The route from Philadelphia viâ Baltimore and Washington to Cincinnati, goes over the Alleghany range of mountains, which are rather disappointing to the tourist, who has naturally been told that “they are the finest in America.”

People who travel over here, putting implicit faith in their “Appleton,” must expect some severe shocks of disappointment.

No bit of scenery or natural curiosity is ever mentioned without some authority being quoted to tell you that “it is one of the most stupendous scenes in nature and well worth a voyage across the Atlantic to witness.”

Harper's Ferry is decidedly picturesque, the situation being quite equal to many of the inferior Swiss views, and the little town itself has the historical VOL. II. 19 0008 2 interest of having been the theatre of many engagements during the civil war, especially in connection with the exploits of the notorious “John Brown.”

But the Alleghany mountains as a whole are disappointing after the great flourish of trumpets with which your guide-book prepares you for them.

Possibly we were the less capable of due appreciation from the extreme discomforts attending this first start. Perhaps it was as well to get into training early for what was to prove an almost chronic experience.

Having got through some seven hours of the journey fairly well, we came to a sudden halt at a small wayside village about five p.m., and were then for the first time told that we must remain there indefinitely, as the country was inundated by floods, the water being five feet deep over the rails farther on.

Now, no faintest hint of such a state of things had been given to us before leaving Baltimore that morning. Yet the railway officials (Baltimore and Ohio line) must have been perfectly aware of it before they allowed our train to start; for a previous train which had left some time before us had been stopped at the same place for many hours already, and this fact would of course be telegraphed to head-quarters.

The utter impossibility of finding any one who both 0009 3 could and would speak the truth was the most trying part of the detention.

The conductor told us such a thing had not happened for seven years and then they were detained for three or four days, a cheering prospect for us, especially as there was no dining car on board; only some lighter refreshments such as tea, bread and butter and eggs were to be had, all of which would certainly shortly give way under the great strain put upon the commissariat.

Most of the men went off to get such tough food as was procurable in the village.

We had some eggs and coffee, and then, resigning ourselves to Fate, took a little walk in the wretched squalid-looking town; afraid to go beyond its limits lest the summons to proceed might arrive during our absence. We need not have been anxious on this score.

Next morning, at seven o'clock, when we ought to have been almost in Cincinnati, I woke to find our car still motionless, in front of the same depressing wayside depôt. Conflicting rumours of a possible move arrived from time to time; but our first real consolation was the sight of an eastward bound train steaming into the station. This at least was a sure sign that 19—2 0010 4 one had got through the obstacles, whatever they might be.

At ten o'clock in the morning, after seventeen hours' detention, we moved off very, very slowly. Still it was movement and a blessed relief after the enforced deadlock of the previous weary hours.

The necessity for travelling at such a slow pace wherever the rails were supposed to be most shaky, and insecure, lost us of course many more hours, and we only arrived at our destination at four a.m. on the Saturday morning instead of seven-forty-five a.m. the previous day.

Later experience taught us to look very lightly on some twenty to thirty hours of unpunctuality in the arrival of trains, but I give this one instance in full, to show travellers what they must expect when once they leave the eastern states and the beaten track across this continent.

The following note comes here in my journal: “I must here mention that in a considerable experience of American railway cars, extending over six months, I have never save once found the boasted dining car one hears so much about, and that was on the train between Boston and New York, about the only journey where one could have dispensed with it.”

Many will question this statement, but it is absolutely true.

I do not mean to say that on one or two occasions dining cars were not advertised on the lines we travelled over; but either the train was late and had no time to stop and take on the car, or the provisions had been exhausted and the car was left behind in consequence.

Anyway the result was the same.

Travelling over the Northern Pacific Line some months later, we always found a dining car attached and the food very good, and I have no doubt that travellers who have only crossed the continent by the direct line from New York to San Francisco will have had a similar experience.

Referring to my list of American lines travelled over during the first six months of our stay, I find the following mentioned.

“Canadian Pacific,” “New York Central,” “Pennsylvania,” “Baltimore and Ohio,” “Ohio and Missouri,” “Chicago and Alton,” “Aitchison Topeka and Santa Fé,” “Atlantic Pacific” and “Southern Pacific.”

These are pretty well-known American lines, and in spite of the incredulity of my Transatlantic friends, I am obliged to keep to my statement.

On the long journeys, tea and coffee were sometimes 0012 6 to be had, not very satisfactory, but better than nothing; sometimes a little cold chicken or tongue and a few eggs; but these provisions were always liable to sudden collapse and at best cannot compare for excellence with the luncheon baskets supplied on our own English lines.

For the rest, you must turn out at the wayside stations, at most inconvenient hours, and be thankful to gobble up whatever tough messes of food happen to be within reach during the very short time allowed for meals.

On these occasions everything is heaped up on one plate, for you are never supplied with a second.

Eggs and bacon, tough mutton or stringy beef, potatoes, tomatoes, Indian corn, and squash pies must be eaten alike, off the one platter, or left alone.

At first you feel you would rather perish than degrade yourself to the level of a pig and its trough, but hunger is a strong argument in the long run.

A traveller will be turned out for a breakfast of this description at nine o'clock in the morning; for another heavy meal of the same kind at twelve-thirty, and again at five or five-thirty p.m. for a third, which you have no inclination to eat after two such predecessors, yet this is your only chance of food till nine o'clock next morning, and that is not a certainty; for a “wash 0013 7 out” may arise at any moment and detain you for two or three hours in the middle of the night.

A well-stocked luncheon basket is the only way of meeting the difficulty, but after the first day, any food you may take with you is apt to get tough, and dusty, and distasteful.

Snow was lying thick on the ground (April 3) when we reached Cincinnati, cold, miserable and hungry, after fifty hours of travelling and insufficient, bad food on the way. An omnibus took us to the hotel we had selected, but there were no rooms to be had, and nothing for it but to deposit our luggage and walk through the filthy, muddy streets, with sleet falling overhead and damp raw fog enveloping us, to seek for other shelter.

This fog and snow continued during the whole of our four or five days' stay, so I can say nothing of Cincinnati, for the simple reason that I had no chance of ever really seeing it. Through the fog and snow we could dimly discern the form of the surrounding hills, which are said to form such a pleasing entourage to the city. Twice we attempted to drive there, but were driven back by a thick pea-soup atmosphere varied by sleet and rain.

Of the town itself we saw much more than we 0014 8 wished. It is black and grimy and smoky, and the streets, for dirt, beat any we have yet seen. A week or so later we modified this opinion and thought the palm should be given to Saint Louis.

A patriotic shopkeeper silenced our complaints of the filthy condition of the streets at the latter place by saying it showed what splendid agricultural properties the soil possessed!

Everything lies certainly in the point of view!

Meanwhile, at Cincinnati the river went on rising day by day, the snow fell, likewise the rain, the mud thickened if possible, every one looked gloomy and recalled the terrible floods of two years ago.

We were only too glad to pack up and escape whilst escape was still possible.

Even then the water was over the wheels of our train as we left the station. Next day the trains were unable to run at all.

Having had a gentle introduction to the dangers by flood, we were next to be initiated into the delights and conveniences of the system of American “stageing,” the very name of which inspires me still with a feeling of most deadly repulsion.

Having come to see the Mammoth eaves of Kentucky, there was nothing for it but to sleep at 0015 9 Louisville and take train next day for Cave City. Hence we had to drive nine miles to the Mammoth Cave Hotel, over such a road as had never come within my travelling experiences.

Stones, rocks, boulders and ruts blocked our way; our stage was an open vehicle, with canvas top and slender iron rods to support it, to which we clung for dear life, as our four mules dragged us over the stony, rutty and muddy track.

An American “bagman” sat opposite to me and a young American with a lovely little wife in the back seat. Conversation was physically impossible. You could not open your mouth without the chance of the teeth being shaken down your throat by the terrible jolting.

It was all one could do, to clutch either side of the “machine” alternately with a convulsive grasp. No one but the irrepressibly cheerful young bagman even attempted to talk, and he got no further than an occasional hopeful, “Now we have struck the bully-yard again,” as sometimes a bit of road less horrible than the last was reached.

Alas! two minutes landed us on to a “rock” or into a rut bigger than ever. The little bride's most cherished novel was shaken out of the stage into the 0016 10 muddy road, but she was quite past caring much about it. “Perhaps I shall find it on my way back to-morrow,” she whispered to her husband, who only gave a compassionate smile in answer. As if it would not be buried feet deep in mud by that time!

Poor little girl! She looked more fit for bed than anything else when we arrived at last, benumbed with cold and speechless from fatigue; but she and her husband were forced to take the eight a.m. stage back next morning, so there was nothing for it but for them to visit the caves that night.

We took things more quietly, and revived sufficiently during the evening to be entertained by some of the experiences of our landlord, specially with reference to the time when he lived at Cave City, whence the stages run.

There are two routes through these caves, the long and the short route. The former is only opened during the two or three summer months, as the water in the river is too high at other times to allow visitors to penetrate to some parts of the cave. The long route gives fourteen to sixteen miles of walking, and entails a nine hours' expedition. The short route goes over some seven or eight miles, and can be done in three or four hours.

On one occasion an old gentleman of over sixty came to Cave City with a young wife of eighteen, who had married him, doubtless, for his dollars, and our friend (Gannett) had induced him to take the long route, which entails some heavy climbing, especially through a part called “the Corkscrew.”

When the old gentleman returned to Cave City next morning he had to be lifted out of the stage, vowing vengeance on the man who had given him the advice.

“Do you know where the fellow lives?” he asked, speaking to Gannett himself, but not recognizing his enemy.

“Yes, sir. A long way from here.”

“Well, if you see him, let me know. I would give him a good thrashing if I could only lay hands upon him.”

The young wife was in convulsions of silent laughter, having recognized Gannett immediately upon their return.

However, she wisely kept her own counsel, and the train coming up soon after took them off, the old husband shaking his fist and uttering curses both deep and loud until he was fairly carried out of sight, much to Gannett's relief.

There was no choice in our case. In April the short route alone is practicable. This includes most points of interest, and you escape a great deal of monotonous and aimless wandering, but you miss the river and a short portion of gypsum formation of “flowers,” said to be the most beautiful in the cave, probably simply because less defiled by the smoke of the torches.

Bayard Taylor says that any one who goes to the Mammoth Caves and comes away disappointed “must be either a fool or a demi-god.” It will save trouble to class myself at once under the former head, for I cannot possibly belong to the latter, and the Mammoth Caves disappointed me greatly.

They are not to be compared for beauty with those at Adelsberg and many others on a smaller scale which I have seen in Europe.

The caves are on an enormous scale, it is true. The chambers are lofty and finely proportioned, but the whole place, with few exceptions, is ugly and black.

The stalactites are few, and blackened with smoke. There is no profusion of the lovely alabaster and crimson shades so universal in the caves of Adelsberg.

A few inches of alabaster formations hanging from the tops were pointed out with great pride, and considered evidently very rich and rare.

We went up an immense wide avenue called “Broadway,” then came to the “Rotunda,” “The Theatre,” “The Methodist Church” (with a natural pulpit), and then to the natural altar, where a romantic marriage took place some years ago.

A girl had promised under great pressure that she “would not marry any man on the face of the earth.”

So she took her fiancé into the caves, and they were married here.

Three pillars, formed by the meeting of stalactites and stalagmites, make a very natural-looking altar, and many cards are left here, showing that other couples have followed suit.

A rather pretty custom is adopted in these cases of dedicating cairns or heaps of stones to the different states in America or foreign countries dear to respective tourists. A card or piece of wood indicates the state or country.

I put a stone on “Massachusetts” for the sake of dear old Boston.

There was a very big heap for “England,” to which, of course, we added, and another for Scotland. The habit is useful as well as sentimental, for it keeps the tracks clear.

I need not enumerate the various “points” shown 0020 14 us by William, our excellent black guide. There are one or two really very fine and almost overpowering ravines of rock, which he lighted for us by throwing about bits of brown paper soaked in oil, and the colouring here was very soft and beautiful. As a rule, however, the avenues and grottoes are dingy and black. Thousands of little black bats hibernate in these caves from October to May, hanging by their legs from the roof. At the latter date they wake up and kindly take up their summer quarters outside.

The chief interest of the caves lay after all in two very good effects of William's own ingenuity and skill. The first was discovered by him accidentally. Two of the passages meet at a special angle, the light from the opening of the cave striking the walls at a particular point.

Given these conditions, William found that when he moved the lamps in the distance there was an effect of a beautiful white marble statue on a pedestal moving slowly backwards and forwards.

The other is still more wonderful.

At a place called the “Starry Dome” (on account of the star-like formations on the roof) there is a wooden seat. Here we sat down; William took away all our lamps and disappeared, leaving us in total darkness.

Presently, by a clever manipulation of the artificial light, it seemed as though the stars were shining above our heads, illuminating the dense darkness in which we had been sitting. Then clouds, heavy and black, seemed to pass over the sky.

At length, to our left, the sun appeared to be slowly rising (a light thrown by him). Then came the lowing of the cattle, the crowing of the cocks, the quick sharp bark of a dog, and the bleating of the lambs; all the sounds of coming dawn being most cleverly imitated in turn by William, who is a first-rate ventriloquist.

It was very clever, but after all it was William, not Mammoth Cave.

About a mile-and-a-half inside the caves from the opening are the ruined remains of twelve stone huts built here in the year eighteen hundred and forty-two by a philanthropist who had heard that the beautiful cave air was calculated to cure consumption, and induced twelve poor victims to try the experiment of living in total darkness and having their food brought them from the outer world.

For five months they endured this living death, but at the end of that time all came out and none survived the experiment. Light must of course be almost as necessary to human life as air.

Two of the cottages alone remain intact to tell the sad tale. One is filled up inside with stones, but the other is still habitable. The walls are of stone, but there were no roofs, only canvas covers.

The railway strikes were in full force over here; as we steamed into Saint Louis we passed a miniature Aldershot Camp on the line. “Soldiers to guard the property and lives of the employers,” was the answer given when I asked what it meant.

“What chance is there of any settlement?” was my next question.

“Chance?” re-echoed my informant, “none at all for the employers of labour; you see there is no legislation for them. These unions are rich enough to buy up all the justice they want. There is not a court that would decide against them.”

“That is simply disgraceful,” I cried hotly.

“Yes,” he admitted slowly; “it is disgraceful, but it is a fact. ”

I have nothing of interest to say about the big black manufacturing smoky city of Saint Louis. We spent a week there, it is true, but this was a question of health and rest.

The only bright spot that remains in my memory is of the little toddling children who go about the streets 0023 17 here in pretty white muslin drawn caps, trimmed with embroidery. It is a quaint, pretty device, and must keep their little heads much cooler than close hats or bonnets would do in this oppressive dull heat.

Another weary fifty hours' journey viâ Kansas city on the Aitchison, Topeka and Santa Fé line, which threads through the Indian territory on the south and Kansas State in the north, brought us to Las Vegas Hot Springs, where we intended to break the journey to Santa Fé.

We passed through endless prairie and fields of Indian corn.

Not a building, not a hill to break the terrible monotony. The prairie fires were our only diversion, and these came thick and fast as we moved heavily along through this prairie ocean.

Our nights were much alike, jolting and stopping, stopping and jolting.

Some of the weary hours might be got over by late rising in the morning, but this is impossible. By six a.m. every one is on the stir, and by six-thirty or seven a.m. at latest, all the berths have been put back and the car transformed into its sitting-room aspect.

The sleeping cars in the daytime are very different from the luxurious parlour car with its arm-chairs VOL. II. 20 0024 18 and footstools. The seats are narrow and the backs are straight; alas, we have bidden a long good-bye to the parlour car, which is only suitable for the shorter day journeys.

A combination carriage is, of course, more convenient from the railway point of view, but travellers must often long to get away during the daytime from the long, stuffy carriage in which they have passed the night, especially as it is most difficult to secure anything like fresh air without the conviction that you are putting some courteous but steam-heated American to real torture.

At Trinidad we first noticed the curious Mexican adobe house (called always “doby”).

They remind one of Irish mud huts, but are built of a brick made from the earth and called “adobe.”

They are square houses, generally without windows, and apparently without any roof, but, doubtless, this last is lower than the rest of the building and so cannot be seen from the line. A ladder against the wall answers the purpose of a front door, the ingress being from a hole in the top of the roof, whence a second ladder leads down into the hut, so that a visitor enters not head, but heels foremost.

A pleasant German gentleman in the train, hearing 0025 19 that we intended to visit Santa Fé after staying at Las Vegas, told me that he had lived for some twenty-five years in the former city, and begged to be allowed to do the honours of it to us on our arrival. After fifty hours' travelling we arrived at Las Vegas, whence a branch line takes you some five miles on to the Hot Springs Hotel.

The manager of the hotel had come down to meet the train, and as soon as we were seated in it and well off, kindly told us that there were no rooms to be had, as a party of thirty-five excursionists were in the house.

This was pleasant news for us, weary, supperless, exhausted, and at nine o'clock in the evening. It might have been possible to secure rooms in Las Vegas itself, but we were really too tired to be very indignant with the man for starting us on such a wild goose chase.

Las Vegas Hot Springs is a picturesque little village, perched in a cañon between high hills, and some six thousand five hundred feet above the sea.

There are several cottages belonging to the hotel, where people are boarded when the house is full, one or two little shops full of Mexican workmanship, and finally the bath houses. 20–2

A long, low, two-storied house of dark red sandstone, with verandah all round, forms the present hotel, which is also the original one.

A new one was built in 1884 and opened for one year, being then burnt down.

In 1885 a second was built, entirely fire-proof as they fondly hoped, and was opened in May of that year. Within three months this shared the fate of its predecessor.

They are actually building it up for the third time, now on a different site, a little higher up on the hill. Such perseverance deserves to be rewarded.

My friend found a refuge in the billiard-room that night, whilst I was put into a tiny cabin of a room on the ground floor, over all the hot-water pipes, and was parboiled in consequence by next morning.

Numbers of people are staying here for months at a time for the benefit of the springs, and, consequently, there are many children in the house. It was typical of the importance given to children in this country that all we grown-up people sat meekly round the drawing-room for some two hours one evening, whilst several small children of ages varying from six to ten entertained the company.

They acted a very dull little play written by 0027 21 themselves, but sang really very fairly, and gave us some airs from the “Mikado” without any trace of shyness.

The play itself, which seemed to be an emblem of eternity (having no perceptible beginning or ending), dragged its weary length along for some two hours, much to the satisfaction of the children themselves and their respective parents no doubt.

The rest, by far the larger portion of the company, looked intensely bored as time went on, but submitted to the infliction with a very good grace, and applauded with a vehement good nature.

A day or two at such a place is quite enough for people who are happily independent of any medical necessity for staying there, and on the third day we had cheerfully decided to push on to Santa Fé, having literally “reckoned without our host.” On applying to him for some detail of the journey, we heard to our horror that the river, which had been steadily rising for the last few days, had washed away some half-dozen bridges between Las Vegas and Santa Fé, and also the railway bridge between the Hot Spring and Las Vegas itself.

We had a glimmering hope that the story might be untrue, or at least exaggerated; but next morning, alas! 0028 22 it was confirmed on most unprejudiced authority, and the state of the rail on this side was only too patent to any one who walked along it for half a mile.

A week or fortnight might be required for repairs; of course we could ford the river by carriage as soon as it went down sufficiently to be at all safe for such a purpose; but we were still confronted by the impossibility of getting further west until these other bridges were built up again.

Fortunately after several days of incessant downpour, the heavens had cleared and a “burro” (donkey) ride up the hills behind the house and later for some miles up the cañon, gave us some fine views and made life seem a little more tolerable.

It was, as usual, impossible to get any definite information, and the hotel manager threw every obstacle in the way of our doing so.

The kindly little postmistress of the place gave us our only ray of comfort by saying that she heard the bridges were being temporarily repaired, and that if we could only get a vehicle of some sort to take us to Las Vegas, we should have a chance of getting on from there.

We interviewed a man on the subject of a carriage. He put a reserve price of a pound sterling on the hour's 0029 23 drive, and we could not make out if it were really safe to ford the river or not, but determined to make the experiment unless this man absolutely refused to go.

At four o'clock in the afternoon we were ready packed, our three boxes having gone on with a team, and we following in a very light carriage, with only hand-bags and rugs.

Fording that river was a very nasty five minutes' experience. It had swollen very much, and the carriage was thrown violently against the stream and seemed bending so much to the right-hand side, that one felt it must soon go over and deposit us in the middle of the waters.

The real danger is that at the time of these “washouts” the bed of the river also is washed away, and becomes consequently full of holes, and there is always the chance that one of the horses may put his feet into these.

However, all things come to an end, and we were landed at length on the opposite bank, safe and dry and with a fairly good road before us to Las Vegas.

Here another unpleasant surprise awaited us. Having some hours to dispose of, we had wandered aimlessly round the town until about 6.30 p.m., intending then to have some sort of meal at the station before our 0030 24 start. To our horror we found that no less than 300 eastward bound travellers had been detained here for two days as three bridges and more than a mile of rail had been washed away on that side.

The railway was feeding all these people during the detention, an unusual piece of generosity and much to the credit of the Aitchison, Topeka and Sante Fé line. It was done at a cost of $450 a day, and at present there seemed to be no hope of getting the passengers off.

The provisions meanwhile were naturally being exhausted, and the crowds were so great as fresh trains from the west came in, that we were only allowed to enter the dining-room by detachments. We were almost lifted off our feet as our turn came and the rush to the door grew more frantic. Only some very tough meat and a few eggs were left, but we were thankful for that. Going up to pay for our scanty meal, the man asked to see our tickets and then to my surprise refused to take any money. At the same time he told us that we could not possibly leave Las Vegas that night, as news had come that two more bridges had been washed away. We were prepared for any misfortune by this time. Mercifully, however, it turned out that he had mistaken our tickets for eastward 0031 25 bound ones, so we really escaped at last, leaving by this time some 450 poor creatures to their uncertain fate.

A change at Lamy to the local Santa Fé line and a midnight crawl of something over an hour brought us to the curious old New Mexico capital.

Santa Fé, as every one knows, is the oldest town in the United States, having been a stronghold even before the days of the Spanish Conquest.

We woke up next morning to a glorious day of brilliant sunshine that no Good Friday influence could dim.

Such a sky! Such mountains all round us! Such billows of cloud of every conceivable shape and shade of pearl and opal!

The air is deliciously bracing, but a little difficult to breathe, owing to the altitude (over 7,000 feet), and many complain that it is impossible to walk far with any comfort.

I had no wish to walk; looking seemed quite pleasure enough with such a glorious landscape before me.

Santa Fé itself is a quaint straggling town, full of low, square “doby” houses and sandhills covered with sparse tufts of grass.

All round you are the snow-clad peaks of the Spanish mountains. On this gorgeous Good Friday morning 0032 26 with its brilliant sky and billowy white clouds it was impossible to tell where mountain ended and clouds began.

There are a few brick houses here, but, as a rule, “doby” reigns supreme. Many of these “doby” buildings are unpretentious mud huts, but others are on a grand scale and very well furnished inside with curtains, carpets and every luxury. In these latter cases the original “doby” has generally received a coat of whitewash. Even the governor's palazzo is a “doby” building.

The “Plaza” is a quaint little peaceful square, surrounded by “stores,” most of which are under cover. In the middle is a very diminutive public garden, and here the band plays in the afternoon, for there is a small military depôt in Santa Fé.

We have not yet escaped from the inconveniences of the “wash-out.” It appears that all supplies of meat come from Kansas City (800 miles away). These supplies were of course now stopped, and we lived upon the coarse, tough local meat, which is almost uneatable.

Our German friend called, bringing a nice young daughter with him, and took us later for a delightful drive in a light T-cart with a fine pair of horses, all over the surrounding prairie country. We saw numbers 0033 27 of the pretty little prairie dogs, a sort of cross between a squirrel and a rabbit. They are not vicious, and can be easily tamed, but will bite in self-defence and pretty sharply, too. Driving over the prairie, we had a grand view of the line of mountains some 70 miles distant—but looking in this clear atmosphere quite close upon us—where rich metal exists in such large quantities. Mr. Staab told me that some of the most valuable gold mines are to be found here; the only trouble is to get enough water for washing out the gold. On Easter Monday we engaged a team (as a carriage and pair is called in this country) and drove some nine miles over the grand ridge of mountains called “The Divide” to the Indian village of “Tisuki” on the other side. It was a glorious drive over a plain covered with sand and tiny green bushes of pignone (a sort of dwarf pine, bearing a very excellent little pignone “nut”). Ascending the ridge of “The Divide” we had a grand view of distant blue mountains on the other side of the Rio Grande.

The purple tinge of the sand-covered plains and the green bushes of pine formed a striking contrast to the two blues of the mountain and the sky line.

The village is built in tiers of houses, most of which are of one story only.

Some of the largest Indian villages have six or seven tiers of mud huts and rise up in a pinnacle: ladders placed against the sides of the huts land you on the various elevations.

I have already referred to the curious method of entering these Mexican Indian huts, by climbing up a ladder inside the wall and then crawling down a ladder which emerges through a hole in the mud roof.

The first house we visited in this way was wonderfully clean. It had, of course, a bare mud floor, but cooking utensils, Indian jars, &c., were very neatly arranged on the ground, and the father, mother and child were squatting together in one corner.

The father was a mild-looking Indian with copper-coloured face, long black hair and very small feet in white mocassins made from tanned skins. The mother, wider in face and with cheeks painted a bright red over the natural bronze, a coloured blanket confined by a belt round the waist and mocassins on her tiny feet coming high up to the knees, completed her simple costume.

A replica of the mother was the little nine-year-old daughter, who was similarly dressed.

Both wore silver bracelets and gaily-coloured beads. 0035 29 They had a few little bits of pottery to sell, which we bought as a matter of courtesy.

They seemed gentle, kindly people, and the mother gave a little pottery shoe to the little child of our driver who had come in with us, in a very pretty motherly way.

They talked a sort of mongrel Spanish which they call “Indian,” but I could understand most of the sentences from having some knowledge of Italian.

We went into another house which was not nearly so clean.

Here some four or five generations seemed to chum together, from the old great-grandfather of eighty-three lying in the corner to the tiny Indian children of three or four years old who stumbled over him with their little, dusty bare feet. The old man, who looked almost too old to be alive at all, told our driver that he had, in his youth, seen both New York and Washington. This I can scarcely believe. He seemed to be sunk in a sort of melancholy grandeur, and I should never have dreamed of disturbing his meditations or insulting him by the offer of a vulgar “tip,” but the driver said it was customary, and certainly the effect of a “quarter” was miraculous.

The old fellow flew up as straight as a dart, jabbering 0036 30 out profuse thanks, and we left him beaming with pleasure.

Even ten cents gave great satisfaction to a poor old blind Indian, who sat in the court outside, and seemed almost too old and infirm for “filthy lucre.”

The day had clouded over as we drove back, and the view was less beautiful in consequence. Our driver amused us en route with stories of wild Western life, and seemed amused to find that I was quite up in the history of “Billy the Kid,” a young New Mexican desperado who was shot five years ago, after murdering nineteen men at various times in his short life of twenty-one years. Our driver declared that“ the Kid” had some very fine qualities, an opinion which has been endorsed by others who knew him.

Our great ambition, since planning this Western trip, had been to include in it a visit to the Grand Cañon of Colorado.

This name is very misleading to the uninitiated. It suggests at once the neighbourhood of Denver and Colorado springs, whereas this famous cañon is in reality many hundreds of miles from either one or other, and is situated to the south of Arizona, between New Mexico and South California.

The great difficulty lay in the utter impossibility of 0037 31 getting any reliable information as to the place or the means of reaching it. Appleton, as usual, contented himself with quoting two or three authorities as to the magnificence of the scenery when one got there, and showed a lordly contempt for any sort of detail.

We could not even find out whether the cañon would be open to travellers so early in the year as April. In vain we had asked this question all along the route, or tried to discover how to send a letter or telegram to any head-quarters from which a trustworthy answer might be expected.

Even in Santa Fé we were assured, over and over again, that the cañon would certainly be closed at that early season, and our German friends were quite horrified that we should even dream of making such an expedition “so far from the beaten track, and we two ladies travelling alone! Ach Hummel und so weiter.”

Another practical difficulty was the overcrowded state of the trains, owing to the number of travellers flocking westward, now that the lines had been put into something like order.

Meanwhile we spent an interesting morning at the Indian school, close to Santa Fé.

A certain Professor Ladd has started this, and watches over it with anxious interest.

Just now the school is much reduced, owing to the fact that some thirty-five scholars have been carried off by the priests. Many of the Indians are devout Catholics—a survival of the Spanish mission.

For some time the priests had tried to get these children away from the schools, and at length they have induced the parents to insist upon their being returned to their respective tribes. It seems a sad bit of “dog in the manger” philosophy on the part of the Catholics, who have no educational advantages to offer them in exchange.

Only about ten pupils remained; but the authorities were hoping that the numbers might soon be increased.

A very pretty girl, of twenty-two or twenty-three, was teaching them; a most determined young lady, who declared that she was “not a bit afraid of them,” but “shook them well around” when they were tiresome or disobedient!

Both sexes were represented, and all ages. Some of them were boys of nine or ten years old; others grown-up young men, one of whom was married.

The young mistress pointed, with some pride, to a strong young fellow of nineteen, and calmly said, “I had to send him to bed the other day.” As some of these Indians belong to the fierce Apache tribe, I was 0039 33 anxious to learn the secret of her influence, which I still believe lay to a great extent in her extreme prettiness, although she denied this vehemently, and declared that no element of chivalry or admiration entered into the question at all.

She seemed to think it was entirely a matter of strong will and determination, and the fact of feeling no physical fear of them. “Once let them see you have that and it is all over with any hope of discipline.”

Her theory and practice seemed very much those of a lion tamer, and lay in the triumph of mind over matter. Perhaps the Christian Scientists might have a word to say on the subject., as being a side illustration of their cardinal doctrine.

This young girl told us that the inspector's wife is very much afraid of her fierce-looking classes, and consequently can do nothing with them. On one occasion, when the mistress and a very determined young Apache man were at issue over some disputed point in discipline, the poor lady inspector looked on tremblingly and implored the young girl to give in and not infuriate the dangerous pupil.

“Not a bit of it,” said this determined young person. “I knew what giving in would mean. I might as well make tracks at once.” VOL. II. 21

“Well, how did you manage him?”

“I said to him: ‘Now, look here, if you don't do what I tell you, one of us two has got to die, for I don't leave this room till you obey me, and you don't leave it either.’”

Fortunately for her, the man succumbed to moral suasion. With all due deference for the triumph of will-power, I am still inclined to think that a very pretty face is no mean factor in discipline, even amongst Apache Indians.

We saw a nice clean wooden dormitory where some of the pupils sleep, and a “doby” house where their food is tidily cooked and served.

We also spent an hour chatting with the superintendent and his wife, intelligent Eastern Americans, who seemed glad to see new faces and exchange a few ideas.

Having received a vague telegram from some unknown source, to say that the Grand Cañon was open, and having spent a last pleasant evening with our kindly German friends, we packed up once more and left Santa Fé late one night, about ten p.m., trusting to find the sleeping carriage in which our berths were engaged at Lamy Junction.

We arrived there soon after midnight to hear that 0041 35 as usual the train was not “in time,” and would be at least three hours late.

One wretched, hot, stuffy, and unventilated room, with bare floor and ditto walls, was our only refuge from the fierce wind blowing outside; a small portion of a dirty wooden bench with no back to it affording our only chance of repose.

Alternately I went out to be frozen, and returned inside to be boiled.

At three o'clock in the morning our train came in at last, and soon afterwards we were safely on board and in our “sleepers,” a short-lived luxury as it proved.

Soon after leaving the Albuquerke Junction at six a.m., we were hustled out of the car, literally at a moment's notice, as the wheels had caught fire, and it was to be left on the road in consequence.

I had that moment begun to dress, after waiting patiently for some half-hour for the chance of washing my hands, but the railway officials would not hear of a moment's delay.

Throwing on a dressing-gown and thrusting my feet into slippers, I gathered together as much of my property as my arms would hold, leaving the rest of my things to be pushed helter-skelter into the 21–2 0042 36 crowded carriage that received us, in addition to its own previous freight of passengers.

Breakfast at Coolidge somewhat smoothed over our ruffled feelings, and we had sufficiently recovered our tempers to be amused by the Navaho Indians who surrounded the carriages, selling their pottery, exhibiting their hideous little babies at five cents “a peep,” and looking extremely picturesque in their gaily-coloured rags.

A dull, dreary waste of sandy desert came next, to be enlivened shortly by the very curious rock formations which stand out against the sky-line at intervals all through the Arizona country.

These rocks are most fantastic in shape, towers, castles, minarets in turn rising up in the midst of the plain; and the colouring is very beautiful, deepest crimson, brown, yellow, and grey in turn.

It was well to have some fresh interest in these beautiful rock formations, for we had left the picturesque New Mexico country behind us now, with its doby huts, and groups of Indians with their fierce black eyes, swarthy complexions and long, matted horsehair locks.

Early dawn landed us, some hours after time, at the miserable little collection of wooden shanties, containing 0043 37 some hundred inhabitants and honoured by the title of city known as Peach Springs.

Poor as the place looked, it was still divided from our eager hopes by a quarter of a mile of sandy desert, and at four o'clock in the morning we were landed on the line, with no perceptible means of conveying ourselves and baggage across the intervening space.

Meanwhile our train had steamed slowly off, so there was no possibility of escape for us; at length, after a good deal of difficulty, we persuaded a boy to show us the way to Mr. Farlie's “house,” as we called it in our ignorance, that being the name of the man who was supposed to run “the stage” from Peach Spring to the Cañon of the Colorado.

Crossing the sandy desert with rather crestfallen faces, we found that Mr. Farlie's boasted “hotel” was simply a small wooden shanty, but any refuge was welcome. We discovered that he had not yet received the telegram explaining a change of day in our arrival, necessitated by the overcrowded state of the trains.

However, he bustled up, showed us into two primitive but perfectly clean rooms, and volunteered to fetch our hand-bags from the depôt, much to our relief.

A few hours later we were up and dressed, and then 0044 38 found that the Farlie mansion did not attempt to provide food for its inmates.

You were expected to walk across the sand to the depôt for breakfast, and a very fair one we got, but were very much “hurried up” in eating it by Mr. Farlie, whose impatience in getting us under weigh was inexplicable to me.

Appleton says, “The road to the cañon from the line is eighteen miles, and a good one.”

It turned out to be a good twenty-three miles and over a thoroughly bad route, although certainly never quite so intolerable as the road to the Mammoth Caves.

We thought we had already reduced our baggage to the very lightest “marching order,” but found that even so the capabilities of the ramshackle “buck-board” honoured by the name of “stage” were over-strained, especially as the provisions for our stay had also to find room, as well as the “cook,” who was to be left with us up the cañon.

The “stage” consisted of a bare bit of boarding, slung on wheels with a couple of primitive seats capable of holding two people each by a little squeezing and both facing forwards.

The “cook” appeared to be a sulky-looking fellow of eighteen or nineteen, who sat in front with Mr. 0045 39 Farlie and declined to be drawn into any sort of conversation.

Later we learnt to appreciate the very excellent qualities of “Billy” at their true value, and to prefer him infinitely to our more talkative but less satisfactory host.

Billy told me afterwards that he was twenty-seven years old, and he had certainly lived through experiences enough to have been seventy -seven, but his slight figure and smooth boyish face made it difficult to realize that he was even a full-grown man.

He was not only to be our cook, but our housemaid, parlour-maid, guide, companion, and friend for the next three days, during which we were thrown completely on his hands and at his mercy.

Our stage had no covering from the fierce sun beating down at eleven o'clock in full force upon our heads, but the drive was sufficiently beautiful to atone for much discomfort.

The first two or three miles over the sandy plains were rough and interesting, but then the road improved and we soon entered the valley leading up the cañon.

Mountains of granite and old red sandstone rose on either side of us to a height varying from five to seven 0046 40 thousand feet. The sun shining fiercely on the deep crimsons and glowing yellows at the rocky cañon sides, gave us a splendid panorama of colour effect.

At length we reached a sort of rocky “divide,” called “Inspiration Point,” at the bottom of which the worst part of the road begins, and pretty bad it is for some eight miles.

Still the grand rocks on either side and the peaceful green valley through which we drove, made up by their beauty for all discomfort and weariness.

The wild flowers were coming out in great profusion after the late snows had disappeared. Cactus and aloe lined our path. The bowl-like “barrow cactus,” said to contain water for the weary traveller, grows here very freely, also a pretty shrub called the ocatero. This has long dark green stems, which rise up from its centre waving in the air, and at the end of each stem is a bright red blossom composed of numberless small buds, which blossom into tiny star-like red flowers. It takes a whole bunch of these latter to form what looks like one good-sized blossom.

The ocatero grows from four to ten feet high, and the larger specimens have some thirty or more of these waving long green arms.

A sort of large yellow primrose grows here in great 0047 41 profusion, and in the sand, nearer the river, a lovely white blossom of the primrose family, but reminding one more, in shape, of the wild rose.

We passed many willow trees and several specimens of the acacia on our road.

The heat grew fiercer as the day advanced. At length, about 3 p.m., coming over a hill, with eyes still straining right and left towards the grand mountain peaks on either side of us, we saw a tiny wooden hut in the distance, looking like a child's toy house, and I said laughingly to our guide:

“I suppose that is the sort of place you are going to take us to at last?”

“It looks very like it,” he answered quietly, and to my dismay I found that I had unwittingly hit upon the dismal truth.

Still, matters might have been worse. Anyway, I knew we had some meat and potatoes under the seat, if they had not been shaken out en route.

And nothing could deprive us of the glorious mountains and the heavenly blue sky, which were important factors in our happiness, although I am bound to place them on this occasion after the beefsteak and potatoes. Is this not a veracious history?

And had we not travelled now for some forty hours or 0048 42 more with much fatigue and discomfort and with little rest or food?

Having seen us safely deposited in our palatial abode and shared our meal there, Mr. Farlie told Bill to look up the horses (which had been turned out loose) with a view to returning to Peach Springs.

We had not hitherto freely appreciated the fact that we were to be left entirely alone with one wild “Western boy,” so many miles from any habitation, and with no means of getting away until our host chose to make another fifty mile journey on our behalf.

It was now Friday afternoon. We drank a last “stirrup cup” with Mr. Farlie in the form of some excellent Californian port, a bottle of which he had brought up with him; and he promised to return for us on the Sunday at latest, when a “gentleman” would be coming to take some views, and would wish to stay at the wooden shanty for this purpose.

This would mean that we must turn out, as there were only two small rooms in the place and no division between them worth mentioning.

Still, we thought that two days would probably give us ample time to explore the neighbourhood, and we never doubted that sufficient provisions had been left for us, or that we should be released on the day specified.

Our confidence on both these points proved to be ill-founded; but this is anticipating events.

Our tiny little wooden box of a house had doors back and front which were kept constantly open, so that it was almost like living in the open air, and the heat was much too great for any question of draughts.

Two or three chairs (one a “rocker”) and an old sofa bed completed the downstairs furniture; a little room being partitioned off from one corner to serve as a kitchen.

Up a narrow ladder stair were our two primitive rooms, one of which was approached without any sort of landing, straight from the ladder.

A wooden partition, not reaching by any means to the rafters above, divided this from the other room, which had a white sheet hung over its exit on to the stair ladder.

My room rejoiced in no such luxury as looking-glass nor wash-stand of any kind, but a tiny tin bowl on the only chair in the room served for the latter.

The first evening we felt too sick and weary from the great heat and fatigue combined to do anything but sit quiet in the entrance to our hut, watching the glorious mountains of glowing granite around us and making a desultory plan for going up the valley to 0050 44 Diamond Crick early next day, when Billy assured us we should be in the shade. nearly all the time.

“May day” dawned upon us in all brightness and beauty.

Billy, who had spent his night on the sofa-bedstead below, was up betimes, and cooked us an excellent breakfast of bacon, tomatoes, Indian corn, brown bread, coffee, &c., and by nine o'clock we were under weigh for our expedition, having been somewhat detained by the necessity for allowing our cook to do his “house and parlour maid” work before he joined us.

The plan was for Billy to walk some three or four miles up the crick (a narrow mountain stream) with us, leave us there, and return “home” in case Mr. Farlie should bring any other visitors up.

Meanwhile we could amuse ourselves as we chose, and Billy would start to meet us again in the cool of the afternoon, when his cooking labours (in case Mr. Farlie did arrive) would be over.

We had taken some food in a small tin can, and should therefore be independent for some hours to come.

It was a hot, weary tramp, constantly crossing and recrossing the little stream or “crick” which lower down goes to join the Colorado River.

We passed bushes of willows and acacias of various kinds, the cat's claw specimens amongst the latter.

The walk seemed endless, owing to the burning heat, but the views of the dark granite mountains around us were magnificent. The gorge became by degrees so narrow that these mountain tops seemed towering far into the sky and quite beyond our powers of vision at such close quarters.

Presently we came upon some very large rocks in the centre of the road and had to climb over these with “Billy's” assistance, and so reached on the other side a pretty little waterfall which falls for the distance of a few feet only, but in a very strong volume of water.

A stony cave near here seemed a good shelter from the sun, and here our friend left us to eat our lunch, whilst he returned up the valley to our starting point.

The “lunch,” consisting of very inferior cold bacon, was quite uneatable, viewed by our happy standard of that day, so we took the bits of bread round it and ate them with some curious preserve that had been placed at the bottom of the can, and we made some excellent lemonade from the crick water and two lemons which Billy had thoughtfully put in for us at the last moment.

We then walked some mile or two further up the 0052 46 valley, the gorge becoming at length so narrow that we could almost span it with outstretched arms, and the mountain tops appearing more inaccessible than ever.

After a little more dabbling in the water by the fall, on our return to the cave we tidied up the remains of our very frugal meal, picked up the tin can once more and began the homeward journey in good earnest.

Now came the tug of war.

It was impossible to scale the boulders of rock again without Billy's help, yet the choice lay between that and going some two feet deep into the stream, which had no “landing” here at the other side, only steep walls of rock rising sheer out of its depths.

In despair we chose the certain wetting to the possible risk of breaking our necks and plunged boldly in, the water being up to our knees.

A few moments' walking brought us to some stepping-stones and here our troubles for the moment ended.

We were much relieved to meet our faithful Billy, on the way home. He had made a fruitless journey, having found our little shanty as empty as when we left it.

It was now four o'clock in the afternoon. The sun's 0053 47 heat was becoming intolerable and I began to fear sunstroke for one or other of us. Moreover we were much exhausted by the long tramp, rather hungry after a very meagre meal, and. our feet were blistered by the sharp stones over which we had so often crossed the stream. Added to all of which we were now wet through by our plunge into the crick.

At last we reached the blessed haven of our little wooden house and got some supper, and better still, the intense luxury of a bath, for I had brought my india-rubber bath with me as a positive necessity of life, and Billy was always ready to get me a pail of water from the crick behind the shanty.

One of the finest peaks before our eyes as we sat in the front of our most primitive abode was called “Prospect Point,” and the view from this over the surrounding cañon was said to be magnificent.

Mr. Farlie had spoken of the ascent as a little half-hour's run, that might be taken at any odd time. My experience of it was very different to this, but the view certainly repays any one for the exertion of reaching it, which in the case of an ordinary lady is very considerable.

Billy admitted that several men had got half-way and returned. Doubtless this was laziness, but a very 0054 48 rough and in many places almost perpendicular scramble up the bed of a mountain torrent covered with loose stones and with nothing to hold by, to a height of over 2,500 feet can scarcely be called an “easy little walk,” except for a lady well accustomed to mountaineering.

We were both thankful that a slightly strained foot prevented my friend from making the attempt on the strength of this delusive description. She would certainly never have arrived at the top, and might in all human probability have had a very nasty fall in making the attempt.

It was arranged overnight that Billy should make me an early cup of coffee and that he and I should sally forth as near 5 a.m. as possible, to see the river, which lies some mile and a half below our shanty, and then make the ascent of Prospect Point.

Walking in the opposite direction to Diamond Crick, by the pretty willow-bordered stream and with lovely wild flowers greeting us on every side, we reached an open plateau with a regular panorama of grand mountains all round us.

Beyond lay a field of fine white sand, and on reaching this we first heard the sound of the rushing river, which flows at right angles to the crick and is 0055 49 hidden by the shelving bank of sand until you are within a few yards of it.

This Colorado River is 150 feet deep by 300 feet wide, and is full of strong currents, the snow waters from the mountains giving it a very muddy look.

These mountains stand up grandly from the opposite shore, and on this occasion we saw them to the greatest advantage, with the rising sun just warming into glowing beauty their rugged sides.

Two of the finest peaks are called “Solomon&s Temple” and “The Tower of Babel.” After a little rest, sitting on the white sands, and drinking in this peaceful yet magnificent view, we retraced our steps a short way until we came to the very precipitous mountain torrent bed which begins the ascent to Prospect Point.

Thirty minutes of very stiff climbing brought us on to the first saddle of the mountain, and already we were repaid by the view over the chain of mountains with the Colorado river winding at their base, which had been hidden from us below.

Another good half-hour's scramble brought us on to some undulating slopes covered with cactus and wild flowers; ocatera bushes grew in great profusion here. VOL. II. 22

This walking was a pleasant relief before climbing the last peak of all to the real Prospect Point, which lies at the bottom of the Pyramid Rock, and can only be approached in this round-about fashion. It was now 8.30 a.m. and I was completely tired out by the heavy climb.

Billy seemed equally disposed for a rest, so after feasting our eyes on the glorious views all round us, we threw ourselves down on the little rock plateau and then, to his great dismay, our “guide, philosopher and friend” made the terrible discovery that he had brought no matches and would be cheated out of his smoke after all.

I could only express profound sympathy. Ladies as a rule are not expected “to have a light about them,” especially when clambering up the sides of a mountain, but I felt conscious, from Billy's point of view, I had failed ignominiously as a “good pal.”

In another minute his brow cleared. “There are more ways than one of getting a light,” he said, and forthwith pulled out his “six-shooter” pistol and one of the cartridges from his leather belt.

He undid the cartridge with some difficulty and the help of a sharp pebble, filled up the space next to the gunpowder with a bit of paper and fired it off, putting 0057 51 his cigar instantly to the burning mouth of the pistol to catch the fire.

The experiment was most successful when it finally came off, but the preparations were lengthy and rather frightening to me, I must confess.

I knew this wild Western “boy” had been picked up at random from a gambling saloon about six weeks before.

We were some twenty-five miles up an absolutely uninhabited cañon entirely at his mercy, to add to which I personally had climbed another 2,000 or 3,000 feet and so cut myself off even from the possible assistance of the only other human being within miles. Quick as thought it flashed through my mind, “why should he not give me a knock over the head, anyway, take my watch—make off to the shanty, and there do the same kind office for my friend?”

What would be simpler? She had a very valuable watch and of course it was impossible for us to dispense with a fair amount of ready money, all of which would have been at Billy's absolute disposal. A mountain walk of twenty-five miles cut us off completely from the outer world, but would form no insuperable difficulty to men.

He could easily make his way over the mountains 22–2 0058 52 to some wayside station further up or lower down than Peach Springs and be off before any human being could stop him, leaving us—if alive—to fare as best we might until Mr. Farlie chose to return for us.

Looking at the matter from this point of view, I am inclined to think that our Western friends were perhaps justified in calling the expedition a foolhardy one for ladies to undertake alone.

However, “all is well that ends well.”

As Billy fired off the pistol, he uttered a loud sort of triumphant shriek which echoed and re-echoed through all the mountain sides, and reached my friend (as I feared it would) in her solitary watch below.

“What did you think when you heard it?” I said anxiously on my return. “Did you think Billy had shot me?”

“Well, yes, I did think so at first,” was the quiet answer, “but afterwards I fancied that you must have fallen over the precipice, for the shriek seemed to be a man's voice. If neither of you had returned and my foot had got better, by-and-by I should have gone out to look for you, but of course I should never have found you as I have not the least notion where you took the track.”

This common-sense view of matters was a great relief to my mind after undergoing some hours of real distress, picturing my poor companion a prey to every sort of nervous horror.

The descent from Prospect Point was terribly rough and stony and the heat overpowering, with the thermometer at 105° in the shade.

By eleven o'clock we were once more safely at home and longing for a good meal; having had nothing but a small cup of coffee since the previous evening. Alas! our real troubles were now to begin. Billy was at length forced to tell us that the meat had given in! It seemed that Mr. Farlie had only left enough for one day, having declared at the last he should return on the Saturday, which he had failed to do.

All our hopes now rested on the “photographing gentleman ” who was confidently expected this day (Sunday). So we sat down to a very small piece of bacon and some weak coffee and tried to feel that we were not hungry after it. Billy no doubt was accustomed to fasting, and my friend bad been quietly resting all the morning, but a six hours' expedition had given me a most inconvenient appetite under the circumstances.

The afternoon passed, no Mr. Farlie; evening came on. It was too late now to expect him. Supper was another shock to our feelings. The bacon had given in now, likewise the coffee, tomatoes, sugar and lemons. A little Indian corn, some very weak sugarless tea and some dry bread formed a very insufficient evening meal, but poor Billy looked so unfeignedly distressed by the position of affairs that we tried to make as light of it as possible for his sake.

He evidently looked upon Mr. Farlie's failure to appear and our “short commons” as in some way a slur upon his own honour and hospitality and put down the hard bread and weak tea with an apparent sulkiness that was really intended to conceal his wounded pride.

He did his best to cheer us up in the evening by stories of his own wild life, with its many incidents.

He has been “held up” (robbed) four times, on one occasion losing over 1,800 dollars, which had been paid over to him as his share of a mine which he and some comrades had owned and worked for many months.

I asked why he travelled with so much money about him; but of course, in these wild regions, he could not lodge it in a bank without travelling many miles over the mountains in order to do so.

Another time he was fortunate in saving most of his money by holding it up in his hand (in paper bills) when told to “hold up” and be searched.

Another ghastly story he told us of a friend of his, another Bill, who had a quarrel with some five or six men in a drinking and gambling saloon. It arose as usual from the most trifling cause. This hero had shouldered his way up to the bar for “a drink,” and had declined to “clear out” when told to do so. It was agreed that the quarrel should be decided by adjourning outside the saloon with pistols. I cannot remember the exact conditions of the “meeting,” but the result was, that one of the other men fired first, disabling Bill's right arm. Instantly he changed his pistol, and firing with the left hand, “picked out” his men one after the other in such quick succession, and with such sure aim, that he killed them all.

Our Billy had been present, and described the scene with much enthusiasm.

I must confess I had some doubts about it, but some time afterwards, coming across a life of this special gentleman, I found the matter described exactly as it had been told to us; so it was, at any rate, no effort of Billy's unaided imagination.

Such scenes were common enough some four or five 0062 56 years ago, and are far from unusual now. Mr. Farlie told us that this man Bill (the best friend he ever had) was eventually killed himself in a most dastardly way.

He was taking a hand at cards in a saloon, and for the only time in his life sat with his back to the bar; his invariable rule being to sit facing every one in the room.

On this occasion, a man who had some grudge against him, crept up and meanly shot him in the back.

I have already referred to a biography of “Billy the Kid,” which I had read at Santa Fé, and which rather tended to whitewash the memory of this New Mexico desperado.

I hear, however, that he was guilty of one great piece of cowardice, namely, the shooting of his own wife.

She had married him, it seems, in ignorance of his desperate character and deeds, and he thought she was inclined to “go back upon him,” in eloquent Yankee phrase. He therefore decoyed her into a drinking saloon, got her into a good temper and then taking her unawares, quietly shot her. She was a very handsome Mexican woman, and this occurred within a year of their married life.

Our next morning brought a change of meal, no tomatoes, no Indian corn, I might have said no tea, for our beverage by this time had almost arrived at hot water, pur et simple. A very hard piece of fossilized bread, some two inches square and baked the previous Thursday, was put down by Billy in front of us with a rueful face and a dismal attempt at a joke: “You two ladies had better settle with a six-shooter which of you is to have that. There is not enough to divide.”

Matters now were really becoming serious. We were absolutely without food, and there was no sign of our deliverance being at hand. Mr. Farlie having failed to come Saturday or Sunday, might leave us yet another day if the photographer did not chance to arrive.

We discovered afterwards this was nearly being the case, for the expected guest did not come at all, and Mr. Farlie said, “he was in ever so many minds about coming as it would have suited him better to come next day, and he thought we should get along pretty well.”

Fortunately for us he reconsidered this first conclusion, and by half-past one, when our hopes were growing fainter, and we were preparing for another twenty-four 0064 58 hours of absolute fasting, the welcome sound of wheels was heard and Mr. Farlie arrived.

There arrived also some tough but most acceptable bacon.

Billy made us a farewell cup of tea, and presented us with two stringy bacon sandwiches for the road, and by five o'clock we were once more en route , leaving our most kind and faithful young “cook” to keep house alone, with many sincere regrets.

We had been told to bring plenty of warm wraps to the cañon, Possibly this may be good advice in February or March, but in late April the heat was overpowering, and I believe the place is quite intolerable to the ordinary traveller in July and August.

The dryness and lightness of the atmosphere, however, help one very much in bearing a degree of beat there which would unfit one for any exertion elsewhere.

The drive back to Peach Springs was very much more trying than our former experience of the road.

To begin with, it takes some six hours instead of four, as it is very much steeper going back. Darkness soon came on. There was nothing more to be seen after that, and we were faint and weak from want of proper and sufficient food.

Poor Billy's coarse bacon sandwiches were almost uneatable, simply because we could not get our teeth through them, and we had not a drop of water or liquid of any kind. Mr. Farlie did not encourage any loitering by the way to find anything to drink, and we were too much exhausted to insist upon his doing so.

All things, however, come to an end, and so at length did this weary drive, but not until eleven o'clock at night, by which time the one small “store” in the village was shut up, and our dream of finding some bread or biscuits proved hopeless.

Our train on West was two hours late as usual, so we lay down in our old quarters, dressed as we were, Mr. Farlie promising to wake us up in time to catch the train when it was telegraphed.

We were waked up all too soon from a heavy sleep and hurried across the sandy common to the station at 4 a.m.

Sick and faint from fatigue and want of food, we soon lay down in our upper berths, the only ones procurable, for the train was crowded.

We had not left Peach Springs much over half-an-hour when two tremendous concussions came, one close upon the other, and then we were at a dead standstill. I thought, of course, we must be off the rails, but 0066 60 mercifully it was not so, or we should have been over the steep embankment, at the edge of which we were running at the time.

Every one in the car took matters very quietly, as Americans always do on such occasions, being a curious mixture of the excitable and phlegmatic temperament. At length one man got up and “guessed he would look around” and see what had happened. The matter eventually turned out to be as follows:

The previous evening a heavy freight train, having to go down a declivity to take in water, put on the brake so strongly that the coupling pegs were torn away, thereby releasing the engine and one or two carriages, which promptly went over the embankment and were dashed to pieces. Some eighteen or twenty freight carriages were thus left blocking up the line, until another engine could be sent to take them off.

Meanwhile it was the duty of the freight train brakesman to warn our train of the obstruction. To do this he would have had to walk a quarter of a mile, and he was a coward, “afraid of the Indians and the prairie wolves!” Knowing that we had been telegraphed as two hours late, he chose to “think” we might be still late, and that, by trusting to the chapter of accidents, the line might be cleared before we arrived. 0067 61 Meanwhile we had been, on the contrary, making up some of our lost time.

A strong curve in the line prevented our seeing the freight train until within a few yards of it. The situation, therefore, was this: A fresh engine from the West was coming up to take away the freight carriages at the same moment that we, in ignorance of any danger, were steaming up from the East straight on to the obstruction.

Fortunately we were running slowly at the time of the collision, having been warned that a bridge had been burnt somewhere near, and was only temporarily restored. Had we been going at full speed there must have been great loss of life. As it was, we smashed into the first few freight carriages, driving the rest of them down the line with such force that about a mile further on they came into strong collision with the engine and tender that were coming to their rescue.

This second engine was completely smashed up, and all the remaining freight carriages also. This second “wreck” was a terrible sight. Twenty carriages lay “telescoped” in, dovetailed with each other by force of the shock. Tomato tins, canned fruits, oranges, every sort of comestible, furniture, &c., &c., were lying 0068 62 about in thousands of pieces; a grand piano was being conveyed in this freight train, and was so completely wrecked that only a few consecutive notes of it held together, the rest being a shapeless mass of wood and metal!

The loss to our own train was that the engine, tender and one car went over the embankment and were smashed to pieces; but mercifully no lives were lost, no severe injuries even being sustained.

Certainly for a double collision and on such an extensive scale, the escapes were miraculous. Our engine driver and firemen had just time to reverse the engine and jump for their lives down the embankment, where, the earth being soft, they escaped with severe bruises.

More wonderful still, the two men who were travelling on the second engine also escaped, although just the moment before that collision their legs were hanging over the engine which was travelling in reverse.

Still, there we were, in the midst of the prairies, without food, with no means of transit, and no chance of getting along for an indefinite time, for the rails had been torn up and must be first repaired.

At length, after some hours, it was decided to take us back to Peach Springs, where at least we could get some food, such as it was. By eleven o'clock we were 0069 63 once more in the miserable little depôt that we had left at four o'clock that morning, certainly without any idea of such a speedy return.

I need not go through all the detail of this weary day. As usual, no one knew in the least how long the delay might last. A number of workmen with every sort of implement and material necessary had been dispatched to the scene of the wrecks, and we heard it would be necessary to build a loop line round one, as the débris was so great that it could not possibly be removed for several days.

Fortunately, an American line is soon “run up.” By eight in the evening a rumour spread that we were shortly to be “sent on.” After three hours of the most exasperating delays and shuntings we were fairly off by eleven o'clock at night, but moving of course at a snail's pace.

Great fires were kindled along where the men, had been working at the line and threw a lurid light over the scene of destruction. It was a ghastly sight, and far from a comfortable experience to be crawling along with our hearts in our mouths, not knowing what fresh disaster might await us at any moment.

By six o'clock in the morning we had reached the beautiful pinnacles of rock called “The Needles”—one 0070 64 of the most striking points on the route. They remind one of our own famous “Needles,” but are very, very big brothers to our small rock babies.

I have said so much already of the discomforts of American travel on these journeys where no dining cars are provided, that it seems unnecessary to heap up the agony. If I do so, it is only because so much misconception exists on the subject, and in all my travels I never met but one family of Americans who were honest enough to admit that travelling in this country can be anything but a paradise of comfort and convenience.

I would willingly go through it all again rather than have missed so much of interest that could only be bought at such a price; but it is far better to let other people know what they must expect on any but the most direct routes from East to West.

It is not so much the question of the food itself, though that is bad enough and tough enough in all conscience, but the way in which it is served, even in the larger depôts, beggars all powers of description.

On one plate are heaped promiscuously eggs and ham, tough beefsteak, stringy mutton, sauces, beans, tomatoes and corn. You eat all together, just as you may manage to get your teeth through one or other in 0071 65 turn, and this at railway speed. Hurried, degraded and miserable, you rush back into your carriage after paying some three shillings for the revolting meal, and probably find that you are kept “on the shunt” in and out of that same station for the best part of an hour, during which time you might at least have made some struggle in the cause of decency and digestion.

It has been the same through all our journeys. Bad food, hurry, worry and one dirty plate: that sums up the charms of American travel over many roads.

When we complained of any arrangements in the East, the invariable answer was, “Ah, it is not worth while to make such perfect arrangements here. Wait until you get to the West. There you will find the most delightful accommodation of every kind.”

Now that we are here, the equally invariable remark is, “Well what can you expect so far West? Think of the thousands of miles of prairie all round you. Remember you are not in the East.”

On again, through more dreary country of the usual type, sand varied by small bushes of pignone, until we reached Daggette and the climax of desolate heat and dreariness.

At Barstow Junction we were quietly kept waiting for three hours as an excursion party was “coming along” VOL. II. 23 0072 66 and it did not seem worth while to send us on alone when one engine would “do the lot,” our train being the one regularly advertised for arrival at a certain hour!

This and the culpable carelessness that led to our accident have toned down any enthusiastic admiration we might have had for the “Atlantic Pacific” line.

We heard that this accident was the seventh in sixty days, and as it cost them over $50,000 that must be an expensive amusement.

The brakesman who did all the mischief had been discharged for incompetence three weeks before, but had been taken on again to this responsible post. So one cannot sympathize very deeply with the company's money loss, seeing how many lives were placed in jeopardy.

On this second day's travel we had some pleasant companions in our car. Amongst them, two pretty girls making a little tour in California before going to stay with a San Francisco aunt. Also two young men who were not of the party, but who played cards with them all day long.

One of these young men divided his attentions between the pretty girls and a note book in which he was making notes in the interest of some local newspaper, as he confided to me later in the day.

He was very painstaking, but apt to be imposed upon. I delivered him from the error of mistaking a very large aloe for the soap root; but the idea was so firmly fixed in his mind that I fear the extraction was a wrench.

He and an old man, who seemed rather given to tippling, had a great discussion later on about the Indians.

The former maintained that where they had been civilized and educated, excellent results had been obtained. The latter, who had lived amongst them for years, declared that this was all sentimental nonsense, that education only placed fresh weapons in their hands, that Indians were born cruel and treacherous and would remain so to the end of the chapter, and that extermination, not education, was the only possible treatment for them.

I fear there must be some truth in this, for every United States officer, every man who has had any close dealing with the Indians, says the same thing.

Yet it seems wrong for individuals to give in to such a pessimistic doctrine.

Mrs. Helen Hunt Jackson (“H.H.”) has written charming stories on the virtues and wrongs of the noble savage, and doubtless there is truth also in her 23–2 0074 68 view of the question. But probably no one belonging to her ever suffered from their treachery or got scalped by them.

We had a most exquisite sunset on our way to Los Angeles. Such colouring! Gold as deep as the Californian metal itself, faint greens and blues and greys and purples, rose and flame colour, all in the sky at the same time and ranging over such a continent of space!

We did not reach Colton until nine o'clock at night, when we were turned out without any warning, to find that we had more than a quarter of a mile to walk in deep sand and deeper darkness to the refreshment room, which is far removed from the railway.

No one knew the way, and some time elapsed before we could make it out, which we did by guessing at the direction of a bell, which was sounded from time to time in the darkness.

One dish of uneatable tough mutton and the weakest dilution of coffee barely repaid us for the half-mile scramble there and back; but our troubles now were drawing to a close. A few hours of disturbed slumber, fearing that the black boy might fail to wake us in due time, brought us at two o'clock in the morning to Los Angeles, and we reached the Pico House by two-thirty 0075 69 a.m., just twenty-nine hours late, and to be greeted by the staggering announcement that a Raymond excursion party had arrived and that there was not a bed to be had in the house.

We had written for rooms days before and all our letters had been sent to this house, but Raymond in America is as omnipotent a name as Cook in Palestine.

There was nothing for it but to carry off our pile of letters and go elsewhere.

By four o'clock in the morning we were safely housed in two small rooms, about as big and airy as a dog kennel or a rabbit hutch! Still they were rooms and there were beds, a luxury unknown to us since we had left our little cañon “shakedowns” more than three days before.

Los Angeles is beautifully situated amidst undulating green hills, with the snow-capped Bernardino range in the distance. The town itself has some excellent stores, but is flat, dusty and uninteresting. The surroundings, however, are very beautiful.

Once leave the town behind you and you come upon roads lined with large, handsome, feathery pepper trees and groves of the tall, blue shaded eucalyptus. The various proprietors act most kindly in allowing the public to drive into their grounds, and two private houses, surrounded by exquisite gardens, have remained specially in my memory. One called “Long Street” belongs to a widow of that name; the other, “Boyle Heights,” commands a beautiful view and is owned by a Mr. Hellabeck. The flowers in both were gorgeous, far surpassing any I have seen on the Riviera.

There were beds of white arum lilies, geraniums and heliotrope growing as large trees many feet in height. 0077 71 Passion flowers, plumbago, mauve-coloured geraniums and every variety of exquisite rose grow here in wildest profusion. The climate, however, is treacherous, and the water so bad that any one easily affected by the latter had better give Los Angeles a wide berth. I can speak feelingly, having suffered from it during the whole three weeks of my stay, and having here laid the seeds of much ill-health in the future.

The sun is very hot and the wind most cold and piercing. A heavy cold and chronic sore throat are not cheerful companions, and I should not recommend a long stay in this place to any one not already “acclimated” as the Americans say.

The cable rail cars take you up hill and down dale, and up hill again to Ellis College, an institution of two years' growth, for the education of girls. Here the air is much fresher than down below and you get a perfect view.

The Bernardino mountains seem close around you. Below lie East and West Los Angeles, dotting the valley all over with houses and villas, whilst the orange and lemon groves stretch far away for miles and miles towards the Sierra Madre range, a continuation of the Bernardino mountains.

After much difficulty in getting accurate information 0078 72 as to the best time for visiting the Yo-Semite Valley, we concluded to put it off till towards the third week in May, and found that we had been wise in doing so. Earlier than this the snow may still be lying and the wild flowers are hardly in their prime should the season be late. Later, the short-lived flowers that lend so much beauty to the valley are gone, the heat grows intense, the dust is suffocating, and the waterfalls are beginning to dry up—a very serious consideration, for these Yo-Semite waterfalls form one of the chief elements of interest in the valley. So we elected to wait on at Los Angeles in spite of climate and bad water.

Some weary days spent “on the sick list” were enlivened by the fact that my bedroom windows (at the Pico House, where we had finally found refuge) “gave” upon the Public Square.

There came every afternoon a wonderful lady doctor who was staying at Los Angeles, and who appeared in a gorgeous chariot, with a band of seven men perched at the back, a husband somewhere attached to the party, and a young English and Mexican interpreter chosen from the town.

She was a Madame Duflot, an Italian by birth, but married to a Frenchman, who is also a doctor. 0079 73 Monsieur and Madame Duflot both claim to be duly “qualified,” and exhibit honours taken at all sorts of examinations, as well as medals presented to them by the various European courts.

The lady, who is a bright, tiny, energetic little woman, pulls out teeth and doctors rich and poor alike gratis, relying, apparently, on the sale of her medicines for her income. These medicines were three in number, and were said to be manufactured from Egyptian herbs, the special preparation being a family secret. There was a green liquid in a small bottle, a green salve and a box of powder which, when mixed with water, made a strong and sweet vegetable tonic, which tasted uncommonly like the Gregory powder of our childhood.

All these specifics were to be had for one dollar, and she was said to take over $1,000 daily by the sale of them; hats, bonnets, and even boxes and baskets being handed up in quick succession to be filled to the brim during the few minutes when the sale was carried on at the end of the afternoon's proceedings.

She began by pulling out the teeth of grown-up people and children alike, giving the latter a “quarter” apiece for submitting to the operation.

This was performed so quickly that the pain must 0080 74 have been infinitesimal, and even the tiniest children went through it unflinchingly, submitting to the extraction of some four or five teeth without a murmur, although some of them looked too young to be thoroughly alive to the consolations of money.

Several wonderful “cures” were supposed to be effected, two of paralysis, in one case the man having been unable to walk for fourteen years. I can testify to the fact that he was lifted into the chariot by three men, rubbed by Monsieur Duflot for about half an hour, then the vegetable tonic was administered, and Madame Duflot came to the fore. She insisted upon the poor old fellow tottering to his feet, which he did with evident alarm; but he finally gained confidence and, climbing down the chariot unaided, walked slowly round the square as the throngs divided before him.

He clambered up eventually on the other side of the carriage, and looked very much relieved to come once more to anchorage.

Moreover, two well-known townsmen, a doctor and a lawyer, testified to this old man's previous condition of helplessness.

All this I saw and heard, but should be sorry to give any opinion as to the cure itself. So much would depend upon the exact nature of the disease, as also on 0081 75 the credibility and powers of accurate judgment and reasoning on the part of these local magnates, always supposing that they were thoroughly honest men.

The medical entertainment went on each afternoon from 4 to 7 p.m., when, having sold her medicines to an eager crowd, Madame Duflot would gather up all odds and ends, shut up the medicine chests, put away the formidable array of pincers and tweezers, put on her cloak, whip off the white apron, and standing up in her chariot with its three strong horses, drive the whole cortége back to the hotel at the other end of the town.

Meanwhile, we had determined to spend a few days at the famous Sierra Madre Villa, a drive of some seventeen miles from Los Angeles, through the orange and lemon groves of Passadena and Lamanda, and which would also give us the opportunity of visiting the old Spanish mission of San Gabriele and the San Gabriel valley, so often referred to by Mrs. Hunt Jackson in her delightful romance of “Ramona.”

A plain white plaster church, built of bricks underneath, alone remains of the once famous mission. Six or seven handsome bells, arranged high up on the outside in irregular dove-cot fashion, make the only picturesque point in the otherwise ugly little building.

Inside the roof is modern, and the walls are hung with some old-fashioned pictures of the saints.

The orange groves through which we drove were on an immense scale, some of the trees being quite young, others from six to eight years old. The drive was terribly hot and dusty, lying all the way along the plains of the valley.

The orange, pepper, and eucalyptus trees lining the road were in many places completely hidden by dust, and reduced to a uniform shade of brownish grey. The villa is a long, low, white gable-roofed house with wide verandahs, nestling on a pretty hill close under the Sierra Madre range.

The grounds belonging to it are beautifully arranged, and the whole place reminded me very much of some Riviera health resort.

Orange trees grow freely in the gardens, and palms and india-rubber plants are all of out-door growth in this pretty sheltered winter home. The season was already over when we arrived, and the heat becoming daily too great for pleasure or health; for although the thermometer only registered 96° in the shade, we found the damp, oppressive heat far more trying than the light, bright air of the Arizona Cañon had been even at 105° in the shade.

Dr. Phillips Brooks from Boston had arrived unexpectedly during our stay in Los Angeles, having joined a Raymond party for the trip to California.

This is a good opportunity for saying a few words on the subject of Raymond excursions in America. These are got up on much the same lines as Cook's parties, but are rather more expensive and decidedly more exclusive. Every one spoke with much enthusiasm of the comfortable arrangements and the saving of trouble—and such excursions offer great advantages to people who are limited for time, or unable to face the trouble of making personal arrangements and who do not object to some little loss of freedom, or to travelling in a large and somewhat mixed company.

Dr. Brooks, who is an old and experienced traveller, expressed himself as more than satisfied with all the arrangements; but then he was certainly quite independent of general companionship, being one of a small party of chosen Boston friends who had a railway car to themselves, and could always fill up a table at the hotels and one or two separate carriages on any driving excursions. So perhaps it is hardly fair to take such an exceptionally pleasant experience as an average. We talked, however, to many “Raymond” travellers from first to last and all expressed their satisfaction, 0084 78 winding up invariably with the triumphant words, “And then all the tickets for meals, cars or carriages are bound up together in real Russia leather. ”

Very pretty these Russia leather books were; the name of the traveller, dates of the start and finish of the tour, being engraved in golden letters outside. I never spoke to any “Raymondian” who did not mention this fact of the “real Russia leather” within five minutes, generally pulling out the book in question to be inspected.

It seemed to be the ne plus ultra of delight and satisfaction, and to give a cachet to the whole affair. I offer the hint to Mr. Cook and believe it would amply repay him to adopt it.

Sometimes, finding what magic the name of Raymond worked with hotel and railway companies, as we watched the merry faces of some of the tourists, my friend and I were inclined to regret our independence; but I think on the whole we did better as we were. For women, at any rate, I think independence of movement in such travelling is a necessity. The very fact of feeling that you must keep up and on for a certain number of weeks would be enough to make some of us ill from sheer nervousness. Only those who are very strong and very sure of their own 0085 79 health under the strain of great fatigue should join such expeditions. It is, of course, always possible to leave the party and rejoin it at some further point; but the temptation to overtax one's strength must be much greater when the alternative is a question of considerable arrangement and inconvenience.

The Sunday we spent at Sierra Madre Villa was a day of stifling heat, one of those days when movement is impossible and life becomes a question of simple endurance. Towards evening matters improved. A slight breeze sprang up, there was a prospect of a brilliant full moon, and last, not least, Dr. Brooks had promised to preach in the little wooden church at Passadena, about five miles distant.

The only question was, how to get there?

He was to be driven down by a pair of “high steppers” belonging to a young doctor living in the hotel, and there seemed to be no possibility of conveyance for any one else, as the two “stages” were both out. Fortunately I had, all unwittingly, “cast bread upon the water” in the afternoon by having a long talk with the wife of the proprietor. He and she are both great singers and received their musical education at Milan, where they first met each other. Music had formed a strong bond between us, and she had 0086 80 told me much of her early life and studies in Italy.

Such a friend at court was invaluable now. I went to her in my despair and she promised that somehow “she would fix matters for us.”

Sure enough, at a quarter before 7 p.m., a small buggy, drawn by two frisky horses, drove up to the door. The proprietor and his wife sat in front, my friend and I at the back, and a most glorious drive we had, coming in as usual for a real Californian sunset. I will spare my readers the sermon, beautiful as it was and made still more impressive by the surroundings. The little churchyard was full of buggies and carriages of every kind, for the fame of the great Boston preacher had spread quickly in the small place. The heat was still intense and every window in the little church had been left wide open. A bright moon had bad risen and shed her rays through the open windows on our side, putting to shame the few poor lamps in the place.

Perfect stillness reigned, broken only now and then by the champ of a bit or the stamp of a horse's foot outside, for the people had, with perfect confidence, left their animals and carriages to freedom in the churchyard.

It was now the third week in May, and time for our start to the Yo-Semite Valley; so we returned to Los Angeles for one day to make final preparations, secure tickets for rail and stage and finally to buy and pack a luncheon basket, having concluded that this was an absolute necessity, although we had put off the evil day as long as possible, for every additional parcel is a nuisance where no porters are to be found.

The Yo-Semite Valley has been described so often and so graphically that I shall pass lightly over it, trusting only to be able to give a few hints to other ladies contemplating the excursion, by a truthful account of the difficulties and fatigues for which they must be prepared.

One hears this valley excursion spoken of as “such a beaten track, such well-known ground,” &c., that I think we had quite failed to appreciate the great fatigue that it would entail.

However, we profited by sad experience, and later on, in the Yellowstone Park, insisted upon doing our stageing at our own convenience, instead of being dragged through, sick and weary, and utterly incapable of appreciating or enjoying anything.

Yet we spent a week in the Yo-Semite valley; a much longer stay than is usual, and I do not even now VOL. II. 24 0088 82 see how we could have insured greater comfort in stageing. The distances there are much greater than in the National Park and the driving is far more dangerous, on both of which grounds a private conveyance with an unknown driver is undesirable. W hen really too ill to move, on our return from the valley, my friend urged me to spend an extra day at the halfway house instead of pushing on, but this proved to be impracticable.

Having once agreed to leave the valley on a certain day (of which notice must be given beforehand) your places in the various stages are booked.

Once change the programme by one day's delay and all the arrangements for the next week are put out.

The following day brings its own complement of travellers, and having forfeited your chance, it may be necessary to wait for a week or more for fresh vacancies.

The present arrangements seem to have been based upon the assumption that men and women who visit the Yo-Semite Valley have muscles of brass and nerves of cast-iron, and that although you should be compelled to pay rail and stageing companies any amount of dollars for the privilege of seeing the beauties of Nature, it is quite unnecessary to bring anything but 0089 83 weary limbs and breaking backs and swimming heads to the contemplation of these wonders in order to extract the fullest possible enjoyment from them.

On the day of our start from Los Angeles we were up at 5 a.m., and after a hurried breakfast caught the 7 a.m. train for Barstow Junction.

The day, even at that early hour, was very hot; but the route through the Bernardino range of mountains was very interesting and we were delighted by passing masses of meskel , a species of jucca, now out in full bloom. The flowers are like a white bell and grow close and thick all up the long stem, waving in the air like showers of snow. They grow in such profusion as to line each side of the valley through which we were passing.

Even the loveliness of the mountains could hardly tempt our eyes from the view of these exquisite columns of pure white bell-like flowers.

At Barstow the connecting train was two hours late as usual; but having settled ourselves down for that amount of time, it suddenly arrived (also as usual) just when least expected.

We had engaged “sleepers” on board one of the good San Francisco cars and we were due at Berenda next morning at 3 a.m. There we had to change cars for a 24–2 0090 84 new piece of line lately opened as far as Raymond, some 30 miles further up the valley.

We had been assured that the second train would be in readiness, and that the transfer would be made without the slightest inconvenience from one sleeping car to the other.

Fortunately for us we did not reach Berenda till 5 o'clock (two hours late), for on arrival there we were turned literally out on to the rails and spent half-an-hour standing there before the train for Raymond came up.

There was no attempt at any station at Berenda, not even a shed for shelter. The only “sleepers” we found “awaiting us” were the “sleepers” on the line itself.

As a matter of fact, even when the train did at length appear, we were not allowed to enter the sleeping carriage, although there were unoccupied berths in it, “for fear we might wake up the other passengers.” We were in for a good bumping and shaking over this desolate prairie-land of some 30 miles only just reclaimed by the railway.

An hour and a half brought us to Raymond, where we breakfasted in a tent, completely covered by flies: flies in your tea, flies in the sugar, flies on your 0091 85 bread and butter, flies in the eggs, flies on your hair, flies in the air, flies everywhere, a perfect Egyptian plague of them.

We were too tired to eat the fly-blown food, and it was a relief to clamber up into one of the “red” stages, with a cover overhead and six horses to carry us over the long road to “Clark's,” our resting point for the night.

From Raymond to “Clark's,” the drive, occupying eleven hours in all (allowing one hour for a mid-day rest), is most glorious. Splendid mountains stretched far away into a sort of misty blue eternity; forests of pine and fir trees grew ever loftier as we went further on, and carpets of lovely flowers surrounded us on all sides. First and foremost came the exquisite mariposa (butterfly) lily, a yellow flower of very delicate colouring and about the size of a large convolvulus; the Californian silene, a beautiful crimson anemone-shaped flower, then the Indian pink, or “paint brush,” also deep red and of the form its name suggests. There were bushes also of a lovely mauve flower, the name of which we could not discover. Here and there in a patch of late snow, rose up the glorious flame—coloured snow plant, somewhat 0092 86 like a crimson hyacinth, which is sufficiently rare to attract admiration, apart from its own great beauty of glowing colour.

The dogwood trees are most beautiful in the valley during spring. They are a perfect mass of exquisite white flowers, something like our winter rose; some are pure white, and others a delicate lemon shade.

The wild Californian lilac grows here profusely also, but is more like spirœa than our lilac.

Next came the pines and cedars. A pine covered with bark like an alligator's skin is called the yellow pine. A corrugated but more evenly marked bark is distinguished as the “sugar pine,” and the arbor vitae (a cedar) grows to a great height on this magnificent approach to the valley. Having heard only of the valley itself, I had no conception of the grandeur of scenery for the eighty or ninety miles that lead into it.

From eight a.m. till two p.m. these magnificent scenes, and then paused for one hour at a little neat white house, called “Grant's,” where we dismounted with great joy from our high perches, to stretch our weary limbs, to get a most necessary “dusting,” and some still more necessary food.

Grant gave us an excellent dinner, far better than we had had in many large towns.

Another four hours' hard driving brought us to our haven for the night at the famous “ Clark's.” a pretty picturesque clearing, with a low two-storied inn, a verandah running all along it, and several adjacent cottages; one of these latter is the studio of Mr. Hill, whose daughter is wife to Mr. Washbourne, the present proprietor of “Clark's” establishment.

She had come out in our stage, bringing with her a baby of four months old, the very best baby without any exception that I ever saw. It was wide awake during the whole weary day's drive and perfectly intelligent, but never made a sound, except one faint whimper (instantly checked by the mother), in spite of the great heat, dust and general discomfort. When we arrived at “Grant's” the baby was put on the bed with a child of the house to look after it, whilst the young mother had her dinner downstairs. Even these trying conditions were not too severe for this sweet-tempered little baby philosopher. There it lay, crowing and smiling in the bravest way, although the poor wee thing must have felt excessively hot and extremely uncomfortable.

Great confusion reigned at “Clark's.”

The waiters were noisy and disagreeable; stages kept driving up with dusty travellers, all vociferating for food and water and lodgings. The verandah was a scene of general noise and discomfort, a great contrast to the peaceful surroundings.

Next morning by seven o'clock we were once more en voyage. The drive this second day was extremely picturesque, but less grand and imposing than the previous one had been. Moreover, the road from Raymond to “Clark's” had been a new one, only open for three weeks when we passed over it and was in very tolerable condition; whereas on this second day we were bumped, thumped, jolted and jogged past all endurance.

We were not allowed to stop for any food, and were most thankful for our crackers and wine in the newly started luncheon basket, for we did not reach the valley until three p.m., after an eight hours' drive without any stoppage except twice, for a few moments to change horses.

“Inspiration Point” was reached at one p.m. This is the famous valley view, but personally, I prefer “Artist's Point,” a little earlier in the road. From either you command a glorious view of the valley. The grand old rock of “El Capitan” stands up bleak 0095 89 and bare, towering three thousand feet to your left, and mounting guard over the valley; beneath it, and a little farther off, is the rock called “Washington's Monument.” On this side of El Capitan is the beautiful “Ribbon Fall,” just the height of the Capitan rock itself.

We must remember that the valley is 4,600 feet above the sea, so this would give a height of nearly 8,000 feet both to rock and fall.

On the other side of the valley we have first a small fall, called cynically “The Widow's Tears,” because it is said to dry up in six weeks! then the exquisite “Bridal Veil Fall,” which is lower, but far wider and more imposing than the Ribbon Fall. All these valley falls have the graceful spray, which gives them a very lacy look. The spray of the Bridal Fall rises up again, above the fall, which produces a very uncommon and beautiful effect. Beyond the Bridal Veil (on the same side) is the Sentinel Rock, covered with fir trees; then a curious rock, shaped like an enormous Brazil nut and called the Sentinel Dome or Half Dome, and beyond again, the snow-tipped crests of the mountain called “Cloud's Rest,” which rises over 4,000 feet above the valley.

Behind the Bridal Fall rise three curiously-shaped 0096 90 mountains at varied intervals, called collectively the Three Graces.

The magnificent sharp, jagged peaks we first passed on descending from “Inspiration Point” on the righthand side are called the Cathedral Peaks and are most characteristic of the name.

The splendid Castle Rock lies next to them, just before reaching the Bridal Fall; here we dismounted to have a good look at. the beautiful effects of spray seen with a background of setting sun.

On our way into the valley we found a large specimen of the king snake some two feet long and ringed with bright scarlet and black. One of our passengers had dismounted and was about to kill it, but the driver assured us that it is a most useful animal, as it kills the rattlesnake which abounds here.

The Yo-Semite traveller has, on reaching the valley, the choice between several hotels, all of which lie within half a mile of each other.

“Leidig's,” small German house, is said to have the best cuisine; but the accommodation is limited and the situation inferior to “Barnard's,” where we elected to stay and which commands a splendid view of the grand Yo-Semite Fall just opposite the house. Some fellow-travellers had insisted upon stopping at “Cook's 0097 91 Hotel” and tried hard to persuade us to do the same; as the whole party came meekly on to “Barnard's” next day, I conclude that they were not entirely satisfied with their first choice.

I may here mention that Yo-Semite is an Indian word signifying “Big Grisly Bear.” This valley has only been explored by white men during the last thirty-six years, but for many years previous to that it had been a noted and inaccessible stronghold for the Indians, who fled there to lie perdu when hunted into the mountains by the “white men.” The stageing into the Yo-Semite Valley is far from being the safe and easy expedition that it is often made out to be.

During the fortnight of our stay in and about the place, no less than three stage accidents occurred, two of which were really severe ones. The authorities, of course, make light of such matters and hush them up so far as is practicable, but one of these accidents, said to be “entirely without injury to any of the passengers,” proved to have been quite severe enough, for later, at Monterey, we came upon some of the sufferers with bandaged arms and legs, whilst one or two who had been in the really bad “upset” were passed on to a hospital near San Francisco and seemed likely to remain there for some months.

I heard afterwards that an old gentleman who had been in our railway cars at the time of the Peach Springs collision and who had then escaped injury, had his thigh broken, a few weeks later on, in the Yo-Semite Valley, which probably points to a fourth upset, as we did not hear his name mentioned in connection with any of the casualties during our stay.

The very sharp curves of the road taken by a stage with six horses are serious matters.

Everything depends upon the temper and behaviour of the “leaders,” who are generally round a corner and out of the coachman's sight. The road is narrow and a deep precipice yawns on the far side.

Then again, as three regular stages start every day from either end of the valley, all these six coaches must pass each other en route.

This looks impossible, but in some miraculous manner it is achieved.

Fortunately, our experience was always to be on the inside of the road on such occasions. The passengers who have to pass on the outside invariably dismount in case of disaster.

Should the horses become restive and an accident be imminent, the only chance is to “bank the coach,” that is to say, to run it violently up against the near 0099 93 side of the road, which is always a hill; of course the stage upsets, but at least you avoid the precipice.

A young married woman saved many lives and covered herself with glory by doing this under the driver's orders one day, during our visit to the valley. We had watched this special coach starting off from “Barnard's” at 5 a.m. on its return to Raymond, little thinking what an adventure was in store for the passengers. At one of the worst bits of the road the leaders became restive, and an accident was imminent. The driver had to do “all he knew” to look after his horses on the precipice side. A gentleman was sitting next to him, and then this young woman, whose husband was inside the stage. The gentleman, alas! lost his head and became absolutely paralyzed with fear when the driver shouted to him to take the ribbons on the near side and “bank the coach.”

This plucky young lady, however, heard the instructions, and seeing that they must all go over next moment if something was not done, she bent down over the high box-seat, got at the reins, and did exactly as she was told, forcing the horses up against the hill, where the stage upset and the passengers escaped with nothing worse than a few strains, dislocations and bruises.

Our rooms at “Barnard's” were two little dens on the ground floor, a most inconvenient arrangement, for a verandah runs all round the house, and to insure privacy it was necessary to pull the blinds down and dress in absolute darkness. Next day I scrambled right up to the base of the Yo-Semite Falls (2,600 feet high), in spite of having brought no waterproof.

Gown and dust-cloak were alike wet through and through, but I had a glorious view of the boiling, seething waters of the fall, forming a giant cauldron at its base.

We then drove all down the other side of the valley, past the point where we had first entered it, to the “Cascade Falls,” which form its boundary at one end; the Mirror Lake being the other extreme point of the Yo-Semite Valley proper (which occupies eight or nine miles).

This drive was very beautiful, but rough and jolting as all American roads appear to be.

We returned to the Bridal Veil Fall in time to get another beautiful rainbow effect from the shining of the setting sun through the fairy-like waters.

Next day we took the opposite end of the valley, paying a visit to the exquisite little Mirror Lake, about a mile and a half from Barnard's Hotel. It is necessary 0101 95 to arrive there about 8 a.m. to watch the reflections of the rising sun as he tops the mountain heights, which stand sheer out from the lake.

This lake is a beautiful little piece of water at the upper end of the valley, fringed on three sides by waving trees and on the east by these grand rugged mountains, behind which the sun rises in slow majesty, throwing the most beautiful reflections of the trees into the bosom of the lake.

One curious effect was that after watching these glorious shadows for some time, everything seemed to be turned to gold. The mountains, the trees, our clothes, our hair, our very faces looked bright yellow for some ten minutes after we had turned our backs upon the sight.

Returning to the point where we had left our carriage, we found horses awaiting us to make the ascent to the Vernal and Nevada Falls. A picturesque mountain trail leads over the Merced River and up through beautiful trees and shady woods, first to the Vernal Fall.

This reminded me very much of the Central Fall on the American side of Niagara.

A natural parapet of granite overlooking the Vernal Falls seems to have been specially designed for the safety and convenience of travellers.

On these mountain expeditions in the Yo-Semite Valley all tourists join forces and form one long string of riders, horses and mules.

There are only one or two well-known guides, and the horses are all “bossed” by one man, so the travellers from various inns order their respective steeds overnight and find themselves members of one large cavalcade next day.

The objection to this plan is that one is apt to be delayed very much waiting for lagging members.

This was invariably my fate, as I bad a very willing and “free” white horse called “Jack,” who would be second to none.

As we came in sight of “Snow's,” the little inn near the Nevada Fall, we all burst simultaneously into exclamations of delight at the glorious panorama spread out before us.

Mount Broderick, The Cap of Liberty, and the Half Dome in front of us, a gorgeous blue sky overhead, and close at hand the beautiful Nevada Fall of 600 feet high. It is a great volume of water, but as graceful in its fall as the Staubbach, and a ledge of rock jutting out in the midst of the fall gives it a peculiar and very beautiful twist , sending the waters up a second time 0103 97 before their final disappearance into the seething foam below.

We had been told to take luncheon with us on this expedition, as the food provided was said to be very bad, and we did so; a mistake, I think. I believe the food was very tolerable and the proprietors were most indignant with us for rejecting it. Moreover I sustained a really inconvenient loss in having the leather straps taken out of my basket en revanche.

One gentleman of the party, however, had a great piece of good luck on this occasion. He dropped a pocket book close to the Nevada Falls, containing $900.

He discovered the loss only on his return and sent one guide back some six or seven miles, but in vain. Our special guide, “Phillips,” then volunteered to go and set out late at night.

Wonderful to relate, the book was found untouched on some rocks between the house and the fall.

A mischievous young puppy had been careering round all the afternoon, and the marvel is that he had not found it and eaten up the paper notes, or thrown the whole concern into the waters.

This guide, by-the-way, had accompanied Dr. Brooks up to Glacier Point a few days before, and spoke with much admiration of his physical weight and appearance: VOL. II. 25 0104 98 “Well, I guess he weighs as much as 300 pounds.” All weight is computed here by pounds, not stones; and men and women in America seem as eager to put on flesh as we English are to reduce it.

A San Francisco paper, speaking of Dr. Brooks' visit to the valley, had rather an amusing story in connection with it.

It is said that he ordered a special mule over night for this Glacier Point expedition, but in the morning no mule appeared. A good, strong horse had been substituted. “How about that mule?” said the doctor. “Ah well! I guess that mule got wind of it in the night, that you were going to ride him. Anyway he had made tracks by this morning so we're obliged to bring a horse instead.” Se non è vero è ben trovato.

People visiting the valley whose time is limited are apt to inquire anxiously which is the best mountain excursion to make; that to Nevada Falls, or the one to Glacier Point? As in the case of Niagara, I can only say, “do both.”

If this is absolutely impossible, I should suggest Glacier Point. It is a steeper trail and more fatiguing, but it is the only expedition that gives you a really fine view of both ends of the valley.

At the top of Union Rock, some two-thirds of the way, is a delightful plateau where the weary traveller can dismount and rest; and the last part of the trail is very beautiful, passing amongst forests of pine with patches of snow lying round; most cool and refreshing after the great heat of the ascent.

There is, moreover, a clean little inn at the point itself, not much recommended below, of course, but where we found clean beds and simple, good food. It is well worth while to stay one night on these mountain tops for the sake of the sunrise next morning.

Moreover, I would urge ladies in particular not to be frightened out of these mountain excursions by the terrible tales they hear of difficulties and dangers. Just as the difficulties and fatigues of the road into the valley have been underrated, so we found the dangers of these mountain excursions immensely exaggerated.

If I had never been on a mountain pony before, I should not choose Glacier Point for my maiden attempt; but to any woman who has had even a small experience of Swiss mountaineering, these mountain tracks present no insuperable difficulty.

From the valley, it is true, the tracks look like a mere perpendicular thread; but we all know how deceptive are such appearances. 25—2

LC

When you are fairly launched upon the trail, it will be found quite broad enough for anybody who is fit to go up a mountain at all.

I make special mention of this, because many people painted the horrors of the ascent in such glowing colours that I was quite prepared to find the expedition most dangerous. In fact we should not have attempted either of them had we listened to the Job's Comforters at various hotels. One lady, hearing that I intended to go next day to Glacier Point, came up and introduced herself with the express object of endeavouring to shake my resolution.

She said to me, “I have travelled all over the world and gone up mountains in every part of it, and I can only tell you that I have never, in the whole course of my life, made such a terrible ascent as the one to Glacier Point. I am a strong, active woman, but it has completely unnerved me, and nothing on earth would induce me to undertake anything so dangerous again.”

Having persevered, in spite of all these horrible tales, I am in a position to assert that these mountain trails “compare very favourably” with many in Switzerland which are ascended by ladies who have no pretensions to Alpine Club celebrity.

The Glacier Point ascent took us just three hours, 0107 101 when we reached the little inn and secured rooms for the night. There are only four rooms, but very few people knew of the accommodation, so we had our choice.

There was, however, still more work to be done, viz., to ascend the Sentinel Dome at our backs, in order to see the sun set from this extreme point. The horses, therefore, after a good meal and rest, were brought up again for us at six-thirty p.m. and a stiff ascent of three-quarters of an hour, through a pine forest, landed us at the foot of the granite dome, now several feet deep in snow.

The guide and landlord got us off our horses, and wanted us to creep like flies along the ridge dividing the granite and snow, until we reached a place where we could scale the mountain top and get away from the snow altogether.

To crawl along a ledge of almost perpendicular granite, wet and slippery, with several feet of snow on one side, leading to a sheer precipice, was by no means a pleasant proceeding at the end of a long and tiring day's work. We both protested at first that the feat was impossible. At length the young guide got me across and up the peak, and the landlord remained behind to look after my friend, who 0108 102 appeared at long last, having had a fall and a good fright, but not otherwise the worse for the scramble.

The view was magnificent and really repaid one for what was the only positively dangerous bit of the expedition. When the sun had set and the last gorgeous colours had disappeared we turned to go homewards, for it was now getting both dark and cold.

Mr. Macaulay, the landlord, insisted upon trying to “toboggan” us down the mountain on the saddle cloth of one of the horses, an attempt that ended of course in disaster, for the surface was much too small for the three of us, and the snow too soft for the purpose. After one or two bad starts, and rolling over and over for some yards, I struck, and insisted upon getting up and walking through the snow up to my knees, sooner than trust again, either to Mr. Macaulay's mode of conveyance or to the very dangerous way by which we had come. My friend elected to remain faithful to the saddle cloth. After all, Phillips and I arrived first at the bottom and there laughed almost to suffocation over the remarkable appearance of the tobogganing duet.

Feet stuck well out, a convulsive clutch round Mr. Macaulay's neck, bonnet very much on one side and a most scared and despairing expression of countenance. 0109 103 Could any one resist it? Certainly Phillips could not, though he must have known that dollars trembled in the balance!

I was long past any possibility of polite self-control, and on the principle that “one might as well be hung for a horse as a sheep,” relieved my pent-up feelings of fatigue, nervousness and cold by peals of laughter.

Phillips, meanwhile, was rolling on the ground in convulsions of merriment, only rising up to gasp out a few incoherent words and then throw himself down once more, fall length upon the snow.

It was too bad, but I would defy any human being with the smallest sense of humour to have done otherwise.

Fortunately my friend was too thankful to reach the bottom safely to be very angry, although naturally she missed the exquisite point of the joke. One could only echo the wish of the Irishman when he saw a tyro on horseback: “Faith thin! If the gentleman could just git down and look at himself!”

The two days spent in leaving the valley are to me a remembrance of purgatory pur et simple.

Too ill really to be moved, I was yet forced to go on; for, as I have already said, it was impossible to 0110 104 insure getting away at all if one forfeited the seats for the special days on which they were available.

We were off soon after five o'clock the first morning, in a most uncomfortable stage, the cover of which was so low that it was impossible to sit without crouching down at an intolerable angle and bending almost double. A gentleman at the back of the stage, where the cover was higher, most kindly gave up his seat to us, which we took in turns. The ingenuity of making a permanent roof overhead just two inches too low for any one but a small child to sit under without positive torture, seemed to me worthy of the days of the Spanish Inquisition.

But I suppose that stage has gone into the valley for months or years and will continue to crick the necks and break the backs of harmless travellers till it goes the way of the famous “One Horse Shay.”

A noisy old Yankee was cracking stupid jokes all the way, which did not relieve one's sufferings, especially as he turned from time to time to “cheer me up” by saying, “Any remarks that the lady by my side may choose to make will be considered quite in order.”

The man was too utterly self-absorbed and tactless to notice that I was really too ill to speak, but a kind 0111 105 young Philadelphian saw how matters stood and did his best to shield me from the unwelcome attentions of this very objectionable old man.

An elderly couple from Kansas City were kindly and pleasant. They held each other's hands all the way, and were as sentimental as if they had been twenty instead of some fifty years old. I thought it must be a case of a marriage late in life and a Yo-Semite honeymoon, but they spoke of some child of theirs who had died eight or nine years before.

By two o'clock we were once more in Clark's noisy room, discussing a very bad luncheon. To our despair, we found that this could not be eaten in peace. Hot, dusty and tired as we were by the nine hours' stageing already done, we were to be sent off at once. to see the Mariposa grove of big trees.

Instead of the easy drive of 3½ miles described by Appleton, we found to our cost that this expedition is a question of eighteen miles there and back, over one of the very worst roads we had yet seen, running the Mammoth Cave route very close indeed.

In vain we sent two telegrams back to the valley to endeavour to arrange a delay of a few days at Clark's clearing—once give up our seats and nothing could be promised for ten days ahead. Moreover, we might not 0112 106 get to the trees at all if we gave up the expedition that day, even had we stayed on at the place; for arrangements were only made to send on to the grove those travellers who arrived each day by the coaches, which were now invariably full.

Several people gave in, saying that if the trees were fifty times the size they could not and would not stage one mile more to see them.

Miserably ill, in addition to ordinary fatigue, I felt much inclined to do the same; a course strongly urged upon me by my companion, who was getting nervous now, thinking that I must soon break down and, perhaps, be kept for weeks in this miserable, noisy house.

Still, to come to the valley and go away without seeing the “Big Trees” seemed absolutely impossible. All my life I had heard and read about, and longed to see these self-same trees, but in the innocence of my heart had had a vague notion that I should find them in the valley itself, not miles and miles away from it. It ended of course by my climbing into another stage and jolting off to the Mariposa Grove, about 9 miles from “Clark's.”

I had also imagined these gigantic trees in a grove by themselves, but they are scattered amongst pines 0113 107 and firs of every description, many of which are themselves gigantic, but completely dwarfed by these monsters.

Most readers will know that the “Big Trees” are a species of cedar, called the “Sequoia,” after an Indian chief who once lived in this valley.

The highest of these trees range from 250 to 300 feet, with diameters varying from 15 to 35 feet; the inner bark alone measuring from 15 to 18 inches in width. Many of them branch out only towards the top, looking more like monuments than trees from below. This is specially the case with the “Grisly Giant,” which is one of the biggest in girth and height, but a very ugly old tree.

The cover to the stage prevented our seeing the trees as well as we ought to have done; but where the height is so enormous, it is difficult to get any conception of them even from the ground itself. You can only peer far, far away into the sky at one at a time, and so lose anything like a general effect. As it was we were always straining our necks into position, in the vain attempt “to see the top.” As a rule, we had to content ourselves with a sight of the enormous roots and trunks; being told, “that is so-and-so,” as we drove hurriedly past, too sick and tired to care much 0114 108 for anything. So far as mere fatigue went, most of my companions were in a similar case, and I do not think one solitary individual out of the three or four carriages on that expedition could have derived any real enjoyment from it, although of course we were in a state of perpetual wonder and admiration.

Surely this is the result of gross mismanagement and a greedy eagerness to take as many dollars and give as little comfort as is possible.

Such journies cannot of course be undertaken without much fatigue and some suffering, but it is unnecessary to heap up the agony by insisting that the wretched traveller, male or female, should take this terribly rough drive of 18 miles to and from one of the most interesting points in the whole tour, with an early morning start and eight hours' hard stageing as a preparation for it. Of course, our carriage, with the rest, drove right through a hole made in the “Grisly Giant,” and there was ample space left on both sides which could only be touched by outstretched fingers. Twenty people dismounted from the stages and, joining finger tips, managed just to span one of the larger trees. The “Diamond Group” impressed me most. All the larger trees are distinguished by names, such 0115 109 as “Lincoln,” “Cedar Giant,” “Old Grisly,” “General Grant,” &c., &c.

We clambered on to one enormous fallen trunk, and my young Philadelphian friend nearly got a bad fall in trying to come once more to my rescue. The bark was so slippery that he was forced to take a flying leap from a very considerable height to avoid a worse fall. He alighted fortunately upon his feet, and without injury. We picked up some pieces of the bark, which makes excellent pincushions, until it splits up utterly.

More dead than alive, we reached home after this expedition at eight o'clock, having been more than fourteen hours on the road altogether, and this over the most rough and jolting tracks that can be conceived.

To bed, but alas! not to sleep. I lay awake in agonies of pain until three o'clock, when we had to get up again, pack and eat a wretched candle-light breakfast with other victims, and by four a.m. we were once more en route for Raymond.

The drive going back was chiefly down hill, but the shaking was more terrific in consequence, and the driver spared us nothing of the road.

The flowers were almost over now, and the mountain sides were burnt and brown compared with the 0116 110 beautiful fresh green of only a week or ten days before.

To see the valley in absolute perfection is evidently a question of days: “ elle a ses jours ,” as the Frenchmen say of a beautiful woman.

The intense misery of that drive out of the valley remains in my memory as a whiff from the “Inferno.”

By half-past eleven we were once more at Raymond and in the “sleeper” of an “accommodation” train which runs to San Francisco for the special convenience of people coming from the valley.

No one ever saw such a set of dirty, dusty wretches as we all looked.

Through dint of much scrubbing and brushing, we became a shade more respectable by slow degrees, and finally settled down to our six hours' railway drive.

By this time the tortures and sufferings of the last few days were beginning to tell upon me. A cold perspiration broke out in spite of the intense heat, accompanied by a feeling of deadly sickness, and I lay back on the hard, upright railway seat, thinking really that my last hour had arrived, and not much caring if it were so. Fortunately one of our companions chanced to be a doctor, and more fortunately 0117 111 still had a little very excellent French brandy, which he poured down my throat with magical effect.

He also kindly improvised a sort of couch from all the available cushions, and there I lay till seven p.m., when we first sighted the San Francisco Bay, Mount Diablo, and the Golden Gate, and by eight o'clock were on board the ferry which plies between San Francisco and the Oakland suburb on the other side of the bay, where all trains run into the depôt.

Being, as usual, over an hour late, we lost much of the beauty of the approach to the city, but had many opportunities of seeing it later, when crossing over by the various ferries during a lengthy stay in the Californian capital.

A comfortable carriage took us from the steam ferry to the “Palace Hotel,” which seemed indeed a paradise of good beds, comfort, cleanliness and peace, after the dirt, discomfort and real suffering of the few days which had just elapsed.

Having gone through so much fatigue since our arrival in California early in May, my friend and I took counsel together, and determined to spend a quiet week or two at Monterey, one of the most famous Californian watering places, before settling down for a time in San Francisco,

We spent, therefore, only one night in that city on coming out of the Yo-Semite Valley, and next day took the morning train at 10.40 for Monterey, passing through the fertile Santa Clara Valley, and reaching our destination at four o'clock in the afternoon.

The distance from San Francisco is only 100 miles, and the express trains go in 3½ hours, but are less conveniently timed than the one we chose.

If it is true to say, “ La France c'est Paris ,” it is equally true to say, “ Monterey c'est l'hôtel del Monte ,” for this is literally the case.

Having heard much of the delights of this paradise 0119 113 we thought of spending several weeks there, and did actually remain nearly a fortnight; but this was partly a question of health, and I should not advise other travellers to do the same.

The hotel, which stands in 140 acres of most exquisitely cultivated grounds, is indeed a paradise of beauty, cleanliness and comfort. The gardens are like fairyland. Every conceivable plant and tree and flower flourish here in luxuriant profusion, kept well within bounds by the artistic taste of a celebrated German landscape gardener, Mr. Ulrich, who devotes his entire life to the cultivation of this lovely spot. There are acres of flower beds glowing with every conceivable colour, lovely walks bordered with variegated shrubs: a tropical garden full of palms and cacti and other tropical plants and trees, white and purple clematis creeping round the verandahs, measuring from ten to twelve inches in diameter, foxglove and snapdragons of immense size, glorious poppies of every shade, shrubs of verbena and trees of geranium, every variety of passion-flower, and last not least, the deep crimson taxonia winding its lovely trails amongst the purples and pinks and lemon colours of many other creepers—what more of beauty could heart desire, or imagination conceive? VOL. II. 26

Then the house itself is scrupulously clean and well kept, and the reception rooms are handsome and lofty. The men, of course, are well looked after as regards smoking and billiard rooms, ça va sans dire; but in this paradise even the poor women are allowed to amuse themselves in a special billiard room of their own, some 40 by 30 feet. There is a magnificent ball room of 40 by 70 feet, and salons and reading rooms ad libitum. All this can be said for Monterey without indulging in one word of exaggeration. In fact I have understated rather than overstated the beauty of the hotel and its surroundings, which cannot be adequately described at second hand.

This being the case it may seem strange that I should not advise a lengthened stay there. The fact is that Monterey as a seaside resort is disappointing to those who go there expecting a fine coast and good sea view. To stroll amongst the flower beds and winding paths of the hotel grounds is happiness enough for a few days, but having done this there is absolutely nothing left to do, and even Edens are apt to become monotonous under such conditions.

You are completely shut in by the extensive grounds of the hotel. There is no view of the sea to be had 0121 115 from the grounds, and the coast is most disappointing when you do see it. Once free from the hotel grounds there are still, low-lying hills all around which must be climbed before the view of the bay breaks upon you, and there is not very much “to break.”

Monterey itself is a pretty scattered little village, lying back from the bay, which latter is surrounded by these low hills and a sandy shore covered with small bushes of a pretty purple wild sweet-pea, but otherwise reminding one very much of the Waterloo sandhills in the neighbourhood of our own British Liverpool.

It is a dusty half-mile or more to get down to the sea, and then again there is no bathing from the shore. There is a grand bathing establishment for ladies and gentlemen, where the tanks are graduated in depth and kept very clean, the whole building being beautifully decorated by shrubs and palms and hanging baskets of flowers. But after all this is only a sort of glorified “swimming bath,” and most people prefer taking a dip in the open sea. On this account alone I should much prefer making a lengthy stay at Santa Cruz, where the shore is far more beautiful, as also the natural scenery, although the accommodation is decidedly inferior. Moreover, at Santa Cruz there is no 26—2 0122 116 artificial beauty that can rival the exquisitely-kept grounds and drives of the Hotel del Monte estate, which covers some 7,000 acres in all, and is in the hands of the railway company, who have not only built the hotel, but who keep all the roads within their domains in excellent order for driving.

Monterey will establish its reputation chiefly, I think, as a winter resort, when people escaping from the rigours of an Eastern winter will not be too exigeant on the score of sea views or sea bathing, but will be thankful to find such a beautiful resting place and refuge from the snow and ice of Boston, New York, or Washington.

In winter I believe the climate is excellent. In June we found it dull, grey and chilly during the fortnight we spent there. The early mornings were usually foggy, about noon the sun would deign to come out for an hour or two, and later in the afternoon the mists would once more descend and close around us till evening drew on.

There is one very beautiful drive of seventeen miles to be taken from Monterey, but it may be judiciously stretched into three by being taken in homœpathic doses.

The road having been made by the company is an 0123 117 excellent one and leads first through Pacific Grove. This is quite a settlement skirting the sea, and has been sold off in tiny lots to enterprising people, who have run up timber houses to receive the summer visitors who prefer this Bohemian life to the grandeur and expense of a first-class hotel.

In some cases these summer quarters are mere tents put over a foundation of plank flooring. Some 2,000 to 3,000 visitors are said to find accommodation in this way, and within a few weeks of our visit a number of stores had been opened, providing a local butcher, baker, grocer, &c., for the little colony. Some of the houses are more pretentious, and many of them are covered by beautiful flowering creepers. This settlement is only two and a half miles from the Hotel del Monte. On again we went through a lovely park or wood covered with wild flowers, especially with a sort of dwarf azalea, buff-coloured, which grows all round here in great profusion. Out of these woods and on to the high cliffs by the shore brought us in sight of the Seal Rock, a worthy rival of the still more famous one near San Francisco.

Hundreds of seals and sea lions were grouped together on this one piece of rock and must crowd each other there as much as the summer visitors to Pacific 0124 118 Grove. Fortunately the latter do not keep up the same deafening noise of perpetual howling and barking.

The curious thing is that although there are many other equally convenient rocks close by, all the seals and sea-lions determinedly patronize this special one. Are they sociable or merely jealous? Perhaps no one seal likes to leave the others in possession! Human beings have been known to act in much the same way.

On again past a promontory called Cypress Grove and covered with cedars of Lebanon; we came to a narrow strip of sand, Pebbly Beach, where rare stones are said to be found polished by the natural action of the waters. We groped about these for some time, finding plenty of pebbles of an ordinary kind and a few pretty bits of iridescent shell.

Soon after this the company's road, alas! came to an end, to be succeeded by the “county” road—a very different matter. The latter is shamefully kept and has great gullies in it, down which the horses slipped from time to time, making the carriage sway over in most uncomfortable fashion. Fortunately our springs were good, so the jolting was not very severe.

A mile or two of this bad road brought us round again to Monterey, having made the complete circuit. We had two excellent horses, one a three-year old and 0125 119 the other twenty-three years old and far the more skittish of the two.

Another day we drove to the Carmel Mission, where the celebrated father Junipero Serra, who founded the Spanish missions in this country, was buried in 1784. Little remains now but the sentiment and a low buff-coloured mission house, very plain inside, with rough whitewashed roof, a tablet with Latin inscription over the resting-place of the good old priest and a fine bell hanging outside, similar to one of those at the San Gabriel Mission.

The little chapel is prettily situated amidst the undulating hills which surround the Carmel Bay and the beautiful promontory of Point Lobas.

We climbed a hill behind the mission to get a view of the sea, but a thick grove of eucalyptus trees interfered with this chance. It was worth the trouble, however, to see the stretch of lovely hills covered by groves of mustard flower which grows here to a height of several feet, reminding one of the beautiful picture drawn by Mrs. Hunt Jackson in her “Ramona,” where the young girl goes through the graceful golden waves of swaying mustard trees, to meet the kind old priest and seek his sympathy and counsel.

Next day we went on to Santa Cruz, a short but 0126 120 tiresome cross journey by train of some three hours. A carriage was in waiting for us here and we drove at once some five miles up a glorious gorge to the Big Trees, which, though smaller, are far more beautiful than those in the Mariposa Grove of the Yo-Semite district.

This Santa Cruz road is an excellent one on the whole and winds high up on one side of a very beautiful valley and is lined on either side by buckeye trees (a sort of dwarf Spanish chestnut in full bloom now), cedars, firs, wild roses and clematis.

The Big Trees are all in one grove, where there is a nice little inn and fair accommodation.

Some people were evidently staying in this shady grove, and a whole set of merry young girls and boys had come over for the day and were wandering about with flower and ivy decked straw hats and bonnets. Our driver maintained that the trees were similar to those we had seen in the Mariposa Grove, but they looked quite different. The Santa Cruz trees are smaller, but far more graceful. The Mariposa trees are usually quite bare up to some three-fourths of the colossal trunk where the branches grow out stiff and straight. The Santa Cruz trees on the contrary have much finer branches, which wave gracefully downwards 0127 121 to within 6 or 7 feet of the ground, and the foliage is also finer and more like that of the pitch pine. The bark, however, is similar to that of the Mariposa trees and both are of the red-wood species. One curious thing we remarked about these monster trees, namely, that their cones are extremely small, only about the size of an ordinary hen's egg, whereas the common-sized sugar pines have enormous ones, some 18 to 20 inches in length. These smaller cones grow straight from the bark of the trees and the branches, instead of growing at the end of the foliage as they do in England and Scotland.

The coast scenery at Santa Cruz is much finer and more varied than at Monterey, and here you find every appliance for bathing in the sea in addition to the ordinary bath-house arrangements. At Santa Cruz there are floating barges at anchor with planks and sliding ladders for enterprising dippers and every possible convenience for taking a good “header” into the open sea.

In addition to the Big Tree Grove there is another magnificient drive along the coast to be taken at Santa Cruz. This beautiful “cliff road” leads over the undulating cliff close to the shore, through many natural arches in the rock and one most curious 0128 122 “natural bridge” formed by a tongue of land between two points of the cliff. We drove over this. Our horses were fortunately steady ones, otherwise it would have been too narrow to be absolutely pleasant.

Coming back inland to Santa Cruz, we drove five miles further in the opposite direction and once more struck the shore at a pretty little sea-side place called Camp Capitolo, a settlement much on the lines of Pacific Grove near Monterey.

Here we saw many porpoises close to land, and several whales spouting up further out to sea.

The time having now arrived for a return to San Francisco, we determined to make an early start from Santa Cruz, and so allow ourselves a few hours en route at Menlo Park, the famous horse-breeding establishment of Governor Stanford, within an hour by train of “the city,” as San Francisco is invariably called in California.

Governor Stanford (as most people know) is a senator of California, but lives almost entirely at Washington, coming only occasionally to pass a few days in his house here, which is surrounded by beautiful grounds, kept in perfect order, in spite of being so rarely under the master's eye.

The breeding grounds, stables, paddocks, and exercising 0129 123 grounds occupy over seven thousand acres, and are devoted to the production of “trotters and runners.”

The paddocks, railed in by white railings, are from one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet square, and extend for a very considerable distance.

The stables are fitted up with every possible convenience, and the saddle-rooms, with their rows of bits, bridles, bandages, and leather shoes of various shapes and kinds, remind one of the daintily-kept bedroom of some young dandy or fashionable beauty.

We went first over the stables of the “trotters,” the most characteristic of American horses.

The ideal American “trotter” is a short, well-knit horse, he has a good depth and strength of shoulder, is very high in the hind quarters, and has strong—not over fine—legs.

The “trotters” best “records” are made as two-year-olds. Some of these are as high as 2.21 and 2.37.

Having once made a high record, the horse is disqualified from running with the same horses again. “Trotting” seems to be dying out very much now in favour of “running,” or what we should call flat racing.

I never saw more friendly horses, though some of them looked fiery enough, too, to judge by their eyes. They came up and poked their noses in my face, and into the very folds of my gown, looking for the sugar which we had stupidly forgotten to bring with us on this journey.

They are kept, of course, in splendid condition, being exercised every day in a “sulky,” a sort of infernal machine used for trotting matches. This has a most uncomfortable seat, not much bigger than one on a tricycle, which is attached to two long side shafts, on which rest the feet of the unfortunate victim who is driving, and who, having absolutely no back-rest, must be shaken terribly all the time.

One man is expected to exercise from ten to twelve horses daily in this manner.

The yearlings were specially fascinating, more particularly a little chestnut, child of a famous sire, who was so well bred, strong and “clean in the legs” that I longed to carry it off with me. It followed me about like a dear dog, and could not be made to understand that to open my little leather travelling bag with its teeth, although a clever enough trick, was absolutely hopeless as far as sugar was concerned.

A magnificent dark bay, perfect in shape, colour and 0131 125 temper, also struck me with deep admiration, and made it possible to conceive the enormous sums which Governor Stanford gets for some of his most valuable horses. Many are worth $30,000, $40,000, and $50,000, and even the yearlings fetch fabulous sums.

Some of the mares have been imported from England, and the colts foaled over here in California.

There was one horse in this trotting stable of an absolute bronze colour, which I had never before seen, and admired immensely.

The trotters always run with a sort of leather boot over the fore feet, and “shoes” of leather over their hind legs, to prevent their hitting and wounding their hoofs during the race. Rows of these boots and shoes hang up in the stable, side by side with the bandages, which are put on as soon as they return from their daily exercise.

About a mile from the trotting stables are the stables for the flat racers, which are quite as interesting. The latter are, of course, more finely built, longer in the body, and less compact than the trotters.

We had had some coffee before starting for the stables, in a dirty little inn recommended by our 0132 126 driver, but did not like it, so had gone for luncheon to the “Menlo Hotel,” which we found was kept by a Captain Swetnam, formerly of the 16th Foot, and now in the Diplomatic service. He is a nephew of Lord Grantley, is a thorough gentleman and man of the world, but not a bit above doing the work he has undertaken. He brought us our Milwaukie beer himself, and begged in most professional manner, that we would recommend the hotel.

It seems that he had invested money out here, and finding that he was in a fair way to lose it, he concluded very sensibly that he would come out and look after things himself, and finding that he could “run” the hotel at a profit, he determined to do so.

A good appointment in India had just been offered to him, but after some hesitation he had declined it, intending to remain in his present quarters for a time. Later we saw in a San Francisco paper that Sir Anthony Musgrave and General Fremantle, from Australia, “had gone down to Menlo Park during their stay in San Francisco, to give a surprise party to their old comrade, Captain Swetnam.”

After lunch we drove over the beautiful grounds of the rich banker, Mr. Flood, whose life was so recently threatened in the San Francisco Opera House, when 0133 127 Adelina Patti was also in danger from the attempt to explode a bomb upon the stage.

The same evening found us once more happily established in the comfortable Palace Hotel.

Oakland, the great San Francisco suburb, reached by ferry, is too large and straggling to be beautiful, and I should much prefer living in the city myself. A train runs through it, stopping at many small stations, which all belong practically to the one suburb. One of these, “Oak Station,” was in great request at the time of our visit, owing to the fact that a great “spiritualistic camp meeting” was being held close by, which lasted for a month.

We went over one Sunday morning to hear an address given by a young Englishman, Mr. Colville, who seems to be one of the leading spiritualistic lights just now.

The camp was held on some pretty shady ground, sloping down to a peaceful lake, and it would have been difficult to choose a more lovely spot for the purpose. It reminded me very much of a volunteer camp out for a week's practice, only instead of the usual inscriptions over the tent doors of “Colonel,” “Adjutant,” “Quartermaster,” &c., you read here such notices as the following: “Mrs. Miller, clairvoyante,” 0134 128 “Mrs. Bennett, crystal seer,” “Mrs. Sawyer, inspirational and trance medium,” “Mr. J. K. Marshall, magnetic healer,” &c., &c.

The large central tent, where the general meetings and services were held, was prettily decorated with flowers, and a cool breeze came in through the flapping canvas sides, much to our relief, for the day was intensely hot. A quiet, sensible-looking man spoke in the morning on the higher phases of spiritualism in very well chosen language; but the great gun, Mr. Colville, was only fired off at 2 p.m., so we were forced to get some luncheon between the services, and returned in time to find a corner amongst the crowds who flocked to hear him.

He is a young, delicate-looking man of about thirty, with a fine head and very clear enunciation. He spoke with much enthusiasm and a considerable amount of eloquence, his great performance, however, being the improvisation of a really fine poem on a subject chosen from the audience by vote. Mr. Colville sat quiet and apparently uninterested as several subjects were suggested in turn, the show of hands being taken by another gentleman on the platform.

“Pentecost,” “Harmony,” “Heaven,” “The Floral Tribute to General Grant,” and several other themes 0135 129 were proposed in turn. The show of hands was in favour of “Harmony,” which had been my own choice. Mr. Colville was, therefore, bound only to speak on the one subject, but he wove very gracefully into it an allusion to General Grant.

After the subject was indicated to him, he remained seated some sixty seconds, then rose and came straight to the front, beginning at once to improvise, and never hesitating for a single word or misplacing one. Some of the lines were really extremely fine, and all were well above the ordinary level of poetical effusion. The performance lasted about fifteen minutes.

Several weeks of my stay in San Francisco were spent, alas! in the doctor's hands, but this sad experience was brightened by the kindness of some old friends who had come to live in this city from New York, and whom I had known previously in England. They insisted upon my leaving the Palace Hotel, to go and be nursed in their own delightful house in one of the pleasantest parts of the city, and were unfailing in kindness and hospitality during my stay there.

In spite of bad health, and much consequent confinement to the house, I managed to see a good deal of beautiful San Francisco, and came to the conclusion that I would rather live here than in any other city of VOL. II. 27 0136 130 the United States, always providing that one could transport a few chosen friends. I think a judicious selection from Boston, New York and Washington, conveyed across the continent, and planted down in San Francisco, would make that city an ideal place of residence.

We were there in June and July, and summer is supposed to be the worst time of year for San Francisco. The mornings were certainly hot, but never oppressively so during those two months, and every afternoon a delicious breeze arose from the bay and blew all over the city for an hour or two.

In winter there is no wind, and the climate is said to be perfect. Many people object to this summer wind, which is certainly rather strong at times, but most refreshing after a hot morning in July.

One of the best views over the Bay and Golden Gate is obtained from the Observatory on Telegraph Hill. Personally, I prefer this to the famous Quebec view, as being more poetical and dreamlike.

Another beautiful view is to be had from the Presidio, the San Francisco barracks, which overlook the Golden Gate. These military quarters consist of lovely little wooden cottages, covered with flowers and creepers, most picturesque and very unlike the cold formality of our English barracks.

Unfortunately there is often a sea fog hanging over the bay in summer, which shuts out the view, but we were very happy in making these expeditions on brilliantly fine days.

The beautiful “Cliff House” drive is the one best known to the ordinary tourist. This leads through the Golden Gate Park, with its beautiful conservatories and bedding-out gardens, where the band plays upon Saturday and Sunday afternoons.

The Cliff House is some six miles from the city, and on the extreme edge of the cliffs, which rise sharply from the ocean at this point. The “Seal Rock” is very close to the shore, and much like the one we had already seen at Monterey, only the San Francisco seals take up a little more room and bark and howl on one or two points of rock.

Behind the Cliff House and higher up still are the pretty, luxuriant grounds of Sutro Heights, where a benevolent old gentleman of that name lives. The day we drove up there he was just sitting down to dinner with a number of children from a Hebrew orphanage, whom he had invited to spend a happy holiday in his lovely gardens.

There are many other beautiful expeditions to be made by those who allow themselves enough time to 27—2 0138 132 see San Francisco in comfort. One or two pretty islands in the bay invite a visit, and the environs of Oakland are far more interesting than Oakland itself.

Piedmont and Alameda are two of the places best worth seeing, but these should be taken on separate days to be thoroughly enjoyed.

San Francisco has some capital clubs. One of these, “The Olympic” has a splendidly arranged gymnasium attached to it and pretty homelike rooms above, with piano, books and magazines of every description, where we spent one pleasant afternoon devouring illustrated English papers after our long fast from English news.

The one great drawback to a peaceful life in San Francisco is the terrible amount of fires which take place there. These are, of course, more common all over the United States than with us, on account of the large number of wooden houses; but the plague seems to have culminated at San Francisco, and this doubtless accounts for the great perfection to which the Fire Patrol of the city has been brought.

During the few weeks spent in a private house with my friends, I do not think we ever went to bed without being disturbed at least once in the night by the ringing of the fire-bells. By-the-way, I would advise people who stay with friends in this city to make sure beforehand 0139 133 that the “fire card” has not been left in their bedroom, otherwise they will be disturbed at least once, possibly twice, in the night by some one rushing in to identify the quarter of the town where the fire has broken out by the number of times the bell rings! Each division of the town has its special number, and when the fire breaks out this number is rung by the bells to warn the inhabitants living in or near the same street.

My friends told me that when they first came to live in San Francisco those constant alarms of fire were most agitating and distracting. On more than one occasion the fire had broken out on their own avenue and within a few doors of their house. But the arrangements are so perfect and the fire, as a rule, is subdued so quickly, that by degrees they have learnt to take things quietly, even when the fatal number of their own district is pealed forth.

One of the San Francisco sights is to go down to the fire brigade in a back street near the Palace Hotel to see the parade, which takes place every day on the stroke of twelve o'clock noon.

At that instant the trap doors from above are let down, the men come tearing through the roof on the waggons, the horses rush out from their stalls to take their special places, the horse collars are snapped on by 0140 134 springs, and the harness, which has been all suspended from the ceiling, falls down on them as they get between the shafts. All these latter contrivances are managed by trap-doors, which liberate the supporting cords, and which are themselves set in motion by one touch of an electric bell, which gives warning of the fire to men and horses alike. The clever thing is that the horses never mistake the sound of this bell for the electric bell in the same place used by the superintendent for private business, although to us the two seemed almost identical.

The whole performance takes just eight seconds, and passes before your eyes like a lightning flash.

The three trap-doors are in the flooring of the room above where five or six firemen are lodged.

They sleep in a flannel jersey with boots and trousers combined, at the foot of the bed. A string attached to the bed-clothes tears them off when the alarm is given. One bound out of bed sees them arrayed in boots and trousers at the same instant; another, and they slide down the stout brass pole in the middle of the room or through another trap-door on to the fire-engine itself, where tarpaulin cloaks and hats are let down upon their heads, and the toilette is complete.

It must be an arduous life where fires are so constant, 0141 135 but the men seem very happy and cheerful, and one of them showed us with much pride the billiard-room, piano, reading-room, &c., where any spare moments can be pleasantly spent.

No doubt the excitement keeps them up and the active life makes them contented. Moreover they must frequently receive handsome gifts from grateful householders. The billiard-table had been a recent donation of this kind.

The man who showed us over the place and spent much time and trouble in explaining all the details, expected no “tip” although we had taken up more than an hour of his time.

Had I gone alone I should most certainly have considered that he had earned his dollar nobly, but my American friends would not hear of such a thing. They pointed out to me with much pride how different this was from our extortionate English ways where a man expected payment for the slightest civility. This is true, but these are isolated cases in my experience.

So far as hotel life is concerned the system of tipping in America obtains quite as widely and on a far more ruinous scale than in any English hotel where it has been my fate to stay.

I shall, however, have more to say upon this subject later and will therefore reserve my remarks.

Of course we made the usual expedition to China Town, where the forty thousand Chinese of San Francisco congregate, living in a regular township of their own, but amidst the most crowded portion of the city. The streets are narrow and winding and dark, and the opium dens crowded and oppressive; but there are one or two picturesque buildings such as the Joss House, Theatre, Restaurant &c., and the Chinese lanterns hanging all down the streets from the walls and roofs of such places give a quaint uncommon look and a dash of romance to the squalid surroundings.

The Chinese restaurant is quite an imposing edifice, and is very prettily decorated with carved and gilded wood-work.

Rather a superior class of Chinese were lounging about here, with tiny plates before them and glasses the size of a walnut to hold the rice whisky which seems to be their “particular vanity.” Beetle nut and cocoa nut made up into diminutive rolls with a sort of cabbage leaf lay on the tiny plates for chewing. This no doubt accounts for the Chinamen having such beautifully white teeth.

The lodging houses are miserable places, tier upon tier of wretched rooms where two or more Chinamen 0143 137 lay huddled together smoking opium. This is done through thick, long bamboo pipes; the opium being smeared over a little hole at the side and smoked close to a tiny lamp, clouds of the smoke enveloping the head of the smoker.

The performance was far more prosaic than one would expect from the descriptions so often given of the process. I saw no comatose or stupefied victims to opium. On the contrary, the men seemed cheerful and happy, but utterly common-place and by no means ecstatic.

The dense crowding and want of air in some of these dens made the atmosphere most overpowering to any chance visitor, and we were glad to move on to the theatre, which we approached through the green room in the most unceremonious manner, pushing past actors and actresses in various stages of dishabille, their grotesque garments and highly-rouged cheeks offering a curious contrast to the peaceful occupation of sipping rice whisky or plying chop-sticks in some unsavoury looking mess of soup and cabbage in which all were indulging during the few moments of relaxation. The theatre itself was packed with delighted spectators. An interminable historical tragedy seemed to be going on; drums were beaten and metal plates clanged together during the whole performance.

The noise was deafening, and the poor actors grew purple in the face with the exertion of screaming down drums, cymbals and one another; for all talk at the same moment and naturally at the very top of their voices. The hideous effect may be more easily imagined than described.

The stage properties were of the simplest kind and chiefly conspicuous by their absence, but some of the dresses were magnificent.

Then we wandered through more of the closely-packed opium dens and several of the lodging-houses. One miserable little room was in perfect darkness. A poor paralyzed woman owned it and had turned in for the night, but she got up and struck a light on hearing our guide at the latch of the door and seemed delighted, poor old soul, with the very modest ten-cent piece that he gave her to make up for the intrusion.

Everything in China Town worth seeing is either up three flights of steps or apparently down in the very bowels of the earth, and the expedition is consequently one of no small fatigue.

Much gambling goes on here and large fortunes are lost and won, sometimes at a single sitting. Dominoes seem to form a special attraction, but a good deal of money passes in the more simple gambling process of 0145 139 “odd or even,” a handful of copper coin being employed, but the real amount at stake depending of course on the betting, which is fast and furious.

Numbers of eager faces line the sides of the long tables where the gambling goes on, a lighted candle being invariably placed underneath to keep off the devil or to propitiate him if he arrives.

Every dwelling-house has its little altar with a painted god presiding (generally Confucius), and below lights are burned in honour of the devil.

The Joss House is small but very handsome, and decorated with fine carvings and beautiful embroideries. On the altar are three or four large metal bowls, full of the ashes of the tiny sticks of incense burnt here.

Outside is the little altar to the devil. The Chinese devil must be very easily deceived, for on the altar in the Joss House itself were some slips of paper which were “Money for the Devil!”

Very few women are to be seen in China Town. In general the Chinamen come over only for a few years, leaving their wives and families in China.

When they have made $100, they return to live as gentlemen of property in their own country.

There is much slave traffic sub rosa in China Town. In fact the women are all slaves, and are valued at 0146 140 from $1,500 to $1,600 a head. A landing tax of some $400 has to be paid, which has been started of late years to discourage the enormous migration of Chinese to California.

Men, however, who traffic in these women slaves import them from China, pay the capitation tax and sell them privately for a sum sufficient to cover all expenses and allow a good commission.

The squalor and misery and dirt were very distressing, and impressed one with an idea of the hopelessness of trying to raise such people from this purely animal life to any higher existence.

My San Francisco friend assures me that the Chinese domestic servants do not come from this lowest class in China Town, and are better housed when they return to their native quarter during the intervals of service. She has Chinamen in her own house, and these occasionally depart for a fortnight without rhyme or reason, saying they “wanted to go to sleep,” and retire to China Town, generally being sufficiently considerate to provide a substitute until some fine morning the original “Gow Dow” or “Ling Chee” returns, having had “his sleep” (sleep meaning opium, no doubt) and being prepared for another spell of work.

The vexed question of Chinese labour is a difficult one to understand, one hears such diametrically opposite opinions from different people. With some of these, there is no word bad enough to describe the Chinese. They are cruel, rapacious, possessed of every vice and no single virtue. They corrupt the American youth. They take money from the natives and carry it out of the country, pauperizing those who could work, but who are forestalled by these “abandoned wretches.” That is one side of the picture.

On the other hand, the ladies who have Chinese servants assert that they are the most childlike, tractable, faithful creatures in the world, capable of great devotion and self-sacrifice, and infinitely pleasanter to deal with than the Irish, who they assert will leave you without scruple at a moment's notice and are most unbearably rude whilst they remain.

These latter partisans affirm that the whole Chinese crusade is simply jealousy on the part of the Irish, who won't work themselves and who cannot bear to see others working and making money. According to them, the Irish resent not having a monopoly able to command the market and to be as lazy and insolent as they choose, knowing that their services are indispensable.

Probably the truth lies as usual between these two extreme views of the question. It seems to be a matter of supply and demand. If the Chinese servants prove more eligible than the Irish, they will be preferred to the latter in spite of any patriotic scruples.

A hastily and very hazily formed idea that it might be worth while to include Vancouver's Island in our trip had been very much nipped in the bud during our Yo-Semite Valley expedition. Curiously enough no less than three independent travellers on the same coach had strongly advised us against the step.

“There is nothing on earth to be seen there,” they said. “Why do you want to go? Puget Sound is just a huge sheet of water. Victoria might be interesting if you were in the lumber trade, but from the tourist's point of view you will be wofully disappointed.”

This was certainly discouraging, and coming in pretty much the same words from three distinct sources, it seemed foolish to cling to the scheme, especially as time was now becoming an object.

The Yellowstone Park and the Rocky Mountains still remained upon our programme, and my friend was anxious to pay a long promised visit to Australia without much further delay.

Fortunately for us we chose as usual to judge for ourselves, otherwise we should have missed one of the most beautiful and interesting bits of our journey. My only regret is that we allowed so little time for the expedition, but this was as much a question of health as of listening to the counsels of the unwise.

It is difficult to imagine what would satisfy those who condemn Victoria and Puget Sound as being without beauty or interest. Probably the celestial regions would strike them in the same light and prove equally disappointing.

On July 9th we left San Francisco with many regrets and sailed for Victoria, Vancouver's Island, on board the S.S. “Queen of the Pacific.”

The voyage from San Francisco to Victoria occupies three days and is generally fairly rough. Good sailors would have thought our experience a favourable one, no doubt, but to an extremely bad sailor there are no degrees of maritime misery.

If the sea is not as smooth as a duck pond you are bound to remain in your berth, and a little tossing more or less does not seem to make much difference.

There is generally a good deal of swell on during this special voyage, which is more trying than the rolling and pitching of a heavy sea.

Many of our fellow-passengers were bound for Port Townsend on Puget Sound, where they would change steamers and make the interesting Alaska expedition, so much in vogue now-a-days.

I have been assured that the Alaska icebergs and snow mountains are far grander than anything to be seen in Norway. I confess to some scepticism on this 0151 145 point, not having yet met any one person who knows both countries.

Knowing Norway myself, I was all the more anxious to make the Alaska trip, especially as we were going to the very starting point, but it would have required another three weeks at least and we were reluctantly obliged to give up the idea. We met many people later in the Yellowstone Park who had made the expedition and all spoke of it with much enthusiasm.

It is in fact quite a pleasure trip and offers no difficulties, and therefore not much adventure. A steamer, well fitted and well provisioned, takes up passengers at Port Townsend and for some two or three weeks cruises round the inland seas of Alaska, touching at the various points of interest en route.

There is no accommodation for travellers on the mainland, but as all the finest mountains, glaciers and icebergs may be seen close to the coast, people are not tempted to leave their floating home for more than a few hours at a time. Sea-sickness is unknown, and to crown all, the expedition, when you have once arrived at Port Townsend, is far from an extravagant one. I cannot remember the exact calculations I made at the time of the probable cost, but believe VOL. II. 28 0152 146 that a pound a day would nearly cover all expenses, exclusive, of course, of wine.

We reached Victoria on the morning of the third day at about half-past five, but did not land till after six o'clock.

For the last hour we had been on deck, watching the lovely coast line to our right, the snow mountains in the dim line of the horizon and the exquisite little bays formed by arms of the land stretching out towards the open sea.

Victoria is one of the most beautiful places that can be imagined. The town itself is small, scattered and dusty-looking, but the situation is magnificent. It lies at the extreme end of Vancouver's Island, stretching all over these beautiful knolls and curves of green land covered with firs; low hills lie all around and it faces the gulf of San Juan de Fuca, behind which rise the magnificent mountains of the Olympian range in the Washington Territory, on the mainland of North America.

These Olympian Mountains are more beautiful than I can describe; such an endless vista of palest blue, purple and azure!

They are all snow-capped, often almost enveloped in cloud and just rise above the fleecy clouds their 0153 147 still whiter heads, looking as though they belonged in reality to the skies, from which they would seem to have dropped.

This is the view south of Victoria and facing Puget Sound. On the eastern mainland is another glorious range of snow mountains, beginning with Mount Baker and the famous Mount Shoshonish.

We had the very greatest difficulty in finding rooms, owing to the rush of visitors to Alaska, a week by sea from Victoria. This has given a temporary “season” to the latter place during the summer months.

There is only one decent hotel in the place, the “Driade” and our first day was spent more or less in the passages, waiting for the chance of some rooms becoming vacant and not able to open even a Gladstone bag after the misery and discomfort of the sea voyage.

The day was brilliantly fine and it seemed quite wicked to lose any more time, more especially as our frequent messages and even visits to the hotel office were utterly vain so far as getting any accommodation was concerned.

Having sat upon our boxes in the corridor for some hours, we determined to trust to the chapter of accidents 28—2 0154 148 and leave our night's lodging a still unsolved problem.

We therefore chartered a carriage about two p.m. and had a glorious three hours' drive.

Our first point was the Naval Yard, where we were not allowed to enter, much to our indignation, as British subjects, at present under the British flag.

Our driver tried to console us by suggesting a visit to the big man-of-war, lying just then in the harbour; but we had seen men-of-war before and we had never seen the Naval Yard of British Columbia. However, they could not prevent our noticing a fine stone-lined dry dock close at hand, which was in course of building, and evidently a matter of great pride to the British Columbian subjects, as it might well be.

I was still more interested in a wonderful old wooden craft with five masts lying in the harbour. It is the very first ship that sailed on the Pacific Ocean more than fifty years ago.

Further on we saw a most primitive old mill and a few tumble-down houses, exquisitely situated on an arm of the sea. These were the first mill and the first settlement of the Hudson's Bay Company, which appears to have appropriated all the best of the land here.

The trees on the island are not very large, but most 0155 149 abundant; firs, cedars, sycamores and a great number of the manzanita trees with their mahogany-coloured stems which we had seen so constantly in the Yo-Semite valley.

Honeysuckle and sweetbriar abound in these lovely Victoria lanes, and the whole landscape is smiling and green and dotted over with pretty white cottages.

We drove past the governor's house, a quaint low stone castellated building where royalty is housed when it visits the island.

The late governor, Sir James Douglas, married an Indian squaw, who is now a much respected widow, living in the town of Victoria and called always “Lady Douglas.”

We drove over a promontory called Beacon Hill, which commands a grand view.

To our left lay the mountain range of Tacoma, facing us were the beautiful snow-capped Olympian Mountains and, stretching far behind, the exquisite coast line intersected by tiny arms of land and inlets of the sea; nestling amongst which lies Victoria.

It would be hard to conceive any scene more exquisite in form and colour. It is the very essence of poetical feeling and imagination.

The heat in Victoria during the summer months is 0156 150 very great from ten a.m. till five p.m.; on the other hand, the daylight lasts till quite nine o'clock and the last four hours are delightfully cool and refreshing for riding or driving.

We feel ourselves quite upon British ground once more and something in the looks and ways of the people reminded one constantly of Canada, only that British Columbia is so much more beautiful.

The winter here is damp, but not very cold, more like an ordinary English winter than a severe New York season.

The best time to visit Victoria is from June to September. This is also the chosen time for Alaska, which can be combined with a few weeks in British Columbia. July and August would be the best months for that trip, as June is still foggy and the air very cold in these northerly regions.

Another day, to avoid the heat, we made an early start on foot for a second view from Beacon Hill.

It was quite a long tramp, but fully repaid us for the exertion. The road led through some beautiful woods, emerging at length on to the green sward of the cliffs. We returned by the Government buildings, some low red bungalow-shaped houses, and an old drill hall containing some pieces of artillery.

Another lovely drive took us through Lover's Lane to a park where the trotting matches take place, but which is not otherwise interesting nor beautiful. Victoria has a pretty little cemetery on sloping ground, facing the straits; one quarter of this is devoted to the Chinese graves. The day before we drove there a grand Chinese funeral had taken place. A rich Chinaman had died, and the whole Chinese population had turned out in carriages of every description to partake of the great feast which is prepared on such occasions, “dressed pig” forming one of the favourite dishes.

In this case the poor man had not been absolutely buried in the cemetery, for his body was embalmed to be sent back to China. They had, however, conveyed the body in its three caskets to this pretty, peaceful spot, where their funeral service took place and the funeral bake-meats were discussed. The body was then taken back and shipped off at once.

Wishing to see Puget Sound thoroughly, we had arranged to go by steamer from Victoria to Tacoma, on the opposite mainland, which would take us right through the sound in about seventeen hours.

The weather was unfortunately rough, and after 0158 152 watching the beautiful scenery for over an hour, we were glad to lie down in our cabin until we reached Port Townsend (in four hours) and had our first view of snow-peaked Mount Tacoma, which is the chief feature of the sound scenery. Mount Baker, with its beautiful snowy range, was still visible, bathed in glorious pink tinges from the after-glow of the setting sun.

At five o'clock next morning we were up, watching the beautiful morning tints and amusing ourselves with the numerous sea-urchins which abound in these waters. Some are gaily-coloured sea anemones of orange, crimson and brown, others again looked like slices of lemon in shape and colour.

At six a.m. we reached Tacoma, a flourishing little town high up on the cliffs.

We had passed various village settlements on the sound, our steamer putting in at most of them to land passengers or goods.

The numerous islands in the sound are very beautiful, covered with fir trees and rising up so golden green from the dark blue waters.

Unfortunately in many cases, the trees on the shore have been terribly burnt, and their blackened trunks and branches look very melancholy and detract much from the otherwise beautiful scenery.

At seven o'clock we were once more in a train on the mainland, and bound for Portland in Oregon.

The heat by this time was intense, and the scenery, although pretty, rather monotonous, consisting of endless woods with short undergrowth of brack, and every now and then small clearings for farm-houses and cottages.

The chief interest lay in crossing the Columbia river in our train by an enormous ferry. The whole train, engine and all, was run on to this huge boat, which was composed of a double line of rails, and when we were safely “on board” she steamed slowly across the river with her heavy load.

Many of the passengers got out of their carriages and crossed on the boat itself, but we had been warned that we did so at our own risk, and thought it more prudent to remain inside. Moreover, there was much more novelty about crossing a river in a train than standing on the boat below.

On the other side we were run up once more on to the regular lines and found a dining car in readiness, the third during our nine months' experience on this continent, including the one between Boston and New York.

We were now on the Northern Pacific Line, and 0160 154 had been told how much comfort and convenience would there be found.

The food was very fairly good, but the attendance most wretched, as they only provide one waiter for either side of a long and crowded railway dining car.

Most of the food ordered was already “out,” and we sat swaying backwards and forwards in the burning sun which was piercing through the car windows, vainly beseeching the one over-driven waiter to take our order.

Finally, after spending an hour and a quarter in an atmosphere like a cucumber frame we came away, having had two or three spoonsful of soup, two square inches of fish, and a small piece of rather tough “spring lamb,” coffee too cold to drink, and some ice which was far too hot to be eaten.

We reached Portland, the Oregon capital, in the early afternoon, very hot and very dusty, to find the heat still more trying and oppressive in the city than anything we had yet encountered in our journey thither.

Portland is a busy, thriving and perfectly uninteresting American city of some 40,000 inhabitants, prettily situated on a branch of the Columbia River. It can 0161 155 boast the usual amount of “elegant public buildings,” and being both a railway terminus (Northern Pacific) and large seaport town, increases every year in importance and trade capacity.

Like many other go-ahead American cities, it has quadrupled its population during the last ten years.

The hotel accommodation was very fair, although the French cuisine was not, perhaps, all that the fancy of the manager painted it. The heat, however, was so great in quantity and so overpowering in quality that we were not tempted to lounge about the long, wide, dusty streets more than was absolutely necessary to procure tickets for our journey to Livingstone, where we should strike south for the Yellowstone Park.

On one of these raids into the town we noticed a great stir in the Chinese quarter. The usual bake-meats were displayed in barrows—the inevitable garnished pig, ducks, rabbits; little plates of various vegetables; and carriages filled with Chinese who were beating heavy drums and cymbals: a funeral was evidently on hand. On inquiry we found that a Chinese woman had killed herself the previous day, and this sort of Chinese “wake” was being held in her honour.

In order to see the far-famed Columbia River, we 0162 156 had arranged to go by steamer as far as “the Dalles” (11 or 12 hours from Portland). This takes in all the best part of the river scenery. Hence we were to go by train to Livingstone, and on buying our tickets we made two discoveries concerning the Northern Pacific line.

In the first place, the travelling on that line is very expensive compared with other American lines, and, secondly, their scale of charges is arranged somewhat curiously.

For instance, we had to pay the same sum (50 dols.) to go to Livingstone that we should have paid to go on just double the distance to St. Paul.

There was no explanation given of the fact that the company expected you to pay as highly for travelling 1,000 miles as for travelling 2,000 miles.

It is, doubtless, a question of competition. From Portland to Livingstone the Northern Pacific has a monopoly, and can charge what it likes; but between Livingstone and St. Paul, it comes into competition with other lines and must regulate its prices accordingly.

We were up at five o'clock on the morning of our start from Portland, and on board a fine large steamer by 7 a.m.

The day promised to be a very hot one, even at that early hour and fulfilled our worst fears.

Some little children were brought on board and placed by their father in charge of three nuns who were returning to their convent, a few miles further up the river.

Two of these nuns were uninteresting, but the third, a dear old sister called “Mother Joseph,” was, in truth, a born “mother,” and had a charming face. The children had evidently known her before, for they flew into her arms with great glee, and seemed hardly to regret their father when he left the boat. It was quite melancholy to see “Mother Joseph” petting and making much of the little creatures, understanding their little ways and fancies so well, with all the divine patience and unselfishness of motherhood. What a waste of good material! However, it would be hard to blame the conventual system too strongly.

It is not only amongst nuns that we find motherly hearts forced into unnatural channels, often overflowing to the children whose real mothers are only bored and worried by their responsibilities.

The scenery of the Columbia River is quite as beautiful as it had been painted to us. The river is wide and sweeping, and yet not on such an enormous scale as to 0164 158 lose all beauty or outline, as is the case with several of the famous American rivers, which are more like oceans. Then, again, the beautiful snow mountain, Mt. Hood, was always before us, and a chain of exquisitely tinted blue and purple mountains in the distance.

From Portland to the Cascades this description holds good. Thence, on to “the Dalles,” the river becomes wider and comparatively tame.

We passed a very curious collection of rocks standing out bleak and bare and serrated, to our left, called Cape Horn.

There were also one or two waterfalls, pretty and graceful, but seeming small to us after our Yo-Semite experiences.

At one o'clock we had to leave our steamer at the Lower Cascades, and go by train for six miles, to reembark at the Upper Cascades for “the Dalles.”

The rapids at this point of the river prevent a steamer plying to and fro, and necessitate this transfer to a second boat. We had some pleasant companions on board, more especially an American gentleman who resembled a Scotchman in appearance and an Englishman in speech. He had lived for eight years in England, besides having travelled much on the Continent, 0165 159 and had consequently lost his Yankee prejudices, and grafted a wise liberality of judgment on to the American freedom of view and speech. Two of our other companions were a pleasant young Prussian doctor of science, from Berlin, and a man from New York who claimed to be English, but who had lived out of the “old country” for thirty years, and who, like many of his class, was more bitterly prejudiced against his fatherland than any foreigner could be.

He considered “that an Englishman abroad was the most contemptible being on the face of the earth.”

Having no inclination to take up the cudgels with such an adversary, we left him and his Anglophobia alone.

Meanwhile, the heat, which had been steadily increasing, became almost unbearable. We found out afterwards that we had been travelling with the thermometer at 105° in the shade.

At seven o'clock in the evening, on arrival at “the Dalles,” where we had to wait for three hours, it was almost impossible to put one's feet to the bedroom floor; the carpet burnt like fire.

At “the Dalles” we joined the train which had left Portland at three o'clock in the afternoon, our 0166 160 river expedition having necessitated our earlier morning start.

A terribly hot night spent in the railway cars brought us to Sunday morning. As a whole, I. think the scenery of the Northern Pacific line, after “the Dalles” is most disappointing, considering what exaggerated accounts of its superb beauty we had received. We passed two huge lakes, the Cœur d'Alea and the Pend d'Oreille, but these are more immense than picturesque. There are some fine gorges, and one or two grand “bits,” but nothing, I think, that can justify the wonderful description that one hears of the grandeur of the line. There are miles upon miles of long, dreary, monotonous stretches of tufted grass, with a few trees here and there, before you come within any possibilities of gorge or ravine. The travelling, however, though more expensive, is far smoother upon the Northern Pacific than upon most of the other lines, and I conclude that the road is therefore better made, which may account for the higher rates.

Moreover, at long last, the dining car is an accomplished fact on this line, not a reminiscence of the past, or a mere hope for the future. There are dining cars attached to the trains, and, after waiting an immense time, you can get a more or less eatable meal 0167 161 “on board.” Between Livingstone and St. Paul the enormous stretches of wheat fields make a wonderful show in August, we are told, and this seems to be one. of the great attractions of the Northern Pacific line, But as we were travelling only as far as Livingstone and a month before the harvest, we gained no benefit from this fact. A hot Sunday was spent alternately sitting outside the cars for air and coming back again to escape the fierce rays of the sun. Another suffocating night, and on Monday, by 2.30 p.m., we had reached Livingstone, exhausted our railway tickets, and were at length forced to come to a decision on a point which had exercised our minds for some days past.

Should we, or should we not, take a “round ticket” for the Yellowstone Park?

These tickets, which cost $40 each, cover the train from Livingstone to Cinnabar (about three hours), take you into the park, give you five days' board there, and allow for the various stages through the park, it being optional to extend the limit of time by paying hotel bills when the five days' coupons are exhausted. The drawback was, that we wished to do one or two things not included in the programme, and, moreover, our Yo-Semite experiences had VOL. II. 29 0168 162 put us very much out of conceit with stages, and we were hoping to be able to make some arrangement for a private carriage.

As usual, no one could give us the smallest information or advice upon this or any other point connected with the expedition, and “Appleton” was of course sublimely above detail, recommending, in a general sort of way, “camping out and fishing and hunting!”

An American bride and bridegroom, on a honeymoon trip from Saint Louis, were even more at sea than ourselves. At length it ended in our taking the round tickets, trusting to be able to add or alter according to circumstances and our own feelings later on.

We reached Cinnabar railway terminus at half-past five, amidst drizzling rain and found there no station, only a wooden shed. It was fortunate for us that we had left our heavy baggage at Livingstone, instead of bringing it on to Cinnabar to be left at “the depôt” there.

Once more we clambered into a high, covered stage and began a jolting journey over rocks and mud, which reminded one too forcibly of previous sad experiences.

The entrance to the park is not very striking. Black, bare hills rise up on either side, a river winding to the travellers' left and a dreary expanse of bog 0169 163 and mud to be waded through, chiefly “against the collar.” For the first three quarters of an hour the tossing and jolting were terrible, quite destroying all chance of comfort or conversation, but matters improved towards the last half-hour, and I had some interesting talk with a pleasant American, who had lived much amongst the Indians and took a hopeful view of them. He believed more in education than heredity and thought they possessed some very grand qualities; being made so fierce and treacherous chiefly by the ill-treatment and cheating of the whites, who pauperize wherever they go. He mentioned the case of one Indian village he knew well, where the people had lived in clean little “doby” huts, and were busy and happy until the railway came there. A year later he saw those people again and said that the change which had come over them was enough to make one's heart ache. They had become drunkards, liars and thieves; utterly degraded, lazy and useless; just living from hand to mouth, upon government, and having lost all self-respect. Where such opposite opinions are given as the result of personal experience, it is impossible for any outsider to come to a conclusion on the subject.

The Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel was to be our 29—2 0170 164 first resting place in the Park, and our last experience of comfort and civilization, before going further afield.

The hotel (86) was quite new, barely opened and still smelling strongly of plaster and whitewash; large and roomy and very fairly comfortable. The first view from it of the famous Minerva Terrace is disappointing.

The hotel stands on a plateau, shut in by hills, some 7,000 feet above the sea and is not unlike Las Vegas Hot Springs in situation.

Facing the hotel, to the left, rise the Minerva Terraces. At a little distance they look like low hills of chalk and shale, with a few shrubs dotted over their base; but coming closer, you perceive that they rise in graduated steps, formed by a sort of condensed foam that appears to be flowing over these “Terraces,” but which is in reality a crumbly soft stone formed by the magnesium and silica deposited by the waters of the Hot Springs.

The tints are very beautiful; pure white billowy snow; then every shade of rich brown, toning up to crimson where there has been iron in the deposits; then again the faint green and yellow colouring which denotes the presence of sulphur. The temperature is unpleasantly hot, but just endurable by the naked 0171 165 hand, and the deep turquoise or sapphire blue of the water makes a striking contrast to the crimson and brown and yellow deposits which I have already mentioned.

Near the hotel is a large, extinct geyser, rising up like a monument of rough blocks of brownish-coloured silica and magnesium.

Under its eaves, hundreds of pretty little brown and white birds (a species of swallow) have built their nests. These nests are made entirely of mottled mud. In shape each is like a fair-sized Indian drinking bottle, the mouth being twisted downwards. The little bird flies in through this, and sits looking out of his home, from the narrow porch. One nest was broken, which enabled us to see how beautifully they were smoothed inside, although the outside has this rough and mottled appearance.

It may be as well here to say a few words, for the benefit of the uninitiated, on the subject of these hot springs and geyser formations. I have already said that the Minerva terraces look as though they had been formed by a thick crust of silicious magnesium deposit upon the undulating grounds, which, doubtless, originally resembled those of the surrounding country.

Bunsen's theory is that where volcanic eruptions 0172 166 and hot springs occur, the earth's crust is specially thin at those points and the boiling, seething mass which makes the interior of the earth is forced through the surface, either in the form of lava, as in volcanoes, or in boiling water, as at these hot springs.

Geyser is an Icelandic name signifying “spouter” or “rusher.” It is a hot spring which erupts periodically in basilica or rock quartz. When a geyser ceases to erupt it is dying out. The hot springs are chiefly incrustations of lime and magnesium, but it is hard to draw the line between geysers and hot springs.

Some of these geysers rise, on eruption, to a height of 70, 80, 100, even up to 250 feet.

The rainbow effect of the sun shining upon these spouting waters is very beautiful.

After working for intervals varying from five to twenty-five minutes these geysers will subside, sometimes for an interval of hours, sometimes of weeks and sometimes even of months. Some of them erupt much more frequently than others. For example “Old Faithful” at the Upper Geyser Basin goes off regularly once in sixty-five minutes; “The Giantess” only once in fourteen days, and other smaller geysers at intervals of two and three days.

The only known and sure connection between any 0173 167 two of these geysers is that between “The Grand” and “The Turban,” which invariably go off and subside at the same moment.

These are separated by some yards of distance at the mouths but must be connected subterraneously. The cones of these geysers are made of silicious coral.

Dr. Halcock (the great Yellowstone authority), in Washington, told us an amusing story of his being in the Park on one occasion with a number of savants , amongst whom were one or two scientific Germans. A great discussion took place about some wonderful and novel deposit which had been found in the pool of one of the geysers. Was it a silicious deposit, or the result of the confluence of the waters?

After much disputing and difference of opinion amongst the learned, the mystery was solved. One of the party had thrown in an old shirt which had been fossilized by the action of the water. On the Minerva Terraces, by the way, we found several trunks of trees entirely covered over by this silicious deposit.

Bunsen's theory of the intermittent action of geysers is as follows:

The boiling point of water depends, as we know, upon the height of the pressure of atmosphere; the greater the pressure, the higher will be the boiling point.

Now 212° is the usual boiling point, but this point is not reached by these geyser waters under 219°, because there is not only the ordinary pressure of the atmosphere to be considered, but the pressure of the column of water in addition.

As this latter pressure is removed by the spouting of the water, the geyser gradually cools down again to the ordinary boiling point and the waters subside, to be again heated up to 219°, when the play begins once more.

In volcanic districts the earth's crust, being very thin, is extremely hot; the rains and snows come down and are heated by this burning earth, rising in steam, which condenses again to water and is forced up, carrying with it the silica which forms the incrustation round the orifice of the geyser.

The steam, when condensing, makes or finds a reservoir amongst the rocks for its basin. It runs off the side of the cone to the river, being replaced either by soaking in from above or condensing from below, as has been already described.

When this action of the steam ceases the geyser becomes extinct.

The geysers of Iceland have been longest known but are probably younger than those in the Yellowstone, 0175 169 which antedate Iceland as Iceland antedates New Zealand.

In Iceland there are 70 springs to 200 acres and two notable geysers.

In New Zealand there are 71 springs to 61 acres of ground.

In Yellowstone Park 1,300 springs to 2,000 acres of ground.

The geysers in the Yellowstone Park were first discovered by Clark in 1806, but his account was not believed by the authorities.

In 1871 Dr. Haydon got a bill through Congress by which 3,275 square miles were reserved as a national park to preserve this district from adventurers.

The volcanic area is almost entirely comprised within these limits.

Geysers cannot exist without the presence of this volcanic condition, although volcanoes may exist without geysers, properly so called.

The absence of geysers in the east of America is due to the absence of volcanic conditions there.

Having determined to see the Yellowstone Park as quietly and comfortably as possible, we began by a few days' rest at Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, watching the rest of our fellow-travellers off on the second 0176 170 morning, for their five days' rush through the Geyser district. The rain that had greeted our arrival had disappeared, giving place to brilliant blue skies and beautiful effects of cloud, light and shadow, which we watched for hours from our verandah.

We went for daily strolls all over the “formation,” which is the technical name for the Minerva Terraces, and learnt much of the shape, colours and peculiarities of these wonderful natural curiosities.

Each evening, towards sunset, the rain came on and drove us indoors, and more than once we had a thunderstorm. The hot steam from Minerva Terraces looked very beautiful then against the angry dark purple and crimson clouds in the background, whilst on the other side, a lovely rainbow gave promise of a clearing shower.

Part of the time also was spent in making arrangements for an independent and leisurely drive through the Park to all the objects of interest, which should give us ten days to see what is usually hurried over in a third of that time.

We were quite determined to charter our own vehicle, to have our own driver, and to be utterly and entirely free from the horrors of any more public stageing, so far as the Yellowstone Park was concerned.

It was, however, one thing to form this resolution and quite another to carry it out, in a place so entirely free from the healthy breath of competition.

One man had the monopoly of all the stages, waggons and horses available, and it took us two or three days, and exhausted a large stock of patience, to come to anything like terms with him.

At length, having arrived at the conclusion that we really did know something about the matter and were fully prepared to pay liberally for extra comfort but were equally prepared to resist extortion, the terms of the treaty were duly signed and delivered, and at 8 o'clock one morning we were safely packed into our very diminutive spring cart, with a melancholy-looking and very silent driver in command of the expedition.

The National Park covers an area of 65 miles north and south by 55 miles east and west.

On the principle of taking life very quietly, we intended to drive only four or five hours the first day and to sleep at the “Norris Geyser,” where most travellers only pause for lunch, on their way to the Lower Geyser Basin.

For the first three miles out from Mammoth Hot Springs the road was monotonous, but we then came upon some very fine rocks covered with yellow lichen, 0178 172 standing boldly out on both sides of the valley and river and called “The Golden Gate.”

Here we dismounted for a better view, and the effect of these rugged rocks in the foreground with a purple haze of leafless trees in the background was very striking.

The springs about the Park destroy vegetation to a great extent, but we passed one prettily wooded peak called Bunsen's Peak, after the great scientist.

Some few miles further on came the Obsidian cliffs, which, like most other things, are rather disappointing at first sight.

They had been described as being perfectly black rocks, composed of glass.

Now they looked very much like any other rock formations, but where the pieces had been broken off and crumbled down, the glass-like stone was very apparent and shone like jet.

Leaving these behind, we drove through some monotonous woods where the trees had been cut down and merely strewn along the path, for they are not worth the expense of transportation, and only serve to bank up the roads. Then we came upon a series of pretty lakes.

First came Beaver Lake, dammed across by green 0179 173 turf dams which have been thrown up by the beavers.

Swan Lake, Myrtle Lake, and Mineral Lake were all passed in turn. These pretty sheets of water, with occasional plateaux of green grass fringed by pines brought us at length to Norris Geyser Basin, four hours from our starting point.

This basin covers several acres of white and coloured deposit ground, full of bubbling hot springs, and several of the smaller geysers are in the neighbourhood of it.

The little wooden mountain inn where we intended to pass the night was much crowded by tourists at the time of our arrival, for it was just the mid-day meal time, and those going through the park or returning from the expedition had all met here for dinner. All the latter looked sunburnt, and most of them were terribly stung by mosquitoes.

The Norris Geyser Inn could only boast of three or four wooden chambers, all of which were occupied when we arrived, so we went into a hot stuffy room for some dinner, and then hearing that our Saint Louis bride and bridegroom had returned from the park that morning and were camping out close by, we wandered through the woods and came upon a very pleasant al fresco entertainment.

Mr. and Mrs. Dozier and some friends had improvised a table from the fallen logs, and were regaling upon potted meats and lager beer in the open air, to escape the heat and confusion that reigned within doors.

They were much exhausted by their rapid travelling, but full of the wonders and beauties they had seen, and after some exchange of experiences, we returned to our primitive rooms and to such rest as the flies and mosquitoes would allow us.

These rooms are peculiarly simple in construction, consisting merely of boarded floors, ceilings of brown paper nailed over rafters, and walls made of strips of brown cardboard just tacked slightly together over the wooden boarding. Every sound is, of course, audible all over the inn, and as there is frequently a spare inch or two between the wooden boards of the walls, you can see as well as hear your neighbours on the other side.

Next morning at 9 o'clock our little “buckboard” arrived, and we drove on throngh the woods, the scene being varied by the most beautiful skies, which seem to be peculiar to this Park district. I have never seen more billowy, foam-like clouds of pearly white against such intense blue sky.

All these woods are full of the pretty little ground squirrel or “chip munk,” which abounds in these 0181 175 regions. It is just the size of the ordinary squirrel, and has the same brown sides, but the back is covered by beautiful stripes of black, brown and tan colours.

These little creatures live in the earth, but come tearing out of their holes on the approach of any stranger, and rush along some fallen tree trunk, looking at you with bright bead-like eyes and little ears cocked knowingly to one side.

We were now driving along by the Gibbon River, which flows through the Gibbon Cañon, and a stiff climb down the cañon sides gave us a fine view of the magnificent Gibbon Falls.

Three and a half hours' driving from the Norris Basin brought us to the Lower Geyser Basin, where we were to dine, but not to stay until our return journey, as we wished to get on at once to the Upper Geyser Basin, where all the most beautiful sights are to be seen.

By three o'clock in the afternoon we had discussed a very bad dinner, and were ready for the latter half of our day's work.

Midway between the two places we came upon the “Middle Basin,” known as Hell's Half Acre. In spite of such a discouraging name this is a most beautiful spot. On one side rises up a huge cauldron of smoke and 0182 176 steam, which blows across a beautiful little piece of water called the Prismatic Lake, from the beautiful colours thrown upon it by the sun shining through the clouds of drifting steam.

The shores of this lake are also of various coloured earths, deposited by the hot springs. Here we saw every shade of crimson, rose, and faintest pink. The waters reflected the loveliest shades of turquoise and sapphire blue. The sky had its own glorious and distinctive blue tint, and the earth round the lake shaded off to yellow, gold, dun, and brown, through every tint of primary colour, the exquisitely tinted vaporous clouds of steam catching the sun's rays and throwing them off into rainbow hues.

Such a feast of colour I never saw before, and we were luckily there just when the sun was at its highest power.

Close by was a beautiful hot spring of deepest turquoise blue water, with fringes of deep sapphire, called “The Morning Glory.”

Further on we came upon some of the noted geysers of the Upper Basin. Amongst these were the “Giant,” the “Grotto,” the “Splendid,” and the “Castle,” all of which were steaming, and some bubbling over, but none in a state of active eruption. The “Giantess” 0183 177 goes off only once a fortnight, the “Beehive” every two or three days as a rule, but had been unusually quiet at the time of our visit. When an eruption is imminent, a great amount of smoke is emitted, generally after a loud rumbling noise. Then come clouds of steam, and finally jets of water, which rise by degrees to the greatest possible altitude of the special geyser.

Most of these geysers have a cone around them, rising from six to ten feet, and composed of the deposits left by the waters.

The “Beehive” is so named from the shape of its cone, which is smaller than that of some less important geysers.

The “Tyrian,” just opposite our inn, has a yellow cone, and resembles a giant sponge in formation.

Having secured our rooms, we sat in the verandah anxiously awaiting the first eruption of “Old Faithful.” This is a most beautiful geyser in action, although it does not rise higher than 120 feet, and being so absolutely regular and dependable shares the usual fate of human beings who possess these sterling qualities, and is much less appreciated than those who, being unreliable and eccentric, are consequently more highly prized. VOL. II. 30

Our rooms at the Upper Geyser Inn were similar to those we had just vacated, but the food, if possible, was worse.

The rarefied air was most exhausting to our unaccustomed lungs, and there was too much opportunity for the study of natural history to make going to bed an absolute and unmitigated pleasure, in spite of weary bones.

Having made the surly old manager come in to kill a huge winged beetle that was careering around my brown paper ceiling, I got into bed, but alas! not to sleep.

Mosquitoes and moths raged around, and just as I was dropping off, a second enormous beetle fell flop on the pillow, and had to be killed with flapping towels before any rest was possible.

After 6 a.m. sleep is impossible in these primitive inns, and breakfast is punctually at 7.30 a.m. The old gentleman who managed this special home treated us all like a pack of school children.

It was necessary to get up at a particular moment, to breakfast on the stroke of the clock, and to dine exactly at 12.30, just when it was most impossible to eat.

In the morning we went for a stroll on the “formation” opposite our inn.

We investigated the orifices of the “Beehive” and the “Giantess,” the latter being remarkable as having no cone, simply a little lakelet of loveliest blue water, with blue and sapphire rock linings for its inner walls.

Then we climbed up the tiny terraces of crustaceous formation round “Old Faithful,” nearer home, and were surprised by the smallness of the orifice out of which this great column emerges so regularly.

In the afternoon we took our “buck-board,” and drove to the “Specimen Lake,” a half-dry bed, where one can see the process of “formation.”

These specimens look like soft spongy coral of green, pink, crimson, and brown.

They can be easily crushed by the foot, and assume pretty or grotesque forms when left alone to harden gradually.

As the “Splendid,” close by, absolutely refused to “go off” for our satisfaction, we had to drive home without seeing him erupt; but after dinner both the “Castle” and the “Oblong” went off, and we had a fine view of them, but admired neither so much as our dear “Old Faithful.”

In order to see some famous “Paint Pots,” as they are called, we took another and far worse road than the 30—2 0186 180 one we had come, in returning once more to the Lower Geyser Basin. On our way we passed a great deal of the yellowstone gentian. It is more purple in colouring than the large sapphire Alpine gentian, and grows several inches from the ground, but is similar in form and size to the Swiss species.

Carpets of gentian are found in the National Park, also monkshood and lupin in great profusion, but the wild flowers at this time of year did not compare with what we had seen in the Yo-Semite Valley.

Some mile and a half before arriving at the Lower Geyser Basin we got out of our carriage and walked up a small hill to see the mud or paint pots.

Imagine a basin some 35 by 25 feet, full of seething, boiling mud of various colours—white, cream, pink, and crimson—and you will have a fair idea of the celebrated “Paint Pots” of the National Park.

The water beneath is constantly throwing up this coloured mud in the most fantastic and often beautiful shapes.

Flowers, birds'nests, poached eggs—these were constantly forming and disappearing as the mud rose and fell.

It was most fascinating to watch the constant play, and speculate on the next curious combination, but the 0187 181 mud spouts out sometimes on coats and dresses in very inconvenient fashion.

There is just the one mammoth “Paint Pot,” but the pools and springs in it are innumerable.

Some of the mud is thrown several feet into the air. Many of these springs throb regularly like a pulse, without being strong enough to throw up the mud from their pink and crimson breasts.

As we came away, the “Fountain,” the chief geyser of the Basin, erupted very beautifully for fifteen or twenty minutes, throwing off its waters in clouds of diamond drops, and in quite different fashion from any of the geysers we had seen.

Interesting as the Upper Geyser Basin is, it was a relief to get away from the strong sulphur surroundings after the second day's stay there. The densely sulphurous atmosphere, in addition to the rarefied air, seemed to affect both appetite and sleeping powers, and the misery of washing in sulphur water was great. On this second visit to the Lower Geyser Basin we slept there, finding pleasant and quiet rooms in a cottage belonging to the hotel. A terrible drive next morning from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. across “The Divide” took us to the Yellowstone Falls in the neighbourhood of the 0188 182 Yellowstone Cañon, which is the most magnificent bit of the whole park.

The Geysers are of course extremely interesting, more especially to a scientific man, but to casual observers, to have seen one good geyser “go off” is to have seen them all, whereas the glorious Cañon remains a joy and beauty for ever.

The road thither from the Lower Geyser Basin is at first very monotonous, through woods of burnt trees, plateaux of green meadows, and low hills shutting in the horizon.

For the first three hours the travelling was terribly severe. We jolted on over stumps and stones, several times having to ford rivers on our road.

We walked up all the worst hills, for the “collar work” was most severe upon our poor horses. I never saw worse roads. No attempt has been made to clear them, and our driver went doggedly over enormous stones and roots of trees, finishing up by driving calmly over two large fir trees which had been thrown across the road and left there.

We struck here and insisted on getting down, but the “buckboard” went triumphantly across the huge trunks.

A dozen times it seemed absolutely miraculous that 0189 183 we escaped an upset, and the fatigue was terrible. We had taken some very stringy mutton sandwiches with us for lunch, as there was no resting place, but it was absolutely impossible to sit still anywhere and eat them, on account of the swarms of mosquitoes that came round and drove us off.

The prettiest and best part of the thirty miles drive between the Lower Geyser Basin and the Falls Hotel is the last seven miles of the road, after the fork has been passed, which would lead in another nine miles to the Yellowstone Lake.

We reached the Falls Inn, a most primitive little house, at four o'clock in the afternoon, very hot, very tired, and very dusty, and had much difficulty in getting rooms, as the accommodation is limited.

There is a system of telephoning arranged throughout the Park, but we soon found that it was impossible to trust either that our order for rooms would be sent or acted upon, unless it happened just to suit the convenience of the agents who transmitted or received the message.

The one terrible drawback to the enjoyment of life at the Yellowstone Falls (after the food, which was absolutely uneatable) was the enormous size and maddening persistence of the mosquitoes.

There were, of course, no such luxuries as mosquito curtains. For that matter there was not a blind to any window in the house. It was necessary to hang up waterproof cloaks and dress in the dark as usual, but this was a minor trouble compared with the mosquito plague.

The Upper Fall is within five minutes of the inn, but the mosquitoes haunt the place and make it impossible to look out of more than one eye at a time, and that in the most surreptitious manner. The rapids above the Fall are extremely picturesque, and the Upper Fall is about 160 feet high, the cauldron below foaming up like a young Niagara.

Next morning we had looked forward to a happy, idle time spent on the rocks, overlooking this beautiful fall. Our Paradise lasted some nine minutes, after which we were positively driven back by the horse flies and gigantic mosquitoes.

In the afternoon we took horses and rode up a rocky, mountainous path behind the inn for three or four miles along the Grand Cañon.

Our way led past the Lower Fall, which reminded me somewhat of the Nevada Fall in the Yo-Semite Valley.

This Lower Fall is 300 feet high, almost double the 0191 185 height of the Upper Fall, but is not so picturesque as the latter.

Every returning traveller had told me that I never had seen and never could see anything to compare in beauty of form and colour with the Grand Cañon in Yellowstone Park. Having seen more of the world than many other people, this constant reiteration was a little aggravating.

Because they had never seen anything so beautiful, did it follow that I must endorse the opinion?

There is much contrariety in human nature, and I set out for the Cañon involuntarily prejudiced and unconsciously determined not to admire it in any such extravagant fashion.

But I am fain to confess that in spite of considerable experience and great prejudice beforehand, I must also take rank amongst those who stoutly affirm that they have never seen anything to equal it for beauty. The colouring at first seemed faint and was rather disappointing, as I pointed out triumphantly to my companion.

By degrees criticism was disarmed and gave place to an almost awe-struck admiration. The beautiful, bold, and sometimes grotesque forms of the rocks which run sheer down into the Cañon, often almost 0192 186 meeting those from the other side, combined with the marvellous colouring, made up a picture that surpassed our most exaggerated expectations.

The bold, fantastic forms of the rocks would be beautiful enough, but add to this the most delicate, varied, and gorgeous colouring that can be conceived, and the effect is magical.

There may be found every shade; faintest lemon, sulphur and orange, blazing white and softest cream, toning into rose pink; deep crimson and glowing red; then every shade of brown, from lightest fawn to deepest vandyke; then comes the contrast of emerald green trees with the rose pink and cream, and above all, the glorious blue sky reflected in a rushing stream of foam and faintest green shades.

The sides of the Cañon are from 300 to 500 yards apart, and the height of the sides from 1,200 to 1,500 feet.

From “Look Out Point,” about two miles from the hotel, the best view of the formation of the Cañon is to be had.

There the rocks assume the grandest shapes, standing bolder out, far across the Cañon. On the very top of one crag, right in the midst of the Cañon, and absolutely inaccessible, was an eagle's nest made 0193 187 of twigs and leaves. A poor little eagle inside was crying out pitifully for its food.

A thoughtless or cruel traveller had shot the mother, but I fancy a kind old eagle friend was going to take care of the poor little motherless creature, for I saw her flying towards the nest as we stood on the rocky promontory, and after this the plaintive cries seemed to cease.

We went on for another two miles beyond “Look Out Point” to “Inspiration Point,” the colours becoming deeper and more beautiful as we went further up the Cañon.

At length, reaching our haven, we dismounted and walked on to the furthest crag.

As “Look Out Point” gives the best view of the rock formations, so Inspiration Point affords the loveliest glimpses of the beautiful colouring of the Cañon.

One great beauty at this latter point is a view in the middle distance of a small but exquisitely coloured rock of deepest Indian red, close to one of dark saffron yellow.

These two small rocks of such intense and burning colour seem to gather up and focus all the lovely tints around them, giving as it were the key note to the whole glorious colour symphony.

The grand colouring of the rocks is partly due to the hot-water springs in their neighbourhood, combined no doubt with volcanic action at some early period.

I should strongly advise all lady travellers to secure a horse beforehand for this expedition, otherwise one is tired out before reaching Inspiration Point and apt to give in and console oneself by thinking that the view is just as grand from one of the other numerous crags.

The walk was described to us as an easy stroll, but it is over four miles of good stiff work either way.

Several men, tired out with previous exertions, gave in at Look Out Point, and so lost the most beautiful part of the Cañon, for the colouring cannot be seen to the fullest advantage at any nearer point.

I may here remark upon the great “game swindle” of the Yellowstone Park.

The game and the fishing are two of the chief attractions held out to male travellers, but as a matter of fact no shooting is allowed in the park, and notices to that effect greet you at every turn.

There is a certain amount of fishing to be had it is true, but nothing to justify the frequent assertion that the only drawback to fishing in the National Park is that 0195 189 the enormous quantity of fish to be caught makes the amusement tedious.

On the Gardiner River, on our way from Cinnabar to Mammoth Hot Springs, there is a boiling spring in the river, and the proper thing to do is to catch your fish in the latter and throw it over with your rod into the hot spring, where it will be boiled in a few minutes.

A gentleman we knew determined to make the experiment and did so successfully, but he had to wait three hours for his trout and this could hardly have been entirely due to want of skill, were the fish as plentiful as they are represented to be.

It was said that bear and mountain lion might be shot in the park, but no one seemed very eager to avail himself of this permission, if it were genuine.

A few years ago the park was overrun by the Indians, but they have been successfully driven away now, only making occasional raids from the north-east corner, and then with a view to theft. The bears are more dangerous. They are sometimes tempted by the smell of the meat hanging outside the tents of campers-out, and make adventurous descents from their mountain homes occasionally, to carry away a few pounds of savoury steak.

Some of our party went off to the Yellowstone Lake, 0196 190 but as that would have entailed another thirty-six miles of driving and there was no facility for camping out to break the journey, we gave up the expedition, and our friends, on their return, said we had been wise in so doing.

The drive is a fairly pretty one, with a view of mountains in the very far distance, but the lake itself seems to be chiefly remarkable for existing at all on such high grounds, 8,000 feet above the sea level.

It is a large sheet of water, twenty miles long by ten or twelve miles broad, and will doubtless repay a visit when some accommodation for travellers has been made there, or for those who are camping out and can therefore see it in peace and quietness.

The food was extremely bad all through the park after leaving the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel.

As all the meat comes from the same place to Norris Geyser Basin and is distributed thence to all parts, this must be chiefly the fault of the cooking. It was always cold, badly served, greasy and generally uneatable and we were reduced to living entirely on bread and butter.

Now, bread and butter with good air is doubtless quite sufficient nourishment, but it is very wearisome to be forced to go through the form of eating other 0197 191 things which only the stomach of a horse could digest.

As the park civilization is advancing with such rapid bounds, doubtless these matters will be looked into and improved.

Several people in the Falls Inn elected to go back to the Mammoth Hot Springs over the trail of Mount Washbourne and thence on horseback to “Jancy's,” a little inn about twenty miles from the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel.

There is a stage from “Jancy's” to the latter but it only runs twice a week and would not fit in with their plans, so the whole journey had to be made on horseback and occupied two days.

Not feeling at all able for such an expedition at the time, we were reluctantly obliged to give up the idea of it.

The rest started from the Falls at eight o'clock on a wet, miserable morning, which gave no sign of clearing.

The ascent, which is very steep, took four and a half hours, but fortunately the sun came out at the last for a few moments and they had a fine view of the whole park from the mountain top.

Another four hours of riding brought them to “Jancy's” for the night.

Here a poor little bride of twenty, who had been overdoing herself very much by going on foot the previous day to Inspiration Point, after the terrible journey from the Lower Geyser Basin, completely gave in.

The disconsolate husband telephoned to the Hot Springs Hotel for a waggon to take her back, but by next morning the young lady (who looked more like a child of fourteen than a staid matron of twenty) had revived and insisted upon riding her horse for the last four and a half hours, so the cart was sent on a fruitless errand.

For ourselves, we spent another day at the Falls, braving the mosquitoes, and then ordered up our “buckboard” to return to the Norris Geyser Basin by a new “stump” road, which had been barely open six weeks when we went over it.

There was no mistake about the stumps. The road had been made very simply, by cutting down the trees through the woods to within ten to twenty inches of the ground.

Under such conditions, of course, only two-horse vehicles can pass.

If you are lucky, the wheels escape the stumps, whilst the poor horses perform a very ingenious sword dance amongst them.

If you are unlucky, or the driver careless, the wheels go right over the stumps, and the sensation is far from pleasant, even if you are not entirely upset by the performance. The drive is twelve miles, and very uninteresting on the whole. We took three hours and a half over it, reaching the Norris Geyser at 7 p.m. A new inn was being built here, to be opened in 1887, and we were amused to find that our own old resting-place had only been built six weeks.

It does not take long to run up brown paper ceilings and walls, and these mountain inns are built and deserted at a few weeks' notice.

Even the grand-looking red roofs turn out to be a sort of paper mâché , made of fire-and-water-proof paper.

The monetary arrangements for this expedition are very convenient for the traveller who is forced to have a good amount of ready money at hand, but does not wish to risk it in these out-of-the-way mountain inns and expeditions.

You can lodge all money and valuables in the office of the Hot Springs Hotel on first entering the park, you can then get a letter of credit, which will carry you through without a cent in your pockets. Every VOL. II. 31 0200 194 bed, meal, horse or waggon is entered on this letter, and the grand settlement is made upon your return.

July is, I think, the best month for visiting the National Park. In June the snow is often still lying on the ground, and in August the place is overrun by tourists, and the air begins already to feel a little chilly.

The Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel seemed the very climax of civilization on our return from the park, and we enjoyed a quiet Sunday there again, watching a whole party of some seventy or eighty deaf and dumb people who were to be “personally conducted” through the park, and who came from an institution in the Eastern States.

It seemed a happy idea to feast their eyes upon such a sight as the Yellowstone Cañon as nature had denied so much enjoyment to them.

They were almost without exception middle-aged and even elderly people, and seemed wonderfully bright and contented. They talked a great deal to each other during the meals, using only one hand as a rule.

Their orders had to be given in writing and were generally well written, but rather deficient in prepositions, as we remarked when the black waiter brought us a few for inspection.

Before closing this chapter on the National Park, I would once more strongly condemn the too frequent practice of rushing through all these wonders in five days. Physically and mentally alike, it is impossible to bring away any true picture of them under such conditions.

A fortnight at least is required to see the park with any satisfaction, and I should strongly recommend those who go there without the intention of camping out not to take any tickets beforehand, but to spend a few days at the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, where they will be able to make their own arrangements for a private team, and settle their route in peace, striking an average of experience amongst those travellers who will from day to day be returning from the expedition.

The slight extra expense of such a course will be more than made up to them by their extra comfort and independence. 31—2

On the morning of our departure from the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, we reached Cinnabar in time to catch the 8.45 train, a terribly slow one, which took four hours to get through a short fifty miles.

On arriving at Livingstone, we were met as usual by the cheerful intelligence that a “storm cloud” had burst and destroyed a bridge 80 miles east, and that consequently our North Pacific train was hopelessly behind time. The delay might cover four, five, ten or even twelve hours!

There was nothing for it but patience and endurance. The heat was intense; there was no waiting room at the depôt, and no information to be gained by staying there, so we strolled across to a little hotel run by the North Pacific Company, and managed to get some very fair food there, returning again for news. None had arrived and the station master prophesied our detention until midnight at least.

It was now four o'clock in the afternoon, so we returned to the inn and I had just made preparations for a little rest there when my friend rushed in to say that the train had been suddenly telegraphed and would come into the station in ten minutes.

This is always the trying part of such delays. It is impossible to place the smallest faith in any official assertion or to relax your watch with security for five minutes. As the train made up a good deal of lost time, we reached Helena (the capital of Montana) by 9 o'clock in the evening and were driven to an hotel in the town which lies about a mile beyond the station.

Helena and Butte City are now what Leadville was five years ago, the great centres of the American Mining Interest and we had determined to spend a day here to see something of the mining district. The town itself is hot, dusty, and ever increasing in size and importance.

It is at the base of some hills and is surrounded on all sides by the mountains. These hills are dry and bare and with no vegetation about them, but are rich in mines, as one may see by the numerous cuttings that have been made in them. The sun beats down pitilessly on this city of the plains, which has not a tree 0204 198 to shade it, and the heat and dust in August were terrible.

A fellow-traveller at breakfast next morning turned out to be the stepmother of our host at the Sierra Madre Villa, near Los Angeles.

She and her husband had come on our train the previous evening and were on business which might detain them for weeks or even months, in “the city.”

It is very curious in America to watch the way in which quite elderly women seem able to uproot themselves at a moment's notice and go off for months to some desolate city to live there in a boarding house or hotel.

I suppose there is not the same difficulty in “leaving home” in a country where for the majority there is no such thing as “home” at all, judging by our English standard.

In the afternoon we took a carriage and drove all over the hot, dusty town.

There are some good houses in Helena and a great deal of wealth in the place, but even the recent importance of this city is waning now in favour of Butte City, and many of the “placer” mines have been consequently deserted.

The “placer” mines are those where the gold and 0205 199 silver are comparatively on the surface, mixed up with the earth itself and washed out from it by a very powerful stream of water, brought from the surrounding hills by wooden aqueducts and directed against the soil containing the mineral deposits.

The force of the water separates the particles of gold from the surrounding earth, and both flow together into a wooden pipe, thence into a wooden receiver, where, being heavier than the water, the gold sinks to the bottom and is carried away, when the working days are over at the end of the season, to go through the ordinary refining processes.

The underground mines of course require much more labour and more complicated machinery to bring the quartz up bodily or in the form of rubble from the very bowels of the earth.

We saw several of these placer mines being worked by two or three men apiece and the earth between the hills is covered with mounds and inequalities where the work has been started, but these superficial mines seem to have been pretty well exhausted by this time. The sides of the mountains are perforated by excavations where mining has gone on, but Butte City is the latest mining craze and has monopolized most of the labour.

One of the chief mines in the neighbourhood of Helena is the “Drumlummun,” about 18 miles from the city, and owned now by an Englishman, who bought it from the celebrated “Tommy Cruse” for a million and a half dollars. “Tommy,” however, still retains some interest in the speculation.

This successful miner (an Irishman) began life without a cent, always having firm faith that he should some day “strike gold.”

His faith was amply justified, for to-day he is one of the richest men in Helena. Two months before our visit he had married, at the age of sixty-five, a young woman of twenty-six.

A grand wedding took place. He gave his bride and his brother $50,000 a-piece on the wedding-day, and spent, I grieve to say, $150,000 more in making everybody in the town drunk on the auspicious occasion.

Our driver told us with great pride that he did not believe there was a sober man in Helena for three days afterwards!

One thing I noticed in Helena as a very distinctive feature of the place, namely, the very great taste in dress displayed by the women. I do not mean magnificence or mere show of costly material, which might be expected in a rich mining district, but I was struck by 0207 201 the really good innate taste, which no money can buy.

Sitting out on the balcony one evening, we watched numbers of ladies driving and walking in the comparative “cool of the evening,” and each one had some dainty touch about her attire. It might be a waistband, gloves and bonnet en suite , and contrasting pleasantly with a pretty coloured gown. Again, it would be a neat toilette of grey and black; of fawn and brown, or rose pink and french grey. The white dresses had all some pretty touch of faint colour about them which would be repeated in hat or bonnet, but never “insisted” upon too strongly.

This is not a question of money, for the materials were generally of the most simple; but the eye for colour possessed by these “mining ladies” would not disgrace a Paris boulevard.

Retracing our steps from Helena to Garrison, I must confess that we were more struck by the beauty of that portion of the North Pacific line than before; but in Switzerland scenes of equal beauty would be accepted as a matter of course.

At Garrison we rechecked our baggage for Salt Lake City, and thence crawled slowly along to Butte City, where a delay of five or six hours in the connection of 0208 202 the trains gave us ample time to see something of the mining in this famous district.

The mines are high above the city and at a distance of a mile and a half from it.

“Express waggons” pass constantly to and fro for the use of the miners and mine owners, and we got into one of these. Being an empty time of day, we had the vehicle to ourselves and also the advantage of a guide in the good-natured, red-haired young man who drove us, and who had himself been overseer of one of the mines for two years, so knew every inch of the ground.

Butte City is much smaller than Helena, having only a population of 5,000 compared with the 10,000 inhabitants of the latter place. This difference, however, does not strike one at first sight, because Butte City is so much less compact than the Montana capital and lies scattered on many hills.

It is as dirty as any “black country” manufacturing towns, being full of mills and smoky chimneys. The mines are all on the high hills above the town proper. The whole distance is an ascent, the road being lined by small houses and stores. “Centreville” comes first, and on the very crest of the hill is “Walkerville,” where the chief mines are situated. The “Lexington,” 0209 203 the “Moneton,” and the “Alice” are three of the principal mines being worked at present.

The Butte City mines are chiefly silver mines. Gold is found in them, but in very small quantities; “just enough to swear by,” as our driver said.

There had been great depreciation in silver owing to some Manchester operations with cotton, and the prospects of Butte had been seriously injured in consequence. It seemed strange to think that our faraway Manchester should be affecting this western mining town so disastrously.

We called upon the manager of the “Alice” mine, but unfortunately he was not at home. We had visions of going down the mine in a cage, but never realized them, and should, probably, not have been much the wiser had we done so.

American miners are too busy and practical to waste time in taking people down in the iron cage, which would entail taking two men off their work to go down in charge.

The manager of the “Moneton Mill” said rather grumpily that he would have gone down with us himself, but that he was obliged to go to Butte City that afternoon and could not spare the men to go, so we were forced to content ourselves with watching the 0210 204 cage ascend and descend with the busy workmen.

Our driver, however, had leave to take us all over the Moneton Mill, and terribly hot work it was! Wood is burnt in all the furnaces, and I could not have believed that such terrific heat could be obtained from wood fires.

The terrible crimson glow of the furnaces as they opened a tiny trap-door and let me look at the whirling mass of molten mineral and earth remains with me as a sort of horrible nightmare.

An immense amount of machinery is used in these mills. The process of separating the silver from the other bodies (such as lead, quicksilver, lime, &c., &c.) are so many and so costly that it is difficult to realize that the profits can be very great.

The separation is effected by the varying degrees of heat, which melt the baser metals and carry them off in liquid form from the silver ore.

The quicksilver is carried off in vapour, but being dropped into water condenses again and is thus saved from destruction.

We passed great heaped-up masses of loose grey rubble which had come from the furnaces and glowed underneath like fire when stirred up by a shovel.

The silver, which has to be refined many times before it is free from dross, is placed in small receivers, and looked like a fairy silver sea, cold to the touch and of the consistency of thick paste. From the mill we went to the mine close by, where two holes in the ground, some twelve feet square, were being worked from 1,000 feet below the surface of the ground.

All the miners looked pale and exhausted. The heat is most enervating and injurious. They earn from three to three and a half dollars a day, and earn it hardly. The overseers are paid four and five dollars a day. Our driver had been forced to give up the work after two years as a matter of health, and to take to the more wholesome occupation of driving. He told us he never drove in the morning, but made all his money between the afternoon and 3.0 a.m.

Being asked what he could find to do in the small hours of the morning, he answered that he drove the men to and from the gambling houses. An immense amount of gambling goes on in these mining towns, and the men save little from their high wages in consequence. This man used to be a great gambler himself, but had given it up, and said he felt no temptation to it, and was certainly much better off so far as money went.

He thought Butte City was improving in these and other matters. The old reckless pioneers were either dying out or being suppressed by the higher standard of public opinion.

Men came to the “city” now with wives and children, and this had a softening effect upon the place and helped to civilize it. There were few “shootings” now, and a year or two ago these had been most common.

I fear honesty is not the strong point in Butte City, however, for we had met kind old Mr. Sutro in the Yellowstone Park (from Sutro Heights), and he had been severely robbed the one night he spent at Butte. Moreover, a gentleman travelling at the same time as ourselves had been roused in the middle of the night by a policeman, who had seen two trunks carried off from the inn and wished to know if the man were justified in taking them. It was a case of theft, but I believe, in this instance, the property was recovered.

Returning to Butte City after our mining expedition, we took an evening train on the Utah and Northern line for Ogden, where we should change for Salt Lake City.

We were now on the “narrow gauge,” and the sleepers were proportionately uncomfortable. The heat 0213 207 was so great that it was absolutely impossible to sleep with the windows closed, and the sheets were consequently an inch deep in blacks. My face and hands would have rivalled those of a sweep by morning, but anything seemed preferable to suffocation behind the heavy “sleeper” curtains in such an atmosphere. The night was very hot, and we passed some great altitudes, when I was invariably awakened by the feeling of intense oppression and difficulty in breathing.

At length, to my infinite relief, day broke with the most glorious colouring of deep pink and crimson above and below two lines of darkest purple hue, the one being the sky line, the other the line of hills in the distant horizon.

The jolting of the train on the narrow gauge was so great that several times in the night it seemed as if we must leave the rails. This is indeed no unusual occurrence. A gentleman told me that his son had travelled on this line a few weeks previously, when the train did leave the track and one poor man barely escaped suffocation, for the jar “snapped to” the spring of his narrow top berth, closing him inside it. Mercifully some one saw the catastrophe, and he was extricated before life became extinct.

This possibility is another objection to upper berths in a sleeping car.

When we had safely arrived at Ogden, a considerate friend told us that he had been in the telegraph department at some station the previous night, and heard some of the instructions which were not calculated to cheer nervous travellers. “The track is in a very dangerous condition.” “Drive slowly at such and such a place.”

The country is bleak and barren until the first influences of the Mormon settlement begin to appear.

The whole line, however, is remarkable for the great profusion of sunflowers. These are smaller than ours, and about the size of a “single” dahlia, and have very pretty brown centres.

I trust Oscar Wilde duly appreciated them when he was in the neighbourhood.

Passing through Idaho, we came upon an Indian reservation of much the same type as those in New Mexico, only the “doby” houses were replaced here by a sort of Europeanized wigwam. These were not made as usual with the bark of trees, but by a number of sticks fastened together in wigwam fashion, and covered with modern-looking “tenting.” It was 0215 209 pitiful to see one poor old Indian, quite blind, who was being led along in rather ruthless fashion by a little Indian daughter. She had put a leather strap over her shoulder, one end of which was attached to the poor old man, and she “hauled” him along to beg, as any stray travellers came in sight.

We stayed for breakfast at Pocatello, and for dinner at Camp Logan, the famous Mormon settlement, where we dined at the house of a Mormon said to possess no less than seven wives. They produced a very good dinner, the best fowl we have eaten in the States, and excellent meat. The meat in the Mormon settlements is, however, universally superior to any we have had in the eastern or western states.

At Logan we entered upon a very different scene to the barren country we had just left. Here the valley is cultivated and fertile. Irrigation is universal, with the result of good crops and beautiful shady trees.

Nearing Ogden we came upon our first view of the Salt Lake, which lies at some distance from the rail.

The lake is of immense size, measuring seventy-five miles in length and thirty miles in breadth. Salt Lake City is built on the plains, nestling amongst hills. Seventeen miles away lies this immense reach VOL. II. 32 0216 210 of water, and beyond that again a magnificent range of blue mountains.

I shall speak later of the great beauty of the lake itself, to which the ordinary traveller does not do justice in his absorbing interest in the human element of the neighbourhood.

The whole valley from Logan is fringed by immense masses of bulrushes, which grow here in the greatest profusion, and make a beautiful combination with the sunflowers.

All the irrigation is carried on from the mountain streams, and, therefore, the rest of the country we had just passed, Montana and Idaho, could be reclaimed in similar fashion if only labour and energy were forthcoming. Salt Lake City, from its situation on the plains, is intensely hot in summer and equally cold in the winter, so does not appear to possess much advantage in the way of climate.

The grand wide streets, lined by poplar, boxelm, and other shady trees, and with running streams along their whole length, are very beautiful.

The city is intersected at right angles by these wide, imposing boulevards. It possesses three streets of stores, two of which are parallel to one another, and the third, Main Street, upon which our hotel was 0217 211 situated, runs at right angles to these. The heat on the night of our arrival (August 6) was terrible. A heavy, breathless, thunder-laden atmosphere made life almost insupportable, and our rooms, even looking north, were like small ovens.

We went to the “Walker House” in preference to the “Continental,” but I believe a third hotel close by, called the “Metropolitan,” is superior to either of the others, but is not mentioned in the guidebooks.

The day after our arrival was a Saturday, a pouring wet, miserable, hot and muggy day.

It was impossible to go out until the afternoon, when we took a carriage and drove for some hours all over the place, the day having cleared up by that time, fortunately for our chance of sight-seeing.

Our driver was an enthusiastic Mormon, who came originally from Macclesfield, in Cheshire, but has lived in Salt Lake City for seventeen years, and has a wife and four or five children in the Mormon settlement. He talked much of the tenets of the sect, and spoke with great respect of polygamy as a high state of living only possible to the best and most virtuous. He said he had no second wife himself, partly because he could not afford one, and partly because he could 32—2 0218 212 not live up to the high standard required of those who are allowed this religious privilege.

Salt Lake City is divided into twenty-two “wards.” Each ward has a bishop and a school of its own, as also two teachers, who are told off to look after the moral and religious development of that special ward. The whole Mormon territory is divided into stakes, each stake having its own president.

The president of Salt Lake City is Taylor, since the death of Brigham Young, but he was in hiding at the time of our visit, owing to the “persecution of the saints.”

The president has two counsellors, and there are also twelve apostles. These apostles seem to possess great powers, and the president was chosen from amongst them.

When a man wishes to take a second wife he must first secure a certificate from the “teacher” of his ward, who seems to be quite a detective in matters of morality.

He must also have the consent of his first wife, “who gives the second wife to him.” This always strikes me as a peculiarly clever bit of Mormon policy. Finally, the apostle and bishop of the ward must indorse the permission. Such a man must show that he 0219 213 is able to support a second wife, and that his character is sufficiently blameless to allow of his being worthy of this “great privilege.” The Mormons assert that to live the true Mormon life is to live the very best and purest of lives. Adultery certainly seems to be punished with Spartan severity. An elder in the city (whose name I suppress) had always been highly respected as a man of great mark, and the husband of two wives.

Fifteen years ago he was away on a mission in England, and had there lived with some other woman. This was suspected, but could not be absolutely proved at the time.

When we were at Salt Lake City the matter had been proved beyond dispute, and, after a lapse of fifteen years, for this one offence the elder had been turned out of the community and degraded from his office.

One of the poor man's wives (married to him for forty years) had died only two days before of a broken heart, in consequence of her husband's disgrace. I did not before know that Brigham Young had had the contract for the Utah and Northern Railroad, some seventeen years ago, and thus made most of his money. We drove past the “Beehive,” a small white house 0220 214 with a beehive on the roof, where some of Brigham's numerous wives still live; a very picturesque gate close by, called the Eagle Gate, from a stone eagle which mounts guard over it, and, finally, the handsome modern stone house built for receptions and entertainments, and called the “Amelia Palace,” after one of Brigham's favourite wives. As a rule, the richer Mormons wisely have different establishments for their various wives, but the poorer members are forced to keep two, or even three, under the same roof, and they declare that there is much less quarrelling under these circumstances than in most English households.

We went into a charming little white cottage, smothered in trees and flowering shrubs, called Rosebank, where we were kindly received by a shrewd, honest-looking Englishman, who lives here with his wife and child.

He came to Salt Lake City in 1854, and has been back twice to the old country since then.

He is a Mormon in name, and seems quite content to live in the city, where he has built his house and planted every tree and shrub round it, but I imagine that he has little faith nowadays in the Mormon creed. He looked with some distrust at our driver, knowing him, doubtless, as a good Mormon, and spoke 0221 215 with evident embarrassment. Had he been alone I am sure he would have been much more communicative.

“No,” he said, “I don't think much of them. Why are they all running away and hiding nowadays? That is why I don't think they amount to much. Why don't they hold their ground?”

As a matter of fact, I believe not more than 5 per cent. of the Mormon population in Salt Lake City are polygamists.

Some cannot afford it; some are not considered worthy, and cannot stand the stern investigation of their lives necessary before granting a polygamous “permit,” and others probably entertain our English idea that a real “home” cannot hold two wives. There are 150,000 inhabitants in the territory of Utah, and about 30,000 in Salt Lake City; of these latter 14,000 are Gentiles, engaged there in trade, railways or mining business.

We drove away from the lake side of the city about three miles into the mountains, and came upon Camp Douglas, a beautiful spot, where the United States military station is located. It is a sort of glorified “Presidio.” Pretty little red sandstone houses are provided for the officers (married or single); there are shady trees about, the mountains in the background; 0222 216 a lovely view over the plains and city of Salt Lake in front, and, far away, the blue lake itself, with the line of dark purple and blue mountains beyond. Close to Camp Douglas is the deep ravine between the mountains, over which came the Pioneers of '47 with Brigham Young at their head.

They were a band of 140 enthusiasts, travelling over these scorching plains with no settled plan, but trusting to a vision from the Lord to show them the right path.

Joe Smith, their prophet, had been shot before this weary march began. All their hopes were centred now in Brigham, and he lay sick on a heap of buffalo skins in the bottom of the waggon, as the weary procession moved slowly onwards.

As they came over this defile in the mountains, the bare sage-bush-covered plain lying before them, the mountains around and the blue lake in the far distance, the story goes that Brigham rose up from his rude couch and looked with dazed eyes around, as though he saw some vision.

“Drive on,” he said; “this is the spot which the Lord has chosen!”

So they descended into the valley, which was then as bare and barren as the rest of the country, with no 0223 217 apparent promise of the wonderful vegetation which should crown their labours of irrigation in the future.

Here they stopped, and began at once the work of planting and sowing. By next day many of their seeds were already in the ground, and the foundations of the present city had been laid.

It is a wonderful story, and somehow enlists one's sympathies even against one's judgment.

It seems as if Brigham must at one time have believed in himself, to have wielded such power over the multitude.

When wealth came to him, no doubt he lost his simple faith and enthusiasm and grew greedy and grasping. Probably then his visions changed also and developed into convenient instruments for gaining his own ambitious ends.

Brigham had seventeen wives and fifty-seven children, many of whom are still alive and working in the city, in commercial houses.

There are some really fine stores in Salt Lake City; an enormous block of buildings called the “Zion Co-operative Store” is the most important of these.

We saw the house where Brigham Young's renegade wife “Anne Eliza” lived, and whence she escaped. 0224 218 It is a comfortable-looking, pretty, square white house, and its appearance is certainly at variance with the story of her hardships, and of how she was forced to do washing and other hard household work. Our young Mormon declared that “it was only temper on her part,” that she was “treated with all possible kindness, but was a bad woman to start with, and had run away from a good husband on account of his poverty. Brigham is said to have been in ignorance of this latter fact. She hoped to have become his petted and favourite wife, but failing in this, she is said to have tried to rouse public sympathy and indignation by lecturing upon her wrongs. How true is the saying, that one story holds good until another is told!

Our driver had also known Elder and Mrs. Stenhouse. I have always felt great interest in the latter since reading her book, “An Englishwoman in Utah.” Here again we were to be somewhat désillusionnées.

The man professed to have liked Mrs. Stenhouse personally, but he declared also that her story was “all gas.”

In her book she declares that her husband was forced to take another wife, as much against his wish as her own. Our Mormon friend asserted that this 0225 219 was impossible, that no one is forced or even urged to do so, that it is considered a great privilege, only accorded where seriously desired and where the man can give satisfactory proof that he is fit for the responsibility and able to meet the expense.

The Mormons assured us that there never was a time when any human being was prevented leaving the city the moment he expressed a wish to do so.

“On the contrary, we want to get rid of them as soon as possible. We want only those here who are true and sincere believers in the revelation we have received.”

It seems that although any offence against the Mormon moral creed is punished by excommunication, yet where the offence is not heinous and the repentance is considered sincere, those who have fallen may be re-baptized into the Church, and in any case they are free to attend the meetings at the Tabernacle, which are open to all.

We had purposely arranged to spend a Sunday in Salt Lake City, in order to attend the Tabernacle worship, which takes place every Sunday at two o'clock in the afternoon.

The Tabernacle has been so often described that I will only remind my readers that it is a low oval 0226 220 building, composed entirely of wood, with the exception of forty-six low and very thick sandstone pillars which support it. Down below, the building is airy enough, for the windows between these stone pillars are left wide open on either side, but the galleries must be very stuffy and dark, receiving light and air only from two skylights in the roof.

The outside roof is of brown wood, put in like bricks. The inside roof is plainly whitewashed, but relieved by hundreds of festooned wreaths of now dead leaves and shrubs, which were put up there for the opening festival many years ago.

The Tabernacle must be a very trying place “to fill” with the voice, even making due allowance for good acoustic properties.

Some 3,000 or 4,000 people only were present on this particular occasion, so fortunately we were by no means crowded on this scorching August day. At the upper end of the immense building is a very fine organ, built by the brothers.

Seats on either side the choir divide the young men from the young women.

The worshippers are extremely proud of their choir. The singing was very fair, but slow and drawling as in a Methodist or Presbyterian church.

In the middle of the platform are four or five red velvet covered long seats which develop into a sort of pulpit in the centre.

On these long benches sit the various officers of the church, counsellers, apostles and elders.

From these central pulpits addresses are made by those called upon for the purpose by the authorities.

There appears to be no pre-arrangement on this score. On the afternoon of our visit a young elder was suddenly called upon who was very evidently not prepared and we suffered in consequence.

Below these seats is a long table covered with a white cloth, upon which are ranged rows of silver tankards containing the water, and silver cake baskets containing the bread for the sacraments.

The bread is brought in great piles of cut slices, the elders sit round, pulling it into little strips, and then again breaking these into smaller pieces as quickly as possible, but the process seemed interminable.

Meanwhile the service began.

It was opened by a hymn which might have been sung in any one of our own churches. Then came a short prayer, beginning with “Our Father,” but extempore and rather common-place. Then another hymn was 0228 222 sung, suitable to the sacrament and referring to the death and atonement of Jesus Christ. Then an elder arose, lifted his arms and with outspread hands like Aaron in the picture books of our childhood, “blessed the bread.” The consecration prayer is as follows:

“Oh God, the eternal Father! We ask Thee in the name of Thy Son, Jesus Christ, to bless and sanctify this bread to the souls of all those who partake of it, that they may eat in remembrance of the body of Thy Son and witness unto Thee, O God! the eternal Father, that they are willing to take upon them the name of Thy Son, and always remember Him and keep His commandments, which He has given them, that they may always have His Spirit to be with them. Amen.”

Then came an address from the young elder I have already mentioned, who seemed nervous, and said he had never spoken to so large an audience before. His address was just the sort of third-rate, common-place, “Bible and water” discourse that might be expected from a young curate in an out-of-the-way English village; a bird, hopping round its cage and afraid of attempting the least little bit of “fly” on its own account. He referred to the Bible characters, to the 0229 223 Jews, to Cornelius, St. Peter, the angel, the jailers, &c., &c.

He puffed out and amplified his texts, without bringing a single idea out of them, and was altogether as utterly dull and common-place as the most conventional person could desire.

At length he came to an abrupt pause and then another elder got up and “blessed the water” with similar gestures and prayer to those already used for the bread.

Up came the young elder again, to our infinite disappointment, with a weary discourse on baptism.

The Mormon church does not recognize infant baptism. Eight years of age is the limit they fix when a child may be considered responsible for sin and capable of an intelligent repentance.

The only one thing savouring of any originality was this young elder's explanation of “eternal punishment.” “Even should it only last an hour, it would still be eternal, because it is God's punishment, the punishment of the Eternal. ”

This sounded ingenious, but was probably not really original. He did not mention any of the special tenets of the sect, but when he sat down another rubicund, robust-looking brother rose up and referred to the “present persecution of the Church.”

He admitted that it was a chastening, but “hoped no onlookers would think this meant that the brothers were greater sinners than the rest of the world. On the contrary, all the grosser sins such as adultery, drunkenness and thieving are absolutely unknown amongst them. Judged by the same standard as the rest of the civilized world, they could already stand forth as a ‘pure and peculiar people.’ But God wanted to give them still greater blessings, and to this end He was forced to bring them to a still higher state of grace, and crop off such minor sins as pride, covetousness, and self-will, and for these they were now suffering.”

The tone of the man's remarks and his glorification of the present standard of Mormon righteousness made one feel that the chastening was urgently needed and had not yet done its work so far as spiritual pride was concerned.

In due time both the water and the bread were handed round to us all in our seats, and even the smallest children partook of them.

Another hymn and a final short prayer brought the service to a close, and then we stood in the doorway to let every one pass us and to notice the types of the various faces.

One of the strong arguments for polygamy is that a fine healthy race can be produced by this means alone. I am bound to say that I saw no sufficient justification for the doctrine in the appearance of the Salt Lake City Mormons.

As a rule, the men and women are hard-featured careworn and anxious-looking. The children cannot compare for healthy appearance with our own rosy-checked little ones in a wholesome English village. I never saw so many “homely” (we should call them ugly) looking women in my life.

Polygamy must indeed be looked upon as a sacred duty to induce the men to take more than one wife from amongst them.

After the service we strolled to the “Temple” close by. This is a massive white stone building which was begun thirty-three years ago and will be finished in another seven years so as to complete the term of forty years; the same as that spent in building the temple of Solomon.

Meanwhile the Temple at Logan has to be used for all great official functions, for the Tabernacle is reserved specially for worship.

The walls of the Salt Lake “Temple” are more than nine feet thick, and it will contain three stories when VOL. II. 33 0232 226 complete. The stone windows are very pretty. They are very deep owing to the great thickness of the walls, and are alternately square and oval on the different tiers of the building.

The Temple is an oblong, 200 feet long by 100 feet wide and 100 feet high.

There are four towers to it, two at either end, and an entrance gate will be placed at each of these tower ends of the building.

No visitors being allowed, without permission, to look at the unfinished building, I knocked at the wire door of a small adjoining “office” and a gruff voice said, “Come in!”

We found a very neat, tidy old man sitting in a small cosy room with glass book-cases. Papers were lying on a table. He took us through the building and gradually thawed a good deal in manner. He was a Scotchman who has been a Mormon for forty years, but who only came over to Utah Territory about eight years ago, at the age of seventy-two. He had left wife and children in Scotland and came over quite alone!

“It was to save their souls,” he said quietly, when I asked the reason for this sudden and late uprooting of his life.

It appears that unless a woman is sealed to a man in 0233 227 Salt Lake City as his wife, she has no chance of salvation. The wife was not a believer and declined to come; so he left home and country and came off alone.

It seemed so pitiful to think of the poor old fanatic starting at such an age, on such a journey alone, and with this unselfish object in view, that I was quite overcome by the idea of such heroism and devotion.

Fortunately I restrained my admiration and felt no temptation to indulge in it later, when I found that the old fox had secured a nice, comfortable “young” wife over here, she being under forty and he over eighty years of age.

The marriage was arranged by a mutual friend, and the woman declared herself quite willing to take the old man on his own terms “and not expect him to gad about with her.”

He was a nice tidy old man, and she certainly kept him very clean and comfortable. I asked what his Scotch wife thought of the arrangement.

“Well,” he said, “I gave her the first chance. I wrote to her three times, begging her to come to me, and the third time I told her I could not live alone, I must have some one to look after things a bit and keep the house clean and tidy and she refused to come, so I married this young woman.” 33—2

The new wife is always urging him to take yet another partner, “for his soul's sake.”

“Maybe I will before I die, but time enough for that; I am in no hurry!” said the poor old octogenarian.

A strong Scotch accent and the loss of all his teeth except two in the front made conversation somewhat difficult.

I asked him a good many questions about his creed, and the grounds for the Mormon belief in polygamy. He asked if I were married, and upon my replying in the negative, said he hardly liked to enter into the subject. However, what he did tell us was told with the greatest delicacy and real refinement of feeling.

Theoretically there seems to be a good deal to be said for the doctrine, putting, of course, our own religious prejudices aside.

Practically, I do not see that Mormon children are any brighter or stronger than our own, and I think those Mormons who really have the self-restraint and moral instincts necessary to act up to the highest conception of their present creed might exercise those qualities with equally good results in a monogamous home and lead a higher and happier life.

This old man believed firmly in the presence of 0235 229 good and bad spirits around us, and in their power to appear upon certain occasions. He had had several such experiences, two of them taking place in Scotland.

On one occasion a very bad companion of his younger days appeared to him in bodily presence, after which, he said, he had certainly felt more tempted to evil than before.

Another time he was praying in his workshop, when he suddenly felt bowed down to the ground by a terrible weight upon his left shoulder which seemed to crush him to the earth. He prayed, “Oh, Lord Jesus, deliver me!” and in a moment the horrible pressure was removed.

The only vision he has had in Utah was when he went to the Logan Temple some time ago to have more than 100 old friends, now “passed away,” baptized through him into this Church. To do this it is necessary to remember the name, residence, birth and death dates of each individual, and he had collected a list of 140 and was with his present wife in the temple for the ceremony.

Just as it was over he saw a woman about fifty years old standing near him with a reproachful look on her face as though she said, “Why were you not baptized for me also?” He described the woman's 0236 230 appearance to his wife, who recognized it at once as that of a sister of her own.

We left our old Scotchman with a hearty shake of the hand—“I like a good grip,” he said—and a “God bless you” from him which I am sure will do us no harm anyway.

He told me that he had tried several communities in Scotland before he came across the “Latter Day Saints,” but found no peace anywhere, until one night by chance, forty years ago, he entered a meeting-house and heard their doctrine preached, since which time he has “never experienced a moment's doubt.” “It had the real ring of truth in it,” he said earnestly.

Surely these things should teach us wider views and show us that spiritual pabulum is very much like physical food.

Some can digest strong meats and wines and require them; others would choke if fed upon anything but bread and milk or a little chicken and fish at the utmost.

Every Saturday morning the poor Mormon “faithful” bring in their tithes to the “Tithing House,” where everything is weighed and counted, and a tenth of every product is exacted.

The poor woman who brings her eggs to market 0237 231 must forfeit one out of every ten; ten pounds of butter pay the same tax; milk, cream, and vegetables are duly measured and tithed as well as the more important property of horses and cattle. The property thus confiscated is supposed to go into the pockets of the elders for the support of the church expenses and the building of the Temple. However great the expenses attending the latter may be, it is difficult to suppose that some balance of this large weekly sum does not remain to the advantage of the officers of the church.

Being determined to speak to some one at the “Beehive,” I strolled past one day and asked two nice-looking girls who were sitting on the lawn (daughters of Brigham Young) if they could direct us to any park or shady place where we might rest for a time. They answered very pleasantly, but in the negative, and did not invite us to come in as I confess I had hoped might be the case.

Salt Lake City is said to have a square or “green” for each ward, but these seem to exist at present in the imaginations of the guide-book writers.

Another day we took the afternoon train from Salt Lake City for Lake Point, a favourite bathing place on the Salt Lake itself. We had pleasant open railway 0238 232 cars and a most refreshing breeze as we travelled over seventeen miles of fertile plains before reaching the lake. There are several bathing resorts on the shore. “Black Rock,” “Garfield,” and “Lake Point” are all on one side, and a newly-opened place called “Lake Park” is in the other direction. We chose Lake Point as our stopping place, and found a number of little wooden boxes there side by side, which serve for dressing-rooms. You are provided with a serge costume and a straw hat, for the sun is intense in August, and then you can run down a little wooden pier and so into the soft, warm, briny water of the lake.

There are a few stones and rough rocks at the bottom, but in general there is pleasant soft sand as a footing. The water round the shores is fortunately shallow, not more than two and a half or three feet in depth, for it is almost impossible to swim in it on account of the abnormal buoyancy of the water, which makes it equally difficult to sink there.

As the difficulty in swimming is that you find your legs constantly in mid air; so the trouble of floating arises from the fact that the least drop of water in mouth, ears, or eyes gives intense pain, owing to the strength of the brine. In fact, any one getting his 0239 233 mouth full of the water would be in great danger of strangulation.

A bath in the lake, however, was most delicious and refreshing in spite of these drawbacks, and gave me the best possible opportunity of admiring the extreme beauty of the surroundings from a point where the exquisite deep blue of the waters and the lovely mountains could be seen to equal advantage.

We returned to Salt Lake City by an evening train, and revelled in a gorgeous sunset, the colours of the after-glow remaining with us for nearly an hour.

This lovely lake expedition seemed to take the rather unpleasant “Mormon taste” away and leave only the remembrance of the great natural beauties of the situation in a district which certainly owes its present fertility and prosperity to the indefatigable energy and industry of this body of—believers, fanatics, or impostors?

I trust this choice of epithets may meet the various views of all my readers.

Being ready equipped for our start from Salt Lake City by 10.30 a.m. one fine hot morning in August, we heard at the last moment, as usual, that our train on the Denver-Rio Grande Railway had been telegraphed two hours late.

This meant for us a two hours' dawdle about the salon and hotel offices, for it was not worth while to unpack for so short a time, and the heat was too great for any walking to be possible.

Arrived at the station we had another hour yet to wait, and as the tiny waiting-room was already full we sat meekly on our bundles in the hot sun, not knowing when the train might choose to arrive.

A wreck and a wash-out were pleaded as usual in excuse of the delay.

We lost three more hours en route when fairly started. I believe the “D.R.G.” trains are never expected to keep within six or seven hours of their 0241 235 specified time, and no doubt there is some reason for this in the very mountainous country through which they travel.

The misfortune is that time is generally “made up” at the most picturesque points of the route, with a cruel disregard of the artistic appreciation of the traveller.

The country, on first leaving Salt Lake, was flat, but soon showed the same curious rock formations which we had already noticed in Arizona. These rocks stand out alone in the plains. They are not very high, but oblong or square in form, and in colouring of soft brown, grey and pink. The “D.R.G.” line is on the narrow gauge, and the “sleepers” are consequently more stuffy than usual. Our first bit of really grand scenery was at “Castle Gate,” where the whole train dismounted to admire the towering, huge masses of magnificent granite rocks, chiefly crimson and yellow in colouring.

A hot night spent in the cars brought us next morning to Cimarron, where an observation car is put on for the Black Cañon of the Gunnison.

To my mind this is the most beautiful scenery on the line, although I am aware that the Grand Cañon of the Arkansas is considered finer.

The observation car is an open car, with reversible wooden seats placed down each side of it.

Only a certain number of passengers can be accommodated, and a great rushing and squeezing began the moment it was understood that the car had been put on. The car being open overhead, the heat from the sun was intense, and whilst waiting at the depôt sunstroke seemed inevitable.

Once off, however, a slight breeze was stirred by our rush through the hot air, and the scenery and excitement made us oblivious of everything but the beauty and danger of the situation. It was, indeed, nervous work to be swinging round the tremendous curves of the cañon at a “making-up time” pace, and at the tail end of such a long train as ours in an open observation car.

The Black Cañon is very beautiful. The high rocks rise grand and majestic on either side; they are of deep crimson dashed with a kind of mica that glittered in the sunshine like myriads of silver stars.

So we rushed along, getting what glimpses we could, and at length, in about forty minutes, the best part of the scenery was over, and we trooped back into our ordinary cars, delighted with what we had seen, but nothing loth to return to some overhead shelter.

In another hour or two we had reached the Marshall Pass, which is remarkable both as a piece of magnificent engineering and also for the great number of snow sheds along the route.

The road for the rails is cut up the sheer side of the mountain, and our train had to be bisected, and an extra engine was put on each half of it on account of the grade.

Where the road for the rail has been cut on these steep mountain slopes the snow is apt to collect and “bank up” in the winter; therefore at all the most likely places long wooden sheds are put up over the rails to allow the snow to fall from their sloping roofs into the valley below, instead of remaining on the track.

These sheds, of course, interfere much with the view, and have the same effect as passing through a number of tunnels would have.

Windows and ventilators must be closed to exclude the foul air and smoke, and the choice lies between these outside or suffocation inside.

There are no less than twenty-three of these snow sheds up and down the Marshall Pass.

From the top the view reminded me very much of the drive into the Yo-Semite Valley. There were the same stretches of mountain all around us, viewed once 0244 238 more from a level. On the whole, however, I was disappointed by the scenery of the pass; but some young girls in our carriage, who had made the expedition the reverse way on the previous afternoon (and were now returning home), said they much preferred their first view of it.

We had several members of the “Grand Army of the Republic” with us on this occasion.

Some two weeks previously they had all been received and fêted in San Francisco, visiting that city by invitation and amid much rejoicing.

Some of those we saw looked too young to have fought, more than twenty years ago, at the time of the American Civil War.

There were, however, many veterans amongst the numbers. Most of those we saw looked as though they had never known a day's drill since '64.

Finding that we should reach Colorado Springs at midnight instead of six o'clock, we decided to “stop off” at Salida (the junction for Leadville), and were very glad to get some rest there after the heat and fatigue of the previous two days.

Next day we took up the same train (fortunately only one hour late this time), and so insured seeing the Grand Cañon of the Arkansas by daylight.

The observation car was much crowded, and the absolute necessity for holding up umbrellas to avoid sunstroke was a great drawback so far as scenery was concerned. The cañon, as a whole , is tame compared with the Black Cañon; but the one bit called the “Royal George,” which lasted for about fifteen minutes, is very magnificent and stupendous, the rocks rising higher than in the Gunnison country, and being even bolder in outline.

After passing this, the scenery became again flat and tame until we had left Pueblo behind, a low-lying uninteresting village, and were approaching Colorado, where the curious, low, crimson, rock formations began once more.

By seven p.m. we had reached Colorado Springs, a pretty village lying right out in the midst of the plains, and here we changed cars for the little branch line to Maniton Springs, which is only four miles distant.

We had chosen the latter as our head-quarters because it is more romantically situated than Colorado Springs, nestling on the hills, close under the famous Pike's Peak and being also much cooler than the former place. Maniton is also rather more conveniently placed with regard to the various expeditions in the neighbourhood, but I should recommend a few days 0246 240 stay in each village, as both have their special advantages.

The beautiful line of the “Rockies” to our left and the very strange rock formations belonging to a portion of the “Garden of the Gods” to our right, made the short distance by rail between Colorado and Maniton, intensely interesting.

Maniton, nestling amongst the Rocky Mountains, reminded me somewhat of a Derbyshire village with its picturesque villa houses, only here they are built of wood, not stone.

The “Maniton House” faces the rail and must be noisy. We chose in preference “the Mansion House,” under the same management, but further from the little mountain depôt.

The famous Pike's Peak is disappointing in outline I thought it would at least have a real peak or cone about it, whereas it looks like a bare granite wall at the top, and a little snow alone points it out from the surrounding peaks and proves its greater altitude. It is 14,000 feet high.

The earth all round Maniton is deep crimson in colour and so are the rocks. The Williams Cañon, close by, has low sides, but the rock formation is very pretty and the contrast of the deep crimson with the green shrubs 0247 241 around is very happy. A quantity of low “scrub oak,” onions, chokeberries, wild cherries, and wild hops make the undergrowth both varied and beautiful.

There is a stalactite cave, called “The Cave of the Winds,” on this route, but we determined to visit the “Great Caverns” of the “Ute Pass” instead, so returned when we had gone some three or four miles up the Williams Cañon and drove into the Ute Pass, a pass amongst the mountains with an excellent mountain road winding up on one side.

The rocks here are most curious, especially one very high up, which is called the “Pulpit” rock from its peculiar shape. Parallel with this is the entrance to the cave. These caverns had only been excavated the year before we saw them and extended only for a mile at that time, but were infinitely more interesting than the Mammoth Caves, although on so much smaller a scale.

To begin with, the stalactites were not only curious and fantastic in shape, but the colouring of deep crimson, white and yellow contrasted very favourably with the blackened specimens of the Kentucky caves.

Bunches of carrots and parsnips, flocks of sheep, vineyards of tiny grapes, rams' heads, men on horseback VOL. II. 34 0248 242 and a dozen other curious formations were pointed out to us in turn.

The prettiest part of all is an upper chamber where the stalactites have formed a miniature natural “organ” with pipes of crimson, brown and yellow which, when struck, give out a beautiful harmony of high treble and fine deep bass notes.

About a mile and a half further up amongst the mountains than Maniton is a pretty little settlement called “Iron Springs,” with a good hotel and a spring which tastes like iron champagne.

Driving there from Maniton, we passed three small springs, one of soda, one of sulphur and one of magnesium. At Maniton itself is a handsome bath-house where soda baths can be had.

I should feel much inclined to try the Iron Springs Hotel were I to find myself in that neighbourhood again. The place is much quieter than Maniton, the walks must be extremely beautiful and the air is decidedly cooler.

One of our first expeditions from Maniton was to Monument Park, which we undertook without knowing what the road would be like. It turned out to be one of the worst we had yet experienced, and our driver, who was young and careless, did not save us a single 0249 243 jolt or jar. We were to visit the celebrated “Garden of the Gods” en route. The entrance to this is only one and a half miles from Maniton but the garden extends for two miles and a half further.

The rocks here are, as usual, deep crimson and of the most fantastic shapes. Many of them look like monster mushrooms thrown carelessly on the ground. By degrees the formations become larger and at “the Gate” culminate in two bold sheets of brilliant crimson rock, standing across and guarding the entrance on the other side, thrown into graced relief by a glorious blue sky, whilst a lower ledge of dazzling white rock makes the contrast of colour still more striking.

Near this gate are a number of solitary crimson shafts of rock standing straight up from the ground like stone sentinels, set there by the Gods themselves to guard the entrance to their garden.

Passing through this magnificent “Gate” we came upon “Glen Eyrie,” a pretty low-turreted crimson and olive coloured wooden house, nestling amongst lonely trees at the mouth of a cañon overlooking the plain and backed by the grand crimson rocks of the Garden of the Gods.

This place belongs to an Englishman, General Palmer, the president of the Denver-Rio Grande Railway. He 34—2 0250 244 lives in New York, spending only two out of the summer months in this beautiful mountain home.

We drove for many miles across this wide plain, the road getting worse and worse, until at length we reached Monument Park, which is a collection of most curious rock formations. In the “Garden of the Gods” the rocks are crimson, old red sandstone, mixed here and there with Scotch granite.

In Monument Park, on the contrary, the formations are all cream and yellow coloured and a sort of “conglomerate” of lime mixed with tiny flints and pebbles. The shapes are if possible more curious than those we had already seen, but on a smaller scale.

Whole sides of the rocks are jagged out into mushroom heads and fringes of various kinds. This must no doubt be the result of the action of water, but the puzzle is why such soft material should have offered so many points of resistance which has resulted in this constant curve of outline.

We spent a happy week at Maniton, hoping to go from thence to Denver, but our plans were delayed as usual by another “wash-out” and the news that “all trains going to Denver had been abandoned.”

The delay might be a question of three hours, three days, or three weeks; no one could give us the 0251 245 slightest reliable information on the point. These constant “wash-outs” and casualties make the real difficulty of travelling anywhere off the beaten track in America. It is impossible to foretell how often or for how long one may be delayed. Our time was now to be counted by days. A cloudy, uncertain day, after a night of pouring rain, brought no further news of the chances of reaching Denver.

We determined to risk it, including a visit to the South Cheyenne Cañon from Colorado Springs. We sent our baggage on to the latter place, and set off in our buggy by ten o'clock, driving once more through the beautiful “Garden of the Gods” and then cut across the valley and up a steep winding hill on to a breezy table-land called “The Mesa.” This was a lovely drive. The mountains were behind us, a fresh breeze blowing over the plains, and our way led through this beautiful park land high up amongst the hills, covered with grassy mounds like fortifications.

Quantities of sun-flowers, the satiny white Colorado poppy and several varieties of wild heather in purple, pink and white, clothe the beautiful table-land.

The little town of Colorado lay in the open plain below us, and beyond was the larger and more imposing-looking “Colorado Springs.” We drove down to the 0252 246 latter and put up at a most picturesque inn, called “The Antlers.”

The entrance to the South Cheyenne cañon from Colorado Springs is said to be four or five miles, but as we drove it easily in half an hour, I should doubt this measurement. Your buggy must be abandoned at the entrance to the cañon. The grand crimson rocks towering up on either side are very imposing.

We walked along a lovely winding road for half a mile to a little frame house, where we deposited our luncheon basket, and then went on for another half mile to the waterfalls which lie between a narrow part of the rocky gorge.

Some very steep, narrow wooden steps lead up the sides of the rocks, from whence a good view of the falls can be obtained. These falls are said to be seven in number, but it is in reality one continuous fall, finding fresh channels as it dashes down from the top to the bottom of the gorge, twisting and turning from one rocky bed to another.

We toiled up over 150 steps, and then collapsed. “Helen Hunt” (Mrs. Jackson) is buried at the very top of one of the highest mountain peaks in the South Cheyenne Cañon, and my ambition had been to pay a visit to her grave.

The climb, however, is very severe. The brilliant sunshine had given place to a grey, lowering sky; the rain was beginning to fall in large drops, and distant sounds of thunder were audible.

To crown all, three active-looking men, who had started for the shrine, gave in, and passed us on their return, so, with much reluctance, we determined to do the same. We had already seen the pretty little white wooden house in which she and her second husband had lived in Colorado Springs.

The rain came on in torrents as we returned to the frame house, and we were soon wet through. There was no fire here, and no chance of drying our soaked garments, so we toiled back through the cañon with our basket as best we could, and trusted to escape any severe consequences from the exposure.

Colorado Springs is a very pretty little town, all laid out in boulevards of green trees at right angles, with running water at each side of the road, as at Salt Lake City. There are many beautiful little wooden houses here, and a number of good stores on a small scale. Altogether, it is a pretty, flourishing little town, and I could imagine that one might lead a very happy and peaceful life there.

Later in the afternoon we drove down to the depôt, 0254 248 hoping to hear something definite of our chances of getting a train to Denver that day. As usual, no one knew anything at all, and the officials were far from civil in their ignorance.

The man to whom we spoke in the office sat with his legs high above his head, and never attempted to alter his position, but let me stand over him for ten minutes, pumping at a dry well.

We came away in despair, but determined to come down again about five o'clock in the afternoon, on the chances of getting off, which we did, after sitting on our bundles of rugs in front of the rails for an hour or more, as there was no other accommodation for us.

Colorado Springs is only seventy miles from Denver, but we managed to spend four hours in reaching the latter place.

Soon after starting we had a capital view of Monument Park from the railway, and might almost have left that expedition out of our programme at Maniton. We passed also a pretty little village built on two spurs of the mountains between which the rail passes, and with a small sheet of water called “Palmer's Lake” facing it.

No one would tell us if we might get out here for some food or not. “We could do so at our own risk.” 0255 249 Hunger carried the day over prudence. We scrambled down to swallow some scalding coffee and rush back into our carriages, to be kept there shunting for twenty minutes or more. This is frequently the case. The train moves on suddenly, and without the slightest notice. If you are a man, or a gymnast, you may manage to “take” the high step after the carriage is in motion; otherwise you are bound to be on the safe side, and rarely leave your train.

It was a weary, weary journey after the darkness came on, but even the crawling of an American train has limits.

By ten o'clock we had reached Denver, and were soon afterwards comfortably housed in the Windsor Hotel, a magnificent block of buildings, almost rivalling its namesake in New York.

Denver is a really beautiful city, not unlike Colorado Springs in appearance, but on a very much grander scale. One fine boulevard street is called “Broadway,” and certainly deserves the name far more than its tortuous, winding namesake in New York.

There are many other smaller boulevards, cutting up the city into rectangular divisions. Some of the Denver public buildings are very fine, and would do credit to any of the Eastern states cities. Amongst 0256 250 these the Court House stands pre-eminent, with its imposing dome and gold figure of “Justice” at the top.

Lastly, Denver possesses some very beautiful houses, and these are chiefly of stone and red brick. Unlike most of the Western towns, there are very few wooden houses to be seen here.

Many of these stone and brick houses looked as though they had been transferred bodily from Fitz John's Avenue in Hampstead, and evinced quite as much artistic taste as could be found there.

The pinky, cream stone found all through the Rocky Mountain region forms a beautiful contrast in house building to the dark wooden verandahs so much affected in these hot climates.

The Denver stores are excellent, quite as good as many in New York and Philadelphia, and there I found the very best Turkish bath establishment that it has ever been my fate to visit during a wide experience of such buildings.

The heat was very great during the daytime, and the views all round Denver of the beautiful Rocky Mountains so enticing, that after a couple of days' rest we packed up and determined to make some mountain excursions. The first expedition was to be made to 0257 251 Idaho Springs, a pretty little mountain resort about thirty-eight miles from Denver in a westerly direction, which has been immortalized in Black's charming novel, “Green Pastures and Piccadilly.”

The train runs through the magnificent “Clear Creek Cañon,” the scenery becoming really grand after passing “Gorden,” a mining town of some importance, where the cañon is entered. No one portion of it can quite equal the grandeur of the Royal Gorge of the Arkansas, but as a whole the Clear Creek Cañon is quite as beautiful and even more interesting, because the beauty is more evenly distributed. Idaho is a pretty mountain village, lying in the plains where the cañon widens out into a plateau. It is very peaceful and quiet, but breathing is a difficult matter here, as at Santa Fé, for Idaho lies 7,500 feet above the sea level.

Last year there was a population of only 1,500 inhabitants, but as a splendid new school has been built at a cost of $25,000, I conclude that these numbers are likely to be augmented.

Idaho is famous for its soda and sulphur springs, and is much frequented by those who suffer from neuralgia and rheumatism. The water is very soft and pleasant, and the natural temperature of the bath is sufficiently warm to be comfortable. My friend and I got hold or 0258 252 some horses and side saddles in the afternoon, but found it impossible to charter any sort of guide to go up the mountain peaks, so we started off alone to find our way as best we might, and after much uncertainty and retracing our steps more than once, found ourselves at the summit of a steep mountain from whence a glorious view of the Rocky Peaks could be obtained. It was a nasty climb with no very defined track. The horses, although quiet, seemed unaccustomed to the work, and were very nervous in coming down the precipitous mountain sides, and zig-zagged in consequence to such an extent that I thought we should never reach the bottom at all.

That our Idaho hosts should have had no consideration for our necks was, perhaps, only to be expected; but I cannot understand their risking two good horses to our tender mercies, who appeared as ignorant of the country as we were ourselves, and this without even taking the trouble to inquire whether either of us had ever mounted a horse before. There is a curious natural Hot Cavern close to Idaho which has been excavated to a distance of 800 feet, the inside being as hot as in a Turkish bath room. At the end of the excavation is a natural spring of water, utilized as a bath, and said to possess great virtue in cases of rheumatism. 0259 253 A tiny oil lamp gave the only glimmer of light to the dark cavern at the extreme end, and we admired the courage of a lady who was about to be left quite alone here for her bath, as we went in to look at the cave.

Having unhitched our horses from the rail where we had left them and mounted ourselves as best we could, there was still time before darkness came on to go some miles further up the Virginia Cañon, which is a side cañon opening into Clear Creek, and sparsely inhabited by miners, for the whole district is rich in mines.

The great mining district, however, is Georgetown, only one hour by rail from Idaho, where silver, lead and a little gold are found.

We went on there next day. The scenery all the way up the creek is very fine, and Georgetown, though less picturesque than Idaho, is likewise beautifully situated under the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, and is said to be the highest town in the world, having an altitude of 8,500 feet.

From Georgetown we took a “buck-board” and started for the “Argentine Pass.” This is a long and rough day's work, but is well worth doing, as it gives one of the finest and most extensive views over the 0260 254 whole Rocky Mountain region. The road is very bad and winds continuously for over four hours, through a gorge by the side of a bubbling mountain torrent and with high rocks surrounding one on either side.

The water of the torrent is very muddy, as is universally the case in these mining districts, owing to the “wash” of the gold. Troughs are provided to catch the gold deposit as the water passes through them to its rocky bed.

The road grew steeper and steeper as we approached the Great Divide, a curious ridge-like chain of mountains, and once on the top of this a glorious panorama lay before us. An amphitheatre of rocky crags faced us, then chain after chain of purpling mountains in the foreground and middle distance; farther still the faint, dreamy, cloudy outline of South Park. Close to our right rose the rugged black mountain called Gray's Peak, with a beautiful little lake of emerald water nestling at its stony feet.

Patches of snow lay on the higher ranges, and beneath our feet such jagged, rugged stones as gave one the idea of some giant's playground.

Turning towards the side from whence we had approached “The Divide,” the mountains were a beautiful shade of crimson purple, very soft, but quite 0261 255 decided in tint, and the contrast between these, the green valley below them and the grey snow-covered mountains beyond was most striking.

Far away in the dim horizon we could just trace our old friend Pike's Peak, and in another direction the dim shadowy outline of the mountain of the Holy Cross. We climbed several small peaks to see this glorious view from various points.

Presently we heard a cry like that of a prairie dog, but at 12,000 feet above the sea this was impossible. We soon solved the mystery by finding several little coneys, a cross between a ground squirrel and a prairie dog in size and appearance.

The descent from the Divide was a really perilous proceeding, owing to the wild and erratic way in which our boy drove, tearing down hills as steep as a house with the most utter sang-froid. Even at this breakneck pace we took two hours to retrace our steps to a point in the cañon where a side road leads up to a beautiful sheet of water, called “The Green Lake.”

The road to it is very steep and very picturesque. The lake is small but very deep and dark, and reminded me much of the König. See in the Austrian Tyrol. This idea is favoured by the bleak look given 0262 256 to the Green Lake by the fact that most of the trees running down to the water's edge have been burnt: so much American scenery is spoiled by the stunted, blackened roots so common in these forests where fires occur very frequently.

We went on the lake in a boat and saw some wonderful trees at the bottom of it, an immense way down, and which can only be seen from one or two points when the water is very clear. These trees have been petrified by the action of the water, but the branches are intact, and they look such monsters lifting their great weird arms towards you as you peer into the depths to make out their forms.

Enormous stones are also to be seen at the bottom of this deep lake, similar to those found close by on the dry land, in a place called appropriately, “The Battle-field of the Gods.”

At this latter point hundreds of enormous blocks of granite lie about in wildest confusion.

The question is, how did they get there? Certainly not from the sides of the adjacent mountains, which are of entirely different construction. The presumption is that these enormous granite blocks are the result of an upheaval of the earth. A rock against them, higher than the rest, gave us a fine 0263 257 view of the surrounding country, and was approached by a very stiff climb over a quantity of rocky débris which has fallen, so as to make a sort of natural cavern, called “The Cave of the Winds.”

Another day we went still farther into the mountains beyond Georgetown to Silver Plume, to see a silver mine there and more especially to travel on the wonderful “loop line,” which is considered a marvel of engineering. After crossing a bridge, the rail from Georgetown makes two complete loops in a series of “contours” from side to side and so gets on to the higher grade, for Silver Plume is a continuous ascent amongst the mountains. It is most curious to look down from the railway car so many hundreds of feet upon the little mining town of Georgetown, and to realize that you have risen all that height by the curving and looping of the line.

Arrived at Silver Plume we were left as usual to find out the mine we wished to visit for ourselves. It is called the “Victoria Mine,” and lies about a quarter of a mile from the little mining town, straight along the track of the rails. This mine is not from 1,200 to 1,500 feet deep as are those at Butte City. A tunnel, approached from the level ground, has been made through the rock of the hill to a distance of VOL. II. 35 0264 258 1,000 feet, and a shaft of 150 feet only made through the hill from above to the end of this tunnel, where the “lode” has been struck.

The lode (or streak of quartz in which the silver is found) runs here almost in a horizontal line for some distance, but gradually becomes more perpendicular towards the outer opening above the tunnel. We toiled through deep mud and water along the line of rail made for transportation of the trucks, in pitch darkness, save for the flicker of our guide's lamp, and by degrees became wet through, for it was impossible to foresee a single puddle.

At the extreme end several men were at work, breaking up the ore with pickaxes, and we heard the voices of others similarly employed at the top of the shaft.

Only the initiated can recognize the silver ore.

The lead ore sparkles more brightly, but is betrayed by its greater weight. One of the prettiest and most golden-looking bits of ore turned out to be simply copper, a severe disappointment to me, for I was beginning to think I knew something about the various kinds of ore after spending some time in the Western mining districts.

Returning once more by the loop line, which seemed 0265 259 even more wonderful seen for the second time, we went straight on to Denver, repassing Georgetown, Idaho and the beautiful Clear Creek Cañon; a noisy party of sixty-five members of the press were with us, returning from a holiday expedition through California. One of them, the editress of a paper in Falls City, was very communicative, and introduced her nephew, a rowdy and rather giggling youth of twenty-two, who was an editor of some other paper. She presented me with her card, which was made of thin birch bark and inscribed:

Alice E. Runnels, Editress, “Hearthstone,” Falls City Journal.

They said they had been much fêted in California and were returning home greatly delighted by all the kindness and hospitality shown to them in the Far West. Most of the men had their wives with them. Americans seem to have a curious notion that a woman requires a holiday as much as a man does and that the monotonous round of household duties may “pall” as much as business cares are apt to do.

This “auntie,” however, was the only “editress” in 35—2 0266 260 her own right, and seemed to be much appreciated accordingly.

The utmost limit of time that my friend could spare from her Australian tour had now been reached, and we parted next day with many regrets, she to retrace her steps to San Francisco and take steamer thence for the Sandwich Islands, and I to pay a long-promised visit in Toronto, and to see something of the parts of Canada left out in our autumn travels there, before returning to England for the winter.

My last and most pleasant association with Denver and the Rocky Mountains is the memory of a pleasant dinner and evening spent at the house of the hospitable Dean of Denver.

Denver, in addition to other advantages, can boast of a fine cathedral with some very good painted glass and one of the most beautiful toned organs that I have ever heard played upon. It was built in Boston and is much appreciated by the dean, who is himself a born musician.

He and his little daughter and I strolled into the cathedral one lovely summer evening, when the intense heat of the day had given place to a heavenly breeze. The grand crimson shafts of the setting sun were glancing through the cathedral windows, giving 0267 261 an ideal beauty to the stained colours, and the little child sat by my side as the dean went to the organ and pealed forth some beautiful “voluntaries,” ending up with exquisite variations on the hymn, “Nearer my God to thee.”

The dean has a most sympathetic musical touch, but was extremely modest on the score of the performance which gave me so much pleasure.

“ I think you play beautifully, papa, and so does this lady,” said the little eight year old daughter, with the calm assurance that sounds so quaint to our conventional English ears, and yet so childlike and natural to these little Anglo-Americans.

The pure American growth is too apt to be priggish and self-conscious, but a little English “cutting,” planted in American soil and flourishing under the bright, clear, American sun, develops into a very fascinating flower, even in early childhood.

The Rocky Mountain district has lost the romance of the unknown since Miss Bird wrote her fascinating volume on the subject some ten or twelve years ago.

The parks, “North,” “South,” and “Estes,” are as well known now as many parts of Switzerland. Advertisements of hotels in and stages to “Estes Park” greet you at every turn, and no doubt the great 0268 262 influx of tourists brings what we should call a “Cockney” flavour to these distant regions.

But it will take many years of even Yankee enterprise to rob “the Rockies” of all romance or of any of their intrinsic beauty.

“Men may come and men may go,” stages may run, hotels may be built and opened, loop lines and railway tracks may be engineered amongst these glorious cañons, “Mountain Jems” may depart, but the mountains themselves stand fast for ever, as grand and majestic in their beauty as when no human eye had rested upon them.

To many of us nature seems to lose all value if her beauties must be shared by others. To such I would say, “Avoid the Rocky Mountains!” which will soon be as well known as Chamouni or the Mer de Glace.

But the true and worthy worshipper of nature will find plenty here to reward him even for the miseries of a sea voyage and the discomforts of a weary journey by American rail.

Taking into consideration my strong prejudices on both these points, it would be impossible to pay the Rocky Mountains a greater compliment than by recording the above as my honest conclusion, after spending a month in their neighbourhood.

I have said so much already of the discomforts of American travel that it would be hard to paint the picture in darker colours, but I may safely affirm that of all wretched journeys, the one between Denver and Chicago was facile princeps.

This was owing in great measure to the intense heat and much also to the overcrowding of our car. Every berth was taken, there was little or no ventilation possible, for the fine black dust comes through any aperture in torrents along the Nebraska Plains.

There were eight or ten men in the car, twelve ladies and eight children, four of whom were in arms.

Now as all the ladies and all the children were forced to find accommodation in one tiny lavatory, and the food for the babies had also to be prepared in there, over “Etnas,” it was impossible for any unfortunate spinster to get near the place until well on in the morning.

The misery of dressing in your berth and then dragging your dirty, weary, melting body out at a wayside station for breakfast or dinner, with the thermometer registering 95° in the shade, may be more easily imagined than described. The heat over those plains was really appalling. Men and women alike were plying fans like punkahs all the time. It was amusing to watch the business men in Chicago fanning themselves violently in the street with large palm fans as they went off to their counting-houses; whilst the waiters in the hotels were always seizing these palm fans from the table and using them, ostensibly for your benefit, but in reality as much for their own.

I travelled from Denver on what is known as the Burlington short route and saved several hours by doing so. Some parts of the Platte River are picturesque, but on the whole the route is most flat and uninteresting.

We dined on the second day at Lincoln, a flourishing town and the capital of Nebraska. No beer or spirit of any kind is allowed in this state, which is one of the “temperance states” of America, and the rule held good even on our dining car, which was only put on the second evening, for supper, when we had 0271 265 left Lincoln far behind. Until we were well out of the Nebraska territory all wine and beer “on board” were kept well under lock and key.

Passing through Iowa the third day, there was again no beer to be obtained, but for a very different reason; every bottle of beer, cider or wine had been drunk up by the heat-tormented passengers. Iowa is much more green and fertile than Nebraska. There are plenty of trees there and good crops of wheat and Indian corn.

On the cars I had found a pleasant, intelligent companion in a woman who was travelling with her husband, a manufacturer of mechanical tools, living in some little western town in Illinois State. She was a superior woman and evidently made valiant efforts to keep up an interest in music and literature, in spite of the entire absence of any advantages for their cultivation in her unlonely, smoky, manufacturing surroundings, and in spite also of having the entire care and management of four children, to whom she was evidently a most devoted mother.

When we had discussed books and oratorios, Beethoven sonatas, Handel and Mendelssohn in turn, I could not help contrasting her pleasant, intelligent conversation with any talk that would be possible with 0272 266 the wife of a small manufacturer in a remote district in England.

“The children,” however, to whom she was returning after a six weeks' absence, were naturally her dearest interest, and once fairly started upon this theme, she seemed perfectly content, and I am sure made no less devoted a mother for being anxious and able to teach her children something that might lighten the monotony of their lives in the future and throw a little poetry into the hard prose of manufacturing mechanical tools in a remote American town.

In speaking of the ages and characters of her children she touched unconsciously on the subject of heredity, which has always interested me deeply and which is, I think, too persistently ignored by most of us.

One experience went too much into detail for the ordinary reader, but she told me also that before the birth of her second child, she accompanied her husband on a business expedition and was of necessity left very much alone in hotels, becoming in consequence very melancholy and morbid and crying sometimes for hours together. The child (a boy, now of twelve years old) has inherited just this temperament, crying on the smallest provocation and showing a general tendency to hysteria, uncommon in a boy of his age and very 0273 267 difficult to combat. Fortunately the mother learnt wisdom by two experiences, and being persistently bright, happy and cheerful herself before number three arrived, he had turned out a sweet, bright boy, two and a half years old at the time I met her and evidently the very apple of her eye. Only the wilfully blind or absolutely unintelligent can ignore the truth that the character and temperament of a child is in the hands of its mother before as well as after its birth into the world. The old Greeks were wise enough to recognize this fact and to keep “the mothers” of the state surrounded by all bright and beautiful influences.

I arrived at Chicago on the second day after leaving Denver and put up at the “Palmer House,” a crowded, bustling and not very methodical establishment.

I cannot understand how people can call such immense caravanserais home-like or comfortable, however magnificent the rooms or however satisfactory the cuisine may be.

It is like living in a small city. It is quite a considerable journey from the dining-rooms to the drawing-rooms, and the office is crowded by hundreds of men, shuffling, smoking and talking, making it quite unapproachable for a lady who may wish to make any inquiries there. At the same time it is exasperating 0274 268 and hopeless work to be forced to send messages to and fro by some unintelligent black waiter.

Having heard, like the rest of the world, that Chicago was the place where a pig goes in at one end of a machine to come out as sausages at the other end, and being told that it was absolutely necessary to pay a visit to the famous Union stock yards if I wished to see the most characteristic thing in Chicago, I prepared to go out there, little thinking how bitterly I should regret the expedition. To my mind, no woman should see such a horrible sight, although in saying this I am conscious of falling in with the usually curious notion that in some way cruel sights are less degrading to men than to women.

Anyway, I did see this horrible performance, and describe it as a warning to others who might be tempted to go over the yards in question.

Whenever I have mentioned the cruelty of pig-killing in Chicago, I have been asked whether I ever saw a pig killed in England. I am happy to say that I have never done so, but if the process in England is half so barbarous, I think the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals should interfere.

It is easy enough to talk glibly of muscular movement after death and to declare that the pigs were 0275 269 really dead when they were shrieking and squalling, kicking their legs and rolling their eyes in agony. If people can stifle conscience and remorse by believing such statements, let them do so. For myself, I am quite convinced that these pigs were capable of intense suffering and did suffer intensely long after their throats were cut. When a man, in a fit of jealousy, cuts the throat of his sweetheart (a matter of constant occurrence) she does not, as a rule, die instantaneously or even inevitably, and she does most certainly suffer. Why should we take it for granted that pigs are so much less sensitive? I am sure they do their best, poor animals, to try to prove to us the contrary!

The great boast in Chicago is that a certain “yard” can kill so many thousands of pigs in one day. No wonder the work is done hastily and inefficiently where this sort of competition in numbers goes on.

The stock yards are situated about seven or eight miles from the city itself and we had to change street cars and devote nearly an hour to the journey there, driving through mile after mile of wretched, squalid-looking suburbs. The yards occupy many acres and have given rise to quite a little town, with large hotel and station for the exclusive use of those in the trade. Chicago is the great market of the West and the 0276 270 meeting place where speculators from the East come up to buy the stock that has been reared on the great stock ranches of Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado.

Arrived at the entrance to the stock yards, we passed innumerable wooden pens full of cattle of every description sent in from the Western grazing grounds and shipped off from here to all parts of the world.

We walked a long way through these stock yards before reaching the first pig-killing yard, “Hutchinson's.”

Before entering the building and all along our walk I had noticed various covered wooden bridges running round the four sides of large areas of ground. Along these bridges a perpetual and forced procession of the miserable pigs is kept up.

They cannot turn right or left in the narrow wooden passage and are forced to go on, being crowded by fresh pigs from behind. On they go to their inexorable fate. One by one, they pass through a door into the building where a large iron hook is fastened on to one of their legs and they are hauled down some steps on one of which stands a man with a carving knife. He makes a hasty slash at the throat, but the wretched animal is not killed, only slung on, to be caught by another man who unhooks it, throws it into boiling 0277 271 water to loosen the hair, and it is then passed on to a cruel machine with jagged iron “teeth” where it is thrown ruthlessly backwards and forwards until all the hair of the skin is removed.

I saw pigs kicking, struggling and most evidently in torture after all three of these fiendish performances.

The poor animals are then rushed into an immense room where they are cut in two and left to hang until all the blood has drained off. The carcases are then removed to another room where the hams and various joints are cut off and finally into the salting room and thence to the packers'.

I shall never forget the hideous sight of the agony of these poor kicking, writhing creatures, thrown into boiling water and then pitched to and fro on this cruel machine and living through it all! This, moreover, in a Christian country, where no doubt anti-vivisectionists abound! What humbugs we are after all!

We get up indignation meetings over scientific cruelty on a very small scale and with at any rate a laudable motive, and yet let this horrible, unnecessary torture go on unchecked! It is only a question of time. They could kill the poor wretches outright if 0278 272 they would only consent to kill a few hundreds less in the day at each yard.

To make the satire complete, “a society for the protection of animals” has an office outside the yards, and begs that any case of cruelty “may be reported.”

I should have liked to report every single man employed in the yards and still more their employers, who live in beautiful houses in Lincoln Park and have fattened and grown rich on this fiendish cruelty.

But after all, we all eat lobsters and crimped cod, and veal that has been bled to death, and pâté de foie gras. The Chicago stock yards are only a degree more cruel; but I came home sickened and disgusted by the sight of them.

Chicago is essentially a city of “parks,” owning no less than six of these delightful breathing spaces.

Lincoln Park is the finest of these, lying to the north of the city and close to the Michigan Lake.

The lake itself is, as usual, too big to be beautiful. The shores are flat and the immense expanse of water might belong to a small sea.

The park, however, is very fine; long and narrow, with numerous grass plats, intersected by gravel walks and very beautiful trees.

There was a fine piece of artificial water where 0279 273 numerous boats were plying, rowed by young men and young women; shady groves where nursemaids were sitting with their small charges, whilst the more energetic people played croquet, cricket and base ball and even “kiss in the ring.”

A number of acres of ground in Lincoln Park are devoted to landscape gardening and planted with gorgeous beds of brilliant coloured flowers.

I drove back to the city by Dearborn Avenue, which contains some of the handsomest residences in the city, all of which are built of stone.

Since the great fire of 1871 no one is allowed to build a wooden house.

In this avenue one large wooden house remains, however, which belonged to the mayor of the town and possesses now the historical interest of having been the only house saved in that quarter of the city. It stands in its own grounds, and having a blank space on either side, escaped the general destruction.

My driver told me that previous to the fire most of the houses were small and low. Now the Chicago buildings compete with the monster public erections in New York, and many of the streets reminded me very much of Ludgate Hill and other portions of the “City” in London. VOL. II. 36

The Post Office, Court House and Government offices are all magnificent buildings.

Chicago has also several large and handsome churches. Most of the “stores” are wholesale, which confirms the likeness to our own “City.”

The Chicago people have one very ingenious device. They cover the first few stone steps from their houses with carpets and rugs which are kept in place by heavy stones. Then they bring out chairs and cushions, and improvise a pleasant lounge for the hot afternoons. Some sit on chairs or “rockers” on the top steps; others on the lower steps, and the carpet prevents any bad effects from chill.

I drove back to my hotel through a brick tunnel under the bed of the Chicago River, which divides the town into three parts—North, South and West. This tunnel is built 53 feet below the river bed. It may give some idea of the rapidity of growth of an American city to remind my readers that in the year 1830 Chicago possessed one hundred inhabitants—in 1880, the census gave a return of 500,000.

Before closing this chapter, and with it almost the last of my strictly American experiences, I should like to say a few words with regard to the vexed question of “tips” or “wails” to servants, waiters, &c.

Every American with whom I have discussed the question (with one or two honourable exceptions) has assured me that the practice was almost absolutely unknown this side the Atlantic, generally inferring that any experience contrary to this dictum must be charged to my own stupidity as a “foreigner” in giving what was neither exacted nor expected.

Driven from this ground, they have invariably taken up as a last resource the theory that the practice was utterly unknown a few years ago, and is distinctly traceable now as a growing tendency generated by English and Continental influence. Americans are equally eager to criticise and condemn the presence and enormities of the great “tipping plague” across the Atlantic.

I can only say that if we English have introduced the practice into America, no teachers ever found pupils so apt to learn.

I have no wish to condone our own offences in this line, and think the whole system, as carried out at present, a rotten one; more especially where you pay for services twice over, first saving your landlord's pocket and then bestowing as much or more again upon the hotel servants themselves to escape black looks and grudging service. But I do wish to say that 36—2 0282 276 it is absurd for Americans to persist in the obstinate assertion that it is quite unnecessary to give fees in an American hotel, when I have seen the very people who enunciated this extraordinary theory produce a “quarter” at every meal.

If you wish to get any food at an hotel in America, it is necessary to give a fee (and a good one) within the first twelve hours of your arrival as a “retaining fee,” and to keep up constant “refreshers” every few days should your stay be prolonged—otherwise black looks, cold meat, interminable pauses and a general crash of crockery may be confidently expected.

Now, in American hotels, the number of waiters to be considered and “remembered” is very considerable. Breakfast and luncheon are invariably served in a separate room from the dining-room, and there are, moreover, different rooms again for a late or an early breakfast. All these changes imply a change of waiters; and, again, transient guests can rarely insure the same table each day for lunch or dinner. Having typically “put salt on the tail” of your special bird, you may find that he has flown a few hours later, or that you have flown to a different part of the room, which comes to the same thing, and the like expensive process must be repeated again and again.

When making a stay for a few days in any hotel, it is absolutely necessary to produce a dollar on the first convenient occasion, and to intimate pretty clearly that there is “more to follow” should the service prove satisfactory.

Now, as there is no separate charge for “service” on an American hotel bill as with us in England, I do not in the least degree grudge these “fees;” but I do resent being told over and over again that there is no necessity for them, and that the whole question is an absurd fancy on my part. More than once my friend and I purposely deferred the presentation in order to prove the truth or fallacy of these assertions. I can only say that our experience on these occasions was far from pleasant, and might have proved physically painful.

We persevered through black looks, cold meat, interminable delays, even to the inevitable crash when our plates were placed before us. I must do the waiters credit on these occasions for having given us fair warning and most unmistakable hints, but we were proving a theory and were wilfully blind and deaf.

At length napkins became conspicuous by their absence, and were hurled at our laps when asked for. After all, a dinner napkin is a soft missile, but when 0284 278 the plates themselves came uncomfortably near our heads, we thought it high time to abandon theory for the more prudent acquiescence in facts and the indisputable virtue of the Almighty Dollar.

After much experience, the only differences I could detect between the systems of “tipping,” as practised in America and England, were as follows:

In England, you give your “tip” on departure when your stay has been a short one.

In America, you must give one on arrival, a refresher midway, and some slight “acknowledgment” when you leave; and a dollar in America goes little further than a shilling in England, under similar circumstances, would do. Moreover, you must take into account three or four waiters in the dining-room (in large city hotels), the head waiter who opens the door when you enter, and expects a large “remembrance” on your departure; one or two “bell boys,” who have brought iced water or answered a question in the passages; a chambermaid, and at least two “elevator” boys, in addition to one or two “hall boys,” whom you have barely identified until the morning of your departure.

Making due allowance for all these, the area over which the tips are spread is considerably larger than with us, or even on the Continent. The one redeeming 0285 279 point, on the other hand, is that over here in America hotel-keepers do not profess to save you all this worry and trouble by putting a fixed charge “for service” on their bills, as they do in England, which, of course, merely means that you have to tip them as well as their servants.

To show that I am writing under rather than over the mark in saying all this, I shall make some extracts from a newspaper cutting, written evidently by an American, but one of the few who will speak the honest truth on the subject.

It is headed, A Nuisance and an Exaction , and begins by giving the experience of another American gentleman, who, with a wife and one daughter, spent two months at an hotel in “Long Branch,” and found their fees for “tips” alone amounted to 200 dollars. This included five dollars a week to the hostler, “to induce him not to founder my animals;” so the gentleman was evidently doing things on a big scale. The writer of the article goes on to say, “I am beginning to think, after all, that the European landlords are a trifle more frank when they put most of these fees in the bill.” Why did he pay? I hear an innocent reader exclaim. This sage person thinks that he or she has struck at the root of the grievance.

The question will answer itself if the speaker will spend a week at an American hotel. I shall be willing to abide by the result of that brief experience. It is idle to talk about this subject to one who has not been through the trials. To one who has it is unnecessary.

A few cold breakfasts, a sleepless night in a badly-made bed, a few persistent brushings by determined broom boys, an interminable delay in getting a pitcher of iced water, the absence of hand towels in the public wash room, except such as are carefully spread across the palms of the obsequious porter, and finally the firm clutch that the hall porter takes upon even your feather weight umbrella every time you enter the door. These things, I say, will soften the stoniest heart just as dripping water will dissolve granite.

To the people who grow indignant over this recital I can only say, “Try a week without fees and just see where you land.” Well, we tried forty-eight hours, not at an American watering-place in the season, but in an ordinary city hotel, and had no wish to prolong the experiment.

Having given an honest opinion on this subject, much at variance with the ideas of most of my American friends, I should like to mention one other small 0287 281 matter in connection with American travel where my experience differs entirely from that of Mrs. Pfeiffer, with whom I have some slight but valued personal acquaintance.

I have not at hand her very interesting and clever book, entitled, “Flying Leaves from East to West,” and must therefore trust to memory.

My distinct remembrance is that she makes special mention of the lack of courteous assistance given by railway officials or fellow-travellers on this continent to the helpless foreigner encumbered by hand baggage.

Now my experience was the exact reverse of this. It is true that the English porter, whose absolute devotion can be purchased for sixpence and whose unwearied civility and patient endurance seem to have no price, is unknown in America, as he is unknown in France or Italy. But I have travelled in no country where fellow-passengers were so unfailingly kind and helpful to women.

Travelling in a country where there are no regular porters to be had, it is necessary if possible to reduce one's hand baggage within such limits that it can be carried independently.

This, however, was often practically impossible.

Travelling for unlimited weeks or months during 0288 282 winter in the Eastern states, a number of wraps and rugs were indispensable, and when spring came and we went further afield, many of the warm wraps could certainly be left behind, but it was then constantly necessary to pack up sufficient clothing for three or four days, to be carried by hand either when in the railway cars or on mountain expeditions where no regular baggage could be conveyed up cañons and mountain tracks.

The anxiety of reaching or changing cars under such conditions was very great in anticipation; but when the critical moment came I found almost invariably some kind friend at my elbow whom I had perhaps not even noticed before and who would say to my unutterable relief, “Allow me, madam! You seem to have rather more than you can manage. Let me fix it up for you.”

Sometimes the grand “conductor” himself would leave his train for a few minutes to run across to the next train with some of our light baggage. If not, an American gentleman would invariably come forward and help us in the most courteous and kindly way, never, in one single instance making any such slight attentions the excuse for thrusting any further acquaintance upon us, unless we encouraged him to enter into conversation.

The only really tipsy man I ever saw in America was a fellow-traveller in our car, going from Boston to New York.

He was a pleasant, gentlemanly-looking man to start with, but had dined, unfortunately “not wisely but too well,” on board the train and indulged in a good deal of champagne en route.

But even under these trying circumstances, the instinctive American courtesy to any woman in difficulties came triumphantly to the front. We arrived at the New York Central Station late at night and my friend, her maid and I were struggling in the grasp of half-a-dozen shouting, bellowing, Irish-American car-drivers who were seizing our numerous bags and bundles and carrying them off in various directions. I had entirely forgotten my tipsy friend, having got safely out of his way when leaving the railway car, but he came gallantly to the rescue, shouldering a huge parcel of my rugs and a dressing bag and hurling defiance at the crowd, repeating over and over again in a most reassuring voice, “Nobody shall get the better of you whilst I am here! I'll look after your interests; nobody shall lay a finger on your property, madam, as long as I have a pair of arms at your service.”

Having seen us safe into the haven of a carriage, he 0290 284 took off his hat most politely and retired, ordering the driver to take us at once to our hotel.

If drink steals a man's brains away, it is at least a mercy when it leaves him his courtesy and chivalry intact.

I think the reason for the widely differing opinions of Mrs. Pfeiffer and myself on the subject lies in the different conditions under which we travelled.

Mrs. Pfeiffer was accompanied by a devoted husband, whereas we were travelling as “lone, lorn females.”

American men are so much accustomed to look after the comfort and well-being of their womankind, that it would never strike them that a woman travelling with any male companion could need other assistance.

Now this is a safe theory to hold so far as American women are concerned, because they reduce their hand baggage to a minimum and are not generally undertaking long and arduous journeys over several thousands of miles even in their own country. But the most devoted husband has after all only one pair of arms, and there are limits to his carrying powers; so that Mrs. Pfeiffer probably fell, metaphorically, between two stools.

Having a male protector, she was presumably independent of outside help, but having doubtless like 0291 285 ourselves a good amount of impedimenta , she fared worse on the whole than we did, so far as this matter is concerned.

“Tout compris, tout sera pardonné!”

I hope if Mrs. Pfeiffer reads this chapter, she may accept the explanation, and acquit the Americans of any lack of kindliness or courtesy, two of their most attractive and, I think, undeniable qualities.

Wishing to see Niagara once more in her summer beauty, I took the “Michigan Central” train from Chicago and spent another day there, this time at the Clifton House, close to the Suspension Bridge on the Canadian side.

The view from the verandah must be beautiful on a fine day, but this August day was unfortunately dark and dreary, and as rainy and cold as any day we had spent at Niagara during the previous November.

It was almost a relief to get away and find myself once more en route for Toronto, where I spent a very happy week with the kind Canadian friends to whom I had taken letters of introduction the previous autumn.

The trees in Toronto were looking lovely in the summer, and the fields were covered with “golden rod” and other summer wild flowers.

Rosedale, which had looked so beautiful even in late 0292 286 autumn, was still more bewitching now, and we had several delightful drives in the neighbourhood.

With many regrets I packed up once more, for my berth was engaged on board the “Celtic,” White Star Line, and several last places still remained to be seen before drawing my lengthened tour to a close.

I left Toronto at eight o'clock one evening by the Grand Trunk line for Kingston, having decided at the last moment not to take the steamer the whole way to Montreal, as the sky looked stormy, and Lake Ontario is said to have great possibilities in the matter of waves and “breakers.”

Our railway journey was rough and wretched enough, and my back ached for two days afterwards from the effects of the terrible jolting, but we escaped a worse fate by water, as it turned out. The train was two and a half hours late, but this was of no consequence, as the steamer was not advertised to touch at Kingston until 5 a.m. The Pullman car took us alongside the wharf, and we were allowed to remain there till five o'clock, but were then turned out into a small, uncomfortable waiting-room until the steamer came up about half-past five, and we went on board, tired, cold and hungry, to find a number of miserable-looking passengers who had left Toronto the night before, and had 0293 287 evidently spent an uncommonly wretched time on board. A heavy sea had got up about 8 p.m., and nearly every one on board had suffered very much, including some who declared they had crossed the Atlantic with much less discomfort.

Almost directly after leaving Kingston the St. Lawrence River is entered, and the passage through the Thousand Islands begins.

These islands are great and small, and are dotted all over the immense stretch of river, breaking it up into many channels.

Many of these islands have either large summer hotels built upon them or pretty little houses with bathing places attached, where the summer boarders can find accommodation.

Gay little pagodas with bright flags flying from them mark out these pretty summer resorts, and give a bright, lively look to the fresh green of the wooded islands on a sunshiny day.

Our steamer was crowded. There was scarcely room to plant a chair on deck, but the surroundings were so beautiful and the day so fine that one lost all sense of discomfort.

About midday we came through the first rapids on the river, which are small and insignificant; but after 0294 288 early dinner we passed through the “Long Sault” Rapids, which are nine miles in length, and very grand.

The steamer tossed and creaked and swayed up and down amongst the dashing, foaming green waves in a way that was quite exciting; although on board a large steamer and with this wide channel the moments were not so apparently critical as some I have spent on a Nile dahabeeah crossing the famous Cataracts.

Nine minutes saw us through these first large rapids on the St. Lawrence River, and others were passed in turn—the “Cascades,” “Cedar Rapids,” &c., &c. We could not go through the La Chine Rapids that evening, for dusk was coming on, and the boat was too heavily weighted to be safe.

I made the expedition later from Montreal, but did not find it either more beautiful or more interesting than the passage through the Long Sault Rapids had been.

To return to the expedition I am describing. Leaving the steamer at La Chine, we took the railway cars and in twenty minutes reached Montreal and another monster Windsor Hotel.

As a town, I prefer Montreal to all the other Canadian towns I have seen. No doubt life in Toronto 0295 289 may be pleasanter because it is more in the world and less provincial. But Montreal is far more picturesque than Toronto, and far cleaner and brighter than Quebec.

There are fine shady boulevards of over-arching trees, wide clean streets and some very handsome stone houses. Winter also is more enjoyable in Montreal than in Toronto, because the air is dryer and there is more opportunity for skating, sleighing and tobogganing and such winter amusements than in the latter city, which is much damper and more liable to sudden thaws.

Some kind friends in Montreal took me for a drive to the famous “mountain,” a long steep hill, rising up behind the town, covered with lovely trees and shrubs and having a steep, winding carriage road which zig-zags up to the very summit.

In autumn the tints must be magnificent, but on this September day the trees had scarcely yet shown any signs of “turning.”

From the summit of “the mountain,” the grandest view of Montreal may be had. The numerous churches, hospitals, City Hall, Grey Nunnery, the famous Victoria Bridge, a tubular bridge across the river two miles long, all these formed a grand picture beneath our feet, VOL. II. 37 0296 290 and the numerous green trees and alleys of foliage planted all over the city and its outskirts make the view one of the most beautiful town views that can be conceived.

Coming down on the other side of the hill, we drove through the Protestant cemetery, which is built on the side of the mountain and which, like most of the American and Canadian burial places, is far more beautiful than anything of the kind in the “old country.”

The site of the famous Ice Palace, which is built up for every carnival season in Montreal, lies just below the Windsor Hotel. Even in September notices were already put up that rooms could be engaged for the succeeding February, and the small-pox visitation having put a stop to all festivities for one year, the scene was expected to be all the more lively the next time.

In the same (Dominion) square is the cathedral of St. Peter's, barely finished at the time of my visit, but looking very gay inside, as a fashionable fancy bazaar was taking place there.

It is built after the model of St. Peter's in Rome, and is said to be the exact half of the latter in every dimension, but this seems incredible.

Thirty years have been spent in the building of it and yet the dome had only been put up a few weeks before my arrival.

The Roman Catholic parish church of Notre Dame is made entirely of wood, including the statues, which are ornamented with gold bands and painted to imitate marble.

The pillars are of coloured wood in imitation of red and green serpentine. Ruskin would be horrified, and no doubt the whole thing is false, inartistic and pretentious; but I should not call it “tawdry” as so many do, because the colouring is decidedly harmonious, chiefly dark brown, green and gold with touches of deep crimson.

The reredos, which is open and without any screen in front of it, is really imposing, the various niches in it being filled with carved and coloured images. Much of the work was done in Paris and sent here from thence.

Going up from this church to the roof by an elevator, I saw the biggest bell in the world, which was cast in London.

The City Hall is a very fine building near the quay, with the usual amount of handsome and absolutely uninteresting committee and mayor's rooms inside. Close 37—2 0298 292 to the water's edge is the quaint Bon Secours Market, where a thriving trade seems to be driven, and up a very steep hill at the back of it, the Bon Secours Church, the oldest in the city, which dates back far away into the dim Canadian recesses of a whole century!

It is being rebuilt and decorated in an ugly florid style, too commonly found in Roman Catholic churches abroad. The grand Roman Catholic cathedral on Fifth Avenue in New York is a glorious exception to this rule, and is as beautiful, simple and imposing as the most fastidious taste could desire.

A clerical synod was being held in Montreal at the time of my visit, and the whole place was overrun by black-coated and white-tied strangers from the surrounding dioceses.

Some of these I knew and heard a good deal of the social arrangements on such occasions.

One of these latter struck me as very happy:

The clergy are billeted as a rule at the houses of the various members of the Episcopalian Church in Montreal. The synod being held in September, most of the resident families were away for their summer holiday.

Instead of returning to the inconveniences of entertaining absolute strangers with a hastily gathered 0299 293 together household, they had sent the most polite letters of welcome to their city with carte blanche for a week's stay at the chief hotel in the place. As this plan gave entire freedom of action to the guests, the relief no doubt was mutual, and probably the expense no heavier to the householder in the end.

In addition to clerical friends I recognized several other American acquaintances in this wonderful Windsor Hotel at Montreal, where one seemed to be always recognizing some well-known face.

Amongst others, I met again a very pleasant American lady who had travelled with me from Niagara to Toronto a week or two before, and who had interested me during a long railway detention by her keen enjoyment and interest in life at an advanced age and having lost her husband and only child, and with them all absolute ties in the world.

Instead of giving way to a morbid and melancholy loneliness, she had taken to oil painting as a relief and distraction, and had shut up her pretty but now desolate home in New York State in order to travel about for a time and see something of the world whilst still free from actual infirmity, and thus lay up a stock of pleasant memories against the rainy day of real old age. I wonder how many English women at the age 0300 294 of 68, left so utterly and sadly alone in the world, would have had the energy and philosophy to do likewise under similar circumstances.

Her only child, who must have been a very beautiful woman, judging by a picture I saw of her, had died only two years previously under singularly sad circumstances. She had an independent fortune, having inherited two-thirds of her father's property upon his dying without having made a will. Mother and daughter were devoted to each other, and both seem to have had a passion for travelling. They lived together on their pretty estate, but the daughter often made journeys with friends of her own. On one occasion, some two or three years ago, the mother had taken a young niece to England and the European continent.

The daughter, meanwhile, spent the summer with friends in the Rocky Mountains, making Colorado Springs her head-quarters.

Being an ardent mountaineer and possessed of strong will power, although physically delicate, she had already made the ascent of the chief mountains in the district, one only, Long's Peak, remaining unachieved.

This mountain is not so high as either Pike's Peak or Gray's Peak, but the ascent is more difficult. Nothing 0301 295 daunted, however, the poor lady set out alone with a guide, who was said to have made the ascent already thirty times and was considered a safe and experienced man.

They left their horses at some distance from the top and walked to the summit, and so far all went well. Unfortunately they then discovered that a storm was blowing up beneath them, and they hurried down hoping to escape the worst of it.

The guide said the lady seemed nervous, a most unusual thing for her, and appeared very eager to get down. At 3 p.m. they began the descent, the storm blowing up towards them, and the rain and sleet coming down in torrents.

The poor girl became more and more nervous and helpless, and at length gave in completely, becoming at times almost unconscious

The guide could only manage to carry her down a few steps at a time, and meanwhile night came on and he grew desperate. He told her that he must go for help; that otherwise both of them would perish in the storm.

The poor girl implored him to remain, but he was obdurate, and possibly he thought he was acting for the best. At any rate he left her at ten o'clock at night 0302 296 quite alone on this terrible mountain whilst the storm raged in full fury. At 4 a.m. he returned with his father to find that she had dragged herself on a few steps and fallen over a precipice, for she lay at the bottom quite dead, and with a deep cut over her forehead. The poor mother meanwhile had returned from Germany, and was staying alone at a big London hotel when the telegram arrived announcing the death of her only child, but giving no clue to the cause. She would in any case have sailed for home in a fortnight's time, but was mercifully able to get a berth on board a steamer which left England next day, and she arrived in New York to be greeted by the sad truth.

The poor girl left considerable sums of money to various charities, especially to those connected with the protection and kindly treatment of dumb animals. She was passionately fond of horses and constantly bought poor over-worked, ill-treated animals from car or stage drivers and turned them out to grass on her own estate in order to insure them a peaceful old age. Distant relations of the father are unfortunately trying to upset the will on the score of “eccentricity,” much to the sorrow and indignation of the poor mother, who worships the memory of her beautiful and accomplished daughter.

She and I drove one afternoon to a fine convent school called Villa Maria, in the neighbourhood of Montreal.

One hundred and seventy-five boarders are received here between the ages of seven and twenty. The rooms are very fine and the education ought to be excellent. Some say it is, others assert that it is very superficial. At any rate the arrangements were very perfect. The dormitories were pretty and scrupulously clean. High spring beds with white dimity curtains and white vallances lined the room on either side. These vallances roused my admiration by the very neat way in which they were plaited in innumerable tiny plaits. Once a week the girls take them off their beds, plait and tie them up for twenty-four hours, when they emerge once more as fresh as ever.

Each young lady here makes her own bed.

Then we passed through large dormitories where the pupils sleep who require private rooms.

A central passage runs down these, and on either side of it the rooms are partitioned off for one or perhaps two beds. Hanging curtains take the place of door and wall in front, so that perfect privacy is insured, whilst at night these “door curtains” can be looped back to allow the air from the general passage (which is well ventilated) to enter.

One odd arrangement downstairs was a number of small music rooms side by side, each large enough to contain a semi-grand piano and with glass walls on both sides of it. A “sister” sits in a kind of glass cage in the midst of these rooms, commanding a full view of the pupils right and left, who can be trusted to practise alone under such supervision.

The pleasant-looking, kindly sister who showed us over the place declared that the sound of the pianos could not penetrate from one room to the other, but I should much doubt this assertion and felt very grateful that the musical pandemonium was over when we arrived.

The grounds are beautiful and very extensive, being fitted up with swings, merry-go-rounds, &c. for the children. Several whole families of from five to seven children each are numbered amongst the pupils. The place looked very bright and homelike. Several of the pupils were receiving friends in one or other of the various reception rooms when we were there, and they seemed very cheerful and happy.

Another day I was beguiled into attending service at the pretty English Cathedral to hear a Canadian bishop, said to be the most powerful and eloquent preacher on either side of the Atlantic! Alas! I took 0305 299 the advice and came in for a very weak dilution of the Bible and a diocese that shall be nameless!

The music, however, was excellent, and one practice which obtains there seems to me a very good and sensible one. A clergyman gave notice that he wished for volunteers for a “congregational choir,” that is for members who would join the first hour's practice of the regular choir and would sit amongst the rest of the congregation in their usual seats when service went on, to strengthen and encourage the congregational singing.

Leaving Montreal for Albany, viâ Lakes Champlain and George, I came in for my only unpleasant experience with an American or Canadian custom house. The Montreal Station is about as disgraceful a building as our own London Bridge, and it would be impossible surely to condemn it more forcibly.

The scene there on the morning of my departure was one of wildest confusion. We were forced to open every trunk, bag and bundle, and in the absence of porters, all our hopes of help rested with the conductor of the Windsor Hotel omnibus. Unfortunately he had attached himself wholly and entirely to the one big strong man of the party, who could have dragged about his own portmanteaux with perfect 0306 300 ease. Probably the conductor knew his prey and scented dollars in the distance.

But he might at least have given the rest of us a chance of competition, and would have gained on the whole by doing so I think.

Anyway, there we were, men and women alike, struggling to drag our respective trunks and portmanteaux from underneath heavy Saratoga trunks and kneeling down on the cold stone floor to undo the leather straps, only to find again and again that we had troubled the waters in vain and that the one “angel” of the Montreal Customs had passed us by for some more favoured traveller with stronger lung power.

However at last everything had been “visited” and checked, and to our great surprise and relief we were fairly off, trusting that our baggage might be fairly off also.

Both the lakes I have mentioned are very beautiful, but I prefer Lake George as the smaller of the two and the more decided contrast to the general run of huge American lakes, which are virtually small seas. The two lakes are separated only by a narrow ridge of land about three or four miles broad. Lake George is bordered by high hills, covered with exquisite green trees, and a number 0307 301 of small islands in the lake add much to its beauty. As the Saratoga season was already nearly over, I had decided not to waste any time there. The great point of going to Saratoga seems to be to see American ladies in triumphs of blanchissage , white gowns and white petticoats which have cost a small fortune to produce in the first instance and to wash in the second, and which, I am confidently assured, are changed twice or even three times a day by the owner if she have any pretensions to fashion.

I believe, however, that amongst the best American families nowadays, as with our own in England, simplicity of dress on ordinary occasions is considered more chic , and better evidence of good breeding.

I spent an hour in Saratoga and was not much impressed by that hasty glimpse of the town. In September, no doubt Saratoga is not seen at its best. It seemed to me a miserable-looking place, with small boulevards, wretched houses and a few monster hotels, where, no doubt, the unwary traveller may be fleeced to any extent.

Newport, or Rhode Island, is the most fashionable of all American summer resorts nowadays, and the practice there of living in villas and small furnished cottages during the season must be far pleasanter than 0308 302 staying in the monster hotels of Saratoga. These “cottages,” however, command enormous prices, varying from $500 to $5,000 for the short summer season.

I had returned to the Eastern states too late in the summer to go through a course of American watering-places. It is impossible to include everything even in the programme of a year, a much longer time than most travellers devote to this one continent.

So I consoled myself by reflecting that such places would probably have seemed rather tame to me after all the wonders we had seen.

Moreover by this time neither purse nor wardrobe would have been equal to the demands of an American summer season.