Hesperothen, Volume II

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CHAPTER I.
ARIZONA.
Deming—The Mirage—Ruined Cities—American Explorers—Self-Tormentors—Animals and Plants—Yuma—California—Los Angeles—Santa Monica—The Pacific	Page 1
CHAPTER II.
THE YOSEMITE VALLEY.
A new Land of Goshen—A Jehu indeed—The Drive to Clarke's—A Mountain Hostelry—Grizzlies—Fascination Point—The Merced—Yosemite Fall—A Salute—Mountain Airs—The Mirror Lake—"See that Rattle?"—A Philosophic Barber	19
CHAPTER III.
SAN FRANCISCO.
The Palace Hotel—General McDowell—Palo-Alto—The "Hoodlums"—The real Sir Roger—Exiles in the Far West—The Chinese Population—For and Against them—The Sand Lot—Fast Trotters—The Sea-Lions—The Diamond Palace—The Coloured Population—"Eastward Ho!"	44
CHAPTER IV.
CALIFORNIA TO COLORADO.
Los Angeles—Mud-geysers—"Billy the Kid"—General Fremont—Manitou, the Garden of the Gods—Desperadoes—Bob Ingersoll—Denver City—Leadville—Grand Cañon	73
CHAPTER V.
KANSAS TO ST. LOUIS.
Liquor Law—Kansas Academy of Science—An Incident of Travel—A Parting Symposium—Life in the Cars—St. Louis to New York	107
CHAPTER VI.
NEW YORK—NEWPORT—DEPARTURE.
Coney Island—Newport—Bass-fishing—Habit of Spitting—Brighton Beach—Newport Coaching—Extra Ecclesiam—Victories of American Horses—Newport Avenues—Return to New York—Our Last Day in America	122
CHAPTER VII.
RETURN TO EUROPE.
The "City of Berlin"—The Inman Line—The Service at Roche's Point—Queenstown Discomforts—A sorry Welcome Home	140
CHAPTER VIII.
SOME GENERAL REFLECTIONS.
Education—Free Schools—Influence of Money in Politics—Corruption in Public Life—Crime on the Western Borders—The Great Rebellion—Anniversaries—Great Courtesy to Strangers—Manners and Customs	151
CHAPTER IX.
THE RED MAN AND HIS DESTINY.
Captain Pratt—Carlisle Barracks—An Indian Bowman—The Indian Question—The Pupils' Gossip—The "School News"—Indian Visitors—The White Mother—The India Office—White and Red—Quo Quousque?—Indian Title Deeds—The Reservations—The Indian Agencies—Missionary Efforts—The Red Man and the Maori	186

HESPEROTHEN.

Deming—The Mirage—Ruined Cities—American Explorers—Self-Tormentors—Animals and Plants—Yuma—California—Los Angeles—Santa Monica—The Pacific.

May 30th.—At an hour as to which controversy might arise, owing to the changes of time to which we have been subjected, the train, which had pulled up but seldom during the night, stopped at Deming Junction, where the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé Railroad "connects" with the Southern Pacific, on which our cars were to be "hauled" to San Francisco. Jefferson time and San Francisco time differ two hours, so at one end of the station we scored 6 A.M., and at the other 8 A.M. The sooner one gets away from Deming in any direction the better. A year ago—as is usually the case hereabouts—there was not a trace of a town on the dry ugly plain covered with prickly acacias and "Spanish bayonets"; now Deming flourishes in gaming and drinking saloons, express offices, and all the horrors of "enterprise" in the West. The look-out revealed a few tents, wooden shanties, a station, at which workmen were running up a frame-house, ground littered with preserved provision tins, broken crockery, adobes and refuse of all sorts. At the door of one hut, swarming with flies, swung half a carcase of beef; two women were washing, pale-faced, but not uncheerful creatures, who had not a good opinion of Deming and its population. "They carry out a dead man a day, or used to," said one informant. The lady washerwomen did not quite corroborate the figure; but, remarked the chattier of the two, "there was a considerable shewtin' about last night!" To the observation of one of the party that he was "going to have a look about," the other lady made reply, "I guess if you dew it will be 'hands up' for ten cents with you." On the platform was a United States marshal, with a revolver stuck in his belt, but his duties were considered to be punitive rather than preventive. Here Mr. Chase and Mr. Hawley left us to return to Topeka. At the abschiednehmen Sir H. Green was affected by a proof of interest in his welfare of a touching character and very full of local colour; one of our friends beckoned to him, took him aside, and pulling out a revolver ("It is hands up!" thought Sir Henry), fully loaded, pressed it on his acceptance in the kindest manner as a useful compagnon de voyage. As we were not to stay at Deming, the self-sacrifice was not consummated.

The regular train having come up, our special was tacked on to it, and in an hour the locomotive puffed out of the depot, and sped westerly on its way at the rate of twenty miles an hour, across a plain some fifteen miles broad, bordered by jagged, irregular mountain ranges north and south, as dry as a bone—so dry that water for the engine has to be brought to the stations in tanks. A scanty growth of what looked like camel grass, interspersed euphorbias and cactuses of great height, was all that met the eye. We are approaching the great basin of Arizona, and are warned that much dust and great heat must be expected, and that the "scenery" does not improve in point of variety or verdure, both of which are nearly at zero. A vigorous, well-directed campaign against the flies in the saloon gave us comparative repose; then the blinds being pulled down, and the thermometer reduced to 83 deg., society settled itself to study, with results indicated presently by a gentle susurrus on the sofas. A sudden alarm, "Look at the deer!" There sure enough was a herd of antelopes flying over the scrub towards the horizon, which flickered about in the heat in a mirage of islands and uplifted mountain ends—so vanished.

After passing Lordsburgh, a desolate spot in the desert, there appeared a beautiful mirage. The sand became a sheet of water, waveless and mirror-like, and in it we saw reflected in trenchant outline the mountain range beyond. "It must be water! it is water!" exclaimed an unbelieving director. And, lo! as he spoke the "dust devils" rose and danced along the face of the sea; in another minute the vision was gone; the dazzling sand, white, blank and dull, mocked our senses. This was near Stein's Pass, up which the train of nine carriages was climbing—"the heaviest train that has gone over yet," said the triumphant conductor. "But we thought we'd try it." Each waggon weighed 30 tons. The Pass is three miles long, and we were working at a grade of 74 feet with a 19-inch cylinder engine.

Between Pyramid Station and San Simon (stant nomina umbrarum—the names of mere shadows of stations) the western border of New Mexico is crossed, and we enter the great Territory of Arizona, which lies between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada.

It is bounded by New Mexico on the east, by Mexico on the south, by Utah and Nevada on the north and north-west, and by California in continuation of the western boundary. It is as large as New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, and Delaware together. Whom it belonged to first, so far as occupation constitutes possession, I know not; but the Spaniards owned and neglected it for more than three centuries before the Americans possessed it. In 1848 and 1853 the regions now forming Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada were ceded by the descendants of the Spanish conquerors to the conquering Anglo-American. It would need weeks of assiduous travel to explore the portion of Arizona where the most interesting ruins in America, the cities of the Zoltecs or the Aztecs—for the experts differ respecting their origin—are to be found. The weight of authority and of recent investigation leads one to believe that the Aztecs were not the builders of these ruined cities. Humboldt, indeed, believed that they were; but, as Mr. Hinton remarks, in his capital little handbook, which I recommend to prospectors, emigrants, tourists, and travellers, "to suppose such an utter abandonment of settled habitations, it will be necessary to suppose some strange impelling reasons, either in climate or other causes, that must have amounted to a catastrophe. An hypothesis which would leave a whole race able to conquer an empire, and to preserve power enough to abandon without destruction their old homes, implies conditions and forces without a known historical parallel." The conclusion that many native cities were flourishing when the Spaniards arrived in America may, perhaps, be questioned. There is a distinctive character about them, differing from that of the Mississippi mounds, the Central American pyramids, or the ruined cities of Yucatan.

The site of one of these cities was pointed out to us from the train, and that was all we saw of them. But I heard so much about the mysterious remains that I was induced to procure Mr. Bancroft's remarkable essay on the native races of the Pacific Coast. Mr. Bancroft believes that the Pueblos and other Indians, in a state of civilisation which they subsequently lost, were the earliest inhabitants of these countries and the builders of the cities; that the Apaches came down upon them, and their work being then aided by the Spaniards, this original agricultural people were swept off the face of the earth. But where the Apaches came from the American ethnologists have not, I believe, determined. For hundreds of miles these ruins cover the country—stone houses, ancient watch-towers, and adobe buildings, around which are quantities of stone implements, masses of crockery and pottery. In some places there are structures of wood and stone, without iron, the masonry consisting of thin plates of sandstone dressed on the edges, and laid in coarse mortar nearly as hard as the stone itself.

The explorers who have discovered the most interesting cities in Arizona and elsewhere were officers of the United States army. They have been the true pioneers of American civilisation in the West, and it is most creditable to them that they have been able to furnish so much scientific and antiquarian observation in the execution of their arduous and often painful duty in Indian warfare. There is no cold shade cast upon the labours of officers who desire to make a little reputation for themselves by contributions to scientific publications, and by papers on natural history and the like in periodical publications or in the daily press.

There is, as might be expected from its position, a very high temperature in Arizona. This lasts from the middle of June to the first of October. During the best part of summer exertion of any kind is impossible. Metal objects cannot be handled without producing blisters; rain scarcely ever falls; and, to keep up the drain of constant evaporation, a man must drink a gallon or two gallons of water a day. Mr. Ross Brown, speaking of the summer, declares that "everything dries. Waggons dry; men dry; chickens dry. There is no juice left in anything, living or dead, by the close of summer. Officers and soldiers creak as they walk; chickens hatched at the season come out of the shell ready cooked. Bacon is eaten with a spoon, and butter must stand in the sun an hour before the flies become dry enough for use. The Indians sit in the river with fresh mud on their heads, and, by dint of constant dipping and sprinkling, manage to keep from roasting, though they usually come out parboiled." But, although it is recorded that a party encamped on a narrow cañon where the temperature was 120 degrees, there was no sunstroke. And in that respect the climate differs from that on the eastern coast, where, especially this very summer, a great number of deaths were caused by coup de soleil. People, with the thermometer marking 94 degrees, talk of its being agreeably cold. An exceedingly interesting fact, if it be one, connected with residence in this part of the world is the wholesome effect of complete abstinence. Death from want of water was by no means infrequent in the old days before so many wells were dug; but it only occurs when there is a good deal of humidity in the air. Although alcoholic drinks and tobacco have an injurious effect, there is a large consumption of both at all the stations and at the mines.

As in the Orange River Free State, where probably the conditions of temperature are not very dissimilar, pulmonary complaints are cured, so a residence in Arizona, it is said, stops consumption; and there are authentic statements that people who arrived in a rapid decline have experienced almost immediate relief of the principal symptoms, and have been finally cured. Governor Safford, in an official letter, states that his lungs were a good deal diseased, and that he was suffering with a severe cough when he reached Arizona, and that in six months his cough left him. He is satisfied the warm, dry atmosphere acted like a healing balm to diseased lungs, and that, the pores being kept open, the impurities which attack weak organs escape through the skin. Dr. Loryea, of San Francisco, and Dr. Sawyer aver that Arizona is nature's Turkish bath, and that Yuma, that evil-looking place, contains the fountains of health.

Of such vast regions a small acquaintance acquired by passing rapidly twice over a line of railway does not entitle one to speak; but, if what we read and heard of Arizona be true, there is within its limits enormous mineral and agricultural wealth. There are carboniferous basins of great extent and richness. The mountains teem with ore. Silver and gold, copper pyrites, zinc, and lead are to be found over a great range, the extent of which is as yet imperfectly known. There are sulphates of nearly all the metals; metallic oxides, chlorides, carbonates, nitrates; agates, amethysts, garnets, and other precious stones. People there are who believe that the diamond, the emerald, and the ruby will turn up in due time. In fact, if one were to be guided by the accounts in the papers or the guide-books, he would think that a sure way of making an immediate fortune would be to settle down on any hillside in this favourite land. Nevertheless, what I saw out of my window gave me reason to suppose that there was poverty in Arizona as well as in the old country. Nor did the buildings which I saw by the way at the sparse stations and infrequent towns give an idea that the in-dwellers were well-to-do in the world. The adobe, or burnt brick, which is a common material in lieu of better, has always a ruinous appearance. The houses built of it yesterday seem tumbling to pieces from the influences of old age.

We take no note of time save by its relation to constant motion, and to the "programme"—a Procrustean bed on which we have voluntarily placed our tortured limbs. Sometimes in the hours of the night, which could not be called still because of the incessant pealing, rattling, and thundering of the train, I thought of the wonderful ways of man with himself in such affairs as we were now engaged in. There is a play of Terence which was a trouble to me in my youth, so long ago that I remember very little more of it than the dismal and elongated name; but Mr. "Heautontimorumenos" never needlessly bound himself up in a programme and delivered his life over to a time-table! It is likely enough, seeing what sort of man he was, that he would have adopted that course had he lived in these days. I admit that programmes are necessary when your movements regulate, or have to be regulated by, those of other people; and that was the case in some measure with us, but the solicitude it occasioned the worthy and valued friends, whose brows I perceived becoming more puckered, and whose faces and spirits were heavy with cares connected with the programme, to come up to time, was beyond belief, and I vowed if ever I had my own way with the ordering of a party I would have no programme at all. And plot and calculate as you will, a gale of wind, or a heated axle, or a broken bridge, or a flood, upsets everything, and your schemes gang aglee utterly! It was admirable to see how we were working out the destiny we had made manifest for ourselves in advance so long ago, but the task was not easy. What curious sounds, by the way, our train made at night! One could now and then compose words to the tune of the wheels, and the regular rhythm forced one at times to hum the words of a song, of which the train seemed to hammer out the music. It seemed so strange to be turning into bed night after night, and waking up to pass the same life day after day, like a log of wood carried on by an interminable, irresistible torrent.

Provided with books and newspapers, and friends to converse with, as well as with sights to see, we had, however, no reason to complain that time hung heavy on our hands as the train sped on. The books were very utilitarian, it is true—Reports of Chambers of Commerce, statistics and papers connected with railway and commercial enterprise and the like. But our directors took to that literature with avidity, and aided by maps and tables, copiously furnished to them, seemed bent on passing with honours in a competitive examination anent the American railway system. There were always, close at hand in the cars, competent authorities to answer questions, or able champions to engage in controversy, and as I heard all the subtle contentions, which I did not understand, concerning signalling and baggage checking, gauges and engines, curves and gradients, freights and fares, I was set to think what the field had been in which all the ingenuity and talent displayed in dealing with such topics were exercised in pre-railway days. These discussions were mostly connected with the consideration of profits and percentages, and that was a neutral ground on which the combatants manœuvred their facts and figures as in a natural "schauplatz". There were times when such investigations ran down like a clock, and no one wound them up again for a few hours, and then my friends digested the remains they found on the field of battle and strengthened themselves for friendly jousting.

Not very long ago there would have been exceedingly good sporting in many parts of Arizona. Grizzly bears, common and black bears; pumas, mountain sheep, jaguars, ocelots, opossums, panthers, wolves, and lynxes are largely distributed over the hill ranges. There are also hares and rabbits and many smaller animals. Wild turkeys have much diminished of late years; but there is a variety of birds, some of them excellent for the spit. The chase, however, is attended with some danger, unless one is very well booted and looks out where he treads, as rattle-snakes abound, and are of exceeding virulence, the black species being especially deadly. There are horned toads, but these are harmless.

For the botanist Arizona is an almost inexhaustible field of delight. Any one who likes to read of vegetable wonders, or of an extraordinarily varied flora, cannot do better than get Dr. Loryea's work, or read 'New Mexico,' by Elias Brevoort. The growth which struck us most was that of the extraordinary cactus called the candelabra or Sahuaro. It is worth while going so far as the railway will take one to see these plants sticking up on the sides of a rock without a trace of verdure or moisture, rising to the height of 40 or 50 feet, and throwing out enormous arms at the most grotesque angles, each varying from the other in shape, the number of its arms, and in the manner in which they are disposed. This giant cactus is covered with prickles, and is of a light green colour. It is said that in the old days the Apache Indians not unfrequently made use of them as handy means of torture, and nailed their victims to a cactus previous to setting fire to it. The body of the plant is resinous, and it can be easily converted into a bonfire. Here and there we saw some with traces of pale yellow flowers. When these are gone there is a fruit, which makes an excellent preserve, or can be boiled into sugar. Then there are prickly pears in great quantities; and there is a "negro-head cactus," with a round top covered with sharp spines, which furnished the Mexicans with fish-hooks. "There is a soul of beauty in things evil." If a thirsty traveller coming upon one of these plants kindles a fire around it, the juices of its body are gradually concentrated into a central cavity, where they only wait incision to be liberated in the form of a pleasant drink, half a gallon or more in quantity. The appliances for getting a drink out of most of these roots are described at length in various books of travel; but however useful they may have been at the time, the activity of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railway will in all probability exempt travellers in future from any necessity to avail themselves of these ingenious devices. Trees flourish in spite of the heat and want of water. As various as the trees are the human inhabitants, and one of the greatest marvels connected with them, perhaps, is the extraordinary variety of dialects amongst people of the same race, who lived in the same country long before the white man came to trouble them. They are decreasing, of course, in numbers; but in some of the reservations they seem to have arrested downward progress, and to have taken to some form of agricultural labour. At present Arizona is the happy hunting-ground of the unfortunate red man. There is, I am assured, no disposition on the part of the whites to intrude upon the reservations of the various tribes. I did not hear of any one who had come in from the East to settle with the view of making his fortune by farming; but miners have flooded the cañons, and climbed the mountain-tops; and now they have settled down into a steady way of life without any big "booms," as the Americans say, but with prospects of pretty certain returns for their labour.

All night we travelled on, and when the morning came, we were still traversing the desert, still passing through one of the most sterile wastes on the face of the earth, where, however, by strange contrasts of nature—or is it strange?—there were in the mountains and in the ravines rich ores to tempt the cupidity and enterprize of man. We are continually reminded of similar wastes in India and in Africa; but no one, as far as I know, has yet discovered any mineral wealth in the north-western deserts of our Indian Empire. And although Captain Burton and others have fancied they have come across an El Dorado in Southern Egypt, and Ibrahim Pasha had such faith in the existence of gold in those regions that he led forth an expedition to perish there, there is no such fortune in store for the adventurous miner as awaits him in Arizona, Colorado, and California.

June 1st.—Everyone who has entered Arizona, or left it—and let us hope he went back all the better for his visit—will recollect Yuma for ever.

Yuma is on the Colorado, which divides California from Arizona. The muddy waters of the river rush with immense velocity past the buttresses of the fine bridge, with a draw for steamers, that spans it. The town consists apparently of adobe houses, and these not very regularly built. I could not visit the main street for lack of time, but the offshoots within eyeshot of us were not tempting. All we could see from the railway windows were flat-roofed adobe houses, some squalid Indians nearly naked, the buildings, with the Stars and Stripes over them, of the United States post on the left bank, and a few wooden sheds. It is said to be one of the hottest places in the world, and certainly looked dry and dusty. They say that a soldier who died there and went to an unmentionable place, returned in the spirit to beg for a blanket, as he felt so cold!

More happily constituted travellers than most of us have seen something pleasing in the aspect of the country roundabout, and have been moved to much admiration by the various tints of the hills in the distance, and by the rocks which constitute the near limits of the valley through which the river passes. In the old days, when the stage-coaches offered the only means of travelling through the district, there might have been a good deal to see along the road; but the rail generally avoids sights, and where nature is at its best, the engineer strikes deep down and burrows if he can. The colours of the hills are bright and varied; the lava rocks are of many shades, and the sun, piercing through strata of pure air, illuminates them with great vividness and force; but after a time the eye tires of the uniform hues of the landscape. For a few miles the rail runs close to the river, then plunges into the most remorseless, cruel waste of sand and rock, spread out up to the foot of the rugged hills of the Barnardino Range, I ever beheld—an abomination of desolation compared with which the Libyan Desert or the plains of Scinde were the Garden of the Hesperides. I cannot describe, nor could I at any time hope to succeed in giving an adequate conception of this dreadful wilderness. For 107 miles west there is not a drop of water to be found; the stations are dependent on the railway for their supplies. But Nature, as if to take away the reproach of permitting such a vast blotch on her fair face, kindly threw in Fata Morgana. We saw with delight widespread lakes with fairy islands in the midst; placid seas washing the base of the distant hills. This baked and dreary expanse extends nearly to San Gorgonio. We were spared the sandstorms which are so dreadful, nor did we experience inconvenience from the dust. The traveller, who has begun to despair of ever seeing anything greener than giant cacti and the adamantine vegetation which dispenses with water, is agreeably surprised as he approaches Los Angeles. If he be as fortunate as we were in having such friends as Colonel Baker and his wife to take charge of him, he will be amply repaid for far greater discomforts than any he experienced in the Colorado desert. From Los Angeles there is a railway to Santa Monica, seventeen miles distant, which belongs to Colonel Baker; and I would advise every one who can, either to spare or make the time for a diversion to that most delightful spot. Judge of the pleasure we felt when, after a picturesque run through orange groves, vineyards, and fields of corn and barley, we gazed on the waters of the Pacific—"θαλαττα! θαλαττα!" What a glorious scene! the broad bay lighted by the rays of the declining sun; the blue waves rolling on in solemn march, and breaking in long lines of foam on the dazzling sand, and nearer still the gardens and trees of the Pacific Biarritz which was about to welcome us! Our palace-car and its attendant carriages shot into a siding close to the beach. In a few minutes "every man Jack" was off to the bathing establishment to conform to the regulations ere we plunged into the sea. It is an orthodox bathing-place of the highest order. The Baths are extensive, and provided with every convenience and comfort for ladies and invalids; hot and cold, salt water and fresh, for those who do not like to trust themselves to the sea. A rope extended seaward to hold on by was needful, for the surf was heavy and the undertow strong. The water was delicious. Generally there is less sea on, and it is never too hot or too cold for bathing. Next morning we had another bath in a still rougher Pacific. The Duke and some of the party were driven about the country by Colonel and Mrs. Baker, and at 3 P.M., to our sorrow, we left the most lovable little spot of all we have seen on this continent. Good fortune be in store for Santa Monica! At Los Angeles, where carriages were waiting, we drove through the streets and suburbs, which enabled us to appreciate the reasons which induced the Spanish founders to give the city its name. In the evening we continued our journey, passing in the dark over the feat of engineering called the Loop.

A new Land of Goshen—A Jehu indeed—The Drive to Clarke's—A Mountain Hostelry—Grizzlies—Fascination Point—The Merced—Yosemite Fall—A Salute—Mountain Airs—The Mirror Lake—"See that Rattle?"—A Philosophic Barber.

June 2nd.—It is astonishing how soon one gets accustomed to the rattle and rumble of the rail, and sleeps all the night through after a time, waking up only when a train stops at a station, just as a miller is roused by the cessation of the clock of the mill-wheel. We keep good hours, and so at 4.30 this morning I was looking out of the window at a sea of blue mountain ridges upon the west, which looked like the waves of the ocean, so varied in the serrated edges was the line of stony waves which seemed as if they were about to sweep down over the great stretch of prairie. We were passing through a new land of Goshen, at least that was the name which I detected on the station board, indicating a junction with another line, and early as was the hour the door of the hospitable restaurant was open, and gentlemen in front were to be seen drawing their hands across their lips as if they had been taking a refresher in the early morning. Close at hand the country was perfectly flat, covered with glorious crops nearly ripe for the sickle, and indeed cut and stacked in some places. Water appeared abundant; a river flowing west was visible at intervals, its course marked by a line of trees. Large black cranes stalked about in the meadow-like fields, and hares sat up on end to take a look at the train. The paucity of human beings, except at the rare stations, was remarkable; only when I say "rare," perhaps I am scarcely justified, as there were little wooden huts at intervals perhaps of ten or twelve miles, where a saloon announced itself, and a possible ticket-office.

On the east of the plain through which the line runs, the peaks of the Sierra Nevada were visible, but the journey was rather monotonous all the same, and we were glad when our train halted at Madera, about ninety miles from Goshen, where we were to get out and start on our expedition to the Yosemite Valley. Especial arrangements had been made for our conveyance, but I almost doubt now whether it would not have been better for us to have taken the ordinary carriage which leaves Madera every day, except Monday, for the Yosemite Valley, at 7.45, arriving at Clarke's or Bruce's in somewhat less than twelve hours, so as to bring daylight with it to the halting-place; a very desirable thing, as we soon found out. It was 8 o'clock before our party started from Madera, in two Kendal carriages with four horses each. In one was the Duke, Lady Green, Mr. Stephen, and myself, with Crockett on the box; in another were Sir Henry Green, Mr. Wright, Major Anderson, and Mr. Jerome. Our driver was a man with the impossible name of MacLenathan, a resolute, dry, taciturn man, with a good face, seamed with the exposure to sun and rain of many years on the box. But he told us he had deserted it lately, and had taken to the work of livery stable keeper, only coming out on this occasion as driver to do honour to the Duke. As it turned out, it was well his right and his left hand had not lost their cunning. The driver of the other carriage was a noted character, rejoicing in the name of "Buffalo Bill," and later on we had reason to feel very thankful to him also for the possession of great pluck and nerve. For some ten or twelve miles the route, which consists of mere wheel tracks over the prairie, runs over moderately undulating land. On the right there is a shoot or flume for carrying down timber from the upper part of the mountain ridge fifty miles away. The dust was troublesome, and the rapid motion of the four horses scarcely saved us from the roasting sun. The scenery was not interesting; indeed, the great object of attraction was the little Californian quail with his pretty crest, running across through the grass or jumping up upon a stump to have a look at the travellers. Stage stables were far apart, but the speed was fair, and it was astonishing to see the excellent condition in which the horses were at the end of their long canter, and what capital steeds were taken out of the stalls, in which they were feeding on barley-straw, to be put into the traces. I think the average length of the stages was about twelve miles. We lost about an hour at a little mining village where we halted for dinner, a place called Coarse Gold, as well as I recollect, consisting of the usual buildings, a few shanties, the store, the hotel, far better than might have been expected, and a sort of wigwam or one-storeyed house, in front of which were assembled a number of "Digger Indians," degraded specimens of a degraded tribe. They sat looking at the new arrivals in the most apathetic manner, just as they might regard so many flies. The men were dressed in a compromise of old Indian attire, leather leggings and deerskin jackets, with European clothing, caps, bad hats and trousers, and old boots, the women swathed ungracefully in what seemed to be pieces of blanket, their legs encased in folds of dirty cotton. One of these Diggers was very slightly dressed, and as it is intensely cold in the winter, we asked him whether he did not feel the effect of the frost and snow. He knew a little English, and made the most of it. "When your body is covered you do not feel the cold," he said; "But your face is always uncovered, and yet you do not feel the cold there. An Indian's body is all face." And that was all the explanation he would vouchsafe to us. Somehow or another, what with delays at the stations, possibly caused by our being out of the regular running, and being an interpolation on the ordinary course of travel, and possibly owing to our reduced speed, for the carriages with four horses did not, it seems, go as fast as the public conveyance with six, it was getting dark as we approached the line of wooded hills, in a valley in which, many miles away, lay our halting-place for the night. The result of our delay in starting, concerning which the driver had been severe from time to time, was startlingly manifest as the coaches mounted the steep ascents of one of the most tortuous roads in the world. The spurs of the hills come down very sharply to the valley, and the road is carried round by a series of very severe gradients following the contour of the mountain-chain, so that at one time there is a deep gorge on your left, and then, as the road leaves that spur with the valley on that side and crosses to another spur, there is a great descent on the right, so that you are continually passing along by a series of precipices, to which, in our case, the fast gathering gloom imparted additional horror. Through the sighing of the wind in the trees aloft came the roar of the torrents down below. The drivers went along at a good steady canter, and from time to time, as we came round a sharp curve, I dare say the thought was in every one's mind, what would happen if one of the leaders fell, or if the driver slipped his hand in gathering up the reins to go round the corner. The scenery became more wild and formidable, so to speak, at every fresh turn. The colossal trees, which challenged admiration in the daytime, closed up in greater volume, darkening the narrow road completely, so that in an hour after entering upon the mountain-range it became as black as pitch. The lamps of Buffalo Bill in the leading carriage were some guide to our driver. He had none, and it was with anxiety, renewed every ten minutes or so, that we saw the lights in front describe a graceful curve, which showed that they were passing by one of the dips or cuts of the road. It needed skill and judgment for MacLenathan to conduct the carriage, because if he drove too close to that in front of us, the clouds of dust obscured the view, and if he dropped too far behind he lost the benefit of the lights. By enormous trunks of trees, by piles of timber, through deep cuttings in the rock, plashing over watercourses, descending swiftly into river-beds, and splashing through the fords over boulders, then climbing up steep hillsides, on and on, it seemed as though the night would never come to an end, and we inwardly, and audibly too, expressed our regret that we had not started a little earlier; but still there was an almost pleasurable excitement in holding on as we swept round one of these terrible gorges, and tried to look down into the gulf beneath. That last stage seemed interminable, but towards 9 o'clock at night the driver of the coach in front announced that we were getting "near at last"; and lucky it was, for his lights were giving out. "It is just as well that they did not," said our driver, "because it would be bad for you." "Why?" "Well," he said, "you would just have to get out and walk! I would not undertake to drive any one in the dark along such a road as this." Presently we heard the noise of rushing water, and gained the bank of a stream flowing with swiftness over a shingle bed. This we crossed, and in half an hour more, through the dark belt of trees in front, lights were discerned, and, crossing another stream and a bridge, our wearied horses were pulled up in front of the hotel, a large wooden building, on the steps of which were the landlord and his staff, and most of the inmates turned out to greet and inspect the travellers who had been long expected. "It is a bad country to go driving about in the dark," said Mr. Bruce, the landlord, a sentiment in which we thoroughly agreed. There was a supper in the common room, to which, albeit the fare was primitive enough, we did ample justice. Travellers have complained of the charges along the road, but, considering the distance which all articles have to be carried to the Valley, the heavy duties, and the shortness of the season, I do not think that any one with experience of Swiss inns would complain much; and if the traveller desires to drink claret, he must not be astonished if he pays eight or nine shillings a bottle for it. The ordinary fare, at hotel prices, is quite good enough for hungry people, and eggs, milk, and bread are abundant, and not dear. The bedrooms, sufficiently simple in all their appointments, are good enough to be welcome to tired people, for there is a fair bed to lie upon, and the sheets, as far as our experience went, were clean and fresh. Nor were the insect horrors, of which we may have some knowledge in parts of Europe, to be dreaded, not even mosquitoes at this time of year.

Soon after dawn a thunderstorm broke over the valley, hail and torrents of rain, and the landlord congratulated us upon the cooling effect it would have on the air, and on the absence of dust, which is rather troublesome at times. It was necessary to make an early start in the morning, for it is a long journey to the Yosemite. For some years past the Valley has become a kind of American Chamouni, and if Americans swarm over Europe in search of the sublime and beautiful, they cannot be accused of neglecting altogether their own country. The first thing I saw, on walking out on the verandah of the hotel, was the stage-coach and six horses, with eight ladies and nine gentlemen, loading up for the Valley. They had arrived late the night before, a little in advance of us, and yet the ladies, bravely attired for the road, were all in their place in the char à bancs long before 7. Travellers frequently stay at Bruce's, and our host promises good sport to any one who will make it his headquarters; but I cannot speak with any confidence on that point myself; still I should think it a very pleasant quarter for a man who had nothing else to do, and who had an aptitude for climbing, to go about looking out big game. We heard talk of pheasants, but saw none: the bird which is called by that name not being entitled to it, according to ornithologists. In front of the hotel was laid out the skin of a cinnamon bear, which had been shot by an Austrian gentleman—"Count Fritz Thumb," the landlord called him—a few days previously, and which was to be sent after him as a trophy of his skill. "But," says Boniface, "it was not he shot him at all; it was 'is old Injun hunter." Grizzlies, he said, were rare, but they were to be found if you went up high enough, and as he spoke he pointed up to the mountains towering away in the distance in grand Alpine proportions. Deer were common enough, and there were some tame specimens of the ordinary black deer running about in the enclosure. We had an early start, but not quite so early as the Americans; and it was wonderful how well our four hardy horses did the first stage, six and twenty miles, including some very sharp ascents from the Hotel.

From time to time we got out and walked up the sharp bits, diverging to the right or left to gather the lovely flowers which grew on the roadside, or halting to admire the giant trees which clothed the mountain ridges. Pitiable ignorance! not to know the names of the plants or shrubs or wonderful bunches of blossoms, among which fluttered the most magnificently coloured butterflies. Woodpeckers of many different species uttered their quaint notes in jerky flight from tree to tree, or peered at the travellers from the shelter of the branches. Firs, pines, and spruces of enormous size, and trees to me unknown, formed a dense forest on each side of the road; but now and then we caught glimpses of the stupendous ranges of the alps beyond. It was lamentable to see the waste and wreck wrought in this wondrous wealth of timber—reckless, wicked waste. Charred trunks stood with leafless arms withered and black, or lay prone among the ferns in myriads. This was, we were told, the work of shepherds, who think nothing of setting fire to one of the finest trees in the world to warm themselves for an hour, and are delighted with a conflagration which may lay a hillside in ashes. And the Indians too are held to have their share in the destruction. There was enough of timber wasted and destroyed mile after mile to build a city. The nemesis must come; already the alarm has been sounded, and the State authorities here and elsewhere are trying to prevent the mischief. I have often had occasion to regret my ignorance of botany inter alia; but never did I feel it more than when I was walking up the road, on each side of which was a carpet of flowers, a maze of shrubs and plants—dense brushwood—to not one of which could I give a name. We arrived at the Halfway House at 12.35 as much pleased as the horses which brought us there so well at the respite, for it was an awful "pull up," and the coachman did his work at high pressure. In the course of our pilgrimage we had found a very pleasant divertissement. The Major, Mr. White, and Mr. Jerome had excellent voices, and from time to time they burst into song, giving with great effect the quaint negro melodies, which are now made familiar to us in London, from a very large répertoire; and so the afternoon passed in quiet enjoyment as we climbed the hills on foot or in the carriages—snatches of talk, exclamations of wonder and delight, and outbursts of the 'Golden Slipper,' 'O! that 'Possum,' 'The Ark,' 'John Brown,' 'Tramp, Tramp,' and other choruses.

It was near 4 o'clock when the driver, who had been silent for some time, looking round at us occasionally as one who would say, "Wait a little till I surprise you," suddenly pulling up, said, "Now, here you are. This is Fascination Point! Won't you get down a bit?" And, lo! there indeed lay before us a scene of indescribable grandeur. I know nothing like the effect produced by Yosemite Valley when seen for the first time from this point. It has a characteristic which no other similar view I am acquainted with possesses. You take in at one glance stupendous mountain-ranges, all but perpendicular, beyond which you see the snowy crests of the great Sierra, the profound valley between them, a long vista of extraordinary magnificence, of cascades and precipitous waterfalls, and far down below a silvery river rushing through a forest composed of the noblest trees in the world, with patches of emerald-green sward and bright meadows.

I see that by a slip of the pen I have miscalled the place from which we got our first view of the wondrous scene. But I have a right to change the name for my own use. What the driver said was "Inspiration Point." I prefer my mistake, for the view inspires you with no feeling save that of wonder and delight. These sublime scenes appear to be beyond the reach of poetry. Niagara and the Yosemite have not yet found a laureate. The peculiar and unique feature of the valley seems to me to be the height and boldness of the cliffs which spring out from the mountain-sides like sentinels to watch and ward over the secrets of the gorge; next to that is the number and height of the waterfalls; but it is only by degrees and by comparison that the mind takes in the fact that the cliffs are not hundreds, but thousands of feet high—that these bright, flashing, fleecy cataracts fall for thousands of feet—that the rent which has been torn in the heart of the mountains, till it is closed by the awful granite portals beyond which no mortal may pass, extends for miles. I thought as I gazed that it were pity to descend, lest a nearer view might destroy the effect of that coup d'œil; but the driver had regulated the period for rapture. He whipped us up to our places by word of mouth, and the carriages renewed their course, now striking by bold zigzags down into the valley for our destination, which was still six miles away. I shall not attempt to describe my own feelings, far less can I pretend to tell what others, probably far more susceptible of the beauty and grandeur of what we beheld than I am, may have felt at the succession of the awe-inspiring revelations of the tremendous grandeur of the Valley which came upon us. What is the use of rolling off a catalogue of names and figures?—even the brush of the painter, charged with the truest colours and guided by the finest hand and eye, could never do justice—that is, could never give a just idea of these cliffs and waterfalls. "El Capitan! Oh, that's the name, is it? Three thousand three hundred feet high!" And then you try to take in what that means. "And it's 3500 feet down to the Valley? Dear me!" "And that is the Cathedral Rock? And those two peaks are the Spires? I don't exactly see the resemblance; do you?"

There was a sort of wail of delight from us all as we came on the "Bridal Veil Fall"; and I do not think any one cared to know that it was just 60 short of 1000 feet high! Surely one of the most graceful, lovely chutes d'eau on earth, lost though it be from view behind the rocks at the close of its feathery flight! But there was no stopping to look at anything; relentless Fate drove us down and on, till the wheels rolled more evenly, and at last we came to the bed of the valley—some 1800 yards broad, opening out here and there yet wider—and we rejoiced in the sight of the bright clear water of the Merced, child of innumerable icy mothers, flashing, sparkling, dashing and brawling, like a myriad Lodores, between her banks decked with flowers and covered with forest trees.

Suddenly there dashed out of a glade two cavaliers, and made full tilt at the leading carriage. "To arms!" Not a bit of it! Nor banditti or Injuns—of whom we had met one or two riding sullenly along to the hunting-grounds—no, only two hotel touts armed with cards of self-commendation, and not apparently in much rivalry, for when told that we had engaged our hotel, they galloped off to waylay other travellers, of whose coming they were apprized by our driver. Our hotel, I may say by the way, gave us full contentment. The site was admirable, commanding a full and near view of the Fall of Falls—the Yosemite—which had so fascinated our eyes that we could scarce divert them to any other object—not "Widow's Tears," or "Virgin's Tears," nor the "Three Brothers," not anything but the Yosemite! And so, when our rooms were pointed out, we made off to the spot where the fine cloudlike vapour rising above the tree-tops indicated the basin into which the waters sought rest after their troubled leap.

Our way lay through the usual gathering of stores, hotels, livery stables for the horses and ponies needed for the excursions, and curiosity dealers' shops, to the village street, as it may be termed, shadowed by fine trees, under which reposed some Indians—one of whom, an Amazon in yellow toga, went riding full gallop past us, her hair falling in a black mat on her shoulders, sitting low, in Melton style, regardless of poultry, children, and boulders, and vanishing in a cloud of dust under the trees. Then we turned to the left and crossed the river by a rustic bridge; and as I looked down into the dancing waters certain shadow-like objects flew up against the current. "Trout?" asked I. "Yes, they're trout. They take 'em—when they dew—five pounds weight. The Injuns catch 'em. We don't understand it as well." A short walk, with eyes ever up-turned, and we come out to a moraine, and, clambering up over a mass of trunks of trees and decaying timber, the Falls were before us—I cannot write more—no adjective will do. "Two thousand six hundred and thirty-four feet, mind!" says the voice. "I don't care," thought we, "it's the most beautiful and wonderful water-jump ever seen by human eye." "It only remains," as they say, to state that there is first, falling over a sheet of granite straight as a wall, a considerable river, which in the plunge comes down at once 1600 feet. There, in a basin of rock, it collects its scattered forces, under cover of eternal spray and cloud, and then takes another header of 434 feet to a barrier of granite, against which it rages for a mad moment, till it swells over and escapes from control by another spring of 600 feet sheer down—and now it is free, and rushes past at our feet, a joyous flashing stream.

We returned through the meadows from the Falls, and as I was walking in advance of the party a snake wriggled across the path, which I struck at instinctively with my stick, and was lucky enough to kill at the first blow. I exhibited the carcass, or whatever a snake's dead body may be, in triumph to my companions. Further on our way we fell in with an old Frenchman who was carrying a basket of fruit from his little garden to the inn. With all the courtesy of his country, he offered to Lady Green the choicest in his little corbeille. He came from Lorraine very long ago to prospect in the States, almost the earliest of the pioneers, but he was still strong and active, and he pointed with great satisfaction up to a white flag planted on a dizzy height above, which he said he had placed with his own hands. The chief livery stable keeper is a German named Stegman. The first ascent of the Dome was made by a young Scotchman named Anderson, from Montrose; so with Indians, Americans, Mexicans, Europeans, there is a very liberal representation of the nations of the world, in the season, in the valley. Mr. Hutchinson, the Conservator of the Valley—one with all the enthusiasm of the American character in everything pertaining to the country, aggravated in this instance by an intense admiration for the valley over which he is appointed to watch—joined us at dinner in the little inn. Full of information, bubbling over with anecdote and illustration, and replete with all kinds of knowledge concentrated upon the one object—the Valley—the Valley—and nothing but the Valley. He knows its history since the time it was first discovered, and its natural history and geological formation, and all about the Indians who lived there and their traditions. It so happened that the Commissioners of the State of California, who are bound to visit the public domains, were also at the hotel, and so we had quite an unofficial and ceremonious meeting; and presently, as we stood in front of the hotel gazing up on the peaks, lighted up by the stars, and listening to the thunder of the waterfall, a startling report burst out on the night, and in another instant the echoes repeated from rock to rock were crashing through the Valley with the roar of heaven's artillery. It was the first gun of a salute ordered by the Commissioners to be fired in honour of the Duke's arrival. The effect was very fine, but I doubt whether I did not feel full of resentment at the outburst, very much as the owls and night-hawks might have been expected to feel, if one could judge from their cries. However, even a salute and echoes must come to an end, and as we were to get up early to start for the Mirror Lake, we turned in to bed at an early hour; not, however, to sleep, because the indefatigable and numerous company in the public room, off which were our bedrooms, were in high spirits, and the song and the dance, to the accompaniment of an invalid piano, for some time asserted their sway.

Mr. Hutchinson had the Duke out early, because it is one of the obligations to see the sun rise, reflected in the Mirror Lake—if you can. There is no fear of cloud or rain. In the Mirror Lake is reflected—or was as we saw it—the precipice at the other side of the Valley, the bulk of Mount Watkins (so called from a photographer who has been daring and successful in his renderings of the Yosemite), and all the surrounding scenery. Once a friend and I saw a cow on its back in the air, by the shore of a Highland lake. The surface was smooth as that of the Mirror before us now. It was flapping its tail from side to side, and its forelegs were up in the sky. We could not make it out at first. There was, in fact, a cow standing near the water of the loch; and what we saw was a reflection of the animal, actually stronger and better defined than the object itself. So it was with the reflections in the Mirror Lake; but when the sun rose over the cliff and we looked at the water, the glare was too dazzling. "It was," as Mr. Wright remarked, "like the electric light." There were curious optical effects produced, some being troubled with purple, others with green or yellow in their eyes, after a vain attempt to look at the reflection, but that did not last long.

We returned to breakfast to make an early start for Union and Glacier Points on ponies. Among the company at the hotel, introduced by Mr. Hutchinson, there was a young lady who was well acquainted with the Valley, and who proved to be a very agreeable companion in our mountain ride; but it was not long ere she was candid enough to let it be known that she did not visit the Yosemite out of love of the picturesque and beautiful, but that she was interested in the sale of photographs of the Valley, and was, in fact, a very persuasive and efficient agent of a firm in San Francisco, who had thus established an outlying picket of great activity and vigilance; and I am sure we all hope she may always be as successful with the visitors as she was with us. Of what we saw from the Glacier Point I must leave others to write or speak. It is reached by a zigzag on the mountain-side—a peculium of the maker, and all the "trails," as they are called, in the valley are the property of individuals or firms who are paid by tariff, and we heard "Eleven gone up before—Duke Sutherland, Lady Green, Sir Green, Mr. Wright, Mr. Russell, Mr. Jerome coming! Sixteen coming up behind!" On the plateau behind the cliffs, from which you look down on the Valley and at the snowfields on the mountain ranges opposite, there is a log house and shanty, and there we had a mountain meal ere we began the descent.

Nothing in the way of riding is more disagreeable than going down a very sharp mountain-side on a pony not, for all you know, very sure-footed, and so instead of riding, I resolved to walk, now and then taking a short cut, to the great discomfiture of feet and boots, although it is three thousand feet to the bottom, and make the best of my way and the most of the road, which is very fair, down the zig zags. I reached the plain thoroughly hot and tired, and bathed in perspiration, in fifty-seven minutes. The horsekeeper, who came down with the rest of the party, seemed to have been affected by the rarity of the atmosphere or something else up at the mountain hostelry, for he insisted on it that I had ridden down, and demanded his horse. "What the thunder, Russell, have you done with my horse?" he asked again and again. Satisfied for the time by my assurances that I had not ridden at all, he went off, and then, thinking over the matter, came back again to repeat his question, till I told him I would not answer it any more. He was an amusing fellow in his way, and affable. He called the Duke "Sutherland," now and then putting Mr. before it. As he was watering his horses, he said: "Here, Mister Sutherland, lay hold of the bucket, will you, whilst I take a turn at this one." And the Duke did so with alacrity. It was a day of incessant activity. No sooner had the mountain party come down than they were off again to drive through the Valley. The rest of our party had already executed masterly investigations at the foot of all the waterfalls; admired the Bridal Veil and the Widow's Tear, as one cascade is satirically termed, "because," says the guide, "it dries up in six months;" had driven and ridden everywhere and seen everything, and we had to do the same; but it would need a week of conscientious work to exploit the Valley thoroughly. At half-past 7, the dinner hour, the little inn was swarming with people; the stage had arrived with fresh contingents. Every place was full, and what with the clatter of knives and forks, the clamour of waiters, the tumult of voices laughing and talking, it was scarcely possible to conceive that a few short years ago this valley was in the exclusive possession of the Indian and the wild beast. There is now, however, a great conflict of interests, and Mammon is holding his revels in the Valley. The State has voted a certain sum of money, twenty-five thousand dollars, I think, to buy up the interests of the trail-makers; that is, those who struck out and made paths to the various objects of attraction; but no success has yet been attained in the negotiations, and, indeed, I should think it a very bad investment for most of them to accept their share of such a sum. Macaulay, for example, who made the path up to the point from which we descended to-day, must make many hundreds of dollars in the height of the season, as he charges so much a visitor, and, besides, has a restaurant where they take their meals at the top.

Next day (June 5th) we left the Yosemite with the satisfactory assurance that we had made the most of our time, though we could not believe we had done it justice. There were some small "nuages" on the face of our "Mirror Lake," caused by changes in the mode of conveyance; but we found six horses and one of the coaches of the country were better than four horses and two carriages of less capacity. Yosemite, I may tell my readers, means "Grizzly Bear" (it may be "Great Grizzly Bear"); but we only heard of one having been thereabouts for a long time, and I believe it was thoroughly tamed. After a glorious day in the woods, clambering up the steep from the Valley, and then on by the road—the only one—to Clarke's, halted there for the night, when we returned from a ceremonious visit to the "Big Trees." We had a most delightful ride from Bruce's, and a hard canter back through the woods on capital ponies, full of life and action, and very sure-footed, but rather inclined to have their own way, which was not always that of the rider. We turned into bed at Bruce's, quite delighted with our expedition, and rather anxious to see the road we had traversed in the dark by the garish light of day. Every traveller's tale, and every guide-book of recent date relating to this part of the world, has a full account of the dimensions, number, appearance, and condition of these wonders of the world. They are either prostrate, mutilated, or decaying; not one has survived the stormy life he must have led for some 3000 years—a few hundreds more or less do not signify. Those which remain upright are scarred by fire and lightning, and drop their monster arms, hung with ragged foliage and sheets of bright moss, mournfully over the ground where their trunks will repose in time to come. I cannot conceive any object of the kind so magnificent as one of those Washingtonias in the full vigour of mature treehood; but we could only fancy what it must have been like by measuring the stems, for there was not anywhere in the forest a tree to be seen which had not suffered. The best way to visit the scene—for it may well be called so—is to strike out from the road on the way to the Yosemite before the halt at Bruce's; but the hotel-keepers and stage-drivers will persuade the stranger, if they can, to defer the excursion till his return from the Valley, so as to make a half-day more out of him.

June 6th.—All up at 5 o'clock, and off soon after 6 A.M. The first stage, eleven miles, we did in two hours and ten minutes—a very pretty road; the second stage, eight miles, in forty-four minutes. The ravages made by fires are most deplorable. We had passed through this great forest track in the dark, but now seen in the morning light, the trunks of magnificent trees rotting on the ground, or standing upright with lifeless arms, consumed at the base, were visible everywhere. It is difficult to find out the exact truth about the cause of these fires. Some few people said "it was the Indians," but the weight of testimony attributes them to the shepherds, who for the most trifling purposes kindle a great fire. In some of the large trees they have hollowed out regular chambers, and of course the tree dies. Such waste of timber! For mile after mile we passed scenes of desolation which ere long those who allowed them will have cause to regret. From time to time we encountered on the road trains of waggons drawn by teams of handsome mules with bells, and had occasion to admire the economy of labour exhibited in the management, by which the driver is enabled to work a powerful break with one hand whilst he drives with the other. The next stage, of fourteen miles, was over an exceedingly bad road; but the horses were good, and we rattled along at a capital speed down towards the plain. Once the quick-eyed driver, pulling up suddenly, said, "See that rattle?" leaped down and made towards the bush; and as we followed him, sure enough we heard distinctly the noise of the snake, which he had intercepted on its way to a rabbit hole. It took refuge in a clump of bushes with gnarled roots, and coiled itself round one of the branches; but by a course of judicious and rather nervous poking it was driven from its vantage ground, and trying to escape was killed by the driver with a blow of his whip, followed by a good many unnecessary strokes from the rest of the party. It was over three feet long, and had just been making an evening meal upon a rabbit, which it had left where we had startled it; and it was evident from its swollen appearance that it had been for some time engaged in the warren close at hand.

At 10.20 we reached Fresno, which is what the Americans call "quite a place," containing not only an hotel, a restaurant, and a store, but a shop where photographs were exhibited. The chef-d'œuvre, a portrait of a Spanish lady 140 years of age, living at Los Angeles, did not, however, commend itself to our taste. We halted at Coarse Gold at 11.40, and left at 12.35. Mr. Jerry Loghlan—who excused himself for not working on the ground that "there was no use in it, as there was nothing to be had," the mines being worked "out"—whose acquaintance we had made on the way up, a huge, broad-shouldered vaurien, was still hanging about with his specimens of quartz, gold, and rattlesnakes' tails, and a black eye recently acquired in battle.

After a long, hot, and dusty drive, it was with no small gratification we made out on the flat the houses of Madera, and after a time the carriages of the special train. The air is so bright and pure that the distances are very deceptive, and it was nearly 5 o'clock P.M. before we reached the station, which had been visible for more than an hour previously. It was pleasant news to hear that the little German barber at the way-side had got baths all ready. In the rear of his shop there was a row of apartments, each provided with a clean zinc bath, hot and cold water to turn on at discretion, and an abundance of towels. This in the centre of a waste seemed very creditable to the civilisation of the people. I should like to know in what part of Europe you would get similar comfort under similar circumstances. I am afraid there are many parts of the British Islands where a traveller would demand such a luxury in vain. And the barber was there to shave those who needed it, and to give you all the news of the day if you wanted it. He was a Prussian, and he grinned from ear to ear as, in reply to my question whether he had served, he said: "Serve, indeed! Not I. I came away and escaped from all that nonsense. There is not a king or an emperor or a prince that I would fight for. Why should I?" "But," said I, "you would have to fight for the Republic here if it were in danger; and that would not be fighting for your fatherland." "Yes," said he, "it would, for this is my fatherland now. But I do not want to fight for it either if I can help it. Fighting is nonsense."

Our excellent stewards received us, if not with open arms, with smiling faces. The carriages were trim and clean and fresh, the tables spread out, and all kinds of dainties provided for the evening meal. We rested quietly for the night in the siding at Madera, and got under weigh at 5 o'clock on the morning of June 7th, the train being timed so as to reach San Francisco at 12.30.

The Palace Hotel—General McDowell—Palo-Alto—The "Hoodlums"—The Real Sir Roger—Exiles in the Far West—The Chinese Population—For and Against them—The Sand Lot—Fast Trotters—The Sea Lions—The Diamond Palace—The Coloured Population—"Eastward Ho!"

The British Consul, Mr. Booker, who has been watching over the interests of the Queen's subjects for some thirty years here, and who is an institution by himself, met the train at a place called, I think, Porta Costa, and welcomed the Duke and his friends. There had been for some days an infusion of the Chinaman in the general element of life along the line, but here it became concentrated, and then ceased to attract much attention. As the train approached the wide expanse of muddy water from the Sacramento, which charges down with impetuous volume, and colours the bay with its turbid stream, we could form an idea of some of the advantages in the expanse of navigable river, that had, however, lain long without appreciation but for the bright red gold possessed by San Francisco. The bay is animated; white canvassed craft stud its waters, and the smoke of steamers pollutes the clear, bracing air. Italian fishermen are busy with line and net, and flights of ducks and squadrons of gulls and cormorants show that the waters are well stocked. It was too late in the year to see the country in the full affluence of its wealth of fruit and crops, of hay and corn, and the hillsides and fields are now disappointingly brown. Presently we arrived at Oakland, where the train was run out on a pier 3500 yards long, to the steam ferry-boat which was to convey us across to San Francisco. The ferry-boat was crowded, for Oakland is a city of some 50,000 people; and of course it had once on a time, not very remote, only a few sheds and insignificant houses. From this side of the bay the city of the Golden Gate, some miles away, was now visible in all its pride of place—pride but not beauty, now at least—for the city presents no great attraction to the eye. The streets, running in parallel lines at right angles to the quay right up the sandy hillside, look like the ribs of some stranded monster, "lank and lean and brown." The most prominent object is the hotel to which we are going, which towers far over the general level of house-top, steeple, and factory-chimney.

There is a little pamphlet, crammed with statistics and with an array of figures and superlatives enough to daze one, given to the guests of the Palace Hotel; but those who are in that happy category scarcely need the information, and those who are not could not derive any idea of the building from the repetition of the ciphers which are to be found in the guide-book. The drawing on the outside affords the best notion of the size, but only actual purview can enable one to judge of the excellent arrangements, the service, the table. For once the American idol "Immensity" is not overlaid. "'Tis blinding bright—'tis blazing white! O Vulcan! what a glow!" Electric lights flooding the court with brightness beyond description. And what a court! Sweetness and light indeed! In the great quadrangle, 144 feet by 84, there are fountains playing, groups of statuary, and exotic plants, and, tier after tier, rise the pillared terraces outside the seven storeys of which the main building consists, painted a lustrous white, shining like purest Parian. There are 755 rooms, abounding in conveniences, and comfortably luxurious. Each is provided with high-pressure hot and cold water, and there is an elaborate system of ventilation, alarms, conductors, pneumatic tubes, telephones, and "annunciators" for fire, letters, servants, &c. The beds are excellent; the furniture admirable; and this vast structure, 120 feet high, 275 feet broad, and 350 feet deep, is not only fire, but—listen—"earthquake proof"; so says the bill of fare, and so says ex-Senator W. Sharon, the proprietor. I have not the least desire to test the truth of the averment, but if I must be in a hotel when an earthquake visits the city in which I am, let me be in the Palace, San Francisco. A man may live here in the enjoyment of a pretty continuous series of meals and one of the best bedrooms for four dollars a day, and there is a lower tariff of bed and board at three dollars a day.

June 8th.—Our first day was rendered exceedingly pleasant by the kindness of General McDowell. The weather did its very best to prevent our enjoying it, and was signally defeated. San Francisco is perhaps the windiest city in the world, and at this time of year there is almost always a storm in the harbour, and a steady, powerful, and somewhat chilly blast, setting in a little before noon, and lasting throughout the day until nearly sundown, up the streets. The General's aide-de-camps came over early to the hotel, in full uniform, in honour of Major-General Green, but General McDowell appeared in mufti, which eased us down a little. A powerful steamer, the "General Macpherson," was prepared for the party, which was swollen by a considerable number of gentlemen invited by our host to meet the Duke, and the gentlemen from Topeka, who were included in the invitation. The excursion afforded a favourable opportunity of inspecting the city defences. From Alcatraz Fort, Point and Presidio Island batteries, which would not be considered very formidable as far as armament is concerned, although their position affords great advantages for torpedo defence, salutes were fired in honour of Sir Henry Green. But in the case of some of us the sight was marred by the rising sea, which increased to an inconvenient height as the steamer reached the Seal Rocks, close to the entrance to the bay. Of the seals I shall give an account farther on. They did not seem to mind the steamer very much until she blew her whistle, when many of them splashed into the sea. At the termination of the trip, which lasted some four hours, General McDowell entertained the party at his official quarters, which are beautifully situated on a bluff overhanging the water of the bay.

June 9th.—We spent, in some respects, an abortive and deceitful day; not, indeed, that there was anything disappointing about our entertainment at Belmont, under the auspices of ex-Senator Sharon; but that we started full of enterprise, and intent upon inspecting the great works of the Spring Valley Reservoir, and of making an excursion through what was described as a very beautiful county whence is brought the water supply of the great city in which we were sojourning. However, though we were baulked in the object of our expedition, the day passed, and not in the least degree unpleasantly, and instead of going to the Lakes we drove about the neighbourhood of Belmont, and visited several country seats.

No one who visits San Francisco should omit taking an early opportunity of going to Palo-Alto to inspect the stock of General Stanford's thorough-breds, and the breeding establishment, which as a sample of perfect order and management cannot be surpassed. I cannot answer for the figures, but I was informed that the owner spends 25,000l. a year upon the maintenance of his stud and stables, and that he has not as yet sold a colt or filly, or parted with a single animal; sires, mares, and young brood now amounting to about 700 head. They are beautifully housed in detached stables fitted up with every convenience that a horse of the highest pedigree and most luxurious taste can desire. I was particularly struck with the perfect silence which prevailed throughout the stables. No shouts to "stand over there," and none of that "——" (groom's expletive) which is so common in our country. And partly owing perhaps to that mode of treatment, and to gentleness in handling, all the horses without exception seemed tractable and sweet-tempered. High-bred stallions stood out in the open for our inspection, and allowed themselves to be rubbed and felt without even laying down their ears or raising a hind-leg from the ground. In reply to a question respecting a remarkably beautiful animal, which seemed to have a little more fire in him, the head groom said "You may walk under his belly if you like," and then and there he told one of the grooms to do so, which the man did, without attracting any unusual degree of attention from the animal. Outside one of the large blocks of stables there is a kind of testing arena, in which we were told it was the pleasure of General Stanford, when he was at home, to sit watching the performance of his young horses. It is an ellipse, like a large circus, bordered with a hoarding, and in the centre there is a raised stage for the visitors, on which are revolving chairs. The riding-master, with an attendant, performing the functions of the late Mr. Widdicombe, sets the animal in motion, checking him when he breaks into a gallop. The speed at which the animal trots the ellipse is known by the time marked on a chronometer, and the fact is recorded for the information of the inspectors, who can turn round their chairs and follow the action of the horse as it trots round the ring.

The district of the State in which Palo-Alto is situated boasts of several residences of the Californian millionaires. One house which we visited, I think belonging to Mr. Flood, furnished the most ornate and beautiful examples of woodwork that were ever seen by any of the party. The house, which was as large as a good-sized English country mansion, is constructed of timber of the finest quality, beautifully worked, painted and varnished; and with moderate care a mansion of this kind will last, in this climate, a couple of hundred years, which to the American mind is an eternity. There were artists from New York, and the staff of an upholsterer and decorator of great renown from the Empire City were still busily engaged in the place as we went through the rooms. The magnificent halls, reception-rooms, billiard-rooms, library, bedrooms, all fitted up with extraordinary luxuriousness, but in a somewhat florid taste, were of wood, the doors of many of the apartments arresting attention by their extraordinary beauty and finish. The ceilings decorated in fresco by Italian artists, and bright windows filled with stained glass gave an appearance of light and grace to the whole residence. The kitchen arrangements were marvels of ingenuity, and one envied the butler who would have such a pantry as that which was displayed for our inspection. Some of the pictures which were ready to be placed on the walls were remarkable, however, only for the richness of their frames; and, indeed, we heard that the excellent proprietor was not a man of very cultivated taste; a child of fortune, in the prime of life and of money-making, spending a portion of his enormous wealth with an easy hand, but destitute of what is called book-learning, and leaving to some future generation the cultivation of the graces and the acquirement of accomplishments which the circumstances of his early life had denied him to effect.

It had been arranged that we should return to San Francisco to dinner, but Senator Sharon had in his secret heart resolved that we should do nothing of the kind, or at least, that if we did so, it should only be after we had partaken of such a feast at Belmont as would very much indispose us to test the capabilities of the chef of the Palace Hotel. From Palo-Alto accordingly we were driven to the charming country house, some miles away, of the ex-senator of Oregon, and we were regaled there, after some delay, at a very elaborate déjeûner, sent out from San Francisco. It was nigh 8 o'clock ere we got back to the city; and the night ended by what might well be called "an excursion" to the Baldwin Theatre, which was at the time the most attractive of the places of entertainment of that sort open in the city. As some of us were walking back, after the play was over, with an American friend, talking of the "hoodlums," famous rowdies, who, we were assured, had been of late days utterly broken up by the vigilance of the police, our attention was attracted to a number of lads smoking at the corner of the street. Our friend said "Hoodlums broken up! There they are—don't you believe it. That's a lot of them, and if you were alone you might find out very unpleasantly that there are plenty of them."

The San Francisco journalists possess astonishing powers of imagination. I rubbed my eyes when I read that I had described "with eloquence the similarity between a marsh at San Bruno and a patch of jungle in the north-west of Scinde, where I had the felicity of spending three weeks with General Green while the natives were arranging a plan to capture the party and cut our throats." I never was in the north-west of Scinde in my life, and, although I had the pleasure of passing a longer time in his company in the United States, and of being on the same plateau before Sebastopol when he was there, for a still longer period, many years before, I never spent three weeks there with General Green. The Duke was described as "professing, but showing, little enthusiasm." However, these matters are of very slight interest or importance; only one wonders how many of the readers of this sort of literary work believe in it. One of our party has, according to a local paper, become a clergyman, and now rejoices in the style and title of "the Bishop," by which he is universally addressed by the party.

While in the train, on our way to Belmont, I had the pleasure of being introduced to a gentleman who, although a lawyer in very large practice, is General of the State Volunteers; and in the course of conversation, I heard that he had papers containing the statement of a gentleman who had visited, and which convinced him that the real Roger Tichborne was living not very far from San Francisco. General Barnes, whose name and character stand high in the city of the Golden Gate, and whom I found to be a gentleman of great intelligence, seemed perfectly satisfied by the story told by this new "claimant"; but what he mentioned to me did not at all tend to create in my mind any notion that he was not an impostor, and especially were my doubts confirmed by the quotations which General Barnes made from some of the narrative, in which there was a ridiculous jumble of French and English, in order to justify, apparently, the stress placed by the "claimant" in his story on that part of his life which was passed in France. He spoke of his uncle as "mon oncle," and of Thursday as "Jeudi," and so on. However, General Barnes appeared to be so impressed by the truthfulness of the man's bearing, and by the full details he gave him at an audience in which he supplied the facts for the consecutive narrative which I was promised, that I expressed a desire to read it. General Barnes subsequently sent me a long written paper containing the heads of the claimant's story, a perusal of which strengthened the conviction I had previously entertained. I only mention this circumstance because there was a report spread throughout the Press, by the agency of one of the great telegraphic associations which furnish the American public with intelligence, that the Duke of Sutherland and myself had interviewed the real Roger Tichborne at San Francisco, and had satisfied ourselves that he was the man; and innumerable "headings" were invented for this supposed interview, of which I was soon made aware on my return westward in every newspaper that I read. I promptly denied the statement that the Duke or myself had seen the new claimant, and although the denial appeared in print I was exasperated day after day by being asked questions afterwards with regard to this supposed conversation with Tichborne at San Francisco, and by inquiries as to my real impression; so it would appear that no one had seen or paid any attention to the refutation of the story which had brought down on my devoted head communications from friends of other Tichbornes, of whom there are several living, some in poverty and others in comparative affluence, in various cities and districts of the United States. I had further the mortification of seeing it stated in print that I had used disparaging words in alluding to the credulity of General Barnes, which was an entirely baseless fabrication. With all the extraordinary keenness of the American mind generally, there is associated with it a considerable amount of the Anglo-Saxon quality which is termed "gullibility," and the land swarms with impostors who make a living out of the easy faith of the population. I do not speak merely of spiritualists, quacks, and professors of peculiar religions or medical dogmas, nor of the preachers of eccentric forms of faith or unbelief, but of the mass of persons who contrive to get an existence by representing that they are "someone else." Although their tricks are well known, the trade still flourishes. They are always the "sons of peers," who have got into disgrace with their families, but who will eventually be owners of castles of historic fame and of enormous estates; "distinguished soldiers"; "Maids of Honour to the Queen," who for some unknown reasons are living in small out-of-the-way villages in the West; or political conspirators who have played a great part on some distinguished stage and have saved themselves from the consequences of defeated enterprize by taking refuge in the States. And then there are hordes of persons who are known by the title of "confidence men," who travel about on the trains or in the steamers, looking out for victims, or lounging about the bars and saloons, waiting for their prey in the shape of some facile and easy-eared stranger, who in consideration of their merits and distress shall give them temporary assistance. Sometimes, doubtless, there are cases of very real suffering, sorrow, and poverty, to which exile in the United States affords a melancholy refuge. I was obliged to hear in one great city of a gallant soldier who, reduced to poverty by no fault of his own, had quitted England and given up the society of his friends, and lived in a small suburb of a town on the coast of the Pacific, his secret known only to one or two officials, shunning all contact with his countrymen and evading as far as possible all inquiries of his friends. In San Francisco, where there is a poor-house open to strangers and to native-born Americans alike, there are, I am told, to be met with extraordinary exemplifications of the "downs" of fortune. Adventurous and daring spirits, and pioneers of civilisation, at one time probably possessed of wealth which was wasted in dissipation, or lost in unfortunate speculations, are there, talking of the days that are gone, in all languages of the world, and awaiting their end; while others who started with them in the same race are building their palaces or revelling in the enjoyment of wealth, compared to which our greatest fortunes are, if figures can be trusted, a mere bagatelle. How rapidly some of these fortunes can be made was illustrated by numerous stories connected with some of the richest men in California. I was told by an eminent tradesman of San Francisco that one day a miner came into his establishment to buy a watch, which he said must be cheap and good, for he wanted something he could trust to in the matter of time, as he was going off with a party on an exploring expedition after gold. This was in the early time of the great "booms" in the West. He selected a watch, for which he paid $40, and departed. The following day he appeared in the shop and asked to see the proprietor, and then, producing the watch, he said he would like to have $30 for it, as he had lost all his money in a "spree" the night before and must have something to start with. The jeweller said, "Well, I will return you what you gave me for the watch, as it has suffered no harm, and you shall have your $40 back again." The man went away exceedingly rejoiced, and the incident was forgotten. Some eighteen months afterwards a man came to the establishment, and looking at rings, gold chains, and jewellery of the most costly character, and asking for the best of everything that they had got, gave orders which occasioned the attendant to have some doubts as to his sanity, or certainly as to the means he had of paying the amount, which was rapidly running up to tens of thousands of dollars. So he sought out his principal. The strange customer said, "I suppose you don't know me?" which was admitted to be the case. He went on buying all the same, making the remark, "You need not be uneasy about the money, for So-and-so (the bankers) will tell you I am all right, and when you send the things home you shall be paid. I am Joe Smith, from whom some time ago you took a watch he bought from you when he came to your store, and gave him the full value for it when he was in want of money," and so departed, having shown his gratitude by buying 6000l. worth of jewellery. This worthy miner is now one of the wealthy pillars of the State.

The Chinese quarter of San Francisco has been described, I will not say ad nauseam, but as often as any book has been written which contains an account of a visit to the city of the Golden Gate. Of course we went there, and saw all that was to be seen under the best possible auspices, for Mr. Bee, whom I have already mentioned, was our guide and companion, assisted by an exceedingly intelligent officer of the police force; and on the occasion of our second visit, when we went to the theatre, we had the advantage of being under the protection of the gentleman who represents law and order, on behalf of the municipality, in connection with the Chinese population and the arrangements for theatrical performances.

The inspection of the dreadful den in which the opium-smokers were to be seen suggested to my mind a train of thought in connection with the traffic which I would not willingly have communicated to my American friends. It will seem incredible some day to the awakened conscience of the nation that we should have ever sanctioned such a frightful crime as the opium traffic. "It only poisons about two millions of people," is the excuse, "and brings in one-sixth of the whole revenue of India." If ever it were justifiable to utter the exclamation "Perish India!" it would be, I believe, in regard to that disgraceful source of revenue, and the necessity that is imposed upon us, as it is alleged, to raise it, in order to maintain the government of our Indian empire. Here in San Francisco the State has nothing to do with the sale of the poison, and it is very questionable whether the police regulations should not be applied to it, just as they are to persons who have tried to commit suicide, or to the inebriates in public-houses, or to places where intemperance is carried on to an extent injurious to the public peace. Death is the inevitable result of continued indulgence in opium-smoking, although it is true that in some cases the victim lingers on a few years, utterly indifferent to all the business of life except the one—the means of supplying himself with his only source of enjoyment. I was in one of the shops where they sell the drug, and was much struck by the cadaverous, sunken faces of the unfortunate customers, with bright dreamy eyes, trembling limbs, and wasted bodies, who came in to buy it. It is cheap enough, in all conscience, as a very small quantity suffices to produce what is called "the desired effect"; but for its bulk it is exceedingly dear, and indulgence in it must consume a considerable amount of the earnings of the best-paid artisans when they are no longer able to earn sufficient to keep them with a full supply. "Then," as our informant says, "they will commit any crime to get it."

The general impression made upon me by the appearance of the Chinese population was most favourable. I do not now speak of what one might see in going through the haunts where the police regulations assign exclusive possession to certain classes of the population, which, sooth to say, seemed numerous enough; I refer to the business quarters, and to the crowds of cleanly, intelligent, well-behaved people of both sexes in the streets. General McDowell, and many other persons, for whose opinion the greatest respect must be entertained, look with apprehension on the effect of the Chinese immigration, and have, indeed, declared that it will destroy the Union if it be not checked; and these apprehensions are based upon the possibility that in time millions on millions of the swarming population of China will inundate the United States, gradually overrun town after town, usurping all the fields of labour, and beating down the white man to the greatest misery by competition in every branch of trade, industry, and labour. This party has successfully, I believe, impressed its views upon a considerable number of senators and representatives in the Eastern States, who can exercise pressure on the Supreme Government; and the treaty recently signed between the Republic and China contains provisions which enable the authorities at the western seaports to exercise considerable control over the current of emigration. But, on the other hand, it is alleged that the fears which are expressed of a rapidly increasing exodus of Chinese from China, and an anabasis into the United States, are purely imaginary—in fact, unreal and pretentious. The pro-Chinese party allege that the emigration comes from only one port in one province, and that you may go all over the West, and ask any Chinaman or Chinawoman where he or she comes from, and you are met with the invariable answer, from the one port. The friends of the Chinese—arguing, moreover, that the State at large is benefited enormously by the accession to its resources from the Celestial Empire, and that the labour was attacked, not because it was cheap, but because it was good; that it is now indispensable, for without Chinamen and Chinawomen it would be almost impossible to carry on the ordinary life of these cities—allege that the agitation which has been so violent in San Francisco is mainly encouraged by those who want to secure the Irish vote. Colonel Bee represents these views very strongly. He argues that Canton, not larger than the State of New Hampshire, is the sole source of emigration. He insists on it that there are no more than 100,000 Chinese in the whole of the Union, and that for the last ten years the emigrants have not sufficed to fill the places of those who had gone home with money, never intending to return, or who had died. He maintains, indeed, that the Chinese are decreasing rather than otherwise; and with all the power of figures, which he has at his fingers' ends as Consul, demonstrates that a very large proportion of the Chinese who are entered as arriving at San Francisco and other parts are the same men and women as those who came some years previously and went back to their native country, returning to gain more dollars.

The principal enemies of the Chinese are the Irish, who, having monopolised the whole of the work of bricklayers, plasterers, carters, porters, and general labourers until their arrival, have been forced to reduce their rates of labour steadily by the competition of the Chinaman.

The part of the population of San Francisco denominated the Sand lot, and especially those connected with the political associations of the city, do not by any means share Colonel Bee's views; but the agitation is dying out, and the meetings, which were of weekly occurrence, to excite the people against the Mongolians have decreased in number, importance, and interest. The directors of public companies, and the contractors for public works, are all in favour of the Chinese workman, who is sober, industrious, and orderly; and although the trade combinations among them are exceedingly subtle, and their powers of association for trade purposes remarkable, being moreover the most ancient in the world, the Chinese in the Western States have not as yet taken to indulge in the luxury of strikes. As domestic servants, nurses, and attendants on children, they appear to be affectionate and careful; and nothing could be better than the service of the hotel in which we were lodged, the great portion of which was carried on by Chinamen and women.

June 10th.—In the spacious courtyard of the Palace Hotel, at 7 o'clock this morning, there might have been observed three well-appointed waggons (as Americans call the vehicle more appropriately termed "spider" at the Cape), each with two horses of race, fast trotters, panting for a spin through the city and the Park out to the shores of the Pacific. The Duke and Sir H. Green and Mr. Stephen were driven by Mr. Howard. Mr. Wright was "personally conducted" by Mr. ——, and I was put behind a pair of as handsome chestnuts as could well be seen anywhere, of which the owner and driver (General Barnes) was very reasonably proud. The streets of San Francisco, like those of most of the American cities we have visited, are atrociously paved; the torture of driving over boulders is aggravated by the sharp ribs of the tram ways, so that it is not pleasant, if, indeed, it be possible, to drive rapidly till the limit of municipal incompetence or fraud be passed. But once out on the suburbs the chestnuts were invited to step it, and were bowling along at a good fourteen miles an hour on our way to the Park, over as good a road as horse or man ever felt under hoof or foot. The Park not long ago was a waste of sand, it is now swarded and planted with shrubs, and luxuriant with flowers. Notices that it was unlawful to do more than ten miles an hour were posted up, but the General did not pay strict attention to them till he came near shady places, where experience warned him that policemen might be lying privily in ambush. The pace was quickened till the waggon seemed to fly through the air rather than move over the ground. It was the perfection of travelling on wheels—almost as buoyant as a headlong gallop. The waggon weighed but 180 lb., the powerful animals "scarcely felt it more than their tails." I had a turn at the reins by "kind permission" of the General. The art of driving trotters needs practice. You must keep a strong, steady pull on the head, or they "break." Very soon I had the satisfaction of making the chestnuts break the law with a vengeance, and of hearing the General say, "We are just within the three minutes! not ten seconds inside it!"—that is, of trotting at the rate of just twenty miles an hour. Up hill and down hill, and along the flat out of the Park and over the smooth road, and in half an hour the Pacific was in sight, and the murmurs of the surf rose above the rhythm of the regular beat of the eight hoofs in front of us! Cliff House was in view. Seal Rocks, in their setting of foam, lay before us, and in forty minutes from the time we left the hotel, despite policemen, miles of bad pavements, and tramways, we drew up at the steps of Cliff House, nine miles from San Francisco, and the trotters had not turned a hair. From the verandah at the sea front of the hotel, we enjoyed for half an hour a spectacle which is, as far as I know, unique. At the distance of 500 or 600 yards from the beach at our feet there is a group of four very rugged rocks, with serrated edges and tops, the sides broken here and there into ledges and small platforms. They are too small to be called islands, the largest being, as it seemed, not 100 yards wide. The slopes are not, I think, so steep as they looked on the land side. On the two largest of these rocks there were herds of sea-lions, so close that we could see, through very poor opera-glasses, with the greatest ease, their eyes, teeth, and whiskers, as they reposed or played with each other. Some had clambered to the highest ledges, escalading the sides by a series of painful-looking struggles with their flappers; others were fast asleep in cosy nooks; some were tossing their heads about and making believe to bite each other in sport; the younger ones were bent on teasing their fathers and mothers by uncouth gambols. As they played or moved they uttered cries between a bark and a roar; now and then the noise was like that of a pack of hounds in full cry, and the effect of the strange sound mingling with the tumult of the surf and the beat of the waves was most singular and "eldrich." Those fresh from the sea were shining black, but became lighter as they dried. The older ones were not darker than cinnamon bears or unwashed sheep. As many of those on the rocks had not long left the water the general effect of the herd put one in mind of a gathering of enormous slugs on cabbages—not a poetic simile, but a just one, I think. Occasionally a sea-lion, hungry or bored by his companions, threw himself with a splash into the wave, and it was interesting to watch the rapidity and actual grace of his movements in the sea compared with his laborious efforts on the land. One could see them quite clearly through the body of the heavy billows; occasionally a bold one would glide close on shore and fish in the edge of the surf, raising his head and shoulders clear above the surface, and then diving out of sight. They were cruising about in every direction. You remember the sea-lion at the Zoo, of which the French attendant was so fond? Well, the creatures below and before us were most of them double the size of that fellow, and several exceeded the largest ox in size. The monsters are quite well known; one is named Ben Butler, "because he is such a great beast." They were formerly protected by law, but some one thought they killed too many fish, and the law was repealed. They are safe all the same, for there is a law against the discharge of firearms within 300 yards of an inhabited dwelling; Cliff House throws its ægis over the sea-lions in that wise; but the quantity of fish which must be devoured by these mountainous phocæ (an they be so) daily would maintain a decently-sized city. The hide furnishes the "sealskin" used to cover trunks, and the body yields oil fat, and the tusks are close, white, and hard. These sea-lions breed far away up north, and come with their young regularly every year to the same resorts; but incessant war is waged upon them by the sealers and whalers, so that the chances are against the beast where he is not protected by law, and their numbers do not increase. Altogether, the spectacle was one never to be forgotten. A hotel, with oysters awaiting us for a forebreakfast refection in the background, waggons from Michigan, horses from Kentucky, all the apparatus of civilised life close at hand, the Pacific and its strange wild denizens at our feet! "Let us turn in and have an oyster." "What! oysters in June?" "Yes, and good ones too." In this favoured land oysters are in season all the year round. There are no oysters found on the coast, I am told, and they will not breed. They are brought all the way from the Atlantic coast when they are mere oysterlets, and they are laid down in the Pacific, where they grow fat and large, but are not "crossed in love," and therefore are fit to be eaten from January to January. They are about the size of a spring chicken, and need some courage on the part of an assailant who desires to dispose of them as he would a native.

This was our last day in the city of the Golden Gate, and the photographers were masters of the situation; and there was much débris of sight-seeing to sweep up—visits to be made, shops to be inspected, among which I must mention specially the Diamond Palace of Colonel Andrews, one of the handsomest jeweller's "stores" in the world, though it is not as large as the establishments of the principal firms in London, Paris, Vienna, or as Tiffany's in New York. The distinctive feature of the interior is the decoration of the paintings of fair women, on the ceiling and the walls above the cases, by necklaces, diadems, zones, and other feminine ornaments of real diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and pearls. The pictures are the work of an Italian artist of merit, and the general effect is very striking; but I doubt whether it is a good way of inducing people to buy the articles which bedeck the ideal beauties. At Bradley and Rulofson's we saw photographs of many of our friends, and had one more proof of the smallness of the world. Every one we knew seemed to have visited San Francisco. There we all submitted to inevitable fate, and left our negatives behind us, but the Duke was captured by a rival photographic institution, and had a sitting all to himself.

The aspect of a crowd in a large American city differs from that of the passers-by in the street of an English town, most of all in the appearance of such a large proportion of coloured people. Here it may be said, however, that they are colourless, as the prevailing hue of the foreign population is that of the Chinaman. In Canada the number of negroes, or of persons of negro descent, of varying gradations of colour, is remarkable, considering the circumstances, but they probably may be accounted for by the emigration in the olden times of those who were escaping from slavery, or who went with their masters and employers into the Dominion. In the cities on the Lakes I was very much struck by the persons of undoubted African descent who are to be met with in the streets in great numbers; and in Chicago there is a quarter nearly exclusively occupied by them—honest, industrious, hard-working people seemingly, given to stand about at the street corners, however, a good deal on Sundays, and cultivating a bright attire, especially on the part of the ladies, whose bonnets and shawls were things to wonder at. There are loafers amongst them, as there are amongst their betters; but, taking them all in all, in the Northern, Western, and Atlantic States, they are a decidedly useful element in the population, easing the burden of labour to the white man, and following many occupations, such as those of waiters, barbers, bricklayers, and labourers in the less skilled sort of work, for which it would be difficult to find American substitutes. One peculiarity, which may be accounted for by some wiser person than myself, seems to be their recklessness as to what they put on their heads. Whether it is merely a compliance with the custom of the white man, which impels them to cover the highly effective protection against sun and cold which Nature has given them, or not; or whether it is that the canons of taste in such matters have not yet settled down to those accepted by people in civilised life in the Western world, the male negro has the most extraordinary indifference as to the quality and shape of the thing which he calls a hat or cap, and it would not be easy to find out of the gutters of some Irish country town anything more dilapidated, battered, and utterly incoherent than some of the hats which one may see on the heads of people of colour, especially down South. Whatever other virtues they may have, neatness is not amongst them; for, with all their affectation of finery, their clothes are generally ill-kept, their houses are unkempt, and, where they are cultivators of the soil, the operations are performed in a slovenly manner. The traditions of the old plantation have descended upon them, and influence them.

On my way from Messrs. Donahue and Kelly, the bankers in Montgomery Street—I believe the former of these gentlemen has had the privilege of giving his name to steamers and cities, leastways railway stations—I saw a party of sailors belonging to the United States steamer "Rodgers," now about to proceed in search of the "Jeannette," and I was much struck by their resemblance to our own bluejackets in general "cut of the jib," dress, face, and figure. They were in charge of a smart-looking officer, and had been paying a farewell visit to the fruit and vegetable markets—one of the sights of the city. They were in high good-humour, laughing and chatting loudly, more than is the wont of Americans, and I could not but contrast their fine physique with that of the soldiers we had seen at Sir Henry Green's parade when General McDowell took us round the harbour. The detachment at the Fort, consisting of infantry and artillerymen, and squads of different regiments, had some weedy veterans in the ranks, who had lost their setting up and did not look fit for much work; but the sailors, probably a picked lot, were good all round.

À propos of Messrs. Donahue and Kelly, the number of wealthy men in San Francisco of Irish origin or nationality is remarkable. Millionaires with names of Milesian prefixes and terminations are phenomenal. We had intended to return to the East Coast by way of Utah, and to stay a day or two at Salt Lake City, but the railroad company did not consider it expedient to give the party the facilities which had been accorded in every other instance by the American authorities to the Duke and his friends. To have gone round Salt Lake City would have cost a couple of hundred pounds more for haulage, and we were much more interested in seeing Leadville and Denver than the City of the Mormons; the game was not thought to be worth the candle, and it was resolved that we would go back as we came, in charge of the representatives of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé Railroad Company. It was only one item more in the long list of things we ought to have seen if we could, and I can safely say that we had a large share of the common experience of travellers in regard to the relations between the possible and the impossible in the course of a journey in a strange land, where there are for ever cropping up representations that "you really ought not to leave without seeing" so and so. The evening of our last day was passed in the society of General McDowell, Mr. Morgan, the English Consul, Colonel Bee, and others, who had done so much to make the visit to San Francisco all that could be desired, and whose courtesy and kindness will ever be remembered by every one of us most gratefully. Like Sir Charles Coldstream, we "had seen everything, done everything," but, unlike him, had found there was plenty in it. The street railway—most ingenious and successful, invaluable in a hilly city like Lisbon—the Chinese Theatre, the Joss houses—shops, eating-houses, opium dens of the Chinese quarter, the clubs, the principal buildings, the streets, the shops, the markets, the harbour, the suburbs, and country round about—all had been inspected, and yet each day we were told that we were doing positive injustice to ourselves and to the objects which were perforce neglected. In the morning there was a levée in the hotel to bid the Duke good-bye and see the party start on their return journey. At the very last moment a gentleman came forward with a proposal to take us to the North Pole by balloon, but there was not time to consider it in all its bearings and the offer was declined with thanks. We started at 10 A.M., and the Duke was attended to the boat and to the station across the water by a large body of San Franciscans, who took leave ere the train started. The gentlemen who were with us on the journey westwards attended the Duke on his way towards the Eastern States. All day we travelled through California—"the hot furnace"—which at first, however, proved to be only very warm, and the coloured servants had constant supplies of iced compounds to be drunk for the solace of the homeward bound, and had laid in a stock of San Franciscan luxuries to soothe the way.

Los Angeles—Mud-geysers—"Billy the Kid"—General Fremont—Manitou, the Garden of the Gods—Desperadoes—Bob Ingersoll—Denver City—Leadville—Grand Cañon.

June 12th.—The train stopped at Los Angeles at six in the morning, and, drawing up my window-blind, the first person I saw on the platform was our good friend Colonel Baker, who had come to meet us, intent on the good offices which he could render during our stay. These were exhibited in the form of a beautiful bouquet for Lady Green, baskets of limes and oranges, and great bunches of grapes. In this happy valley there are cares as in the rest of the world. The Colonel told us he was in the midst of a great litigation affecting his claim to a large tract of land in which there are said to exist the richest tin-mines in the American Continent. Yet why should he care about his tin-mine? There were rolling acres rich with corn and fruit, and there were flocks and herds and vineyards, and a charming home of his own. Nevertheless, if the want of that tin-mine made him at all unhappy, I am sure those who were indebted to him, as we were, for so many kindnesses, will wish his claim to be triumphantly asserted, and long possession of all that is to follow.

I dreaded the passage of the Desert to Yuma; and indeed the heat was intense. No wonder that with the thermometer ranging from 100° to 104°, all the blinds in the car were pulled down, and we sprawled listlessly on the cushions. Our excellent attendants put forth all the resources of art in the shape of ice and preparations of limes and cocktails; but the temperature would not be baffled. We could just read, and were aware that we were living, and some of us had strength enough now and then to execute forays against flies with napkins to drive them out of the carriages. How could people live out in the open, and work in the mines, or pursue any out-of-door employment in such torrid heat? Nevertheless, there was a marked distinction between it and the heat to be endured with the mercury at an equal height in India.

The speed of the train was very respectable—somewhat over twenty miles an hour—and at that rate we ran from San Gorgonio and Banning on to Cabazon, through a flat plain, dry and burnt up, very like the desert around Suez, and fringed, like it, with rocky and rugged hills, save that there was a great growth of Spanish bayonets and cactuses of all kinds among the stones and sand, and that snow was to be seen on all the hill-tops in the distance. For 107 miles there was no water to be met with going along this plain; but the mirage, of which I have spoken in the account of our journey to San Francisco, was frequent and beautiful; and again I was fascinated by the sight of lovely lakes embowered in trees, with stately cities on their shores, changing and shifting and melting away, only again to assume apparent substance to cheat the senses.

Once the train stopped to allow the passengers to visit the mud-geysers, which were not more than 150 yards on the left of the line, and with commendable curiosity most of us got out and walked over the baked earth to the spot. There was no mark whatever of smoke or vapour to indicate the place; and it was almost startling to come suddenly upon a kind of pond of semi-liquid mud, fifty or sixty feet in diameter, on which huge bubbles, varying in size from an orange to a hogshead, were continually forming and bursting. There was a faint sulphurous smell, and the ground around the liquefied portion of the surface, where the bubbles were breaking, was hot and cracked. The conductor said that all attempts to reach the bottom of the holes through which the bubbles arose had failed. Two of these geysers were in active operation, and the plain away to the left of the rail was said to contain a great number of them. After all it was very unsatisfactory to see this ebullition going on without being able to account for it; and, generally, I think we thought less of each other and of our information after visiting them, and finding out that not one of us had any theory on the subject which would bear either fire or water.

I do not think I ever saw a sunset more beautiful than that which marked the close of this day—certainly not in India or South Africa, nor on the prairie, for which they make claims of surpassing beauty in the matter of sunsets. As it died out, I felt that "thing of beauty" could not "be a joy for ever," for it was a combination of colour and of form, including sky and mountain, that it would be impossible to see again.

The kindness of which we have had so many proofs, has followed, accompanied, and preceded us all unremittingly and unweariedly. A rough with some Bourbon on board mounted to-day the steps of the car at a station, and insisted on seeing "this Duke." When he was told that the object of his attention was engaged, he said, "This is a land of liberty (as in his case it was), and he doesn't want a bodyguard with him!" But the conductor sent him away about his business without trouble. On the platform at Benson a few miners asked "the Duke to come out and show himself." The people at the stations were generally satisfied with a quiet peep; now and then an enthusiastic Scotchman claimed a shake hands, which was always accorded to him. A sleeper placed across the rails (accounted for by the officers on the hypothesis that some loafer without a ticket had been turned off by the conductor, and had put the sleeper in the way of the train to wreak his vengeance—a thing which has occurred nearer home) was the only substantial danger to which we were here exposed.

The heat (June 13th) was intense. The thermometer rose to 105 at one o'clock in the day, and it was little comfort to us to be told that at Deming it had been up to 110 the day before.

For some days we have been supping full of horrors, indeed breakfasting and dining on them, for the papers contain accounts of the extraordinary homicides all about this region. Tucson, Benson, Wilcox—all these places were resounding with the exploits of "Billy the Kid." Now at Tucson there is, I believe, a man whose name was once amongst the very foremost in the United States. Who some twenty years and more ago had not heard of General Fremont, "the Pathfinder," the adventurous traveller, the energetic politician, the dashing soldier? He had gone at the outbreak of the war to take up the chief command in the west with all the pomp and circumstance of glorious war. I was somewhat astonished to find that he was at Tucson, the governor of the Territory, on a humble salary, apparently the world-forgetting and the world-forgot, while "Billy-the-Kid" was perpetrating numberless atrocities under his nose, and Mr. Pat Garrett was dressing up his loins with his revolver-belt, and about to go forth with a chosen band of citizens and seek the redoubtable William.[A]

A person who has only seen settled States in Europe, or the Eastern States of the North American Continent, cannot form any notion of a territory which has become a centre of attraction to all the wild adventurers and daring spirits which society, in the process of formation, throws out as a sort of advanced guard. In Arizona, in 1870, according to the American Almanac, out of a total population of 9658, 2729 could not write and 2690 could not read. Of the total population, 2491 were foreign born, and 2753 were natives, the rest being coloured or under ten years of age. In New Mexico, out of 91,000 people, 48,000 over ten years of age could not read, and 51,000 whites over ten years of age could not write. It may be inferred from such figures what is the general condition of the labouring classes in these States and Territories. The inhabitants of these States have doubled in the last ten years. They are filling up at a rate inconceivably great—so great, indeed, that American newspapers are fairly bewildered and American statesmen appalled by the rush across the Rocky Mountains and down the rivers, although as yet but a small proportion of the immense stream of immigrants has flooded the outlying territories. "At this rate," exclaims a Western editor, "the old monarchies of Europe will soon be depopulated." When Mr. Lincoln, in 1861, addressed his inaugural to the expectant States he expressed his confident belief that there were children then born who would live to see the flag of the Union floating over no less than 100,000,000 of human beings. The recent census of the United States gives a return of 51,000,000 of people, but the most eminent statisticians have arrived at the belief that the progress and increase of the States will not be at the same rapid rate as that which marked the history of the Republic since the cessation of the great civil war. It may be fairly inferred, however, that at the end of this century the population of the United States will greatly exceed that of Russia, or that of any empire except China and Great Britain, including Hindostan. The population, on each period of ten years, has increased at an average of more than 30 per cent.; in fact, nearer 33 per cent., and the centre of it has travelled westward at the rate of more than fifty miles every ten years, till the centre of population is now eight miles west by south from Cincinnati. In 1800 the Union extended over only 239,935 square miles. Its flag now floats over 1,272,239 square miles of States and over 1,800,000 square miles of Territory governed by the central power at Washington. "We cannot think," exclaims a Republican writer, "that the war of rebellion settled all our troubles and made us secure in our Republic. This enormous growth of the practically unknown West reveals to us the grave dangers that threaten our nation. We meet there the tremendous influences of alien races and alien religions." The Americans of New England and of the Eastern States do not feel anxious on that score, because their institutions are thoroughly founded, their character formed, and they trust to the great power of accomplished facts to assimilate the alien elements and sustain the fabric of the Republic. The bugbear of a great Chinese immigration has ceased to practically influence Californian politics, and it may be safely assumed that the bulk of the future immigrants from the Celestial Empire will only come from the same sources as those which have hitherto supplied the stream. No wonder, however, that thoughtful Americans—and there are many who think of the future of their country as something quite apart from dollars—are filled with grave anxieties when they see such floods of purely foreign material, which will in all probability exercise a preponderating influence over the politics of the Great Republic, surging into the States. Particularly have the home missionary clergy, as they are styled, been struck by the enormous influence which this foreign immigration has exercised. According to one authority, the Rev. Mr. Stimson, of Worcester, "it is not a question of spreading any particular form of Christianity or of Church government, but a momentous struggle of American institutions with alien civilisations and religions for the control of the great Western country. The problem is not a matter of cleaning door-yards, but of saving a continent for freedom." The Chinese Question and the Indian Question are, they think, as nothing compared with the Irish Question and the German Question. "The Republic," we are told, "stands on a foundation as broad as humanity itself," whatever that may mean, "but its condition of existence is a universal regard for the interests of all." Often during the course of the Duke of Sutherland's excursion it was our good fortune to fall in with men of great political and social knowledge. The future of the Republic is, in the mind of these men, clouded with uncertainty and doubt. They are apprehensive of some unknown danger. It may be corruption of political life leading to want of faith in free institutions; it may be the rival energies and the opposing interests which Washington foresaw as likely to array the East against the West—the Atlantic States against the inland States, and it is calculated by some sanguine people that before this century is over there will be eighteen, or possibly twenty, States admitted into the Union formed out of the Territories which are now under the central Government at Washington. Upon such influences as these alien immigration may be expected to act with prodigious power. At a recent meeting in Springfield a clergyman gave as an illustration of the absolute indifference of the foreign immigrants to Republican institutions a conversation he had with a Norwegian minister in Minneapolis. "There is nothing," said this gentleman, "in America which we Norwegians regard as of value except your land and your money. We do not want to learn English: we do not want to know the Americans around us; we have certainly no notion of becoming Americans, but we intend to remain as we are—Norwegians." The Mormons control Utah. They boast that they will soon govern five of the most important territorial regions beyond the Rockies. But if Utah becomes a State, as she hopes to do, she will found a Mormon code of laws and institutions beyond the power of the United States to control. New Mexico may be considered as a Roman Catholic State under the control of an excellent archbishop. Of course all prophecies may be falsified by events, but judging by the eighty years which have elapsed of the present century, and from the ratio of increase in that time in the United States, the most liberal construction may be placed even upon the bounding estimates of American politicians and statists. When we look to the Far West and see, for instance, how Winnipeg has become the centre of a great network of river navigation, 300 miles in one direction, 600 miles in another, and that the Mackenzie River passes for 1200 miles through what is declared to be the future wheat region of the world, we may easily comprehend the anxiety with which the patriotic American is filled lest the future of such a State should fall into hands antagonistic to the principles in which his beau idéal of government has been founded and has prospered.

June 14.—At Lamy, a station named after the good archbishop of Santa Fé, where we halted for a short time whilst the passengers of another train were breakfasting, a citizen came up to me on the platform and exclaimed, as if he were very much impressed by the news he was going to give, "If you look in there, sir, you will see Bob Ingersoll at breakfast!" I asked whether there was anything very remarkable about the fact. "Well, sir," he said, "he is Colonel Ingersoll, of whom you have heard. He is the most remarkable in-fidel in the United States, and I really think he believes what he preaches. A good man to look at, too, and, they say, first-rate in his family." I had a glance at the believer in unbelief, and saw a very presentable-looking person, of fine appearance and good features, busily engaged in making the most of his time at one of the tables in the refreshment-room. He was the observed of all observers, and appeared to like it; and I understood from one of the crowd that he had just returned from inspecting some mining ventures in which he was concerned; for, if he does not believe in the world to come, he is credited with very strong faith in the excellencies of the possession of wealth in the world that is. His lectures are attended by crowded audiences, but, as an astute American observed, "they won't come to much, for, after all, people who do not believe anything can never get up a great enthusiasm. It is in believing something that the populace has faith."

Once more our eyes were rejoiced with the sight of the lovely plains of Las Vegas, wide-spreading fields decked with flowers and dotted with flocks, bordered with ranges of softly contoured mountains, the courses of the water streams indicated by bright vegetation and by growth of trees of many kinds. From Lamy (170 miles) there is a gradual rise to Raton, which we reached at 6.30 in the evening. The appearance of the region we traverse as the train approaches the Raton Pass presents a strong contrast to the desolate country through which we have been passing. From Raton the train was drawn by two engines in front and shoved by one behind, and even then the pace was not very rapid, for the ascent is very sharp. All the more could we enjoy a very glorious sunset, as we slowly ascended the mountain. Then darkness came on rapidly, and we slid down towards La Junta into the night, and were all fast asleep long before we arrived there. In the very early morning, on June 15th, some two hours after midnight, we halted for a time at Pueblo. At 9 o'clock we had to leave our beloved Pullman and change the cars, for we were to take a fresh point of departure, starting from the Union Depôt upon the Denver and Rio Grande narrow-gauge railway for Denver, 119 miles distant, and making an excursion on the way to Manitou, to which we diverged from Colorado Springs: for to go within reach of that famous resort and not to see it would have been a great outrage on all the rules and regulations established for the observance of travellers. Certes narrow-gauge railways need an apology. Their raison d'être is, at the best, that they are better than nothing. "If you won't have us, you can have nothing else." And in such a mountainous region as we were about to visit, the difficulties and expense connected with a broad-gauge line would have been enormous, if indeed it could be constructed at all. The narrow-gauge carriages, with seats to match, with which we were made acquainted for the first time, were of course much less commodious and comfortable than those we had quitted, but far superior to those on the Indian lines of the same gauge, and Indian engineers had been over to take a lesson from the Americans for the use of their carriage-builders. Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé Company and Denver and Rio Grande Company have been at daggers drawn and pistols cocked—ay, and fired—and at battles waged, in times gone by; and now our friends on the former line were, like ourselves, the guests of the latter, which was represented by several official gentlemen anxious to do the honours to the Duke. The scenery becomes grander and wilder every mile as the special hurries on as well as it can over the sinuous line, which is piercing a mountain region savage and sterile, and climbing by the sides of ravines and creeping upwards in rocky valleys with pine-clad hill-tops and frowning cliffs above. The engineer who designed the line is a Scotchman named McMurtrie—or at least of recent Scotch origin—and he seems to have a special gift for such aspiring work, and a gradient-compelling genius not to be baffled by altitudes. We were mounting towards the snows. Range upon range of whitened summits and hoary ridges came in view, all paying homage to the rugged crown of Pike's Peak, which can be seen from points more than 140 miles away. The fleecy cloudland which seemed to lie before us, as we looked away from Pueblo, was resolving itself into savage alps. And in these passes, which the eye caught for a moment, there might be El Dorados still undiscovered, for around us were cities springing out of the desert. Here the enchanter's wand is the explorer's pick, and no one could say where the precious ore might not be awaiting its touch. We were coming to the Land of Promises. The conversation of our new friends, among whom were some gentlemen of the press, related mostly to mines, and one of them had, as we discovered, a very certain investment at the disposal of the Duke, in the form of a mining-claim, which was worth, at the lowest computation, twice as much as he was willing to take for it. There was no reason to doubt his good faith, but it was felt that it was a kind of fortune which ought not to pass into the hands of strangers, and should be reserved for the people of the country; and I am sure all of the party who had the pleasure of the owner's acquaintance hope that he has "made his pile" out of it, and has more than realised his expectations.

Colorado Springs, forty-five miles from Pueblo, is nearly 6000 feet above the level of the sea. The character of the line to it is best described in the fact that the average grade per mile is 44·14, the maximum curvature 6°. There are "no Springs" here, but the little town, charmingly situated, is a halting-place much frequented in tourist-time by travellers, and reputed to be healthful. There are some pleasant houses visible from the station, at which we descended to take our places in the carriages provided to take us to Manitou Springs, five miles away. Mr. Palmer—if General, I beg his pardon—the President of the Railroad, had important business to attend to, but he was so well represented by Mr. Bell, the Vice-President, that no one regretted his absence, and it cannot be said in his case les absents ont toujours tort. He is reported to have made a very large fortune with much ingenuity, and to have business talents which even in this country excite admiration. Mr. Bell is an Irish gentleman, a member of the medical profession, who has a delightful villa embowered in a garden in the environs of Manitou, where the Duke and his friends found a charming interior and an Irish-American welcome, and discovered that strawberries and cream were almost as good in Colorado as in Covent Garden. A quaint, odd place, Manitou—an American Martigny, with Pike's Peak rising (14,300 feet above the sea) over it in the clear sky, inspiring regret that we could not make the excursion to the summit, which is rewarded, we were told, and I can believe, by one of the grandest views in the world—the usual service of guides, horses, and mules, and calèches—a naturalist's store with skins, minerals, feathers, and stuffed "objects"—detached wooden houses and villas in small plots of garden—a straggling street, and large hotels for invalids. But there was the unusual feature of encampments here and there by the roadside, and notices forbidding the pitching of tents within certain limits which were explained by the fact that the high reputation of the waters and air induces people to come from great distances for the treatment of consumption, and diseases of throat and lungs. Many of them find it cheaper to travel in horse waggons and pitch their canvas dwellings when they wish to make a halt, than to take up their quarters at hotels. Poor people! what pale, hectic cheeks and wasted forms we saw; little groups picnicking by the sides of the rivulets along the roads—each with a gnawing care—anxiety about some dear one's health in the midst of them. Our driver, an intelligent, chatty lad, was full of information, and we had to drive the prescribed road by the wells out to the Ute Pass, a mountain-gorge wild enough—a small Tête Noire—to points to which magniloquent names have been given.

It is not for want of what is called puffing that Americans neglect the resorts of health of their own country, and in the States far and wide the beauties and advantages of Manitou are blazoned forth on the walls of hotels and in guide-books to all who can read. I may confess now that, notwithstanding the magnificent altitude of Pike's Peak, and the eccentric forms of the rocks in the "Garden of the Gods," I was disappointed with Manitou. But then the visit was short, and the day was hot, and the way was long and dusty, and haply it might be that under different circumstances Manitou would deserve much warmer praise. It possesses indeed an abundance of curious springs, said to be full of health-giving properties; and in the course of our drive we halted several times to partake of drinks from various springs, out of one of which bubbled up very good soda-water, precisely like Schweppe's best in taste and appearance. At the large hotel, which put one in mind of the great establishments of the same sort in Switzerland, the water served at table to the guests—a sort of pleasant Apollinaris-tasting beverage—came from a natural fountain.

The "cataract" nearly made us angry, and there was no regret felt when the carriages returned to the hotel, where there was unwonted activity and bustle, as the "Denver Zouaves" had just descended in a friendly razzia on it, and were desolating the hearts and fireside resources of Manitou. The consequences might have been serious, as it turned out, to unoffending strangers. Those who needed it turned into the barber's shop of the hotel to be shaved, and after some delay a coloured man appeared, who began to try his hand on me. Fortunately it was not 'prentice, for it was very unsteady, and I became a little alarmed for my cuticle. "It will be all right, mister," quoth the barber. "I never cut any one. But I'm demoralised, dat's a fact, having to wait on dem Denver Zouaves. Lor a messy on any enemy dey has! My nerve's all gone to pieces wid their wantin' everting at once at the dinner!" The hotel seemed far more clean and comfortable than the caravanserais in the land of William Tell; but our stay was short, for we were put under orders for a sight which has the most inappropriate name that could be invented—a valley in which the most extraordinary-looking columns carved out in a plateau by the agency of water, have been left standing, detached and in groups, to which the visitor enters through a cleft in a barrier of rock passing round the base of a pillar of sandstone as high as a house. The "Garden of the Gods" contains 500 acres, and is surrounded by mountains and cliffs. The sandstone pillars generally taper from the base upwards to a short distance from the tops, which are flattened out or surmounted by slabs or blocks of sandstone of fantastic outline, and they are called by names derived from fancied likenesses to animals, birds, and men. The juxtaposition of the most brilliantly hued, dazzling-red blocks and strata, with masses of the same material of milky whiteness, gives the impression that the scene is the work of human hands; it seems too quaint and artificial for the hand of Nature, to which alone it is due; and the vegetation and the trees are in keeping with the character of the place. A trysting-place for geologists, and their happy hunting-ground, no doubt. But why "the Garden of the Gods," I pray?

From the valley or cup, emerging by another road, the driver took us to a ravine-like recess, almost girt in by high wooded mountains, in which Mr. (General?) Palmer is erecting a mansion of palatial importance—a picturesque site surely—cliffs, forests, and mountain all around, and in view one most singular sandstone pillar, named the Major Domo, 120 feet high and only 30 feet round—a mountain stream brawling through tangled brushwood glades—a garden. But the heat! That must prove a terror by day to the inmates of Glen Eyrie Lodge or Castle—which, by the by, was named, as one of us insisted, from a collection of rubbish on a ledge in the face of one of the cliffs, which was, he maintained, the nest of an eagle. It was now time to return to our train, and we were not sorry to get back to Colorado Springs.

From Colorado Springs to our destination at Denver there were still 75 miles of rail, and the line continued to ascend till we reached Divide (7186 feet), whence there was a gentle descent. There were sixteen stations named on the time-table. We stopped at very few of them, and travelled somewhat too fast to permit our placid enjoyment of the scenery, austere and vast, which indeed deserved more attention than could be given to it by passengers in a very lively train—endless alps on alps, not sheeted with perpetual white, but rather flecked with snowfields, which contrasted finely with the sombre pine-forests, and the rich hues of the rocks, touched by the rays of the setting sun, that, ere it slid behind the mountains, cast a rose-coloured mantle on their summit. The evidences of a bustling city were not wanting in the approaches to the capital of Colorado. There were tall chimneys vomiting out smoke in the distance, and near at hand trains of waggons were toiling over the dusty plain—still 5000 feet above the sea-level—fast trotters and people on horseback, beer-gardens, factories of all kinds, brick-kilns, and then a fringe of log houses and wooden shanties, before the train stopped at the imposing and substantial depot.

It was a quarter-past eight, nearly dark, when we reached Denver, and glad were we to get into the hall of the Windsor Hotel, which was crowded with a mixed multitude—miners, and speculators, and traders, and some travellers like ourselves—a very busy scene indeed. In the hotel were all human comforts nearly; hot and cold baths, and good rooms, and more appliances of civilised existence, for those who could pay for them, than could be found in many hostelries of approved reputation in venerable towns at home; moreover, exuberant offers of help and information. One goes to bed laden with obligations and heavy with the sense of favours which can never be repaid. There was now a soupçon of frost in the air, and notwithstanding the heat which we had endured the greater part of the day, fires were not ungrateful; and as we peered out of our windows over the roofs of the wide-spread houses of the town, we could see the snow on the lofty ranges of hills, watered by the South Platte River and Cherry Creek, which surround the cup in which Denver has been built in obedience to the impulses of the increasing population, which now numbers, I believe, 38,000 souls. There was a bright glare from the gas-lighted streets, sounds of music, and a tumult of life in the town which would have been creditable to an ancient metropolis. In the morning from the hotel windows appeared a beautiful and widespread panorama of the hills we had seen the evening before, peak above peak, none very densely covered perhaps, or presenting continuous snowfields, but extending in billowy sweeps far away to the horizon, all capped with snow, now bathed in a flood of fervent sunshine, the snow lighted up by the peculiar crimson tints common in Alpine regions. There were duties in the way of sight-seeing and exploration of no ordinary nature to be done. First there were interviews and receptions, and the inevitable drive through the place as soon as the ordeal of breakfast was over; and ordeal in some sort it was for the strangers to file in to the public room and take their places at their table, aware that the morning papers had subjected them to exhaustive criticism, which was being verified by those around us. The morning papers too had given some topics for reflection, indications that in the newly created capital of Colorado desperate men, overtaken by the march of law and order, had refused to accept service, and were vindicating their rights as wild western outcasts to take or part with life as of yore, in reckless encounters and deliberate assassinations. There were, perhaps, at that moment some hundreds, if not thousands, out of the population of 37,000 or 38,000 of the city, who belonged to the adventurous classes—sporting-men, betting-men, ring-men, bar-keepers, hell-proprietors, and their satellites, and the scum of the saloons attracted from the great cities of the States for hundreds of miles, by the prey which miners with belts full of gold, half mad with drink, and always fond of excitement, frequently are; and if to these be added the dissolute loafers and broken-down mining speculators, the strength of the army arrayed against the law may be estimated; and the wonder is that among a population armed to the teeth there are not more cases of such violent deeds as we were reading of at breakfast. To the stranger there was no evidence of the existence of these disturbing elements, unless the bearded and booted men with speculation in their eyes, in the hotel passages and halls, belonged to the dangerous, as they certainly did to the mining, classes. As to the resources of the city, although for rapidity of growth its wonders may be eclipsed by those of Leadville, Denver claims a very high place in the catalogue of these marvellous fungi of civilisation, of which the Western States present almost unique examples. There is everything that any one can want to be had for money in the place, and much more than most people need. Paris fashions and millinery are in vogue. There are fine shops, handsome churches, a theatre, breweries, factories, banks, insurance offices.

The principal street exhibits pretty young people, who would have no occasion to fear comparison with the beau monde in Eastern or European capitals. The thoroughfares are crowded with vehicles, and spruce carriages and well turned-out horses may be seen in the favourite drive, that has been made over an indifferent road to the base of the Rocky Mountains, which appear to be close at hand, though they are thirteen miles away. But here and there in the well-dressed crowd may be seen a Bohemian pur sang, or a miner in his every day clothes, bent on a rig out and a good time of it. The streets, unpaved, dusty, and rugged, are very wide, and bordered with trees, and the houses generally are built of good red brick instead of wood; and there are runnels of water like those one sees in Pretoria and other Dutch towns in South Africa. The roads about the city leave much to be desired; but Rome was not built in a day.

There are many ready-made clothing establishments in the main streets, and there is a heavy trade in tinned provisions. Through the Western States, as in South Africa, the débris of provision-tins constitutes a certain and considerable addition to the objects to be seen in the vicinity of every house, and to the mounds of rubbish in the street of every village. How indeed could the first-comers in such regions keep body and soul together without the supplies in such a portable form of the first necessaries of life? Having once run up a town in these remote wastes, the inhabitants are still compelled to make a liberal use of the same sort of food, and mines of tinned iron gradually accumulate around them.

Our first excursion was to the Argo Works, under very pleasant auspices, for we had the wife of the Senator, who is one of the principal partners, and Mrs. Pearce, whose husband is largely interested in the works, taking charge of us. The works are at some distance outside the town, but the lofty chimneys vomit out quite sufficient vaporous fumes and smoke to blight the vegetation and to give the people near at hand a taste of their quality. I am not going to give a minute description, for more reasons than one, of what we saw at the works; but it was a very interesting exhibition of the processes by which the precious metals are extracted from the ores and delivered to commerce. The Argo Works simply assay and reduce ores on commission, but the business is on a very large scale. Immense piles, in fact small mountains, of brown, cinnamon and earth coloured dust and rock were heaped up in the sheds, to be brought to the furnaces and turned, when divested of the lead, iron, copper, and gold, out in ingots of silver. All the methods for the extraction of silver were shown to us, but I committed a gross indiscretion when I asked, in my ignorance, "How do you extract the gold?" "That," said the urbane gentleman who was conducting us over the works, "we never permit strangers to see." So there is more there than meets the eye.

The business of assaying here must be profitable, and if the reputation of any firm be once established there is a secure fortune for its members. The miners flock to them, and they can dictate terms. The extent of mining work in the country around may be inferred from the numerous offices in connection with it in the city. As a specimen of what Messrs. Bush and Tabor of our hotel give their guests for dinner, let me offer you this menu of the 5.30 ordinary to-day (June 16). Soup, beef à l'Anglaise; fish, boiled trout, anchovy sauce; corned beef, leg of mutton, sirloin beef, chickens with giblet sauce, fricassee à la Toulouse, veal, kidneys sautés aux croûtons, rice, croquettes, baked pork and beans, saddle of antelope, currant jelly, lamb, tongue, chicken salad, spiced salmon; innumerable "relishes" and vegetables, baked rice pudding, strawberry pie, apricot pie, jelly, blancmange, vanilla ice cream, macaroons, pound cake, fruit, Swiss cheese, nuts, coffee, &c. The wines were not cheap: champagne 16s. a bottle, St. Julien 6s., Leoville 14s., sherry 8s., brandy 14s. per bottle. Orders for "drinks" at the bar after dinner were much more general than orders for wine at dinner.

Denver, in spite of its mineral wealth, is very poor, however, in that of which the want would make life, even in America, intolerable. The supply of drinking-water is scanty and bad, and last year there was nearly a water famine. The cartes in the hotel announced "Water used in this room is boiled and filtered." But great efforts have been made to furnish the inhabitants with a store, constant and adequate, of the precious fluid, and we saw very considerable works, the property of an Irish gentleman, erected before the town attained its present dimensions, which were to be supplemented by a new enterprise respecting which we heard much. Perhaps no town of equal size in an equal length of time has ever had so much money and money's worth flowing in and through it as Denver since the Colorado mines were worked. It is asserted that the trade of the town for 1881 will exceed 8,000,000l. Colorado in 1879 yielded ores to the value of more than 3,750,000l. The output in the present year will exceed that of 1880. In that year $35,417,517 worth of gold and $20,183,889 of silver (more than 11,000,000l.) was deposited in the United States Mint and Assay Office. There is, besides, vast wealth in flocks and herds, and Denver is the place where the people resort from Colorado for purposes of trade and pleasure; altogether an astounding place, with a future quite dazzling to think of, unless the mines give in, and even then Colorado cannot again be poor; its climate and scenery will always attract travellers, and its capacity for feeding sheep and cattle will secure its population. "And as to the beetle?" Why, no one would have anything to say to it. Nothing was known of it. There might be such things in other States. "And the name?" Probably it was a red-coloured bug, and got the name Colorado just as the river, or tobacco, was called, from the hue of it. At all events the bug did not belong to the State.

The interest which the progress of Colorado and the condition of society in the State excite was exemplified by the appearance in Denver of a party of Hungarian noblemen, whose names gave occasion for stumbling to the journalists who copied them out of the Hotel Register—Count Andrassy and others, who were travelling under the guidance of Dr. Rudolf Meyer, of Vienna. Although the air of Denver is so much bepraised, it happens that most of our party felt rather overcome at the end of our excursion through the town and the visit to the smelting works, and one of the Hungarians was confined to his room. However, they sallied out before dinner, and a gloomy prophet of evil remarked, "If these strangers should have a difficulty, I consider they'll hev only theirselves to blame. Some citizens don't like strangers comin' in and starin' at them, and they're apt to be awkward in their tempers in the afternoon." Knowing no danger, and fearing none, they went off, and were a long time absent. Meantime we were preparing for the road, as we were bound for Leadville, the city of the "biggest boom" of mining times—"the Silver El Dorado," as the guide-book, with a magnificent "bull," describes it. Our Hungarian friends returned to the hotel ere we left. They were filled with enthusiasm, and with a good deal also of curiosity in regard to the shootings of which they had heard so much, and were following in our track next day, and so we parted sans adieux. How the love of gold has filled these lone valleys with desperate men! "They are a rough lot, sure enough," said the landlord, "but lynching keeps them down; and it is much better than hanging according to law, to my mind. It certainly is cheaper." "How is it cheaper?" "Why," said he, "when a man is prosecuted, or when he is tried before the judges, the law expenses are heavy, and they fall on the county. When a man is lynched there is only the expense of the rope, and a little loss of time for the boys who do the job." From Denver to Pueblo and from Pueblo to Leadville the line is on the narrow-gauge principle, and our train, which left at seven o'clock in the evening, seemed to be driven on no principle at all; for, anxious to astonish a Duke perhaps, or Britishers generally, the driver did what certainly could not be called his level best to send us along up and down a very rough line, and round the sharpest curves, at the rate of forty miles an hour, so that when we turned in, our rest, if rest at all it were, was exceedingly broken, and we trundled about in our berths as if we were in a ship in a pretty heavy sea. Still this narrow-gauge was the only line which could be made through such a country as we were traversing. Peeps out of the window ever and anon revealed, high up amongst the stars, rugged mountain-tops, and for ever there came the sound of rushing water, near or remote, as the train "bounded" on its course. I do not know what stations we passed on our way, but the night was very long, and I greeted with pleasure the first gleam of light above the hill-tops. The Arkansas River was on our left, and at dawn we had glimpses of its turbid stream running madly in deep gorges far below us. At the South Arkansas station the train halted soon after daybreak, and then we diverged from the main line, and a light train took us over the Arkansas River by a fine bridge on its way up the Gunnison Extension to visit the highest mountain-pass traversed by a railway in the world. South Arkansas station is 217 miles from Denver, and is 6944 feet—and Marshall Pass (25 miles away), to which we were bound, is 10,760 feet—above sea-level. There were grades of 211 and curves of 24° on the way, and the railroad twisted in and out among the ravines like an iron Alexandrine, for ever ascending till we had passed the limits of forest life. There were stations at short intervals—Poncha Springs, Mears, Silver Creek—from each other. From the stations there is a good deal of cross-country traffic, and at one place we saw three stages laden with men and women—or rather, to be polite and accurate, let me say with women and ladies—starting, one with six horses, and the other two with four each. These were bound for Gunnison, and as we were halting for a little, the Duke and some others got out of the train, and sauntered up towards the wooden shanties which formed "the town," consisting of the usual array of saloons and drinking places. However, our course was cut short by the information vouchsafed by one of the officials, that it might be as well not to go up, as there had been a big shooting match that morning, and that one man was killed and four had been wounded, "and some of them were on the drink yet." From 4.30 A.M. to 6.45 A.M. we struggled up towards the pass till the line came to an end near the summit, and we were rewarded by some very fine views, exceedingly like those of the Mont Cenis Railway or the Sömmering. The hills on both sides of the line were stippled and flaked with snow, but there was no extensive field, so far as the eye could see, nor was there any appearance whatever of a glacier, the tops generally being clear of snow, which only lodged in the ravines and hollows. Strange it was in these alpine heights to hear the clang of Italian tongues; but most of the navvies were from Italy, and if not quite so strong as English or Americans, they were in more favour with contractors, because they did more work, owing to their steadiness and sobriety. The line was being pushed on at an astonishing rate, and one man was pointed out to us who had laid four and a half miles of railway in one day, "the biggest thing of the kind ever done." Our enjoyment of the scenery was very much diminished by our animal appetites, stimulated by the sharp mountain air, which craved incessantly for food. But not even a cup of coffee was to be had until we got back to the South Arkansas station, late in the morning, where an excellent breakfast awaited us. Here we were detained some time by a derailment of an engine in front.

From South Arkansas station to Leadville (61 miles) the railroad is still more aspiring. The higher we ascend the less striking are the scenic effects, but the grades are not very severe till we come to Malta, where it reaches 130; from Hilliers to Leadville the maximum is 176, the curves being often 15°. The general character of the country may be conceived from these figures, but no words can convey any idea of the wholesale destruction of timber which has marked the progress of the explorers and prospectors. Where the axe was weary the blaze and the fire were called in, and hundreds of miles of forest are laid in blackened ruin. At last we are on a level with the hill-tops. There, on the hill-tops and in the valleys of a sterile region in front of you, amidst those tall chimneys vomiting out smoke and steam, is a wilderness of wooden huts, "the Great Carbonate Camp"—where we leave the train—spread out over an undulating plateau, broken into mound-like hills and sharp hillocks—bustling streets filled with the most remarkable swarm of all nations that ever settled on any one spot in the world. The story of Leadville reads like a chapter out of some book of Oriental fable. It is a huge barrack of wooden houses, with some solid and important buildings, with masses of tree-stumps cropping up in the centre of the main thoroughfares, pitched over an undulating, rugged, dusty ledge. In the midst of blocks of houses sprout up the chimneys of furnaces and mining works, the clang of machinery fills the air, which is thick with clouds of dust. It was a few years ago an utterly wild, lifeless waste amidst the mountains covered with forests, when three brothers, named Gallagher, exploring from California, were led by some genius, good or bad, to test the material of the rocks in the ravine. They struck gold ore, and silver too, and they set up a claim; and presently they sold their shares in the land which they had appropriated, for 40,000l., which they divided. Two used their wealth wisely, and made more of it, and, taking to themselves the members of the family, throve exceedingly; one, not so wise, if he were quite as good, did not prosper as well as his brothers. But the scene of their operations was soon swarming with enterprising miners. There was a mighty "boom." Now there is a city! Leadville is, I think, the most astonishing city on earth, but I am not by any means inclined to say that it is a place I should like to be astonished about for more than a few hours.

The party drove to the Morning Star, said to be the best mine in Leadville; and the Duke, Lady Green, Sir Henry Green, and others, went down the mine in miners' clothes or cloaks. Two others, whose names I shall not give, remained above, and had, I fancy, the best of the time. Afterwards we visited Grant's Smelting Works, and then back to the Clarence Hotel and dined, strolling out afterwards through the town and visiting the billiard saloons, the Grand Central Theatre, and finally, where we were told Leadville life was to be seen in all its glory, the faro and the kino tables, which, however, were doing but very little business, as it was not until after midnight that play in the town generally commenced. Instead of sleeping at the hotel, we resolved to take refuge in the train, which was drawn up at the siding; and we had to drive in order to reach it, as it was considered unsafe to walk through the streets in the dark.

We started at four o'clock next morning, June 18th, and on arriving at Arkansas Station learned that an engine was off the line in front of us. Breakdown gangs were sent for, and all the locomotive talent amongst our passengers repaired quickly to the scene. As it was not easy to lift the engine, the engineers adopted the expedient of laying a temporary rail to turn its flank so as to enable us to pass round it, which we did after a delay of about an hour. The Duke got out and sat on the cow-catcher by way of a change. But the interest we took in the scenery was somewhat diminished by the intelligence that the delay caused by the engine would prevent our enjoying the "soda bath" we had been promised at Cañon City, and the sight of the State Prison, where murderers were to be paraded by the dozen. About twenty miles north of the Grand Cañon, the gorges through which the river runs became wider and deeper. All that has been written about the Grand Cañon utterly fails to convey an adequate idea of its exceeding grandeur and wildness. The rocks—closing in so that the spectator in the car, looking forward, thinks the progress of the train must be arrested, and that it is not possible for it to get out of the cul de sac which appears in front, rising aloft for upwards of two thousand five hundred feet on each side—are coloured with the brightest hues, and present an infinite variety of form. The impetuous current of the Arkansas River, contracted at times to the breadth of some twenty or thirty yards, and penned into a space in which the waters boil and toss as if about to leap on and submerge the passing cars, roars wildly down below on our right at a depth varying as the line rises and falls. But it is at the Bridge—a triumph of engineering skill—that the horrors of the pass culminate. The sides of the ravine approach so near that the daring engineer was enabled to execute the idea of lowering from above a -shaped frame or trestle of iron; and, the ends catching on each side of the gorge, permitted him to work on it for the construction of the iron platform over which the train is carried at a height of some hundreds of feet right over the maddened river. You can look down through the interstices of the girders and glance shudderingly at the hell of waters below—a sight and sensation never to be forgotten. The ravine gradually expands and the cliffs recede as the line strikes eastwards; and though the scenery retains a wild and savage character for many miles farther, the impressions of the Grand Cañon caused us to regard it with comparative indifference. We heard many tales of the great railway war which was waged for the possession of the pass, of which traces still remained in the ruins of posts of vantage and observation, and the works of the defeated railroad visible on the other side of the ravine. At night we reached Pueblo and took up our quarters in our own cars, and continued our journey, after some delay, towards Kansas City.

Liquor Law—Kansas Academy of Science—An Incident of Travel—A Parting Symposium—Life in the Cars—St. Louis to New York.

June 19th.—Still on the rolling prairies; in the country of compulsory abstinence—the paradise of Sir Wilfred Lawson. At 9.30 A.M. the train stopped at Newton, 431 miles from Pueblo, and 281 from Kansas.

Here a phenomenon—there was a man by the road side who walked with unsteady step, whose legs tottered, and who lurched violently as he came down the road at that early hour. "He is a sick man," observed one of my friends in the train; "that gentleman has been taking medicine." In the Kansas Act there is a clause enabling physicians, in case of need, to order stimulants for the patients without penalty; but I am told the doctors have generally refused to act upon that permission, so I suppose our friend had been consulting an unlicensed practitioner.

It would be ill done, when I am anxious to acknowledge the pleasure and profit which I derived from my passage through the State, if I did not record the satisfaction with which I perused a volume of the "Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science," which by accident I picked up at one of the stations. The very name speaks trumpet-tongued for the progress which has been made in this wild region. The year before last, the twelfth annual meeting of the Academy was held in Topeka, and I find amongst the list of papers read such subjects as these:—The Kansas Lepidoptera; Kansas Minerals; the Mounds of Southern Kansas; Recent additions to Kansas Plants; Kansas Botany; Kansas Meteorites; Phonetic representations of Indian Language; Sinkholes; Elementary Sounds of Language; Mound-builders; On Recent Indian Discoveries. And among the lecturers there was Professor B. F. Mudge, who died last year, whose name probably is known to a very limited number of scientific men outside the University of Kansas. Generally the papers contributed by the gentlemen of the State attest industry and attainments which make their praise of the Professor particularly valuable. It is curious enough to pick up in a railway carriage, traversing such a scene of comparative wildness and vast uninhabited plains in Western Kansas, an exceedingly interesting examination of the Helmholtz theories of sight. The object of the lecturer would scarcely be suspected by the reader. We had already been struck by the extraordinary absence of signalmen, or of any of the complex apparatus of men and machinery which may be seen in Europe, and notably in England, to report the progress of trains on the lines. Collisions, however, occur in America where these precautions are not taken, and the lecturer attributed a good deal of these accidents to colour-blindness, which appears to have attracted considerable attention in the United States. Surgeons, pilots, &c., are tested for colour, and in the army colour-blindness disqualifies the recruit for employment in the signal corps. Altogether the papers give an impression that in this new State there are diligent students of natural history and physics, and profound inquirers into all the phenomena of life. There was a reverse to the medal.

At a station where the train halted beyond Pueblo, a card was handed to me by one of the stewards. "The gentleman is, as he seemed very pressing, outside; but I told him you were engaged." I started as I read the name and address on the card, as well I might. They indicated that an old friend whom I had left in a condition of great bodily weakness and infirmity in London, was close at hand in this remote region—a wonderful if welcome fly in amber. I ran out of the drawing-room into the next car, and there saw a man, agitated and travel-worn, whom I had never, to the best of my belief, seen in my life before. His story was told, if not soon, at least in time to let me partly understand the situation ere the train moved off. The stranger had been in the service of the gentleman whose card he sent in to me, but had left it to better himself in America, and had gone out as valet to an American of good position at Colorado Springs. He found, however, according to his own account, that he was expected to do things not required of a valet in his own country, such as lumbering, wood-cutting, and the like, and so he had thrown up his situation and was going back to England. He had had quite enough of Colorado Springs. "I was not there above a month, and I was shot at twice," he said. "Once because I made some remark in a bar-room, where a chap was abusing Englishmen; and another time while I was speaking in the street to a man a fellow had a grudge against. He fired at him across the road, and the ball whistled within a hair's-breadth of my head." He had arrived at Pueblo some time before our special, and as the morning was warm, he walked into a bar near the platform, while the engine of his train was watering, to get a glass of lemonade. As he was drinking it, a man walked in and called for a glass of whisky, putting down, at the same time, what seemed to be a bank note, on the counter. The boniface said, "I haven't got change for this twenty-dollar bill—perhaps this gentleman can oblige you." The unsuspecting Briton, who had put the money for his passage to Liverpool in a purse, drew it out to change the note, and the strange customer at once seized it from his hand, and rushed off towards the street with his booty. The Britisher ran after him, but checked his wild career when he saw, within an inch of his head, the muzzle of a revolver which the robber had drawn, and the fellow vanished. "Won't you help me to stop the thief; you see what has happened?" exclaimed the victim turning to the barman. "I guess there was no money in that purse, sir. And if there was, perhaps you had no more right to it than he had." Then the Briton dashed off after Don Guzman, shouting "police," and was at once accosted by an officer of the Pueblo force. He hurriedly stated the facts. The policeman smiled. "I think you won't see that pile agin," he remarked; "and if you don't look sharp ye'll miss yer train, that's a fact!" The man had his railway ticket all right, a few dollars in his pocket, and I told him I would see him and get him a passage, if I found on inquiry his story was true. My companions thought the tale suspicious—but I believe it was true, and I subsequently franked the man to England.

Now here we had an exemplification of the manners and customs of the district. Such an act of violence and robbery might occur in London—anywhere. But what of the apathy, or perhaps complicity, of the bar man? And if it or they be considered not altogether abnormal, is the conduct of the policeman to be accepted as quite consistent with the discharge of a policeman's duty? Well, whilst I was pondering on these things, there came to me the best possible adviser—a judge in this Israel—our excellent Palinurus, Mr. White. He threw a new, if not a side light on the subject. "Depend on it he is a confidence man. The trains are full of them! Our conductors have express orders about the rascals." And he explained that a confidence man is a swindler—very often an Englishman, who makes it his business to look out for unwary strangers, on whom he imposes with some tale of distress, or some recital of imaginary misfortune and adventure. As the man I had seen was coming on in the train in our wake, Mr. White promised to talk with the conductor, and find out, if he could, the truth about the Pueblo robbery. Before dusk a telegram was forwarded by him to me from the station where he left us, to say that the conductor had no doubt the man was robbed, but that it was partly his own fault, and to warn me to be cautious in my dealings with him.

We have now been travelling straight on end for 1160 miles, with only two engineers and two firemen and one engine, a feat of endurance which has greatly exercised the Duke of Sutherland, who, as a practical director of the London and North-Western Railway, has knowledge of such matters, and who contrasts the performance with the experience he has on the home lines, where engines, engineers, and firemen would have been relieved or laid up over and over again. The head engineer of the line, who joined us, Mr. Hackney, formerly of Congleton, had become accustomed to these journeyings and endurances, which were brought to the front in our conversation by the engine-driver appearing at the door of the carriage to claim a dollar which he had won from the Duke in a bet that he could not do the distance without laying up the engine for repairs.

All the long Sabbath-day we travelled on through the prairie, catching glimpses now and then of wooden villages, around which trees were beginning to sprout up, and of the little churches with knots of carts, waggons, horses, and buggies outside, and people waiting for the end of the sermon. Now and then, perhaps at intervals of fifteen miles or so, are places of larger importance, such as Emporia, a rising city on the plains, where many steeples pointed aloft indicated considerable diversity of creed. An authority, not always to be relied upon, stated that there are fourteen churches belonging to the town.

There was a parting symposium in the second Pullman ere we reached Topeka. Mr. White, Major Anderson, General Brown, Mr. Jerome, and my much wandering compatriot, a veritable Irish Ulysses, raised the tuneful melodies of the "Golden Slipper," the "Little Brown Jug," and the other tender psalmodies which had whiled away so many hours, for the last time in our society, and the little gages which were but the outward and visible signs of the regard we felt for our friends were exchanged with honest effusion. There may be—nay, there are—many jealousies and causes of estrangement between the people of the Old Country and of the New, but between the individuals of both there is a camaraderie which cannot, I believe, be found between Englishmen and the natives of any country except America.

"Good bye! God bless you! Be sure if ever you come to England you shall have a hearty welcome from me." "And from me!" "And me!" "And me!" The engine bell tolled, and we moved slowly on.

And we were left all alone! The pleasant companions of so many weeks had gone! I wonder if they missed us as much as we missed them?

While travelling across the Rockies and the desert to San Francisco and back, our course of life was pretty uniform, and one day followed another with almost perfect resemblance in the mode of existence and in all things except the scenery and the country through which we were passing. First, in the early morning came one of the attendants to our bedside with a cup of coffee, and then the curtains of the little cubicle were thrown aside and you looked out on either plain, or mountain, or river, or col; and on the faces of early risers at doors or windows as the train passed through some rising town. At one end of the saloon there was a bath-room, and from the tank there was always to be obtained sufficient water for the purpose of an early dip, which was enjoyed as occasion offered in turn by the party. Then a cigarette. Then we dropped in as people do at a country house, into the sitting-room, and exchanged ideas as to the progress made during the night, and the stoppages, wondered where we were, and had a little conversation with the conductor or Arthur as to the place where we could stop or get the papers—and so got over the morning till 9 o'clock, when breakfast was announced, consisting of fish, poultry, meat, fruit (I had nearly said flowers, for there was always a bouquet on the table), tea, coffee, and cold dishes, with abundance of milk and butter. Where the fish came from and how they were kept fresh was matter of wonder, for the instances were very rare in which there was any indication that it had not quite recently come out of the sea or the river. The supply of ice was liberal and unfailing, and whenever we stopped at any considerable station the whole disposable strength of the attendants in the train was employed in grappling with large blocks of it and stowing it away in the ice reservoir, in which were the larder and the cellar for such wines as needed cooling, and for the vegetables and meat, of which there were great stores constantly laid in. Then after breakfast there was reading or sight-seeing, investigating the line, examining the maps, receiving visits and returning them in other parts of the train, till in the very hot days it was necessary, after expelling the flies, which were troublesome on occasion, to draw the dust-blinds and the curtains of the carriages, to mitigate the fierceness of the sun. It was objected occasionally that by this process we deprived ourselves of the opportunity of what was called "seeing the country," but after all a glance now and then is quite sufficient to reveal the general character of the districts through which the train is running; and the most diligent and painstaking observer cannot keep his eyes fixed steadily for a day on the external aspects of the region through which he is travelling. I should be sorry to declare that every one was wide awake all the time of the forenoon and up to the period of lunch, which too often exceeded on the side of many dishes, being, in fact, a mid-day dinner; but then no one was obliged to eat more than he liked, or drink either. Then came the longest stretch of the day, and at its close another banquet; and as the sun declined and the temperature decreased, we could take more pleasure in looking out at the fantastic forms of the vegetation which clothed the arid rocks in the desert, or on the bright green prairie, or on the towering mountains, waiting till the sun had set, generally in a blaze of glory. There were, of course, interruptions and variations as we halted at the more important places; disappointments about letters which had been telegraphed for and which were expected day after day, constituted also a matter of conversation and discourse. There was an harmonium in the sitting-room of the palace car, but no one had the art of playing it, although we had plenty of music of another sort; for after dinner the gentlemen of the railroad party who had not dined with us came in, and we were never tired of listening to the songs, so original and amusing, which they gave with great spirit and admirable time and tune, for it happened they all possessed good voices, and the melodies with which the troops of coloured minstrels have now rendered the world familiar were then new to us.

During the whole of our tour the weather has been most favourable. With the exception of the rainy days in Canada, and the cold and rawness which characterised the time of our short visit to Richmond, there was nothing worse to complain of than continual sunshine. Now and then the temperature was a little too good to be pleasant when we were traversing the beds of the dry seas in the desert in Colorado and California, but that was something to look back upon with satisfaction, because there was no time lost in keeping within doors owing to the rain and storm or cold. "Within doors," however, is a phrase scarcely applicable to our mode of life, as it would imply that we were in stable habitations, whereas, as will have been seen by those who have accompanied us so far, we "lived and moved, and had our being" in railway carriages; a mode of life rendered so comfortable by all appliances, that it was sometimes no relief to be told that we would have to pass the night at an hotel.

For nine days and nine nights in succession, on one occasion, we never slept out of the carriages or got out of the train except to take a stroll about the station, or a peep into the street of a small town whilst we were waiting, and one got quite accustomed to that nomad and yet civilised mode of existence, where at every halting-place we were supplied with the latest intelligence by the local papers, and made the recipients of some attention or courtesy, visits and compliments (the remarks of the other sort not being many), bouquets of flowers, presents of fruit, and plenty of conversation. But that my critics might say I dilate too much upon the material enjoyment of life, I would describe at length the means which were supplied in the course of these long journeys for animal enjoyment. Never could there be found more attentive and obliging domestics than the coloured men who waited upon us—Arthur and his fellows. There lived in the kitchen compartment of the train, at the end of one of the saloons, a coloured cook, very intelligent and gossipy, full of quaint conceits and dishes and conversation, who commenced life as a slave on a Southern plantation, probably adopted for indoor purposes on account of his smartness. He liberated himself in the course of the war, and marched off with a regiment of Federals in the capacity of cook and body-servant to one of the officers, wherein he saw a great amount of very hard fighting at very close quarters. This adventurous modern Othello was wont to discourse with much animation when he came out for a breath of fresh air on the platform and could find anybody to talk to him, although he could move no more tender heart than that of Sir Henry Green. The gentlemen of the Atchison, &c., Railway, when travelling with us, had a cordon bleu in the saloon—an Italian or Frenchman, I think, or at all events a French-speaking man, who had served also, and would have done credit to an establishment where faults in a chef would not lightly be condoned. In the interchange of courtesies, Mr. White and his friends invited our party now and then to dine in the saloon, which was not "across the way," but up a little, on the line, being the saloon in front of us.

But here we are at Kansas City once again! At 5.30 P.M. the train arrived at the platform, which was gay with a Sunday crowd, of whom many were negresses—black, brown, brindled, and yellow citoyennes—in much variety of colour and garmenting. Unlike Samson, their weakness is in their hair, and like Achilles, they are vulnerable about the heels (to the arrows of an æsthetical criticism, which accepts the Greek idea of beauty in form); but they seemed to enjoy life amazingly, and not to be in need of beaux; perhaps the happiest people in the world now that their chattel days are over. It was late when we turned into our berths, for it was a lovely night and the fire-flies exercised a great attraction over us, but at last the charm was worn out and we slept till morning without a break.

June 20th.—Still the same boundless plain. In vain does one look for the grass fields with close, even, carpet-like surface to be seen in Europe. We are still passing through exceedingly rich land—the fields covered with flocks of sheep and herds of good-looking cattle. There are more trees by the stream-side, and shrubs growing in the hollows. Habitations are more frequent, and so are fencing and planting. As the sun was setting we approached St. Louis. There were some park-like glades, and vistas opening up to pleasant mansions, amid grounds showing marks of culture. There had been a severe thunderstorm the night before, and the St. Louis Station had still traces of its effects in pools of mud. But the rain had cooled the air, and the people were rejoicing exceedingly in the great improvement that had taken place in the weather, for, they told us, men and women had been dropping down with the heat a few days ago as though they had been struck by musketry.

The appearance of the St. Louis Terminus gave one a high idea of the importance of this city. Eight trains were waiting on their respective lines to start with passengers to all parts of the Union; and by the simple device of placing at the end of each train a large board announcing its destination and the time of its departure, much anxiety was saved to intending passengers, not to speak of the irritation of officials avoided by this simple expedient. The journey was continued by the Indianopolis and Vandalia, and by what is called the "Pa'handle" line to the Pennsylvania Railroad on to Philadelphia. The train was timed on Tuesday so that we were able to see the famous passage over the Alleghany Mountains from Conemaugh to Altoona. For nearly eleven miles we were carried without steam, and with the brakes on, through very fine scenery, down the mountain-side, but the summit was crossed in the darkness of a tunnel 1200 yards long. There are some striking engineering feats in the way of curves and gradients, and the trace of the line is very bold all the way down to Altoona, where the Pennsylvania Railroad engine and machinery shops are established—the centre of a population of some 17,000 souls, where twenty years ago "there were," as a friend said, "only bears, deer, woodpeckers, and skallywags." The Duke, Mr. Stephen, and our railway experts got out and visited the workshops, and came back very much pleased at the discovery of several London and North-Western men in good positions in the Pennsylvania Railroad Company's service, who welcomed their old directors with effusion, and that there was nothing visible there for Crewe to copy, unless perhaps cast-iron wheels. The speed at which we travelled was a sensible proof that we were once more on the line of our old friends of Pennsylvania. From Altoona to Harrisburg, 132 miles, we rattled along in two hours and forty-three minutes. On another stretch of the line we travelled eighty-three miles in one hour and forty-two seconds, including stoppages; and the rapid motion was very agreeable, as there was a perceptible increase of temperature after we reached the plains and approached the beautiful valley of the Susquehannah—a scene of industry, prosperity, and peace. Fortunately there was a good light on the river, and we had a fine view of the country all the way to Harrisburg under the rays of the setting sun. A little farther on we were gratified by the appearance of General Roberts at a station on the way, where he was awaiting the Duke to congratulate him on his safe return from the Western expedition, and we bade him farewell at his own house, with many sincere and well-deserved acknowledgments of great and constant kindness. Then over the river by the noble bridge, and on to Philadelphia. We did not visit Pittsburg, which was vomiting out masses of smoke, nor did we halt this time at the capital of the Quaker State.

Coney Island—Newport—Bass-fishing—Habit of Spitting—Brighton Beach—Newport—Coaching—Extra Ecclesiam—Victories of American Horses—Newport Avenues—Return to New York—Our last day in America.

The special train was detained by the immense amount of traffic on the line, as we approached New York, and we did not reach Brooklyn till a little before 11 P.M. on June 21, so that it was past midnight when we ascended the steps of the Windsor Hotel, which we had selected by way of a change, and found to be every way commendable, with the exception of its distance from the busy parts of the city. The following day was devoted to letter reading and writing, receiving visitors, and various attempts "to go out," which were not generally successful, for New York was palpitating with the intense heat. The "heated term" was in full vigour, but it was now quite temperate in comparison to the excesses which had marked its advent some time before our arrival. In the evening we got up strength and courage enough to go to Wallack's Theatre, a very pretty, well-constructed house, and saw "The World" excellently acted and admirably put on the stage. Next day, June 23rd, in virtue of a solemn league and covenant with Uncle Sam and Mr. Hurlbut, the Duke and I devoted ourselves to fresh fields and pastures new, and ordered ourselves accordingly for Coney Island. A long bank of sand by the sea-shore has, by an accident, become one of the most crowded resorts in the world, and to-day there were races in the new ground. It was not, as we found, so easy to get there. Having the advantage of two experienced guides, our party of four managed to break up into two and to miss each other; one taking the boat at one iron pier, and the other embarking by a different mode of conveyance. But as we were bound to see Coney Island, the Race course being a secondary object, our temporary separation did not prove a source of great annoyance.

The early settlers would indeed have been astonished if they could look round and see what they have brought the quiet place to in these later days. They were Quakers persecuted by the good Christians of New England, who were driven out of Boston as ruthlessly as though they had been malignants and papists of the worst sort. They settled the township of Gravesend about 250 years ago, and amongst the conspicuous settlers occurs the title and name of Lady Deborah Moody, of whom this deponent knows nothing, but wonders how, with such a title, she managed to have influence amongst a Society of Friends.

A ship was built, so the Americans say, of 70 tons in 1699, by the descendants of the Quaker settlers, and less than 100 years later the bold republicans, abandoning the doctrines of peace, engaged and captured an English corvette off the island. It was all along of General How, who landed his troops here and set the people to work on the fortifications he threw up, whether they would or no. A corvette, bound to Halifax, anchored off the island, and an old whaler, who, says the chronicler, must have been smarting under the wrongs he had suffered at the hands of the red-coats, or who possibly regarded the work as he would the capture of a finner or a bottle-nose, imparted to a few trusty friends the idea of "cutting her out." So embarking at night in a couple of boats, they stole down with muffled oars and ran up under the stern of the ship. There was no watch, and through the cabin windows the officers could be seen playing cards. The crews of the boats boarded the corvette simultaneously, seized, overpowered, and bound the officers and men, lowered them into their boats, and, having set the man-of-war on fire, pulled over to the Jersey shore with their prisoners. It is to be hoped that the demeanour and language of the captain have been misrepresented by local tradition; but he is said to have cried bitterly, and to have exclaimed, "To be surprised and captured by two blooming egg-shells is too blasted bad!"

There was a long period of neglect before Fashion and the populace found out the attractions of Coney Island. Fishermen, oyster-catchers, and sportsmen visited the sandy beach from time to time; then after a while a few houses were run up of a very inferior class, and these were frequented by the very worst of the scum of New York, so that it was almost dangerous, and certainly disgusting, to go among them, while the scenes on the beach, to which the present proceedings afford such a contrast, were described as being of the most disgraceful character.

The official directions for spending a day at Coney Island certainly indicate a belief in the possession of enormous physical energy and indefatigable curiosity on the part of the visitors in those who compose the code. Having given you sailing instructions by the iron steam boat to Bay Ridge for the Sea Beach Railway (ticket 35 cents), you are to visit the Sea View Palace Hotel, the Piazza, the two iron piers, the Camera obscura (10 cents), the Great Milking Cow, the top of the observatory (15 cents); then to eat a Rhode Island clam bake (50 cents), visit the aquarium (10 cents), take a park waggon and ride over the Concourse to Brighton; see the hotel grounds and bathing pavilion there; then take the Marine Railway (5 cents) to Manhattan Beach; visit the Oriental Hotel and take the Marine Railway to Point Breeze (10 cents) and return back to Brighton Beach Pavilion and take a bath; then see the Museum of Living Wonders (10 cents), dine at the Hotel Brighton, hear a concert in the evening, and return to New York by 11 o'clock. "This trip," observes the compiler, "may fatigue one, but the excitement soon overcomes the trouble." Coney Island is indeed an institution.

Along the sea front of the bank for some three or four miles there has been constructed an esplanade lined with seats, and defended from the sea by a stone wall. Outside there is a belt of shingle on which the surf breaks, but not violently, unless in bad weather. Large bathing establishments, with every appliance, are placed at convenient intervals along the shore. Here in the season tens of thousands of people may be seen, all properly and decently attired, disporting in the waves. At the time of our visit, the hour and the season of the year seemed not to be favourable to the indulgence. We were too late in the day. It is an early place, and from 7 till 9 A.M. from the month of June to the end of September are described as the orthodox periods. Nevertheless the spectacle was quite unique, and if you can imagine Brighton with half-a-dozen Pavilions blown out to twice their size, and the largest hotels multiplied by ten in length, breadth, and depth, you may fancy what the Coney Island front is, provided always that you can also conjure up (literally) myriads of well-dressed men, women, and children perambulating the esplanade or sitting in the grounds around the various establishments which occupy a large space inland—pavilions, hotels, exhibitions, restaurants, and club-houses. There were fireworks going on in broad day; but these were principally for the purpose of exhibiting very ingenious Japanese figures, which were discharged from bombs, and which gradually descending were objects of eager competition amongst the younger members of the enormous multitude. And with all so much good-humour, so much propriety of demeanour; none of the brutal rushes of "roughs" which disgust one with English popular assemblages—none of the brutal horse-play, and screams, and unmeaning cries of the 'Arrys and the Bills of our popular resorts.

Looking at Mr. Marshall's excellent book on the United States, which we found to be copious and accurate, I was struck by what he says respecting a habit of the people which, according to my experience, has very much decreased since I was last in the States, but which he finds in as full force, and repulsive as ever. I am bound to say I think the habit of spitting has very much diminished, but from numerous evidences, from the presence of spittoons in every room and in the passages of the hotels, and from public admonitions, such as one we saw at some of the theatres, that the audience would not spit upon the stage, I must believe that it still exists. What the cause of this habit may be it is not easy to determine. It cannot be in the race, because it is scarcely an "English" habit. I would be inclined to attribute it to the drinking of iced water, but ladies in America use the national beverage quite as freely as the men, and spitting is a masculine failing. Can it be a result of climate? Scarcely. For in the States, British-born people do not seem to be affected by the influence of the habit in those around them after many years' residence. Smokers and non-smokers alike indulge in the practice, so that tobacco cannot be charged with the disagreeable custom. I assume that it is as common as Mr. Marshall asserts it is, but I am bound to say, according to my own observation and experience on my last visit, that there was no evidence to show that it was common or national. Chewing tobacco also appears to me to have fewer votaries than formerly. A remark to that effect at Richmond brought upon me something like a rebuke from the gentleman to whom I spoke, a Judge of the land. "No, sir," he said, "not at all! I rather think we chew more than ever!" And, to illustrate his faith, he produced a silver box, shaped a plug of no doubt very excellent weed, and thrust it into his mouth. I do not recollect, however, meeting a gentleman in the course of our journey who used tobacco in that way, with that exception.

In the grounds in front of the pavilion, where an excellent orchestra of some one hundred performers were playing, sat a very large and appreciative audience, who applauded with discrimination, and were content with the good performance of each piece.

Our common rendezvous was the Surf Club, one of the numerous convivial associations for which Coney Island seems to be specially adapted; and I presume the name had nothing at all to do with any supposed amusements of the members in connection with the surf on the beach outside. There was some difficulty in finding our way through a labyrinth of rooms all filled with guests: with corridors swarming with people; with vast halls, where at hundreds of tables there were seated people engaged in the consumption of the menu of a Coney Island restaurant, abounding in strange dishes and attended by armies of waiters. At a rough guess, I should say there may have been about 4000 people in the building—and this was but one of several—I think the Brighton Beach Hotel, but of this I am not quite sure.

When the Prospect Park and Coney Island Railroad was opened none believed in its success, but the foresight of the projector was justified; and when it was found that respectable people would go there, if the vagabonds of both sexes and their associates were driven away, the police asserted themselves, and swept off the gamblers and the others of a still more dangerous class, who were to be found there in increasing numbers every year; and then hotels were erected and landing-places made for the steamers; and now the electric light blazes in a hundred halls, and music and rejoicing sound late into the night, contending with the noise of the surf upon the beach. Bowling-alleys, shooting-grounds, archery, croquet, sailing and rowing, all invite some of the visitors, according to their tastes. An amusing exemplification of the ingenuity of American advertisers is afforded by the sailing vessels, which display in enormous characters on their main-sails the names of quack medicines, from which no corner of this continent appears to be safe.

On June 24th the party, which had been somewhat dislocated, reunited their scattered forces, and at 2 P.M. started by train after a little repose, for Newport, R.I. It was a kind of holiday after our travels, but somewhat out of place, for we were told the Ocean House was scarcely ready; but we should not have found it out, had we not been informed of the fact. The newspapers had been on the alert, and soon after the Duke's arrival visitors began to call and invitations to pour in—some well-nigh irresistible, for they included opportunities for experiences of bass-fishing.

June 25th.—Newport has not yet put on its festive attire. It is not the season, and we ought not to be here. Nevertheless it is still so pleasant, and so respectably dull, that one enjoys it amazingly. After breakfast we walked down to the seashore and sat gazing on vacancy, and on three yellow ladies collecting clams. Returning thence in a very hot sun, ran to earth in the hotel where, presently, there were many visitors; and how kind and anxious to please they were! Mr. Fearing drove up later on the top of a drag, and whirled us away to a charming fishing-box on the shore, in order to judge for ourselves what bass-fishing was like. It was a very pretty drive, and Mr. Fearing handled his "four" as if he were bent on joining the Coaching Club—not indiscreetly, as the horses were not accustomed to going together, but with satisfactory decision—and we all were landed without mishap by the side of the road, close to one of the best-organised sporting-boxes I have ever seen, built entirely for the comfort and delectation of Mr. Fearing and two or three friends who own the bass-fishing stands, at the end of one of which a gentleman was then busily engaged in his pastime, for the sea comes rolling up upon the rocks within some forty or fifty yards of the sward of the green meadows on which the house is placed. From it projects into the breakers a platform supported on iron pillars, at the end of which there is an enlargement of the structure to enable the fisherman and his attendants to stand at their ease—the one in hurling the bait and the other in preparing it. And first, as a proof that the labour is not futile, there was exhibited a terrible-headed monster with great scales, which had been caught that morning by Mr. Whipple—a bass of 57 lbs. weight, of which I think the skull and jaws and gills must have weighed a third. The fishing is not, as I found, to be done at once, but needs a little practice. The art of casting consists in the double operation of jerking the bait from the top of a stiff rod, and checking the run of the line without permitting it to overrun, which it is very apt to do in an inexperienced hand, by a pressure of the thumb on the reel, just sufficient to let the weight of the bait carry out the hook to the farthest stretch of the jerk. The rod, not more than eight or nine feet long, a work of great art, and costly, is furnished with a reel, also very expensive, containing a couple of hundred yards of prepared line. At the end is a large single hook, sometimes secured to a piece of piano-wire, as the "blue fish" will cut through the strongest cord or gut. To this is fixed a junk of fat oily fish, of which supplies are kept in a basket close at hand, to be cut up for ever and ever by the attendant, and ever and anon pieces are chucked into the sea, and being of a very unctuous nature, the oil rising to the top, floats away on the surface of the water, and attracts the bass within measurable distance of the platform. Captain Fearing threw, Mr. Whipple threw, and the gentlemen at the end of another pier emulated them, and pounds, perhaps stones, of bait were thrown into the sea, but the bass, which are capricious, like most fish, were not to be caught; and so after a time we returned to the cottage.

I was, unfortunately, unable to accept an invitation from one of the many hospitable gentlemen in Newport, to go out and spend the evening on a desolate island, where they are said generally to have exceedingly good sport, in order to get up before sunrise the following morning and essay my skill, or want of it, in bass-fishing. Mr. Wright, an enthusiastic sportsman, availed himself of a like invitation with great pleasure and with many anticipations of delight, but on Monday morning he returned weather-beaten back, and boot-less and bass-less home, although he assured me he enjoyed himself very much, and had very agreeable company out at sea on the rock.

The following day (June 26th) was cloudy and cool, and all that was of rank and fashion in Newport went to All Souls Church. There are many churches in Newport, and in the height of the season, each is, I am told, well filled on Sundays. And wonderful it is that there is neither dissension nor controversy among the congregations. They mingle together coming and going, affording to me, who have been accustomed at times to observe the manners and customs of my country men and women on like occasions in Ireland and elsewhere, ground for wonder, not unintermingled with an ardent desire that we, nearer home, could learn the secret of this moderation.

Mr. Bridgman, our fellow-passenger in the "Gallia," is enjoying his villeggiatura with his wife and family in a pretty little cottage. We were very much pleased indeed to renew our acquaintance with him, although there was no scope for the display of his fine talents as a salad-maker. It was not foggy enough for the ladies, who delight in a thick and moist brume from the Banks, and who sit at the open windows when it comes on for the sake of their complexions, as it is esteemed a sovereign cosmetic beyond Maydew or Kalydor. Whether it be rightly credited with these virtues or not, I can answer for the presence of many fair ladies in church, and on their way to and fro in the streets. We dined with Mr. and Mrs. Keene, who reside in one of the best villas of the many charming dwellings in Newport.

The victories of the American horses in France and England created an enthusiasm in the States almost as intense as though they had been won by the national fleets or armies. From one end of the Union to the other the news was flashed the same day, and we saw the names of the conquerors in large letters in every newspaper. Unfortunately there came at the same time reports of foul play to American competitors at the hands of some English roughs, and there was a good deal of heat caused by the objections taken to the entry of the "Cornell Crew" at Henley. These international contests should be very carefully conducted and judiciously worked, or they will do more harm than good, if indeed they do any good at all. The injurious insinuations respecting the age of Foxhall could but excite indignation in the minds of honourable men against whom they were directed.

There is a State House in the town, and there is also a mansion occupied by Commodore Perry, but the most useful inhabitant of the place appears to have been one Abraham Touro, a Jew, who gave his name to the park, a cemetery, a synagogue, and a street. Altogether there is rather an old-world air and look in the town; but one must go along the Avenues to have an idea of the charms which lead so many of the principal families of the Eastern States to make the place a resort when they are not enjoying the delights of travel in Europe, or that blissful existence which endears Paris to our Transatlantic relatives. Bellevue Avenue is bordered by a number of very sprightly dwellings, of every order and disorder of architecture, and rejoicing in all the extraordinary richness and elaboration of American workmanship in wood, each standing in a little park of its own, generally rich with trees, shrubs, and an ornamental garden. Several of these interiors, as we had reason to know, were furnished in the very best taste, and filled with objects of art, excellent examples of good masters, principally foreign, and articles imported from all the corners of the globe. Of an afternoon the ladies might be seen driving, in very well turned-out carriages, to some rendezvous where lawn-tennis or a picnic awaited them; and altogether, even at this time of year, Newport presented a picture of great refinement and comfort, which enable the visitor to understand how attractive it must be in the height of the season, and why it is Americans are so fond of life in Rhode Island.

I am not in a position to throw the smallest doubt upon the statement that the mass of stones in the form of a tower, ivy and moss covered, and evidently the work of human hands, was not built by the hardy Norsemen hundreds of years before the arrival of Columbus. There are, moreover, people who declare that the erection is due to a British governor of the colony, when it was more prosperous as a commercial resort, though not so fashionable as it is at present. But American antiquaries take a great pleasure in propping up the proofs which have been adduced of Scandinavian enterprise and discovery on the continent, many centuries before Vespuccius, Columbus, and the English navigators lived.

We dined on the evening of the 27th at the house of Mr. Shattock, a gentleman of New York, who had assembled a party of very pleasant people to meet the Duke, and kindly hastened his dinner-hour to suit our convenience, as we were obliged to go on board the Fall River boat, which called at 9.30 P.M. to take up passengers for the Empire City. There was some difficulty about getting cabins or state rooms as they are called, but "Uncle Sam," who came from New York to consort with us quietly, applied himself diligently to telegraph wires, telephones, and the like, and when the great steamer came alongside the wharf our dormitories were ready. The night was calm and fine. There was an excellent band, quite worthy of being called an orchestra, on board, which played to the delight of a large audience till it was bed-time. As a "sight" for a foreigner, nothing could be more striking than the vast saloon, brilliantly illuminated, with hundreds of people on sofas, chairs, and benches, reading or conversing in the intervals of the music, and presenting infinite varieties of type and class, yet all so orderly and well-behaved; and if you moved quietly through the crowd, your ear caught many strange languages interpolating the American speech—German, French, Polish, Russian, Italian, and, perhaps the natives would say, British. There is some care observed in the locking up of cabins, and I believe there are detectives and police on board the boats; but it is said they do not look after the morals of the passengers, and concern themselves only with vested interests in portable property. There was no sea on, and the only motion was caused by the beating of the paddles and the throbbing of the engine, and early in the morning of the next day we were at our quarters in our comfortable hotel in the Fifth Avenue.

June 29th.—And yet more excursions. Bound by a long-standing engagement, a small detachment of our party set out this evening to visit Mr. Barlow at his country place, Long Island, which travellers, perhaps, have not much occasion to see. The Mayor of New York (Mr. Grace) and Mr. O'Gorman were on the steamer which took the Duke, Mr. S. Ward, Mr. Hurlbut, and our host down the Sound, and were introduced to us by Mr. Barlow. The first-named gentleman I mentioned in one of the early pages of this diary in connection with the vigorous efforts to purify the civic atmosphere made by him on his accession to office. I learn that he has since obtained a large measure of success, and let me hope corresponding thanks from his fellow-citizens. Attacks on corrupt influences are apt to receive lukewarm support from the politicians. The power of the respectable classes, which hold aloof from politics, is not large. Mr. Grace had more opposition than help from his own countrymen, who have been long nearly omnipotent in New York, and who monopolise a large proportion of the civic offices and employment. Mr. O'Gorman, one of the traversers with O'Connell in the famous State trials, is one of the leading lawyers of New York, and is held in much respect by his fellow-citizens. The "old Country" is still dear to him, but I seemed to gather from his remarks that he shared in the distrust which American lawyers generally expressed respecting the principle of the Land Bill then under discussion as far as interference with the law of contract—"the very foundation of social life"—was involved. Glen Cove is a beautiful place, standing high above the level of the sea, and commanding charming views of the sound and of the opposite shore. It is surrounded by trees, ornamented by woodland and fine natural groves, broken up by ravines, through which trickle streams of water. The mansion is furnished with every comfort and luxury, and we had a garden to saunter about in the morning, and a genial hostess to talk to, and her fair daughter to sing for us, so that it would have pleased us well to have made a longer sojourn at Glen Cove. Here we passed two very peaceful days, part of Wednesday and Thursday, and in a pleasant drive with our host in the early morning had some slight outlook on umbrageous Long Island. "O! si angulus iste!" It is 115 miles long and 14 miles broad, and quite big enough for me! And there be deer in the woods and trout in the rivers, and fish in all the creeks, and game in the wooded lagoons, and forest, lake, and civilised life, and many things to please the eye; and then the comet was so good as to display his glories and his tail before Glen Cove. But our time of departure from the States was drawing near, and there were still things to be done in New York, and many engagements to be kept, ere we started on our homeward journey on July 2nd; and at 12.35 on the 30th June the Duke and I took the "cars" at a rural station, and reached New York at 2.35, in time for a run through Tiffany's and some little shopping and visiting. There was a dinner arranged by "Uncle Sam" at "Sutherland's" in honour of the famous city restaurant. The house is one of a type which has, I believe, disappeared in the "City," where once flourished famous establishments such as Williams' Beef Shop in the Old Bailey, Dolly's in Paternoster Row, the Billingsgate Fish Ordinary, Jacquet's, &c., like it in character. Great New Yorkers do not disdain to cross the threshold, within which they find admirable fare and excellent wines—the national delights of clam chowder, clam soup, soft-shell crabs, and many other Transatlantic delicacies—at the far end of Broadway, still holding its own against the fashionable restaurants. Of the party who dined there with Chancellor Robertson and others in 1861, only "Uncle Sam," Mr. S. Barlow, and I survive; but the host, a granitic sort of man, with a kindly Scottish heart warming the case inside, seems capable of presiding over his feasts for another generation.

July 1st.—It was difficult to realise the idea that this was our last day in America, but the truth was forced on us by the practical duties of getting the baggage ready and settling up generally, ending with a dinner at the Turf Club, where we met Mr. Keene, of Foxhall fame, who had also entertained us at Newport, Mr. Jerome, Mr. Stuart, Mr. Travers, and other fathers of the New York sporting world, which seems very like our own, and had to drink madeira of all but fabulous antiquity and excellence.

The "City of Berlin"—The Inman Line—The Service at Roche's Point—Queenstown Discomforts—A sorry Welcome Home.

July 2nd.[B]—Up at 5.30. The Duke, Lady Green, Sir Henry, Mr. Wright, Edward, all engaged in the transport department, with Mr. Trowbridge in observation; incessant activity. The Queen Anne coach was in readiness at 7.30, and in half an hour more we were discharged at the Inman wharf. There was a great flotilla—five large steamers leaving at the same period for Liverpool, and there was the usual throng at the landing-places of friends to bid "good-bye" to those who were about to cross the Atlantic. The steamer we had selected belonged to the Inman line, and whatever there may have been wanting to the eye on board, compared to the trimness and paint of the Cunard steamers, there was nothing to regret in our accommodation or service. There were so many passengers that the dining-saloon, illuminated by the electric light—which was also used for the purpose of lighting the engine-room and the lamps in the corridors—would not contain them all at the same time, and so there were two messes for dinner. Epergnes filled with the most beautiful flowers were ranged in order, and a rampant war-steed composed of white roses was displayed on the table. I am not about to give a log-book, or to trespass on the patience of my readers by an account of such an ordinary event as a passage home. The second day after we left New York was the anniversary of Independence, July 4th, and the day was duly celebrated by the citizens of the United States, who constituted the large majority of our fellow-passengers. The "stars and stripes" were hoisted at the main, and the cabin was draped with British and American flags. But there was no speechifying, and the spread-eagle was content with moderate flights; a recitation and a song or two, and the fire of champagne corks, being the only indications of an extraordinary festivity.

About this time of the year the Atlantic, in the latitudes which we traverse, is rather vexed of fogs; and if one be disposed to low spirits, I know nothing which weighs upon him more than the sound of the fog-horn. But what must it be for the captain, who is perforce obliged to go at full speed, or as near to it as he can, with the expectation every moment of some startled cry from the bow "Sail right ahead!" Nor is it quite out of the running that an iceberg may be taking a sail across his course. Fortunately we had no experiences of the kind; and as night was falling on the 10th July land was in sight.

The lights of the Fastnet were seen through drifting haze, and about 10 o'clock at night the "City of Berlin" steamed through a rising sea, with a strong beam wind, into the roadstead of Roche's Point, burned her rockets, and laid-to for the steamer to take the mails, and those passengers who had decided to land, on shore.

It was blowing freshly, and rain fell heavily; and as we looked down from the lighted decks on the murky water, and made out the tug as she paddled up to us, rising and falling on the waves, we were seized with reasonable misgivings as to the propriety of leaving our ship and taking to such a craft. I am bound to say that our experience more than amply justified them.

I am writing these lines with a very faint hope that any amendment will be introduced, in consequence of what I say, into the abominable service between the American vessels off Roche's Point and Queenstown. In fine weather and in daylight it is not of much consequence, perhaps, what discomfort one may be exposed to in a short passage to the shore; but to affront women and children with the misery which must be experienced at night time and in bad weather, in the steamers employed in the service, is little short of barbarous, if it be not indeed altogether so.

After I had got down upon the deck of the little steamer and surveyed the scene around me, I thought that it would have been much wiser to have gone on with my friends to Liverpool; but I had some engagements in Ireland, and so had the experience I was glad not to share with my fellow-passengers, on whom I should have liked the old country to have made a favourable impression. There was the great steamer, with hundreds of waving hands, and the sound of friendly voices bidding us "God speed," a blaze of lights, and almost as steady as the solid earth, as the horrible little tug puffed away, and, getting from under her lee at once, encountered the swell. If she could have ridden over the water below, she certainly could not escape that which came down from above; so that we were all pretty wet and cross and miserable in the half-hour which elapsed before we reached the shore. Fortunately, there were not many passengers who availed themselves of the opportunity; but the deck of the steamer was crowded by poor people returning to their native country. Accommodation for the cabin passengers, except seats on the wet and sloppy decks, there was none. There was a little cabin, stuffy and comfortless, and moreover occupied by a couple of women who had come out to see friends by way of a pleasure excursion, and who were suffering the last extremities of sea-sickness. The spray broke over the luggage and passengers; it was in such circumstances that the custom-house officers began their search. One of them, opening my bag, which was unlocked, found a small revolver. It was unloaded, and there was no ammunition for it; but, nevertheless, it was seized, for I was "importing arms into a proclaimed district without licence." A similar mishap occurred to a Spanish officer, who was not quite so easily appeased as I was by the assurance that the arm would be given up on proper application to the police. His revolver, he insisted, was part of his uniform, a necessity of his existence, and the authorities might as well seize his epaulettes or spurs. However, my deadly weapon was restored to me some days afterwards, after a correspondence with the custom-house, and I dare say the Hidalgo was equally fortunate. These were incidents to denote that we were in the midst of trouble. There was but a sorry welcome for us when we landed at Queenstown. Not a car to be found, that I could see; but there were a few porters, and the agent of the hotel at the pier; and, commending my luggage to his care, I walked to the establishment. It surely cannot be quite an unaccustomed event for a steamer to arrive at Queenstown at that time of night! The last train for Cork had gone; and it might have been expected that lighted rooms and some sort of preparation would have awaited the travellers; for every vessel that touches at Queenstown, coming from America, surely lands a few people needing rest and refreshment? A demoralised waiter, who appeared to think that such a thing had never happened in the whole course of his experience, as the inroad of ten or twelve people asking for supper and bedrooms, informed us that nothing could be done until the gentleman who represented the hotel at the landing-place had arrived; and so we sat on the stairs for half an hour, and were then shown into a gaunt room, dimly lighted by gas. There was nothing ready. The hungry people, by dint of patience and perseverance, eventually succeeded about midnight in obtaining some poor substitute for supper and scrambled to their beds.

I mention the circumstances in which my fellow-passengers and I were landed at Queenstown, that those who are interested in promoting the welfare of the port, and in making the route through Ireland less thoroughly objectionable, may take steps to obviate the great inconvenience to which travellers at present are certainly exposed.

Next morning I reached Mallow. I was but a few hours in the "distressful country," but I found that things had gone from bad to worse while we were in the States. I heard from my fellow-travellers in the train that "Boycotting" had attained such a pitch in the South, that all the relations and conditions of social life were exposed to peril, if not destruction. And still, with the usual cheerfulness of Irish landlords, accustomed, as it were, to these excesses of the popular will, my informants talked of hunting, fishing, and shooting; and I heard full accounts of the state of the rivers, and of the take of fish which had made some of them happy. The County Cork, indeed, had nearly a parallel in the "wild West." But what a contrast between the state of public feeling, in respect to the outrages which were perpetrated in each, in the country we had left, and that to which I had returned! In the United States there was no attempt to justify the men who were guilty of such deeds. In Ireland it was impossible to obtain evidence or to convict the offenders. I am not going to close this narrative of our little excursion with a political disquisition, indeed I have not the materials for forming any opinion respecting the breadth and depth of what may be called the Irish national movement in the United States; but there seems to be a general vague impression in America that as the British Government was not very wise and equitable in its dealings with the people of the thirteen colonies in the reign of King George, it is, somehow or other, at the present moment, treating with harshness and injustice the whole of the Irish race in Ireland. It is impossible not to recognise the fact that the head, perhaps the heart, and certainly the purse of this development of Irish discontent are in the United States. The arms, the body, and the legs are in Ireland. During the whole time of our visit, although we visited towns where eminent orators were lecturing upon Irish subjects, and where representatives of the League were in session, there was not a trace brought home to us of the strong sympathy which undoubtedly exists in many American cities with the movement in Ireland. There were accounts of the meetings in the newspapers, and now and then a few leading articles on the subject; but we might have concluded, from what we saw and heard generally, that the Irish question was of far less importance to the American people than the religious views of Colonel Ingersoll, or the discussions between the railway companies respecting their fares. The recital of wrongs, most of which have been long ago redressed, still reaches the ear and touches the heart of the American public, and if the Irish population had not in many ways provoked or excited the antagonism of the native Americans in the towns, and of the Teutonic element which exercises such a powerful influence in the country, there would be far greater sympathy for the supposed oppression of the Sister Island by England. The fact that emigrants come from Europe is accepted as a proof that the countries which they leave are ill-governed; and Americans, in dealing with the emigration question, are apt to forget the existence and nature of the forces which induced their own ancestors to seek homes in the New World.

The New York Times declared in an article last June, that there is no essential difference between the two divisions of the Irish in America and of the Irish in Ireland. The voyage across the Atlantic works no transformation in Pat, and he is still as much an Irishman after his plunge into an alien civilisation and taking out his papers as when he stood on the old sod in Meath or Tipperary. "He cares no more for the American eagle than for an owl; but a sprig of shamrock stirs him to ecstasy. The name of Washington has no meaning for his ear; but that of St. Patrick is a living and potent reality." That statement, however, must be taken with qualification. There are to-day 90,000 acres of land in Minnesota as thoroughly Irish as if they were planted in the centre of Connaught. There are Pats and Pats. Many of the most wealthy and prosperous merchants, bankers, and landowners whom we met in the West were not merely of Irish extraction, but born Irishmen, and the extraordinary spectacle of Irish millionaires who knew how to keep their money, and to add to it, too, may be seen in San Francisco and elsewhere in the West. Many, less fortunate, have high positions either in the army, or as politicians, or in the estimation of all that is great and good in America—such as Mr. O'Conor—men who have held aloof from politics, and who could not be tempted, even by the Presidentship, to enter the arena of party strife. One convicted rebel of 1840 now occupies a leading place at the American bar. I heard him denounce the Land Bill in terms he might have used in denouncing the atrocities of the Saxon in his hot days when O'Connell was king. The influence which has been acquired in many parts of the Union by the Irish immigration and by the descendants of immigrants has naturally excited at various times the opposition and indignation of the American born, and it has always been more or less opposed by the Teutons of different nationalities who occupy such a powerful position in all the great States of the West. But "the Native Party" is now either dead or sleeping. A very distinguished officer and politician said to me that he had at one time been a most eager and ardent adherent of the policy of the Native American Party, but that when he saw how earnestly and devotedly the Irish had come forward in defence of the Union, how brilliantly they had fought, and how recklessly they had sacrificed their lives, in 1861, he felt constrained to abandon his principles, and to admit their free right to all the privileges of American citizenship. I could not, however, but recollect that General Richard Taylor, in his most amusing, able, and graphic work on that same war, from the Confederate side of the question, bore the strongest testimony to the services of the Irish in the army which fought under the banner of the Slave States. In New York and in San Francisco the Irish element has exercised almost supreme control in municipal matters, and it may be said, without offence I hope, that, whether it be owing to the opposition they have encountered or to a radical deficiency which may be Irish rather than Celtic, their management has not conduced to the comfort of the cities or to the pecuniary purity of the Executive. In San Francisco there is a strong anti-Irish press and much anti-Irish feeling. The 'Argonaut' repudiates the thraldom of the Irish associations and factions in the Far West as strenuously as the 'Times' and 'Tribune' do in the East. But notwithstanding all that may be written and done, it is impossible to resist the influence of numbers under a system of suffrage so large as that which exists in the greater number of the American States. It was curious to read in a Californian paper an appeal to England to suppress Irish agitation. "We confidently believe," says the Argonaut, "that the wisdom of its public men, the healthful condition of its public opinion, and the strength of its military power will be sufficient to crush out the Land League movement, which is but incipient rebellion. That England will deal justly, firmly, and successfully with this effort of united ecclesiasticism and Communism is the earnest wish of every intelligent and independent mind that believes in free government, the guarantees of property, the rights, and the personal liberty of man." However, there are American parties, if not statesmen, whose wishes are by no means directed to such a consummation, and we must take note of the fact.

Education—Free Schools—Influence of Money in Politics—Corruption in Public Life—Crime on the Western Borders—The Great Rebellion—Anniversaries—Great courtesy to strangers—Manners and Customs.

The "tar-water Bishop of Cloyne" would have been exceedingly astonished could he have seen the first line of his prophecy or averment made to do duty as a motto to Mr. Bancroft's History of the United States; but surely if the prophecy be not realised, it will be the fault of the agencies engaged in working it out—never in the history of mankind, as we know it, have such advantages been enjoyed by any nation as have been, and are, the appanage of the Americans of European origin in the New World. They have leaped into the possession of their heritage full armed, like Minerva from the brain of Jove. For them have all the champions of human rights died or conquered, and the protagonists of human struggles for liberty and light fought. For them Science has trimmed her lamp—for them martyrs have died—for them Europe and Asia have been in toil and travail for countless generations, and they have been guided across the sea to a grand continent where it would seem as if Nature had been engaged for myriads of ages to provide for their happiness and grandeur—all climes and all products are theirs—the bounteous plain, the ore-filled mountain, the treasures of the deep, the heaven-made ways by lake and river, and it would be a despair for all mankind if they misuse their glorious inheritance, and if all the nations of the world see that the pillar of fire in the west was but an ignis fatuus dancing before their aching eyes in a Serbonian bog of creeds and 'isms, of factions and faiths, all struggling towards the gate of the Temple of Mammon. "Philosophers," in all the doubts and fears which the condition of the Republic inspires at times, cling with confidence to the palladium which is, they think, to be found in the system of education based on the free schools of the States. If there were not a distinction between knowledge and morality, they would be justified; but the Evil One tempted us to eat of the fruit of the tree which brought sin into the world, and if Americans are to be trusted as authorities, the result of the largest and most liberal system of education ever devised is not as happy in practice as it ought to be according to theory.

As the central Government extended its sway over the Territories there was a uniform system, when assigning land for public objects to railway companies, of retaining for the School Fund a portion of the land in each Territory, as it was settled and admitted as such, under the control of the central Government. In the States Constitutions creating Sovereign States, there are provisions inserted, varying very little in language and not at all in spirit, which render it compulsory on the Legislature of each State to maintain public schools free to all the children of the people residing within its borders. Another principle, of universal application, provided that all schools under public control should be free from sectarian or denominational teaching, in the schools or in the books used for educational purposes. With such safeguards for the extension of education, it is depressing to find that, in certain districts at all events, crime and immorality prevail in the United States as extensively as in the benighted kingdoms of the Continent of Europe. But the most serious consideration in connection with the system of common schools in America, is the fact that serious doubts are intruding themselves respecting the success of it. In a recent official report it was stated that whereas the children who ought to go to school numbered about fourteen and a half millions, the average attendance was not more than five millions. But, assuming that all the children went to school, there are people who declare that the education given under the National system is by no means satisfactory. Mr. R. G. White affirms that the system is a failure; and high authorities assert that "any comparison between the results obtained in the public schools of New York, Cincinnati, and Boston, with those of such public grammar schools of England, as Bedford, Manchester, and the City of London, is simply ridiculous." The teachers are continually shifting, and when the teachers, as they do in this land of liberty, go away, the schools are deserted, the constant services of a staff cannot be retained unless there is very considerable increase in the rate of payment now made to the male and female teachers. None of these in any State have, I think, more than about 9l. per month. Mr. White says that "the mass of the pupils of the public schools are unable to read intelligently, to spell correctly, to write legibly, to describe the geography of their own country, or do anything that reasonably well educated children do with ease; and they cannot write a simple letter, they cannot do readily a simple sum in practical arithmetic, they cannot tell the meaning of any but the commonest of words they read and spell so ill. They can give rules glibly, they can recite from memory, they have some dry knowledge of the various ologies and osophies, they can, some of them, read a little French or German with very bad accent; but, as to all real education, they are as helpless and as barren as if they had never crossed the threshold of a schoolhouse." It is from American writers that these accusations against the common school system are to be gleaned. Some statisticians say that crime and pauperism are increasing far more rapidly than population. The charge on the State for punishing criminals and keeping paupers last year was $20,000,000, or £4,000,000; but it is too much to attribute crime and pauperism to the defects of the schools. It might with more reason be argued that the teaching of the people in the schools tends to develop the looseness and eccentricity of thought, where there is no religious teaching, which are exemplified in the uprising of extraordinary sects and strange philosophies; for America is the land of spiritualists, mesmerism, soothsaying, and mystical congregations. Mr. Hepworth Dixon may not be a perfectly unimpeachable authority on the subject of the number of spiritualists in America; but there can be no question they are to be counted by millions. It is averred that believers in spirits generally believe in "special affinities which imply a spiritual relation of the sexes higher and holier than that of marriage." It is not wonderful then that there should be also a very large number of divorces, especially in the New England States. Mr. Nutting says that "in the history of nations there has never but thrice occurred such a breaking up of the family tie as is now taking place, especially in Rhode Island and Connecticut, among the people of New England blood." Mormonism, although of American origin and early growth, has been mainly successful by the constant importation of ignorant peasants from Europe.

There is a want of reverence on the part of children towards their parents which is very striking. Americans who have admitted and deplored this have sought to account for it by the school system, wherein the State usurps the place of the parent, and teaches the young idea to mock at any authority but that of the schoolmaster. It would be lamentable to have to admit that free education is associated with the weakening of parental influence. Theoretically, there is nothing in the American system to prevent the teaching of religious and moral duties by parents at home; but it would seem as if very little of that kind of instruction was given by the busy fathers and anxious mothers of the Republic, and that when the day's work is done at school, and some time given to the preparation of the studies for the day to follow, there is no further teaching.

I do not think the rule "By their fruits shall ye know them" can be applied to the public schools, in connection with the prevalence of crime, immorality, unbelief, or eccentric religion. But it is certain the system has not by any means secured that high level of general education, or what education is supposed to bring with it, which its friends claim for it in the States. There is reason to believe that the standard of morality has not been uniformly high in the political world, and that in the public intelligence the judiciary does not aspire to an absolute immunity from suspicion. Even in the old settled States, legislators from time to time may be found, who, seated among the good and wise, excite admiration akin to that which is aroused by the spectacle of a fly in amber. It has been observed by travellers that whatever affection may exist in families, it does not attain that keen sensibility and lasting power which is found in French domestic life.

When American newspapers of the greatest influence and circulation write invectives against the corruption which prevails in places high and low, when writers of great intelligence and known character contribute similar articles to periodicals which possess the highest position in the literary world of America, a stranger may be permitted perhaps to say a few words respecting the impression produced upon his mind by what he heard and read on the subject when he was in the country, without it being alleged that he attempts to assail the principles of free government, or to make invidious charges or wholesale accusations against a nation. I know too well the force with which Americans could retort if they were so minded, and how they could point to the reports of election judges which set forth the prevalence of extensive bribery, led to the suspension of writs, and will perhaps end in the disfranchisement of some ancient and populous boroughs and constituencies in England, and to the speeches of Sir Henry James in Parliament, to cast any stone out of my glass house on that score; but I do not think it can be established that persons in a position at all analogous to that of the members of a State Legislature have been purchased wholesale in England, Ireland or Scotland, or that even a complete Borough Corporation had been bought up. Now, nothing was more common in the Far West than to hear it stated openly that Senator So-and-so had bought his place, and that Mr. So-and-so had purchased a State Legislative body in order to "get through" some railway or other scheme. That was accepted in fact as a matter of course, and not contradicted or questioned by any one. We heard from time to time of the sums which So-and-so would expend to buy his senatorship, and of the money actually paid to secure the passage of a line from the legislature of O—— and the like, whilst stories relating to the purchase of judges were common in the conversation of the hotels and cars.

I do not aver that these stories were true. I only know that they passed current and were not challenged by those who were around us. "Thoughtful persons," who exist in the United States as well as in the vicinity of Pall Mall clubs, lament, deplore and hate the evils of growing corruption with all the fervour of honest and powerless natures. The mechanism is scarcely concealed. It stands before the world with less attempt at disguise than the gallows in the gaol. Mr. Parton, in the 'North American Review' of this July, writing on the power of public plunder, says: "At present, in the ninety-fifth year of the Constitution, we are face to face with a state of politics of extreme simplicity, of which money is the motive, the means and the end. What was the last Presidential election but a contest of purses? The longest purse carried the day, and it carried the day because it was the longest. Some innocent readers perhaps have wondered why the famous orators who swayed vast multitudes day after day and night after night, have not been recognised in the distribution of office. They were paid in cash from ten dollars a night to a thousand dollars a week." And then he goes on to describe the business in detail, and to show what this power is. He says: "There is a boss in the city of New York who will take a contract for putting a gentleman into Congress. Pay him so much and you may go to sleep, wake up and find yourself member elect. A boss is a man who can get to the polls on election days masses of voters who care little or nothing for the issues of the campaign and know of them still less. They operate upon the strangers in the land who are unable to use its language and are unacquainted with its politics." Mr. Parton describes with humour one of these "bosses," an improvement on the pugilists and cormorant thieves of a remote period. "The Emerald Isle gave him birth; the streets of New York, education. To see the brawny, good-tempered Irishman walking abroad in his district when politics are active is to get an idea of how the chief of a clan strode his native heath when a marauding expedition was on foot. He lives in a handsome house, and has more property than any man has ever been able to get by legitimate service to the United States. He treats his dependants and retainers nobly, but as the agent and organiser of spoliation he is a prey to every minor scoundrel, for at certain seasons he dare not say no to any living creature. And yet it requires tact, self-possession and resource to move about among needy people with a pocket full of money, an embodied "yes," and have some of it left after the election. The strikers, as they are called, go for solid cash now instead of target companies and clambakes for which the candidates paid the bills." "Money, money," exclaims Mr. Parton, "everywhere in politics, in prodigal abundance, money, except where it could secure and reward good service for the public, hecatombs for the wolves, precarious bones for the watchdogs." The details in the article are precise, and if they are to be trusted it may be doubted whether the claims of the United States to possess a cheap government can be maintained, for it is not cheap to pay responsible executive officers a precarious pittance per annum if now and then it costs a million dollars to change them. Mr. Secretary Blaine has thrice declared that the election in October 1880 in the State of Maine, a model New England State, was carried by money. His opponents declared that he and his party were as bad, and that they too flooded the towns with money. What renders the situation more dangerous is the fact that the men who provide the money for running these enormously expensive political combinations are either seekers after, or holders of, office, and the inference is that they seek to control Government, or, as Mr. Parton puts it, that "the Government is coming to be rather an appendage to a circle of wealthy operators than a restraint upon them." That is indeed a serious proposition, and the result of observation goes to support the idea that it is valid. The small man is in office, but the big man, his master, is outside. The mischief is brought prominently forward in connection with the sale of public lands in the North-West, which have been claimed as the heritage of the people, and indeed of all the nations of the world. The government land attracted the hardy labour of all countries, covering the western west with thriving towns and populous counties. But now the prairies are skinned by rich men, by "land-grabbers," people who buy up tracts of twenty thousand or thirty thousand acres wherever they can lay their hands upon them, evading the law and filling the western world with roving labourers who work on these prodigious farms in summer and starve in winter. This is, we are told, the result of "government by lobby."

Occasionally there is an exceeding great and bitter cry over all this from the depths of the body politic. Some great paper in a moment of deep mental agony publishes an article like that, to which I have called attention, by Mr. Parton; occasionally some preacher, nobly daring, thinks it necessary to direct attention, from his pulpit, to the progress of corruption. Dr. Talmage delivered a very remarkable discourse whilst I was in America on the text from Job. xv. 34: "Fire shall consume the tabernacles of bribery." Although I do not profess exactly to understand to what particular sect he belongs, he is one of the leaders of religious thought, dividing with Beecher and others the popular favour in the Empire City. The State buildings at Albany ought to be heavily insured if the reverend gentleman's vaticinations are right. It was an American discourse. I cannot give the whole oration. The people of the Brooklyn Tabernacle were presented with a muster-roll of the people who had distinguished themselves amongst the great ones of the world. Cobden, Brougham, O'Connell and Rowland Hill were placed in juxtaposition as leaders on our side of the water. Of course it was impossible to resist the allusion to Francis Bacon and to Macclesfield; but it was scarcely correct to say that the Lord Chancellor Whiteberry—I presume a misprint for Westbury—"perished," nor do I quite understand what the preacher meant by the awful tragedy of the Credit Mobilier. Washington, Ben Butler, and John McClean were linked together for the benefit of Americans. They were, Dr. Talmage declared, great politicians, but "out of politics there has come one monstrous sin, potent and pestiferous, its two hands rotten with leprosy, its right hand deep in its breeches pocket. This is bribery." Dr. Talmage called upon the American people to judge the crime. "Under the temptation of this sin," he exclaimed, "Benedict Arnold sold the fort in the Highlands for thirty-one thousand three hundred and seventy-five dollars; Gorgy betrayed Hungary, Ahitophel forsook David, Judas killed Christ. I think," he says, "when I see the strong men who have gone down, of the Red Dragon in Revelation, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon its head, drawing the third part of the stars of heaven after it." And therefore he proceeds to preach against bribery. He thought it was the right time, "because the Legislature in New York is busy in investigating charges of bribery. The whole country woke up in holy horror at the charge that two thousand dollars had been offered to influence a vote in the Legislature, as if this was something new; as though in one State nine hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars had not been paid a legislator of the State Government by a railway company to get its charter and secure a dedication of public lands; as though three-quarters of the legislators of the United States had not, through bribery, gone into putrefaction whose stench reached heaven. After a few weeks' hunting the squirrel has stolen the hickory nut. Gentlemen in New York hunt out wrong by day and play poker and old sledge at night at Delavan House. It was like the country which had spent six millions of dollars in lawsuits about William Tweed going suddenly into hysterics when it found out that he had stolen a box of steel pens. California is submerged in the grip of a great monopoly; in Kansas United States senators had been involved in charges of bribery; in Connecticut an election to Congress was bought as men might buy a box of strawberries. Last year they were convicted of attempting bribery in Pennsylvania, but the Court of Pardons liberated them with the exception of two judges, who were told that they would be cut off from political preferment for their obstinacy. A Pennsylvania United States senator used to put a price on legislators just as a Kentuckian puts a price on his horse." But it was not legislators alone that Dr. Talmage attacked. He declared that the railways, the common carriers of the country, were tainted by a favouritism which was, in fact, the result of bribery. One company made rebates in its fares to some favoured corporation, as in the case of a petroleum company, which was enabled to control the price of that light all over the world in consequence of a virtual monopoly that was given to it by arrangement with the railway. In the same way merchandise in grain, provisions, and cattle are placed in the hands of a few firms. "How much," asks Dr. Talmage, "did it cost the Elevated Railroad to keep the fare from dropping to five cents from ten cents? I have been told," said he, "three hundred thousand dollars," which is 60,000l. "Very seldom does a bill pass through any of our Legislatures if there be no money in it. Sometimes the bribery is in bank bills, sometimes in railroad passes, sometimes in political preferment, sometimes by the monopolies given to the legislators, what are called points, a corner, a flier, a cover, washing the street, salting down, ten up! If you want to know what these are, ask the bribed members at Albany and Harrisburg." Then he goes on, with some truth, to declare that the bribery begins far away behind all this; that it is really with the money subscribed for election expenses that the evil begins its course. "From the big reservoirs of subscribed election expenses the little rills roll down in ten thousand directions, and by the time the great gubernatorial, congressional, and presidential elections are over, the land is drunk with bribery." Perhaps it is quite as well that it is from an American orator and from an American writer such statements and such indictments proceed, rather than from a stranger like myself; but it is very clear that the evil which De Tocqueville indicated long ago has spread rather than diminished, and there is reason to think that it will do so until the public conscience of a great people is aroused to a sense of the enormity of the mischief. But it lies far down towards the base of the national institutions, and any attempt to extirpate it will fail until the doctrines of the "Spoils to the Victors" be rejected from the political catechism, and the interests of party made the means and not the end of political life.

The letters which appeared in the Morning Post, written under the influence of the surprise and anger I felt at the extent and impunity of crimes of violence and the state of feeling, or want of it, respecting them in the West, were badly received in America, and were severely handled by a few papers, as I was informed; I expected that the mention of the subject would not prove agreeable, though I guarded myself most sedulously from a single offensive word—nay, went out of my way to palliate the offences against life and living, and to excuse the people who allowed them, whilst I most carefully drew the line—a broad one—between these border ruffians and the law-abiding, virtuous people of the settled States. I was not, however, prepared for misrepresentation. One would have thought that I accused the kind hosts who had received us—our generous entertainers in so many cities—the courteous, polished gentlemen who accompanied us—of murder and robbery, and ascribed to them the brutal murders committed by Canty or the Kid. As I quoted chapter and verse, and as the papers which vilified me could not deny the statements, they wrote that I had been imposed upon by the vivid fancy—in other phrase, the deliberate lying—of their brother editors in the West. One organ had the effrontery to declare that the Duke of Sutherland expressed his delight at the kind and courteous treatment of the ruffians I denounced; adding, "somebody lied—it was not the Duke." No. It was not indeed! A friend sent me one of these, and below an article in which it was said that I might take my place "beside Basil Hall, Mrs. Trollope, and Dickens for libelling the people of the United States," and that my stories were all inventions, there was a pregnant commentary as follows:—"Sunday, July 17th: Daring Train Robbery; Bandits Boarding Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Cars; The Conductor and a Passenger Shot Dead, and the Safe in the Express Car Robbed; the Passengers Saved by a Brakeman."

I hope it will not be imagined that I have any desire to cast obloquy on the grand efforts, supremely successful as they have been, to turn the prairie and the desert to the uses of civilised man and of the world, and to open up the Western Continent to humanity and civilisation. I am too sensible of the courtesy, ready service, and hospitality everywhere accorded to the party of English travellers of which I was one, to write one word which I thought calculated to give pain or offence to any of our many friends or to any right-minded American. Maculæ solis! 'Tis a pity they are there! In a few years, perhaps, the memory that such things were will have passed away like the recollection of some evil dream. But public sentiment must make itself felt, and above all there must be some abatement of the maudlin sympathy, which is virtually on the side of crime, if it be active in averting punishment.

Crime in America, especially in the Eastern States, is very much the same as it is in other countries, but in the far West there is more recklessness in dealing with human life, which, in spite of the Howard Society and of humanitarians, I believe to be connected with the indulgence extended under State laws by American judges and juries to criminals who appear to be deserving of nothing but the strict and unmitigated application of the rope. "Property" is safe, for the citizens hunt down with extraordinary energy marauders whose object is simply plunder. Ordinary robbers and gangs of burglars are speedily and summarily suppressed. It is otherwise with those who assail life and limb. The desperadoes who infest the "saloons," as they are called, with which every western settlement is sure to be provided as soon as the shingle roofs are placed on the earliest upheaval of deal planks which can be called a dwelling, have far greater immunity and freedom than burglars or robbers. Wherever the train stopped for water on our journey in New Mexico, Western Colorado, or Eastern California, a rectangular wooden box, with a verandah, open doors, windows screened by a muslin curtain, perhaps a flagstaff with the Stars and Stripes flying, a large signboard, and some high-sounding name—the "Grand Alliance," "Union League," "El Dorado," "Harmonium," "Arcadia," or the like—was visible, with the usual group of booted and bearded miners, and their horses hitched up at the door-posts in front; inside you would be certain to find men of the same class at a bar, behind which, known for miles around, the affable Charlie, Bill, or Bob was dispensing drinks and mixing cocktails, slings, and the other drinks, in which the badness of the spirit is artfully disguised by a stimulant of a more active character and more pronounced flavour, known as "bitters," and kept in subjugation by the liberal use of ice. For even in these burning regions ice is stored up as the one thing needful. The rudest miner is accustomed to it; iced drinks are consumed by classes in America far below the social level of those who never taste them in this country.

As the train was halting at Colorado Springs the stewards engaged in an animated discussion respecting a certain erection of poles and rafters just visible in an adjacent field. "I tell you dat's it." "I say tidn't." They were discussing the probability of the scaffolding being the gallows whereon "Canty, the Buena Vista murderer," was to be hanged the day after. On April 29th, last year, Mr. Canty was standing on the platform in front of Lake-house with "Johnny the Ham," "Curly Frank," and "Off Wheeler," when Thomas Perkins appeared in an alley opposite, endeavouring "to induce 'Dutch Bill' to go with him to the office of Justice Casey, who had deputised him for the purpose." Canty and his companions at once ran across and demanded his release. Before Perkins could answer, Canty fired and missed him. The second shot wounded Perkins in the arm; the latter drew his pistol, but before he could use it Canty fired; the ball shattered the constable's hand. "For God's sake," he exclaimed, "is there no policeman to help me?" He fell, and Canty, walking close to his side, coolly sent a bullet through his body. He was arrested, tried, and convicted. His counsel applied to the Supreme Court for a supersedeas, but the court, after solemn argument, refused the application. Then they applied to the Governor of the State, but Mr. Pitkin, though "a weak-kneed man," would neither grant a reprieve nor a commutation to imprisonment for life. There was, he said, no ground "to set aside a verdict of a competent jury and the district judge reviewed and approved of by the Supreme Court." In the very last hour a woman came forward, and the Denver paper gave verbatim et literatim the text of the document in which ... "with dew regard," she offered Sheriff Spangler $50,000 (10,000l.) to save the life of W. H. Canty, her cousin, whose real name was, she said, N. H. Salisbury. "I entreat you to have him spared till you have an interview with me." She added that "Jennings and his brother in Leadville would pay a still larger sum. You may have ample means for life," &c. A gentleman of the press, who came into our train at South Arkansas, was present at the execution. Just before the drop fell, Canty, who had expressed complete confidence in his ultimate liberation till the day before his execution, spoke for fifteen minutes, protesting his innocence. Then he exclaimed, "Good-bye, nothing can save me. I have faith in the Saviour and a hereafter." The trap was sprung, but to the horror of every one, the rope broke at the beam. The murderer's neck, however, was dislocated, and "a happy relief was experienced" when it was found he had died a painless death. As he was the nephew of an eminent statesman it was expected his friends would take action as to the disposal of his remains, which were put "in a neat casket at the sheriff's expense." In the journal there was a woodcut of the murderer. "Before his likeness could be taken holes were bored in the door and Canty was lashed to it, and then, when the door was set upright, the photographer watched a favourable opportunity when the head and eyes were quiet and secured the impression" from which the engraving was made. He was not so fortunate as Frank Gilbert, who was sentenced to be hanged the following day for a brutal murder, but respited, "in order that the proceedings may be reviewed by the highest judicial tribunal," by Governor Pitkin at the last moment, "till July 29," the day on which Rosencrantz is now sentenced to be hanged. The sheriff, Judge Ward, the clerk of the court, and the prosecuting attorney joined with others in petitions to the governor on the ground that the Supreme Court judges had refused a supersedeas in consequence of the defects and informalities of the record of the proceedings in the court below. Rosencrantz was respited, and the public, who had been expecting a double execution on the 18th of June, were disappointed, although they were allowed to slake their curiosity by the sight of the condemned men and by testing the ropes in the prison enclosure where the scaffold was ready. In the paper which gave the text of Governor Pitkin's reprieve there was a heading "Done Brown. Al. Huggins, marshal of Recene, turns out a bad man. He shoots and fatally wounds officer Brown of Kokomo." Phil. Foote, constable of Kokomo, formerly marshal of Robinson, and Al. Huggins, marshal of Recene, it seems had spent the night in visiting the saloons of Kokomo, and in the early morning began to fire their pistols and guns off in the street, and continued to do so until Andy Sutton, marshal of Kokomo, attempted to arrest them, but failed, "as he was quickly covered by two rifles." Mr. Brown, a police officer, asked Huggins to put up his pistol, and, to encourage him, proceeded to pocket his own revolver, when Huggins took deliberate aim with a 38-calibre Colt and shot Brown in the left breast, just above the heart. Huggins and Foote started for Recene. The marshal of Kokomo followed quickly in pursuit, with a large body of men. Huggins refused to surrender, whereupon the marshal shot him in the face. As there was a movement to lynch him, Al. Huggins was sent under strong guard to Leadville, but Foote escaped. "Brown was not dead by last accounts, but was not expected to live long." Then came a long account of another "Denver tragedy. Charles Stickney murders Mr. T. Campan and Mrs. H. O. Devereux in a boarding-house." Stickney was nephew of ex-Governor Clifford, of Rhode Island, served as lieutenant, 20th Regiment, in the war of 1861-4, graduated at Harvard, became principal of a school, married a lady whom he sent to London to study music, and tried mining whilst his wife was giving music lessons in Denver. There she met Mr. Campan, one of the best families in Detroit; Stickney shot him and killed a woman who was in the room at the same time. "Public opinion is in favour of Stickney, and he will probably be reprimanded." The evening of the day we reached Leadville, "Alderman Johnnie M'Combe, a leading candidate for lieutenant-governor and mayor, and last spring before the people for city treasurer," shot and wounded, probably fatally, a well-known actor named James M'Donald, because the latter had taken some children in M'Combe's buggy for a drive. It is not easy to determine how far Johnnie's chance of office may be affected by this ebullition, but the newspapers did not write of it with harshness; one gave it a comic character by the heading, "Ex-Alderman M'Combe attempts to perforate Jemmy M'Donald's cranium." In my morning paper of the same date I find that "James Hogan was foully murdered by James M'Cue in the open streets of Erie this afternoon in a quarrel about a handkerchief;" that Dr. Flemings, a prominent citizen of Portland, Ashley County, Arkansas, had appeased a quarrel between a pedlar named Gillmore and a coloured man very effectually, for, "incensed by a remark made by the pedlar, the doctor drew a pistol and shot him dead;" that "a prominent business man of M'Leansboro' had made a sensation on the streets to-day by hunting up, pistol in hand, one of the gay Lotharios of Hamilton County;" that "Daniel Keller, deputy county clerk, was stabbed and killed in the street of Virginia City by Dennis Hennessy, a kerbstone broker;" that "a searching party under Captain Leper had overhauled Hamilton, Myers and Brown, the outlaws who shot Sheriff Davis and Collector Hatter at Poplar Bluff, Mo.; killed Hamilton, mortally wounded Myers, and made Brown a prisoner;" that "James Hurd shot Jeff Anderson at Alamosa, Col., and that it was feared the latter would not survive." An account of the death of "Curly Bill," a notorious desperado, leader of cowboys and murderer of Marshal White, who was killed at Caleyville, Arizona, by his comrade, Jem Wallace, followed. They had a quarrel (of course, in a saloon). After a few drinks "Curly Bill" said, "I guess I will kill you on general principles." Wallace stepped out of the saloon and immediately opened fire, inflicting a mortal wound on his foe. After a brief hearing Wallace was discharged, and left for parts unknown. Then it was related how "Thomas Clarey ('Tommy the Kid'), a Durango outlaw, was killed by a comrade named Eskridge at Annego while drunk." A fratricide and three trials for murder were duly recorded. Another paper gave an account of South-West Colorado from the lips of a recent visitor to San Juan County. "Are you going back to San Juan? No, I think not; but it is a glorious country. The men there are a little rough, and kill each other on slight provocation; but a peaceable man who does not swagger and blow is not molested. There is no law, and courts and constables are unknown." He narrates how Aleck ——, acting as a barkeeper, "a noble-hearted, jovial fellow, full of fun, who looked you square in the eye, owns mines, said to be worth a million," settled a difficulty; I am inclined to think Mr. Charles Klunk rather drew on the interviewing reporter of the Globe Democrat. He was, he said, going to see a stockman who lived about fifty miles from the house where he was visiting. A farmer said to him "Come and take a drink with me, and I'll show you the barkeeper who killed the man you are going to see an hour ago." The stockman had come into the saloon whilst Aleck was in the back room, and began to abuse him. Aleck heard him, opened on the man with a revolver, and "shot him full of holes. Next day I asked him what he was going to do about it, and he said he had been tried and acquitted, which meant that some of the leading men had told him that he had done right. There was no trial about it. When a man kills another out there in a fight they don't inquire very strictly into the circumstances, but make up their minds that they can't bring the dead man to life by hanging the killer, so nothing is done about it. But when a man murders another to rob him, the vigilants turn out and have no mercy on him. They just fill his skin with lead and tumble him into a hole like a wolf. After all, though the bears are plentiful in the spring, you can kill a deer 100 yards from the house where you like, the streams are alive with trout, the vegetables and crops splendid." Mr. Charles Klunk's resolution not to go back to this Happy Valley seems founded on sound constitutional principles. What I wish to point out is the condition in which the Central Government and State Governments have permitted many districts of New Mexico, Colorado, and California to remain. It is plain that the peculiar conditions under which the sway of the United States has been extended over the regions of the Far West have rendered it very difficult to establish the machinery for protecting life and property and punishing crime; but I do not see that the statesmen at Washington or the legislators at the State capitals are very much concerned at the reign of terror which prevails on the borders, or that they seek to impress on their people any regard for the sacredness of life. In fact, human life is almost a drug in the market. And I write fully sensible of the failures of our own and of all European Governments to repress crime, to prevent violence, and to ensure security to life and property. I am aware that Ireland and Poland are to the fore, and that wife-beating and "running kicks" illustrate the brutality of Lancashire and other districts—that London has its Alsatias, that every European capital has foul recesses in which the only laws are those of crime. All the world is busy preparing shoals of emigrants for the United States. It is only, however, when some savage outbreak affrighting the propriety of a great city arouses indignation and fear that there is a clamour for measures of repression. I do not think there is in any other part of the world, or that there ever has been in any civilised country, such shootings as have filled the land to which I allude with bloodshed. It may be said with truth that there never have been and that there are not any similar conditions in the world. But the absence of any great abiding movement for the correction and suppression of violence and lawlessness cannot be so readily accounted for or excused. There appears to be a sort of admiration for these border ruffians among portions of the American Press and public. Even a staid paper like the Republican, in an article headed "South-East Missouri: the Reign of Lawlessness about Ended," on the destruction of the New Madrid gang, writes of one who was sent to the penitentiary for thirty years "as a living monument of a bold and brave lot of desperate men who had started out to make money by robbing their fellow-men. This swift and stern justice speaks well for this portion of the States, which has had for a long time more than its full quota of these lawless characters. Myers and Brown will be hung on the 15th July, and their execution will be witnessed by thousands of South-East Missourians." The spectacle of the hanging will not do much good, if it be like the execution at Colorado Springs, which was advertised as a sort of picnic or pleasure excursion. One advertisement ran, "After the hanging to-morrow drink La Salle beer; it will cool your nerves." "Highway robbery here has about run its course, and the people are determined that lawlessness in those regions shall no longer go unwhipped of justice." Very good. But, why not sooner and long ago? "Rhodes was hung by Judge Lynch when captured at the killing of young Laforge in New Madrid;" but the gang killed the sheriff and wounded the deputy-sheriff and collector before the people arose in their majesty to squelch them. A criminal is invested with a notoriety which, next to popular estimation, is valued by some men, and it is noted with interest that "Gilbert" (one pitiless murderer) is a Catholic, and that "Rosengrants" (another homicide) "inclines towards the Episcopalians." A Leadville doctor visits one of them to ask for his body. "No, sirree, you can't have my body; I'll be hanged first!" And the public laugh at the lively sally, and admire the sangfroid of the wit! In fact, there is a tendresse for crime in this grim humour. A Texan who would "fill the skin" of a stranger "with lead" for aspersing Texas would no doubt heartily enjoy the description of the early population of the Lone Star State, which I quote from the Texas Press. "In the early days of the Republic, and even after annexation, many of the white men who came here had strong sanitary reasons for a change of climate, having been threatened with throat disease so sudden and dangerous that the slightest delay in moving to a new and milder climate would have been fatal, the subjects dying of dislocation of the spinal vertebræ at the end of a few minutes—and a rope. A great many left Arkansas, Indiana, and other States in such a hurry that they were obliged to borrow the horses on which they rode to Texas. They mostly recovered on reaching Austin, and many invalids began to feel better and consider themselves out of danger as soon as they crossed the Brancos River. Some who would not have lived twenty-four hours longer had they not left their homes reached a green old age in Western Texas, and were never again in risk of the bronchial affection already referred to by carefully avoiding the causes which led to their trouble. Some at Austin recovered so far as to be able to run for office, within a year, though defeated by a respectable majority, owing to the atmosphere and the popularity of the other candidate." The most extraordinary fact connected with the indulgence which is extended to Western excesses is the severity with which Northern and Eastern writers and publicists deal with the recklessness of Southerners with regard to life, as if it were a political question in some way connected with slavery. In an article on "Colonisation," in the July number of 'The International Review,' there is an attempt to prove that the prevalence of homicide in the South as compared with the North has impeded the flow of immigrants, although slavery has disappeared, and the writer, quoting Mr. Redfield's book on 'Homicide North and South,' says the terrible "scourge of open murder, wholly irrespective of political causes more deadly than disease or yellow fever, because each death is the result of a heinous crime, seems to be calmly accepted by public opinion as a part of the unchangeable conditions of social life in the South. In Kentucky more men are killed in six days than in eight years in Vermont. In a village of Connecticut a death from homicide has never occurred from its foundation, while in one graveyard in Owen County, Kentucky, the majority are murdered men, and in another county forty-two persons were killed and forty-three wounded in two years." But in the very same number of the 'International' there is an account of the doings of the "Vigilance Committee" of San Francisco (where there were no slaves and where there is immense wealth), which might cause the author of the paper on "Colonisation" to reflect a little on his theories. Surely in Arizona, California, &c., where the foreign population is 50 per cent. of the natives, immigration has not been checked by the prevalence of homicide? It must not be supposed that there is no "law" in the towns where these crimes have been committed; in all the cases referred to the coroner did his office and verdicts were returned, and it will have been seen that "wretches hang" in due course. We had intended to visit the State prison at Cañon City on our way to Pueblo from Leadville, where we were promised an opportunity of seeing "thirty murderers all in a row," but the delay of the train on the road deprived us of the means of verifying the statement, and I give it as it was made. It would seem as if the criminal supply were super-abundant, or that death on the gallows had no deterrent influence. The chances of escape are, if not numerous, at least considerable. At Deming, Denver, Leadville, Tucson, Tombstone, and other cities, the vast mass of the inhabitants are law-abiding, peaceable, honest, and honourable men, who feel as much horror at the violence and bloodshed around them as the most refined lady in any saloon of Boston, Paris, or London, but they appear to endure these things in the hope that the law will be enforced at last; now and then they break into vigilance committees and execute their own decrees, though the judges do not fail to lay it down that they have been accessories to murder. The great civiliser and police agent is the railroad. It is affirmed that as the iron way is pushed on the outlaws and the personnel of outlawry congregate at the terminal town, but I suspect that there is a fringe of the material left on the border as it runs. As our party were at dinner in the palace-car one evening the train pulled up at a station. There was a group of rough men on the platform, who stared in with all their eyes at the white tablecloth, set with bright glass and silver, and at the cheerful faces under the lamps. "How merry they are. I wonder if they know that this is Dodge City?" exclaimed one of the crowd. I was told by an official that when they were making a railway in these parts the surveyors, &c., were much troubled by gangs of gamblers and robbers, who impeded the work and debauched the men, so after due warning they made a razzia on the gamblers, shot a lot of them, and the rest "vamosed." There was not very long ago an actual war in the Grand Cañon Valley between the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé Railway and the Denver and Rio Grande Railway, in which there was an array of armed forces and fighting on both sides, and we saw with our own eyes the remains of the breastworks cast up in the Grand Cañon by the belligerents. The law came in at last. "One side got at the judge first and gave him $50,000. The other was quite ready to go beyond that, but the first was too quick, and the suit went against the company." I was talking to a lawyer about the length of time which is allowed by the judges to criminals sentenced to death as a detail of the execution of the law not in accordance with the general practice of civilised nations, when one of the company remarked, "They must do it, sir, to please the people. If we had Judas Iscariot in gaol to-morrow there would be thousands of petitions to commute his sentence, and thousands of dollars ready for an appeal to the Supreme Court. Our people don't like prompt sentence." Nevertheless, sentence and execution are pretty swift when the desperadoes take the law into their own hands, as we have seen. The revolver and the "saloon" are the agents and the scene in most of these murders, and whisky is too often the motive power. In Kansas it is a criminal offence to sell any intoxicating spirit, or to use it except on medical certificate. It is said that the law cannot last, but it surely was a very strong conviction of the evils which were endured by the community that brought a State Legislature, elected by the people, to enact that beer, wine, and spirits should be absolutely and entirely banished from its borders. Lately there was a prosecution by the State attorney of a man for selling spirits. The case was clearly proved. The judge charged the jury in the strongest manner against the defendant. The jury without retiring at once found a verdict of "not guilty." "Boys," exclaimed the judge, putting his hand on the foreman's shoulder, "Boys, I'm quite with you." The Kansas case will be, I think, watched with great interest by the rival parties in England, and it is certainly worth investigation and attention, for, if all I hear be true here, a Parliament elected by the people either in advance or in the rear of their constituents have passed a law which judges condemn, and juries evade, and public opinion derides.

From a British, which may be an unintelligent, point of view, there is a want of logical method in the treatment of the Great Rebellion question by Americans. There is a general disposition to speak of the war between the Federal Government and the people of the Confederate States as an historical fact which has ceased to present burning controversies and terrible issues to the Republic. But, at the same time, these controversies are kept alive, and, for the defeated, are stirred up incessantly by anniversaries and celebrations, natural but, if it be the object of Americans, as many of them assure us it is, to let the memory of the past die out like that of a horrid dream, impolitic. The spirit which animated the Southern States is neither dead nor sleeping. But there are no end of G. A. P. and G. A. R. Associations flourishing their banners and waving their sheathed swords in and out of the newspapers, and it is almost more than Southern flesh and blood can bear at times to be reminded of the defeats they sustained, even if they be content to admit that the doctrine of the sovereignty of States was a delusion, and that the indivisibility of the Republic was a fundamental principle of the Constitution before it was conclusively established by force of arms.

North and South, our good cousins are fond of anniversaries and speechmakings. I wonder where they get their taste for them from? Some few veterans dine together on anniversaries of old French war days, and there is a Balaclava Dinner in the Old Country; but, though we have a reasonably long list of fighting successes to commemorate, their anniversaries are mostly left to the almanacks. The other day the Americans had a celebration of the Battle of Cowpens, wherein the heroic Morgan gave the diabolical Tarleton the deuce of a whipping. I wonder if it was worth remembering? But it is better to remember such things perhaps than Sherman's Raid or Wilderness—or Chickahominy. There are bitternesses enough remaining—the rivalries and jealousies of generals are still active and these memories might be left to die out.

The great war which so deeply moved the population of the United States has left many traces in Soldiers' Homes, and men deprived of legs or arms, or bearing marks of indelible wounds, are to be met with wherever there is any considerable gathering of people all over the Union. The clerk at the bar of the hotel, to whom we were talking a moment ago, was a captain in a regiment of militia, and served with distinction, having risen to the grade he occupies by conduct and courage during the war; and if he is known among his friends by the title of "Colonel," he deserves, probably, the brevet conferred upon him by the authority of the general public around him. The conductor of the train on the Pennsylvania Railroad, to whose attention we were so much indebted, was an ex-officer of volunteers, was engaged at the first battle of Bull Run, where he was wounded, and in several other actions. And our good friend the Major, who enabled us to pass many an hour listening to his admirable rendering of negro minstrelsy, bore in his body a proof of the dangers he had passed, in the shape of a Confederate bullet, or it might have been (for I am not quite sure now) a projectile of the Federal persuasion. And so on. Scarcely a day passed that we did not meet someone who had been fighting on one side or the other.

One great change has come over Americans since I was last here, and, whether it was the ridicule to which they were exposed or to a sense of their greatness as a nation that it be due, it is to be commended. Except by a professional interviewer, not one of the party was asked, "What do you think, sir, of our country?"!

The welcome which an Englishman who is entitled to admission into good society receives all over the States, in the best houses, and from the best men, is as gracious and warm as ever. It seems as if a reaction against the suspicion, jealousy, and harshness which marred the political relations of the Republic and Great Britain in times gone by, moved those who behave with so much courtesy to Englishmen, and that they seem to say, sotto voce, "Come and see how I forget the wrongs done to the United States by the Ministers of George III. and his successors! Admit that I can be as magnanimous as I am rich and cultivated! I am of your house, but I have transplanted all the good qualities of your race to American soil, and grafted them on the tree of liberty which towers aloft in all the splendour of Transatlantic luxuriance above us."

Captain Pratt—Carlisle Barracks—An Indian Bowman—The Indian Question—The Pupils' Gossip—The "School News"—Indian Visitors—The White Mother—The India Office—White and Red—Quo Quousque?—Indian Title Deeds—The Reservations—The Indian Agencies—Missionary Efforts—The Red Man and the Maori.

On the 5th of May the party visited Carlisle Fort or Barracks, one of the ancient military establishments of the Republic, where in the old times, speaking in an American sense, a considerable force was usually concentrated to keep watch and ward over the western frontiers, now extended thousands of miles away to the Pacific. The Barrack, which is a large quadrangle capable of containing a couple of regiments, is appropriated by the Government to this great experiment, the systematic education of the Indians of both sexes, whose families send them to school for the purpose of learning English and useful arts, mechanical and other, which may be of advantage to their people. It was, perhaps, one of the most interesting of the many little excursions which the Duke of Sutherland and his friends made in the States, and as it was the only one of the schools which we had an opportunity of seeing I shall proceed to give a little account of what we witnessed. In the first place let me express the sense which every one of us entertained of the real sterling qualities of Captain Pratt who is in charge of the school, and of the devotion and solicitude for their charges of those ladies employed in the training establishment. It may be asked how casual visitors could judge of these things? The discipline, order, progress, and perfect method visible in every room, and the intelligence and good understanding between the teachers and the pupils which could be perceived throughout the establishment, were adequate proofs, I think, that the praise is well deserved. At the time of our visit there were something under three hundred pupils, of whom perhaps two hundred were boys, and these were engaged in their class-rooms, each section of Indians being arranged according to nationality, if such a term can be used. But, indeed, the tribes of Indians differed from each other in personal appearance far more than do the races which inhabit the European continent. It is true they nearly all have straight wire-like black hair and eyes set deeply and rather obliquely in faces which are frequently of the Mongol type. But there is great diversity in the shape of the head, the angle of the jaw, the formation of the mouth and nose, the colour (when not tainted or "improved" by an admixture of European blood, whether Mexican or American or other) being pretty uniform, a rich bronze, with something of a copper hue, predominating in the young people. The boys were dressed in a plain neat uniform of greyish-blue, military tunics and trousers, well shod and comfortably equipped in all respects. The girls, amongst whom, perhaps, taste for eccentric finery was not unobservable, wore dresses less uniform in appearance, generally neat and always clean; but their foot gear was rather eccentric. The rooms, spacious barrack-like apartments, well ventilated, were appropriated to the classes according to age and progress, the boys being separated from the girls. The walls were hung with maps and furnished with educational coloured prints, and boards for arithmetical exercises were in each apartment. The desks and stools were such as would be seen in an ordinary school, and if one had not looked at the faces of the pupils and been struck by some of the strange characters on the walls he would have thought himself in the middle of some ordinary school; save, perhaps, that his ear would have missed the curious humming noise which marks the industry of idleness or of legitimate work in similar establishments in Europe. But here were all these young savages, poring over their books or boring with their pens, looking up at the visitors scarcely with curiosity and applying themselves again to their work, or answering questions put to them with the composure which must be a portion of the Red Man's nature.

I cannot recollect how many tribes there were represented at the Carlisle school; but I was struck by the race-distinctions which could be observed when Captain Pratt, standing on a raised platform, called out the names of each tribe. The little batches, in some instances only one or two, stood up briskly and looked somewhat proudly about, as much as to say, "We are Sioux (or Apaches, or Ponchas, or Creeks), not like these other fellows." And the young ladies were, if one might judge from their expression, quite as proud of their own people as the boys. But the names these poor children receive are ludicrous. Not content with calling them by English names, or American, singularly misapplied, very often, as a name may be, their own Indian nomenclature is translated into English, so that we heard reading and reciting beside "Luke Phillips" and "Almarine McKillip" (a Scotch Creek) "Maggie Stands-looking" and "Reuben Quick-bear." There was something of sarcasm, I think, in the address of a Creek boy to the visitors. He said: "The Indian boys had come here to learn something about the use of the bow and hunting. Their people believed that if boys grew up to manhood without learning they would be of no use; therefore they had sent the boys here to get education." Then, after some moral if trite reflections, the lad said: "You must understand that nearly everything that was made was made both for the present and the future. This barracks was not built for Indians, as I do not think the men who built it ever thought that it would be an Indian school; but things were made to do good both in the present and in the future." And then quoth he, looking at his white friends straight in the face: "The education which we are getting here is not like our own land, but it is something that cannot be stolen nor bought from us." And the white man did not turn red at the words! I do not pretend to judge of the actual progress made in learning, but the very intelligent self-possessed teachers reported uniformly that they were satisfied. The most useful education, perhaps, which these Indians receive is in practical mechanics, and a visit to the workshops attached to the barracks was amply repaid by the sight of these industrious young fellows hammering and leathering away in the various departments. They have actually completed waggons of a most satisfactory construction, complete in all their parts, so much so that orders have been received for as many as can be supplied for the use of Agencies. They make and repair their own shoes. They have sent out a hundred and twenty double sets of harness. They make coffee-boilers, cups, pans, pails, and all the articles known to the tin-smith; and the girls are taught to hem and sew and knit in the English fashion; but it must have been not many a long year before the white man landed, when the ancestors of these Indian maidens exercised the same mystery with fine sinew and skin in the wonderful work of which specimens are handed down to us to-day. On one point alone, perhaps, there was something to regret; the health of the children was not all that could be desired. Well clad, regularly fed, I presume on wholesome food, cleanly lodged in well-ventilated rooms, these wild children of the plains scarcely came up to the expectations one would form of them in the matter of chest-measurement; and although many were remarkable for fine physical development, Captain Pratt confessed that their sanitary condition was not everything that could be desired, and that losses from consumption and other causes were rather serious. But they have plenty of out-door exercise. They have games in which they rejoice. They drill and march to the sound of their own band, a very good brass band of eight performers, each of a different tribe, who played "Hail Columbia!" and the "Star-Spangled Banner," and the like, with energy and zest; nay, with harmonious concurrence. When we went out into the large open square, there appeared before us a wonderful being in feathers, waving plumes, wampum and all the leathern panoply and peltry adornments of an Indian, painted, and armed with bow and arrow, probably such an one as Captain John Smith may have seen as he went exploring the woods of Virginia on his way to the sacrifice from which he was saved by Pocahontas. A target was erected at a distance of a hundred yards or so, and had I been in the centre of it, I should have been perfectly safe from the arrows which the Indian warrior discharged at it. But we were told that with a good bow a strong-armed Indian will drive an arrow right through a buffalo, and in that case I would suppose that the buffalo was very near to him indeed.

Of course it is but natural to find very varying degrees of intelligence amongst the pupils, and the rate of progress was by no means uniform, but a committee of examination which recently visited the school declared that the manifestations of advancement in the rudiments of English education were to them simply surprising. It was with admiration bordering on amazement they observed the facility and accuracy with which the children passed through the various exercises, in reading, geography, arithmetic, and writing, of the schoolroom; the accurate training and the amount of knowledge displayed were, they reported, the fullest proof not only of skilful teaching, but of great aptitude and diligence on the part of the children. Considering the brief period during which the school had been in operation, and the fact that the children entered it in a wholly untutored condition, the evidence was conclusive of the capability of culture. They go on to say: "We are fully persuaded that improvement equal to that which we have witnessed in the case of these children of the plains, if made in equal time by American children, would be regarded as quite unusual. And when the difficulty of communication consequent upon the diversities of language is taken into account we can but feel that the results of which we have been the witnesses to-day justify our judgment of them as amazing."

One of the most interesting features connected with the attempts to educate the Indians at Carlisle is the 'School News,' a little publication which, as I understand, is conducted by Indian pupils taught in the establishment, edited by Samuel Townsend, a Pawnee Indian boy. It is published once a month, and costs 25 cents or 1s. per year. It takes as its motto the lines:

Perhaps neither the metre nor the actual statement commend themselves to acceptance, but the matter of the little journal is full of interest. In the first place the names of the contributors afford full matter for meditation. Perhaps it is one of the steps which must be taken to civilise these poor Indians that their names should undergo a strange and, to me, unmeaning metamorphose. There seems no reason whatever why the Indian names should not be retained, or if there is any reason for changing them, at least there might be some discrimination and good taste exercised in the adoption of English Christian names.

The first number of the 'School News,' which I have before me, contains as an article: "What Michael Burns, an Apache boy, thinks on the Indian Question." He says, "I cannot help myself, having much feeling for my people, what has been said about them, and the efforts making to give us the same privileges as the people of the United States. And it is said how we have been treated by the bad white man, for the last ten or fifteen years, decreasing our number. But that kind for treatment for my nation will soon stop." The poor boy goes on to say: "There is no doubt that we are in fault. We had the opinion that we could not get beaten by any other nation. Now we know for ourselves that we will have to change.... But how does the white man know which way is the best to do. Was he born that way? No! Education gives him the light of knowledge." Then a boy named Marcus Poko writes to his father: "I want you to try hard and leave the Comanche way, and to find the white man's way." In the leading article, written, I presume, by Samuel Townsend, it is said: "Indian ways will never be good any more, it is all passed, gone away, and the other way is coming up to take the place. We shall all be glad when we all get into the civilised way of living, then the Indians will not make so much trouble for the American people. Some people say 'let the Indians get out of the way. There is no use in trying to advance them, kill them all they are like the wild animals deaf and dumb, they never will learn anything. We have already paid so much money for them they have never become civilised yet.' But all good people say, 'Oh, yes, give them an education and plenty of opportunities, and send more teachers among them so they may come up beside us and live as brothers and live in peace.'" There is a little paragraph as to language. "There are a great many words in the English," says the writer, "that the Indians have no word for, so the white people who make the Indian books have to make new Indian words. So the Indians have to learn the new Indian words. Now we don't know much about it, but we believe the Indians can all learn to speak the same as the whites." Then there is a column about the school news: "Lizzie McRae, a Creek girl, made a very good corn bread the other day. We had some of it. It was right good I tell you." "Robert American Horse is a steady boy. He works in the blacksmith shop very well, and Mr. Harris never has to tell him but once how to do something." "One of the teachers had artificial violets on her belt. A Gros Ventre boy saw them, but did not know what they were, so he got up from his desk and went close to the teacher. He looked at it and then smelt it. When he smelt it he said, 'Pooh! rags!'" "Boys, some time ago Captain Pratt gave us advice about throwing stones at birds. Some of the boys who understand most English did not listen. We want the birds to come and stay with us and sing for us, too. Let us remember about this, and not let Captain Pratt have to say it again." "Last Sunday some of the large girls had a prayer-meeting in the yard at the back of the girls' quarters. Nobody told them to do it, but they thought it would be a good thing." There is a long letter from Lizzie Walton, a Pawnee girl of thirteen years old, describing a trip to Philadelphia, and I believe there are very few girls of thirteen years of age in any school who could write more amusingly or better. The account of a magic lantern by Ada Bent, a Cheyenne girl, closes the number.

Letters from the children who are sent out to the farmers are published in this little periodical, and give a very pleasing picture of the lives and aptitudes of these Indians. Virginia, of Kiowar, writes from a farm, asking one of the teachers to pardon her for not having done so before; but "I have not much time," she says, "I am very busy set the table and wash dishes make my bed and make pies and cakes and try to make bread too, and the other things beside.... Sometime I make fire and bring in wood. Mrs. Borton is very kind lady she has two children one girl and boy. I love these little children very much." "My dear Miss H——, I am not bad a girl. I help now a great deal. I pray for you almost every night, also when I wake up in the morning. I like to pray very much because I make myself good." And so on in a pleasant little gossiping way, frequently in very difficult language. There is an article in the 'School News' of July upon the shooting of President Garfield: "The man who shot him," says the writer, "we suppose, thought he would please some of the people in the United States. He thought he was very smart. If President were to die how would every white man, black man and the Indian feel? It was not in war when the President was shot, for our country don't have war any more, but in peace.... We all feel sorry because the President is suffering. We hope he will soon recover." It is stated that about a hundred boys and girls have gone out to work on the farms, and there are some trite remarks about the advantages of hard work as opposed to the disadvantages of laziness. "The farmers up country say the Indian boys can bind wheat first-rate." "Nelly Cook, Sioux, made 36 sheets in one day last week. Nellie Cary, Apache, made 32, and Ella Moore, Creek, made 30. Boys, do you think those girls are lazy?" The 'School News' has a reporter, it would appear, for the paper says that "Our reporter took a walk round in the shops to see what the boys were doing. In all the shops every boy was busy. In the carpenter shop there were Jock (Arapahoe), Ralph (Sioux), Elwood (Iowa), and Joe Gun (Ponca) sawing out window and door frames. Oscar (Cheyenne) and Michael Burns (Apache) were busy carving balcony posts; and Lester (Arapahoe) was outside chiselling a beam. These things are all for our new hospital.... Jesse (Arapahoe) and Little Elk (Cheyenne) were busy in the gymnasium. The waggons which Robert American Horse has finished painting are to be sent to Oregon and Washington Territories." It is sometimes difficult to make out the meaning of the little prattle which these small people commit to the uncertain medium of the English tongue; but, on the whole, it is a most interesting and curious study. In one respect these children of the forest possess that which civilisation seems rather to dwarf amongst men of the highest culture and imagination—a certain stately eloquence and nobility of expression, in which natural images abound, and allegory and metaphor consort together in excellent and tasteful union. In a paper called 'Eadle Keatah Toh,' which seems to have been the precursor of the 'School News,' there is an interesting report from the Committee on Indian Affairs to the House of Representatives, submitted by Mr. Pound. The motto of the paper is "God helps those who help themselves"; but surely it might be better put that God will help those who seek to do good to the unfortunate Indians, who in contact with civilisation are rendered utterly helpless, and who in their attempts to help themselves according to the manner of the race must meet with nothing but extinction. From time to time there are notices of deaths. One would like to know who wrote the account of the "death of John Renville, son of Gabriel Renville, Chief of the Sisseton Sioux." After noticing the circumstances under which he contracted his fatal illness—fever, produced by drinking water at a spring on a hot day on a march to the camp in Perry County, the writer says:—"'Death loves a shining mark,' the poet sang long ago; and in the passing away of John Renville from our school we sadly say, how truthfully the poet sang.... Through all the days of his sickness his large sorrowful eyes had a far-away wondering look, no pain marred the beauty of his brow, and his voice as he addressed his sister, who tenderly watched over him, was like the trumpet warbling of some mournful bird. Our hearts follow the father in deep sympathy as he bears back the body of his beautiful boy to the land of the Dakotas for burial."

The Indian chiefs have a right, which they often exercise, of visiting these schools as a Board; and there is an account in the Carlisle paper of the visit of Spotted Tail, Iron Wing, White Thunder, Black Crow, and Louis Robideau from the Rosebud Agency; Red Cloud, American Horse, Red Dog, Red Shirt, Little Wound, and Two Strike from the Pine Ridge Agency; Like the Bear and Medicine Bull from the Lower Brule Agency; Son of the Star, Poor Wolf, Peter Beauchamp, and John Smith from Fort Berthold; Two Bears, John Big Head, Grass, Thunder Hawk, and Louis Primeau from Standing Rock; Charger and Bull Eagle from Cheyenne River; Brother to All and James Broadhead from Crow Creek; Strike the Ree and Jumping Thunder from Yankton; Robert Hakewashte and Eli Abraham from Santee Agency; Mr. Tackett and his wife and daughter; a daughter of Spotted Tail, and others. The meeting of the children with their parents is described as being most touching; and sometimes the pupils were not recognised, so greatly had they altered. As the chiefs seemed unwilling to speak when called upon to do so, there was silence for a time till a little girl, who had been about a year and a half at the school, expressed her desire to speak in so earnest a way that General Marshall permitted her to do so; and so, speaking in her own dialect, her words were translated into English and into Sioux. She declared that she liked the white man's ways and the white man's language. Indian words, she said, were down on the ground, but the white man's language was in his head. The chiefs, who listened attentively, seemed to understand this curious figure of speech, and nodded their approval. And then she enlarged upon the advantage of what she learned, and implored the chiefs to send their children to the school, where she says she is going to try to be God's daughter. Her words seemed to kindle the fire within the chieftains' breasts, for Like the Bear, a Sioux, and father of one of the boys at Hampton School, came forward and addressed the meeting. "There is no greater power in the world," said he, "than the Great Spirit, and we must listen to Him and do what He wants us to do. When the men who were sent out by the Great Father the President asked for my children I gave them up. I see you are making brains for my children, and you are making eyes for them so that they can see. That is what I thank the Great Spirit for, and it is that which will make me strong." Then Robert Hakewashte, a chief from the Santee Agency, spoke, and said that he wanted schools like that which he saw here on his own reservation, and Spotted Tail wished for the same thing. "Since I have learned the words of God," he says, "it makes no difference to me what is the colour of a man's skin; if he walks like a man it is the same. I do not believe God likes the white colour only. God likes red and white, for He made them all." And then the flood of eloquence was loosened, and an old chief of the Sioux, nearly blind, verging on ninety years of age, who had come to see his grandson, said: "I grew up a red man, and the things I see here I never had a chance to see before. I have heard about the white man's church and his religion, and I have heard about the holy house. I have looked into them, and I am very much pleased. But there is only one Great Spirit we all can worship, and the red men all over the country are hearing about it. You are teaching the children to worship the Great Spirit. That is a great thing, and I like it. But you have here two sons of one father. One is sick. I want you to keep the other." And so he carried him away.

The condition of the Red Man who is allowed to exist under the banner of the Republic is a subject which has attracted the attention of the best and wisest men in the United States. The treatment of the Indians is a question of future policy. It is one which must exercise a very deep and abiding influence on the whole history of an ancient and interesting people. But it is exceedingly difficult to put in a short compass its most salient points before those who are unacquainted with the nature of the problems to be solved. Comparisons are odious, above all places, in America, when they are not to the advantage of the Great Republic, and I shall not draw any between the state of the Indian tribes in Canada and in the States. But it may be fairly admitted that the Indian Question in Canada is divested of many of the difficulties which surround it south of the lakes. The people of Canada have far more land than they know what to do with. They are a sparse population. They are not impelled to fierce adventures by mining "booms," and they are altogether less progressive than their American brethren. Shall we say that they are more charitable, more humane, less greedy of other men's goods? I do not say so. But at all events it is perfectly true that the Red Man, although he is dying out under the influence of whiskey and other influences which need not be particularised, in his native land, lives in comparative peace and comfort under the British flag in Canada. He is content with the White Mother. He pursues the occupations dear to his race as a hunter and as a fisherman. He is a dealer in peltries, and in such small barter as his needs require. He is the companion of sportsmen, and he delights, free as mountain air, to hunt on the hillside and in the prairie in winter over the vast ranges of snowy fields which in the few short months of spring and summer teem with flowers, and the frosty lakes which yield fish to his spear and net. There are few or no railways through his reservations to vex his repose, no great trains of miners with pick and rifle to drive away the moose and the buffalo, and hand the native hunter over to starvation. The Indian gives to the white man all he needs, and aids him in obtaining from the wide stretch of land over which he roams all the wealth that it can afford. Practically one part of the Dominion is handed over to the Red Man and to the half-breeds, for there is an Indian frontier which as yet has not been much encroached upon by any large migration of whites. As far as I know, conflicts north of the Saint Lawrence between Indians and whites are unknown, or have not been heard of for very many years. South of the great lakes, in the wonderful land over which is displayed the banner of the stars and stripes, the fate of the Indian is very different. In the words of Mr. Carl Schurz, himself an expert in the question, "the history of the relations of the United States with the Red Man presents in great part a record of broken treaties, of unjust wars and of cruel spoliation." That is a sweeping statement, which it would be just as well for an Englishman not to make, but coming from the mouth of an American citizen and of a United States Minister with plenty of evidence to back it, there can be no harm in recording my conviction of its truth. It is but another indictment against a defect in the form of government which Americans exalt as the most perfect of human institutions, that the central government made treaties in good faith with the Indian tribes, but was unable to enforce their obligations or to maintain their integrity. There is, as all well-informed people know—well informed, at least, in reference to American affairs—a commissioner who makes an annual report to the Secretary of the Interior respecting the Indian tribes in the various locations over the Union and the Territories. The last of these reports which I have seen is that of the Acting Commissioner Mr. Marble, addressed to the Department of the Interior from the office of Indian Affairs at Washington in the November of last year. The volume contains the reports of the agents in the Indian Territory; of the schools for Indian children established in pursuance of a wise and humane policy, and detailed statistics in relation to the Indian settlements and reservations, the latter indeed forming by far the largest portion of the volume of 400 pages. Before I call attention to the condition of the Indians, and the efforts made to save them from extinction or from a degradation worse than annihilation, I should like to direct the attention of those who are interested in the subject to the view which is beginning to find favour, I believe, among the most experienced men in the States, that the system of "Reservations" is founded on a mistake the magnitude of which is demonstrated every day, and that the only means of saving the Indians from extinction is their gradual absorption as educated communities in the agricultural life of the nation, keeping them far as may be from the white man, but making no other distinction between them and the other citizens of the United States than such as must be found in the nature of the Indian race and their degree of culture and civilisation—treating them, in fact, as communities of Mennonites, Mormons, or Norwegians, or other nationalities would be treated in the United States. When the Reservations were first established it was considered impossible that the migration of the whites would extend to the remote regions of the west to which the unfortunate survivors of the people with whose virtues and vices Cooper and other novelists have made us familiar were gradually and often remorselessly driven. It is a plea which will be urged in bar of judgment that the doctrine of States Rights prevented the interference of the United States Government on behalf of the Indian tribes who were often ruthlessly destroyed. But it will scarcely be a plea, I think, which humanity in full court would recognise as valid. Homo homini lupus. But to the Red Man as to the Black in many cases the White Man is worse than any wolf; far more bloodthirsty and rapacious than any tiger—a Cain of Cains. It was our own kith and kin who, landing on the shores of the North American continent, encroaching by degrees upon the tribes and at last encountering their hostility, spread their sway literally by fire and sword, and rooted out the Red Man wherever they found him established on land or by sea which they coveted. We, whose countrymen have worked out the same policy on the Australian continent and Van Diemen's Land, and who can only be restrained from its pursuit in New Zealand by the strong arm of the Home Government, can scarcely afford to take up stones to fling at our American brethren; and it is not with any purpose of indictment or accusation that I proceed to make a few remarks on the relations of the United States Government with the Red Man, and the efforts which they have been making to compensate the Indians in some measure for the injustice and persecution dealt out for many a generation.

As I looked at the men gathered at some of the railroad stations in the western desert and thought of the Red Men whose fate it is to meet such representatives of civilisation and Christianity, I could not but be filled with pity for the unfortunates and with wonder at "the dispensation" under which they live. The faces are fine and bold enough, bearded to the cheek or shaved in the American fashion, with bold staring eyes, which "look square" in your own, with a general expression "Do you want a fight?" in them—the heads to which they belong are generally set on muscular bodies. If a gang of these men think fit to go on to an Indian reservation—the very name is too often a bitter mockery—who is to stop them? If the Indians try to do so and one of the white intruders is killed the country-side rings with cries of "vengeance for the massacre of our brethren," and all the papers are filled with accounts of "Another Indian Outbreak."

"The average frontier-man in the States looks," as Mr. Schurz says, "upon the Indian merely as a nuisance in his way. There are many whom it would be difficult to convince that it is a crime to kill an Indian." I will go further and say that there are many, I believe, who would take great pleasure in killing an Indian whenever they could; or as one gentleman observed to me, and I believe in his relations with white men no more just or honourable man or more humane could be found, "I would sooner kill an Indian than I would a skunk." When I was in the West, there was a cry raised that the Utes were about to wage war, and appeals appeared in the local papers for a military force to march against them. Their leaders were accused of arrogance and of insolence, and of murderous designs, and the general remark one heard was, "The Utes must go." I inquired a little into the matter when I got back, and I found that the Utes were strictly and absolutely, in their own right, standing upon the titles, which they had derived from the United States Government, to the lands from which they were required to move. These lands were wanted. Other lands were pointed out to them, to which they objected, and then they were informed that they would be moved by force, and preparations were made to levy war against these unfortunates, if they resisted deportation from the territory which had been assigned to them by the Great Father. Had they been Irish landlords, they could not have been treated worse; but in the West not one word was raised in favour of their claims.

The first point which has to be considered is, that the Indian is obnoxious to the very class of men with whom he is by the necessity of things most closely brought in contact. The railway has been the great persecutor of Red Men. It has driven away the game, it has carried in proximity to their reservations all the enterprise charged with whiskey, revolver, rifle, and greed, which can be furnished by the offscourings of the world. In the Far West the miners in advance throng into the valleys, and break the silence of the mountain-ranges by the sound of their picks, the cattle-raisers spread out over the plains, the ploughman settles down on the fertile land. "What," asks the American philanthropist, and his question is echoed all over the world by humane and good men, "what is to become of the Indian?" The hunting-grounds are gradually being pushed farther west and north until they are bounded by the sea, and by the eternal snow. And if by any chance it should be found that there is gold or lead, silver or iron, or copper, or coal in any abundance, even under these unpromising conditions it will be sought. The buffalo is disappearing fast, faster than the Indian himself. Deer are becoming scarcer every year. What is to be left for the Red Man? Pastoral life and agriculture, say the philanthropists. The substitution, however, is not so easy. The weakness of the United States Government is the main cause why the policy of reservations has failed. Let us take the account of it by a United States Minister. "The Government," says Mr. Schurz, "has tried to protect the Indians in good faith against encroachments, and has failed. It has yielded to the pressure exercised upon it by people in immediate contact with the Indians. When a collision between Indians and whites once occurred, no matter who was responsible for it, our military forces were always found on the side of the white against the savage. How was Government to proclaim that white men should for ever be excluded from the millions of acres covered by Indian reservations, and that the national power would be exerted to do so?" Such an idea the American Minister thinks would be utterly preposterous. The rough and ready frontier-man would pick quarrels with the Indians; the speculators would urge him on. Government could not prevent collisions; the conflict once brought on, Government, in spite of its good intentions and sense of justice, would find itself employing its forces to hunt down the Indian. The old story would be repeated, as it will be wherever, says Mr. Schurz, there is a large and valuable Indian Reservation surrounded by white settlements, "and unjust, disgraceful as it is, that is an inevitable result." Such being the case then, the United States Government being powerless to see that right shall be done, and it being at once a human and a Christian duty to avert, if possible, the extinction of the original possessors of this grand continent, let us see what can be done to carry out the object. Fit the Indians, it is said, for the habits and occupations of civilised life; give them individual possession of land as property, a fee-simple title to the fields they cultivate, guarded by an absolute prohibition of sale—because it has been found that whenever the Indians are exposed to the temptation of artful traders, they will be cajoled out of the titles they have to their land—and you will save the remnants from utter destruction. I hope it will be so. I could not but feel a glow of enthusiasm when I heard the Attorney-General, Mr. MacVeagh, at Washington, speaking incidentally one day about some railway matter, declare that he would not sanction the making of a line of railway through Indian Territory until he was satisfied that the Indians actually understood the conditions which had been offered to them by the company. "I will," said Mr. MacVeagh, "send down government agents there to ascertain that the Indians thoroughly understand what they are doing, and that it is of their own free will and consent that the railway passes through their territory in exchange for the money and goods they receive for the concession." Excellent and just minister! But, alas! I believe that ere I left the United States the whole thing was done; the railway company had declared that they would, whether or no, make their line, and if an Indian touched a hair of the head of any white man, the United States Government would not be able to avert the Divine wrath of every white man on the border from the whole of the tribe. Well may Mr. Schurz say that the thought of exterminating a race once the only occupants of the soil, where so many millions of our own people have flourished, must be revolting to every American who is not devoid of all sentiments of justice and humanity. Extermination or civilisation is the alternative offered to the Indian. Now let us see how it is proposed to civilise them. According to the returns in the Report for 1880, the number of Indians in the United States, exclusive of those in Alaska, is 256,127. Of these, 138,642 are described as wearing citizen's dress. It will be observed that there is no estimate given of the Indians who do not wear citizen's dress under this head. Citizens must be sometimes very badly dressed indeed if the Indians I saw at various stations along the line to San Francisco in shocking bad hats and tattered clothes were to be included amongst those who figured under this description in the report of the Commissioner. About 17,000 houses are reported as occupied. There are 224 schools, attended by 6000 scholars for a month or more during the year, scattered over the continent. About 34,550 Indians could read. There were 154 church buildings and 74 missionaries. The number of children of school age was 34,541; but this was an under estimate. Of these there was only school accommodation for 9972. The total amount expended for education during the year by the United States Government was $249,299; by the State of New York, $15,863; by the State of Pennsylvania, $325; by other States, nothing; by religious societies, $46,933; by tribal funds, $7481. 22,048 Indian families were engaged in cultivating farms or small patches of ground; 33,125 male Indians were labouring in civilised pursuits; and 358 Indian apprentices had been pursuing trades during the year. This census and these statistics are stated to be imperfect, and it would require a close examination of the returns to enable an inquirer to form any idea as to the progress made in the direction which we are told is the alternative of destruction.

The Reservations of the various Indian tribes are scattered irregularly over the United States; from Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota on the north and north-west, away to the Territories on the other side of the Rocky Mountains, down to New Mexico and Arizona, there being none in the southern states bordering the Atlantic. But there are Red Men of different tribes located, as the Americans would say, in the States to the east, such as New York. The Reservations are of irregular size and extent. Isabella, in the State of Maine, reserved for 848 Indians, lies to the east of 86° longitude, and south of 44° latitude. There is a considerable group of Reservations on the western shore of Lake Michigan in Wisconsin, and in Minnesota. But the proper Indian territory lies west of Arkansas, with the Red River on the south, New Mexico on the west, and Kansas on the north; and in it are concentrated the Cherokees, Choctaws, Chicasaws, Comanches, Cheyennes, and several other tribes. The Navajo Reservation in New Mexico and Arizona ranks perhaps next in size, extending northwards into Colorado, where the Utes have got a large tract of land assigned to them upon what appears now to be very doubtful or vanishing tenure. These, and numerous reservations, which it would be tedious to enumerate, are under the charge of agents appointed by the Government at Washington, as to whose functions and personal character and attainments one hears very surprising and contradictory reports. But I confess, from a perusal of the documents which they have furnished to the head of the Department, and which are published in the Annual Report, there seems to me no just ground for imputing to these gentlemen want of zeal, knowledge, interest, or intelligence. Those who detest the whole work of saving the Red Man are very apt to impute to the Indian agents not only corrupt practices in relation to the sale of government stores and supplies destined for the use of those under their charge, but illicit traffic in spirits, which is ruinous to the Red Man, and even some participation in the acts of violence which have frequently led to Indian troubles. It all depends upon the manner in which your informant in the States regards the Indian Question whether the agents are described as scoundrels whom no man could trust, or as gentlemen of high propriety and general excellence.

The necessities which have been imposed by advancing civilisation of providing Indians with food entail a heavy outlay upon the United States Government, which is much begrudged by large sections of members of Congress, although they do not see their way clearly to withhold supplies of food from the unfortunate people whose hunting-grounds have been occupied, and who have not yet learned the arts of agriculture, so as to be able to supply themselves with food. The transportation of stores, the cost of beef, corn, coffee, bread, tobacco, tea; in fact, all kinds of food, woollen goods, clothing, boots, hats, groceries, waggons, tools, hardware, and medical supplies,—all these duly figure in the estimates of the Indian Commissioner to a very considerable amount, and the returns as yet do not present any large reduction on the annual charge; although nearly all the agents speak in terms of great hopefulness of the extraordinary advance which has been made in their agencies in the cultivation of the soil.

One remarkable division of the agencies has reference to their appropriation to religious denominations. An Indian might well be puzzled as to his form of belief if he were passed through the various agencies, attending at each a religious service or two, and listening to the teaching of the various divines attached to them. The Society of Friends have control of the belief and religious teaching of the Sante and Nemaja Indians in Nebraska, and of the Pawnees in the Indian Territory; to the Methodists are assigned three tribes in California, three tribes in Washington Territory, two in Oregon, three in Montana, two in Idaho, and one in Michigan. The Nevada Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chicasaws, and Seminoles are handed over to the Baptists. The Presbyterians have charge of the Nezpercès in Idaho, Umtas in Utah; the Apaches, Pueblos, and two other tribes in New Mexico. The Congregational Church exercises its religious offices among the tribes in Wisconsin, among two tribes in Dacotah, and one in Washington Territory. The Reformed Church has its work cut out for it in Arizona amongst four tribes. The Protestant Episcopal Church exercises its jurisdiction over one tribe in Minnesota, six tribes in Dacotah, one in Indian Territory, and one in Wyoming. The Unitarians have apparently only one tribe in teaching, the Los Pinos in Colorado. The United Presbyterians have one tribe in Oregon; the Christian Union has another in Oregon; the Evangelical Lutheran has charge of the Southern Utes in Colorado; and lastly, the Roman Catholic Church has two tribes in Washington Territory, two in Oregon, one in Montana, and two in Dacotah. As a general rule, the reports of the missionaries themselves are more sanguine, as they are wont to be, than are those of disinterested, perhaps unprejudiced, observers of their work. But, as is natural, the actual progress made depends very much, not only upon the nature of the tribe among whom the work is carried on, but on the character of the missionary, and on his ability and energy. In some instances, I see the condition of a tribe is reported as being lamentable, from a religious point of view, whilst in a neighbouring reservation, it is stated that great progress has been made in the establishment of religious teaching and ideas. The Rosebud Agency is said to prosper in the hands of one reverend gentlemen; the fathers of St. Ignatius are described as doing good work amongst the Flatheads; the Pawnees are left without any missionaries at all, and, says the government report, "are probably better off without them." And depreciatory remarks are slightingly introduced concerning the work at other agencies. On the Devil's Lake Agency, the majority of the adults shun the missionaries as they would the gentleman who may be supposed to own the lake by the sides of which they are encamped. The Jesuit fathers and the Catholic sisters are described as working generally with zeal and success, whilst one agency assigned to the Methodists is said to have no religious agency at all. It is to the success of the attempts made to educate the Indians at the public establishments that the philanthropist and humanitarian must look with the most hopefulness.

All the reports of the teachers and visitors of these schools coincide in one point, that the young Indian is most teachable, and that in respect of acquiring knowledge he is, if anything, the superior of the white, who seems to enjoy no hereditary excellence in his capacity for acquiring knowledge. The Bill to which the Report was an introduction may be considered indeed as the Magna Charta of the Indian tribes if it be followed up by judicious treatment, and careful management of and consideration for the rights conferred upon these tribes as preliminary to their absorption as citizens in the mass of the nation, when they are fit for such an amalgamation with the white races. The advance of the United States westwards has left vacant many military posts and barracks, stranded, as it were, high and dry in the midst of the torrent of civilisation. Fort Bridger, Wyoming; Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania; Fort Craig, New Mexico; Fort Cummings, in the same territory, and a number of others, have been named as suitable for the purpose of educating the Indian children; and it was in pursuance of the measure recommended to Congress that the various agencies throughout the Indian Territories were directed to forward children whom their parents might wish to entrust to the officers of the United States for education. "Received in the rudest state of savagism," says the Report, "their progress is already most remarkable." I have already remarked that the health of the boys is not generally satisfactory. Their sanitary condition is bad; and it would appear that sometimes in these long and tedious journeyings from the remote Indian agencies the poor children suffer much.

Even at the present moment the Anglo-Saxon appears to be dealing with the Maori in New Zealand very much as he has dealt with the native in Tasmania and in Australia. The history of our relations with the New Zealand chiefs and people is not in a nature to enable us to throw stones at the Americans with impunity, for the glass house in which we live can very easily be reached. Some sixteen or seventeen years ago a rebellion, arising out of the aggressions of the white settlers on the lands of the Maori, was averted by a Proclamation and by Acts confiscating a large tract of Tallinassey, which became theoretically the property of the Crown. Of course the natives had as little to say to that as the lady who is mentioned in 'Tristram Shandy' had with the declaration that "she was not related to her own child." But they did not recognise the occupancy, and whenever a white man settled upon a portion of the ground they pulled down his fences and removed his landmarks. The contest is still going on, but no one who is acquainted with the history of the colony will doubt what the end will be; and it is coming soon, or it is to come, the moment the colonists are bent upon taking the land, and when it is desired to do so.

"It but feebly expresses the judgment formed from what we have observed to say that we regard the experiment made in this school to educate and improve Indian children as in every way a very remarkable success." Si sic omnes! Why does not the United States Government, or if not the Government, the people, abounding in wealth, full of pious impulses, humane, charitable, who justly say that the worst use you can make of an Indian is to hang him; why do not the political economists who declare that it costs a million of dollars to get rid of an Indian with gunpowder and lead; why do not the enterprising and wealthy capitalists who desire to appropriate Indian Reservations all combine to extend the work of these schools so as to absorb all that remains of the Red Man in the rising generation amongst the citizens of the great Republic? A blessed work, worthy of an imperial State, truly great and truly good!

THE END.

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[A] How Mr. Garrett executed his mission and killed the Kid is narrated in the account of the desperados of the West, which forms a separate chapter.

[B]The day of our departure from the United States, after the visit of which I have been giving the details, was the date of a great crime, of which we were then ignorant. About the very time that we were on our way to the wharf to embark on board the "City of Berlin," the murderer of the President was accomplishing his purpose. But with all the means and appliances which exist for the despatch of news, I believe that the commission of the crime was not known till the steamer had passed out to sea from the Sand Heads.

[C] See also Rose Library.