last induced to make what now appears a most magnificent offer of land-alternate sections of twenty miles deep on each side of the road to the company, or 12,800 acres for each mile of road-and had furnished the money for the work. workmen were scarcely to be had. The war had absorbed much of the laboring element. At length by paying as high as three dollars a day and board, enough laborers were obtained; yet men and material, brought by railroads thousands of miles, had to be transported on the one track as it progressed, or in lieu of that, were carried over vast spaces by oxteams. Sometimes for want of fuel, ties which had been carried by railroad 800 miles, had to be burned.

Once the purchaser for the company at Omaha, on the receipt of a message from the plains, telegraphed to a manufacturer in New York, "Ship me in stantly 100 iron ploughs, and 3,000 steel plough-points." The manufacturer, doubting the accuracy of the order, or the sanity of the purchaser, telegraphed back to a friend, and when assured that all was right, he forwarded the articles, accompanying them with a message to the purchaser, "I never was so proud of an order in all my life; but in Heaven's name what do you want of 3,000 ploughpoints?" It was found that these were needed for loosening mountain gravel, so hard that it would give out showers of sparks when traversed by the steel, and wear out, in the hands of one ploughman, a dozen plough-points in a day. To Thomas C. Durant, manager and builder of the road, and who is said to own a large fraction of it, belongs the credit of achieving this magnificent enterprise.

The antelope, a diminutive creature, bounds over these wastes, too swiftly by far to be overtaken by the cinnamon bear, the largest of his tribe in this part of the world, who must use stratagem if he would feast on this particular delicacy.

In these solitudes one longs to hear a bird sing. The want of trees accounts for the scarcity of birds; the feathered tribe are here scantily represented by the owl, the woodpecker, and the lark. We

see the prairie-dog and the owl in friendly companionship. Large villages of prairiedogs. sometimes miles in extent, appear on the way; and to those of us who stop at a convenient station, and wait for the next train, walking out meanwhile upon the prairie, this little canine curiosity, seated by his hole, barks out a droll salute. His attitudes are scarcely less ridiculous than those of the monkey, as he sits winking, even after the solemn owl has taken his flight, holding his head to one side, and prying inquisitively at the visitor, chattering all the time. You approach nearer, and with a bound he dives into his hole. Intelligent travellers tell us that the popular notion that the rattlesnake sometimes makes a third party to this happy family, is a mistake. The rattlesnake is indeed sometimes found therein quartered, but he comes as a pitiless freebooter, with a love for the young prairie-dogs, and not with a respect for their parental hearth.

The food of the prairie-dog is the grass of the prairie. In appearance he is half rat and half squirrel. His head is shaped like a bull dog's, and in size he is a little larger than a gray-squirrel; when seen for the first time he is found to be more insignificant than was expected. He is dun-colored, and utters a singular chirruping bark. A single pair occupy each hole, which is marked by a hillock of sand or earth. The holes at the surface are about four inches in diameter, and they pass down obliquely and branch in all directions, connecting with one another on every side. A prairie-dog village is dangerous ground for buffalo hunters.

Among the flowering plants the amorpha, with its large purple clusters, outrivals all the others. What little timber there is fringes the river, the poplar, elm and hackberry prevailing. Along the flats of the Platte river there is often a salt deposit, which may be seen sparkling on the grass as well as marking the ground with its efflorescence, and there seems to be just enough of it to render the fine grass more palatable for the cattle. The utter absence of fuel in many days' journeys over these plains would make the preparation of meals an impossibility,

were it not for what is called euphoniously bois de vache, or "buffalo chips," which in the dry state burns like turf and contains carbon enough for culinary use. Those who have travelled on camel tracks over Arabian deserts see here repeated a usage quite common in the East.

Great is the overland travel the present season; so great, that we may say Uncle Sam himself is out to look at his farm. Nor is our Uncle much flattered in gazing upon this part of his purchase, for we seem to overhear him say, "the more of this kind of land I have the worse off I am. It is very much like the possession of self-righteousness." And verily, having left behind the fertile prairies, we come upon an alkali region, where only sage-brush and grease-wood grow, a land desolate and accursed. After the first two hundred miles from Omaha, we have a barren waste till we reach the Sacramento valley in California.

Yet once these wastes were thickly peopled, if not by man, by the living creatures that preceded him. The abundance of marine fossils show that these tracts were once the bed of the ocean, in which life swarmed.

The ground tastes of alkali, and whoever "bites the dust" here, whether as a prone victim to the lust for gambling and outlawry, or as an upright martyr to a cloud blowing into his face, is bitten in return. The water is alkaline; that for the boilers must be carried a hundred miles, or it will corrode them. The water of the wells that are dug is unfit for drinking, producing nausea.

Gradually upward we move until we come to Cheyenne, "the magic city of the plains." Here begins the branch road to Denver, and the wonderful park region of Colorado. As we journey towards Sherman, up a still heavier grade, we see far to the south, like white clouds, the summits of Long and Pike's Peak. That region has been called the Switzerland of America. It has doubtless occurred to the reader that we have half a dozen of these Switzerlands, each persistently asserting its claim to the high-sounding title. The Adirondack region, that of

Chattanooga and East Tennessee, and the White Mountains, not to speak of other mountainous tracts, are each labelled with the Alpine appendage. The one that can best afford to dispense with it is the Colorado region, which not only has higher mountains than Switzerland, but could hide away among its gorgeous uplifts two or three such little republics.

There is something strange in this climbing to the top of high mountains in the day time, without knowing that you are ascending mountain summits. The snow sheds, and the snow lying around in a few shaded places in early summer, remind us of the greatness of the elevation. The mountains are of the primary formation; the granite, in such eminences as Pike's Peak, obtruded itself through the azoic rocks, which lie in a slanting position flanking them. Black Hills, a spur of the Rocky Mountains on the east, furnish some magnificent natural sights on the way.

The

Never were more finely pencilled clouds borne along in a pure azure. "O for a beaker full of the warm south!" exclaims Keats, in one of his fine bird songs. But what more exhilarating draft could one wish, than this cool south wind, with every thing above and around transparent and vitalizing?

All aboard! Once more we must be off, chasing the setting sun. Down, down we go by degrees, till we come to Laramie Plains, high table land. We are still 6,000 or 7,000 feet above the level of the sea, and if the White Mountains were along side of us, we could look down upon them. Through the plains of Laramie our train speeds, the land, we are told, of large flocks of sheep and juries of women, not one trace of which we are able to perceive, as our journey occurs in the night. We reach in the morning a station famous in earlier days for its Vigilance Committees. One noted desperado, on being waited on, was allowed fifteen minutes to leave the town. "Gentlemen," said he, "if this mule don't buck I shall want but five."

Now comes the Green River region,

with its castellated rocks, giving the appearance of forts and pinnacles. An "observation car," added to the rear of the train, enables us to view the country without danger. It is an open car, with cushioned seats on the sides. Rugged mountain scenery now rewards us for the dryness and monotony of the first days of our trip. Echo Cañon gives place to Webber Cañon, and we feast our eyes upon the prospect, with its lofty cliffs in architectural shapes, in colors of a delicate chocolate, or a sunny orange. They are now beginning improperly to spell the word for these wondrous mountain gorges can-yon, because the first n in this Spanish word has the sound of n in poniard.

The singular shapes are owing to the unequal hardness of the strata. The softer rock has been worn away by the storms of centuries. We are in the midst of so many beauties and wonders of rock formation, and are hurried through them so rapidly, that we hold our breath, and are silent with awe. Our companions, who are more demonstrative, give vent to expressions of rapture; and now that we seem to have passed through all, we breathe more freely, and have a vague impression of having been whirled from battlement to battlement, from monument to monument, and from cathedral to castle, and of losing nine-tenths of the pleasure we might have had, if the iron horse had been awe-struck like ourselves, and had slackened his speed in harmony with our sentiment.

The Indian stands looking on, awed into comparative silence, not by the scenery, but by the locomotive, which he knows can outstrip him on his fleetest horse; and as he sees it rounding the cañons and spanning the airy trestle work with a scream that his heart tells him can outwhoop him a hundred fold, he turns away cowed by the white man's work, which seems to him something midway between the red man's achievements and the thunderings and lightnings of the Great Spirit.

Never shall we forget how those rug ged walls of Webber Cañon stood up for a thousand feet in awful grandeur, squared

continually, as we dashed past them, by side cañons, entering at right angles. What a place for the rock-house builders of an Idumean race! What cities they might have made had they honeycombed these lofty perpendicular rocks, admitting of a hundred stories, with cañons a thousand feet deep for streets!

These sublime passes of the Wasatch Mountains open into the valley of Great Salt Lake, and here, while thinking of Brigham Young, we let him alone severely by leaving Salt Lake City to the south, and soon find ourselves at Ogden, the terminus of the Union Pacific Railroad. Here we shall find it to our advantage to exchange our greenbacks for silver, the currency between this place and the Pacific being only hard money. We long ago came to the conclusion that greenbacks are the best representative of value, because most portable and least easily counterfeited, and we part from them with regret, to receive in return what to the philosopher possesses quite as little intrinsic value, that is, none at all. The old track of the Union Pacific road originally extended as far as Promontory Point. This is the station where the three spikes, one of California gold, one of Nevada silver, and one of gold, silver and iron from Arizona, were driven home by a solid silver hammer, the last stroke being the signal throughout the Union for thanksgivings and general jubilations; and henceforth the 10th of May, 1869, is a day memorable in the history of the world's civilization. From an eminence near by the Great Salt Lake is visible, and our route now lies near the lake shore, white with salt.

An alkaline desert next receives us, exceedingly bleak and uninviting. The various stations are from four to six thousand feet above the sea level; thus we are on table land as well as a desert. This great desert stretches from Oregon to Arizona, and exhibits traces of volcanic action, such as hot springs, basaltic rocks and alkaline soil.

The Humboldt Valley, with its pastures for cattle, and its immense droves of horses, brings us relief, and reminds us that Nevada is not altogether sterile.

The fertility however, is the exception, and the sterility the rule.

These immense sandy plains often present the phenomena of the mirage.

A line of wagons with white canvas tops is transformed into the appearance of a fleet of ships, the canvas being drawn upward to four or five times its natural size. A number of dead buffaloes has at times been exaggerated into the semblance of Indians on horseback, and the undulations of the heated air have added to the alarming spectacle the adjunct of motion. The counterfeit presentment of a river or a lake

has been the occasion of a lost march to an emigrant party, and has resulted in misery and death.

In the Humboldt river section of the road among the chief objects of interest are the famous Humboldt Wells, lying around a station called Wells, the elevation of which is 5,650 feet. The wells, about twenty in number, are distributed over a valley five miles by three in extent, in which the wayworn emigrants were wont to stop and recruit themselves and their beasts of burden after their fatiguing journeys. They are natural springs, yet coming from so great a depth and measuring so far across, we conclude that wells is the more appropriate name for them. They have been sounded to a great depth, yet no bottom has been found; so at least the people here report. As the water is slightly brackish it seems probable that this valley was once the crater of a volcano, and these are the numerous openings.

Looking up to the snow-capped summits of the high sierras on the west, we see the edge of the Great Basin, and the boundary between two very different climes. The range is higher than the Rocky Mountains, and full of interest to

the traveller. We take counsel in regard to sleeping accommodations at one of the stations on the Nevada side, for we wish to cross and descend upon the California side by daylight, that none of the sublime scenery be lost.

At the hotel where we stayed a Californian brought in a horned toad, a curiosity of which we had heard enough to awaken a desire to see and possess one. He would not part with the scaly little monster, but said that we should find plenty of them if we intended to travel much in California. They will bear transportation as well as any other living thing.

The engineering difficulties were the greatest at the western end of the road; the difficulties on the east were mostly from the Indians. The contrast between the Chinese and the Indians is magnified in the fact, that while the former hastened on the great work the latter retarded it. Did the Indian race come over to this continent from China? The difference in the races seems too great for the supposition. The Indian is lank, sinister, poverty-stricken and thriftless; the Chinaman is cheerful, well-behaved, industrious and money-saving. Our chief charge against John is that he does not