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 THE 
 
 PACmC EAILROAD— OPEN. 
 
 HOW TO GO : WHAT TO SEE. 
 
 GUIDE FOR TRAVEL TO AND THROUGH 
 WESTERN AMERICA. 
 
 BY 
 
 SAMUEL ''feOWLES, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "across THE CONTINENT," AND "COLORADO, 
 ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS." 
 
 i. BOSTON: 
 FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO., 
 
 SUCCESSORS TO TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 
 1869. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 
 
 riELDS, OSGOOD, & CO., 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts 
 
 University Press : Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 
 
 Cambridge, 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 Introductory. — The G-rand Ride ... 5 
 
 From Chicago to the Rocky Mountains . 16 
 
 Colorado , . .27 
 
 . The Mountains and the Mormons , . 43 
 
 \ From Salt Lake to the Pacific , . .54 
 
 I. San Francisco 65 
 
 [I. California at Large ...... 78 
 
 I. The Sandwich Islands 91 
 
 iX. Oregon. — Puget's Sound. — The Columbia River 100 
 
 X. Idaho. — Shoshone Falls . . . . 106 
 
 XI, Montana and Home . . . . . .110 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Outlines for a Two Months' Journey to the Pacific 
 States by the Pacific Railroad . . . .119 
 
 Table of Railroad Distances between the Atlantic 
 AND Pacific Oceans 121 
 
% 
 
THE PACIFIC RAILROAD - OPEl^. 
 
 HOW TO GO : WHAT TO SEE. 
 
 I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. — THE GRAND RIDE. 
 
 'nr^HE Pacific Railroad — open, is a great fact to 
 America, to the world. The vast regions that 
 it brings, for the first time, into our familiar knowl- 
 edge hold a new world of nature and of wealth, and 
 are full of delightful surprises for the lover of scen- 
 ery, the student in science, the seeker of opportu- 
 nity for power and for riches. It is the unrolling 
 of a new map, the revelation of a new empire, the 
 creation of a new civilization, the revolution of the 
 world's haunts of pleasure and the world's homes 
 of wealth. Europe long ago became only a famihar 
 panorama, with the surprises and sentimentalisms all 
 written in at the proper places, like the " cheers " 
 
6 THE PACIFIC RAILKOAD — OPEN. 
 
 and "laugliter" of a faitlifully reported speech. 
 But thanks to the toughness of day and night stage 
 travel for a continuous three weeks ; thanks to the 
 greed for gold and the high prices of food, leaving 
 no time for those who had gone into this wide, new 
 land to look at its scenery, or to study its phe- 
 nomena, or at least to write about them; thanks, 
 indeed, to the Indians, of whom all sentimental 
 travellers have a holy horror ; thanks, finally, to the 
 rapidity with which the railroad has been built, we 
 have here a world of nature, fresh and tempting, for 
 the explorer. The field is too broad, also the vari- 
 ety of experiences to be had too great, the forms 
 and freaks of nature too strange and too numerous, 
 — the whole revelation too unique and too aston- 
 ishing, — to be readily catalogued and put into flex- 
 ible covers for one's overcoat pocket. So the pleas- 
 ure of original discovery — delicious victual for 
 our vanity — may not unfairly be enjoyed by those 
 who travel within the next year or two by the Pa- 
 cific Railroad, and are wise enough, and have leisure 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 7 
 
 enougH, to deploy liberally to the right and left, at 
 salient points, along its track. 
 
 Near two thirds of all the land of the United 
 States lies beyond the Mississippi, not counting in 
 the outlying purchase of Alaska, which will doubt- 
 less prove a very good thing when we have found 
 out what to do with it. The Pacific Eailroad fairly 
 bisects this vast area east and west, as the Eocky 
 Mountains — the backbone and dividing line of the 
 continent — do north and south ; the two cutting it 
 up into huge quarters, each of which would overlay 
 all Europe this side of Eussia, and flap lustily in 
 the wind all around the edges. It will take us long 
 to learn what there is on and in it ; how long, in- 
 deed, to subjugate it to use and the ministries of 
 civilization! But with one railroad of two thousand 
 miles built across it in four years, and two others to 
 follow within the present generation, our strides in 
 its conquest are at least on equal scale with its 
 majesty and its mysteries. 
 
 Skipping the Mississippi valley as more or less 
 
8 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN. 
 
 familiar country to us all, and takmg up the 'Rew 
 West on the other side of the Missouri, where the 
 Pacific Eailroad proper begins, there are four great 
 natural divisions in the country hence to the Pa- 
 cific. First the Plains, that grandest of all glacial 
 deposits, according to Agassiz, five hundred miles 
 wide and one thousand miles long, stretching from 
 river to mountains, from Britain to Mexico ; a mag- 
 nificent earth ocean, rolling up in beautiful green 
 billows along the shores of the continental streams 
 and continental mountains that border it, but calm- 
 ing down in the vast centre as if the Divine voice 
 had here again uttered its " Peace, be still." The 
 ocean does not give deeper sense of illimitable 
 space ; never such feeling of endless repose as in- 
 spires the traveller amid this unchanging boundless- 
 ness. We used to call it The Great American 
 Desert ; it is really the great natural pasture-ground 
 of the nation ; and the Platte will yet prove the 
 northern iN'ile. The antelope, the buffalo, and the 
 wolf are already disappearing before the horse, the 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 9 
 
 OX, and the sheep, and these, for so far as the waters 
 of the Platte may be spread, — and volume and fall 
 offer wide promise for that, — will give way in time 
 to fields of corn and wheat. 
 
 Next the Mountains, — five hundred miles width 
 of mountains, staying the continent at its centre, 
 and feeding the great waters that fertilize two 
 thirds its area, and keep the two oceans alive. The 
 Cordilleras of South America, the Kocky Mountains 
 of i^orth America, are here broken up into a dozen 
 sub-ranges, with vast elevated plains lying among 
 and between ; their crests broken down and wasted 
 away for a pathway for the iron track across the 
 continent. This section is full of natural wonder 
 and beauty, of scientific variety and marvel ; in its 
 centre, holding the divide of the continent, lies a 
 great barren basin, without living streams, and 
 almost without living springs, — a desert, indeed, 
 which the trains should always manage to pass 
 over in the night ; and beyond, the picturesque 
 descent into Salt Lake valley, past majestic ruins 
 1* 
 
10 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN. 
 
 of majestic mountains, mider towering walls of 
 granite, along banks of snow and beds of flowers, 
 through narrow canyons with frowning sides, down 
 streams whose waters lead the locomotive a losing 
 race, and turn the train from one novelty to an- 
 other, from one wonder to a greater, — altogether, 
 perhaps, the most interesting and exciting portion 
 of the whole continental ride. 
 
 Now a third stretch of five hundred miles 
 through Utah and ]N"evada, whose united territory 
 takes in little more than the vast interior basin, 
 which, more properly than any other region in 
 our extended territory, merits the name of the 
 American Desert. The Colorado and its tributa- 
 ries drain much of its eastern and all its south- 
 eastern portions ; and some of the shorter branches 
 of the Snake or Columbia cross its northern border ; 
 but, with these exceptions, all the waters within 
 its six hundred by three hundred miles' area rise 
 and flow and waste within itseK. Th ey contribute 
 nothing to the common stock of the ocean. Salt 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 11 
 
 Lake is its chief sheet of water, — fifty by one 
 hundred miles in extent, — and is bountifully fed 
 from the western slopes of the Eocky Mountain 
 ranges, but has no visible outlet. The Humboldt 
 Eiver, lying east and west along its upper line, 
 and marking tlie track of the railroad for some 
 three hundred miles, though fed from various 
 ranges of mountains, that cut the basin every 
 dozen or twenty miles north and south, yet finally 
 weakens and wastes itseK in a husre sink within 
 a hundred miles of the California Kne. So with 
 the fresh streams that pour down on the western 
 border from the Sierra N'evadas, and those of 
 feebler flow from the winter snows of the inte- 
 rior mountain ranges, — all, so soon as they reach 
 the valleys, begin to be rapidly absorbed by the 
 dry air and the drier elements of tlie soil, and, 
 sooner or later, absolutely die away. Yet, where 
 and while they do exist, there are strips of fertile 
 land that yield most abundantly of grass and 
 grain and vegetables; and where, as in the Salt 
 
12 THE PACIFIC RAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 Lake valley on the east, and in the Carson on the 
 west, the mountain streams can be divided and 
 spread about in fertilizing ditches, agriculture wins 
 its greatest triumphs. 
 
 As a whole, this is a barren and uninterestiag 
 country for the general traveller ; sodas and salts 
 and sulphurs taint the waters and the soils ; the 
 dust, wherever roused, is as searching and poisonous 
 as it is delicate and impalpable ; the rare grass 
 is not green, but a sickly yellow or a faint gray ; 
 trees and shrubs huddle like starved and frightened 
 sheep into little nooks among the hills, stunted 
 and peevish in growth and character, with no 
 birthright there, and often none visible within 
 the horizon's stretch of ten to twenty miles ; no 
 flower dreams of life in such uncongeniality ; 
 wastes of volcanic rocks lie along and around 
 rivers that might otherwise be tempted to bless 
 the country they pass through ; beds of furious 
 torrents slash the hillsides and mar the valleys ; 
 while fields of alkali look in the distance like 
 
INTEODUCTOEY. 13 
 
 fresh and refreshing banks of snow, and taunt 
 approach with the suffocating reality. Some of 
 the valleys seem indeed to realize the character 
 of the fabled Death's Valley of southern J^evada, 
 within which no vegetable life ever creeps, out 
 of which no human life ever goes ; and yet, within 
 this grand area of distance and desert, two States 
 have risen and are prosperous, — one planted by 
 the fanaticism of a religion, and the other by the 
 fanaticism for gold and silver. To these are we 
 indebted for our path across the continent; while 
 the traveller finds refreshment for his finer senses 
 in the subtle beauty of the air, and the palpitating 
 roundness of the hills that, with the winds for 
 architect, present such forms, unbroken by rock 
 or trees, as are a constant exhilaration to the 
 eye. 
 
 The final division of the journey begins with the 
 eastern foot-hills of the Sierra N"evada mountains, 
 and carries us over these, through twice welcome 
 forests, of unaccustomed height and variety; by 
 
14 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN. 
 
 broad lakes of rare purity and beauty ; along rocky 
 precipices, unsealed until the engineer for the rail- 
 road planted his level on the walls, and the China- 
 man followed with his subduing pick ; down by 
 fathomless gorges ; through long-delaying foot-hills, 
 waste with the miner's ruthless touch, or green 
 with the vineyards that promise to heal the wounds 
 of nature ; out by the muddy Sacramento and its 
 broad alluvials, golden brown with the summer's 
 decay, over long stretches of the tule marshes; 
 under the shadows of Mount Diablo ; finally, across 
 the wide inland bay to the sand-hills that the Pa- 
 cific has thrown up as a barrier to her own restless 
 ambition, and over which San Francisco roughly but 
 rapidly creeps into her position as the second great 
 city of America. 
 
 This is but a two hundred miles' ride, and should 
 be made from sun to sun, for it takes the traveller 
 through already fabled lands in our history, and 
 introduces him to that region of wonderful wealth, 
 of contradictory and comprehensive nature, of 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 15 
 
 strange scientific revelations, of fascinations une- 
 qualled, of repulsions undisputed, — California, the 
 seat of a new empire, the promised creator of a new 
 race. And here, the traveller's experiences have 
 but just begun ; his curiosity is brought only to its 
 edge. Let us go back and look around, and see 
 where he should linger, on what it should feed 
 itself. 
 
II. 
 
 FROM CHICAGO TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 
 
 T T UMBOLDT, in one of his solemn sentences, 
 prescribes three requisites for travel in new 
 regions : 1, serenity of mind ; 2, passionate love for 
 some class of scientific labor ; 3, a pure feehng for 
 the enjoyment which Nature, in her freedom, is ready 
 to impart. These are all very desirable, at least one 
 is indispensable ; but my companions may swap off 
 the other two for a well-fiUed purse and a good set 
 of flannels. We may be as serene and scientific 
 and sentimental as the old German traveller him- 
 seK ; but without these other possessions, we cannot 
 go far or be very comfortable. 
 
 Then we must be liberal as to time too ; the aver- 
 age American can see Europe in thirty days, I 
 know ; but this is a bigger job. True, with that 
 limit, he can be carried from Boston to San Fran- 
 
FROM CHICAGO TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 17 
 
 cisco in ten days, — allowing for a night or two in 
 bed, and one or two failures to connect at that, — 
 and back in the same time, and have a third ten 
 days to look about him in the mountains, in Utah, 
 and in " Frisco " ; and this is better than nothing, 
 of course ; but still, comparing what he thinks he 
 knows with what he really does, before and after 
 such a trip, he will be immensely more ignorant 
 when he returns than he was at starting. I cannot 
 tolerate the idea of less than sixty days ; and we 
 shall find three months devoted to the journey the 
 busiest and best spent in our lives. That is as little 
 time as any one proposing really to see our interior 
 and Pacific States should allow himself to take for 
 the purpose. So make a ninety-day note for our 
 expenses, — well, say four hundred dollars a month, 
 — the average American traveller, in these green- 
 back days, will hardly get off with less, — and leave 
 a good indorser for any little contingency of delay, 
 such as a pressing invitation to visit a " friendly " 
 Indian village, or a long call from those persuasive 
 
 2 
 
18 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN. 
 
 gentlemen of the interior basin, ''the road agents." 
 We may as well count railroad travel at an average 
 of five cents a mile, and stage at twenty cents, and 
 board and lodging, whether with Pullman or at the 
 hotels, at five dollars a day. Extras and contingen- 
 cies will need all these allowances have to spare, — 
 if they have any. 
 
 Prejudices against sleeping-cars must be con- 
 quered at the start. They are a necessity of our 
 long American travel. There are often no inviting 
 or even tolerable places for stopping over night, 
 and, besides, we cannot afford to lose the time, when 
 so much of beauty and interest lies beyond. But 
 the Pullman saloon, sleeping, and restaurant cars of 
 the West — as yet unknown in the Atlantic States 
 — make a different thing of railroad travelling from 
 what it is in the close, cramped, ill- ventilated, dirty 
 box-cars of common experience. They introduce a 
 comfort, even a luxury, into life on the rail that 
 European travel has not yet attained to. For the 
 Pacific Kailroad excursions these cars will be offered 
 
FROM CHICAGO TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 19 
 
 to private parties on special charter ; that is, one or 
 two dozen people may club together, and hire ono 
 for their home by day and night as they ride through 
 to the Pacific coast, and back, stopping over with 
 them wherever they choose on the route. By day 
 they are open, roomy, broad-seated cars ; by night 
 they offer equally comfortable beds, with clean linen 
 and thick blankets ; with as good toilet accommo- 
 dations as space will allow, and a servant at com- 
 mand constantly. Those with a kitchen furnish a 
 meal to order, equal to that of a first-class restau- 
 rant, and with neat and fresh table appointments. 
 But the eating-stations on the whole route already 
 average respectably ; some of them are most excel- 
 lent ; and all will soon be at least good. The mod- 
 eTn American mind, especially that of the Western 
 type, gives intelligent thought to the food question ; 
 and one of the surprises before us is the excellent 
 victuals they will give us on the Pacific coast. 
 
 The Pullman cars go along with all through 
 trains, and the independent traveller can make such 
 
20 THE PACIFIC EAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 use of tliem, day or niglit, as lie chooses to pay for. 
 Those for sleeping only are attached to the trains as 
 night approaches, and dropped in the morning, while 
 the traveller resumes his place in the regular cars 
 of the road. But travellers who can afford the 
 extra expense will choose either to share in a spe- 
 cial charter of one for the round trip, or engage a 
 particular seat and berth in a regular one for so far 
 as they may be going without stopping. To under- 
 stand the advantages of these cars, and learn how 
 best to make use of them, is a part of the education 
 of the traveller in new America. Their introduction 
 and development and popular use mark an era in 
 the history of railroad travel, and place America at 
 the head of nations in its convenience and com- 
 fort. 
 
 Though Pullman promises to back one of these 
 cars to order up at our very doors in Boston or N'ew 
 York, we shall naturally take up our grand journey 
 at Chicago. This is just one third the way across 
 the continent, and the beginning of the New West, 
 
FROM CHICAGO TO THE ROCKY ;M0UNTAINS. 21 
 
 whose spirit is nowhere so proudly rampant, into 
 whose growth no other city so intimately enters. 
 The pulse of the Pacific beats with electric sym- 
 pathy on the southern shore of Lake Michigan; 
 and if Chicago does not hear every blow of the 
 pick in the depths of the gold-mines of Colorado 
 and Montana, she at least has made sure to fur- 
 nish the pick, and to have a claim on the gold 
 it brings to light. 
 
 One this spring, two this summer, three in the fall, 
 and another year four roads invite us across Illinois 
 and Iowa to the junction of the Pacific road proper 
 on the Missouri Eiver. This five hundred mile ride 
 is through the best of the rich prairie country of the 
 Mississippi Valley. If it is stranger to us, it will 
 arouse our enthusiasm by its wide-reaching open- 
 ness, the evidences of its fertility, and the signs of 
 its civilization and prosperity ; if we have been in- 
 troduced before, we shall even the more wonder at 
 the rapidity of its growth and the wealth of its ac- 
 cumulating harvests. It is quite worth while to stop 
 
22 THE PACIFIC EAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 a day either on the Mississippi Eiver at Clinton, or 
 Davenport, or Burlington, or at some such town as 
 Geneva or Dixon in Illinois, or Grinnell or Des 
 Moines in Iowa, and see more closely than the cars 
 permit the character and culture of this most inter- 
 esting region and its population. Last year, before 
 the Pacific EaUroad was open, it was the New "West; 
 now it is the Old ; but it will always be the garden 
 and granary of the continent. It is our new New 
 England ; here the Yankee has broadened and soft- 
 ened ; and what he can do, what he has done here, 
 with a richer soil, a broader area, a larger hope, and 
 a surer realization, is worth the scrutiny of every 
 American and every student of America. Those 
 who would understand the sources of American 
 wealth, and the courses of American politics and 
 religion, must understand Illinois and Iowa. New 
 England is, indeed, dwarfed in the larger life of the 
 meUower regions of the Eepublic. It may be the 
 taunt of her enemies, that hers is a departed sceptre, 
 is substantially true ; but she has a resurrection here. 
 
FROM CHICAGO TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 23 
 
 and her sons and daughters have come to a new glory 
 in these prairies, heavenly by comparison with her 
 sterile hillsides. Stop and see if you recognize them 
 in their new robes. 
 
 Council Bluffs, the depot of the gathering lines of 
 the East, and Omaha, opposite, the starting-point of 
 the grand continental line, challenge attention for the 
 striking diversity and yet striking similarity of their 
 locations on the bottoms and bluffs of the Missouri 
 Eiver, as well as for the wonderful rapidity of their 
 growth and their large future promise. Four rail- 
 roads come in already from the East at Council 
 Bluffs ; very soon the number will be doubled ; and 
 with these and the swift and strong Missouri rolling 
 between, and carrying steamboats two thousand 
 miles north to the very line of British America and 
 the Eocky Mountains, and two thousand miles south 
 to the Gulf of Mexico, the two towns are surely to 
 be one of the largest centres of traffic and travel on 
 the continent. 
 
 We shall not need to stop for the next five 
 
24 THE PACIFIC EAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 hundred miles. The first hundred and fifty are a 
 repetition of the Iowa we have left behind, — rich 
 rolling prairies, already broken by plough, or 
 smoothed with the track of the mower, — beyond, 
 the grand Plains proper, cut by the Platte, with 
 wood-houses and water-spouts every twelve or 
 fifteen miles, and workshops and eating-houses 
 every seventy - five or one hundred ; the road 
 straight as an arrow across the whole region, 
 and apparently as level as the floor, though ac- 
 tually rising steadily at the rate of ten feet to 
 the mile for the entire five hundred miles ; there 
 is enough of the ride over it to satisfy curiosity 
 and exhaust its novelty, — there is none too much 
 to absorb the grand impressions of vastness, and 
 majesty of area, and take in the glory of sunset 
 and sunrise along the unending horizon. The 
 Plains introduce us, also, to that dry, pure atmos- 
 phere — that cloudless sky and far-reaching vision 
 — which is the great and growing charm of the 
 whole region from the Missouri Eiver to the Pacific 
 
FKOM CHICAGO TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 25 
 
 Ocean. Moving westward from Kew England, there 
 is a constantly increasing dryness of atmosphere, 
 with a broadening sweep and power for the eye; 
 but, after getting fairly outside Eastern influences 
 upon the Plains, it takes on a positive presence, 
 and the traveller feels it as a beauty, as an exhil- 
 aration, an inspiration to every sense. It sur- 
 rounds him with a new world ; it infects him 
 with a new spirit ; and it hangs the banners 
 of pleasure and of beauty over experiences and 
 upon forms that never would have borne them 
 under different skies and in a denser atmosphere. 
 The nights become cold also. Glaring as may 
 have been the day's 9un, and searching its heat, 
 the evening brings refreshing coolness, and the 
 night need of blankets. This phenomenon, too, 
 will attend him through all the new countries he 
 is now entering upon. 
 
 At Cheyenne the Plains end and the Mountains 
 begin — in the eye of faith and the figures of 
 railroad subsidies. The hills at least come into 
 
26 THE PACIFIC RAILKOAD — OPEN. 
 
 sight, and though, the track goes forward through 
 an open country, the shadows of the great Eocky 
 Mountain belt fall faintly around us. Cheyenne 
 wondered and waited long, but finally determined 
 to be a town. Colorado makes its connection here 
 with the continental road ; it is as high up — near 
 six thousand feet above the sea level — as that 
 road will care to have the winter quarters of its 
 supplies and machinery ; it is far enough away 
 to be out of the shadow of Omaha, and Denver 
 lies one hundred miles to the south, and is off 
 the main route. So the town has several thou- 
 sand settled population, and is steadily growing. 
 But here we must switch off the main track. 
 We must see Denver, the real Eocky Mountains, 
 which the railroad cheats us of, their grand 
 snow peaks and their wonderful wide parks, the 
 scene and the source of the central life of the 
 continent, before we shall talk with the Mor- 
 mons, hear the sigh of the Sierra ISTevada pines, 
 or listen to the roll of the Pacific waters. 
 
III. 
 
 COLORADO. 
 
 nr^HOUGH Colorado lies below the line of our 
 first Pacific Eailroad, and above the second, 
 which I take it will be the southern, she cannot be 
 refused a first place among their revelations. Be- 
 cause of her mountains, which turn the tracks north 
 and south, she allures the lovers of the grand and 
 picturesque in scenery; because of her mines of 
 gold and silver, she seduces the greedy for gain ; 
 because of the agricultural resources of her plains 
 and her valleys, she will have steady growth, per- 
 manent prosperity, and nforal rectitude, for these 
 are the gifts of a recompensing soil ; because of her 
 many and various mineral springs, soda, sulphur, 
 and iron, and of her wonderfully clear, dry, and 
 pure atmosphere, she will be the resort of the 
 health-seeking. Within her borders the great con- 
 
28 THE PACIFIC EAILROAD — OPEN. 
 
 tinental mountains display their most magnificent 
 proportions, tlie great continental rivers spring from 
 melting snows, the plains most warmly invite the 
 farmer and the hushandman, and the best popula- 
 tion, between the Missouri Eiver and California, has 
 organized itself into a State. Fifty thousand people 
 here have more than become self-supporting; they 
 are already wealth-producing ; and social order and 
 its institutions of education and religion are estab- 
 lished. The main Pacific Eailroad wisely hastens 
 to connect itself with them by a branch from Chey- 
 enne to Denver ; and St. Louis " builded better than 
 she knew," after all, when, in the apparent spirit of 
 a blind rivalry, she pushed her Eastern Division 
 Pacific Eoad straight towards their centre. Failing 
 to go through the mountains, this road will yet find 
 recompense in furnishing the most direct communi- 
 cation between Colorado and the East, and in throw- 
 ing out branches from its terminus here, through 
 the best agricultural sections of Colorado, to the 
 main continental lines above and below. 
 
COLOEADO. 29 
 
 If the branch track is not laid to Denver when 
 we leave Cheyenne, so much the better. The stage 
 ride of this one hundred miles is an experience to 
 which I welcome the stranger. It is the best repre- 
 sentation of that sort of travel which the rapid 
 progress of our railway system has left us. Fine 
 Concord coaches, six sleek and gay horses in every 
 team, changed each ten miles, good meals on the 
 way, the road itself generally smooth and hard over 
 the open, rolling prairie, the sky clear, the air an 
 inspiration, the open ocean of the plains on one 
 side, the long and high mountain battlements shad- 
 owing us on the other, — altogether, this is as fine a 
 bit of out-door life, by day, as will come within the 
 range of all our summer's journey. By night — for 
 the ride covers the night, as well — new elements 
 come in, which I forbear to detail ; but if my com- 
 panions served in the war, or have tended sick and 
 cross babies through a winter's night, when they 
 had the toothache themselves, I am sure they wiU 
 survive it. 
 
30 THE PACIFIC EAILROAD — OPEN. 
 
 We shall like Denver, spread out upon the rising 
 plain, with the Platte Eiver flowing through and 
 around it, with broad streets and fine blocks of 
 stores, and a panoramic mountain view before it, 
 such as rises before no other town in all the circle 
 of modern travel. For one hundred miles, but- 
 tressed on the north by Long's Peak, and on the 
 south by Pike's Peak, each over fourteen thousand 
 feet high, its line of majestic rock and snow peaks 
 stretches before the eye, ever a surprise by its vari- 
 ety, ever a beauty by its form and color, ever an 
 inspiration in its grandeur. The Alps from Berne 
 do not compare with the Pocky Mountains from 
 Denver ; in nearness, in variety, in clearness of 
 atmosphere, in grand sweep of distance, in majes- 
 tic uplifting of height, these are vastly the supe- 
 rior. Any man with a susceptibility to God's 
 presence in nature must find it very easy to be 
 good in Denver. Certainly, to watch these moun- 
 tains through the changes of light and cloud of 
 a summer's day and evening is a joyful experience. 
 
COLORADO. 31 
 
 worth coining from a long distance to Denver to 
 share. 
 
 The mining centres of Colorado are up among 
 its mountains, twenty-five, fifty, and seventy-five 
 miles from Denver, which is but the political and 
 business capital, and thus facilities exist for travel 
 into the regions whither we would go for knowl- 
 edge and joy of nature. Ten hours of staging 
 take us through Central City, the chief gold- 
 mining centre, at a height of seven thousand feet 
 above the sea, with a population of several 
 thousands, on to Georgetown, two thousand feet 
 higher, the centre of the silver production, with 
 nearly three thousand inhabitants. The way is 
 full of mountain and valley scenery of freshest 
 interest and majestic beauty. At Idaho and Fall 
 Eiver, little villages in the South Clear Creek 
 valley, on the route, are accommodations for sum- 
 mer visitors, with cold and warm soda springs at 
 the former place, furnishing most luxurious bath- 
 ing. And at Georgetown, with larger and better 
 
32 THE PACIFIC EAILROAD — OPEN. 
 
 hotels, we are in the very centre of the highest and 
 finest mountain life in the State. 
 
 Gray's Peaks, the highest explored summits of 
 Colorado (14,300 and 14,500 feet high), and named 
 for the distinguished Cambridge botanist, lie just 
 beyond and above the town, and the excursion 
 to and from their tops may easily be made in a 
 day with guide and horses from Georgetown. The 
 working of mines up as high as twelve thousand 
 feet has secured a wagon-road two thirds the 
 way, and trails for horses lead to the two sum- 
 mits of the mountain. The view from either of 
 a clear morning is the most commanding and im- 
 pressive, I truly believe, within the range of all 
 ordinary American or European travel. Nothing 
 in the Alps takes you so high, reaches so wide. 
 There we overlook a petty province ; here the 
 broad American continent spreads itself around 
 us as a centre, and stretches out its illimitable 
 lengths before the eye. The rain-drops falling on 
 one coat sleeve flow off to the Pacific, on the other, 
 
COLOEADO. 33 
 
 to the Atlantic. We are at the very apex, the ab- 
 solute physical centre, of the IN'orth American 
 continent ; the scene assures the thought, and is 
 worthy of the fact. Fold on fold of snow-slashed 
 and rock-ribbed mountains lie all around, ■ — west, 
 east, north, and south ; they riot in luxuriant mul- 
 tiplicity ; for this is the fastness, the gathering and 
 distributing point of the grand continental range; 
 while away to the east lies the gray-green sea of 
 the plains, and distributed among the snow-folds of 
 the mountains are miniature copies of the same, 
 which look like patches of prairie amid the conti- 
 nent of mountains, yet are, in fact, great Central 
 Parks, from ten to thirty miles wide and forty to 
 seventy miles long. I^orth, Middle, South, and San 
 Luis Parks, — they lie along through the whole 
 line of central Colorado, — great elevated basins 
 or plains, directly under the highest mountains, 
 — soft and smooth ways upon the very backbone 
 of the continent. Some lie on the Atlantic side, 
 others on the Pacific side of the divide ; and" their 
 
 3 
 
34 THE PACIFIC EAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 height above the sea level ranges from seven thou- 
 sand to ten thousand feet. In Europe or in iN'ew 
 England this height in this latitude would be 
 perpetual barrenness, more likely perpetual ice 
 and snow ; but here in Western America grains 
 and vegetables are successfully cultivated, and 
 cattle graze the year round at seven thousand 
 feet, while between that and ten thousand feet 
 there is rich summer pasturage, and often great 
 crops of natural grass are cured for hay. 
 
 These great fertile areas among the high moun- 
 tains of Colorado — this wedding of majestic hill 
 and majestic plain, of summer and winter, of 
 fecund life and barren rock — present abundant 
 attractions for a full summer's travel. Eor the 
 lover of the grand and the novel in nature, or 
 the weary seeking rest from toil and excitement, 
 our country offers nothing so richly recompens- 
 ing as a summer among the parks and moun- 
 tains of Colorado. The dryness of the climate, in- 
 viting to out-door hfe, is favorable to lung difficul- 
 
COLORADO. 35 
 
 ties, thoiigli the very thin air of the higher regions 
 must be avoided by those whose lungs are quite 
 weak. Asthma and bronchitis flee before the breath 
 of this dry, pure atmosphere, and it operates as an 
 exhilarating nerve-tonic to all. Denver and St. 
 Louis are about in the same latitude, and their ther- 
 mometers have nearly the same range, though Den- 
 ver is nearly six thousand feet higher. Its noons are 
 probably warmer, as its nights are certainly cooler, 
 the year round ; but the drier and lighter air, ever in 
 motion from plain and mountain, makes its summer 
 heats always tolerable. Denver is exposed to snow 
 from October to May, but it rarely stays long ; 
 sleighing is as much of a novelty as at Washington 
 or Philadelphia, and its winters are more like a dry, 
 clear E"ew England November than any other sea- 
 son of the East. The valleys and parks of the 
 mountains are similar in chmactic character, with 
 the added influences of three or four thousand feet 
 greater elevation. The principal snows are in early 
 spring, and the rains in late spring and early sum- 
 
36 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN. 
 
 mer. Midwinter and midsummer are imiformly dry 
 and clear. When clouds and storms do come, they 
 are always brief. The sun soon shines through 
 them to warm and clear the sky. 
 
 The saddle and the camp are the true conditions 
 of extended travel or a summer's life in Colorado. 
 A party of four, well-mounted on mules or Western 
 ponies, with a guide and servant, and two pack- 
 mules for tents and blankets and food, carl gain 
 such experience of rare nature, such gift of health, 
 such endowment of pleasure, in leisurely travel over 
 its mountains and among its parks, lingering by the 
 side of their beautiful lakes and their abundant 
 streams fat with trout, basking in its sunshine, 
 hunting in its woods, and bathing in its mineral 
 springs, as nowhere else that I know of in all 
 America. This is surely destined to be " the correct 
 thing to do " for the pleasure and health seekers of 
 the future America. 
 
 Over in Middle Park, two days' horseback ride 
 from Georgetown, are the famous Hot Sulphur 
 
COLORADO. 37 
 
 Springs, a doudhe-bath and a sitz-bath united, 
 sucli as only experience of their wondrous tonic 
 can appreciate. The water is of the temperature 
 of 110° Fahrenheit, — as hot as human flesh can 
 loear, — and pours over a ledge of rock ten feet high 
 into a pool below with a stream of four to six 
 inches in diameter. When wagon-roads are made 
 to the spot, as they soon will be, invaMs will flock 
 to these springs in July and August from the 
 whole country. Already they. are a favorite local 
 resort, despite the hard climb over the mountains 
 into the valley where they lie. 
 
 The South Park is the most attractive and most 
 frequented of these elevated park areas ; and a good 
 wagon-road from Denver, branching out within the 
 park to all its various sections, and taverns and 
 mining villages strung freely along one and through 
 • the other, invite the traveUer to its easy enjoyment. 
 Mount Lincoln, the great parent mountain of the 
 parent range, stands at the northwestern angle of 
 the park, and may be ascended without too severe 
 
38 THE PACIFIC EAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 labor from the village of Montgomery. It is of 
 nearly or quite the same height as Gray's Peaks, 
 and commands a like view. The connoisseurs in 
 mountain views in Colorado dispute as to which 
 smnmit offers the wider and grander. Either is 
 grand enough, and one or other should be enjoyed 
 by every visitor to Colorado. Our ascent of Lin- 
 coln was made amid contending^ torrents of rain, 
 snow, hail, and sunshine, and though the views we 
 obtained were not so complete and satisfactory as 
 those from Gray, the experience was perhaps the 
 grander, because of its variety, and the terrible im- 
 pressiveness of a storm on the mountain-tops, open- 
 ing and closing long glimpses of ghastly worlds of 
 rocks and snow below and all around us. 
 
 The upper mountains of Colorado ^ at eleven 
 thousand and twelve thousand feet — hold numer- 
 ous pools and lakes, and not infrecLuent waterfalls. 
 A party who made the ascent of Long's Peak for the 
 first time, last season, report nearly forty lakes in 
 view at once ; but the parks and lower ranges offer 
 
COLORADO. 39 
 
 them but rarely. A day's ride, in saddle or wag- 
 on, out of South Park, over into the valley of the 
 Upper Arkansas, — where various new beauties of 
 scenery await the explorer, — will carry us into the 
 presence of the Twin Lakes, as beautifully lying 
 sheets of water as mountains ever guarded or sun 
 illuminated. They hold kinship with the Cumber- 
 land lakes of England, the Swiss and Italian lakes, 
 and those of Tahoe and Donner in the California 
 Sierra !N"evada, which are among the sweet revela- 
 tions of the Pacific Eailroad. The Twin Lakes will 
 be one of the specialties when the world goes to 
 Colorado for its summer vacations. 
 
 The tree life of the Eocky Mountains is meagre ; 
 pines and firs and aspens (or cottonwood) make up 
 its catalogue; nor are these so abundant or so rich 
 in size or beauty as to challenge special attention. 
 They grow in greatest luxuriance at elevations of 
 from eight to eleven thousand feet ; and the timber 
 line does not cease till nearly twelve thousand feet 
 is reached. A silver fir or spruce is the one charm 
 
40 THE PACIFIC EAILKOAD — OPEN. 
 
 among the trees. But the flora is more varied and 
 more beautiful ; Dr. Parry reports one hundred and 
 forty-one different species in these higher moun- 
 tains, eighty-four of which are peculiar to them ; and 
 I can report that nowhere else have I gathered such 
 wealth — in glory of color and perfection and num- 
 bers — of fringed gentians, harebells, painter's brush, 
 buttercups, larkspurs, child sunflowers, dandelions, 
 and columbines, as on these eight and ten thousand 
 feet high hillsides, or in little nooks of grass and 
 grove still higher. Blue and yellow are the domi- 
 nant colors ; but the reds flame out in the painter's 
 brush and the kernel of the sunflowers, like beacons 
 of light amid darkness. With much lacking in de- 
 tails of beauty and interest, that are found in the 
 country life of l^ew England and the Middle States, 
 as in California, Colorado more than redeems her- 
 self by the charm of her atmosphere and the mag- 
 nificent majesty of her mountains and her plains. 
 These are her title to supremacy, her claim to be 
 to America what Switzerland is to Europe. 
 
COLORADO. 41 
 
 But I cannot hope my Pacific Eailroad travellers 
 will give more than seven or ten days to Colorado, 
 — an appetizer for a future summer's feast, — and 
 I rely on the patriotic and thrifty citizens of 
 Denver and Georgetown to perfect some arrange- 
 ments by which, in that time, they may get a fair 
 glimpse of its grand and rare specialties of moun- 
 tain ranges and enfolded parks, and a share in 
 the out-door life they invite. A ride up through 
 the mountains by Boulder Creek or South Clear 
 Creek valleys, on to the head of the latter above 
 Empire or at Georgetown, the ascent of Gray or 
 Lincoln, and a peep into and a cut across the 
 South Park, with two or three nights in camp, 
 and a half-day's trout - fishing, — these I con- 
 sider essential ; and under good guidance they 
 may all be had within the time mentioned. As- 
 cending Gray's Peaks from Georgetown, I should 
 recommend going down on the other side, and a 
 night's camp on the Snake Kiver; thence to 
 the junction of the Snake, the Blue, and Ten 
 
42 THE PACIFIC EAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 Mile Creek; up the Blue to Breckinridge; over 
 the Breckinridge Pass into South Park at Ham- 
 ilton or Fairplay ; and thence, if there is not 
 time for Lincoln or the Arkansas Lakes, across 
 the Park and out to Denver by Turkey Creek 
 Canyon and the Plains. All this could be put 
 into seven days from Denver, though ten would 
 be better ; but, through lack of a wagon-road from 
 Georgetown over to Snake Eiver, it would have 
 to be done in part or altogether in the saddle. 
 Hotels could be reached for all but one or two 
 nights ; but these may be made, with fortunate 
 camping-ground, choice companions, and plenty 
 of blankets and firewood, the most memorable 
 and happy of the whole week. 
 
 With such experience as this, we go back to 
 the railroad at Cheyenne, with a new sense of 
 the greatness of America, with a curious doubt- 
 ing wonder as to what can lie beyond, and with 
 appetites that we shall probably have to go to 
 Pord's to satisfy, while waiting for our train for 
 Salt Lake City. 
 
lY. 
 
 THE MOUNTAINS AND THE MORMONS. 
 
 T3 ESUMING- the cars, for the grand ride over 
 the Eocky Mountain section of the track, 
 an hour or so from Cheyenne takes us to Sherman, 
 the highest point (8,200 feet) of the entire railroad 
 line. But we feel rather than see the evidences of 
 tlie fact. The air is thin and chill, even under a 
 July or August sun ; but it is a high plain, and 
 not mountain-tops, that the track rests upon. There 
 are bare, smoothly-rounded hills about ; scattered 
 over them are huge boulders, or piles of boulders, 
 like remnants of mountains ; but the mountains 
 themselves stand far away in the dim distance; 
 and the train speeds free and nearly straight over 
 an open and comparatively level country, crossing 
 an occasional deep ravine or river-bed, cutting 
 through a rare rock remnant of the original hill- 
 
44 THE PACIFIC EAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 tops, but altogether finding easy pathway through 
 the one hnndred and fifty miles that counted, in the 
 government subsidy, as peculiarly the mountainous 
 section, and had the exceptional allowance of 
 $48,000 a mile. A clean reddish granite, ground 
 fine by nature, makes the most compact and en- 
 during of road-beds ; the ties come from thin for- 
 ests in the distant hills ; and altogether we are still 
 in a paradise for railroad contractors. 
 
 Down and on from Sherman a thousand feet and 
 twenty-five miles the land grows more level still, 
 and the Laramie Plains spread a broad fifty miles 
 around us. They are like one of the parks below in 
 Colorado, only the mountains do not lie so close and 
 commanding around, and the views are less pictu- 
 resqu.e and nature less rich ; but the neighboring 
 hills will repay the sportsman. A considerable 
 village is springing up at Laramie ; the Plains are 
 famous in overland emigrant travel, and were long 
 headquarters for the government supplies and sol- 
 diers in the mountains ; and those of us who failed 
 
THE MOUNTAINS AND THE MOEMONS. 45 
 
 to look into the parks of Colorado will be well re- 
 paid for stopping here a day or two. 
 
 Beyond, the country grows gradually barren ; and 
 after crossing the ^^Torth Platte Eiver, we enter upon 
 one hundred and fifty miles of desert, — a waterless, 
 treeless, grassless, rolling plain, the soil fine, dry, 
 and impregnated with alkali, the air pure, dry, and 
 cool, — a section shudderingly remembered by slow- 
 travelling emigrants, and memorable in the history 
 of railroad construction for the necessity of having 
 a special water train to supply the workmen and 
 the engines while carrying forward the work through 
 it. Eightly named Bitter Creek gathers the slug- 
 gish surface waters it furnishes, and carries them 
 on to Green Eiver, reaching which we enter upon 
 new and better scenes. The water increases and 
 freshens, the verdure improves ; but thajb which 
 attracts the traveller most is the novel and impos- 
 ing forms of architecture that IRature has left to 
 mark her history upon these still open plains. Long, 
 wide troughs, as of departed rivers ; long level em- 
 
46 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN. 
 
 bankments, as of railroad tracks or endless fortifi- 
 cations ; huge, quaint hills, suddenly rising from 
 the plain, bearing fantastic shapes ; great square 
 mounds of rock and earth, haK-formed, half-broken 
 pyramids, — it would seem as if a generation of 
 giants had built and buried here, and left their 
 work to awe and humble a puny succession. The 
 Black, the Pilot, and the Church Buttes are among 
 the more celebrated of these huge monumental 
 mountains standing on the level plain ; but the 
 railway track passes out of sight of them, all ex- 
 cept the Church Butte, which, seen under favorable 
 lights, imposes on the imagination like a grand old 
 cathedral going into decay, quaint in its crumbling 
 ornaments, majestic in its height and breadth. They 
 seem, like the more numerous and fantastic illus- 
 trations of Nature's frolicsome art in Southern Colo- 
 rado, to be the remains of granite hills that wind 
 and water, and especially the sand whirlpools which 
 march in lordly force through the air, — literally 
 moving mountains, — have left to hint the past, 
 
THE MOUNTAINS AND THE MOEMONS. 47 
 
 and tell the story of their own achievements. Not 
 unfitly, there as here, they have won the title of 
 *" Monuments to the Gods." 
 
 Passing the waters that flow south to the Colo- 
 rado, we come to those that run west to the Salt 
 Lake Basin. ISTature now deserts us as a railroad 
 engineer ; and high art and mighty labor are sum- 
 moned to make a path for the track through and 
 down these western ranges of the Rocky Mountains. 
 Over and down the high hills, the road at last 
 reaches Echo Canyon, and, following that to its 
 entrance into Weber Canyon, proceeds by this into 
 the Yalley of the Salt Lake. These canyons are 
 narrow and rugged, with high, perpendicular walls 
 of red rock, with picturesque openings and fresh 
 running streams, with little Mormon farms, and 
 every element of agreeable and inspiring scenery. 
 The mountain-tops are white with snow ; the 
 valleys are green with grass or gay with flowers; 
 and those greatly cherished but long-missed com- 
 panions of man, the trees, now come in to freshen 
 
48 THE PACIFIC EAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 and familiarize tlie scene. WitHn this region we 
 meet, moving west, the first tunnels of the road ; 
 and there are five of them, aggregating nearly two 
 thousand feet, between Green Eiver and the Salt 
 Lake Valley. 
 
 Our travellers across the continent, men or wo- 
 men, will not need urging to stop at Salt Lake City, 
 though it lies forty miles south of Ogden, where 
 the Pacific Eailroad enters and crosses the Salt 
 Lake Valley. The social and the natural pheno- 
 mena centring there make it perhaps the most 
 interesting feature in our journey. The courage 
 of men who undertake the management of num- 
 berless wives will attract one sex, while the auda- 
 city of the act will arouse the wonder, if not the 
 worship, of the other. Here, too, are study for the 
 statesman, thought for the philosopher, and puzzles 
 for the scientific student. But the science of Salt 
 Lake City, social and natural, presents problems not 
 easily solved ; and one must be content to look 
 upon the surface of things, and move on. There 
 
THE MOUNTAINS AND THE MOEMONS. 49 
 
 will be, this summer, a brancli railroad to the city, 
 and sooner or later the track will proceed on south 
 throuo-h the lower Mormon settlements to Arizona. 
 
 The town will delight us with its location, on a 
 high plain over the broad vaUey of the Jordan, 
 Camp Douglgss behind on a higher bench of land, 
 the Wahsatch Mountains, with winter caps, hanging 
 above it on the north and east, while opposite lower 
 mountains make a western horizon, and Salt Lake, 
 an inland ocean, ripples and shimmers under the 
 noonday sun, fifteen miles away. Broad streets, 
 with the irrigating brooks pouring down their gut- 
 ters ; good hotels ; large and well-supplied stores ; 
 an abundant market ; a large and weU-appointed 
 theatre, run in the name and for the benefit of the 
 Church; gardens luxurious with fruit, the peach 
 and the strawberry most abounding, and bountiful 
 with vegetables ; hot sulphur springs in the suburbs, 
 inviting most luxurious baths ; summer days, dry 
 and pure, yet cool nights, — aU these wiU seduce the 
 senses and minister to our joy, and the traveller 
 
 4 
 
50 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN. 
 
 may well sing with Bishop Heber that " every pros- 
 pect pleases, and only man is vile." A drive out to 
 Salt Lake, and a bath and a sail, if they are to be 
 had, guarding the mouth and eyes from the water, 
 which is sharply salt, and the stomach from sea- 
 sickness, for the wind makes short waves on this 
 sea ; an attendance, if it is Sunday, — and we should 
 manage to have our visit cover a Sabbath, — upon 
 the services in the grand Church Square, where we 
 shall see the old and new tabernacles, and the foun- 
 dations of the grand Mormon cathedral, as well as 
 an audience of several thousand Mormons, affording 
 an interesting human study ; a walk under the high 
 wall around Brigham Young's equally grand square 
 opposite, with tithing-house, home for thirty wives 
 and seventy children, private school-house for the 
 family, all the central business ofiices of church and 
 state, stables and warehouses to match so mammoth 
 an establishment, and gardens of grapes and peaches 
 and pears and flowers and vegetables, all within the 
 area, — counting up, as we walk, the contending 
 
THE MOUNTAINS AND THE MORMONS. 51 
 
 passions and conflicting experiences, the crushed 
 loves and the subdued hates, the moral murders 
 perpetrated, the physical murders planned, enfold- 
 ed in this ten-acre circuit of wall; an excursion 
 back to the mouth of the canyon that overlooks 
 city and valley ; a numbering of the front-doors of 
 the long, low adobe cottages, as the simplest means 
 of learning how many wives each owner has, and 
 wondering if haK of these children, that swarm in 
 every door-yard, and play around every mud-puddle, 
 have any idea who their fathers are, — these em- 
 brace all that such passing travellers can hope or 
 need to see and experience of Utah and the Mor- 
 mons ; and for these from two to four days will 
 suffice. 
 
 We shall busy ourselves, of course, with a dozen 
 questions and a dozen theories about Mormonism, 
 about polygamy and Brigham Young, and when and 
 how they are all coming to an end ; perhaps, if we 
 hear earnest Mormons talk, we shall wonder in our 
 hearts if it is possible they are right, and this little 
 
52 THE PACIFIC KAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 leaven in Utah is, as they say, bound to leaven the 
 whole American lump, and polygamy become the 
 law of the sexes, and Mormonism the religion of the 
 future, — which is all well enough if we keep our 
 wondering doubts to ourselves. We may know, if 
 we observe closely and think intelligently, that no 
 social, political, and religious organization, all bound 
 into one and proceeding from a common head, so 
 foreign to all our principles of life and growth, as 
 this of Brigham Young in Utah, exists elsewhere in 
 America, nor even in Europe, indeed ; and it will 
 take but little knowledge of history and its philos- 
 ophy, and less of the American instinct of life and 
 of man's progress, to convince us that it must give 
 way, and be swept almost into forgetfulness by the 
 advancing tide of American emigration and Amer- 
 ican civilization. There is nothing in our American 
 fundamentals that is not outraged in the theories 
 and practice of the autocracy that rules here in 
 Utah ; and unless we are going speedily back to the 
 civilization of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, this thing 
 
THE MOUNTAINS AND THE MORMONS. 53 
 
 will not be, cannot be. And yet a beautiful and 
 prosperous city of twenty-five thousand inhabitants, 
 and a surrounding territory of near one hundred 
 thousand, making a garden here in the dry desert 
 of this central basin of the continent, will impress 
 us wonderfully, as it ought, with the power of a 
 religious fanaticism, directed by a lordly will, and 
 organizing a faithful, simple industry, to create 
 wealth, and to set in motion many of the elements 
 of progress and civilization. But for the pioneer- 
 ship of the Mormons, discovering the pathway, and 
 feeding those who came out upon it, all this central 
 region of our great West would be now many years 
 behind its present development, and the railroad, 
 instead of being finished, would hardly be begun. 
 
V. 
 
 FROM SALT LAKE TO THE PACIFIC. 
 
 "^ I ^HERE is no end to the anomalies of nature in 
 this great interior American basin, of whicli 
 the Salt Lake VaUey is alike the threshold, the gem, 
 and a sub-specimen. But the study of them is now 
 accompanied with so many drawbacks that the 
 pleasure-traveller will, after leaving Salt Lake City, 
 seek to put the whole region between him and the 
 Sierras as speedily as possible. Ascending and 
 passing out of the Valley, the road skirts the 
 northern shore of the lake, crossing Bear- River, 
 its chief tributary, and going through the Promon- 
 tory Mountains that come down from the north into 
 the lake. Here the two companies building the 
 railroad, from east and west, joined their tracks, 
 though the point of actual connection is at Ogden, 
 in the valley below ; from here the stage lines start, 
 
FROM SALT LAKE TO THE PACIFIC. 55 
 
 northeast and northwest, to Montana and Idaho ; 
 and from here, too, the Union or Eastern Pacific 
 company intends to stretch a branch road np to 
 and along the Snake branch of the Columbia Eiver, 
 through Idaho, and down the Columbia to the sea, 
 thus making for itself a distinct connection with the 
 Pacific Ocean. The distance is six hundred and 
 fifty miles, but for half of it steamboats can run 
 on the rivers, so that the first construction, to 
 insure steam communication, is comparatively not 
 large, and will hardly require more money than 
 the profits of the company in building the main 
 line. 
 
 Stretching out from Salt Lake through high 
 broad valleys or plains, barren and forbidding, 
 the road seeks the Humboldt Valley, and follows 
 that river for two hundred and thirty miles. This 
 is the old emigrant route across the continent, 
 cheerless and dreary enough, indeed, but far more 
 tolerable than the old stage-road, which led us 
 south of Salt Lake, and crossed ItTevada at about 
 
56 THE PACIFIC EAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 its centre. The river is sluggisli and muddy, 
 and fertilizes but a narrow strip of land in its 
 path ; it lies along a trough between high vol- 
 canic table-lands on the north, and the ranges of 
 mountains that every fifteen or twenty miles lead 
 off south through IsTevada, and out of whose snows 
 it gathers its feeble waters. Where the road enters 
 the valley wide and watery meadows spread out 
 a sickly oasis, and where it leaves it the same 
 phenomenon is repeated ; for the rest, there is little 
 to divert the traveller, nothing to inspire him but 
 the dry, clear air, and the rounded outlines of the 
 bare hills. Elko, where the main tributary of the 
 Humboldt comes out of the snow-capped East 
 Humboldt mountains, which are ten thousand to 
 twelve thousand feet high, and the backbone of 
 the great basin, is the point of departure for the 
 new silver-mines of White Pine, the latest sen- 
 sation of the sensation-loviQg Pacific coast. They 
 lie one hundred and forty miles south of the rail- 
 road, in Southeastern Nevada, and if they hold 
 
FROM SALT LAKE TO THE PACIFIC. 57 
 
 out as they have begun, with a pretty sure prom- 
 ise of five millions the first year, they will force 
 the first southern cross railroad to the Colorado, 
 and checkmate Mormonism in the south. 
 
 A little farther out we touch a bit of emigrant 
 sentiment in Maggie Creek from the north, so 
 named for a pretty little Scotch girl, pet of .one 
 of the early columns of the army of civilization 
 crossing this way years ago. Here is Carlin, a 
 town of hopes, as marking a point of departure 
 from the West for Idaho. J^ear here, too, if the 
 locomotive breaks down, the traveller may refresh 
 himself by climbing a little knob, a few rods from 
 the road, and find that nature has improved an 
 old crater by turning it into a mammoth hot sul- 
 phur bath-tub. At Argenta he will be invited 
 to a stage ride of ninety miles up the Eeese Eiver 
 " valley to Austin ; but if he has ever invested in 
 any of its mines, he will decline with a shudder, 
 and set his face resolutely west. The glory of 
 Austin is a trifle dimmed now; but it has had 
 
5S THE PACIFIC RAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 its five or six thousand inliabitants, and was the 
 successor of " Washoe/' and the forerunner of White 
 Pine, in the series of mining movements that have 
 made Nevada, and even threaten to perpetuate her 
 existence as a State against every other Divine gift 
 and grace. 
 
 If we are hent on novelty, eighteen miles farther 
 west we shall switch off our car for half a day, 
 and borrow horses and gallop away south, among 
 the barren hills and more barren valleys, into the 
 Whirlwind Valley, where sulphurous waters beat 
 and bubble beneath the surface, like numerous 
 struggling hidden pumps or steam-engines, and 
 occasionally burst out in columns of burning 
 water and clouds of hot steam. Great, stiU. pools 
 invite to a bath, yet mayhap would overtake the 
 bather with a scalding, crystallizing explosion, and 
 leave him a monumental statue of his temerity, 
 and a new wonder of Nature in the Great Basin. 
 Frequently she revenges herself here for her stint 
 in all the ordinary natural graces by these deposits 
 
FEOM SALT LAKE TO THE PACIFIC. 59 
 
 of seething chemicals, that seem to be faint breath- 
 ings of dying volcanoes, or the early efforts of new 
 
 ones. 
 
 Passing between the Trinity Mountains on the 
 north and the West Humboldt on the south, and 
 through a mining district of great hopes, large pros- 
 pecting, and small returns, the road now leaves the 
 Humboldt Eiver, which sneaks off among the hills 
 to die in the sands, and, crossing the Truckee Des- 
 ert, forty miles of_ the dreariest country it has 
 yet passed, — arid, alkalish, and Arabic, the only 
 life, lizards and jackass rabbits, the only landscape 
 feature, dry, brown, and bare mountains, the 
 only hope, the end, — the track brings us within 
 the waters and the winds of the California moun- 
 tains. 
 
 Along the Truckee to Eeno, we should there take 
 a day to see Yirginia City and Gold Hill, fourteen 
 miles away on a branch road. The great Comstock 
 lode lies under these two towns; they are built 
 along the mountain-side, upon the crust of the 
 
60 THE PACIFIC EAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 great silver-mine of America, with open depths be- 
 neath of from five hundred to one thousand feet, 
 and more miles of streets below than above; and 
 they are the theatre of the most systematic and ex- 
 tensive if not the most successful mining operations 
 in this country. The mines in this lode have 
 yielded over eighty millions in gold and silver 
 since 1860, reaching sixteen millions, or their high- 
 est year's return, in 1867, but faUing off one haK in 
 1868, and giving signs now of being nearly worked 
 out. It is in the hope of their renewal, at least of 
 a more profitable working, that Congress is besought 
 to give millions for a tunnel from far down the val- 
 ley in under the mountain to the lode at a point 
 below its present excavations. But with any real 
 faith in the future possibilities of the mine, the 
 money for the work can be raised in California and 
 Nevada easier than it can be bored and bought 
 through Congress. The question at issue is one of 
 life or death to these towns ; but they are well 
 worth even the hurried traveller's visit, as weU for 
 
FEOM SALT LAKE TO THE PACIFIC. 61 
 
 their historical relations to silver-mining, to the 
 settlement and organization of Nevada, and to the 
 Pacific Eailroad, as for offering the best opportunity 
 for observing the processes of quartz mining and 
 milling, and not a little, indeed, for the uniqueness 
 of their location and the surrounding natural ob- 
 jects of interest. 
 
 The " Steamboat Springs " in the neighborhood 
 repeat the phenomena of Whirlwind Valley. Car- 
 son, the capital, lies pleasantly in an adjoining val- 
 ley nearer the great mountains ; but the mountains 
 themselves now invite us more strongly, and we 
 are soon moving swiftly among their gurgling waters 
 and soughing pines, — rarer water and grander forest 
 than we have seen before, — with towering walls of 
 rock and distant snow-fields, that are full of Alpine 
 memories. The snow-sheds over -the track shut out 
 the best of the mountain scenery, and we must stop 
 near the summit of Donner Lake, a beautiful sheet 
 of water, already a favorite summer resort for Cali- 
 fornia, and type of a series of grand lakes along the 
 
62 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN. 
 
 upper Sierras, that add a rare charm to their many 
 other scenic attractions. A day or two here will 
 make us familiar with the numerous beauties of 
 this mountain range, the grand forests, the castel- 
 lated rocks, the wedded summer and winter, the 
 dry, pure air, the mosses, the flowers and moun- 
 tain fruits, and refresh us for the descent into 
 the hot suns and the brown valleys of California's 
 summer. 
 
 The railroad passage over these mountains is the 
 greatest triumph of engineering skill and labor on 
 the whole line. The track going west ascends 
 twenty-five hundred feet in fifty miles, and descends 
 six thousand feet in seventy-five miles. There are 
 over a mile of tunnels on the route, and a million 
 of dollars were spent in blasting-powder alone for 
 the construction.. Majestic, frowning peaks hang 
 over us, deep, almost fathomless gorges lie beneath 
 us, as we follow out and around the long ridges in 
 the descent into California ; and amid scenes more 
 bold and impressive than any we have yet passed 
 
FROM SALT LAKE TO THE PACIFIC. 63 
 
 through, we pass out into the lower valleys, and 
 reach California's capital, Sacramento. 
 
 Three lines invite us thence to San Francisco : 
 the river-boats ; a short-cut railroad to Vallejo at 
 the head of the bay, with a twenty-mile ferriage ; or 
 the Pacific Eailroad's proper prolongation around 
 through Stockton to Oakland, the rural suburb 
 and school-house of San Francisco, lying opposite, 
 and an hour's steamboat ride away, on the bay. 
 By and by rails will circuit the bay, and we may 
 go into the heart of San Francisco without " break- 
 ing bulk " or touching water. Sacramento, Stock- 
 ton, and Oakland are all worth a passing glance. 
 They are inland rural cities, like Cleveland and 
 Columbus in Ohio, or Hartford, Springfield, and 
 Worcester in E"ew England, pleasantly located by 
 the water, brisk with local trade and developing 
 manufactures, mature in social and religious ele- 
 ments, rich in many beautiful homes ; they rank 
 next to San Francisco among the towns of Califor- 
 nia. Sacramento and Stockton stand respectively at 
 
64 THE PACIFIC EAILROAD — OPEN. 
 
 the heads of the Sacramento and San Joaquin val- 
 leys, which form, north and south, the great interior 
 basin and agricultural region of the State, and whose 
 waters uniting pour westward and circle San Fran- 
 cisco with her wealth of bay. 
 
YI. 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO. 
 
 "O UT it is at San Francisco that we shall linger 
 and take in the essence of California life, and 
 cast the future of California's wealth. First we 
 shall go to the Occidental, Cosmopolitan, Euss, or 
 Lick Hotels, and live at three dollars a day, — spe- 
 cie, mind you, now, — as weU as at the Tremont or 
 Fifth Avenue. Perhaps we shall have a mind to 
 try that " peculiar institution " of the city, the 
 " What Cheer House," where meals and lodgings 
 are fifty cents each, with a library and natural his- 
 tory and mineralogical museums thrown in ; we 
 shall certainly want to test the French restaurants, 
 where, at sharp six and a private table, we may 
 have for a dollar and a half as good a dinner of 
 four or five courses, wine included, as Parker or 
 Delmonico wiU give us for a five-dollar bill. 
 
 5 
 
66 THE PACIFIC KAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 The fruit surprise will have been broken to us as 
 we came down from the mountains ; but still the 
 wonder grows at the sight of the city fruit-stands, — 
 Sweetwater and Black Hamburg and Muscat grapes 
 at from five to twelve cents a pound, and poorer 
 qualities at haK the price ; strawberries the season 
 through ; peaches and pears, more fair and luscious 
 and large than our senses were ever accustomed to ; 
 fresh figs, oranges, limes, and bananas, — all at 
 moderate prices, and all in such abundance on the 
 hotel tables and in the streets as to make a fruit- 
 famished New-Englander rub his eyes and prick his 
 flesh lest he be in a fairy-land dream. Then the 
 more substantial articles of food: here is flour at 
 half Atlantic prices, and vegetables of every kind, 
 spring, summer, and fall varieties, all at once in 
 fullest perfection; here are fresh salmon twelve 
 months in the year, at from ten to twenty cents a 
 pound, and smelts at eight cents, and fresh cod, 
 bass, shrimps, anchovies, soles, even herrings, every 
 treasure of the sea; and game as various, and at 
 
SAN FEANCISCO. 67 
 
 prices that in many instances shame our Eastern 
 markets. The materials for living are in as rich 
 supply here as the art of their preparation is per- 
 fect, and it will not take the thrifty mind long to 
 calculate that, so far as food is concerned, a family 
 can be supported more cheaply in San Francisco 
 than in New York or Boston. The rates quoted 
 are, of course, specie ; but wages and profits are 
 also in specie, and are higher, generally, than 
 currency wages and profits in Eastern cities. 
 
 The summer, we must remember, is apt to be 
 chillier than the winter in San Erancisco ; and 
 though the morning sun may seduce us, it will 
 never do to venture out for the day in shoes and 
 white stockings or without overcoats. Montgomery 
 Street is Wall Street and Broadway united, and at 
 all hours of the day is full of business life and fash- 
 ionable gayety, — the promenade of richly dressed 
 women, the busy arena of " cornering " and " cor- 
 nered " men. To the right, chiefly on made land, flat 
 and regular, lie the heavy business squares of the 
 
68 THE PACIFIC RAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 city ; to the left we mount, through, retail shops to 
 homes, with weary legs and bended backs, the great 
 sand-hills that are such a blessing to street contrac- 
 tors, such a trial to land-owners and tax-payers, yet 
 for us such a grand point of view over city and sur- 
 roundings, over the wide range of interior waters 
 that gather here from all the State, and, with delay- 
 ing, lingering movement, circle the city as with a 
 sea, and then reluctantly and yet with majestic 
 sweep pass through the line of rocks by the Golden 
 Gate into the Ocean. We must be sure and get this 
 grand view of city and bay from several points ; 
 it is a revelation in itself of the future Pacific Coast 
 Empire, certainly of San Francisco's security as its 
 metropolis. 
 
 The San Franciscans, having begun wrongly on 
 the American straight line and square system of 
 laying out the city, are tugging away at these hills 
 with tireless energy, to reduce the streets to a grade 
 that man and horse can ascend and descend without 
 double collar and breecliing help ; but there is work 
 
SAN FEANCISCO. 69 
 
 in it for many a generation to come. They would 
 have done better in accepting the situation at the 
 first, chosen N'ature engineer and architect in chief, 
 and circled the hiUs with their streets and build-' 
 ings, instead of undertaking to go up and then 
 through them. Such a flank attack would have 
 been much more successful and economical and 
 given them a vastly more picturesque city. 
 
 In town, the buildings of the Mercantile and 
 Young Men's Christian Associations, and of the 
 California Bank, the financial king of the coast, 
 will attract us ; the school-houses and churches will 
 show that E'ew England has been aggressive here 
 for years ; the machine-shops and woollen-mills will 
 suggest that we talk lower of Lowell and Holyoke 
 and Pittsburg ; and the stores and shops and little 
 factories of all sorts, springing into success all about 
 our wandering paths in city and suburbs, will prove 
 to us that here are a people not only capable of 
 going alone, but already doing so. San Francisco is 
 only twenty years old, yet she has one hundred and 
 
70 THE PACIFIC EAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 fifty thousand inhabitants, a third of th^ population 
 of the whole State ; her manufactures aggregate 
 thirty millions a year, which exceeds the gold and 
 silver products of the State, and equals the wheat 
 crop ; her commerce employs from forty to fifty 
 steamships and three thousand sailing vessels ; and, 
 already the third, she will soon be the second com- 
 mercial city of the nation. It is not best to burden 
 our soul with many statistics ; but if we expect to 
 get along without either a quarrel with or the con- 
 tempt of our California friends, we must show that 
 we know on what this Csesar of cities is feeding, and 
 how fat she is sure to be. They talk lovingly as 
 well as grandly of " Frisco " out here, and they only 
 allow New York to be ranked as a rival when they 
 are in their most condescending moods. Boston is 
 where Starr King came from, and that is glory 
 enough for her, and she ought to be forever grate- 
 ful to California for giving him fit field for his 
 powers, and so renown to his birthplace. 
 
 In the clear, quiet morning, before the wiad 
 
SAN FRANCISCO. 71 
 
 sucks in over these sand-hills through the Golden 
 Gate, and the coarse dust bhnds and stings, we 
 win drive out to the ocean at the CM House. 
 It is an hour's ride, and the road is smooth and 
 hard. We might weU stop for an hour at Lone 
 Mountain Cemetery, and see how San Francisco 
 is making a iit burial-place, under adverse cir- 
 cumstances, and pays tribute to the memory of 
 Broderick and James King of William, proud 
 martyrs to the political and social reformation 
 of the town and State. On the rocks before the 
 Cliff House,— where we shaU take our second 
 breakfast or lunch, — an army of huge seals creep 
 up to sun themselves and bark, and great, gawky 
 pelicans flap about; and, getting down under the 
 bank, we lie on the hard sands, and try to realize 
 that this is the Pacific Ocean, and that beyond 
 He the Sandwich Islands and China and Japan. 
 Driving back along the hard beach for miles, 
 our horses trotting to the roU of the ocean, we 
 attack the city from another quarter, see its proud 
 
72 THE PACIFIC EAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 Orphan Asylum, its old Mission grounds, and 
 appreciate how much room for growth these wide- 
 rolling sand-hills afford. 
 
 The ever-present Chinese will pique our curi- 
 osity. We must look into their homes, compact, 
 simple, yet not over clean or sweet-smelling quar- 
 ters, into their restaurants, and their theatre, if it 
 is open, and into their "Josh Houses." Their 
 stores invite us with open doors, and tempt our 
 pockets with all the various specialties of Chinese 
 manufacture at reasonable prices. The few are 
 men of stature and presence, with faces of refine- 
 ment and gentle strength; the many go sneaking 
 about their work, a low type of man, physically and 
 mentally, that are imported here like merchandise, 
 and let out to labor under a system only half re- 
 moved from slavery itself. But they are an impor- 
 tant element in the industry and progress of all 
 this side of the continent. Except for their labor, 
 the Pacific Eailroad would have been at least two 
 years longer in building. Twelve thousand of 
 
SAN FRANCISCO. 73 
 
 them have done nearly all the picking and drill- 
 ing and shovelling and wheeling of the road from 
 Sacramento to Salt Lake. They furnish the prin- 
 cipal labor in the factories ; they make cigars ; they 
 dig and work over neglected gold-gulches ; they 
 are cooks ; they count the specie in the banks ; 
 they almost monopolize the clothes washing and 
 ironing ; in all the lighter and simpler departments 
 of labor, where fidelity to a pattern, and not flexi- 
 bility and originality of action are required, they 
 make the best and most reliable of workers. At 
 least seventy-five thousand of them are scattered 
 over these Pacific States west of Utah ; and though 
 our American and European laborers quarrel with 
 and abuse them ; though the law gives them no 
 rights but that of suffering punishment ; though 
 they bring no families, and seek no citizenship; 
 though all the Chinese women here are not only 
 commercial, but expressly imported as such ; though 
 they are mean and contemptible in their vices as 
 in their manners; though they are despised and 
 
74 THE PACIFIC EAILROAD — OPEN. 
 
 kicked about on every hand, — still they come and 
 thrive, slowly better their physical and moral and 
 mental conditions, and supply this country with the 
 greatest necessity for its growth and prosperity, — 
 cheap labor. What we shaU do with them is not 
 quite clear yet ; how they are to rank — socially, 
 civiUy, and politically — among us, is one of the 
 nuts for our social science students to crack, — if 
 they can ; but now that we have depopulated Ire- 
 land, and Germany is holding on to its own, and so 
 the old sources of our labor supply are drying up, 
 all America needs them, and, obeying the great nat- 
 ural law of demand and supply, Asia seems almost 
 certain to pour upon and over us countless thou- 
 sands of her superfluous, cheap-living, slow-chang- 
 ing, unassimilating, but very useful laborers. And 
 we shall welcome, and then quarrel over and with 
 them, as we have done with their Irish predecessors. 
 Our vast grain, cotton, and fruit fields ; our extend- 
 ing system of public works ; our multiplying sys- 
 tem of manufactures, all need and can employ 
 
SAN FRANCISCO. 75 
 
 tliem. But must they vote, and if so, to wliat 
 effect? 
 
 The garden-yards of San Francisco homes, as of 
 other California towns, welcomed us lovingly, and 
 will bid us a sweet adieu. Great open conserva- 
 tories, with daily artificial waterings in summer, 
 they maintain freshness of color and vigor of bloom 
 the whole year through. Eoses of every name and 
 variety, never dying and never resting ; heliotropes 
 and fuchsias climbing over fences and houses, — 
 in fact, all our New England June to October 
 blooms make perpetual summer gayety of color 
 and gratefulness of odor, at little outlay of means, 
 around every individual house. The climate of 
 the city is more even than of the country, — never 
 so warm, never so cold ; not soft or kind to invalids, 
 but a tonic and a preservative for the well, and 
 keeping labor up to its fullest capacity for the 
 whole twelvemonth. 
 
 Let us look into Wells, Fargo, & Co.'s express on 
 Montgomery Street, before we leave San Francisco, 
 
76 THE PACIFIC KAILROAD — OPEN. 
 
 for an illustration of how much more tlioroughly 
 these new people on the Pacific coast meet the 
 exacting wants of our civilization than either 
 Europe or the Eastern States. Here, for ten cents 
 (three to the Government for the permission and 
 seven for the work), your letter is taken and carried 
 anywhere on the broad continent, delivered, if its 
 direction bears a local habitation and a name, and 
 mailed in the nearest post-offi.ce, if it has not ; here 
 you can ship merchandise, small or great, to any 
 known spot on the globe's surface ; here you can 
 buy gold or greenbacks ; here draw on your Eastern 
 correspondents, and receive the cash down ; here 
 they will bargain to carry anything for you any- 
 where, yourself included ; to bring you anything, 
 send for anything, sell you anything, supply you 
 with information on any given topic ; and generally 
 set you up in knowledge, money, business, and char- 
 acter. Our Eastern express companies never began 
 to make themselves half so useful or omnipresent. 
 San Francisco will impress all her visitors deeply 
 
SAN FKANCISCO. 77 
 
 in many ways. We see it is very new ; yet we see 
 it is very old. Civilization is better organized here 
 in some respects than in any other city except 
 Paris ; some of its streets look as if transplanted 
 from a city of Europe ; others are in the first stages 
 of rescue from the barbaric desert. Asia, Europe, 
 and America have here met and embraced each 
 other ; yet the mark of America is over and upon 
 all ; an America in which the flavor of 'New Eng- 
 land can be tasted above all other local elements ; 
 an America in which the flexibility, the adapt- 
 ability, and the all-penetrating, all-subduing power 
 of its own race are everywhere and in everything 
 manifest. 
 
VII. 
 
 CALIFOKNIA AT LARGE. 
 
 /^UTSIDE of San Francisco California has 
 many a choice wonder in nature, many a 
 rare development of industry to show its visitors. 
 But summer tourists may be choice in their selec- 
 tions. A few days for railroad excursions into the 
 valleys of the coast mountains about San Francisco 
 will show us some of the grand wheat-fields, the 
 orchards, and the vineyards; will exhibit the ad- 
 vantages of an agriculture that can begin ploughing 
 and planting in December, keep them up till April, 
 and then begin to harvest, and keep at that till 
 October, with no barns necessary for housing ani- 
 mals or crops; will open to us beautiful natural 
 groves of oaks; will reveal to us charming little 
 nooks of rural homes among the adjoining hills ; 
 will invite us to health-giving sulphur-baths and 
 
CALIFORNIA AT LARGE. 79 
 
 soda-springs more deliglitfully located than Sharon 
 or Saratoga ; will give us a peep into the gardens 
 of the old Catholic missionaries among the Indians, 
 now overgrown with peach, plum, and fig trees, 
 where we may have the novelty of picking the ripe 
 figs from trees nearly as large as the big elms on 
 Boston Common; will — if we go far enough — a 
 two days' ride — take us into the wild valley of the 
 Geysers, where a miniature hell sends up its sul- 
 phurous waters, and burns and poisons all the earth 
 and air within its reach, and where you peer into 
 each crevice and around every corner in sure faith 
 of seeing the Monster of Evil switching his tail 
 in vengeful activity ; again will carry us into the 
 grand forests of redwood in the coast mountains, — 
 sponsor and promise of the mammoth trees of the 
 Sierras, — a light, delicate, reddish cedar that enters 
 largely into the lumber supply of the San Francisco 
 market; will introduce our curious steps to the 
 great quicksilver mine of New Almaden, the rival 
 of the Almaden mine of Spain ; or will set us down 
 
80 THE PACIFIC RAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 under the mountains by tlie ocean's shore at Santa 
 Cruz, the Mce of our Pacific coast, where the pure 
 air breathes soft and low, and invalids rejoice in 
 relief. Farther down, Los Angelos invites us, with 
 stories of the tropical wealth of Southern California, 
 of grape-vines as trees, of orange and olive, of lemon 
 and banana groves, of cotton plantations, of agricul- 
 tural wealth unbounded, of a climate so dry and 
 even, so soft and sweet, as to surpass Italy's. 
 
 But most of us will wait for the Southern Pacific 
 Eailroad, already moving out from both sides, to in- 
 troduce us to this latter region of almost fabulous 
 wealth and beauty ; and, after a hasty run, with 
 wide-open eyes, into Kapa, Sonoma, and Santa 
 Clara valleys, perhaps into that of Eussian Eiver, 
 we shall prepare for the one great wonder which 
 we came out to see, — the Yosemite Valley. Por 
 this, ten days, a full purse, and Professor Whitney's 
 new and model guide-book and maps, one of the 
 best incidental gifts of the geological survey of the 
 •State, — these and a camping suit, with duster and 
 
CALIFORNIA AT LARGE. 81 
 
 overcoat, are essential. The best way to go is by 
 niglit boat or early morning cars to^ Stockton ; and 
 then by stage one hundred miles up the San Joaquin 
 valley, — how dry and dusty ! — through rich 
 wheat-fieldSj into and through, too, that magnificent 
 ruin, that football of Wall Street, Fremont's Mari- 
 posa estate. In one of the dying villages of this 
 principality. Bear Yalley or Mariposa, saddle-horses 
 and guides are procured. If possible, add tents, 
 blankets, and food, and travel independent of 
 ranches or hotels. The first day, after leaving the 
 stage, and going up into the mountains, we shall 
 reach White and Hatch's for dinner, to which point 
 we may, if we choose, ride in wagons, and get to 
 Clark's ranch for supper. Here we shall wish, of 
 course, to stop over for a day, to see the Big Trees 
 of the Mariposa Grove. These are four or five 
 miles' distance from Clark's, and, if possible, we per- 
 suade him to- go with us. He is the State's agent 
 for the care of the Yosemite Valley and the Grove, 
 and a genuine child of the great nature around him ; 
 
 6 
 
82 THE PACIFIC RAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 and whether within his wide-spreading cabins, or 
 under his protecting haystack, or in your own 
 tent by the side of his grand open-air fires, he 
 will care for us as father for children, and be proud 
 to have us praise his trees, his river, and his 
 mountains. 
 
 Another day — the fourth — takes us into the 
 grand Yalley, after a hundred miles of wagon and 
 forty of saddle riding from Stockton; every man 
 and woman of us making sure to dwell long upon 
 the first views that are opened to us as we come out 
 of the woods, and look over into the depths below, 
 and on to the heights above and beyond. Only 
 seeing is believing what this gorge in the mountains 
 reveals. It is Nature speaking to man in a way 
 that proves and exalts her supremacy. There are 
 simple hotels here ; but if we have tents and blan- 
 kets, we should pass each of our three days and 
 nights at different points in the Valley, one in the 
 lower part, under El Capitan, another where the 
 music of the Yosemite Fall will lull us to sleep, and 
 
CALIFOENIA AT LARGE. 83 
 
 the third by the lake, or in the neighborhood of the 
 Vernal Fall. All the main features of interest are 
 within a ten-mile line, and the three days will give 
 us ample time to see them comfortably. But these 
 will hold not an hour too much ; and no week in 
 any life could be more memorable than the one that 
 should be spent under the rocks and by the side of 
 the waters of the Yosemite. 
 
 Another week «aay be also profitably spent by 
 the lover of rare and majestic nature among the 
 High Sierras circling the Yosemite Valley. Here, 
 upon and among mountains from eight thousand to 
 thirteen thousand feet high, we find beautiful lakes 
 and bright rivers, grand rock and mountain scen- 
 ery, and a repetition in miniature of the Yosemite 
 Valley itself, called the Hetch-Hetchy Valley ; and 
 if we choose to prolong our ride down the N"evada 
 side of the mountains to Mono Lake, we shall dis- 
 cover in that sheet of water, fourteen miles long 
 by nine wide, truly a Sea of Death. IsTo living 
 thing can exist in it; its waters will consume 
 
84 THE PACIFIC EAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 leather, and thoroughly decompose the human body 
 in a few weeks ; and though it receives various pure 
 streams from out the mountains^ it poisons all from 
 its fountains of death, and, like Salt Lake, has no 
 apparent outlet, and is even more of a puzzle to 
 geologists and chemists than that better known in- 
 land sea. 
 
 The return trip from the Yosemite should be 
 made by the Coulterville trail and road, keeping 
 our original outfit with us. There are ten miles 
 more of horseback riding on this route ; but it in- 
 troduces us to a change of scenery, and a remark- 
 able cave, called Bower's Cave, and invites us by a 
 short detour to visit the Calaveras Grove of Big 
 Trees, the first discovered and best known of these 
 forest wonders. There are some eight collections of 
 these mammoth trees scattered along the Sierra 
 Mountains within a distance of one hundred and 
 fifty miles ; the tallest trees yet measured are fuU 
 three hundred and twenty-five feet high, and are in 
 the Calaveras collection ; and the largest in circum- 
 
CALIFORNIA AT LARGE. 85 
 
 ference are in the Mariposa Grove, and measure over 
 ninety feet ; while the greatest age that any yet 
 scientifically tested in that respect can claim is 
 about thirteen hundred years. Their beauty of 
 shape and color is as striking as their size ; and no 
 visitor to California will omit them in his tour of 
 its curiosities. 
 
 Though the mining interests of California have 
 fallen behind those of agriculture and manufactures, 
 and seem destined to stilL greater decay, there are 
 some features of them decidedly worth a stranger's 
 study. Grass Valley is the centre . of the most 
 extensive successful gold quartz mining; and its 
 operations are not dissimilar to those of Central City 
 in Colorado and Virginia City in N"evada. But the 
 disembowelling of the dead rivers of California for 
 the loose deposits of gold left in their beds by the 
 convulsions of nature in ages long past, the deep 
 excavations, and the grand hydraulic processes re- 
 sorted to for the purpose of reaching them, develop 
 both natural phenomena and great ingenuity and 
 
86 THE PACIFIC EAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 boldness in man, that rank among the curiosities of 
 the State. These dead rivers are not dry, open beds ; 
 but huge strata of sand, gravel, and quartz, filling 
 up what were once river channels, and lying now 
 from a hundred to a thousand feet beneath the foot- 
 hills of the mountains. They lie parallel with the 
 Sierra N'evadas, and diagonally to the rivers now 
 coming out of the mountains ; thej^ were sponged 
 up and filled up by the upheaval of the hills ; and 
 their place was made known by the modern streams 
 cutting down through them, and revealing on the 
 walls of the canyon the peculiar gold-bearing ma- 
 terials that now occupy their beds. Out of these 
 dead rivers three hundred millions in gold have 
 been taken, and they stiU yield eight millions a 
 year. Much capital and labor are requisite to carry 
 on mining operations in them : tunnels are run 
 along their lines, and great streams of water are 
 brought down from the mountains, through miles of 
 ditches and troughs, and poured, by the aid of hose, 
 with many times more force than the streams from 
 
CALIFORNIA AT LAEGE. 87 
 
 a steam fire-engine, upon a hillside, to tear it to 
 pieces and get at the gold materials, or into the gold- 
 beds themselves to wash out the precious particles. 
 The ruin and waste that such operations spread 
 around are frightful ; rivers are choked up with the 
 sands and stones sent down by these washings ; and 
 broad valleys of alluvial are made a desert by the 
 overspreading tide of hills they set afloat. 
 
 But it is no longer proper to consider California 
 as especially a mining State. Many of the mining 
 villages and camps along under the mountains have 
 been wholly deserted ; nearly all are decreasing in 
 population — it is very sad and very odd to see so 
 new a country so soon old and decaying ; and the 
 agriculture and commerce and manufactures of the 
 State are each, even now, in advance of the mining 
 interest in wealth and productiveness. The mining 
 counties have fallen ofP twenty-five per cent in 
 population since 1860, while that of the agricultural 
 counties has doubled, and that of San Francisco 
 trebled in the same time. The agricultural products 
 
88 THE PACIFIC KAILROAD — OPEN. 
 
 of 1868 footed up sixty millions of doUars, against 
 twenty-six millions in metals. There are thirty 
 million grape-vines growing in the State ; and the 
 wine manufactured in 1866 amounted to from three 
 to four millions of gallons, and in 1868 to eight 
 millions. The wine was at first crude and coarse, 
 but, as the virulent richness of the soil is tempered 
 by use, and greater care and science are used in the 
 manufacture, its quality rapidly improves. Finer 
 kinds of the grape than the old Mission are coming 
 rapidly into cultivation, and will stUL more surely 
 improve the quality and diversify the varieties of 
 the wine. The wheat crop of California in 1868 
 was fifteen millions of bushels ; the barley, eight 
 millions, — this grain being fed freely to horses 
 on the Pacific coast ; the wool, fifteen millions of 
 pounds ; the butter, five millions, and the cheese, 
 three millions, and still much butter and cheese are 
 imported from the East. The exports of domestic 
 produce, aside from metals, amounted to seventeen 
 millions in 1868 ; the chief item being wheat, of 
 
CALIFORNIA AT LARGE. 89 
 
 wHch no other State in the Union raised so large a 
 surplus in that year, and, with a contribution of four 
 million bushels of surplus from Oregon, California 
 is holding over for higher prices, or the contingency 
 of a bad year, probably close on to a two years' sup- 
 ply, for her own wants. 
 
 With such suddenly developed, yet securely held 
 wealth as these few facts illustrate, the future of 
 California looms before the visitor with proportions 
 that astound and awe. Her nature is as boundless 
 in its fecundity and variety as it is strange and 
 {^artling in its forms. While Switzerland has only 
 four mountains that reach as high as thirteen thou- 
 sand feet, California has one or two hundred, and 
 one, Mount Whitney, that soars to fifteen thousand 
 feet, and is the highest peak of the Eepublic. She 
 has a waterfall fifteen times as high as Niagara. 
 All climates are her own ; any variety which her 
 long stretch north and south does not present, her 
 mountains and valleys introduce. Dead volcanoes 
 and sunken rivers abound in her mountains ; the 
 
90 THE PACIFIC EAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 largest animal of the continent makes his covert 
 in her chaparral ; the second largest bird of the 
 world floats over her plains for carrion ; the bones 
 of the oldest man have been dug out of her depths ; 
 the biggest nugget of gold (weighing 195 pounds 
 and worth $37,400) has been found among her 
 gold deposits; she has lakes of such rarity that 
 a sheet of paper will sink in their waters, so vora- 
 cious that they will eat up a man, boots, breeches, 
 and all, in thirty days, so endowed in their foun- 
 tains that they will supply the world's apothecaries 
 with borax, sulphur, and soda ; she has mud vol- 
 canoes and the Yosemite Valley ; she grows beets 
 of 120 pounds, cabbages of 75, onions of 4, turnips 
 of 26, and watermelons of 80 pounds, and has a 
 grape-vine 15 inches thick, and bearing 6,500 
 pounds in one season. Her men are the most en- 
 terprising and audacious ; her women the most self- 
 reliant and the most richly dressed ; and her chil- 
 dren the stoutest, sturdiest, and the sauciest of any 
 in all the known world ! Let us worship and move 
 on! 
 
VIII. 
 
 THE SANDWICH ISLANDS. 
 
 'nr^O us of the East tlie Sandwich Islands are 
 a remote foreign kingdom, where our whalers 
 refit, and to the conversion of whose heathen we 
 dedicated all the sanctified pennies of our child- 
 hood. But here in California they are counted 
 as neighbors, dependencies, ay, surely and soon 
 possessions of the American Eepublic. We have 
 converted their heathen ; we have possessed their 
 sugar-plantations ; we furnish the brains that carry 
 on their government, and the diseases that are de- 
 stroying their natives ; we want the profit on their 
 sugars and their tropical fruits and vegetables ; why 
 should we not seize and annex the islands them- 
 selves ? At any rate, the familiarity with which 
 the Eastern visitor finds " the Islands " spoken of 
 in California, the accounts he receives of their 
 
92 THE PACIFIC KAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 strange scenery, their wonderful volcanoes, their 
 delightful climate, — all "will strongly invite him. 
 to make them a visit. Indeed, though his portfolio 
 may contain choicest specimens of coloring and of 
 contour, . — new harmonies of tint, new measures of 
 grandeur, fresh surprises of form, — gathered in so- 
 journings among the mountains and parks of Col- 
 orada, or in the deep canyons of the Sierra, yet he 
 must not close it feeling that he has exhausted the 
 revelations that this Western World has to make to 
 him, until he has added a few sketches at least of 
 the yet more unique scenery of the Hawaiian Isl- 
 ands. So, if time permits, let us see the utmost 
 possibilities and varieties of the Republic, and de- 
 vote to these at least a couple of months. 
 
 This little group of breezy, sunny islands, stand- 
 ing like an outpost of the great army of islands, 
 little and big, that guard the eastern coast of Asia, 
 yet offering itself as a kind of neutral ground on 
 which the Eastern and Western Worlds have met 
 and joined hands, lies about two thousand miles 
 
THE SANDWICH ISLANDS. 93 
 
 southwest of San Francisco, and is broiiglit into 
 close communication with it by means of a semi- 
 monthly steamer. A voyage of ten days, — days 
 of uninterrupted sunshine and serenity on this most 
 smiling of seas, — and the passenger will find him- 
 seK rounding the bold, bare headland of Diamond 
 Point, which stands guard over the little bay and 
 city of Honolulu. The first view of this miniature 
 capital of a petty kingdom can hardly fail to disap- 
 point us ; it is but a village of unpretending wooden 
 houses, clustered for the most part around the bay, 
 and stretching out, here and there, a long arm up 
 into the hills toward which it slopes. But one has 
 not come so many thousand miles from home to see 
 a counterpart of Boston or New York, and the first 
 walk on shore will offer a suggestion at least of the 
 pleasure that awaits him in the thousand novel 
 shapes and aspects of a changed hemisphere. After 
 two or three weeks here, spent in early morning or 
 evening gallops into the wonderful valleys of the 
 range of hills that cut the island in two, varied with 
 
94 THE PACIFIC EAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 climbs to the different summits, from whicli, on each, 
 side of yon, the little island seems to roll away and 
 leap and tnmble in great billows of green into the 
 sea ; and with the day rounded in on cool and fra- 
 grant verandas, among these intelligent, hospitable 
 people, with whom kindness to the stranger is the 
 first of duties, — the visitor will find it hard to 
 believe that the other islands can promise greater 
 attractions. ; 
 
 The first expedition usually made is to the active 
 volcano Kilauea, situated on the Island of Hawaii, 
 the easternmost of the group. Tor this the indis- 
 pensable articles by way of outfit are, first, a water- 
 proof (in case of a lady, a bloomer dress of heavy 
 woollen material) and a saddle, as all the journeying 
 must be made on horseback ; to these may be added 
 whatever articles of comfort or convenience the in- 
 dividual taste may suggest ; but it is desirable that 
 all should not exceed the capacity of a pair of sad- 
 dle-bags. To sail direct to Hilo, which is the most 
 common course, instead of landing on the other side 
 
THE SANDWICH ISLANDS. 95 
 
 of the island at Kawaihae, and making a partial cir- 
 cuit of the island, is to rob one's seK of a rich and 
 rare experience of pleasure. It is a journey of three 
 or four days, and attended with some fatigue and 
 discomfort, but to the enthusiastic sight-seer the 
 annoyances will prove far more than overpaid by 
 the pleasures. After a day of monotonous scenery, 
 the road winds round the base of Mauna Kea, and 
 comes out close to the sea; and then begins the 
 romantic part of it, through a succession of preci- 
 pices, — or great cracks, they might be called, — 
 from one hundred to five hundred feet deep, and 
 so steep that General Putnam's feat of riding down 
 stairs seemed nothing to the perils of such a de- 
 scent. But these palis, as the natives call them, 
 are as beautiful as they are appalling ; their steep 
 sides are covered with every shade of green, from 
 the silver-leaved kukui to the dark purple fronds 
 of pulu fern, — masses and tangles of vines and 
 trees, and at the bottom of each a roaring, tumbling 
 brook, or narrow arm of the sea. On this side of 
 
96 THE PACIFIC RAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 the island, also, lie the rich sugar-plantations under 
 whose hospitable roofs the traveller must look to 
 find his shelter and his victual. 
 
 But Hilo will not suffer him to pass her by 
 without stopping to pay a tribute of admiration to 
 her beautiful bay and cultivated and generous in- 
 habitants, giving him at the same time the oppor- 
 tunity to take breath before the last and longest 
 day of his journey. Kilauea lies four thousand 
 feet high on the side of the lofty Mauna Loa, and 
 a gradual ascent of thirty miles lands you suddenly 
 on the edge of its enormous, yawning chasm. So 
 vast is it that it is impossible to get any idea of its 
 gigantic proportions till you have climbed down its 
 almost perpendicular walls, and traversed its ten- 
 mile circuit. The condition of its activity varies 
 greatly at different times ; sometimes a chain of 
 fiery lakes, connected by subterraneous channels, 
 hems in the molten mass ; sometimes it overleaps 
 its barriers, and pours out rivers of fire over the 
 floor of the crater. No words can depict the awful 
 
THE SANDWICH ISLANDS. " 97 
 
 fascination of those fiery caldrons, boiling and 
 hissing and roaring, and tossing up fountains of 
 liquid flame. The most effective time to see them 
 is at evening. Then the whole sky is lighted up 
 with the reflection of the fire, and the surrounding 
 darkness serves to heighten the effect of the glow- 
 ing, seething mass. 
 
 In striking contrast with Kilauea stands the stu- 
 pendous extinct volcano of Haleakala, almost the 
 greater wonder of the two. It occupies the eastern 
 half of the Island of Maui, and is a cone of ten 
 thousand feet high. Its crater is three times the 
 size of Kilauea, — that is, thirty miles in circum- 
 ference, — and more than a thousand feet deep. 
 Parties who visit this are accustomed to take their 
 camping equipage, and to pass a night on the top 
 of the mountain, not only because the excursion 
 would be too fatiguing for a single day, but also 
 because, through the day the crater is filled with 
 light clouds and mist, which only depart with the 
 setting sun. No scene could possibly combine more 
 7 
 
98 THE PACIFIC EAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 elements of the grand and the beautiful than this 
 does ; the soft floccnlent masses of clouds silently 
 rolling in and out of these Tartarean depths, 
 through the great gap in the mountain-wall, toward 
 the sea, occasionally breaking to reveal the fright- 
 ful darkness beneath ; then, as the sun sinks, it 
 touches the whole cloud-landscape with a rose- 
 gray glow ; long lines of trade-wind cloudlets, like 
 fleets of phantom ships, go scudding over the sea ; 
 the three lofty summits of Hawaii, and the lesser 
 heights of the islands surrounding Maui, repeat the 
 sunset tints, and the whole, seems like a scene of 
 enchantment. Maui also can boast of a valley that 
 deserves to be mentioned by the side of the Yo- 
 semite, though different enough in outline and in 
 coloring to forbid rivalry ; and these, together with 
 the most picturesque mountain group of all the 
 islands, the richest sugar-plantations, and the most 
 generous and free-handed proprietors, make for 
 Maui the greenest spot in the memory of every 
 traveller. 
 
THE SANDWICH ISLANDS. 99 
 
 It is impossible, in the limits of such, a brief 
 sketch as this, to do more than roughly outline 
 the chief points of interest of these far-off islands. 
 The climate, too, lends its subtle attraction, being 
 just that delicious blending of heat and coolness 
 that leaves one puzzled to know whether he is only 
 comfortably warm or refreshingly cool. One who 
 has two or three months of leisure cannot better 
 bestow it than in going to see all this for himself ; 
 and he will obtain from the warm-hearted island- 
 ers every possible help and suggestion he may 
 need to make his journey easy and profitable, with 
 only one drawback, and that is, that at every place 
 he may stop, with the exception of Honolulu, he 
 must accept the freely-offered hospitality of the 
 foreign residents, nor dare to make any return, 
 except in friendship's coin. 
 
IX. 
 
 OREGON. — PUGET'S SOUND. — THE COLUMBIA 
 
 RIVER. 
 
 *' I ^HE Islands, however, involve, with the rest, 
 a full five or six months, and cannot be put 
 into the two or three months' plan with which we 
 left home. But Oregon, the Columbia Eiver, and 
 Idaho can ; and if you please we will go home that 
 way. It will take but two weeks longer than the 
 straight railroad line back, and even the most super- 
 ficial circuit of our New West will be incomplete 
 without it. Good ocean steamers will carry us 
 around to Portland, Oregon, from San Erancisco 
 within two days ; but if the roads are tolerable and 
 the stage service what it should be, we shall prefer 
 to go overland. The cars take us up the grand 
 valley of the Sacramento through Marysville to 
 OroviUe, and leave about five hundred miles for 
 
OREGON. 101 
 
 the stage. We ride then through "broad, alluvial 
 meadows, golden brown with wheat, enlivened by 
 a frequent old oak grove ; past Chico, where, if 
 possible, we should linger to see General BidweU, 
 and his twenty-thousand-acre farm, with gardens 
 and orchards to correspond ; past Eed Bluffs, the 
 head of navigation on the Sacramento Eiver, where 
 the widow and daughters of old John Brown live in 
 quiet village honor and usefulness, nursing the sick 
 teaching the young ; into narrowing valleys, the 
 Coast Eange and the Sierras meeting and embra- 
 cing each other ; over pleasant hills with occasional 
 plantations of apple, pear, and grape, growing here 
 most luxuriantly ; along under the grand shadows 
 of Moun?fc Shasta, monarch of the Northern Sierras, 
 and the Mont Blanc of California ; over higher 
 hills and into the cross valleys of Northern Cali- 
 fornia and Southern Oregon, — the Trinity, Kla- 
 math, Eogue, and Umpqua Eivers coursing wildly 
 to the sea, — many a gem of oak grove on the 
 way, the green misletoe and the gray moss pen- 
 
102 THE PACIFIC EAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 dent from the branches, and the gay madrona-tree 
 lighting up the scene; many a broad intervale 
 of grass and grain welcoming flocks or reapers ; 
 through and in sight of forests of pines, cedars, 
 spruces, balsams, birches, and ash, greener and 
 more diversified than those of California, and 
 grander in individual size and collective extent 
 than those of the AILeghanies or the White Hills, 
 — stopping in the Umpqua valley to have an 
 hour's chat on the philosophy and practice of 
 politics with Jesse Applegate, a wise old pioneer 
 of Oregon, — finding everywhere beauty, novelty, 
 and exhilaration in nature; and come out at last 
 into the garden of Oregon, the Willamette vaUey. 
 Never elsewhere have our eyes looked upon a scene 
 of picturesque rural beauty like that spread before 
 us, as the stage comes out of the hills and woods, 
 and we overlook the broad meadows, with their 
 wide, open groves, rising and falling in softly un- 
 dulating lines, and the hills standing far apart to 
 frame the picture. The parks of Old England, 
 
OREGON. — PUGET'S SOUND. 103 
 
 the valleys of !N"ew England, the prairies of Illi- 
 nois, the mountains of Colorado and California, 
 alL seem to have contributed their special ele- 
 ments, their choicest treasures, to make up this 
 scene. Through this valley of the Willamette 
 (or Wallomet, as some of the Oregonians insist 
 on spelling the name), one hundred and twenty- 
 five miles long and fifty miles wide, the railroad 
 or the steamboat may quicken our speed ; but we 
 shall wish to linger over its wealth of beauty 
 and wealth of agriculture. Prosperous villages 
 lie along the river, and sixty thousand people 
 already live upon the soil. "Wheat, corn, and 
 fruit are the chief products ; and there is no 
 stint in the return. 
 
 Portland lies on the Willamette, just before it 
 enters the Columbia, has from eight to nine thou- 
 sand inhabitants, who pay almost a l>[ew England 
 respect to the Sabbath, and dreams sometimes that 
 it is a rival to San Erancisco. It would be well if, 
 now we are here, we could run across Washington 
 
104 THE PACIFIC EAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 Territory, — a two days' ride through thicker forests 
 of larger trees even than any we have before seen, 
 always excepting the grand mammoth groves of Cal- 
 ifornia, — and visit that northern wealth of water, 
 Puget's Sonnd. Steamboats carry ns through it to 
 Victoria, on Vancouver's Island, and back, and the 
 ride is a revelation of new beauties and new wealth. 
 Magnificent forests line its shores ; the largest ships 
 can move close to its banks ; there is lumber here 
 for all nations and all time ; snow-covered moun- 
 tains, grand in form, smiling in visage, rise on the 
 right and left ; and we come back penetrated with 
 a new wonder at the far-reaching bounty of our 
 Northwest, and a trifle impatient that the British 
 drum-beat is even temporarily sounded over a por- 
 tion of such waters, over an acre of such excellent 
 forests for ship-timber and profitable lumber gener- 
 ally. A week's time would suffice to make this ex- 
 cursion from Portland to Victoria and back, and 
 most recompensing investment would it prove. 
 But we promised to return homeward by the 
 
THE COLUMBIA RIVER. 105 
 
 Columbia Eiver. Elegant steamers* convey us into 
 and up its mile-and-a-lialf broad sea-sweep. Soon 
 we pass Fort Vancouver, where Grant, Hooker, and 
 McClellan all served apprenticeship, and Grant dis- 
 tinguished himself by raising a crop of potatoes ; 
 and it was while here, too, that our new President 
 left the army, to come back in the hour of national 
 distress, — rescued himself, rescuing us. Mount 
 Hood appears next upon the scene, the pride of 
 Oregon, and fit rival to California's Shasta, — in- 
 deed, a grand pyramid of snow in the distance ; 
 but soon now we enter the exciting theatre of con- 
 flict between river and rock, that distinguishes the 
 Columbia Eiver above all other known rivers, and 
 endows it with a beauty and a grandeur that the 
 Ehine, the Hudson, and the Northern Mississippi 
 can hardly imitedly claim. Two short railroads 
 of five and fourteen miles convey passengers and 
 freight around rapids and rocks in the river, where 
 boats cannot pass, to other boats of equal excel- 
 lence above. 
 
X. 
 
 IDAHO. — SHOSHONE FALLS. 
 
 "mpAST of the mountams the close, rich forests 
 disappear, the hills are bare and brown as in 
 Nevada, and the boat-ride grows monotonous. At 
 Umatilla or Walla- Walla, some three hundred miles 
 above Portland, we come to the present head of 
 navigation, and take stages for a ride of five hun- 
 dred miles over the Blue Mountains, through the 
 Grande Eonde valley, along the valley of the Snake 
 Eiver, where steamboats can and may soon help us 
 over another one hundred and fifty miles of the 
 way, into and through Idaho, and on to Salt Lake 
 and the railroad again. That portion of this ride 
 over the Blue Mountains and through the Grande 
 Eonde Yalley is most satisfactory for scenery. The 
 ascent and descent of the mountains are easy, the 
 roads hard and smooth, and the views, near and re- 
 
IDAHO. — SHOSHONE FALLS. 107 
 
 mote, very grand and inspiring. Gorges and parks, 
 forests and meadows alternate with fine panoramic 
 effect ; and a bath in the warm sulphur springs by 
 the roadside will relieve the weariness of the body. 
 Through Idaho, whose gold-mines seem to hesitate 
 in their productiveness, and whose towns are either 
 fading or at a standstill, and along the Upper Snake, 
 the country bears a dull, barren uniformity, and 
 high volcanic table-lands begin to appear and 
 absorb the landscape. 
 
 Here, within from one hundred to one hundred 
 and thirty miles of the north end of Salt Lake, 
 are to be found several peculiar and grand freaks 
 of Nature, which the traveller should leave the 
 stage for a day or two to observe. The first, com- 
 ing east, is the canyon of the Malade Eiver, a 
 branch of the Snake on the north; for miles it 
 flows through a narrow gorge of solid lava rock, in 
 some places fifty feet deep, and yet only eight or 
 ten feet across, the confined waters coursing rapidly 
 and angrily along below. Next, at Snake Eiver 
 
108 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN. 
 
 Ferry, the waters of its Lost Eiver Branch, having 
 sunk beneath the ground a long distance back, 
 emerge to light again just at the point of junction, 
 and pour over rocks one hundred and fifty feet 
 hio'h into the main stream. Ten or fifteen miles 
 from this point, though only seven miles from the 
 stage-road at another place, are the Shoshone Falls 
 in the Snake Eiver itseK. They rank next to 
 Niagara in the list of the world's waterfalls, and 
 by some visitors are held to be entitled to the first 
 rank in majesty of movement and grandeur of sur- 
 roundiQcr feature. All about is volcanic rock, — 
 wide lava fields give an awful silence for this 
 grand voice of Nature to speak in. The river, two 
 hundred yards wide, deep and swift, has worn itself 
 a channel one hundred feet down into the rock ; 
 then, as if in preparation for the grand leap, it 
 indulges in a series of cascades of from thirty to 
 sixty feet in height, and, now gathering into an un- 
 broken body, it swoops doAvn, in a grand horseshoe 
 shape, twelve hundred feet across, a two hundred 
 
IDAHO. — SHOSHONE FALLS. 109 
 
 and ten feet fall, into the bottomless pit below. 
 The river is not so wide as Niagara, nor the volume 
 of water so great, but the fall is higher, and quite 
 as beautiful. It is difficult to get near to the falls, 
 because of the high, rough, and perpendicular 
 walls of, rock that guard the stream ; but they 
 Can be reached with hard climbing both above and 
 below. A perpendicular pillar of rock rises one 
 hundred feet in the midst of the rapids above ; 
 islands halt in the stream just over the cataract ; 
 and two huge rocky columns stand on eg-ch side of 
 the falls, as if to sentinel the scene, and guard it 
 from sacrilegious hands. Either by a day's detour 
 in the trip from the Columbia Eiver to Salt Lake, 
 as we have suggested, or by a special journey of 
 three or four days from the railroad at the latter 
 point, these distinctive and distinguished marvels 
 of nature will soon be freely visited by Pacific 
 Eailroad travellers, and the details of their sublim- 
 ity more thoroughly catalogued by pen and pho- 
 tograph for the general public. 
 
XI. 
 
 MONTANA AND HOME. 
 
 "XT OW again at Salt Lake, — time, money, and 
 disposition holding out, and the season favor- 
 able, — there will, indeed, be great temptation to 
 round our travel with the stage ride through Mon- 
 tana to Fort Benton on the Upper Missouri, and 
 follow down that river in one of its steamboats to 
 Omaha again. It is about three hundred miles by 
 stage to Virginia City, Montana, four hundred and 
 twenty-five to Helena, and near six liundred to Fort 
 Benton, and the fare through one hundred and forty 
 dollars. The roads are excellent, the stage service 
 the best on the continent, and the scenery across 
 the high, open plains, along the fertile valleys, and 
 through the favorable passes in the upper Eocky 
 Mountain ranges, fresh, picturesque, and every way 
 inviting. Colorado is scarcely more favorable for 
 
MONTANA AND HOME. Ill 
 
 farming and stock-growing purposes than Montana. 
 The ride is among the head- waters of the Missouri 
 Eiver, and grand mountains follow as guides and 
 guards, and yet not to obstruct, along the entire 
 pathway. In Montana, too, we can see mining in 
 all its phases, more readily than perhaps anywhere 
 else, — by paning, " long toms," sluicing, hydraulics, 
 and quartz-miUs ; each and all are in operation 
 there now and near together. The boat ride down 
 the Missouri will be long, slow, and tedious ; the 
 stream is muddy, the banks for the most part high, 
 barren, and uninviting; the time will perhaps be 
 ten days or two weeks; but the experience will 
 prove very instructive, and the journey will afford 
 opportunity for reaping and digesting all the sum- 
 mer harvest of the senses. 
 
 Or, postponing Montana for a more convenient 
 season, and indulging our unsatisfied . curiosity in 
 another peep over Brigham Young's garden and 
 harem wall, and our weary bodies in another bath 
 in the warm pools of fresh sulphur water in the 
 
112 THE PACIFIC EAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 suburbs of Salt Lake City, we close our Pacific 
 Eailroad excursion by a two days' ride in the cars, 
 back over the mountains and across the plains to 
 Omaha, which places us again on the threshold of 
 the East and of Home. 
 
 Over aU this country, through which we have so 
 hastily travelled, the careful hand of science has 
 yet but little passed. Professor Whitney has done 
 much to map the past and present of California, 
 and inventory its varied resources ; if sustained by 
 the State, he will complete a work that will be of 
 incalculable benefit to its people, and a great gift to 
 the scientific knowledge of the world. Several 
 young graduates of his survey, with aid from the 
 general government, are fast completing a thorough 
 scientific examination and report of a belt across 
 the continent, along the fortieth parallel, or the 
 line of the Pacific Eailroad. This will prove of 
 great interest and value. Professor Powell, an en- 
 thusiast in geology and natural history from Illi- 
 nois, spent last summer, with a party of assistants, 
 
MONTANA AND HOME. 113 
 
 in a scientific exploration of the parks and moun- 
 tains of Colorado, and, after wintering in the wilds 
 of Western Colorado, he proposes this season to ex- 
 tend his observations into the almost unknown land 
 of Southwestern Colorado and ]N"ortheastern Arizona, 
 and perhaps test the safety of the passage of the 
 great canyon of the Colorado of the West. Here 
 lies, as yet, the grand geographical secret of our 
 Western empire. For three hundred miles this 
 river, which drains the western slopes of the Eocky 
 Mountains for several hundred miles, is confined 
 within perpendicular rock walls, averaging three 
 thousand feet in height, down which there is no safe 
 descent, up which there is no climbing, between 
 which the stream runs furiously. One man is re- 
 ported to have gone through it, and come out aKve ; 
 to explore it, and report upon it, is the dangerous 
 yet fascinating undertaking of Professor Powell. 
 For the rest, our scientific knowledge of the moun- 
 tains and plains and deserts of our far West de- 
 pends upon the reports of government engineers, 
 
114 THE PACIFIC EAILEOAD — OPEN. 
 
 and the railroad surveys, — valuable, indeed, but 
 incomplete, and provoking rather than allaying the 
 curiosity of the scholar. 
 
 The Indians are not likely to interfere with 
 Pacific Eailroad travel. The fears of travellers 
 may be spared on tliat account. IlTeither among 
 the parks and mountains of Colorado, nor in the 
 valleys of California and Oregon, nor in the Sierra 
 Nevada mountains, shall we be likely to meet 
 them, save as humble, peaceful supplicants for 
 food and tobacco. They may appear on the routes 
 through Idaho and Montana. But greater danger 
 is to be apprehended from " the road agents," or 
 highway robbers. In Nevada and California, and 
 in Idaho, they have occasionally introduced the 
 Mexican banditti style of operating on travellers ; 
 rarely killing their victims, and only making sure 
 to get all their money and watches, and whatever 
 treasure the express messenger on the stage may 
 have in hand. This Western country is destined, 
 probably, to go through an era of that sort of 
 
MONTANA AND HOME. 115 
 
 crime. The vicious and vagrant populations that 
 followed the progress of the railroad in its build- 
 ing, and have been set loose by its completion, 
 and the similar elements turned adrift by the 
 failure of mining enterprises, both furnish the 
 needy and desperate characters for the business. 
 !N"ot unlikely they may grow bold enough to stop 
 and "go through" a railroad train. Short and 
 sharp should be the dealing with this class of 
 marauders, when they begin their career, and then 
 it will speedily close. But the chance of being 
 victims of their interference with our journeyings 
 is not great enough to excuse any of us in stay- 
 ing at home, when such inviting pleasures and 
 such wide-reaching experiences as the Pacific 
 Eailroad, open, offers to us all, lay along, around, 
 and beyond its track. 
 
 These are but scant outlines of the new and 
 larger half of our Eepublic. We have given lines 
 where only pages could properly picture a scene, 
 describe an experience, or develop a capacity. 
 
116 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN. 
 
 Arizona, 'Rew Mexico, and Lower California — 
 three territories as remarkable, perhaps, in natural 
 wonders and resources as any in our 'New AVest — 
 have hardly been touched upon ; but only specu- 
 lators or adventurers will be readily tempted into 
 their difficulties and dangers now; and we fear 
 the early travellers by the new pathway of iron 
 will be appalled by the variety of entertainment 
 to which we here invite them. But if they start 
 with the protest that we have promised too much, 
 they will return with the confession that the half 
 was not told them. 
 
 Whatever we go out to see, whatever pleasures 
 we enjoy, whatever disappointments suffer, this, 
 at least, will be our gain, — a new conception of 
 the magnitude, the variety and the wealth, in 
 nature and resource, in realization and in promise, 
 of the American Eepublic, — a new idea of what 
 it is to be an American citizen. He is past ap- 
 peal and beyond inspiration who is not broad- 
 ened, deepened, greatened, every way, by such ex- 
 
 a 
 
MONTANA AND HOME. 117 
 
 perience of the extent, capacity, and opportunity 
 of this Nation, and who does not henceforth per- 
 form his duties as its citizen with increased fidel- 
 ity and a more sacred awe of his trust. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Outline for a Two Months' Journey to the Pacific 
 States by the Pacific Eailroad. 
 
 From Omaha to Cheyenne and Denver . . .2 
 Excm-sions in Colorado . - . . . . 9 
 
 To Salt Lake City 2 
 
 Stay in Salt Lake City ..... 2 
 
 To Virginia City, and there ..... 2 
 
 To San Francisco, with two days to stop on the way 3 
 In and about San Francisco ..... 7 
 
 Yosemite Valley and Big Trees . . . .10 
 
 Overland to Oregon . . . . . .6 
 
 From Portland to Victoria, through Washington Ter- 
 ritory and Puget's Sound, and back ... 7 
 From Portland to Salt Lake by Columbia River, 
 Idaho, and Shoshone Falls .... 8 
 
 From Salt Lake to Omaha . . . . .2 
 
 Total . ... .60 
 
 This is obviously a short allowance for so com- 
 
'ABU 
 
 \ki 
 
 llrand 
 
 120 APPENDIX. 
 
 prehensive a journey ; but every traveller can en- 
 large it to suit his comfort and convenience. He 
 cannot advantageously cut down Colorado, San 
 Francisco and its neighborhoods, or the Yosemite, 
 but may well add a week to each. Another 
 month would allow the traveller to return through 
 Montana and down the Upper Missouri, besides 
 scattering an extra week along through the pre- 
 vious portions of his journey. Two months more JNi 
 still — or from June 1 to ^November 1 — would 
 include, with all the above, a liberal excursion to j 
 the Sandwich Islands. And the weather in all 
 these five months would be favorable for every | 
 part of the grand trip ; only in the Islands would i dmrc 
 waterproofs and umbrellas be needed. For the two I bridge 
 months' journey we would recommend July and 
 August ; for the three, July, August, and Septem- 
 ber. California is in its summer glory in April 
 and May ; but that is too early for its mountains 
 or the Yosenjite ; and the parks and mountains 
 of Colorado, though passable in June, are much 
 more accessible in July and August. 
 
 deje 
 Laran 
 BrjaD 
 
 iranc 
 
 [Sta»e 
 
men- 
 
 iopIi 
 
 jveiy 
 
 Ipril 
 
 TABLE OF RAILEOAD DISTANCES. 121 
 
 'able of Eailroad Distances between the Atlantic 
 AND Pacific Oceans. 
 
 Tew York to Chicago 
 
 'joston to Chicago .... 
 
 vhicago to Omaha . . . - 
 
 Pacific Railroad. 
 
 jOmaha to Grand Island . 
 
 iJrand Island to North Platte 
 
 !^orth Platte to Sidney . 
 
 I Sidney to Cheyenne .... 
 
 'Branch road to Denver, 110 miles.] 
 
 jJheyenne to Laramie .... 
 
 Laramie to Bryan .... 
 
 Bryan to Church Buttes . . 
 
 Clhurch Buttes to Bridger 
 
 Bridger to Echo City .... 
 
 Echo City to Ogden 
 
 [Branch road to Salt Lake City, 40 miles, 
 and point of union of the Central Pa- 
 cific and Union Pacific roads.] 
 
 Ogden to Corinne, Bear Eiver . . . 24 1,054 
 
 Corinne to Promontory City . . 29 1,083 
 
 [Stage lines for Idaho and Montana.] 
 
 Promontory to Monument Point . . 27 1,110 
 
 
 Miles. 
 
 . 
 
 963 
 
 . 
 
 1,019 
 
 • 
 
 490 
 
 Miles. 
 
 
 154 
 
 154 
 
 137 
 
 291 
 
 123 
 
 414 
 
 102 
 
 516 
 
 56 
 
 572 
 
 286 
 
 858 
 
 27 
 
 885 
 
 27 
 
 912 
 
 74 
 
 986 
 
 44 
 
 1,030 
 
122 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Monument Point to Hnmboldt Wells 
 
 142 
 
 1,252 
 
 Humboldt Wells to Elks . 
 
 56 
 
 1,308 
 
 "Stage line to White Pine.' 
 
 
 
 Elks to Carlin . . . , . 
 
 23 
 
 1,331 
 
 Carl in to Argenta 
 
 49 
 
 1,380 
 
 Stage line to Austin." 
 
 
 
 Argenta to Humboldt . . . 
 
 141 
 
 1,521 
 
 Humboldt to Wadsworth 
 
 68 
 
 1,589 
 
 Wadsworth to Eeno .... 
 
 34 
 
 1,623 
 
 Branch to Virginia City, 17 miles. 
 
 
 
 Keno to Truckee 
 
 35 
 
 1,658 
 
 Truckee to summit of Sierra Nevadas . 
 
 14 
 
 1,672 
 
 Summit to Dutch Flat .... 
 
 39 
 
 1,711 
 
 Dutch Flat to Colfax . 
 
 12 
 
 1,723 
 
 Colfax to Sacramento .... 
 
 55 
 
 1,778 
 
 Sacramento to Stockton 
 
 45 
 
 1,823 
 
 Stockton to San Francisco 
 
 79 
 
 1,902 
 
 Chicago to San Francisco . . . 
 
 . 
 
 2,392 
 
 New York to San Francisco . 
 
 • 
 
 3,355 
 
 Boston to San Francisco . 
 
 • 
 
 3,411 
 
 THE END. 
 
 
 
 Cambridge : Printed by Welch, Bigelow, and Company. 
 
THE 
 
 PACIFIC MILEOAD- OPEN. 
 
 HOW TO GO : WHAT TO SEE. 
 
 A GUIDE FOE TRAVEL TO AND THROUGH 
 WESTERN AMERICA. 
 
 BY 
 
 SAMUEL BOWLES, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "across THE CONTINENT," AND "COLORADO, 
 ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS." 
 
 O BOSTON: 
 FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO. 
 
 SUCCESSORS TO TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 
 1869. 
 
THACKERAY'S NOVELS. 
 
 To meet the long-felt want of an edition of Thackeray's Novels, at once 
 UJ^IFORM, COMPACT, HAJSfDSOME, JlJSTD CHEAP, MessbS. Fields, 
 Osgood, & Co. have prepared and will immediately issue a 
 
 HOUSC:iIOL.D EDITION 
 
 of these unsurpassed works of fiction. 
 The style of this edition is in all respects similar to that of the Household 
 Edition of Charles Reade's Novels recently published and received with 
 immediate and universal favor. The Edition will consist of six volumes, as 
 follows : — 
 
 Vanity Pair One Volume. 
 
 Pendennis . " 
 
 The Newcomes ... 
 
 The Virginians .... 
 The Adventures of Philip 
 Henry Esmond ) 
 Level the Widower) 
 
 Handsomely bound in Green Morocco Cloth, with 
 gilt back and sides. 
 
 Price, o • • $1.25 a volume. 
 
 " In his subtle, spiritual analysis of men and women, as we see them and 
 live with them ; in his power of detecting the enduring passions and desires, 
 the strengths, the weaknesses, and the deceits of the race, from under the 
 mask of ordinary worldly and town life, — making a dandy or a dancing- 
 girl as real, as ' moving delicate and full of life,' as the most heroic incama- 
 tipns of good and evil ; in his vitality and yet lightness of handling, doing \t 
 once and forever, and never a touch too little or too much, — in all these 
 respects he stood and stands alone and matchless." — Dr. John Brown. 
 
 *** This Edition will be sold by all Booksellers, or will be sent, post-paid, on 
 receipt of price by the Publishers, 
 
 FIELDS, OSG-OOD, & CO., Boston. 
 
CHARLES READE'S NOVELS. 
 
 HOUSEHOLD EDITION. 
 
 Uniform, Compact, Legible, Handsome, Cheap. 
 
 The popular Household Edition of Mr. Rbadk's Novels is comprised in 
 Eight Volumes, as follows : — 
 
 Foul Play. 1 vol. 
 Hard Cash. 1 vol. 
 
 White Lies. 1 vol. 
 
 Griffith Gaunt. 1 vol. 
 
 liove me Little, Love me Long. 1 vol. 
 Never too Late to Mend. 1 vol. 
 
 The Cloister and the Hearth. 1 vol. 
 
 Peg Woffington, Christie Johnstone, and 
 Other Stories. 1 vol. 
 O:^ Pkice, % 1.00 A Volume. The Set in a neat box, $ 8.00 ; 
 Half Calf, $ 18.00. 
 
 "This edition of Charles Reade's novels is somewhat similar in style to the 
 well-known 'Charles Dickens' series, issued by the same firm. The volumes 
 are all neatly bound, well printed, and compact, with the facsimile signature 
 of Charles lleade prominently displayed on the outside. We are glad to wel- 
 come such an acceptable addition to the American library of modern English 
 literature. After Dickens, no English author of the day appeals so directly to 
 all branches of the English-speaking race as Charles Reade, Although most 
 of his works are intensely English in local coloring, his hatred of class injustice, 
 of petty social spites and prejudices, of official wrongs and abuses, and his 
 warm sympathy with all the fresh and true impulses and instincts of humanity, 
 secure for his works appreciative readers wherever the English language is 
 spoken. Charles Reade's works all deserve the widest circle of readers, within 
 whose rea,ch they can be brought, and we are glad to find that the task of 
 placing them before the American public in a tasteful and convenient library 
 form has been undertaken, and so well executed, by those so thoroughly quali- 
 fied for carrying it out as the publishers of the present series."— New York 
 Times. 
 
 " A very pretty edition of Charles Reade's novels, —just such a one as has 
 long been desired by his numerous admirers in this country. It can hardly 
 help meeting the success it deserves, from its taste and elegance no less than 
 from the conspicuous merits of its author." — Liberal Christian. 
 
 " The new, uniform, elegant, and cheap edition of Charles Reade is just in 
 time to take the tide of the story-teller's great and deserved popularity." — 
 The Western Bookseller {Chicago). 
 
 *** For sale by all Booksellers. Sent, post-paid^ on receipt of price by the 
 
 FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO., Boston. 
 
r 
 
 Popular Books of Western Travel. 
 
 By SAMUEL BOWLES, 
 
 Editor of the Speingfield (Mass) Republican 
 
 I. ACROSS THE CONTINENT. 
 
 A Stage Ride over the Plains and Mountains to Col- 
 orado, THE Mormons, or Utah, Nevada, California, 
 Oregon, and Puget's Sound, in the Summer of 1865, 
 with Speaker Colfax. 
 
 New Edition. 400 pages. Price, $1.50. 
 
 IL THE SWITZERLAND OP AMERICA ; or, Col- 
 orado: its Parks and Mountains. 
 
 A Summer Vacation in Camp and Saddle among the 
 Rocky Mountains, in 1868. 
 
 A volume of 175 pages. Price, $1.00. 
 
 " These books," says George Curtis, " are breezy and picturesque ; full of 
 
 information as an egg of meat ; and of perennial interest and value." 
 
 Donald G. Mitchell, in Hearth and Home, says : " Next to a horseback ride 
 over the scenes of enchantment, on which Mr. Bowles so fondly dwells, is the 
 
 description of these wonders by his effective pen." The Mew York Eoan- 
 
 gelist s&ys : "The author is a born traveller; at home in the camp and in 
 the saddle, and loves to climb mountain heights, and wind down into pic- 
 turesque little valleys, and pitch his tent beside the running streams." 
 
 The Sacramento (^California) .Union says : " ' Across the Continent ' is the 
 most thorough and exhaustive book ever written about the Pacific Coast." 
 The Mew York JVation says : " It has almost as much the charm of nov- 
 elty as Palgrave's ' Arabia.' " 
 
 These volumes should be found at all bookstores, and they will be sent by 
 mail, postage paid, on receipt of the price by 
 
 SAMUEL BOWLES AND COMPANY, 
 
 Springfield, Mass. 
 
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