not a little taste, as shown in the neatness of the masonry and the ornamentation of the rooms. ' This cliff house is a typical specimen of the buildings which extended for a considerable distance along the ledge, which was evidently thickly peopled. ST. LOUIS TO DENVER. Ruins of half a dozen smaller houses were found in the immediate vicinity of the one shown in the illustration. The greater number, however, were found in the valley, where they are of two kinds, viz., in square blocks and circular towers. One of the latter was found in the midst of a group of dimly-marked ruins surrounding it for about twenty rods in all directions. This tower consisted of two lines of walls with a single circular room in the centre, while the outside space was divided into six equal apartments each about four feet wide. The inner room was twelve feet in diameter. CLIFF HOUSE, MANGOS CANON. The wall between was one foot thick and pierced with window-like doors opening into the circle. Only eight feet of the inner wall and about fifteen of the outer remained, the total height, judging from the amount of debris, being originally about twenty feet. The stones of which it was constructed were irregular in size, with their outer surfaces uniformly dressed. Some of the towers are single-walled, and seem to have been connected with rectangular buildings. They were all evidently built by the same people that built the cliff houses. The people inhabiting them seem to have devoted themselves mainly to agricultural pursuits. They probably built the cliff houses as places 58 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES IN COLORADO. of refuge from the attacks of their enemies. On some of the cliffs there are o inscriptions, which are supposed, however, to be of later origin. Some of the buildings seem to have had underground rooms, and an excavation would probably reveal the existence of many interesting relics, from which much information in regard to the manner of life might be gained." Who and what the builders of these ruined cities were, can only be matter of conjecture. They seem to have been distinct alike from the mound builders of the Mississippi Valley, and the Aztecs of Mexico, and RUINS ON THE HOVENWEEP. to have occupied this portion of the continent at a date earlier than that of the Red Indians who, at a comparatively recent period, poured down from the north upon the peaceful settlers of the south. Driven from the valleys and plains by the fierce nomads, they sought refuge on the bluffs where their strongholds are yet to be found in good preservation. Gradually they have disappeared, as their successors are now disappearing, before the advance of the white man. This fact should not be forgotten when we indulge in regrets on the rapid extinction of the Indian tribes. They are not the aboriginal inhabitants. ST. LOUIS TO DENVER. They are a race of invading savages, who have swept with devastating fury over the continent within the last thousand years. This affords no justifica tion for the unscrupulous manner in which they have been robbed of their land and driven from their hunting-grounds. Still less can it palliate the conduct of those who have introduced amongst them the vices of civilised life, whilst they have withheld from them its blessings. Whether under wiser and more Christian treatment the Indians mijjht have been reclaimed, C? and remained as a permanent element of the American population, is too wide a question to be discussed here. We can only hope and pray that the vigorous and energetic race who have supplanted all their predecessors on this vast continent, may increasingly do the will and seek the glory of Him, who " hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation." GLEN IRIS FALLS. ^rMlj^ |*g ftMONQ^T THE TN the spring of 1873, when travelling in Egypt and Palestine, I fell in INDIANS WEST OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. with a party of Mormons, or Latter Day Saints, as they call themselves. It was commonly believed that they were "prospecting for a new location," and the Jordan Valley was pointed out as its probable site. The valley would afford every advantage for a Mormon settlement, possessing a fertile soil, a semi- tropical climate, with abundant natural irrigation, though now lying unculti vated and uninhabited. They strenuously disclaimed any intention of seeking a new home in the East, and gave themselves out to be merely simple AMONGST THE MORMONS. travellers like myself. In the course ot our frequent conversations, they pressed me to visit them in Salt Lake City, and promised to make my stay with them interesting and pleasant. I therefore determined to accept the invitation. The railway from Denver runs over a grand stretch of rolling prairie, till at Cheyenne it connects with the Union Pacific line. The ascent of the Rocky Mountains is now commenced in earnest, and at Sherman the highest point is reached, eight thousand two hundred and forty-two feet above the level of the sea. This is the water shed of the continent. The streams, which hitherto have emptied themselves into the Atlantic or the Gulf of Mexico, , now make their way to the Pacific. The scenery is not very striking, and 5 the route chosen offers no great engi- s neering difficulties, though the gradients in some places are rather severe. It '. is only as we enter Utah, and approach Ogden, the point of junction with the Central Pacific and the Utah railroads, 3 that the grand scenery of the Rocky a Mountains comes into view. The track sometimes winds along the bottom of a wild ravine, with precipitous walls of granite on either hand. Canons now gloomy and savage, then radiant in verdant beauty run up into the mountains. Waterfalls come tumbling down from dizzy heights overhead. Huge masses of rock, torn and splin tered into grotesque shapes, seem to have been fashioned by the fantastic caprices of genii rather than by the unaided operations of nature. One of the most remarkable of these rock- formations is known as the Devil's Slide. A mass of dark red sandstone rises to a height of eight hundred feet. Up the side of this mountain, from the base to the summit, runs a mass of white limestone, consisting of a smooth floor about fifteen feet wide, on either side of which is a wall varying from ten to THE NARROWS, UTAH. CROSSING THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. thirty feet in height. As seen from the railway, it resembles a huge mass of masonry. Even on a closer inspection it is difficult to discover by what natural agency it has been produced. There is a pre cisely similar forma tion called by the same name in the Yellowstone. A solitary pine, known as the thou sand mile tree, is now passed. It is so called from the fact that it stands at that distance from Omaha, on the Missouri River, the eastern terminus of the Pacific line. A vivid illustration is thus afforded of the rapid growth of the western terri tory. In the year 1860, Omaha and Council Bluffs, on the opposite bank of the river, were little more than Indian trading posts on the western fron tier, marking the extreme limits of civilisation. Omaha is now a busy and prosperous city of THE DEVIL'S SLIDE. twenty thousand in habitants, with a direct railway communication of two thousand miles to the Pacific coast, and at least a dozen other lines, running north, east, and south. 65 AMONGST THE MORMONS. Making our way along the bottom of the Weber Canon we see on the right a precipitous wall of rock, the summit of which at a dizzy height overhead has buttresses and battlements like a mighty fortress. Here, in the early days of the settlement in Salt Lake Valley, a body of Mormons were stationed by Brigham Young to stop the progress of the United States troops on their march to enforce Federal law in the disturbed districts. Great blocks of stone were poised upon the edge of the cliff ready to be hurled down into the ravine below. The fort was held for some time by a band of desperadoes watching for the soldiers to pass ; but the peril was averted by timely negotiations. At Ogden, one thousand and thirty-two miles from Omaha, and nine hundred miles from San Francisco, we find ourselves at the entrance of the valley rendered famous throughout the world by the Mormon settlement. It consists of a broad open plain, running far up into the Wasatch Range, a part of the Rocky Mountain chain. The Great Salt Lake, from which it takes its name, lies at the northern end of the valley, near to Ogden. Its dimensions are variously stated. Those given by Hepworth Dixon, " a hundred and fifty miles long by a hundred broad," are clearly exaggerated. A hundred and twenty-five miles in length by fifty in breadth are probably nearer the truth. Like the Dead Sea, it is so saturated by salt that no fish can live in it, and its specific gravity is so great that it is scarcely possible for the human body to sink. It resembles the Dead Sea further in having no exit, the contents of the streams which flow into it being carried off by evaporation alone. About sixty miles farther up the valley is the Utah Lake, whose waters are pure and sweet. The two are joined together by the River Jordan, a turbid and turbulent stream. The Mormons lay great stress upon the resemblance between the hydrography of their territory and that of Palestine their sweet-water lake, river, and salt lake bearing a curious similarity to the Biblical Sea of Galilee, Jordan, and Dead Sea. It would be difficult to exaggerate the glory and beauty of the scenery of the Salt Lake Valley. " The scene, from whatever point of view it may be taken, is one of the half-dozen pure and perfect landscapes which the earth can show." My first visit was shortly before sunset in early summer. The waters of the lake, along whose shores the railway runs for about forty miles, were exquisitely clear, breaking upon the beach in white foam. Mountains on either side, many of them rising to a height of eleven thousand feet, were crowned with snow. The setting sun poured a flood of golden light into the valley. The air was so bright that the most distant objects stood out to view with a marvellous distinctness. The soil was gay with innumerable flowers. We passed smiling homesteads, surrounded by orchards and gardens, meadows as green as those of the Emerald Isle, fields of corn as carefully cultivated as those of England. Then the city came in view, with a foreground of lake and pasture land, a background of mountains. It has APPROACH TO SALT LAKE CITY. the appearance of a vast garden, dotted here and there with houses. Though the popula tion of the city and suburbs is under twenty thousand, it covers an area of nine miles. The streets, each one hundred and thirty-two feet wide, are lined with shade trees, and a stream of water runs between the roadway and the side walks. Excepting in the main business thoroughfares, each house stands in its own separate inclosure, which is com monly planted with fruit trees, reminding me, at first sight, of Damascus, which is hidden in the same way by the orchards and gardens that surround it. It is difficult to believe, what, is never theless true, that this luxuriant fertility is entirely due to careful cultivation and to artificial irrigation. When the Mormons first settled here the valley was a barren desert of sage bush and alkali dust. A famous hunter and trapper, named Bridger, declared that he would give a thousand dollars for every ear of corn that was raised. The only human being occupying the arid waste wen; Digger Indians, the most degraded and miserable of their race, subsisting on insects, reptiles, and roots. One of the leaders in the emigration from Nauvoo, who endured all its perils and hardships, said to me, " My faith never faltered, my courage never failed, till I emerged from the canon looking down upon the valley. When I saw it, I said to myself, ' Can this barren, desolate spot be the promised land, the home of the Latter Day Saints ? ' Only by resolute industry and skilful engineering the change has been effected. The streams which flowed down the mountain sides were turned into irriga tion canals and distributed over the land. The alluvial soil which they brought down with them was deposited on the surface, turning the alkali dust into a rich black loam, producing crops of marvellous richness and AMONGST THE MORMONS, abundance. It is not easy to understand why so unfavourable a site as that of the Salt Lake Valley was selected for the Mormon settlement. Many spots might have been chosen equally removed from the fear of invasion, and which would not have required so vast an expenditure of labour to bring under cultivation and to keep in a condition of productiveness. If the efforts of the Mormons were to relax only for a year or two the valley would return to its original barrenness. It has been calculated that the money value of the labour employed would have bought the land many times over, so that it has been a costly blunder, notwithstanding the boasting of the Mormons and the extravagant praises of their inconsiderate admirers. This fact must be borne in mind, if we would arrive at a correct estimate of the Mormon question. The public buildings in the city have no preten sions to architectural merits. Most of them are absolutely ugly. The temple, which is only raised a few feet from the ground, is built of grey granite. Its design is said to have been given by re velation, but it is never likely to be carried forward to com pletion. The tabernacle is a curiously-shaped edifice, not unlike a huge fish-kettle. It is said that eleven thou sand persons can be com fortably seated, and can hear without difficulty. This is probably an exaggeration. I should say that six or seven thousand is nearer the truth. But there can be no doubt that its acoustic properties are admir able. It was well filled on the only occasion on which I attended a service in it, and every word was distinctly audible. Round the front of the large deep gallery are mottoes texts of Scripture, extracts from the Book of Mormon, and proverbs exhorting to thrift and industry ; one in a conspicuous place declares that " Children are Utah's best crop." The history of the march of the Mormons from Nauvoo across the prairies and mountains, and their settlement on this spot, affords a curious record of superstition and credulity on one hand, of fearless courage and WAGGON LOAD OF MORMONS AT OGDEN CANON. 70 GREAT MORMON EXODUS. indomitable resolution on the other. I will give the narrative as it was told to me, using as far as possible the very words of one of the most prominent actors in the affair. "It had been revealed to the prophet, and confirmed to Brigham, that the saints were to find a new home far beyond the reach of the United States Government, where they should dwell undisturbed. The precise locality was unknown, and a band of pioneers, con sisting of one hundred and forty-four men and four women, were sent on ahead. As they went forward they selected suitable spots on the line of march, where they broke up the soil, sowed corn, and left some cattle, with a few men to guard them from the Indians. The rest of us were formed into bands to follow in their trail. Some had light waggons, others travel led on foot, dragging in barrows and hand-carts what few goods they had saved from the wreck at Nauvoo. We had to march over a thousand miles, through a country without roads and without inhabitants, except hostile Indians, who plundered us and killed stragglers when ever they got a chance. We were two years in the wilderness before we reached our destination. "When we arrived at one of the camping grounds prepared for us by the pioneers, we halted for awhile, reaped the corn, broke up the soil afresh, cast in seed for those who came after us, and then moved on again, taking with us some of the cattle, and leaving behind such as could travel no farther without rest. When the winter came upon us we dug out caves for F 73 THE TABERNACLE IN SALT LAKE CITY. 250 fat I"i i$ofeet widc t and 80 feet high. AMONGST THE MORMONS. CROSSING THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN'S. the women and children, and the men did the best they could to keep themselves from freezing to death. Many died from cold, hunger, thirst, and sickness, or were murdered by the Indians. At last we reached this place. A more desolate, hopeless desert you never saw. The alkali dust flew up in clouds when you kicked it. When we turned the water GREAT MORMON EXODUS. upon it, you would have said that it would swallow up all the water in the sea without ever becoming a bit the moister. But in a week or two we could see that it would turn out good soil after all. " About three years after our settlement here we had plenty to eat, and our crops were magnificent. But we were as nearly as possible without clothes, and could not buy any. I was brought down to a pair of tattered pantaloons and a ragged woollen shirt, with no prospect of getting any more. Then came the great rush westward to the Californian gold diggings. Teamsters worn out and dead beat by the toil and sufferings of the journey were glad to barter a waggon and four fine eastern horses for a light cart and a pair of little Indian ponies. I bought a pair of pantaloons for a pail of RESIDENCE OF BRIGHAM YOUNG, SALT LAKE CITY. From a Pliotograph. buttermilk. All the fruit and fresh provisions we had to spare were eagerly exchanged for clothing and other luxuries. Our people went back on the trail for over three hundred miles, and returned laden with the goods cast away by emigrants who could carry them no farther, or who died, leaving them on the road. All sorts of things were brought in bales of clothing, implements and tools of every kind, waggons, horses, rifles, revolvers.* " Up to this time we had plenty of provisions, but no money. All trade was done by barter. But now the American Government sent down troops to overawe us. They camped up at Fort Douglas yonder, and had * My informant did not tell me, what is, however, affirmed positively by all their neighbours, that many a poor fellow was murdered in cold blood, and left on the prairie by Mormon desperadoes, who enriched themselves by plunder. AMONGST THE MORMONS. to buy everything they wanted from us, and to do so at our prices. When the troops were withdrawn, they sold back again to us what they did not want, and again had to do so at our prices, so that we made a good thing of it both ways. For instance, they supplied sacks, which were worth a dollar a piece, being made of the best double domestic ; we filled them with flour, for which we charged six dollars. When they left we bought back sack and flour for half-a-dollar. That wasn't bad trade. By this time we had got well established, and have done well ever since." It is difficult for a visitor, however great his advantages may be, to arrive at a correct judgment as to the actual condition and prospects of this strange people. The impression left upon my own mind, after careful inquiries made under exceptionally favourable circumstances, was as follows : FORT DOUGLAS CAM!', AND KE1J UUTTKS RAVINE, NEAR SALT LAKE CITY. The material prosperity of the Mormons cannot be doubted. The opening of the Pacific Railway, and the development of the mining industry of the territory have secured for them a market for the sale of their produce. Immense quantities of fruit and vegetables are forwarded to all parts of the States, and from their excellent quality command high prices. The policy of the leaders has been to prevent the people from working the mines* themselves, and to be contented with the large and certain profits they may make by the sale of provisions to the miners and other Gentile immigrants. Upon this rapid increase of wealth there has followed * The great Emma Mine, in which so large an amount of English capital has been sunk, lies at a short distance from Salt Lake City. 76 THE NARROWS, NORTH FORK OF THE RIO VIRGEN, UTAH. PRESENT CONDITION OF THE MORMONS. a diminution of fanaticism. With comfortable homes, luxuriant orchards, and thriving farms, they seem to be settling down into a quiet, orderly com munity. One of the wealthiest men in the territory, who had been himself a Mormon, but who is so no longer, said, " Up to five years ago, I never ventured to walk on the side walk after dark. I always kept to the middle of the roadway with my hand on my revolver. Had I not done so I should certainly have been assassinated. Now I go where I please, and when I please, with no more fear than if I were in New York." The question of poly gamy is, of course, a crucial one. The women seemed to me to have a depressed and dejected air, with no thing of the brightness and o o buoyancy of happy wives and mothers. But it is doubtful whether the plu rality of wives can be per manently maintained. So long as there was a large excess of female immigrants from Europe, there were obvious reasons for retaining the unnatural and unchris tian system. These reasons are, however, now ceasing to operate. A schism has already occurred, and seems to be spreading ; the se- ceders protest that poly gamy ought never to have been introduced, and must be at once abandoned. Some of them go so far as to insist that it never had the sanction of Joseph Smith at all, but was foisted upon Mormonism by Brigham Young for his own purposes. George A. Smith, cousin, I believe of "the prophet," historian of the church, and first councillor of the president, said to me, " The only passage in the Book of Mormon which speaks of polygamy condemns it, and denounces the judgment of God upon those who practise it. It was only when Joseph Smith's wife got old and ugly, that a second revelation came authorising him to take another wife. If ever the O time comes for it, we can go back upon the first revelation." This, BRIGHAM YOUNG. AMONGST THE MORMONS. however, was a purely theoretical opinion, as the speaker confessed to four teen wives ! One thing seemed clear to me either polygamy will have to be abandoned, or it will result in the breaking up of the whole Mormon system. Mormonism as it at present exists is the creation of Brigham Young, a man of great ability and energy. Up to his death in his seventy-seventh year, he retained the supreme management of the affairs of the community in his own hands. During the troublous times through which the Latter Day Saints passed, his despotic authority was submitted to without a murmur. But at the time of my visit complaints against him were making themselves heard. A man of high position in the city, an orthodox and devoted Mormon, said, " He keeps everything in his own hands, and we wish he'd quit it." An eminent official of the United States Government, who had been appointed to investigate and report upon the policy to be pursued in regard to the Mormons, expressed to me his strong conviction that the system would break up on the death of Brigham Young. Recent reports seem to show that the organisation is already in process of dis integration. From the history even of this gross and vulgar caricature of Christianity we may gather some practical lessons. The inexpediency as well as the wickedness of persecution. Towards the close of Joseph Smith's life he was evidently losing hold upon his followers. Complaints of his hypocrisy, sensuality, and lying were common. Deep distrust of his pretended revelations was making itself felt even amongst his adherents. It is probable that the delusion would speedily have passed away, if its opponents had confined themselves to argument, or assailed it only by legitimate means. But they proceeded to open violence ; courts of law were made the instruments of inflicting severe penalties for imaginary offences. At last, the prison in which Smith was illegally confined was broken open by a band of armed ruffians, and he was foully murdered in cold blood. This made him a hero in the eyes of his disciples. The man who had been denounced as a swindler and impostor was now revered as a martyr, saint, and prophet. Fanatical enthusiasm took the place of suspicion and hostility. History records many instances in which persecution has had a similar effect, but few so striking as this. Christianity, which suffered so severely from per secution in its infancy, cannot need, and ought never to wield, such weapons as these. "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds." The power of faith. An influential school of teachers in the present day disparage faith and glorify doubt. They speak contemptuously of definite convictions and steadfast belief, and inculcate the strange doctrine that a sceptical and unbelieving temper is wisest and best. But it is impossible not to see that faith is an element of strength, and doubt of weakness. He, PRACTICAL LESSONS. and he only, who believes firmly will act vigorously. Even in mundane affairs, the victory which overcometh the world is faith. In the days when Mormonism came into existence, communistic and semi-communistic schemes were rife. America was the chosen home for theorists who endeavoured to reconstruct society on a new basis. Throughout the United States scores of communities were founded having this object in view. Most of them were atheistic or deistic in their character. Throwing aside all religious creeds, they hoped to establish themselves upon the principles of refined selfishness or of abstract science. They have, with very few exceptions, dwindled away and disappeared. They lacked the ardent enthusiasm which only religious faith can impart. Philosophical speculations can never give cohesion to an from a Photograph. TOWNSEND HOUSE, SALT LAKE CITY. aggregate of individual atoms. The deep-rooted selfishness of the human heart cannot be eradicated by vague doctrines of universal benevolence. Mormonism, grotesque and crude and false as it is, yet supplied a religious basis, kindled enthusiastic devotion, and excited for awhile a vigorous faith. In that faith its adherents triumphed over persecution, endured that long and terrible march of two years over a thousand miles of desert, and established themselves in their new home. They believed that God was their guardian and guide and friend, and in that faith they were strong. Scepticism has no such feats to record, no such trophies to display. The influence of the creed upon the life. Whilst one school of modern teachers disparages faith as a motive power and principle of action, another exaggerates its value. " Only believe," they say, " and it matters little AMONGST THE MORMONS. what you believe. Strength and sincerity of faith are everything, the object of faith Odin or Buddha, the Koran or the Gospel is of secondary im portance." But the value of our subjective act of faith is determined by its objective character. " As a man thinketh in his heart so is he." A sensual and materialistic creed, like that of Mormonism, degrades and debases its adherents to its own level. As well expect to gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles as to find a noble and holy life developed by faith in a system which denies the spirituality of the Divine nature, inculcates polygamy as a duty, and gives the assurance of salvation to the mere mechanical performance of outward rites. Mormonism, it is true, has retained many of the distinctive doctrines of Christianity. But these are obscured or perverted by impure and absurd additions. Its success hitherto is due to the measure of truth it has preserved. Its impending downfall will be brought about as a natural and inevitable, result of the immoral and unchristian articles of its creed. If this be admitted, there follows of course the correlative truth, that we who profess a purer faith ought to be distin guished by a purer and holier life. Remembering the lofty morality which the Gospel inculcates, and the potent motives which the life and death of our Lord supply, " What manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and godliness ! " EAGLE GATE AT THE SCHOOL HOUSE OF BRIGHAM YOUNG. The gateway surmounted by a hive, the symbol of Deseret, abcn'e which is the American eagle. ' : kM / ^^^^^4^ A'.& . ',>.':' ^ -' --< - W&' \ '- - ..]-':,- '.-.'. -f-^ ; \' y/V^^/l^' ^ivki .', AT Ogden, we leave the Union Pacific line, and transfer our selves into the cars of the Central Pacific, which are to convey us about nine hundred miles to San Francisco. After skirting the shores of the Great Salt Lake, and enjoy ing magnificent views of the valley, we reach in a couple of hours Pro montory Point, where, on the loth of May, 1869, the junction was made, and the last rail laid, completing the railway communication between the Atlantic CATTLE RANCH IN CALIFORNIA. THE NEW EL DORADO. and Pacific Oceans. A silver spike was brought by the governor of Arizona, another was contributed by the citizens of Nevada, and two golden ones by the Californians. They were driven home into a sleeper of California!! laurel by a silver hammer. As the last blow was struck, the hammer was placed in direct connection with a telegraph wire. " Thus the instant that the work was consummated, the result was simultaneously saluted on the shores of two great oceans, and throughout the wide expanse of a vast continent by the roar of cannon and the ringing of bells." The line now enters and traverses the Great American Desert. This was probably the bed of a vast inland sea, of which only a few stagnant pools of water, intensely salt and bitter, now remain- It is a region of utter desolation. The surface is white with a saline efflorescence. Clouds of alkali dust, pungent and irritating, fill the air. Eyes, nostrils, and lips smart with the corrosive particles which settle upon the skin. Even the railway traveller who is exposed to the annoyance for only a few hours is thankful to escape from it. What must it have been to the early immigrants, who had to toil across the arid waste for days, and in constant fear of perishing by thirst ! Leaving this dreary desert, and passing the fertile plains watered by the Humboldt River, which flows westward for two hundred and fifty miles, then sinks into the sand and disappears, the great mining district of Nevada is entered. Up to the year 1849, these regions, now amongst the wealthiest and busiest in the world, were inhabited only by Indians and a few Spanish settlers. The discovery of gold in California, and silver in Nevada, has drawn hither immigrants from every part of the globe. At first only surface mining placer or gulch mining, as it is called was carried on. The superficial deposits in the beds of streams and the bottoms of gullies were dug out. The soil was washed away, and grains or nuggets of the precious metal were left at the bottom of the pan. Though the whole soil of California is auriferous,* yet gold is only found in paying quantities in certain localities. These were soon exhausted. It then became necessary to substitute costly engineering operations for the old simple processes. Shafts and tunnels were excavated to reach, and machinery was employed to crush, the metalliferous quartz. The diggers, who for the most part squandered their money as rapidly as they had gained it, were without the means to engage in these enterprises. Capitalists now came into the field, and joint stock companies were formed. In some cases a number of miners clubbed together to effect by co-operation what they could not accomplish singly. Gradually the wild digger life gave place to settled, organised industry. The more adventurous spirits went farther afield, to * A friend of mine, questioning the accuracy of this statement, was requested to select any part of the orchard in which we were standing. Having fixed upon a spot under an apple tree, a tin pan filled with water was brought, and soil from amongst the roots of the tree was placed in it. A few dexterous turns of the wrist sufficed to wash away the earth, and grains of gold were found in considerable number. 84 SILVER MINING IN NEVADA. prospect for new gullies in which the precious metal might yet be found in paying quantities. At this time the discovery of gold and silver in Nevada was announced, and a rush eastward was made to the new El Dorado. The same results have followed here as in California. The surface diggings have been nearly exhausted, and immense engineering works have been carried out, which for extent may vie with those of the Old World. The most important of these are on the great Comstock Lode, of which SILVER MINING IN NEVADA. Virginia City is the centre. The shafts and tunnels run for miles below the surface, and the produce of one of the mines the Virginia Consolidated had been for some time at the rate of a million dollars of silver per month. The shares of this mine were scarcely saleable at any price whilst the shafts necessary to reach the reef were being constructed. They are now of an almost fabulous value. And this is only one of many mining ventures in the district which have been equally successful. A writer in a magazine published in San Francisco, the Overland Monthly, gives the following vivid description THE NEW EL DORADO. of one of these mining towns: "At the door a pack train of Mexican mules are being loaded with the precious ore for the mills, two miles to the south west, and two thousand feet lower down. In the shed men are busy at great piles of brown, blue, red, green, and black rock, breaking it to pieces and sorting it, the richest being thrown aside for the crucible, and the rest going into the sacks to be packed away to the mill. There is a princely fortune in this pile of ore, which to the uninitiated eye is but a heap of broken rock fit only for building walls or macadamising public streets. Over SILVER CITY, NEVADA. 1' roil t a Photograph. one of the hoisting shafts there is a large wooden bucket with a rope and rude windlass, such as you might see on the prospecting shaft of the poorest miner. It has served for hoisting all this wealth to the surface. In this bucket we descended into the mine. A long, narrow chamber, with dull, dark walls, and a few men at work with pick and gad, were all that the first glance revealed, and there was a momentary feeling of disappointment. A closer inspection showed that the walls, the ceiling, the floor, were silver. This lump will yield five dollars a pound, this six, this seven, this eight, and this, which will flatten like lead under the hammer, is worth within SILVER MINING IN NEVADA. a fraction of ten dollars a pound. They tell us that there is a million dollars worth of silver piled up before our eyes in this gloomy cavern, and such is indeed the fact." The total produce of gold and silver throughout these Western States, was returned for 1875 at eighty million eight hundred and eighty-nine thousand and thirty-seven dollars. A deficient water supply in California, and the destructive fire which swept over Virginia City, suspending the operations of STREET IN VIRGINIA CITY, NEVADA. From a Photograph. some of the richest mines, made the gross product less than it would have otherwise been. It is probable that Nevada alone will in a single year yield not less than fifty million dollars worth of the precious metals. In fact, there is ore sufficient in sight in half-a-dozen mines to multiply that amount ten times over. The yield is, however, limited to the capacity of the mills for reduction rather than that of the mines for production. And still the developments are increasing day by day. Though the natural beauty of the scenery suffers greatly from the THE NEW EL DORADO. labour of excavation, and its hidden are seen piled on the platforms of the stations, round which rude rough miners group themselves picturesquely, discussing the chances of a new venture, or about to start for some recently discovered digging. The claims forsaken as unprofitable by white men are taken up by Chinese immigrants, who grow rich out of "stuff" which has been rejected as worthless by Euro peans or Americans. Their quaint costumes mining operations which are being carried on, they yet give great interest to a railway journey. Districts which till a few years ago were unvisited by the white man are now the centres of busy industry. Huge wooden troughs called flumes are carried for miles along mountain sides, or across deep ravines, to convey water for washing the ore, or for hydraulic mining. Powerful jets of water are concentrated against the side of a hill believed to contain mineral wealth. Masses of soil are thus torn away without the cost or treasures are laid bare. Ingots of silver C.U'E HORN, ON THE PACIFIC LINE. Btt TRESTLE BRIDGES. and Mongolian features give additional variety to the scene. Indians of a debased and degraded type flock round the train, begging for whisky, tobacco, money, anything they can get. Their ugly features, daubed with vermilion, and their stunted, filthy forms, dispel whatever sentiment of romance about " the noble savage " may yet linger in the mind of the traveller. TRESTLE BK1DGE ON THE PACIFIC RAILWAY. Whilst passing through the mining district, we have been steadily climbing the slopes of the Sierra Nevada, and the scenery grows wilder and grander as we rise. The road is carried across valleys hundreds of feet in depth on rude trestle bridges, which creak and groan beneath the weight of the train. Anything apparently more insecure than these structures can hardly be found elsewhere, and I always drew a long breath of relief as I found myself THE NEW EL DORADO. TRESTLE BRIDGE VIEWED FROM BENEATH. forests, and crowned with lie embosomed in the valleys of the Sierra, supplying an element of beauty commonly wanting in mountain scenery. Two of these, Donner and Tahoe, lie at a short distance from the railway, and no traveller should fail to visit them. Snowy peaks, noble forests, grand walls of rock, a profusion of fruits and flowers, and the crystal clearness of the lakes them selves, offer a combination seldom met with, and once seen never to be forgotten. As the summit of the pass is seven thousand and forty-two feet above the level safely on the other side. It is a fearful thing to look out of the carriage windows into the dizzy depth below, and feel that if the frail fabric were to collapse, as it seems on the point of doing, we should all be dashed to pieces with no possibility of escape- Even in the Eastern States many of these primitive bridges yet remain, and it is said that few accidents have happened from their use. They are, however, very liable to destruc tion by fire, caused by burning coals falling from the engine. The view from the Summit Station, where the railway crosses the ridge of the Sierra, is one of extraordinary grandeur. Mountains clothed with magnificent pine snow, rise on either side. A series of lakes SNOWSHEDS ON THE PACIFIC LINE. SCENERY OF THE SIERRA NEVADA. Front a Photograph. POLLARD STATION, UPON LAKE DONNER. of the sea, patches of snow lie along the track for a great part of the year. For forty miles the line runs through a succession of snowsheds, con structed like those on the Simplon and other Swiss roads to prevent its being blocked up through the winter. The enjoyment of the scenery suffers greatly from this cause, as we catch momentary and tantalising glimpses THE NEW EL DORADO. of glittering peaks only to lose sight of them before their forms have been clearly seen. From the summit of the pass the railway descends six thousand feet in seventy-five miles. In about thirty miles more we reach Sacramento, the capital of the State, and the spot where, in 1848, the gold discoveries were made which have had so vast an influence not only over the American con tinent, but throughout the world. The mountains of the Coast range are now From ,i Ptiotograph. CRYSTAL LAKE, NEAR THE CISCO STATION, 5907 FEET ABOVE THE LEVEL OF THE SEA. crossed. They are ot no great height, and somewhat resemble the lower spurs of the Apennines in their picturesque forms and the exuberant fertility and glowing colour of the valleys. Soon a vast sheet of water comes into view, embosomed in hills, with no visible outlet. It is the harbour of San Francisco, the Golden Gate of the Pacific, an inland sea, ten miles in width, seventy in length, and, including the bays which run out from it, two hundred and fifty in circumference. All the navies of the world could ride at anchor here in perfect safety. It is only as we steam out into the bay that the M EARLY DAYS IN SAN FRANCISCO. entrance is seen through which the waters of the Pacific come rolling into this splendid and land-locked harbour. In the year 1849, tne s P ot where this great city of the west now stands was occupied only by a few wooden shanties, by a Spanish mission station, and ruffians and cut-throats, thieves and gamblers of every nationality. " Convicts from Australia, the scum of European cities, ' bruisers ' from New York, and ' pluguglies ' from Philadelphia, desperadoes from Central and South America, pariahs from India, and outcasts from the South Sea Islands, swooped down a hideous brood upon the infant city. Crime of almost every conceivable grade ran riot. Gambling dens monopolised the heart of the town. Murderers walked about the streets unchallenged in mid-day. Leading citizens were SAN FRANCISCO, 1849. murdered in cold blood in their places of business. No man's life, no man's property, was safe. Then followed the uprising of the people, the punishment of the principal offenders sharp, quick, terrible, and without the formulas of legal proceedings and the dispersion and flight of the more notorious ruffians. A short reign of peace and order, then a repetition in a new form of the disorders of 1850 and 1851. The era of vulgar ruffianism was followed by that of municipal corruption. The thieves and cut-throats, entrenching them selves within the precincts of the City Hall, made war upon the life of the community. Again the people rose in righteous anger. Instead of suspending the Tweeds and Connollys of 1856 from office, they suspended them from second storey windows. The remedy was harsh, but it was effective ; it was extra-judicial, but it brought order out of anarchy. The Vigilance Committee, THE NEW EL DORADO. having fulfilled its mission, dissolved, never to reappear. Henceforward San Francisco became one of the most quiet, law-abiding, well-governed cities in the world." * The last sentence in this quotation can hardly be accepted as true. That San Francisco is a city of wonderful wealth and energy, that it contains public edifices which J] would do no discredit to "any city in the world," that, remember ing what it was twenty years ago, its present peace and order are marvellous : that Judge Lynch did his extra- judicial work so well that property and life are now fairly secure all this must be ad mitted. But every news paper contains reports of deeds of violence far in excess of those in European cities. Row dies and loafers hang about the corners of the streets ready for any crime. After night fall, just off the main thoroughfares, are gambling dens, rum- holes, and dancing saloons, where no man's life would be safe. The detective officer whom I employed to conduct me through the purlieus of the Chinese quarter solemnly warned me against being entrapped into any of these haunts, adding, " Many a man who has travelled in safety all over the world has been inveigled into those places, knocked on the head, and never heard of again." I dp not mean to imply that this unfavourable description applies to the general character of San Franciscan society, but only to correct the exaggeration that, "it is one of the most quiet, law-abiding cities in the world." * Scr titter's Monthly Magazine, July, 1875. 96 STREET IN SAN FRANCISCO. PROGRESS OF SAN FRANCISCO. The growth of San Francisco has been rapid even for America. From a mere cluster of wooden shanties, it has, in little more than a quarter of a century, risen to the rank of a great city, with a quarter of a million of inhabitants, and it is estimated that at the next census, in 1880, it will have reached a population of three hundred and seventy thousand. Nearly all traces of the little village which stood upon its site in 1849 have been swept NEW clxy HALL> SAN FRANCISCO> away. Montgomery Street may vie with the Broadway of New York, Regent Street in London, or Rue de la Paix in Paris in the extent and splendour of its shops and the style of its equipages. The Palace Hotel, just approaching completion when I was there, is said to be the largest in the world. It can accommodate THE GOLDEN GATE. twelve hundred guests, and is said to have cost, including fittings, upwards of four million dollars. All its furniture is not only of Californian manufacture, but of Californian material. It has three immense inner courts roofed with THE NEW EL DORADO. glass, a marble tiled promenade, and a tropical garden filled with exotic plants. Grave doubts were expressed whether this immense structure can pay, and the liability of the city to earthquakes was given __ as a reason against build- ing so lofty an edifice. But Californians seldom care to count the cost or to dread the future. Having resolved "to do a big thing," they do it, regardless of conse quences. It is in San Fran cisco that the " Chinese question " assumes pro minence and importance. Soon after the gold dis coveries, immigrants from the Flowery Land began to arrive. Gradually they have been spreading themselves over the con tinent. They are making their appearance in the Eastern States. A few may be found in Balti more and Chicago, and their number is increas ing year by year. The employes in a shoe factory in Massachusetts having struck for wages, the manufacturer, having large contracts on hand, was compelled to concede their demands ; but the same night he despatched an agent to San Fran cisco. In three weeks he returned with two hun dred Chinamen, who soon became skilled workmen, and took the place of the Americans, who were summarily dismissed. The large influx of cheap German THE CHINESE IMMIGRATION. and Irish labour into New York has, for the present, prevented the Chinese from gaining a footing there ; but in other eastern cities the vanguard of the great army has arrived. In our journey westward, we meet them in con tinually increasing numbers. At Denver the whole of the laundry work is done by them, and many other trades are falling into their hands. In the Canons of Colorado colonies of these thrifty and industrious people are profit ably engaged in gulch mining on streams too poor to attract white men. The Pacific lines of railway were, to a great extent, constructed by Chinese labour, and it is almost ex clusively employed in the maintenance of the per manent way. It is a curious sight to see gangs of Chinamen with their smooth round faces, their pigtails twisted round their heads, their white wooden-soled shoes, and dressed in blue cotton shirts, working as navvies, with pick, shovel, and crowbar. In many of the eating-houses along the line Chinese waiters, quiet, respectful, alert, attentive, are a most agreeable change from the Irish and negroes, who swagger or dawdle behind our chairs elsewhere. In the towns of Nevada and California they occupy a quarter by themselves, in which scores or hun dreds of Celestials may be seen carrying on their trades, or placidly amusing themselves, having no intercourse with their neighbours. But it is at San Francisco that they are found in greatest numbers, forming, it is said, a seventh of the whole population. They are crowded together in a district called China Town. Here are joss-houses, restaurants, gambling-rooms, opium-dens, theatres, as exclusively and characteristically Chinese, as though it were Shanghai or Hankow, instead of an American ALLEY IN CHINESE QUARTER. THE NEW EL DORADO. city. With the exception of one main street, China Town consists of a series of blind alleys and back slums, in which the people are packed together like negroes in a slave ship. The walls of the rooms are fitted with shelves, like the bunks of an emigrant vessel. On each narrow shelf a Chinamen sleeps, and many of these are never empty, being let to three persons in the twenty- four hours, each of whom takes his turn for eight hours at a time. In the joss-houses sticks of incense are burning and cups of tea are simmering before the shrine all day long. Turn into an opium den : the atmosphere is thick and heavy with a dense blue smoke. Reclining on the boards are the wretched smokers in all stages of intoxication. Look into one of their theatres : it is filled with men, smoking and looking on with silent interest as the play, performed by actors from China, runs through its inter minable course ; it was begun a week or ten days ago, and will last for a week or ten days more ; the orchestra, seated on the stage, make the most dis cordant uproar I ever heard ; the perform ance is grotesquely absurd ; the dresses are magnificent. Here is a restaurant : all the food has been brought from China rice, dried ducks and fowls, birds'-nests, and the various comestibles which make up the Chinese cuisine. The transition from the fierce energy of life which roars along the streets of the city into the placid monotony of a civilisation as ancient as that of the Pharaohs, is almost startling. We have passed at a single step from America to Asia. What, it may be asked, is "the Chinese question," of which we hear so much in this Western country ? It is how to deal with this great tide of heathenism, pouring with an ever increasing flood into the country. Hundreds of thousands of Chinamen have already arrived, and there are a hundred million behind. W 7 ho can tell what proportions the immigration may assume ? They are strangers in the land. They will not mix with the general popu lation. They buy and sell only amongst themselves. When they have amassed a few hundred dollars, they return to their own country with the CHINESE Ol'IUM DKN. THE CHINESE QUESTION. money they have accumulated. If they die here, they have all paid into a fund to carry back their bones. In a country where no man will put a spade into the ground for less than four dollars a day, they will work hard for a dollar, and save seventy-five cents out of it. John Chinaman does not get drunk ; he never mixes in street broils ; he tells lies, and is prone to petty thefts, and is charged with debasing vices, but he keeps clear from violent crimes. He is docile, industrious, patient ; makes an admirable domestic servant. Nobody, not even a Parisian blanckisseuse^ can get up linen to compare with him. China Town is indeed filthy beyond the filth of the CHINESE THEATRE, SAN FRANCISCO. Ghetto at Rome, or the Jews' quarter in Jerusalem, but in his own person John is always clean and tidy. Whence then arises the bitter hostility with which he is regarded, and the ever recurring proposals to get rid of him as a nuisance ? He makes himself obnoxious to all classes of the community. The labourers and artisans hate him because he reduces the rate of wages by his cheap labour. Tradesmen denounce him because he spends nothing, but buys and sells only amongst his own people, importing from China all articles of consumption. Capitalists complain that, instead of adding to the accumulated wealth of the country, he carries away with him all that he has amassed during his residence THE NEW EL DORADO. in it. Politicians fear lest he should make his appearance at the ballot box, and thus disturb the course of affairs by introducing an alien element. Christians look with not unnatural alarm on the establishment in their midst of a large heathen community, idolatrous in profession, atheistic in fact, and addicted to degrading vices. Regarded as a political and economical question, the fears of the Americans seem to me to be unfounded. The fact that the immigrants do not amalgamate with the settled residents, and that they return to their own country, minimizes the danger of their interference with the Government, even in those States where they are most numerous. The abundant supply of cheap labour in the present condition of the country cannot but be an SEA-LIONS ON ROCKS OFF SAN FRANCISCO. immense advantage. The moral and religious influence 01 this immense mass of heathenism is more serious. It is gratifying to find that the Christian Church is taking up the matter in earnest. Missions have been established among them which have not been unsuccessful. In San Francisco alone there are fifteen or twenty Chinese Sunday Schools, which are well attended. The teaching is thoroughly good and evangelical. I heard the scholars sing, " Rock of Ages cleft for me," "Just as I am, without one plea," and ''Jesus, gracious Saviour, hear me," very heartily, and with apparent feeling. Two mission churches have been built, at which the attendance is very good. In one of these a Chinese convert acts as assistant minister. It is not by legislative enactment, but by the blessing of God upon such efforts as these that the COUNTRY ROUND SAN FRANCISCO. evil is to be counteracted. The earnest faithful preaching of " Christ crucified," and the inculcation of the doctrines of the Gospel, can grapple with and overcome all the evils of our corrupt nature, "for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth." Though the missionaries at work in China Town can rejoice over not a few conversions, they yet feel oppressed by the magnitude and the difficulties of the work before them, and they ask the prayers of English Christians for that Divine aid without which the most vigorous efforts will be in vain. The San Franciscans are justly proud of the scenery within easy reach of their city. Ocean and mountain and forest combine to invest it with rare MOUNT SHASTA, THE NORTHERN PEAK OF THE SIERRA NEVADA. charms, which are enhanced by a delicious climate, and an atmosphere of extraordinary purity. There are few pleasanter drives on the continent than that to the Cliff House overlooking the Pacific. Glimpses of the Golden Gate and its surrounding headlands are gained en route ; and then the glorious expanse of ocean bursts upon the view, its long rollers tumbling upon the beach, and breaking into a line of foam. Just out to sea are the Seal Rocks, covered with hundreds of sea-lions, which bask in the sun, or glide with an almost imperceptible motion into the water, or wriggle and clamber up the precipitous rocks with marvellous ease. The motion of these clumsy creatures in the water is very graceful ; but how they can climb the steep ascent of their domicile with neither hands nor feet, but only flippers to aid them, is a mystery. THE NEW EL DORADO. TREE IN PETRIFIED FOREST. A more distant excursion is to the Geysers and the petrified forest. The latter consists of scores of conifers of great size, which have been laid prostrate by some con vulsion of nature, and then silicified. One, of which only a part is ac cessible, measured sixty-three feet in length by over seven feet in diameter. In many cases the bark and even the small branches are well preserved, and the texture of the woody fibres, though absolutely petrified, is distinctly visible. Those who visit the Geysers expecting to find intermittent foun tains suddenly shooting up into the air, and then relapsing into quiescence, like those in Iceland and the Yellowstone, will be disappointed. But if, without quarrelling with the name, we go in search of striking natural scenery, we shall not regret our journey. The Geyser district is one of active volcanic disturbance, in the midst of exquisite fertility and beauty. The ap proach to it is vividly and graphically described by a writer in Scribners Monthly. " Broad natural meadows are dotted with groves of oak, and, in the spring months, the green levels and slopes are spangled thick with flowers, including the blue lupin, larkspur, purple primrose, yellow poppy, and a profusion of buttercups and daisies. The streams run tinkling over gravelly beds, larks and linnets sing joyously, flocks of blackbirds chatter musically as they whirl in gusty flights together, and the clear morning air exhilarates like cham pagne. Mount Helena is kept to the right, revealing its sculpture boldly as it is neared, but never losing its magic tints. The ridges dividing a series of intervals are thickly wooded with oak and pine, with here and there a fir or redwood astray, a madrona or VULCAN'S STEAM WORKS. THE CALIFORNIAN GEYSERS. manzonita, whose smooth brown or red bark and waxen leaves make them very striking objects. If it is spring, big clumps of buck-eye will thrust out their bristling spears of scented bloom. Where the soil is bare it is red, except in the valleys, where it is black or brown, while the rocks are stained with lichens. Thus there is a constant feast of colour gold and purple predomi nating in summer, emerald and red and violet in the spring, but always an undertone of pearly grey, which St. Helena's cone seems to give out as the key for the whole beautiful composition. . . . As the road winds higher towards Geyser Peak, it leaves the forest, and passes through a dense thicket of chemisal shrubbery, oak, laurels, small bays, and ceanothus. The last, called California lilac, is covered till late in the spring with powdery blossoms that give forth honeyed odours. Masses of stained and blackened rocks, serpentine, sandstone, and trap, rise here and there, giving the Hearing summit a desolate look, which is increased by the few contorted pines that suck a feeble life from the crevices where they grow. A narrow ridge called the Hog's Back just wide enough for the waggon connects two spurs of the range at this point, separating Sulphur and Pluton Creeks. It is the parapet of a wall whose sides slope at sharp angles a thousand feet ; and riding over it at high speed one looks into a chasm on either hand, catches breath, and hopes the harness and wheels may be strong." The Geysers themselves are springs, many of which reach or approach the boiling-point, and are strongly impreg nated with alum, ammonia, magnesia, * o sulphur, iron, Epsom salts, and other mineral substances. The Witches Caldron is a basin about twenty feet in circumference, and of unknown depth. It is filled with liquid mud, black as ink, and overhung with dense clouds of vapour, which rise from the seething, boiling fluid. In Vulcan 's Steam Works and the Steam Boat Geyser, jets of steam rush from the mountainside with a noise and force equal 'to that of a high-pressure engine. In the Devil's Canon and the sides of the Mountain of Fire there are hundreds of orifices, from which a dense black smoke THE DEVIL'S CANON. THE NEW EL DORADO. exudes. These are but a few of the fumeroles and boiling springs in which the district abounds. The soil is volcanic, and full of crystals of soda, sulphur, and other salts, which crumble into dust beneath the tread. The hot ground under the feet, the subterranean rumblings, the throbs and thuds near some .of the larger steam vents, the atmosphere charged with acidulous and sulphurous vapours, the screaming, roaring, hissing, gurgling, bubbling of the various springs, all contribute to call to mind Dante's Inferno. And the weird impressiveness of the spectacle is enhanced by the fertility and beauty of the surrounding scenery. I know not how better to sum up my impressions of California, than by quoting the words of Moses' description of Palestine : It is " a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills ; a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pome granates ; a land of oil olive, and honey ; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack anything in it ; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass." * * Deut. viii. 7-9. BRIDGE OVER I'LUTON CREEK. ic 6 YOEMITE [HE gigantesque character of America and its people is strikingly illustrated by the vast tracts of territory recently set apart for national enjoyment. To say that miles are appropriated to this purpose, where we should be content with acres, is to under state the fact. Not only is each city providing ample space '{ for the common use of its citizens Fairmount Park, for instance, at Philadelphia, with an area . of three thousand acres, laid out with exquisite THE YOSEMIIE AXD YELLOWSTONE. taste and beauty but national parks of still greater extent are being marked out "for public use, resort, and recreation, inalienable for all time," as the Act of Congress phrases it. Six hundred squares miles in the Andirondacks are on the point of being withdrawn from private ownership and occupation on behalf of the State of New York. The whole of the Yosemite Valley, with the neighbouring Sierra, and the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees, in the State of California, have been thus nationalised. And the Yellowstone region, containing an area of three thousand three hundred and seventy-five square miles, has been similarly "dedicated and set apart as a great national pleasure-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people." These great Western reservations are of sufficient importance to claim a chapter to themselves. To reach the Yosemite, we leave the main Pacific Railway at a point about three thousand miles west from New York, and forty-three east from San Francisco. A branch line carries us fifty miles to Merced, a town so modern that it has not yet made its appearance in maps or guide-books, but whose progress has been so rapid that it already numbers nearly three thousand inhabitants, with an immense hotel making up a hundred beds. Here we leave railway communications behind us, and have to travel by stage. for about a hundred miles more into the valley. It was my first experience of a vehicle peculiar to America, called a compound concord-coach. It resembles a large post-chaise, or funeral carriage, accommodating three passengers on each seat. A padded bench moves up and down by a hinge in the middle, and seats three more. The interior thus holds nine persons, packed tightly to gether. Three or four more on the roof complete the load. The road was so rough, the pace so severe, the springs of the coach so inflexible, that we had to cling firmly to leathern straps, provided for the purpose, to keep our seats at all. In spite of all my efforts, I was more than once pitched up to the roof, as we bumped against a boulder, or dropped into a hole ; and I completed my first day's journey, a distance of sixty-eight miles, bruised from head to foot. In approaching Merced, we pass through five thousand acres of wheat without a fence or division of any kind. On leaving it the road runs for twelve miles through another unbroken field of wheat, which stretches as far FIRST LOG HI ARIPOSA GROVE. ON THE WAY TO THE BIG TREES. APPROACH TO THE YDS E MITE. as the eye can reach on either side. A pastoral region is then traversed, where flocks and herds roam at large over the prairie. To this succeeds a broken and mountainous country, but which, judging from its profuse natural vegetation, only needs cultivation to become a district of extraordinary fertility. The gullies and hill-sides are gay with flowers of brilliant colours and exquisite fra grance. At present, however, it is almost entirely unsettled. Observing the bark of many of the trees to be riddled with innumerable holes, as though they had been the mark of rifle shots, I asked an explanation, and was assured that it was the work of woodpeckers, who bore these holes, and stuff them full of acorns for a winter supply of food. An examination of one of the trees seemed to confirm this. As we continue to ascend, the vegetation changes in its character. Azaleas begin to take the place of the buck-eye, arbutus, snow-bright, and other flowering shrubs of the lower regions. The oak, live oak, black walnut, and other trees of the plains give way to magnificent forests of pine, redwood, and cedar. Then the great mining region of Mariposa, opened up by General Fremont, is entered and passed. The scenery grows grander and wilder. Majestic mountain forms loom up from the horizon. The peaks of the high Sierras cut the sky with their keen sharp outlines. The road skirts the edge of ravines, where the slightest deviation from the trail would be certain destruction. I left the inside of the coach, and mounted to the seat beside the driver, partly to stretch my cramped limbs, partly to enjoy the scenery. Our driver was dashing on at a reckless speed, not unfrequently putting his horses to a gallop. Every now and then he said to me, " Hold on, stranger ; there's an ugly hole round the next corner." More than once, when we had bumped against a big boulder with more than usual violence, which threatened to pitch me into the gulf below, he half soliloquised, half apologised, " Guess THE SENTINELS, CALAVERAS. THE YOSEMITE AND YELLOWSTONE. I knowed that 'ar stone, but I forgot it." At length, after thirteen hours of this travelling, we reached Clark's Ranch, coated and choked with dust, black and blue with bruises, and heartily thankful to have accomplished this part of our journey with safety. At sunrise next day I started on horseback, with a guide, to visit the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees, which stands about ten miles from our halting- place for the night. The road led through a vast forest, with a dense IN THE PINE FOREST. undergrowth of flowering shrubs, which made the air heavy with their fragrance. The pines and redwood, which have been increasing in size ever since we left the plain, now assume gigantic proportions. Again and again, as I approached some forest giant, I asked, " Is that one of the big trees ?" But it was only a redwood, attaining not more than the contemptible height of two hundred feet. At length the grove was reached, and all that I had heard of these monarchs of the forest fell short of the reality. For their size I was prepared, but their beauty took me by surprise. The lines of the trunk reminded me THE BIG TREES. of those of the modern lighthouses a broad base, from which rises an exquisitely tapering shaft, perfectly smooth and straight, to a height of two hundred or two hundred and fifty feet, when a vast crown of branches is thrown out, many of which are as big as an ordinary tree. Unlike the redwood, to which they are allied, they only grow in detached clumps or groves. Their habitat is on terraces varying from five thousand to seven thousand feet above the level of the sea. Nine of these groves are known, of which two at Mariposa and one at Calaveras are the most frequently visited. The general average of the Mariposa groves is the highest, but the largest individual trees are found at Calaveras, which may be visited on the return journey from the Yosemite, following the Coulter ville trail. The scientific name by which these trees have been known in England is Wcllingtonia gigautca. This, however, seems to have been given in mistake, under the erroneous idea that they formed a new species. Really they are a variety of the redwood or Sequoia, which grows abundantly and attains an immense height on the mountain ranges of California. "It is to the happy accident of the generic agreement of the Big Tree with the redwood," says the author of the Geological Survey of California, "that we are not now obliged to call the largest and most interesting tree of America after an English military hero : had it been an English botanist of the highest reputation, the dose would not have been so unpalatable. . . . The name now stands as Sequoia gigantea" The most important of the trees are named and numbered the Mother of the Forest, the Three Graces, Maid of Honour, Daniel Webster, Richard Cobden, Henry Ward Beecher, and so on. One which has fallen and lies pointing to the south is called after Andrew Johnson, the late ex-president of the United States, on account of his "southern proclivities." The tallest tree actually measured is the Keystone State, in the Calaveras Grove, which is three hundred and twenty-five feet high. One tree, numbered three hundred and THE HONKER'S CABIN, " ROOM FOR TWELVE INSIDE." THE FALLEN MONARCH. THE YOSEMITE AND YELLOWSTONE. thirty in the Mariposa Grove, was originally over one hundred feet in circum ference at the base. Another, though one side has been burned away, still measures ninety-three feet round the base. A calculation of the age of the trees, by counting the annual rings, was made by the Geological Survey. Having selected one which was deemed suitable for the purpose, it was felled by means of augurs and wedges, a task which occupied five men for twenty- two days. The stump, at six feet above the ground, had a circum ference of about ninety feet. A very careful counting of the rings gave its probable age as one thousand three hundred years. As this tree was in full vigour, it may be fairly assumed that those which show signs of decay are much older. The trees of the Mariposa Grove have suffered from the action of fire, many of them being charred and black ened to a considerable height from the ground. This has been caused either by herdsmen lighting their camp fires at the foot, or by Indians and hunters igniting the brushwood to drive out the game. Though this is forbidden by severe enactments, the law is constantly violated. Standing on the Sentinel Dome above the Yosemite, from which a view is gained over a vast expanse of densely- wooded mountains, I saw the forest on fire in three places. One of the largest of the Big Trees has a passage burned clean through the trunk, large enough to admit a man on horseback. I rode through it as through an archway, without touching on either side, and though my horse was at least fifteen hands high, there was ample space between my hat and the crown of the arch. PREPARING TO FELL BIG TREE. THE BIG TREES. I shall not soon forget a brief and simple religious service held under the shadow of one of these mighty monarchs of the forest. A few of us were resting for awhile before commencing the descent to Clark's Ranch. One of the party commenced the hymn, which all joined in singing : Nature with open volume stands To spread her Maker's praise abroad; And every labour of His hands Shows something worthy of a God. As the old familiar strain went on to exalt the "grace that rescued man " above all the glories of crea tion, the words seemed to gain new force and meaning. The iO4th Psalm was read with a few words of ex position and application. Prayer was offered, and we left our forest-sanctuary with hearts uplifted in adoring love to Him who is not only the God of nature, but our God and Father in Jesus Christ. A rough carnage road has recently been opened from Clark's Ranch to the Yosemite, a distance of twenty-six miles. The scenery for the whole distance is mag nificent. It is not unlike the grander parts of the Jura range, but is even finer, and forms a fitting approach to what is perhaps the most wonderful valley in the world. Nordhoff, in his book on California, says, " A business man or a statistician would tell you, in a few words, that the Yosemite Valley is a floor eight miles long by two wide, with walls three- quarters of a mile high. He would give THE KEYSTONE STATE, 325 FEET HIGH. you, further, the following figures concerning the height of the precipitous AUGUR HOLES IN TREE. THE Y OS E MITE AND YELLOWSTONE. mountains which form the walls, and of the waterfalls which give variety to the wonderful scene : MOUNTAINS AND WATERFALLS. MEANING OF INDIAN NAME. AMERICAN NAME. MOUNTAINS. Great Chief of the Valley Large Acorn Cache . Mountains playing Lean-"! Fro-' . Kl Capitan . Cathedral Rocks . The Cathedral Spires . Three Brothers. Gone in Union Rocks . Signal Station .... Sentinel Rock . Sentinel Dome. Shade to Indian Baby\ Basket / Glacier Rock . Royal Arches . The Watching Eye Washington Column . North Dome Goddess of the Valley . South Dome Pine Mountain . ! Mount Watkins Cloud's Rest Cap of Liberty Mount Star King ... WATERFALLS. Night Wind . . Large Grizzly Bear First Fall . . . Second Fall Third Fall . . . Sparkling Water . Cataract Bridal Veil Yosemite The Beautiful .... Shade to Indian Babyl Basket / Vernal . . . Nevada . . South Fork . Royal Arch Falls Sentinel Falls . 3.300 2,660 i ,'oo 3.830 3.500 3.043 4,500 3,000 3,200 1, 800 1,875 3,568 4,737 3,900 6.034 4,000 5,600 900 630 .634 ,600 6co 434 350 700 600 i ,000 3, coo CATHEDRAL ROCKS, 2,C6o FEET. " He would acid, for purposes of comparison, that 5,280 feet make a mile, and that the great Fall of Niagara is but 163 feet high."* Nordhoff is right in adding that these figures give " no idea of the wonderful, strange, and magnificent scenery of the valley." Even the visitor is unable at first to gain any adequate sense of the height of the cliffs on either side of the ravine. They are so nearly vertical, that the eye passes upward from base to summit unconscious of the distance over which it has travelled. It is only when we look down into the valley from above, and see the houses immediately below us dwarfed into insignificance, the men mere pigmies, and the Merced River a tiny rivulet, that we discover the immense perpendicular distance between ourselves and them. There are many points at which we may stand on the edge of the cliff, and dropping a stone * California; a Book for Travellers and Settlers. By Charles NordhofTT. it5 GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE YO SEMITE. from our hand, it will fall more than three thousand feet be fore strik ing the earth. The val ley is un ique, not merely in the height and verti- cality of its walls of rock. Its narrowness only about two miles across is a noticeable feature. Its waterfalls, plunging down a sheer leap of from one thousand to three thousand feet, are unequalled in the world. The bed of the valley too is unlike anything I have seen elsewhere. It is absolutely flat, except for small mounds CAP OF LIBERTY, 4,OOO FEET. of debris lying along the base of the cliffs. The gradual ascent leading up from the bottom of the gorge, and becoming steeper as we climb till the foot of the mountain is reached, with elsewhere, has no A level plain, covered quisitely green able flowers, rests upon the bases of rocky walls, which spring upwards at right angles from the fertile soil below. The contrast of colour between the narrow strip of verdure and the light grey of the granite, which becomes of a dazzling whiteness as which we meet existence here, with grass ex- and bright with innumer- THE YOSEMITE AND YELLOWSTONE. the sun shines upon it, adds to the weird effect of the whole. There is but a single entrance into the valley, and no way of exit except by retracing our steps through the narrow rift. It is a cul-de-sac o inclosed by perpendicular walls of granite. Its very existence was only discovered by accident. The Yosemite Indians, pursued by the settlers after their ma rauding raids, mysteriously disappeared from view, and no trace of them could be found. At length, in the spring of 1851, an expedition was organised to explore the mountains, and follow the Indians into their retreat. Under the guidance of Tenaya, the chief of a hostile tribe, the troops penetrated the valley, and brought tidings of the wonders they had found. So narrow is the entrance that but for this circumstance it might have remained en tirely BRIDAL VKIL FALL, 630 KKKT. EL CAPITAN, 3,30O FEET. unknown to the present day. Perhaps nothing in the whole valley is finer than the entrance to it. On the left is El Capitan, "an im mense block of granite, pro jecting squarely out into the valley, and presenting an almost vertical sharp edge, three thousand three hun dred feet in elevation. The sides or walls of the mass are bare, smooth, and en tirely destitute of vegetation. It is almost impossible for the observer to comprehend the enormous dimensions of this rock, which in clear weather can be distinctly seen from the San Joaquin plains, at a distance of fifty or sixty miles. Nothing, WATERFALLS IN THE YO SEMITE. however, so helps to a realisation of the magnitude of these masses about the Yosemite, as climbing around and among them. Let the visitor begin to ascend the pile of debris which lies at the base of El Capitan, and he will soon find his ideas enlarged on the point in question. And yet these heaps of debris along the cliffs, and especially under El Capitan, are of insignificant size compared with the dimensions of the solid wall itself. They are hardly noticeable in taking a general view of the valley. El Capitan imposes on us by its stupendous bulk, which seemed as if hewed from the mountains on purpose to stand as a type of eternal massive- ness. It is doubtful if anywhere in the world there is presented so squarely cut, so lofty, and so imposing a face of rock. On the other side of the valley, we have the Bridal Veil Fall, unquestionably one of the most beautiful objects in the Yosemite. It is formed by the creek of the same name, which rises a few miles east of Empire Camp, runs through the meadows at Westfalls, and is finally precipitated over the cliffs on the west side of Cathedral Rock into the Yosemite in one leap of six hundred and thirty feet perpendicular. The water strikes here on a sloping pile of debris, down which it rushes in a series of cascades for a perpendicular distance of nearly three hundred feet more, the total height of the edge of the fall above the meadow at its base being nine hundred feet. The effect of the cascade, as everywhere seen from the valley, is as if it were nine hundred feet in vertical height, its base being concealed by the trees which surround it. " The quantity of water in the Bridal Veil Fall varies greatly with the season. In May and June the amount is generally at the maximum, and it THE YOSEMI'lE FALLS, 2,6OO FEET. THE YOSEMITE AND YELLOWSTONE. MIRTH DOME, 3,568 FEET. gradually decreases as the summer advances. The effect, however, is finest when the body of water is not too heavy, since then the swaying from side to side, and the waving under the varying pressure of the wind as it strikes the long column of water, is more marked. As seen from a distance at such times, it seems to flutter like a white veil, producing an indescribably beautiful effect."* Proceeding up the valley we pass on the right the Cathedral Rock, a massive pile of granite two thousand six hundred feet high ; and, just beyond, the graceful pinnacles called the Spires, five hundred feet above the walls of rock on which they rest. Nearly opposite are the Three Brothers, rising in steps one behind the other, the highest being three thousand eight hundred and thirty feet above the valley. Just beyond them is the Great Yosemite Fall, one of the grandest water falls in the world. Its vertical height is given, as the result of actual measurement, at two thousand six hundred feet from the edge of the cliff to the point where it strikes the valley. In June 1865, the amount of water passing over the fall was estimated at half a million cubic feet an hour, " and at the highest stage of water, there is probably three times as much as this." One of the most imposing objects in the Yosemite is the Half Dome. Seen from the eastern side, it is a perfectly rounded dome of granite, as smooth and regular as that of Mont Blanc, rising to a height of four thousand seven hundred and thirty-seven feet above the valley. But the western half has been split off, and presents a flat vertical side. Towards the * The YoseinUc Guide Book. Published by authority of the Legis lature, pp. 58-60. In common with all writers on the Yosemite, I am greatly indebted to this admirable production of the Geological Survey of the United States of America. SOUTH, OR HALF DOME, 4,737 KKET. THE MIRROR LAKE. Tenaya Canon it is absolutely vertical for two thousand feet from the summit, and so nearly vertical for the remainder of its height, that its inclination from the perpendicular only becomes apparent by actual measurement. " It is entirely unique in the Sierra Nevada, and, so far as we know, in the world." Passing onwards between walls of granite seamed with waterfalls, and surmounted by domes and pinnacles, we reach, near the end of the Tenaya Canon, a lovely lake. Inclosed by mountains, its surface is smooth, and unruffled as a mirror hence its name, Mirror Lake. In the morning or evening, when the slanting rays of the rising or setting sun fall upon the surrounding peaks without penetrating into the valley, the reflection upon its MIRROR LAKE. glassy surface is marvellously perfect. The scarped walls of rock are repro duced with a startling vividness. Looking down into the clear depths, we see every blotch of lichen, every weather-stain, every fracture of the surface, with even greater distinctness than in the reality. Sometimes a slight breeze comes up the valley, and the lovely vision fades away for a moment, only to reappear with fresh beauty. The Geological Survey discuss the question which suggests itself to the mind of every visitor to the Yosemite : " How was this extraordinary rift in the mountains produced ?" Having examined and dismissed the various theories which explain the formation of other valleys, and shown that it cannot be a valley of fissure, or of erosion, or of glacial action, they adopt the extraordinary THE YOSEMITE AND YELLOWSTONE. hypothesis that it must have been caused by subsidence. They say, " We are led irresistibly to the adoption of a theory of the origin of the Yosemite, in a way which has hardly yet been recognised as one of those in which valleys may be formed, probably for the reason that there are so few cases in which such an event can be absolutely proved to have occurred. We conceive that, during the process of upheaval of the Sierra, or, possibly, at some time after that had taken place, there was at the Yosemite a subsidence of a limited area, marked by nearly parallel lines of 'fault,' or fissures crossing each other at right angles. In other and more simple language, the bottom of the valley sank down to an unknown depth, owing to its support being with drawn from underneath, during some of those con vulsive movements which must have attended the up heaval of so extensive and elevated a chain, no matter how slow we may imagine the process to have been. Subsidence over extensive areas of portions of the earth's crust is not at all a new idea in geology, and there is nothing in this peculiar application of it which need excite surprise. It is the great amount of vertical displacement for the small area implicated, which makes this a peculiar case ; but it would not be easy to give any good reason why such an exceptional result should not be brought about amid the com plicated play of forces which the elevation of a grand mountain chain must set in motion. " By the adoption of the subsidence theory for the formation of the Yosemite, we are able to get over one difficulty which appears insurmount able with any other. This is the very small amount of debris at the base of the cliffs, and even, at a few points, its entire absence, as previously noticed in our description of the valley. We see that fragments of rock are SENTINEL ROCKS, 3,043 FEET. GEOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE YOSEMITE. loosened by rain, frost, gravity, and other natural causes along the walls, and probably not a winter elapses that some great mass of detritus does not come thundering down from above, adding, as it is easy to see from actual inspection of those slides which have occurred within the past few years, no inconsiderable amount to the talus. Several of these great rock avalanches have taken place since the valley was inhabited. One which fell near Cathedral Rock is said to have shaken the valley like an earthquake. This abrasion of the edges of the valley has unquestionably been going on during a vast period of time ; what has become of the detrital material ? Sortie masses of granite now lying in the valley one in particular, near the base of the Yosemite Fall are as large as houses. Such masses as these could never have been removed from the valley by currents of water ; in fact, there is no evidence of any considerable amount of aqueous erosion, for the canon of the Merced below the Yosemite is nearly free from detritus all the way down to the plain. The falling masses have not been carried out by a glacier, for there are below the valley no remains of the moraines which such" an operation could not fail to have formed. "It appears to us that there is no way of disposing of the vast mass of detritus which must have fallen from the walls of the Yosemite since the for- NKVADA FALLS ' 7 FEET - mation of the valley, except by assuming that it has gone down to fill the abyss which was opened by the subsidence which our theory supposes to have taken place. What the depth of the chasm may have been we have no data for computing ; but that it must have been very great is proved by the fact that it has been able to receive the accumula tions of so long a period of time. The cavity was undoubtedly occupied by water, forming a lake of unsurpassed beauty and grandeur until quite a recent epoch. The gradual desiccation of the whole country, the disappearance of the glaciers, and the filling up of the abyss to nearly a level with the present outlet, where the valley passes into a canon of the usual form, have converted the lake into a valley with a river meandering through it. The process of filling up still continues, and the talus will accumulate perceptibly fast, although a long time must elapse before the general appearance of the valley 123 THE YOSEAflTE AND YELLOWSTONE. will be much altered by this cause, so stupendous is the vertical height of its walls, and so slow their crumbling away, at least as compared with the historic duration of time." Even this explanation has generally been rejected as inadequate. But the fact that the most eminent geologists and physicists in America are driven to adopt it for want of a better alternative, may serve to show how absolutely unique are the phenomena which here perplex the philosopher and fascinate the traveller. But the wonders even of the Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove are eclipsed by the other great national park, of which mention was made at the commencement of this chapter that of the Yellowstone region. I was unfortunately prevented from visiting it, and must therefore avail myself of the description given in the Leisure Hoiir for June 1872, by the artist attached to the Alaska Survey party.* " For years marvellous tales have been rife among the hunters and mountaineers of the Far West, about a mysterious country in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, some three hundred miles south from the line of the British possessions. This region comprises within its limits the sources of the Columbia, whose waters flow westward toward the Pacific, and those of the Yellowstone a large stream which, after trending eastward for several hundred miles, joins the mighty Missouri in its course to the Mexican Gulf. It was asserted that the course of the Upper Yellowstone was broken by cataracts surpassing that of Niagara ; that it flowed in one place through a canon, or gorge, whose vertical sides measured more than a mile in depth ; that on the shores of the Yellowstone Lake were scattered the remains of idols, war-clubs, and utensils of an extinct race ; and that the country abounded in hot-water geysers and mud volcanoes, surpassing all others hitherto known in height and volume. It was further added, that the Indians looked upon the mysterious country as the abode of evil spirits, and rarely, if ever, ventured to invade the solitudes of their haunts. To verify these loose rumours, a party of gentlemen, citizens of Montana, determined to attempt an exploration of the Upper Yellowstone River, and solve the mystery. " The nine gentlemen comprising the party were well mounted, and armed each with a needle-gun, revolver, and hunting-knife ; a small pack train, loaded with flour, bacon, coffee, and sugar, in charge of two Mexican packers, following them, and completing their outfit. General Hancock, the general commanding-in-chief of the district, had acceded to their request for a company of cavalry by way of escort ; but when they arrived at Fort Ellis, the starting-point of the exploration, the commander informed them that he * For fuller details the reader may be referred to Scribner's Magazine for May and June, 1871, or to The Wonders of the Yellowstone Region, recently published by Blackie and Sons. 124 FIRST EXPEDITION TO THE YELLOWSTONE. could not possibly spare them more than five men, with which small addition to their strength they bade adieu to this outpost of civilisation, and plunged at once into the vast unknown which lay before them. Having learned at the fort that a band of Crow Indians had preceded them the day before up the valley of the Yellowstone, they organised their party in anticipation of possible trouble from this quarter, and elected H. D. Washburn, Surveyor- General of Montana, as their chief commander. It was determined to make but one march each day, camping about three in the afternoon, to obviate the necessity of unpacking and cooking dinner. It was also agreed that a picket guard of two men should be detailed each night to guard the camp and horses. In the afternoon of the day following, their attention was drawn to a small band of mounted Indians riding along the foot-hills on the opposite side of the river, travelling in the same direction as themselves, and evidently watching them with keen interest. That night the camp was guarded with more than usual vigilance. A severe rain-storm prevailing during the night may have saved them from a visit of these prowlers. " After remaining for some time at the lower canon of the Yellowstone a gorge about a thousand feet in depth, with vertical sides, through which the river tears at a fearful rate they crossed the mountains above the canon, and again descended into a broad and open valley. Here a strange freak of nature attracted their attention. Two parallel vertical walls, projecting from the side of the mountain to the height of one hundred and twenty-five feet, traversed the mountain from base to summit a distance of one thousand five hundred feet. The walls were about thirty feet wide, and their tops were crowned with a growth of pines. Here an entire mountainside had been washed away by wind and water, leaving, as the evidence of their united action, these vertical projections, which, but for their gigantic proportions, might readily be mistaken for works of art. ' In future years/ adds the author, ' when the wonders of the Yellowstone are among fashionable resorts, there will be few attractions surpassing in interest this remarkable freak of the elements. For some reason best known to himself, one of our companions gave to these rocks the name of the Devil's Slide.' " Arriving at the mouth of Tower Creek, where it joins the Yellowstone, they were fairly within the precincts of the volcanic region, and where the wonders were supposed to begin. Here the Great Canon commences, and extends to the foot of the Lower or Great Falls of the Yellowstone, some forty or fifty miles, one of the most remarkable gorges in the world, equalling, if not surpassing, the famous one on the Colorado River. In its descent through this awful chasm, varying from a thousand to nearly five thousand feet in depth, the river falls almost three thousand feet. At one point, where the passage has been worn through a mountain range, the chasm was estimated to be a vertical mile in depth, through which the river, broken into rapids and cascades, appeared no wider than a ribbon. THE Y OS E MITE AND YELLOWSTONE. " ' The brain reels as we gaze into this profound and solemn solitude. We shrink from the dizzy verge appalled, glad to feel the solid earth under our feet, and venture no more, except with forms extended and faces barely protruding over the edge of the precipice. The stillness is horrible. Down, down, we see the river, attenuated to a thread, tossing its miniature waves, and dashing with puny strength against the massive walls which imprison it. All access to its margin is denied, and the dark grey rocks hold it in dismal shadow. Even the voice of its waters cannot be heard. Obstructed by massive boulders and jutting points, it rushes madly on its solitary course deeper and deeper into the bowels of the rocky firmament. The solemn grandeur of the scene surpasses description.' " The lower part of the canon, along the TOWER FALLS, AND COLUMN MOUNTAIN. eastern bank of the Yellowstone, bore a striking resemblance to the Giant's Causeway. It was composed of successive pillars of basalt, tier upon tier, separated by .broad belts of cement and gravel. The columns, standing in close proximity, were quite regular in form, each about thirty feet high, and from three to five feet in diameter. " The attrition of the stream for ages has worn the side of the chasm into the most odd and fantastic shapes. Some resemble towers, others the spires of churches, and others again shoot up lithe and slender as eastern 126 THE TOWER FALLS. minarets, and these are 'gaily painted by the waters of the numberless hot springs which ooze out from the fissures into a variety of tints and tones white, red, purple, orange, etc. fairly bewildering the eye with their dazzling variety of colour.' " To avoid the slow and toilsome journey in following the sinuosities of the river, an advance party was sent forward to mark out a trail across the mountains in the direction of the Great Falls, at the base of which the Great Canon proper terminates. The party on their way ascended a lofty peak, ascertained by barometrical measurement to be ten thousand five hundred and eighty feet above the sea-level, which they named, in honour of their ROCK PINNACLES ABOVE TOWER FALLS. commander, Mount Washburn. From its summit, four hundred feet above perpetual snow, they were able to trace the course of the river to its source in the Yellowstone Lake. Descending the mountain, they came to a small stream flowing into the Yellowstone, following which they crossed an immense bed of volcanic ashes, extending for several hundred yards on either side of the creek. Less than a mile beyond, they suddenly came upon a hideous-looking glen, filled with sulphurous vapour emitted by six or eight boiling springs of great size and activity. The entire surface of the earth was covered with incrusted sulphur thrown from the springs, and jets of hot water were expelled from numberless natural orifices with which it was pierced. 127 THE YOSEMITE AND YELLOWSTONE. " * The springs themselves were as diabolical in appearance as the witches' cauldron in Macbeth, and needed but the presence of Hecate and her weird sisters to realise that horrible creation of poetic fancy. To approach them was unsafe, the incrustation surrounding them bending in many places beneath our weight, and from the fracture thus created would ooze a sulphury slime of the consistency of mucilage. It was with great difficulty that we obtained specimens from the natural apertures with which the crust is filled a feat which was accomplished by one of our party, who extended himself at full HOT WELLS ON GARDINER'S RIVER (UPPER BASIN). length upon that portion of the incrustation which yielded the least, but which was not sufficiently strong to bear him in an upright position, and, at imminent risk of sinking into the horrible mixture, rolled over and over to the edge of the opening, and with the crust slowly bending and sinking beneath him, secured the coveted prize.' " The party continued their journey for the next two days through a country broken up with innumerable ravines and masses of fallen timber, and made necessarily but slow progress, but near camping-time on the succeeding 128 HOT SPRINGS OF THE YELLOWSTONE. day they found themselves descending a mountain along the banks of a beautiful stream in the immediate vicinity of the Great Falls of the Yellow stone. The stream, which they named Crystal Creek, just before its union with the river passed through a gloomy gorge, at the foot of which it breaks from a succession of rapids into a cascade of great beauty, which descends into a pool clear as amber, deep in the shadow of overarching rocks. After a second leap of more than eighty feet, it effects almost immediately its junction with the Yellowstone. HOT WELLS ON GARDINER'S RIVER (LOWER BASIN). " A more sublime scene than the Lower Cataract of the Yellowstone was never witnessed by mortal eyes. The river, from a width of two hundred feet above the fall, is compressed by converging rocks to one hundred and fifty feet, where it takes a plunge over a smooth level shelf, presenting the appearance of a vast green curtain veiled with glancing and dissolving foam- like festoons of lace. The height by measurement is four hundred and fifty-six feet. " ' A sheer, compact, solid, perpendicular sheet, faultless in all the elements izq THE YOSEMITE AND YELLOWSTONE. of grandeur and beauty, it seems to be in perfect keeping with the stupendous character of the scenery surrounding it. The canon, which commences at the Upper Fall, a half-mile above this cataract, is here at least a thousand feet in depth. Its vertical sides rise grey and dark above the fall to shelving summits, from which one can look down into the boiling spray-filled chasm, enlivened U1TER FALLS OF THE YELLOWSTONE. with rainbows, and glittering like a shower of diamonds. From the shelf overhanging the stream, five hundred feet from the top of the canon, and one hundred and eighty feet above the verge of the cataract, a member of our party, lying prone upon the rock, let down a cord with a stone attached into the gulf, and measured its profoundest depths. The life and sound of 130 UPPER AND LOWER FALLS OF THE YELLOWSTONE. the cataract contrast strangely with the sombre stillness of the canon a mile below. There all was darkness, gloom, and shadow; here all was vivacity, gaiety, and delight. Seen through the canon below the falls, the river for a mile or more is broken by rapids and cascades of great variety and beauty. " Between the Lower and Upper Falls the canon does not exceed from two hundred to three hundred feet in depth. The Upper Fall is entirely different from the Lower, but in its peculiar way equally interesting. The stream, which above the falls is broken into frightful rapids, is narrowed between the rocks as it approaches the brink, and presently bounds through LOWER FALLS OF THE YELLOWSTONE. their stony jaws in a sheet of snowy foam over a precipice one hundred and fifteen feet high. " ' What this cataract lacks in sublimity is more than compensated by picturesqueness. The rocks which overshadow it do not veil it from the open light. It is up among the pine foliage which crowns the adjacent hills, the grand features of the landscape unrivalled for beauties of vege tation as well as of rock and glen. The two confronting rocks, over hanging the verge at the height of a hundred feet, could be readily united by a bridge, from which some of the grandest views of natural scenery in the world could be obtained ; while just in front of and within reaching distance of the arrowy water, from a ledge projecting one third of the way THE YO SEMITE AND YELLOWSTONE. below the brink of the fall, all its nearest beauties and terrors may be caught at a glance.' " Fascinated by the awful sublimity and beauty of the sights around them, the party lingered on the spot for several days, drinking in their fill of a scene than which the world contains perhaps no grander. At last they relunctantly turned their backs upon the glorious scene, and pursued their way up the river towards the lake. At some distance above the Upper Fall the rapids disappeared, and the river, expanding to a width of four hundred feet, rolled peacefully between low and verdant banks. They forded a creek strongly impregnated with alum, and three miles beyond they found them selves in the midst of volcanic wonders of great variety and profusion. The region was filled with hot springs and craters. Steaming vapour shot from the crevices of the incrustations, around which large masses of pure crystallised sulphur had been deposited. Further on they discovered a cavern, in whose mouth, about seven feet in diameter, a jet of sulphurous vapour exploded with regularly recurring report like a high-pressure engine. They also came upon a boiling alum spring, from the border of which they gathered a quantity of alum, nearly pure, but slightly impregnated with iron. " Continuing their journey, they shortly after entered another basin covered with the ancient deposit of some extinct crater, which contained about thirty springs of boiling clay. " ' These unsightly cauldrons varied in size from two to ten feet in diameter, and the contents of most of them were of the consistency of thick paint, which they strongly resembled, some being yellow, others pink, and others dark brown. They were boiling at a fearful rate, much after the fashion of a hasty pudding in the last stages of completion. The bubbles, often two feet in height, would explode with a puff emitting at each time a villainous smell of sulphuretted vapour/ " The atmosphere was filled with sulphurous gases, discolouring their watches and other metallic articles, and the river was impregnated with the mineral bases of the adjacent springs. " Returning one evening to the camp by a new route from an exploration of this volcanic basin, dull thundering sounds like the discharges of distant mortars broke upon their ears. The reports were found to proceed from a mud volcano on the slope of a hill densely timbered. Huge volumes of smoke shot high up into the air through a crater thirty feet in diameter. Each report, which occurred as often as every five seconds, could be distinctly heard half a mile off, and the massive jets of vapour which accompanied them burst forth like the smoke of burning gunpowder. ' This volcano, as is evident from the freshness of the vegetation and the particles of dried clay adhering to the topmost branches of the trees surrounding it, is of very recent formation. Its first explosion must have been terrible. We saw limbs of trees one hundred and twenty-five feet from the 132 YELLOWSTONE LAKE. ground encased in clay, and found its scattered contents two hundred feet from it.' " Next morning they broke up their camp, forded the Yellowstone, and shaped their course for the great mountain lake which is the source of the river. " Lake Yellowstone is a lonely but lovely inland sea, everywhere surrounded by ' forests primeval,' and nestled deep in the Rocky Moun tains. It has been cur rently asserted by the mountaineers who have visited this watery soli tude, that its waters run both to the Atlantic and the Pacific, but such is not the case ; the summit of the main chain passes, however, within half a mile of its southern shore. I ts shape resembled ' a human hand with the fingers extended and spread apart as much as possible.' The palm of the hand represents the main body of the lake, and the fingers and thumb the deep inlets, which, like Iceland fjords, indent the southern shore. Ver dant islands dot its sur face, and the beach of rock crystal sand, scintil lating in the rays of the THE YOSEMITE AND YELLOWSTONE. afternoon sun, formed a most appropriate setting to the solitary mountain mere. "Its height above the ocean was ascertained by actual measurement to be eight thousand three hundred and thirty-seven feet. It is twenty-five miles long and eighty in circumference, and is possibly the mighty crater of an extinct volcano. It abounds with trout of unusual size and superior delicacy ; a great variety of water-fowl dot its surface, and the surrounding forests teem with deer, elk, mountain sheep, and smaller game, while farther within the fastnesses of the mountains the chance of meeting a grizzly, or the formidable mountain lion, is by no means a remote one. " On one point on the lake shore are scattered in great profusion curiously wrought objects of slate, varying in size from ' a gold dollar to a locomotive.' There were cups, discs, pestles, resemblances to legs and feet, doubtless the joint productions of fire and water. In these fanciful con figurations originate doubtless the tales current about the war-clubs and idols of an extinct race existing in the Yellowstone country. "On another part of the beach they found numerous specimens of cornelians, agates, and chalcedony. " Near the south-east end of the lake is the highest peak of the range. Two of the party ascended it. About two-thirds of the way up they were obliged to leave their horses and continue their ascent on foot. The altitude by barometrical observation was estimated at eleven thousand one hundred and sixty-three feet. ' The grandeur and vast extent of view from this elevation beggars description. The lake and valley surrounding it lay seemingly at our feet, within jumping distance. Beyond them we saw with great distinctness the jets of the mud volcanoes and geysers. But beyond these, stretching away into a horizon of hazy mountains, was the entire Wind River range, revealing in the sunlight the dark recesses, gloomy canons, stupendous precipices, and glancing pinnacles which everywhere dotted its jagged slopes. Lofty peaks shot up in gigantic spires from the main chain of the range, glittering in the sunbeams like solid crystal. The mountain on which we stood was the most westerly peak of a range which in long extended volume swept to the south eastern horizon, exhibiting a continuous elevation more than thirty miles in width, its central line being broken into countless nobs, glens, and defiles, all on the most colossal scale of grandeur and magnificence. The valley at the base of this range was dotted with small lakes, and cloven centrally by the river, which in the far distance we could see emerging from a canon of immense dimensions, within the shadow of which two enormous jets of steam shot an incredible height into the atmosphere/ 'This chain of mountains, the loftiest of the lateral ridges of the Rocky Mountains, is regarded by the Indians as the crest of the world ; and among the Blackfeet there is a fable that he who attains its summit catches 134 A PERILOUS ADVENTURE. a view of the land of souls, and beholds the happy hunting-grounds spread out below where the spirits of the good Indians revel in the pursuit of their favourite pastime. " While struggling irregularly through the dense timber which covers the slopes of the main divide, one of the party, Mr. Everts, became separated from the others. Leaving his companions in pursuit of game, or for the purpose of viewing the country, was not an unusual occurrence, and consequently little was thought of Mr. Evert's absence. But when night came, their friend's disappearance began to excite grave apprehensions. To follow a track through a dense forest and over fallen timber would tax the perceptive faculties of an Indian, and Mr. Everts was quite near-sighted. Every endea vour was made to attract his attention by firing guns, and building fires on prominent points near the camp. Failing to find him, they changed their camp to the lake shore, and remained for more than a week searching for him in all directions. " The weather was now (September 13) getting cold, and the next two days snow fell to a depth of two feet. Conjectures as to the probable fate of their poor lost comrade were numberless, but futile. He was well mounted ; when lost he was without pro visions, but had with him a good needle-gun and ammunition. 'We clung to the hope that, failing to f HE QREAT YELLOWSTONE PORGE. THE YOSEMITE AND YELLOWSTONE. find us on the second day, he had started for the settlements ; in which case he might possibly be beyond the reach of the snowstorm.' They continued their unwearied efforts until almost out of provisions. Then, leaving three of their number behind still to look for him, the rest of the party commenced their journey homewards, surfeited with the wonders of the Yellowstone, and believing that the interesting part of their journey was over.""" But a last and final 'wonder' was to be added to the strange experience of our enterprising travellers. Selecting to follow the Madison River, one of the three forks of the Missouri, to the settlements, they discovered, on the west side of Fire Hole River, a branch of the Madison, a basin literally alive with geysers and steam jets, which in volume and height dwarf even GROTTO GEYSER. the far-famed ones in Iceland into comparative insignificance. They remained for several days, and made a thorough exploration of this wonderful basin. The most prominent geysers were named Old Faithful, the Castle, the Giant, the Grotto, the Fantail, the Giantess, and the Beehive ; they were all in full activity in an area of two miles in length and one in width. " Old Faithful was so called on account of its almost constant action. It * The party on their arrival at the first settlement furnished two old mountaineers with six weeks' provisions, and offered a large reward if they succeeded in finding their lost comrade, Mr. Everts, or should bring back his body. They found him, quite exhausted and nearly famished, about sixty miles from Bozeman. It seemed that his horse got away from him the day after he left the party. His gun was made fast to the saddle, and his revolver was in the holster, so that he had no means of providing himself with any food. During the snowstorm he built himself a shelter of pine-boughs above a warm spring. For thirty-seven days he lived on roots, and two minnows he caught in his hat. THE GIANTESS GEYSER OF YELLOWSTONE. THE GREAT GEYSERS. did not intermit for more than an hour at any time during their stay. It had a vent five feet by three, and projected a solid column of water to a height of eighty or ninety feet. About the crater of the Castle was the largest cone of incrustations in the basin. The ground for a hundred yards sloped gradually up to the cone, which itself rose thirty feet nearly perpendicular It was called the Castle on account of its shape and commanding appearance A piece knocked out of the side of the mound of the Giant afforded a look into the crater, which was shaped like a hollow cylinder, and six feet in diameter. It discharged a column of water equal to the size of its crater to a height of a hundred feet. The day of their arrival it was in nearly constant action for three hours, after which it did not again discharge. The Grotto was so called from its domelike crater of vitrified sinter, full of large sinuous apertures. One of the company crawled through one of these holes and examined the orifice, but when an hour afterwards a volume of boiling water shot through it to a height of sixty feet, he concluded that he had narrowly escaped being summarily cooked. The Beehive was quite small, but threw its water higher than any of the other geysers. The stream was less than two feet in diameter, but ascended, by accurate measurement, to a height of two hundred and fifty feet. The Fantail geyser was so named from the fact that it discharged two streams from its orifice, which spread out very much like a fan. " But the most remarkable of all the boiling springs was the beautiful geyser which they appropriately named the Giantess. The ground sloped gently to the mouth of the crater, which did not protrude above the surface, as was the case with the other geysers in active operation. "'When quiet, it was a clear, beautiful pool, caught in a subsilica urn with a hollow, bottomless stem, through which the steam came bubbling like the effervescence of champagne from the bottom of a long hollow-necked glass ; the mouth of the vase, represented by the surface, was twenty feet by thirty, and the neck, fifty feet below, was fifteen by ten. All at once it seemed seized with a terrible spasm, and rose with incredible rapidity, hardly affording us time to flee to a safe distance, when it burst from the orifice with terrific momentum, rising in a column the full size of this immense aperture to the height of sixty feet ; and through and out of the apex of this aqueous mass five or six lesser jets were projected to the marvellous height of two hundred and fifty feet. These lesser jets, so much higher than the main column, and shooting through it, doubtless proceed from auxiliary pipes leading into the principal orifice near the bottom, where the explosive force is greater. This grand eruption continued for twenty minutes, and was the most magnificent sight we had yet beheld. We were standing on the side of the geyser nearest the sun, the gleams of which filled the sparkling column of water and spray with myriads of rainbows, whose curves were constantly changing, dipping, and fluttering hither and thither, and Till-: YOSEMITE AND YELLOWSTONE. disappearing only to be succeeded by others, again and again, amid the aqueous column, while the minute globules into which the spent jets were diffused when falling sparkled like a shower of diamonds, and around every shadow which the denser clouds of vapour, interrupting the sun's rays, cast upon the column, could be seen a luminous circle radiant with all the colours of the prism, and resembling the halo of glory represented in paintings as encircling the Head of Divinity. All we had previously witnessed seemed tame in comparison with the perfect grandeur and beauty of this display.' " Five miles below the geyser basin, on the west side of Fire Hole River, they came upon four lakes of boiling water. The circumference of the largest was four hundred and fifty paces. The immense volumes of steam ascending from them first called attention to their existence. So much hot o water flowed from them that the river was tempered for several miles below. No fish were found in the Fire Hole River, though after its junction with the Madison they were quite plentiful. "On the 22nd of September, just one month after leaving Fort Ellis, the adventurers reached Parleys, the frontier rancho on the Madison River, and felt, after such wonderful experiences, as may readily be supposed, a little strange to find themselves again within the pale of civilisation. By means of the Northern Pacific Railroad, which will probably be shortly com pleted, the wonders of the Yellowstone and the geyser basin will be rendered easy of access. Besides these lately discovered marvels, the enterprising tourist may visit and admire the kindred and hardly better known sights of the Falls of the Missouri, the fantastic eroded rock formations below Fort Benton, the grand panorama of the three converging forks of the Missouri, and the stupendous architecture of the vast chains and spurs which traverse this terra incognita, and heightens the grandeur of its primeval solitude." 22l^- ^wf^^**^ CHlCftQO TO journey homeward from San Fran cisco may be made by steamer to the Isthmus of Panama, and thence by the Gulf of Mexico to one of the southern or eastern ports. Travellers who have ample leisure, and do not object to a long sea voyage, find this a very pleasant trip. But for many reasons I preferred the ordinary direct route across the continent, though it involved a railway run of fifteen hundred miles through a country I had already seen, and which has been described in the preceding pages. CLARK'S RIVER FALL, LAKE SUPERIOR. CHICAGO TO NIAGARA. Only at Cheyenne, the point of junction of the Union Pacific and the Colorado Central Railways, did I enter upon new territory. Nebraska, which we now traverse, came into the possession of the United States in the year 1803, as part of the great purchase of the Mississippi Valley from the French. It was organised as a State in the year 1867. From the extraordinary fertility of its soil, and its mild and equable climate, it has already become a great grain-producing and stock-raising district. At Omaha, on the eastern boundary of the State, we cross the Missouri, a turbid, turbulent coffee-coloured stream,* and after passing through Iowa and the northern part of Illinois, we reach the Garden City, or the Queen City of THE UPPER MISSOURI. the Lakes, as Chicago is called. Probably every traveller in the United States, if asked to name a typical American city, would at once select Chicago. All that is best and worse in the national character is found in its most highly developed form intense energy, dauntless courage, versatility of resource, irre pressible hopefulness, and recuperative power under the most crushing disasters, wild and reckless speculation, gross vice, confronted by zealous large-hearted Christian charity. The progress of the city since its foundation, less than half a century ago, may be seen from the following official statistics. POPULATION OF CHICAGO. 1830 1840 1843 1844 70 4,853 7,58o 10,864 1845 1846 1847 1848 1872 (October) 12,088 14, 169 16,859 20,023 1849 1850 1852 1853 364,377 23, 47 29,9 6 3 38,734 60,627 1860 1862 1863 1865 112,172 138,835 160,000 178,900 1874 (December) estimated 1866 . . 200,418 1868 . . 252,054 1870 . . 298,977 1871 (June) 334,270 . 475,000 * Western men always speak of the Mississippi with pride, but they commonly couple some opprobrious epithet with the Missouri. Old Ugly, Big Muddy, Old Rip, are soubriquets frequently applied to it. PROGRESS OF CHICAGO. Valuation of Property in the City of Chicago. Also, the Amount of Taxes levied, and the Public Debt of the City in each year since 1838. YEAR. Total Valuation. Total Tax Levied. Bonded Debt of the City. YEAR. Total Valuation. Total Tax Levied. Bonded Debt of the City. 1839 $ 948,038 $ 4,740 $ 1857 $ 36,335,281 $ 572,046 $ 535,000 1840 944,370 4,731 1858 36,l89,93 2 430, 190 1841 1,667,445 IO,OO4 1859 36,553,380 513,614 1,885,000 1842 1,530,213 9,181 1860 37,053,512 373,050 2,336,000 1843 1,570,490 8,637 1861 36,352,380 550,968 2,362,000 1844 2,861,041 17,166 1862 37,139,845 564,038 2,028,000 1845 3,165,025 11,077 1863 42,667,324 853,346 3,422,500 1846 4,5 2I > 6 59 15,825 1864 48,732,782 974,655 3,544,500 1847 5,188,290 18,159 1865 64,709,177 1,294,183 3,701,000 1848 6,300,440 22,051 1866 85,953,250 1,719,065 4,369,000 1849 6,676,684 30,045 1867 195,026,844 2,518,472 4,757,5oo 1850 7,222,999 25,280 1868 230,247,000 3,223,458 6,484,500 1851 8,562,717 63,385 1869 266,024,880 3,990,373 7,882,500 1852 10,463,414 76,962 126,035 1870 275,986,550 4,139,798 11,362,726 1853 16,841,831 135,662 189,670 1871 289,746,470 2,897,464 14,103,000 1854 24,392,239 199,081 248,666 1872 284,197,430 4,262,961 13,546,000 1855 26,992,893 205,982 328,000 1873 312,072,995 5,6l7,3I3 13,494,000 1856 31,736,084 396,558 435,000 Arrivals and Clearances of Vessels at the Port of Chicago for a Series of Years. ARRIVALS. CLEARANCES. ARRIVALS. CLEARANCES. YEARS. Vessels. Tonnage. Vessels. Tonnage. YEARS. Vessels. Tonnage. Vessels. Tonnage. 1862 7,417 1 1,931,692 7,270 1,915,554 1869 13,730 3,123,400 13,872 3,149,946 1863 8,678 ! 2,172,611 8,457 2,l6l,22I 1870 12,739 3,049,265 12,433 2,983,942 1864 8,938 | 2,172,866 8,824 2, 166,904 1871 12,330 3,096, 101 12,312 3,082,235 1865 10,112 | 2,106,859 10,067 2,092,276 1872 12,824 j 3,059,752 12,53' 3,017,790 1866 11,084 2 ,258,572 ii, "5 2,36l,520 1873 11,858 3,225,911 11,876 3, 338., 803 1867 12,230 2,588,527 12,140 2,512,676 : 1874 10,827 ; 3,195,633 10,720 3,134,078 1868 13,174 2,984,591 13,225 3,020,812 A glance at the map will help to explain this progress, the rapidity of which is probably unparalleled even in America. Standing, as Chicago does, at the southern extremity of Lake Michigan, it is in direct water communica tion with the vast territory stretching from the north-west of Lake Superior to the shores of the Atlantic. Thus, though in the middle of the continent, it enjoys the advantages of a sea-port. A network of railways and canals, said to be the most extensive in the world, brings it into connection with the whole of the United States and Canada. It is possible for a steamer to enter the Mississippi from the Gulf of Mexico at New Orleans, and by means of one of these canals to make its way to the Atlantic by the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Chicago forms the outlet for the produce of Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana, which are amongst the most fertile States in the Union. The energy and public spirit of its citizens having provided all facilities for commerce, it has drawn to itself the trade of the immense area of which it is the natural centre. As I write, the large atlas of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knoivledge, published in 1832, lies before me. Fort Dearborn is marked, but CHICAGO TO NIAGARA. Chicago finds no place. The place where the city now stands was then only known as an Indian trading post, for the protection of which the fort had been built. I was at some pains to discover the meaning of the name, but failed. WABASH AVENUE, CHICAGO. Godspeed's History of Chicago, a large and pretentious volume, says that it is "an Indian word, meaning a skunk, or a chief, or a deity, or a wild onion." It is incredible that a single word should have such various meanings. Probably it is connected in derivation with the great lake Wvchigau, the THE CITY HALL, CHICAGO. MEANING OF THE NAME CHICAGO. initial syllable of which signifies water, and is found in .Mississippi, Missouri, Miami, Af/nnehaha, and other rivers. At the point where the River Chicago empties itself into the lake the first log house was built, in the memory of persons yet living, by a man named MacKinzie. The site was low and swampy, and suffered greatly CLARK STREET, CHICAGO. from inundation. As the city increased, it was resolved to lift it up bodily six or eight feet. This was done by cutting the walls of the blocks of houses near the basement, and placing underneath jack-screws, with a gang of men at the lever of each. At a given signal, each gang simultaneously gave a half turn to the lever. This was repeated again and again, till the CHICAGO TO NIAGARA. desired height was attained. In this way, warehouses, shops, and hotels were raised by a whole storey from the ground, so quietly and imperceptibly that business was carried on without interruption, and the inhabitants came and went, bought and sold, ate and slept as usual. The Sherman House, then the largest hotel in the city, was thus raised, though occupied all the while by guests. By an extension of this method, houses are transported from place to place. I saw several on their travels, and bought various articles in shops which had been moved out of their original location in the centre of the city, and were en route to the suburbs. The water supply of Chicago was originally very defective. That drawn from the river or from near the shores of the lake was impure, and wells could not furnish sufficient for the wants of the rapid ly increasing popu lation. An im mense tunnel was therefore run out for two miles un der the bed of the lake. At this dis tance it had reached the clear crystalline depths from which an abundant supply of water of ex quisite purity could be drawn and by means of powerful pumping-engines be distributed by millions of gallons over the whole city. In .nothing has the energy of the citizens of Chicago been more strikingly displayed than in the rapidity and completeness of their " recuperation " from the ravages of the great fire. The summer of 1871 had been exceptionally dry. Prairie fires had been unusually numerous and destructive, so that the atmosphere was loaded with smoke, dense clouds of which hung along the horizon. In the city many serious and alarming conflagrations had happened. Hence, when on Sunday, October the 8th, a new alarm was given, the firemen were exhausted with their labours. All that night it raged, and all the next day with such uncontrollable fury that it crossed the main branch of the Chicago River. Persons who deemed themselves quite safe were thus involved in the fiery deluge, almost before they were aware of the approach of danger. Immense granite blocks of warehouses, banks, and dwelling-houses were seen suddenly to collapse as the flames burst out from the interior, their contents being ignited, not by immediate contact with the flames, but by the currents IT HOUSE BUILT IN CHICAGO. 148 THE GREAT FIRE. of scorching winds which passed through them. It seemed as though the conflagration would only cease when nothing remained for it to feed upon. Not till four square miles had been laid in ashes, seventeen thousand four THE SHERMAN HOTEL. hundred and fifty buildings destroyed, nearly a hundred thousand persons rendered homeless, and two hundred and fifty had perished, did a great storm of rain pour down upon what was left of the city, and save it from utter destruction. Property to the value of two hundred million dollars had CHICAGO TO NIAGARA. been destroyed. Multitudes had lost their all. Even millionaires had to be fed on Government rations. This was a calamity which might have crushed out all hope and energy from the sufferers. But the ashes were not yet cold when the work of reconstruction commenced. Business was resumed amidst the smoking ruins. Only a year had elapsed when it could be said, that "a new Chicago is rising on the ruins of the old, grander, more magnificent, and more extensive ; and with one-fourth of the city in ashes, the business of the past year has been greater than ever before in a similar period." The Chicago Tribune sums up the result of " A Year's Work," in the following words : " We know of no words which will convey to persons residing outside of Chicago an idea of what has been done in the way of rebuilding the city, than to say that, beginning on April 15, 1872, and ending December i, 1872, excluding Sundays, counting two hundred working days, and each day of eight hours, there will be completed one brick, stone, or. iron building, twenty- five feet front, and from four to six storeys high, for each hour of that time. In other words, the buildings of that size and character completed, and that will be completed by December i, will average one for each sixty minutes of two hundred days of eight hours each. " This estimate, which will fall below the actual fact, does not include the many stone, brick, iron, and wooden buildings built outside of the burned district, and which alone equal the ordinary new buildings put up in Chicago annually. There is no precedent in the world's history of such a growth ; no precedent of such energy and bravery by a people who, within the year, had seen two hundred million dollars of their property destroyed by fire. The statement will sound extraordinary that, for seven months in 1872, beginning the first day the frost was out of the ground, there was built and completed in the burnt district of Chicago a brick, stone, or iron warehouse every hour of each working day in that time." The same energy which is displayed in the pursuit of material prosperity by the citizens of Chicago is manifested in their religious movements. In the year 1870, there were upwards of two hundred churches and buildings appropriated to Christian worship in the city, and the number has increased since then. The congregations are large, and the church members numerous probably larger and more numerous than those of any town of the same size in England. That infidelity and vice abound cannot be denied. Nor is this to be wondered at, when we remember that the population of the city is made up of immigrants from every part of the globe. "Future historians may say of Chicago that it 'rose like an exhalation.' Some already say that it resembles Pandemonium in other respects than in the rapidity of its growth. I often heard it spoken of as a fearfully wicked city. That many rough and lawless characters are among its immigrants may well be expected, but that stronger influences are busy on the side of order and law, of education and religion, is attested by the good municipal govern- RP2LIGIOUS LIFE IN CHICAGO. ment, and by the number of schools, churches, and charitable institutions. The vast and rapidly increasing population and wealth might cause feelings of depression rather than exultation, if viewed alone, but with this growth and activity there is also greater growth and greater activity in all good and beneficent works. Some travellers may like to parade statistics of crime, or to quote the large number of divorces in the State of Illinois, but more generous visitors will prefer to note what gives promise of a happy and well-ordered commonwealth. In this spirit I would conclude my recollections of Chicago by referring to one scene which left a deep impression. " From the busy tumult of the Chamber of Commerce one day soon after noon I was taken to a public building in La Salle Street, not far off. I was not told what I was going to see or hear ; but found myself in a large hall crowded to the door, the vast majority being men. It was a religious assembly, 'the noon-day prayer-meeting,' it was called, an institution which has been known for some years in most of the large American cities. I had attended a similar meeting in Boston, but it was a formal affair compared with the hearty and animated meeting at Chicago. An address was being delivered when I entered by the earnest and energetic evangelist, D. L. Moody. The singing was the heartiest I ever heard in America, as lively as in any Methodist meeting. The fact of such a service being kept up in the centre of the city, at the busiest time of the day, was a striking proof of spiritual life being active in the midst of an atmosphere of worldly influence. It is true that religion shows itself in the common duties and occupations of daily life ; but the best men feel refreshed and strengthened by a brief mid-day season of prayer and Christian communion. It used to be so in the City of London in the time of good old Mr. Watts Wilkinson, when St. Margaret's, Lothbury, every day at noon was crowded with bankers and brokers and merchants ; and in some degree similar scenes have been witnessed in more recent years. To witness such a scene in Chicago was a pleasant surprise, even after hearing of the number of places of Sabbath-day worship. The aggressive agency of these ' revival ' meetings reaches many who do not attend regular services at church, while the most respectable church-goers are none the worse for the quickening glow sometimes obtained in hours of devotion such as are experienced in La Salle Street Hall."* The list of vessels entering and clearing out from Chicago, given on page 143, will show the commercial value and importance of the great chain of lakes which stretches from Lake Superior to the St. Lawrence. The fact that a city in the interior of the continent, and nearly a thousand miles from the sea coast, should be a great shipping port, is not one of the least marvels of this marvellous country. Sailing across these vast inland seas in vessels as large and as well equipped as ocean steamers, we pass far out of sight of land, and are exposed to storms at least as violent as those in the * First Impressions of America and its People. Leisure Hour, 1871. CHICAGO TO NIAGARA. English Channel. It takes some time to familiarise ourselves with the fact that the water by which we are surrounded is not salt, but fresh. The story has been often told of the crew of a British vessel becalmed on Lake Ontario, during the war of 1812, suffering severely from thirst, in consequence of being ignorant or forgetful that they were afloat on a sea of deliciously sweet, pure water. It is, I believe, a fact, that gun-boats destined for service on the lakes during that war were fitted with water-tanks, as though for a sea-voyage ! A tour of the lakes does not offer very much to repay a traveller in the way of natural scenery. The shores, even when near enough to be seen, are commonly flat and uninteresting. But the rivers or straits connecting them the St. Clair River, for instance, between Lakes Erie and Huron, or the Straits of Mackinac, between Huron and Michigan have points of great beauty. In many places, cliffs rise precipitously from the water's edge. In others we sail between rounded hills, clothed with forests to the very summit. The channel is broken up by rocky islands, which though perilous to navigation, yet add to the picturesqueness of the landscape. The effect of scenery of this kind depends very much on atmospheric con ditions. One view I enjoyed under exceptionally favourable circumstances. On a delicious evening in June, a shower came sweeping up from the lake. As it passed over us, and the sun shone out again, the rain-drops sparkled like innumerable diamonds. A rainbow spanning the valley, and resting on the green hills on either side, formed a magnificent arch through which the river rushed impetuously, as though exulting in the beauty of the scene. Ship canals have been constructed at great cost, to enable vessels to avoid the rapids, and thus pass between the lakes without discharging cargo. But tourists for pleasure not unfrequently select the more difficult and perilous route, to join in the field sports of the North-west, and shoot the rapids in an Indian canoe. The frail boat, constructed of thin planking and birch- bark, looks far too fragile to bear the strain upon it, and the rush of waters constantly threatens to dash it in pieces upon the rocks. But the danger is more apparent than real. The passenger has only to sit perfectly still where he is told, and his boatman will steer him safely through the mad rush of the torrent to the still smooth water below. There is sufficient appearance of danger to give excitement to the adventure, but many years pass by without an accident. At the Saut Ste. Marie rapids, between Lakes Superior and Michigan, a story is current that a boat was once capsized with several pas sengers on board. The drowning men were borne irresistibly downward, vainly trying to save themselves by clinging to the rocks and projecting points in the channel. Crowds of spectators on the banks watched the catastrophe, though powerless to help the sufferers. At this juncture a Yankee trader rushed to the scene of the accident, and with frantic cries and gesticulations abjured the bystanders to rescue the " man with red hair." All effort was con centrated upon this object, though why this man's life was so pre-eminently LAKE SUPERIOR. valuable none knew. At length, after many failures, a rope was flung out to him, and he was dragged to shore more dead than alive. The Yankee being applied to for an explanation, gasped out, " Ah ! he owed me ten dollars ! " I cannot vouch for the truth of the story. Like Herodotus and Sir John Mandeville, I tell the story as it was told to me. PICTURED ROCKS OF LAKE SUPERIOR THE GREAT CAVE. Lake Superior is the largest body of fresh water in the world, covering an area of thirty-two thousand square miles. Its rock-bound shores afford some striking exceptions to what was just said as to the generally uninterest ing character of the lake scenery. In no part are they flat or tame, CHICAGO TO NIAGARA. and often they attain real grandeur. Sometimes a great wall of rock rises precipitously from the lake, and stretches in an unbroken line for a great distance. Elsewhere in wild picturesque disorder are " Rocks, knolls, and mounds, confus'dly hurled, The fragments of an earlier world." The Pictured Rocks, on the southern shore of the lake, about twenty miles from its mouth, are easily visited, and are very striking objects. They gain their name from the extraordinary effects of colour, caused by the NIAGARA FROM THE SUSPENSION BRIDGE. oxidation of metals, chiefly copper and iron, with which they are richly impregnated. And their forms are as remarkable as their colours. They extend for a distance of six or seven miles, and in many places rise vertically from the water's edge to a height of two hundred feet. Vast caves have been hollowed out into the resemblance of Gothic cathedrals. Huge masses of rock stand turreted and battlemented like ancient castles. Towards evening, when the lake forms a mirror, reflecting the grotesque forms and bright variegated colours of the rocks, the weird beauty of the scene is indescribable. 156 NIAGARA. But the supreme and crowning glory of the lakes is, of course, Niagara. Sala, in his American Diary, gives a droll account of his perplexity and despair at having to attempt a description of the Falls : " Niagara ! fearful word ; ominous and overwhelming to the literary mind. I have looked upon it for months as a monstrous bill for ever coming due, and which I have over and over again renewed, but for which I can procure now, even at the most exorbitant interest, no more days of grace. ' It has got to be done,' as our cousins say. The watery Sphinx has for the last time thundered forth her conundrum, and I must answer it or be devoured. Of course I shall be devoured demolished, and annihilated. I shall go over the Falls of Incapacity, be smashed to pieces at the base of the Table Rock of Stupidity ; be carried down the Rapids of Censure, to turn up again after many days, mangled and dismembered, in the Whirlpool of Criticism. How can I ever hold up my head again in print, after attempting Niagara ? " And, in truth, he does not attempt it, but fills up three letters under this title, with amusing persiflage. Even guide-books, usually so dry and prosaic, become rhetorical when they deal with Niagara. Thus I turn to Apple fan, the Murray of America, and read: "The River Niagara (signifying in the Iroquois language, Thunder of Waters) takes its rise in the western extremity of Lake Erie, and after flowing thirty-three and a half miles, enters Lake Ontario, which is three hundred and thirty-four feet below Lake Erie. The waters for which the Niagara is the outlet, cover an area' of one hundred and fifty thousand square miles ; floods so grand and inexhaustible ', as to be utterly unconscious of the loss of the hundred million of tons which they pour every hoiir, through succeeding centuries over these stupendous precipices? "Were you disappointed in the first view of Niagara?" is the question commonly addressed to the visitor, and as commonly answered in the affirma tive. I cannot say that I was so. It was exactly what I expected neither more nor less. Having read scores of descriptions, and seen hundreds of pictures of the falls, the whole scene was perfectly familiar. Of course, the sense of grandeur and immensity grew upon me as I gazed hour after hour at the wonderful spectacle. This is the effect of all grand natural scenery. But it is especially true of waterfalls. Sit down before a cascade of only moderate size. At first it seems nothing very remarkable, but gaze and listen long enough, and the ceaseless rush and roar, the sublime monotony of sound and motion, acquire a mysterious charm. At Niagara, the grandest cataract in the world, the impression becomes absolutely overpowering and fascinating. Let us take our stand at the edge of the great Horseshoe Fall on the Canadian side. To the right the river is rushing toward us in a furious torrent. The rapids, as they approach the abyss, seem conscious of their im pending fate, and writhe and struggle as though vainly endeavouring to escape from it. As they reach the edge of the fall the agitation ceases, and gives place to " the torrent's smoothness ere it dash below." A mass of water, CHICAGO TO NIAGARA. twenty feet in thickness,* bright as a mirror, clear as crystal, green as an emerald, curves over the wall of rock, and plunges down the ravine at our feet with an awful roar. In the clouds of spray which rise from the "hell of waters," swallows are seen darting to and fro, now emerging into the sunlight, and then lost to sight in the dense masses of vapour. Innumerable rainbows are formed amongst the shifting clouds as the wind rolls them hither and thither. The river below the falls is white with foam, but the agitation is less than might have been expected. Indeed, it is smooth enough to allow a ferry boat to ply upon it. The truth is, that the force of the descending tor rent is so great, that it is carried down for a con siderable dis tance under the superincumbent mass of water, and only comes up to the sur face at the dis tance of a mile or two. The rocky walls of the ravine through which the river rushes are of a ruddy tint. Trees and shrubs and flowers grow out of the crevices of rock, and by their exquisite verdure add a new beauty to the scene. About two miles lower down the gorge is spanned by a graceful sus pension bridge, the admirable proportions of which make it an ornament rather than an eyesore. Looking right across the glassy curve which forms the top of the fall, the eye rests upon a cluster of islands covered with the richest verdure Goat Island and the Three Sisters. They stand boldly out into the torrent which roars and rages round them as though endeavouring to sweep them away. Failing in this, it rushes past them and plunges over the American Fall, which, though smaller than the Horseshoe or Canadian Fall, * It is, of course, impossible to test by actual measurement the depth of water either in the rapids or on the edge of the fall itself. But in the year 1829 a ship, the Detroit, drawing eighteen feet of water, was sent over the fall, and it was seen to pass without touching the rock, leaving a clear space beneath its keel and the edge of the precipice. 158 ROAR OF THE FALLS. is a very rand and impressive object. The deafen ing roar of the cataract is said to have been heard in some conditions of the atmosphere, at Toronto, forty- four miles away. It is constantly heard at a distance of eighteen miles. The late Colonel Kelson told me that in the war of 1812, being in command of a small detachment of British troops, to which some Indian allies were attached, he was aroused at night by a sentry who said that he could hear cannon at a distance, showing that an engage ment was in pro gress. As he listened, he heard distinctly the long roll of heavy artil lery rising and sinking on the wind, and at once ordered the alarm to be sounded, and the men to be got under arms with the least AT THE FOOT OF THE AMERICAN" FALL. CHICAGO TO NIAGARA. possible delay, that they might march to the scene of action. But an old Indian chief lying down, put his ear to the ground, and then with a grunt of con tempt at his white friends, told them that it was Niagara they heard. This proved to be the fact, though they were seven teen miles distant. It is only by passing right under the falls that any ade quate sense of the force and volume of the cataract can be gained. Enveloped in a suit of oilskin, we descend a rough staircase, inclosed in a wooden shaft, which is fixed with iron clamps to the rock. Our fragile foothold shakes and trembles with the wild turmoil around it. Blasts of cold clammy air densely laden with vapour rush in through all the openings of the shaft. As we step out from it, having reached the bottom, it is difficult to breathe, not merely from the spray which fills eyes, and mouth, and nos trils, but from the density of the air, which seems to be forced in upon the lungs like a solid mass such at least was the sensation which I experienced. Few visitors penetrate beyond this point, but I persevered and made my way over the slimy boulders as far as it was possible to go. I found myself under an overarching canopy of rock, whilst the great mass of Niagara came pouring down in front of me from some mysterious height HENNEPIWS SKETCH OF NIAGARA. overhead. The blasts of cold wind, the blinding showers of spray, the deafening uproar, the oppression on the lungs, all combined to prevent any accurate observation of the marvellous scene. I have only a general remem brance of a dense mass of water falling with awful force and velocity, through which a dim green light made its way, whilst myriads of jets of water separated themselves from the body of the fall, and projecting themselves like descending rockets into the air, were caught by gusts of wind and dispersed into showers of foam. FATHER HENNEPIN'S SKETCH OF NIAGARA, 1677. Little, if at all, inferior in impressiveness to the falls themselves is the whirlpool. It has just been said that the vast mass of water plunges down to the bottom of the river-bed, and forming a subaqueous torrent only emerges to the surface at a distance of two or three miles. The channel at this point narrows considerably, and then turns round sharply at right angles to its former course. The result is a furious maelstrom, in which the centre of the current rises to a height of ten feet above the sides, whilst waves of prodigious size are flung upward to a yet greater height. The first European to visit Niagara was Jacques Cartier, in 1535 ; the CHICAGO TO NIAGARA. first to give a pictorial representation was Father Hennepin, a Franciscan missionary, who, in the latter half of the seventeenth century undertook a journey of discovery in the region of the great lakes. His sketch is curious as illustrating and confirming the conclusion arrived at by geologists, that the form of the cataract is constantly changing.* Even the hardest and most homogeneous rocks must be slowly worn away by the torrent which pours over them, and by the boulders which are borne down by it. But the geological formation here is partly shale, partly limestone. The former yields readily to the action of the water, and the latter is torn away in huge fragments and carried into the gulf below. The falls are thus receding surely and ceaselessly. The rate of recession has been calculated. Year by year the length of the rapids is being imperceptibly diminished as the wall of rock is eaten away, and at some distant day the river will have disappeared, and the lake will empty itself directly into the lower channel. In the attempt to describe Niagara, one's words convey the idea of rage, fury, wild and passionate turmoil. Yet, strange to say, this is not the im pression made upon the mind by the scene as a whole. It is rather that of majestic calm, of awful and irresistible might, guided and controlled by a silent, mysterious law. Whilst all the details suggest violent agitation, the serene beauty of nature asserts itself as the dominant sentiment. I felt this most impressively when, one afternoon in early summer, I sat hour after hour by the edge of the great Horseshoe Fall. The sun went down ; the calm, pensive shades of evening settled over the landscape ; the distant woods and fields grew dim ; the stars came out in the pure azure ; innumerable fireflies were weaving their intricate mazes around me, and still the thunderous roar went on ceaselessly, and the rush of waters continued as it had done from the creation of the world. It was as though the harsh discords and hoarse cries, and angry turmoil of life, had been hushed and harmonised into a Divine peace. This I have always felt to be the deepest and most abiding impression left upon my mind by Niagara. Often when giving expression to this feeling I have been laughed at, as indulging in paradox, or as affecting singularity. It was therefore with some surprise and pleasure that I found the same sentiments expressed by Dickens in his American Notes: "Then when I felt how near to my Creator I was standing, the first effect, and the enduring one instant and lasting of the tremendous spectacle, was peace. Peace of mind, tranquillity, calm recollections of the Dead, great thoughts of eternal rest and happiness ; nothing of gloom or terror. Niagara was at once stamped upon my heart, an Image of Beauty ; to remain there, changeless and indelible, until its pulses cease to beat for ever." * For an admirable discussion of the geological conditions of Niagara, see Sir Charles Lyell's Visit to //< United States. ,64 *S^^ji,*HC^ *** NEW HAMPSHIRE SCENERY. BOSTON AND NEW SOME years ago, wandering through the silent, picturesque, grass-grown streets of old Leyden, I came upon a house bearing the inscription : HERE LIVED, TAUGHT, AND DIED, JOHN ROBINSON. My companion burst into a fit of un controllable laughter at having discovered, as he said, " the abode of the mythical Jack Robinson." I was at first tempted to join him in his mirth, till I remem bered that this was the birth-place of the Puritan settlement of America. The exiles, R i- LICS BROUGHT OVER IN THE 'MAYFLOWER.' driven from England by persecution, had found a temporary refuge at Leyden, and formed there a Church, carrying out their own ideas of doctrine and discipline, under the pastorate of NEW ENGLAND. Robinson. But, though grateful for the toleration they enjoyed, the refugees never looked upon Holland as their home, and determined to seek a settlement across the ocean, on what were then the inhospitable, savage shores of North America. Their pastor led the pioneers in this movement to the neighbouring port of Delft, and, commending them to God in prayer, dismissed them upon their perilous enterprise. His parting words have been preserved by one of the party, as they well deserve to be. "He told us," says \Vinslow, "that we were ere long to part asunder; and whether ever he should see our faces again, was known to the Lord. But whether the Lord had appointed it or not, he charged us, before God and His blessed angels, to follow him no farther than he followed Christ ; and if God should reveal anything to us by any other instrument of His, to be as ready to receive it as ever we were to receive any truth by his ministry ; for he was very confident the Lord had more truth and light to break forth out of His Holy Word. . . . Here also he put us in mind of our Church covenant, or, at least, that part of it whereby we promise and covenant with God and one another to receive whatever light or truth shall be made known to us from His written Word. But withal, he exhorted us to take heed what we received for truth, and well to compare and examine it, and weigh it with other Scripture of truth before we received it. For (saith he) it is not possible the Christian world should have come forth so lately out of thick anti- Christian darkness, and full perfection of knowledge break forth at once. . . . Another thing he commended to us was, that we should use all means to avoid and shake off the name of Brownist. And so he advised us to close with the godly party of the kingdom of England, and rather to study union than division, viz., how near we might possibly, without sin, close with them, rather than in the least measure affect division or separation from them." The Speedwell, in which the Pilgrims first embarked, belied its name, and had to return with the emigrants on board. Some were dismayed by the perils and hardships they encountered, but a hundred persevered and sailed from Plymouth in the Mayflower, a vessel of only 180 tons, on the 6th of September, 1620. They had intended to make the mouth of the Hudson River. But, by the ignorance or the treachery of their captain, they were carried out of their course to the north of Cape Cod, and on the 2ist of November landed on Plymouth Rock, so called by them in loving remembrance of the port from which they sailed in the land which had cast them forth. Their provisions were scanty, the winter severe, the soil barren, the Indians hostile. Half the settlers died before spring. Those who survived were so weak as to be scarcely able to minister to the sick and dying. Yet, amidst all these dangers and sufferings, they bore up bravely. When the chief of the Narra- gansett Indians sent them a bundle of arrows tied up with a rattlesnake skin, in token of defiance, Bradford, their governor, with grim humour, 166 THE PILGRIM FATHERS. returned the skin filled with gunpowder, as his acceptance of the challenge. Joined by other bands of pilgrims, they had in a couple of years built a church, and placed six cannon upon its roof, as a protection against their savage enemies. Two years later, the settlement consisted of thirty-four houses, inclosed by a wall with fortified gates. The hostile Indians were LANDING-PLACE OF THE PILGRIMS, AT PLYMOUTH. cowed by the resolute bearing of the colonists, and treaties were made with such of the tribes as were friendly. Lands were bought from those who would sell, and formed the prize of war from those who would not. A quaint record of the hardships endured, and of the cheerful spirit in which they were borne, has come down to us in some rude verses, written about 1630, ten years after the first settlement. The anonymous bard who thus first attempted English poetry on the American Continent, says : New England's annoyances you that would know them, Pray ponder these verses which briefly do show them. The place where we live is a wilderness wood, Where grass is much wanting that's fruitful and good ; Our mountains, and hills, and our valleys below, Being commonly covered with ice and with snow; And when the north-west wind with violence blows, Then every man pulls his cap over his nose ; But if any's so hardy and will it withstand, He forfeits a finger, a foot, or a hand. NEW ENGLAND. And when the spring opens we then take the hoe, And make the ground ready to plant and to sow; Our corn being planted, and seed being sown, The worms destroy much before it is grown. And when it is growing, much spoil there is made By birds, and by squirrels, that pluck up the blade ; And when it is come to full corn in the ear, It is often destroyed by racoon and by deer. And now do our garments begin to grow thin, And wool is much wanted to card and to spin ; If we can get a garment to cover without, Our other in-garments are clout upon clout. Our clothes we brought with us are apt to be torn, They need to be clouted soon after they're worn But clouting our garments they hinder us nothing, Clouts double are warmer than single whole clothing. If fresh meat be wanting to fill up our dish, We have carrots, and pumpkins, and turnips, and fish ; And is there a mind for a delicate dish, We repair to the clam banks, and there we catch fish. Instead of pottage, and puddings, and custards, and pies, Our pumpkins and parsnips are common supplies ; We have pumpkins at morning, and pumpkins at noon ; If it was not for pumpkins we should soon be undone. If barley be wanting to make into malt, We must be contented and think it no fault; For we can make liquor to sweeten our lips Of pumpkins, and parsnips, and walnut-tree chips. * * * Now, while some are going, let other be coming, For while liquor's boiling it must have a scumming ; But I will not blame them, for birds of a feather, By seeking their fellows, are flocking together. But you whom the Lord intends hither to bring, Forsake not the honey for fear of the sting; But bring both a quiet and contented mind, And all needful blessings you surely will find.* It docs not fall within the scope of these slight sketches of American scenery to narrate at length the subsequent fortunes of the Puritan settle ment of New England. It must suffice to say, that the character of the first settlers has remained indelibly stamped upon their descendants. Even in the large cities into which the tide of emigration from every part of Europe has poured, we are constantly reminded of the men who, two centuries ago, left their homes and sought on these barren shores the liberty to worship God after the dictates of their own consciences. In every age of American history the men of New England have been conspicuous for a * Published by the Massachusetts Historical Society. I/O BOSTON AND THE BOSTONIANS. stubborn adherence to principle at all costs and all hazards. This has given them an influence in the national councils out of proportion to their numbers or their wealth. In the Revolutionary War they were the leaders in the revolt against the mother country. If Plymouth Rock was the birth-place of the nation, Bunker's Hill was the birth-place of National Independence. In the Civil War, they were not only the first to assert the rights of the slave, but when the central states wavered in their opposition to the military power of the south, Massachusetts never flinched nor faltered. It may be true, as their fellow-countrymen allege, and as visitors often feel, that the Yankee type of character is marked by somewhat of opinionativeness, hardness, and self-conceit, but it is impossible to deny to them the inestimable qualities of fidelity to conscience, and the fearless assertion of convictions. If Chicago be taken as the typical city of Young America, Boston stands out as the representative of New England. It claims to be the intellectual metropolis of the New World. And the claim is allowed, though o not without many a jest at those who make it. Americans, who have a nick name for every state, and city, and public man in the union, call it " the Hub," the pivot, that is, round which the universe is supposed to move. "Boston," says one writer, "is a city of two hundred and fifty thousand in habitants, at a mean distance from the sun of ninety-two million miles, with a rotation on its axis of twenty-three hours, fifty-six minutes and four seconds, and a revolution in its orbit of three hundred and sixty-five days five hours forty-eight minutes and fifty seconds." " Bostonians," says another writer, with a side-glance at the Unitarianism which prevails amongst them, " are so proud of their birth-place that they seldom wish to be born again." The characteristics of the three great Eastern cities are hit off by the proverb : " At New York the question is what a man has, in Philadelphia who he is, in Boston what he knows." The original Indian name of Boston was Shawmut. The first colonists called it Trimountaine abbreviated into Tremont from the three hills which formed a marked feature in the landscape. Its present name was given by the emigrants from the Lincolnshire coast, who, with the pathetic love for the mother country which characterised them, transferred the old familiar name to their new home. There are few cities In America where the English visitor finds himself MONUMENT ON BUNKER'S HILL. NEW ENGLAND. OLD STATE HOUSE. 1748, and was long used by the year 1770, the square in front was of the Republic as the " Boston Massacre." The feelings of an tagonism between the colonists and the mother country had been growing- more and more embittered, and in an acci dental collision between the townspeople and the British mainguard, the latter fired upon the crowd, killing four and wounding many others. The result was to increase the irri tation which already existed, and thus to accelerate the revolution, which could not have been long delayed. Faneuil Hall, " the cradle of liberty," as it is fami liarly called, was built by Peter Faneuil, an old Huguenot mer chant, in 1/42. Having been destroyed by fire, it was rebuilt so soon at home. The streets are not laid out in straight lines, running at right angles to each other, but are crooked and de vious, like those of our own towns hence the joke that " they were laid out by the cows going to pasture." To myself, wearied with the mathematical regularity and spic-and-span newness of other cities, it was positively refreshing to be able to lose one's way amongst old rambling streets with picturesque court yards and projecting gables. Boston, unlike most American cities, can boast of buildings of real historical interest, such as the Old State House and Faneuil Hall. The former was built in State Legislature for its sittings. In the o o the scene of what is known in the annals FANEUIL HALL. BOSTON COMMON. in 1761, and, soon afterwards, served as a barrack for the British troops until 1776, when they had to evacuate the city, and Washington triumphantly entered it. Ever since, it has been the great meeting-place for the citizens of Boston. On occasions of great public excitement its unbenched floor is densely packed by the crowds who flock together to listen to stirring harangues, to invoke the memory of their ancestors, and to pass resolutions denouncing tyranny and oppression in every form. The hall, being public property, is never let for money- payment, but is thrown open for meetings by the authorities, on receiving a requisition for that purpose. The charter of the city contains a clause forbidding the sale or lease of this historic edifice under any circum stances. Of few things are the Bostonians more proud than of their Common, and deservedly so, for few things are more characteristic of the city. It cannot compare either for extent or splendour with the public gardens we find elsewhere. In American phrase, " It is not a circumstance " to the Central Park of New York, or Fairmount at Philadelphia. Its tiny lake is derisively called the " Frog-pond :" yet its avenues of stately elms, its smooth green sward, its plain, unostentatious, homely beauty, give it a charm which is not found in the magnificent parks of other cities. And it has a history 177 NEW ENGLAND. which they have not. A venerable elm, known as " Liberty Tree," went back almost to the Puritan settlement, and was the centre for patriotic gatherings till its fall a year or two ago. Those who deride the Puritans as ignorant and uncouth fanatics, and claim for the Cavaliers a monopoly of culture and refinement, would do well LIBERTY TREE, BOSTON COMMON. to study the history of public education in the New England States. Shortly after the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers common schools were established ; and in the year 1647, it was enacted "that all the brethren shall teach their children and apprentices to read, and that every township of fifty house- HARVARD COLLEGE. holders shall appoint one to teach all the children." 1 Nor was higher education forgotten. It was only six years after the settlement of Boston that the general court appropriated ^400 a large sum in those days for the establishment of a college at Newtown, as Cambridge, was then called. As this sum was equal to a whole year's tax of the entire colony, we may infer in what estimation the earliest colonists held a liberal education. Two years after, the institution received the bequest of ^800 from the estate of the Rev. John Harvard. The court, in consequence of this legacy, changed the name of the town to Cambridge, where the generous benefactor had been educated in old England, and gave his name to the college itself. In the GORE HALL, HARVARD COLLEGE. two centuries and a half which have elaped since its foundation Harvard, under the fostering care of the colony and the state, and by the generosity of its alumni and friends, has maintained a leading position amonst the colleges of the country, its only rival being Yale, in Connecticut, which has a history little less noteworthy.! Walking amidst sequestered courts, under the cool green shade of venerable trees, and surrounded by ancient buildings, it is * Twenty years after this, Sir William Berkeley, Cavalier Governor of Virginia under Charles ir., wrote: "I thank God there are no free schools or printing here, and I hope we shall not have them these hundred years. For learning has brought heresy, and disobedience, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them. God keep us from both!" t See Osgoocl's admirable guide-book, Boston Illustrated. NEW ENGLAND. easy to forget that the feverish activity of American life lies all around us. We seem borne back again across the Atlantic, and to have returned to our own ancient seats of learning. Not even Oxford or Cambridge has an air of more classic repose and philosophical calm than these universities of the New World. An hour's ride from Boston is Salem a name of evil omen amongst the Puritans of New England. It was here that the worst side of their character their intolerance and fanaticism came into greatest prominence. Escaping from persecution, they had not learned to concede to others the liberty they claimed for themselves. The founder of the settlement, John YAI.E COLLEGE. Endicott (1628), called it Salem, from "the peace they had and hoped to enjoy in it." The tiny meeting-house in which they assembled for worship, not larger than a good-sized room, is still standing, and well deserves a visit. Three years afterwards Philip Ratcliff was scourged, had his ears cut off, and suffered banishment, with the confiscation of his property, "for blaspheming against the church of Salem, the mother church of all this holy land." A few years later the Quakers were stripped, whipped, imprisoned, and banished from the colony. The Baptists were excommunicated and expelled. Towards the close of the century the witch delusion broke out. The names of one hundred and fifty persons are given, who were accused of 180 SALEM WITCHCRAFT. witchcraft, of whom twenty were hung, one was pressed to death with cir cumstances of peculiar horror, and many others perished miserably from the sufferings they endured. Amongst them were women of good repute, ministers of the gospel, and little children from five to ten years of age. A contem porary document which lies before me commences the narrative of these troubles by saying that, " There was a prodigious descent of devils upon divers places near the centre of this province." Similar phrases occur again and PEITEKILL, NEAR. BOSTON, THE HOME OF FRESCOTT THE HISTORIAN. again, showing that the whole population was in a condition of panic, under which no man's life was safe. A single extract from a work published at the time will suffice to show the credulity and terror which prevailed. Speaking of parallel cases of witchcraft elsewhere, the writer says : " There were dis covered no less than threescore and ten witches in one village ; ' three and twenty of which, freely confessing their crimes, were condemned to die. The rest (one pretending she was with child) were sent to Falhuma, where most of them were afterwards executed. Fifteen children which confessed NEW ENGLAND. themselves engaged in this witchery, died as the rest. Six and thirty of them, between nine and sixteen Years of Age, who had been less guilty, were forced to run the Gauntlet and be lashed on their Hands once a Week for a Year together. Twenty more who had less inclination to these Infernal Enter prises, were lashed with Rods upon their Hands for three Sundays together at the Church door. The number of the Seduced Children was about Three Hundred."* In the court-house of Salem the original reports of the proceed ings, the pins and nails which were extracted from the bodies of those who were possessed, and many other relics of this period of delusion and terror, are preserved. SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS. As we walk through the pleasant streets of Salem, past the stately mansions which still remain from the old colonial days, when it and Nantucket were the great commercial emporiums of the New \Vorld, it is difficult to realise that such horrors were enacted here. A more agreeable association with Salem is that it has been the birth place of some of the most eminent men whom New England has produced ; amongst them Nathaniel Hawthorne, Prescott the historian, and Peabody, who is buried in a charming suburb of the city. I have already spoken of the New England landscape. Much of it is * Wonders of the Invisible World, by Cotton Mather, p. 445. NEW ENGLAND SCENERY. flat and uninteresting, and the want of tall timber deprives it of that richness which makes even the least picturesque of our English counties so beautiful. But it has many districts which may compare favourably with the finest scenery of Europe the White Mountains of New Hampshire, for instance, or the Green Mountains of Vermont, the Berkshire Hills, or the Housatonic Valley. Bold mountain forms, cool, sequestered glens, gleaming lakes, foaming waterfalls, and hanging woods, combine to form a landscape of rare beauty, and warrant the somewhat pretentious title of the Switzerland of America. There are many spots to which the words of Edward Everett will apply : NANTUCKET WHARF. " I have been something ot a traveller in my own country, and in Europe. I have seen all that is most attractive, from the Highlands of Scotland to the Golden Horn of Constantinople, from the summit of the Hartz Mountains to the Fountain of Vaucluse ; but my eye has yet to rest on a lovelier scene than that which smiles around you as you sail from Weir's Landing to Centre Harbour on Lake Winnepesaukee." Notwithstanding the beauty of portions of the New England scenery, its general aspect is stern and rugged, in harmony with its history. The men who planted and settled the Old Granite State found a soil and climate congenial with their character, and which have helped to preserve it amongst N 185 NEW ENGLAND. their descendants. Habits of thrift and industry, of steadfast perseverance and firm resolve, have been fostered by inclement skies and a barren soil. The teachings of experience, like those of Scripture, associate "pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness." When Lot chose the "well-watered" plain of Sodom, with its exuberant fertility, leaving to Abraham the bare wind-swept hills of Palestine, he unconsciously carried out the Divine purpose, which had prepared a nobler destiny for the covenant people than could be attained in the lap of luxury. And so, in a lower sense, we may believe that it was not without a providential guidance that the Mayflower, deviating from her course, cast the Pilgrims upon Plymouth Rock. They thus escaped the temptations to luxury and effeminacy to which they might have suc cumbed, had they landed in what are now the Southern States of the Union. Mrs. Sigourney, herself a descendant of the Puritans, has addressed a stirring appeal to her fellow-countrymen, urging them to transmit to their children the virtues of their ancestors : " O ye, who proudly boast, In your free veins, the blood of sires like those, Look to their lineaments. Dread lest ye lose Their likeness in your sons. Should Mammon cling Too close around your heart, or wealth beget That bloated luxury which eats the core From manly virtue, or the tempting world Make faint the Christian purpose in your soul, Turn ye to Plymouth Rock, and where they knelt, Kneel and renew the vow they breathed to God." 1 86 CHOUGH I had heard much, and seen something of the splendid appointments of American steamers, those running on the Fall River, between Boston and New York, took me by surprise. To speak of them as floating palaces is no exaggera tion. They are of immense size, with six decks, and three hundred state rooms, affording accom modation for eight hundred persons. The grand saloons, two hundred and seventy-five feet long, and twenty-one feet high, THE EMPIRE STATE. are panelled with the choicest woods, and car peted with the richest velvet; pile, into which the foot sinks as into a bed of moss. Mirrors and pictures give them the air of magnificent drawing - rooms. A band which would do no discredit to Sir Michael Costa plays through the evening, and a dinner which would do no dis credit to a Lon don club, may be obtained at the restaurant on board. It was impossible not to be struck by the contrast between the superb accommodation thus afforded, and the wretched tubs which still ply round our coasts, or navigate the Channel. The approach to New York by sea is very fine. It bears a certain resemblance to the approach to Constantinople, to which it is sometimes compared. The shores of Long Island, Staten Island, and New Jersey may stand for those which border and inclose the Sea of Marmora. The Battery at the end of Manhattan Island projects into the bay like the Golden Horn. Brooklyn, divided from New York by the East River, is the Western representative of Pera and Galata. But there the comparison must cease. The characteristic features of an Eastern city its minarets and domes, its glow of colour and luxuriant foliage, its air of mystery, of venerable antiquity and of repose- are wanting here. Everything is new and raw, and the details of the picture are for the most part unattractive. The villas, indeed, which line the shores, NEW YORK STATE. the gardens bright with flowers, and the verdant lawns sloping down to the sea, are not wanting in picturesqueness. The broad expanse of the bay is alive with vessels varying in size from ocean steamers to coasting or fishing craft. But it would be difficult to imagine anything more unsightly than the ferry-boats, which are plying in every direction, except it be the grain ele vators, which are absolutely hideous. Everywhere we see an eager, intense activity, and exuberance of vitality, reminding us that we are approaching the commercial capital of "the smartest nation in creation." The State of New York the Empire State, as the Americans call it is three hundred and thirty-five miles in length, by three hundred in breadth. We on this side the Atlantic seldom think of New York except as a great commercial centre. With a feeling of surprise we find that its northern frontier is formed by Niagara, Lake Ontario, and the Upper St. Lawrence with its Bay of a Thousand Islands, and that in the upper portion of the FERRY-BOATS BY NIGHT. state are lofty mountains, tracts of primeval forest, and unreclaimed wilderness, equal in extent to the whole of Wales or Palestine. We thus, on arriving from the Old World, gain our first practical lesson as to the vastness of the country we are about to traverse, and begin to understand the feeling of the typical American tourist in England, who professed that "he dared not take a walk before breakfast lest he should slip over the side." It was in the year 1609 that Hendrik Hudson explored the bay, and sailed up the river which bears his name, for a distance of one hundred and fifty miles, to where the city of Albany now stands. Five years later a Dutch settlement was formed, consisting of four houses and a fort. It stood on what is now known as the Bowling Green, and was called New Amsterdam. In fifty years the population had increased to one thousand eight hundred. In 1664, Charles n. having made a grant of all the land between the Connecticut and the Delaware Rivers to his brother, the Duke THE EMPIRE STATE. of York, the English dispossessed the original settlers, and changed the name of the city to New York, in honour of the new proprietor. Very few relics of the old Dutch town now remain. The names of many of the localities indeed are handed down from the times of the infant colony, whose fortunes have been so amusingly narrated by Washington Irving in his EXCURSION STEAMER ON THE HUDSON. burlesque History of New York, by Dicdrich Knickerbocker. Here and there in the back slums leading towards the Castle Garden, an old edifice may be found which recalls the days of Peter Stuyvesant. But the inexorable requirements of modern progress have improved New Amsterdam off the face of the earth. Manhattan Island, on which the city stands, is about fourteen miles in 199 MANHATTAN ISLAND. length by two in breadth. About half this space is already covered with buildings, and, in 1870, contained a population of nearly a million. If the in habitants of Brooklyn, Williamsburg, Jersey, and other suburbs be added, it would take its place amongst the largest cities in the world. Along the central ridge of Manhattan Island runs Broadway, for a distance of nearly five miles, from the Battery to the Central Park, and con tinues in a nearly direct line for four and a half miles farther to i54th Street. The roadways parallel with it are called avenues, those intersecting it running down to the Hudson River on one side, and the East River on the other are streets. Being numbered in consecutive order from north to south NEW YORK IN 1673. and from east to west, it is impossible for the most inexperienced visitor to lose his way. A similar rule, with needful modifications, is observed in most American cities. The historical associations connected with our street nom enclature are lost, but the method is not without its convenience. If I receive an address in 23rd Street, between 8th and Qth Avenues, I can go straight to the place without doubt or hesitation, though a total stranger in the city. 193 THE EMPIRE STATE. Broadway is, perhaps the longest street in the world, if we include its extension beyond Central Park. It combines in itself what a Londoner would understand by East End, City, and West End Regent Street, Cheap- side and Poplar all in one. Starting from the Battery and Castle Garden, we pass shipping offices, emigration agencies and sailors' homes. The zone of CASTLE GARDEN AND BATTERY PARK. wholesale stores, banks, insurance offices, and stock exchange succeeds. Then come "the happy hunting grounds " of fashionable ladies out shopping, where the Swan and Edgars, the Howell and James's, the Storr and Mortimers of America display their tempting wares. The business part of the city now gives place to the "brown stone" and marble mansions of the millionaires, who have gone "up town," as the Court end of New York is called. The '94 BROADWAY. outer fringe of the city consists of clusters of wretched shanties run up by squatters who hang on to the skirts of civilisation like the line of filth which marks the limit of the tide. Dickens, in his American Notes, has given a description of Broadway and its purlieus so vivid and life-like, that I cannot do better than quote it, with a few omissions : "Was there ever such a sunny street as this Broad way ! The pavement stones are polished with the tread of feet until they shine again ; the red bricks of the houses might be yet in the dry hot kilns ; and the roofs of those A SQUATTER VILLAGE, IN THE OUTSKIRTS. omnibuses look as though, if water were poured on them, they would hiss and smoke, and smell like half quenched fires. No stint of omnibuses here ! Half-a-dozen have gone by within as many minutes. Plenty of hackney cabs and coaches too ; gigs, phae- tons, large-wheeled til buries, and private car riages rather of a clumsy make, and not very dif ferent from the public ve hicles, but built for the heavy roads beyond the city pavement. Negro coachmen and white ; in straw hats, black hats, white hats, glazed caps, fur caps, in coats of drab, black, brown, green, blue, nan keen, striped jean and linen ; and there, in that one instance (look while it passes, or it will be too late), in suits of livery. Yonder, where that phaeton with the well-clipped pair of greys has stopped standing at their heads now is a Yorkshire groom, who has not been BROADWAY AT ST. PAUL'S. THE EMPIRE STATE. very long in these parts, and looks sorrowfully round for a companion pair of top-boots, which he may traverse the city half a year without meeting. The ladies, how they dress ! We have seen more colour in these ten minutes than we should have seen elsewhere in as many days. What various parasols ! what rainbow silks and satins ! \yhat pinking of thin stockings, and pinching of thin shoes, and fluttering of ribbons and silk tassels, and display of rich cloaks with gaudy hoods and linings ! The young gentlemen are fond, you see, of turning down their shirt-collars and __ cultivating their whiskers, especially under the chin ; but they cannot approach the ladies in their dress or bearing, being, to say the truth, humanity of quite another sort. Byrons of the desk and counter, pass on, and let us see what kind of men those are behind ye : those two labourers in holi day clothes, of whom one carries in his hand a crumpled scrap of paper from which he tries to spell out a hard name, while the other looks about for it on all the doors and windows. " Irishmen both ! You might know them, if they were masked. It would be hard to keep your model republics going, without the countrymen and country women of those two la bourers. For who else would dig, and delve, and drudge, and do domestic work, and make canals and roads, and execute great lines of Internal Improvement! Irishmen both, and sorely puzzled too, to find out what they seek. Let us go down, and help them, for the love of home, and that spirit of liberty which admits of honest service to honest men, and honest work for honest bread no matter what it be. " That's well ! We have got at the right address at last, though it is written in strange characters truly, and might have been scrawled with the blunt handle of the spade the writer better knows the use of, than a pen. 19$ ST. MARK'S CHURCH. BROADWAY. Their way lies yonder, but what business takes them there ? They carry savings : to hoard up ? No. They are brothers, those men. One crossed the sea alone, and working very hard for one half-year, and living harder, saved funds enough to bring the other out. That done, they worked together side by side, contentedly sharing hard labour and hard living for another term, and then their sisters came, and then another brother, and lastly, their old mother. And what now ? Why, the poor old crone is restless in a strange land, and yearns to lay her bones, she says, among her people in the old graveyard at home, and so they go to pay her passage back. " This narrow thoroughfare, bak ing and blistering in the sun, is Wall Street : the Stock Exchange and Lombard Street of New York. Many a rapid fortune has been made in this street, and many a no less rapid ruin. Some of these very merchants whom you see hanging about here now, have locked up money in their strong boxes, like the man in the Arabian Nights, and opening them again, have found THE EMPIRE STATE. but withered leaves. Below, here by the waterside, where the bowsprits of ships stretch across the footway, and almost thrust themselves into the windows, lie the noble vessels which have brought hither the foreigners who abound in all the streets: not, perhaps, that there are more here than in THE FIFTH AVENUE. other commercial cities ; but elsewhere they have particular haunts, and you must find them out ; here, they pervade the town. " We must cross Broadway again ; gaining some refreshment from the heat, in the sight of the great blocks of clean ice which are being carried BROADWAY. into shops and bar rooms ; and the pine-apples and water melons profusely displayed for sale. Fine streets of spacious houses here, you see ! Wall Street has furnished and dis mantled many of them very often and here a deep green leafy square. Be sure that is a hospitable house with inmates to be affectionately remem bered always, where they have the open door and pretty show of plants within, and where the child with laughing eyes is peeping out of window at the little dog below. You wonder what may be the use of this tall flagstaff in the by street, with something like Liberty's head-dress on its top: so do I. But there is a passion for tall flagstaffs here about, and you may see its twin brother in five minutes, if you WASHINGTON HEIGHTS. have a mind. "Again cross Broadway, andso passingfrom the many- coloured crowd and glitter ing shops into another long main street, the Bowery. A railroad yonder, see, where two stout horses trot along, drawing a score or two of people and a great wooden ark, with ease. The stores are poorer here ; the passen gers less gay. Clothes ready- made, and meat ready-cooked, are to be bought in these parts ; and the lively whirl of carriages is exchanged for the deep rumble of carts and waggons. These signs which TRINITY CEMETERY. THE EMPIRE STATE. are so plentiful, in shape like river buoys, or small balloons, hoisted by cords to poles, and dangling there, announce, as you may see by looking up, "OYSTERS IN EVERY STYLE." They tempt the hungry most at night, for then dull candles glimmering inside, illu minate these dainty words, and make the mouths of idlers water as they read and linger." The great boast of New Yorkers is the Central Park, and they may well be proud of it. It contains, indeed, some tasteless buildings and execrable statuary. The site chosen had no natural beauty to recom mend it, and yet the gene ral effect is unquestion ably good. Landscape gardening has done its best in improving eight hundred and sixty-three acres of swamp and rock into an ornamental ear- o den, certainly not inferior to the Bois de Boulogne of Paris. The quality of the turf and the size of the timber cannot, of course, compare with those of our English O parks, nor, from the thinness and poverty of the soil, can the trees ever attain a consider- CENTRAL PARK. able size. But a brighter, more varied, more picturesque sweep of artificial landscape I do not know. The lakes, which cover one hundred and eighty-five acres, are supplied by the Croton waterworks. A flotilla of gaily painted pleasure boats in summer, and crowds of skaters in winter, add to the vivacity of the scene. The deficiency of fine timber is supplied, as far as possible, by an endless succession of walks winding in and out amongst copses and thickets, the shade of which is delightfully refreshing under the fierce sun of an American summer. The cost of the whole has been up wards of ten mil lion dol lars (two m il lions sterling), and New Yorkers de cl ar e that the whole of this a- mount has been honestly expended, it being the only public work in the city which has been kept free from jobbery and corruption. Brooklyn is to New York what the " Surrey side" is to London, or Birkenhead to Liverpool. It is of itself an important city, containing upwards of half a million inhabitants. A large proportion of these have their places of business in New York, and pass to and fro daily. The great number^ of ecclesiastical edifices more than two hundred and fifty which it contains has gained for it the name of the " City of Churches." The East River, which divides New York and Brooklyn, is not as yet spanned by a bridge, though one is in course of construction. The ferry boats which ply incessantly make communication easy, and the two cities are for all practical purposes but one integral whole. Much is said and with justice on both sides the Atlantic as to the LAKE IN THE CENTRAL PARK THE EMPIRE STATE. jobbery and corruption which pre vail in New York. Most as tounding charges of embezzle ment and fraud are openly made against the leading politicians in the city. To some extent these accusations are groundless. No where is party spirit more fierce and unscrupulous. The principle announced by Sala in his Ameri can Diary is freely acted upon : " Never accuse youradversary of ignorance or error. Declare boldly that he murdered his grandmother andstole clocks." But, after making all possible allowance for the ex aggerations and mis representations of heated partisans, it cannot be doubted that the government of the city is fearfully corrupt. It ought, however, to be remem bered that New York is a cosmopo litan, ra ther than an Ameri can city. For the last fifty years it has been the com mon sewer ofEurope. MORALITY OF NEW YORK. SANDY HOOK, FROM THE LIGHTHOUSE. Every day sees a fresh flood of ignorance and pauperism and crime poured upon its shores. The wonder is not that it is so bad, but that it is not far worse. If I were an advocate for Ameri can institutions, I should point to New York as a proof of their excellence, seeing that they have sur vived the tremendous strain put upon them. When we remember that the worst class of emigrants remain in the city, whilst the ma jority of the virtuous and industrious go up the coun try, it is surprising that the evil is kept so well in check. Visiting Blackwell's Island, which is the city prison, poor house and penitentiary, we find that the Irish form more than one half of its inmates. German emigrants come next, then the English, whilst native- born Americans are only about ten per cent, of the whole. From the public and private immorality of New York it is pleasant to turn aside to the efforts made to stem the tide of evil. Probably in no city in the world are religious and phi- lanthropicorganisations more vigorously and earnestly at work than here. The mag nitude of the evil to be encountered has called forth a corresponding zeal and devotion on the part of the Christian Church. The form which these philanthropic TURTLE BAY AND BLACKWELL S ISLAND. THE EMPIRE STATE. efforts assume may sometimes offend a fastidious taste and jar upon our feeling's of propriety, yet it is impossible not to admire the vigour with which they are conducted, or rejoice in the success by which they are followed. There are multitudes in New York who live in the spirit of the prayer with which the minute book of the Common Council of the city commences : " We beseech Thee, O Thou who art the fountain of all good gifts, qualify us by Thy grace, that we may, with fidelity and righteousness, serve in our respective offices. To this end enlighten our darkened understandings, that we may be able to distinguish the right from the wrong, the truth from falsehood ; and that we may give pure and uncorrupted decisions ; having an eye upon Thy Word, a sure guide, giving to the simple wisdom and know ledge. Let Thy law be a light to our feet and a lamp to our path, so that we may never turn away from the path of righteousness. Deeply impress on all our minds that we are not ac countable unto men but unto God, who seeth and heareth all things. Let all respect of persons be far removed from us, that we may award justice unto the rich and the poor, unto friends and ene mies alike ; to residents and to strangers, according to the law of truth, and that not one of us may swerve therefrom. And since sifts SPUYTEN DUYVIL CREEK. do blind the eyes of the wise, and destroy the heart, theretore keep our hearts aright. Grant unto us, also, that we may not rashly prejudge any one without a fair hearing, but that we patiently hear the parties, and give them time and opportunity for defending themselves, in all things looking up to Thee and to Thy Word for counsel and direction." Some of the most pleasing scenery on the continent may be found in the State of New York, and within easy reach of the city. If the American people were less addicted to travel, they would explore the beauties of their own land before visiting Europe. I have seen tourists in raptures over the banks of the Rhine or the Danube, to whom those of the Hudson were unknown. And yet, paradoxical as it may sound, the Hudson is the most HEADWATERS OF THE HUDSON IN THE ADIRONDACKS. THE HUDSON RIVER. ARBOR VIT^i GROVE ON THE HUDSON. beautiful river of the three. It lacks the ruined castles and romantic legends of its German rivals. Its tradi tions are but of yesterday, and are either grotesque or prosaic. But it has an afflu ence and variety of natural beauty which more than compensate for this de ficiency. Rising amongst the Adirondack Mountains in the northern part of the state, it flows in a southerly course for about three hun dred miles. For the first hundred and fifty miles it rushes over a series of rapids and cascades, which prevent navigation. But at this point, where the city of Troy (!) stands, it becomes a navigable river flowing down in a broad deep channel to the sea. In assigning the palm of beauty to the Hudson over its more famous Euro pean rivals, I must admit that they have single points of views which it cannot equal. It surpasses them, however, in variety and in uninterrupted loveliness. On the Rhine and the Danube are long stretches of country with little to attract the eye, and in sailing up the former of these rivers we feel a certain monotony in the succession of hill-sides, ter raced to the summits with vineyards. Vineyards, how ever poetical in idea, are very prosaic in fact. As cultivated in France and Germany, they are the most stiff and formal covering for the landscape that can be FOOT OF THE STORM KING. THE EMPIRE STATE. well imagined, with no more grace or beauty than a row of raspberry bushes might have. But on the Hudson, from New York to Poughkeepsie, there is not a single bend of the river but discloses a new and varied beauty. Bare cliffs are succeeded by soft swelling hills ; lovely glens run up into the mountains ; stretches of greensward, groves of arbor vita^, forests of oak, and walnut, and pine ; villages, farms, stately mansions, parterres gay with flowers, come and go in quick succession, like the figures in a kaleidoscope. And over all, the Catskill Mountains rise along the horizon, cutting the sky- m THE PALISADES ON THE HUDSON. line with their serrated summits, and forming a noble background to a charming picture. Near Poughkeepsie is a characteristic American institution Vassar College where Tennyson's dream in The Princess approaches realisation. Here, three hundred and fifty " sweet girl graduates, with golden hair," from every state in the Union, pass through a university course, the studies of which are as advanced, and the examinations as severe, as those in the Colleges of Harvard and Yale. Its founder, Matthew Vassar, having raised himself, by a life of honourable industry, from a condition of absolute penury 208 VASSAR COLLEGE. to great wealth, re solved to devote his property to this object. In the year 1861 he transferred to trustees securities to the value of about half a million dollars, for carrying out his design, and on his death, a few years later, bequeathed large ad ditional funds to the college. The grounds, two hundred acres in extent, are of rare beauty, and command noble views over the valley of the Hudson. In addition to the class rooms, lecture halls, refectories, and dormi tories, are an obser vatory, a gymnasium, a school and gallery of art, museums of natural history, geology, botany, and other kin dred sciences, a riding- school, and a chapel. Pleasure boats, maimed by young ladies, skim across the lake with a speed which shows that physical development is not neglected. Dr. Maria Mitchell is Pro fessor of Astronomy and Director of the Ob servatory, Miss Frances Ellen Lord is Profes sor of Greek, Helen W. Webster, M.D., Professor of Physiology THE EMPIRE STATE. and Hygiene, and Resident Physician. The higher branches of mathematics and mental and moral philosophy, I regret to say, are taught by gentlemen, but it is hoped that in due time this blot may be removed, and the absolute equality of the sexes demonstrated by the appointment of lady professors even for the abstract sciences. Having heard the graduates read Plato and Demosthenes, Tacitus, and Cicero, having listened with wonder to their dis sertations on Sir William Hamilton's Lectures on Philosophy, and witnessed their performances on the blackboard, working out abstruse problems in the higher calculus, I ventured to ask the Lady Principal what portions of time were devoted to the humbler duties of house-keeping, cookery, and similar sublunary, but not altogether unimportant parts of a lady's life. The question was treated with the scorn which it deserved, and I was informed that the higher education of women needs the same concentration of mind as in the case of men. It is satis factory to read in an article re printed from Scribners Maga zine by the Col lege authorities, that "It is an ad mirable sight to look upon these grounds, filled with bright and happy girls, walking, garden ing, engaged in games, rowing on the lake, or occasionally making ready, in some shady recess, for work in class-rooms. It is a constant joy at Vassar to see that bodily health is not to be sacrificed to any other object whatever." In illustration of this the dietary is given, which has an additional interest as showing our English girls how their American sisters live. "These young ladies and their teachers eat two hundred pounds of beef, mutton, or lamb, or seventy shad for dinner daily, after one hundred and twenty-five pounds of steak for breakfast. They consume two hundred and seventy to three hundred and fifty quarts of milk per day ; from seventy-five to one hundred pounds of butter daily ; one-half barrel of granulated sugar, six pounds of coffee, and three to four pounds of tea for the same time. Canned fruit of all sorts is eaten largely. Twice a week they make away at dinner with one hundred and sixty quarts of ice-cream. Farinaceous food abounds. From twelve to fourteen varieties of bread are on the tables, in profusion. Two articles, THE OBSERVATORY. CORNELL UNIVERSITY. with bread and butter, are always supplied at tea. Twice a day they have some acid. Winter brings buckwheat and rice cakes, and twenty barrels of syrup are used in a year." In his address to the trustees of the College at their first meeting, Mr. Vassar laid down certain principles which were to be observed in the management of the institution, concluding with " Last, and most important of all, the daily systematic reading and study of the Holy Scriptures as the only and all-sufficient rule of Christian faith and practice. All sectarian influence should be carefully excluded ; but the training of our students should never be intrusted to the sceptical, the irreligious, or the immoral." This the managers of the College have kept steadily in view. In their address issued in 1865, they avow their purpose to make it "a School of Christ a place where His Word and doctrine shall be taught in purity and power, and where His renewing and sanctifying Spirit shall continually dwell." Vassar is not the only educa tional experiment which is being worked out in the State of New York. Cornell University is equally deserv ing of notice. In the year 1 862, when the civil war was at its height, and the prospects of the country were the gloomiest, Congress resolved to appro priate large tracts of public lands for the purpose of encouraging the study of agriculture and the mechanical arts. The share allotted to the state of New York amounted to nearly a million acres. Four hundred thousand acres of this were sold at a dollar an acre. To this capital sum Ezra Cornell added a further amount of half a million dollars, and likewise gave land on which to erect the college buildings. The site chosen was at Ithaca, near the head of the Cayuga Lake, in the north-western part of the state. Within five or six years the College was fully equipped and organised with libraries, class-rooms, workshops, and an efficient staff of professors. The peculiarities of the insti tution may be best stated in the words of Mr. Cornell himself. He says : " I would inform all who may desire the information, that, in organising the University, the trustees aimed to arrange a system of manual labour which, while it would be compulsory upon none, would furnish all the students of the University with the opportunity to develop their physical strength and vigour by labour, the fair compensation for which would pay the expenses of their education. Students will be employed in cultivating and raising, on a THE GYMNASIUM. THE EM r I RE STATE. farm of three hun dred acres, the various productions best suited to furnish the college o tab 1 e s . These will include live stock for producing milk, butter, and cheese, and to be killed for meat ; grain for bread, and vege tables and fruits of all kinds suited to the cli mate and soil. Me chanical em- ploym e n t will be given to all in the machine shop of the University. This will be equ ip p e d with an en- g i n e of twenty -five horse-pow er, lathes, pi an ing -ma chines for iron and CORNELL UNIVERSITY. wood, and all the most improved implements and tools for working in iron and wood. Here they will manufacture tools, machinery models, patterns, &c. The erection of the addi tional buildings required for the University will furnish employment for years to students in need of it. There will also be employ ment in laying out, grad ing, road-making, and im proving and beautifying the farm and grounds of the University. The work done by students will be paid for at the current rates paid elsewhere for like services. The work will be done under the supervision of the professors, and competent superintendents and fore- ANTHONY'S NOSE, AND THE SUGAR LOAF. men. It will be the con stant aim of the trustees and faculty of the University to render it as attractive and instructive as possible, and especially to make it conducive to the health, growth, and physical vigour of the students, besides affording them the means of self-sup port and independence while receiving all the advantages of the University. With such combined facilities for in struction and maintenance, all the expenses of a first- class faculty and of tuition being paid by the endow ment, I trust that no person who earnestly desires to be throughly educated will find difficulty in becoming so by his own exertions at the Cornell University. We al- readv have students who GI.EN S FALLS. * entered three months in ad vance of the opening of the University, to avail themselves of the opportunity to earn two dollars per day through haying and harvest, and thus make a sure THE AU SABLE CHASM. ENTRANCE TO THE FLUME. THE FLUMK. HORSE SHOE FALLS. SENTINEL ROCK AND TABLE ROCK. THE HUDSON RIVER. thing of it. Such boys will get an education, and will make their mark in the world in the use of it. In conclusion, I will assure the boys that if they will perform one-fourth a much labour as I did at their ages, or as I do now at sixty years of age, they will find no difficulty in paying their expenses." The Hudson, from Pough- keepsie to Albany and Troy, though still beautiful, is less varied and imposing than in its southern section. Albany, the state capital, is a fine city of nearly one hundred thousand inhabitants. By its Dutch founders it was called Beverwyk ; but on the conquest of the province by the British, when New Amster dam became New York, it re ceived the name of Albany, the second title of the Duke of York and Albany. An old geography, by a droll collocation of clauses, describes it as "a city consisting of four thousand houses, with twenty thousand inhabitants, all standing with their gable-ends towards the streets." Many of the old gable- ended houses still remain, but its sleepy Dutch charac ter has disappeared, and it is now one of the busiest and most thriving cities in the Union. The Catskills, which have stretched along the western horizon in dim and shadowy beauty, now approach the river, and their picturesque forms add a new charm to the scene. The scene of two of the most THE DUDLEY OBSERVATORY, ALBANY. popular tales which have been written in America, is laid in this district. Sleepy Hollow, where the r IN THE CATSKILLS. THE EMPIRE STATE. i& village ne'er- do-well, Rip van Winkle, slept so long and so sound ly, lies in a deep glen, running up into the moun tains ; and, if F e n i m o r e Cooper may be believed, the island below Glen's Falls in the Hudson River was the scene of some of the most thrilling adventures of Uncas, the Last of the Mohicans. We now approach the Adiron- dacks, and the headwaters of the noble river whose course we have been tracing. The highest of these wild peaks is Mount Marcy, called by the Indians Ta-ha-wus, or The Cloud Splitter. It is five thousand five hundred feet high, and there are many others which approach this altitude. Though within the limits of the Empire State, yet a few years ago the region was almost unvisited, except by- Indians or trappers, and was the haunt of moose, beaver, panthers, and bears. Hotels are now rapidly springing up ; roads are being made in every direction. The Au Sable chasm, though upon a much smaller scale than the canons of Colorado and the Yellowstone, may be compared with them. The river has cut its way through the rock to a depth of nearly two hundred feet, and flows on between perpendicular walls which rise on either side, leaving a narrow channel only ten feet wide. The charming lake scenery of the Empire State might well claim a chapter to itself. Lack of space, however, compels us to leave it and many other points of interest unnoticed. FALLS ON TIIK RA.MAI'o. 3l6 ON THE DELAWARE. HPHE site of Philadelphia well deserves the praise which its founder be stowed upon it. " Of all the places I have seen in the world," wrote William Penn, " I remember not one better seated, so that it seems to me to have been appointed for a town, because of its coves, docks, springs, and lofty land." Lying between two navigable rivers the Schuylkill and the Delaware, and at no great distance from the point at which the latter empties itself into the ocean it possesses every facility for both foreign and internal PHILADELPHIA AND WASHINGTON. commerce. And of these natural advantages its citizens have not been slow to avail themselves. The City of Brotherly Love is second in population only to New York, containing, according to the last census (April, 1876), 817,448 inhabitants, an increase, since 1870, of H3.4^, a rate of progress which even Chicago can hardly surpass. The original plan of the city was a parallelogram, about a mile wide, and two miles long from the Schuylkilltothe Delaware, contain ing nine streets in one direction, cross ed at right angles by twenty-three in the other. It has now " a hundred and thirty thousand dwellings, a thou sand milesof streets and roads, over six hundred miles of gas mains, and nearly as many of water-pipes. It has two hundred and twenty miles of street railways, run ning two thousand passenger cars ; and four hundred public schools, with over sixteen hun dred teachers, and more than eighty thousand pupils."' Though the Quaker influence no longer prepon derates in the city, it yet preserves much of the primness and symmetry in which its founders delighted. The unvarying straightness of the streets, forming rectangular blocks, like the squares on a chess board, soon wearies a European visitor. But one forgets the prosaic monotony of the plan in the air of cheerful comfort which everywhere meets the eye. The houses are built of * Philadelphia and its Environs. Lippincott and Co. ARCH STREET, PHILADELPHIA. 218 OLD BUILDINGS IN PHILADELPHIA. brick, stone, or marble, according to the locality, with bright green outside shutters, and doorsteps of white marble. The footwalks are commonly lined with rows of finely-grown trees. After the atrociously ill-paved streets of New York, it is a relief to drive over roadways not immensely inferior to those of our English towns. The Philadelphians are justly proud of the homes of the artisan population of the city. The huge barrack-like tenement houses of New York have no existence here. As a rule, each family has its I'UBLIC LEDGER BUILDING. own dwelling. With a smaller population than New York, it has sixty thousand more houses. Notwithstanding the rapid progress of Philadelphia, it retains more old and historical buildings than Boston, or any other city in the Union. A little two-storied brick house, now occupied as a tavern, is part of the cottage built for William Penn, before his arrival. The Old Swedes Church stands upon the site on which the first church was built in 1677. The present edifice goes back to 1700. The Old London Coffee House was built in 1702. In the steeple of Christ Church, completed in 1754, hangs the oldest 219 PHILADELPHIA AND WASHINGTON, peal of bells on the American Continent. Some of the most interesting passages in Franklin's Autobiography refer to his residence in Philadelphia, and we may yet follow his graphic descriptions as we walk through the city to visit his unadorned grave. THE COURT HOUSE. In the room to the left, on enttring the /tall, the Dcclaraiion of Independence was signed. But it is the Old Court House, which, at least to the Americans, is the most noteworthy relic of the past. In it the Declaration of Independence was discussed and adopted by the Congress. This memorable document, which every American school-boy can repeat by rote, declares : "We hold these truths to be self-evident : that all men are created equal ; THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights ; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organising its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes ; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security." It proceeds to charge upon George in. a series of crimes, the malignity and atrocity of which could hardly be surpassed by Nero and Macchiavelli combined. We, who think of him as a well-meaning and kindly, though obstinate ruler, read these allegations with a sense of bewilderment. It is easy to understand how, in the passionate fury of a civil war, such charges should have been made and credited. But it is to be regretted that when a hundred years have passed away they should continue to be taught as historical truth. The Declaration concludes with these stately words : "We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare : That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, Free and Inde pendent States ; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved ; and that, as Free and Independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which Inde pendent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour." It is said that, after signing the Declaration, John Hancock exclaimed, " We must now all hang together ;" Franklin replied, " If we do not, we shall all hang separately." Fairmount Park, with its three thousand acres of hill and valley, the Centennial Exhibition, Girard College, and other points of interest in and around the city must remain unnoticed for want of space. PHILADELPHIA AND WASHINGTON. From Philadelphia, where the Independence of the United States received its formal assertion, we pass on to Washington, the seat of the government thus established. The railroad conducts us through Maryland, whose green, rounded, well-wooded hills and fertile valleys call to mind those of England. Shortly after leaving Baltimore, the dome of the Capitol conies into view, and in a few minutes more we are in the City of Magnificent Distances, as the Federal capital is styled. The appropriateness of this epithet becomes less obvious every year. The avenues and streets having been laid out on a vast scale, to provide for the wants of a population which did not arrive, it was perhaps the most straggling and sparsely peopled city in the world. A few large public buildings and caravanserais were grouped round the Capitol. A few private houses for permanent residents were scattered here and there. The rest of the city consisted of roadways stretching out into space, waiting for the builder to complete what the road-surveyor had commenced. By degrees, however, it is beginning to fill up, and in 1870 the population had reached the respectable figure af 109,388. During the Session of Congress the streets are alive with traffic, and Penn sylvania Avenue is thronged with carriages and equipages. But at other times it has the air of being too large for its population. "Washington," says Mr. Sala, "will be, when completed, the most magnificent city on this side THE CITY OF MAGNIFICENT DISTANCES. the Atlantic, and some of its edifices, as, for instance, the Post Office, the Patent Office, and the Treasury Buildings, are really magnificent in propor tion and design ; but it is not quite begun yet. It contains certainly some noble public buildings, but they are scattered far and wide, with all kinds of incongruous environments, producing upon the stranger a perplexed impression that the British Museum has migrated to the centre of an exhausted brick field, where rubbish may be shot ; or that St. Paul's Cathedral, washed quite white and stuck upon stone stilts, has been transformed to the centre of the Libyan Desert and called a Capitol." Like so many of Sala's droll and grotesque exaggerations, this description contains truth enough to give it point. THE CAPITOL. Few things strike the English visitor to Washington more strangely than the free and easy style in which the government of the country is conducted. There is a total absence of ceremony, not merely in the Local and State Legislatures, but in those of the Federal Union. The dignified reserve which high governmental officials maintain in Europe is almost ostenta tiously avoided. Meeting a plain bluff man, wearing a wide-awake hat and brown overcoat, smoking a cigar and driving himself, unattended, in a buggy, I learned, with some surprise, that it was the President of the United States. Calling upon him next morning at the White House, as the presidential residence is called, I was received with less formality than would have been observed in the house of a private gentleman in England. In these hasty sketches of America and its people, I have not ventured PHILADELPHIA AND WASHINGTON. to discuss the grave political and social problems which are being worked out there. It would be worse than impertinent in me to endeavour to forecast the future of the Great Republic of the West. Its founders were content to speak of it, in the words of John Adams, the second President of the Republic, as "an experiment better adapted to the genius, character, situation, and relations of this country and nation than any which had ever been professed." Its centennial eulogists boast of it as the perfection of human wisdom, to which other systems must ultimately conform. Washington, in his Farewell Address to the People of the United States, clearly pointed out the conditions on which the stability and prosperity of a nation depend : " Of all the dis positions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labour to subvert these great pillars of human happi ness, those foremost props of the duties of men and citizens. The politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it be simply asked, Where is the security for property, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investiga tion in the courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be con ceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that natural morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles." These wise and weighty words are applicable alike to England and to America. Prosperity, morality, and religion are inseparably connected. ' Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people." THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON. 224 ILLUSTRATED BOOKS OF TRAVEL Uniform with "AMERICAN PICTURES." PICTURES FROM BI 4 BLE LANDS, Drawn with Pen and Pencil. Edited by the Rev. S. G. Green, D.D. The Illustrations by Edward Whymper and others. Imperial 8r0., elegantly bound in cloth, gilt edges, Ss. ILLUSTRATED BOOKS OF TRAVEL. ^JK JHE PHURCH OF THE J^ATIVITY, JBETHLEHEM. "THOSE HOLY FIELDS." Palestine Illustrated by Pen and Pencil. By the Rev. Samuel Manning, LL.D. With Kumcrj'is Engravings. Imperial Bvo., elegantly bound in cloth, gilt edges, Ss. " Dr. Manning writes in an unobtrusive, solid, and thoroughly interesting style, and his facts help us to understand Judea and its cities more completely than any amount of mere declamation." Daily Neivs. " The work is executed with great ability ; but the great charm of the book is the illustrations. 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