The Pacific railroad--open. How to go: what to see

BANCROFT LIBRABY

THE

PACIFIC KAILEOAD-OPEN,

HOW TO GO : WHAT TO SEE.

GUIDE FOR TRAVEL TO AND THROUGH
WESTERN* AMERICA.

BY

SAMUEL BOWLES,

AUTHOR OF "ACROSS THE CONTINENT," AND "COLORADO,
ITS PARKS AND MOUNTAINS."

BOSf cN:
FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.,

SUCCESSORS TO TICKNOR AND FIELDS.
1869.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by

FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

UNIVERSITY PRESS : WELCH, BIGELOW, & Co.,
CAMBRIDGE.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

I. INTRODUCTORY. — THE GRAND RIDE ... 5

II. FROM CHICAGO TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS . 16

III. COLORADO 27

IY. THE MOUNTAINS AND THE MORMONS . . 43

V. FROM SALT LAKE TO THE PACIFIC . . .54

VI. SAN FRANCISCO 65

VII. CALIFORNIA AT LARGE 78

VIII. THE SANDWICH ISLANDS 91

IX. OREGON. — PUGET'S SOUND. — THE COLUMBIA RIVER 100

X. IDAHO. — SHOSHONE FALLS .... 106

XL MONTANA AND HOME . .110

APPENDIX.

OUTLINES FOR A Two MONTHS' JOURNEY TO THE PACIFIC
STATES BY THE PACIFIC RAILROAD . . . .119

TABLE OF RAILROAD DISTANCES BETWEEN THE ATLANTIC
AND PACIFIC OCEANS . . 121

>

THE PACIFIC RAILROAD - OPEN.

HOW TO GO : WHAT TO SEE.

I.

INTRODUCTORY THE GRAND RIDE.

'HT^HE Pacific Eailroad — open, is a great fact to
America, to the world. The vast regions that
it brings, for the first time, into our familiar knowl
edge hold a new world of nature and of wealth, and
are full of delightful surprises for the lover of scen
ery, the student in science, the seeker of opportu
nity for power and for riches. It is the unrolling
of a new map, the revelation of a new empire, the
creation of a new civilization, the revolution of the
world's haunts of pleasure and the world's homes
of wealth. Europe long ago became only a familiar
panorama, with the surprises and sentimentalisms all
written in at the proper places, like the " cheers "

6 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

and "laughter" of a faithfully reported speech.
But thanks to the toughness of day and night stage
travel for a continuous three weeks ; thanks to the
greed for gold and the high prices of food, leaving
no time for those who had gone into this wide, new
land to look at its scenery, or to study its phe
nomena, or at least to write about them; thanks,
indeed, to the Indians, of whom all sentimental
travellers have a holy horror ; thanks, finally, to the
rapidity with which the railroad has been built, we
have here a world of nature, fresh and tempting, for
the explorer. The field is too broad, also the vari
ety of experiences to be had too great, the forms
and freaks of nature too strange and too numerous,
— the whole revelation too unique and too aston
ishing, — to be readily catalogued and put into flex
ible covers for one's overcoat pocket. So the pleas
ure of original discovery — delicious victual for
our vanity — may not unfairly be enjoyed by those
who travel within the next year or two by the Pa
cific Railroad, and are wise enough, and have leisure

INTRODUCTORY. 7

enough, to deploy liberally to the right and left, at
salient points, along its track.

Near two thirds of all the land of the United
States lies beyond the Mississippi, not counting in
the outlying purchase of Alaska, which will doubt
less prove a very good thing when we have found
out what to do with it. The Pacific Eailroad fairly
bisects this vast area east and west, as the Rocky
Mountains — the backbone and dividing line of the
continent — do north and south ; the two cutting it
up into huge quarters, each of which would overlay
all Europe this side of Russia, and flap lustily in
the wind all around the edges. It will take us long
to learn what there is on and in it ; how long, in
deed, to subjugate it to use and the ministries of
civilization ! But with one railroad of two thousand
miles built across it in four years, and two others to
follow within the present generation, our strides in
its conquest are at least on equal scale with its
majesty and its mysteries.

Slapping the Mississippi valley as more or less

THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

familiar country to us all, and taking up the New
West on the other side of the Missouri, where the
Pacific Railroad proper begins, there are four great
natural divisions in the country hence to the Pa
cific. First the Plains, that grandest of all glacial
deposits, according to Agassiz, five hundred miles
wide and one thousand miles long, stretching from
river to mountains, from Britain to Mexico ; a mag
nificent earth ocean, rolling up in beautiful green
billows along the shores of the continental streams
and continental mountains that border it, but calm
ing down in the vast centre as if the Divine voice
had here again uttered its " Peace, be still." The
ocean does not give deeper sense of illimitable
space ; never such feeling of endless repose as in
spires the traveller amid this unchanging boundless
ness. We used to call it The Great American
Desert ; it is really the great natural pasture-ground
of the nation ; and the Platte will yet prove the
northern Nile. The antelope, the buffalo, and the
wolf are already disappearing before the horse, the

INTRODUCTORY. 9

ox, and the sheep, and these, for so far as the waters
of the Platte may be spread, — and volume and fall
offer wide promise for that, — will give way in time
to fields of corn and wheat.

Next the Mountains, — five hundred miles width
of mountains, staying the continent at its centre,
and feeding the great waters that fertilize two
thirds its area, and keep the two oceans alive. The
Cordilleras of South America, the Eocky Mountains
of North America, are here broken up into a dozen
sub-ranges, with vast elevated plains lying among
and between ; their crests broken down and wasted
away for a pathway for the iron track across the
continent. This section is full of natural wonder
and beauty, of scientific variety and marvel ; in its
centre, holding the divide of the continent, lies a
great barren basin, without living streams, and
almost without living springs, — a desert, indeed,
which the trains should always manage to pass
over in the night ; and beyond, the picturesque
descent into Salt Lake valley, past majestic ruins
1*

10 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

of majestic mountains, under towering walls of
granite, along banks of snow and beds of flowers,
through narrow canyons with frowning sides, down
streams whose waters lead the locomotive a losing

o

race, and turn the train from one novelty to an
other, from one wonder to a greater, — altogether,
perhaps, the most interesting and exciting portion
of the whole continental ride.

Now a third stretch of five hundred miles
through Utah and Nevada, whose united territory
takes in little more than the vast interior basin,
which, more properly than any other region in
our extended territory, merits the name of the
American Desert. The Colorado and its tributa
ries drain much of its eastern and all its south
eastern portions ; and some of the shorter branches
of the Snake or Columbia cross its northern border ;
but, with these exceptions, all the waters within
its six hundred by three hundred miles' area rise
and flow and waste within itself. They contribute
nothing to the common stock of the ocean. Salt

INTRODUCTORY. 11

Lake is its chief sheet of water, — fifty by one
hundred miles in extent, — and is bountifully fed
from the western slopes of the Eocky Mountain
ranges, but has no visible outlet. The Humboldt
Eiver, lying east and west along its upper line,
and marking the track of the railroad for some
three hundred miles, though fed from various
ranges of mountains, that cut the basin every
dozen or twenty miles north and south, yet finally
weakens and wastes itself in a huge sink within
a hundred miles of the California line. So with
the fresh streams that pour down on the western
border from the Sierra Nevadas, and those of
feebler flow from the winter snows of the inte
rior mountain ranges, — all, so soon as they reach
the valleys, begin to be rapidly absorbed by the
dry air and the drier elements of the soil, and,
sooner or later, absolutely die away. Yet, where
and while they do exist, there are strips of fertile
land that yield most abundantly of grass and
grain and vegetables ; and where, as in the Salt

12 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

Lake valley on the east, and in the Carson on the
west, the mountain streams can be divided and
spread about in fertilizing ditches, agriculture wins
its greatest triumphs*

As a whole, this is a barren and uninteresting
country for the general traveller ; sodas and salts
and sulphurs taint the waters and the soils ; the
dust, wherever roused, is as searching and poisonous
as it is delicate and impalpable ; the rare grass
is not green, but a sickly yellow or a faint gray ;
trees and shrubs huddle like starved and frightened
sheep into little nooks among the hills, stunted
and peevish in growth and character, with no
birthright there, and often none visible within
the horizon's stretch of ten to twenty miles ; no
flower dreams of life in such uncongeniality ;
wastes of volcanic rocks lie along and around
rivers that might otherwise be tempted to bless
the country they pass through ; beds of furious
torrents slash the hillsides and mar the valleys ;
while fields of alkali look in the distance like

INTRODUCTORY. 13

fresh and refreshing banks of snow, and taunt
approach with the suffocating reality. Some of
the valleys seem indeed to realize the character
of the fabled Death's Valley of southern Nevada,
within which no vegetable life ever creeps, out
of which no human life ever goes ; and yet, within
this grand area of distance and desert, two States
have risen and are prosperous, — one planted by
the fanaticism of a religion, and the other by the
fanaticism for gold and silver. To these are we
indebted for our path across the continent; while
the traveller finds refreshment for his finer senses
in the subtle beauty of the air, and the palpitating
roundness of the hills that, with the winds for
architect, present such forms, unbroken by rock
or trees, as are a constant exhilaration to the
eye.

The final division of the journey begins with the
eastern foot-hills of the Sierra Nevada mountains,
and carries us over these, through twice welcome
forests, of unaccustomed height and variety; by

14 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

broad lakes of rare purity and beauty ; along rocky
precipices, unsealed until the engineer for the rail
road planted his level on the walls, and the China
man followed with his subduing pick ; down by
fathomless gorges ; through long-delaying foot-hills,
waste with the miner's ruthless touch, or green
with the vineyards that promise to heal the wounds
of nature ; out by the muddy Sacramento and its
broad alluvials, golden brown with the summer's
decay, over long stretches of the tule marshes;
under the shadows of Mount Diablo ; finally, across
the wide inland bay to the sand-hills that the Pa
cific has thrown up as a barrier to her own restless
ambition, and over which San Francisco roughly but
rapidly creeps into her position as the second great
city of America.

This is but a two hundred miles' ride, and should
be made from sun to sun, for it takes the traveller
through already fabled lands in our history, and
introduces him to that region of wonderful wealth,
of contradictory and comprehensive nature, of

INTRODUCTORY. 15

strange scientific revelations, of fascinations une
qualled, of repulsions undisputed, — California, the
seat of a new empire, the promised creator of a new
race. And here, the traveller's experiences have
but just begun ; his curiosity is brought only to its
edge. Let us go back and look around, and see
where he should linger, on what it should feed
itself.

II.

FROM CHICAGO TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.

T T UMBOLDT, in one of his solemn sentences,
prescribes three requisites for travel in new
regions : 1, serenity of mind ; 2, passionate love for
some class of scientific labor ; 3, a pure feeling for
the enjoyment which Nature, in her freedom, is ready
to impart. These are all very desirable, at least one
is indispensable ; but my companions may swap off
the other two for a well-filled purse and a good set
of flannels. We may be as serene and scientific
and sentimental as the old German traveller him
self ; but without these other possessions, we cannot
go far or be very comfortable.

Then we must be liberal as to time too ; the aver
age American can see Europe in thirty days, I
know ; but this is a bigger job. True, with that
limit, he can be carried from Boston to San Fran-

FROM CHICAGO TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 17

cisco in ten days, — allowing for a night or two in
bed, and one or two failures to connect at that, —
and back in the same time, and have a third ten
days to look about him in the mountains, in Utah,
and in u Frisco " ; and this is better than nothing,
of course ; but still, comparing what he thinks he
knows with what he really does, before and after
such a trip, he will be immensely more ignorant
when he returns than he was at starting. I cannot
tolerate the idea of less than sixty days ; and we
shall find three months devoted to the journey the
busiest and best spent in our lives, That is as little
time as any one proposing really to see our interior
and Pacific States should allow himself to take for
the purpose. So make a ninety-day note for our
expenses, — well, say four hundred dollars a month,
— the average American traveller, in these green
back days, will hardly get off with less, — and leave
a good indorser for any little contingency of delay,
such as a pressing invitation to visit a " friendly "
Indian village, or a long call from those persuasive

2

18 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

gentlemen of the interior basin, " the road agents."
We may as well count railroad travel at an average
of five cents a mile, and stage at twenty cents, and
board and lodging, whether with Pullman or at the
hotels, at five dollars a day. Extras and contingen
cies will need all these allowances have to spare, —
if they have any.

Prejudices against sleeping-cars must be con
quered at the start. They are a necessity of our
long American travel. There are often no inviting
or even tolerable places for stopping over night,
and, besides, we cannot afford to lose the time, when
so much of beauty and interest lies beyond. But
the Pullman saloon, sleeping, and restaurant cars of
the West — as yet unknown in the Atlantic States
— make a different thing of railroad travelling from
wrhat it is in the close, cramped, ill-ventilated, dirty
box-cars of common experience. They introduce a
comfort, even a luxury, into life on the rail that
European travel has not yet attained to. For the
Pacific Railroad excursions these cars will be offered

FROM CHICAGO TO THE EOCKY MOUNTAINS. 19

to private parties on special charter ; that is, one or
two dozen people may club together, and hire one
for their home by day and night as they ride through
to the Pacific coast, and back, stopping over with
them wherever they choose on the route. By day
they are open, roomy, broad-seated cars ; by night
they offer equally comfortable beds, with clean linen
and thick blankets ; with as good toilet accommo
dations as space will allow, and a servant at com
mand constantly. Those with a kitchen furnish a
meal to order, equal to that of a first-class restau
rant, and with neat and fresh table appointments.
But the eating-stations on the whole route already
average respectably ; some of them are most excel
lent ; and all will soon be at least good. The mod
ern American mind, especially that of the Western
type, gives intelligent thought to the food question ;
and one of the surprises before us is the excellent
victuals they will give us on the Pacific coast.

The Pullman cars go along with all through
trains, and the independent traveller can make such

20 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

use of them, day or night, as he chooses to pay for.
Those for sleeping only are attached to the trains as
night approaches, and dropped in the morning, while
the traveller resumes his place in the regular cars
of the road. But travellers who can afford the
extra expense will choose either to share in a spe
cial charter of one for the round trip, or engage a
particular seat and berth in a regular one for so far
as they may be going without stopping. To under
stand the advantages of these cars, and learn how
best to make use of them, is a part of the education
of the traveller in new America. Their introduction
and development and popular use mark an era in
the history of railroad travel, and place America at
the head of nations in its convenience and com
fort.

Though Pullman promises to back one of these
cars to order up at our very doors in Boston or New
York, we shall naturally take up our grand journey
at Chicago. This is just one third the way across
the continent, and the beginning of the New West,

FROM CHICAGO TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 21

whose spirit is nowhere so proudly rampant, into
whose growth no other city so intimately enters.
The pulse of the Pacific beats with electric sym
pathy on the southern shore of Lake Michigan;
and if Chicago does not hear every blow of the
pick in the depths of the gold-mines of Colorado
and Montana, she at least has made sure to fur
nish the pick, and to have a claim on the gold
it brings to light.

One this spring, two this summer, three in the fall,
and another year four roads invite us across Illinois
and Iowa to the junction of the Pacific road proper
on the Missouri Eiver. This five hundred mile ride
is through the best of the rich prairie country of the
Mississippi Valley. If it is stranger to us, it will
arouse our enthusiasm by its wide-reaching open
ness, the evidences of its fertility, and the signs of
its civilization and prosperity ; if we have been in
troduced before, we shall even the more wonder at
the rapidity of its growth and the wealth of its ac
cumulating harvests. It is quite worth while to stop

22 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

a day either on the Mississippi River at Clinton, or
Davenport, or Burlington, or at some such town as
Geneva or Dixon in Illinois, or Grinnell or Des
Moines in Iowa, and see more closely than the cars
permit the character and culture of this most inter
esting region and its population. Last year, before
the Pacific Railroad was open, it was the New West;
now it is the Old ; but it will always be the garden
and granary of the continent. It. is our new New
England ; here the Yankee has broadened and soft
ened ; and what he can do, what he has done here,
with a richer soil, a broader area, a larger hope, and
a surer realization, is worth the scrutiny of every
American and every student of America. Those
who would understand the sources of American
wealth, and the courses of American politics and
religion, must understand Illinois and Iowa. New
England is, indeed, dwarfed in the larger life of the
mellower regions of the Republic. It may be the
taunt of her enemies, that hers is a departed sceptre,
is substantially true ; but she has a resurrection here,

FEOM CHICAGO TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 23

and her sons and daughters have come to a new glory-
in these prairies, heavenly by comparison with her
sterile hillsides. Stop and see if you recognize them
in their new robes.

Council Bluffs, the depot of the gathering lines of
the East, and Omaha, opposite, the starting-point of
the grand continental line, challenge attention for the
striking diversity and yet striking similarity of their
locations on the bottoms and bluffs of the Missouri
Eiver, as well as for the wonderful rapidity of their
growth and their large future promise. Four rail
roads come in already from the East at Council
Bluffs ; very soon the number will be doubled ; and
with these and the swift and strong Missouri rolling
between, and carrying steamboats two thousand
miles north to the very line of British America and
the Eocky Mountains, and two thousand miles south
to the Gulf of Mexico, the two towns are surely to
be one of the largest centres of traffic and travel on
the continent.

We shall not need, to stop for the next five

24 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

hundred miles. The first hundred and fifty are a
repetition of the Iowa we have left behind, — rich
rolling prairies, already broken by plough, or
smoothed with the track of the mower, — beyond,
the grand Plains proper, cut by the Platte, with
wood-houses and water-spouts every twelve or
fifteen miles, and workshops and eating-houses
every seventy - five or one hundred ; the road
straight as an arrow across the whole region,
and apparently as level as the floor, though ac
tually rising steadily at the rate of ten feet to
the mile for the entire five hundred miles ; there
is enough of the ride over it to satisfy curiosity
and exhaust its novelty, — there is none too much
to absorb the grand impressions of vastness, and
majesty of area, and take in the glory of sunset
and sunrise along the unending horizon. The
Plains introduce us, also, to that diy, pure atmos
phere — that cloudless sky and far-reaching vision
— which is the great and growing charm of the
whole region from the Missouri River to the Pacific

FROM CHICAGO TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 25

Ocean. Moving westward from New England, there
is a constantly increasing dryness of atmosphere,
with a broadening sweep and power for the eye;
but, after getting fairly outside Eastern influences
upon the Plains, it takes on a positive presence,
and the traveller feels it as a beauty, as an exhil
aration, an inspiration to every sense. It sur
rounds him with a new world ; it infects him
with a new spirit ; and it hangs the banners
of pleasure and of beauty over experiences and
upon forms that never would have borne them
under different skies and in a denser atmosphera
The nights become cold also. Glaring as may
have been the day's sun, and searching its heat,
the evening brings refreshing coolness, and the
night need of blankets. This phenomenon, too,
will attend him through all the new countries he
is now entering upon.

At Cheyenne the Plains end and the Mountains
begin — in the eye of faith and the figures of
railroad subsidies. The hills at least come into

26 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

sight, and though the track goes forward through
an open country, the shadows of the great llocky
Mountain belt fall faintly around us. Cheyenne
wondered and waited long, but finally determined
to be a town. Colorado makes its connection here
with the continental road ; it is as high up — near
six thousand feet above the sea level — as that
road will care to have the winter quarters of its
supplies and machinery ; it is far enough away
to be out of the shadow of Omaha, and Denver
lies one hundred miles to the south, and is off
the main route. So the town lias several thou
sand settled population, and is steadily growing.
But here we must switch off the main track
We must see Denver, the real Rocky Mountains,
which the railroad cheats us of, their grand
snow peaks and their wonderful wide parks, the
scene and the source of the central life of the
continent, before we shall talk witli the Mor
mons, hear the sigh of the Sierra Nevada pines,
or listen to the roll of the Pacific waters.

III.

COLORADO.

'T^HOUGH Colorado lies below the line of our
first Pacific Kailroad, and above the second,
which I take it will be the southern, she cannot be
refused a first place among their revelations. Be
cause of her mountains, which turn the tracks north
and south, she allures the lovers of the grand and
picturesque in scenery; because of her mines of
gold and silver, she seduces the greedy for gain ;
because of the agricultural resources of her plains
and her valleys, she will have steady growth, per
manent prosperity, and moral Rectitude, for these
are the gifts of a recompensing soil ; because of her
many and various mineral springs, soda, sulphur,
and iron, and of her wonderfully clear, dry, and
pure atmosphere, she will be the resort of the
health-seeking. Within her borders the great con-

28 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

tinental mountains display their most magnificent
proportions, the great continental rivers spring from
melting snows, the plains most warmly invite the
farmer and the husbandman, and the best popula
tion, between the Missouri River and California, has
organized itself into a State. Fifty thousand people
here have more than become self-supporting; they
are already wealth-producing ; and social order and
its institutions of education and religion are estab
lished. The main Pacific Eailroad wisely hastens
to connect itself with them by a branch from Chey
enne to Denver ; and St. Louis " builded better than
she knew," after all, when, in the apparent spirit of
a blind rivalry, she pushed her Eastern Division
Pacific Eoad straight towards their centre. Failing
to go through the mountains, this road will yet find
recompense in furnishing the most direct communi
cation between Colorado and the East, and in throw
ing out branches from its terminus here, through
the best agricultural sections of Colorado, to the
main continental lines above and below.

COLORADO. 29

If the branch track is not laid to Denver when
we leave Cheyenne, so much the better. The stage
ride of this one hundred miles is an experience to
which I welcome the stranger. It is the best repre
sentation of that sort of travel which the rapid
progress of our railway system has left us. Fine
Concord coaches, six sleek and gay horses in every
team, changed each ten miles, good meals on the
way, the road itself generally smooth and hard over
the open, rolling prairie, the sky clear, the air an
inspiration, the open ocean of the plains on one
side, the long and high mountain battlements shad
owing us on the other, — altogether, this is as fine a
bit of out-door life, by day, as will come within the
range of all our summer's journey. By night — for
the ride covers the night, as well — new elements
come in, which I forbear to detail ; but if my com
panions served in the war, or have tended sick and
cross babies through a winter's night, when they
had the toothache themselves, I am sure they will
survive it.

30 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

We shall like Denver, spread out upon the rising
plain, with the Platte River flowing through and
around it, with broad streets and fine blocks of
stores, and a panoramic mountain view before it,
such as rises before no other town in all the circle
of modern travel. For one hundred miles, but
tressed on the north by Long's Peak, and on the
south by Pike's Peak, each over fourteen thousand
feet high, its line of majestic rock and snow peaks
stretches before the eye, ever a surprise by its vari
ety, ever a beauty by its form and color, ever an
inspiration in its grandeur. The Alps from Berne
do not compare with the Eocky Mountains from
Denver ; in nearness, in variety, in clearness of
atmosphere, in grand sweep of distance, in majes
tic uplifting of height, these are vastly the supe
rior. Any man with a susceptibility to God's
presence in nature must find it very easy to be
good in Denver. Certainly, to watch these moun
tains through the changes of light and cloud of
a summer's day and evening is a joyful experience,

i V JS

COLOEADO.

worth coming from a long distance to Denver to
share.

The mining centres of Colorado are up among
its mountains, twenty-five, fifty, and seventy-five
miles from Denver, which is but the political and
business capital, and thus facilities exist for travel
into the regions whither we would go for knowl
edge and joy of nature. Ten hours of staging
take us through Central City, the chief gold-
mining centre, at a height of seven thousand feet
above the sea, with a population of several
thousands, on to Georgetown, two thousand feet
higher, the centre of the silver production, with
nearly three thousand inhabitants. The wny is
full of mountain and valley scenery of freshest
interest and majestic beauty. At Idaho and Fall
Eiver, little villages in the South Clear Creek
valley, on the route, are accommodations for sum
mer visitors, with cold and warm soda springs at
the former place, furnishing most luxurious bath
ing. And at Georgetown, with larger and better

32 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

hotels, we are in the very centre of the highest and
finest mountain life in the State.

Gray's Peaks, the highest explored summits of
Colorado (14,300 and 14,500 feet high), and named
for the distinguished Cambridge botanist, lie just
beyond and above the town, and the excursion
to and from their tops may easily be made in a
day with guide and horses from Georgetown. The
working of mines up as high as twelve thousand
feet has secured a wagon-road two thirds the
way, and trails for horses lead to the two sum
mits of the mountain. The view from either of
a clear morning is the most commanding and im
pressive, I truly believe, within the range of all
ordinary American or European travel. Nothing
in the Alps takes you so high, reaches so wide.
There we overlook a petty province ; here the
broad American continent spreads itself around
us as a centre, and stretches out its illimitable
lengths before the eye. The rain-drops falling on
one coat sleeve flow off to the Pacific, on the other,

-

COLOEADO. 33

to the Atlantic. We are at the very apex, the ab
solute physical centre, of the North American
continent ; the scene assures the thought, and is
worthy of the fact. Fold on fold of snow-slashed
and rock-ribbed mountains lie all around, — west,
east, north, and south ; they riot in luxuriant mul
tiplicity ; for this is the fastness, the gathering and
distributing point of the grand continental range;
while away to the east lies the gray-green sea of
the plains, and distributed among the snow-folds of
the mountains are miniature -copies of the same,
which look like patches of prairie amid the conti
nent of mountains, yet are, in fact, great Central
Parks, from ten to thirty miles wide and forty to
seventy miles long. North, Middle, South, and San
Luis Parks, — they lie along through the whole
line of central Colorado, — great elevated basins
or plains, directly under the highest mountains,
— soft and smooth ways upon the very backbone
of the continent. Some lie on the Atlantic side,
others on the Pacific side of the divide ; and their

3

34 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

height above the sea level ranges from seven thou
sand to ten thousand feet. In Europe or in New
England this height in this latitude would be
perpetual barrenness, more likely perpetual ice
and snow ; but here in Western America grains
and vegetables are successfully cultivated, and
cattle graze the year round at seven thousand
feet, while between that and ten thousand feet
there is rich summer pasturage, and often great
crops of natural grass are cured for hay.

These great fertile areas among the high moun
tains of Colorado — this wedding of majestic hill
and majestic plain, of summer and winter, of
fecund life and barren rock — present abundant
attractions for a full summer's travel. For the
lover of the grand and the novel in nature, or
the weary seeking rest from toil and excitement,
our country offers nothing so richly recompens
ing as a summer among the parks and moun
tains of Colorado. The dryness of the climate, in
viting to out-door life, is favorable to lung diilicul-

COLORADO. 35

ties, though the very thin air of the higher regions
must be avoided by those whose lungs are quite
weak. Asthma and bronchitis flee before the breath
of this dry, pure atmosphere, and it operates as an
exhilarating nerve-tonic to all. Denver and St.
Louis are about in the same latitude, and their ther
mometers have nearly the same range, though Den
ver is nearly six thousand feet higher. Its noons are
probably warmer, as its nights are certainly cooler,
the year round ; but the drier and lighter air, ever in
motion from plain and mountain, makes its summer
heats always tolerable. Denver is exposed to snow
from October to May, but it rarely stays long ;
sleighing is as much of a novelty as at Washington
or Philadelphia, and its winters are more like a dry,
clear New England November than any other sea
son of the East. The valleys and parks of the
mountains are similar in climactic character, with
the added influences of three or four thousand feet
greater elevation. The principal snows are in early
spring, and the rains in late spring and early sum-

36 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

mer. Midwinter and midsummer are uniformly dry
and clear. When clouds and storms do come, they
are always brief. The sun soon shines through
them to warm and clear the sky.

The saddle and the camp are the true conditions
of extended travel or a summer's life in Colorado.
A party of four, well-mounted on mules or "Western
ponies, with a guide and servant, and two pack-
mules for tents and blankets and food, can gain
such experience of rare nature, such gift of health,
such endowment of pleasure, in leisurely travel over
its mountains and among its parks, lingering by the
side of their beautiful lakes and their abundant
streams fat with trout, basking in its sunshine,
hunting in its woods, and bathing in its mineral
springs, as nowhere else that I know of in all
America. This is surely destined to be " the correct
thing to do " for the pleasure and health seekers of
the future America.

Over in Middle Park, two days' horseback ride
from Georgetown, are the famous Hot Sulphur

COLORADO. 37

Springs, a douche-bath and a sitz-bath united,
such as only experience of their wondrous tonic
can appreciate. The water is of the temperature
of 110° Fahrenheit, — as hot as human flesh can
bear, — and pours over a ledge of rock ten feet high
into a pool below with a stream of four to six
inches in diameter. When wagon-roads are made
to the spot, as they soon will be, invalids will flock
to these springs in July and August from the
whole country. Already they are a favorite local
resort, despite the hard climb over the mountains
into the valley where they lie.

The South Park is the most attractive and most
frequented of these elevated park areas ; and a good
wagon-road from Denver, branching out within the
park to all its various sections, and taverns and
mining villages strung freely along one and through
the other, invite the traveller to its easy enjoyment.
Mount Lincoln, the great parent mountain of the
parent range, stands at the northwestern angle of
the park, and may be ascended without too severe

38 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

labor from the village of Montgomery. It is of
nearly or quite the same height as Gray's Peaks,
and commands a like view. The connoisseurs in
mountain views in Colorado dispute as to which
summit offers the wider and grander. Either is
grand enough, and one or other should be enjoyed
by every visitor to Colorado. Our ascent of Lin
coln was made amid contending torrents of rain,
snow, hail, and sunshine, and though the views we
obtained were not so complete and satisfactory as
those from Gray, the experience was perhaps the
grander, because of its variety, and the terrible im-
pressiveness of a storm on the mountain-tops, open
ing and closing long glimpses of ghastly worlds of
rocks and snow below and all around us.

The upper mountains of Colorado — at eleven
thousand and twelve thousand feet — hold numer
ous pools and lakes, and not infrequent waterfalls,
A party who made the ascent of Long's IVuk for the
first time, last season, report nearly forty lakes in
view at once ; but the parks and lower ranges offer

COLORADO. 39

them but rarely. A day's ride, in saddle or wag
on, out of South Park, over into the valley of the
Upper Arkansas, — where various new beauties of
scenery await the explorer, — will carry us into the
presence of the Twin Lakes, as beautifully lying
sheets of water as mountains ever guarded or sun
illuminated. They hold kinship with the Cumber
land lakes of England, the Swiss and Italian lakes,
and those of Tahoe and Donner in the California
Sierra Nevada, which are among the sweet revela
tions of the Pacific Eailroad. The Twin Lakes will
be one of the specialties when the world goes to
Colorado for its summer vacations.

The tree life of the Eocky Mountains is meagre ;
pines and firs and aspens (or cottonwood) make up
its catalogue ; nor are these so abundant or so rich
in size or beauty as to challenge special attention.
They grow in greatest luxuriance at elevations of
from eight to eleven thousand feet ; and the timber
line does not cease till nearly twelve thousand feet
is reached. A silver fir or spruce is the one charm

40 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

among the trees. But the flora is more varied and
more beautiful ; Dr. Parry reports one hundred and
forty-one different species in these higher moun
tains, eighty-four of which are peculiar to them ; and
I can report that nowhere else have I gathered such
wealth — in glory of color and perfection and num
bers — of fringed gentians, harebells, painter's brush,
buttercups, larkspurs, child sunflowers, dandelions,
and columbines, as on these eight and ten thousand
feet high hillsides, or in little nooks of grass and
grove still higher. Blue and yellow are the domi
nant colors ; but the reds flame out in the painter's
brush and the kernel of the sunflowers, like beacons
of light amid darkness. With much lacking in de
tails of beauty and interest, that are found in the
country life of New England and the Middle States,
as in California, Colorado more than redeems her
self by the charm of her atmosphere and the mag
nificent majesty of her mountains and her plains.
These are her title to supremacy, her claim to be
to America what Switzerland is to Europe.

COLORADO. 41

But I cannot hope my Pacific Eailroad travellers
will give more than seven or ten days to Colorado,
— an appetizer for a future summer's feast, — and
I rely on the patriotic and thrifty citizens of
Denver and Georgetown to perfect some arrange
ments by which, in that time, they may get a fair
glimpse of its grand and rare specialties of moun
tain ranges and enfolded parks, and a share in
the out-door life they invite. A ride up through
the mountains by Boulder Creek or South Clear
Creek valleys, on to the head of the latter above
Empire or at Georgetown, the ascent of Gray or
Lincoln, and a peep into and a cut across the
South Park, with two or three nights in camp,
and a half-day's trout - fishing, — these I con
sider essential; and under good guidance they
may all be had within the time mentioned. As
cending Gray's Peaks from Georgetown, I should
recommend going down on the other side, and a
night's camp on the Snake Eiver ; thence to
the junction of the Snake, the Blue, and Ten

42 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

Mile Creek; up the Blue to Breckinridge ; over
the Breckinridge Pass into South Park at Ham
ilton or Fairplay ; and thence, if there is not
time for Lincoln or the Arkansas Lakes, across
the Park and out to Denver by Turkey Creek
Canyon and the Plains. All this could be put
into seven days from Denver, though ten would
be better; but, through lack of a wagon-road from
Georgetown over to Snake River, it would have
to be done in part or altogether in the saddle.
Hotels could be reached for all but one or two
nights ; but these may be made, with fortunate
camping-ground, choice companions, and plenty
of blankets and firewood, the most memorable
and happy of the whole week.

AYith such experience as this, we go back to
the railroad at Cheyenne, with a new sense of
the greatness of America, with a curious doubt
ing wonder as to what can lie beyond, and with
appetites that we shall probably have to go to
Ford's to satisfy, while waiting for our train for
Salt Lake City.

IV.

I

THE MOUNTAINS AND THE MORMONS.

T3 ESUMING the cars, for the grand ride over
the Eocky Mountain section of the track,
an hour or so from Cheyenne takes us to Sherman,
the highest point (8,200 feet) of the entire railroad
line. But we feel rather than see the evidences of
the fact. The air is thin and chill, even under a
July or August sun ; but it is a high plain, and
not mountain-tops, that the track rests upon. There
are bare, smoothly-rounded hills about ; scattered
over them are huge boulders, or piles of boulders,
like remnants of mountains ; but the mountains
themselves stand far away in the dim distance ;
and the train speeds free and nearly straight over
an open and comparatively level country, crossing
an occasional deep ravine or river-bed, cutting
through a rare rock remnant of the original hill-

44 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

tops, but altogether finding easy pathway through
the one hundred and fifty miles that counted, in the
government subsidy, as peculiarly the mountainous
section, and had the exceptional allowance of
$ 48,000 a mile. A clean reddish granite, ground
fine by nature, makes the most compact and en
during of road-beds ; the ties come from thin for
ests in the distant hills ; and altogether we are still
in a paradise for railroad contractors.

Down and on from Sherman a thousand feet and
twenty-five miles the land grows more level still,
and the Laramie Plains spread a broad fifty miles
around us. They are like one of the parks below in
Colorado, only the mountains do not lie so close and
commanding around, and the views are less pictu
resque and nature less rich; but the neighboring
hills will repay the sportsman. A considerable
village is springing up at Laramie ; the Plains are
famous in overland emigrant travel, and were long
headquarters for the government supplies and sol
diers in the mountains ; and those of us who failed

THE MOUNTAINS AND THE MORMONS. 45

to look into the parks of Colorado will be well re
paid for stopping here a day or two.

Beyond, the country grows gradually barren ; and
after crossing the North Platte Kiver, we enter upon
one hundred and fifty miles of desert, — a waterless,
treeless, grassless, rolling plain, the soil fine, dry,
and impregnated with alkali, the air pure, dry, and
cool, — a section shudderingly remembered by slow-
travelling emigrants, and memorable in the history
of railroad construction for the necessity of having
a special water train to supply the workmen and
the engines while carrying forward the work through
it. Eightly named Bitter Creek gathers the slug
gish surface waters it furnishes, and carries them
on to Green Eiver, reaching which we enter upon
new and better scenes. The water increases and
freshens, the verdure improves ; but that which
attracts the traveller most is the novel and impos
ing forms of architecture that Nature has left to
mark her history upon these still open plains. Long,
wide troughs, as of departed rivers ; long level em-

46 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD OPEN.

bankments, as of railroad tracks or endless fortifi
cations ; huge, quaint hills, suddenly rising from
the plain, bearing fantastic shapes ; great square
mounds of rock and earth, half-formed., half-broken
pyramids, — it would seem as if a generation of
giants had built and buried here, and left their
work to awe and humble a puny succession. The
Black, the Pilot, and the Church Buttcs are among
the more celebrated of these huge monumental
mountains standing on the level plain ; but the
railway track passes out of sight of them all ex
cept the Church Butte, which, seen under favorable
lights, imposes on the imagination like a grand old
cathedral going into decay, quaint in its crumbling
ornaments, majestic in its height and breadth. They
seem, like the more numerous and fantastic illus
trations of Nature's frolicsome art in Southern Colo
rado, to be the remains of granite hills that wind
and water, and especially the sand whirlpools which
march in lordly force through the air, — literally
moving mountains, — have left to hint the past,

THE MOUNTAINS AND THE MOEMONS. 47

and tell the story of their own achievements. Not
unfitly, there as here, they have won the title of
"Monuments to the Gods."

Passing the waters that flow south to the Colo
rado, we come to those that run west to the Salt
Lake Basin. Nature now deserts us as a railroad
engineer ; and high art and mighty labor are sum
moned to make a path for the track through and
down these western ranges of the Eocky Mountains.
Over and down the high hills, the road at last
reaches Echo Canyon, and, following that to its
entrance into Weber Canyon, proceeds by this into
the Valley of the Salt Lake. These canyons are
narrow and rugged, with high, perpendicular walls
of red rock, with picturesque openings and fresh
running streams, with little Mormon farms, and
every element of agreeable and inspiring scenery.
The mountain-tops are white with snow ; the
valleys are green with grass or gay with flowers ;
and those greatly cherished but long-missed com
panions of man, the trees, now come in to freshen

48 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

and familiarize the scene. Within this region we
meet, moving west, the first tunnels of the road ;
and there are five of them, aggregating nearly two
thousand feet, between Green River and the Salt
Lake Valley.

Our travellers across the continent, men or wo
men, will not need urging to stop at Salt Lake City,
though it lies forty miles south of Ogden, where
the Pacific Railroad enters and crosses the Salt
Lake Valley. The social and the natural pheno
mena centring there make it perhaps the most
interesting feature in our journey. The courage
of men who undertake the management of num
berless wives will attract one sex, while the auda
city of the act will arouse the wonder, if not the
worship, of the other. Here, too, are study for the
statesman, thought for the philosopher, and puzzles
for the scientific student. But the science of Salt
Lake City, social and natural, presents problems not
easily solved ; and one must be content to look
upon the surface of things, and move on. There

THE MOUNTAINS AND THE MORMONS. 49

will be, this summer, a branch railroad to the city,
and sooner or later the track will proceed on south
through the lower Mormon settlements to Arizona.

The town will delight us with its location, on a
high plain over the broad valley of the Jordan,
Camp Douglas behind on a higher bench of land,
the Wahsatch Mountains, with winter caps, hanging
above it on the north and east, while opposite lower
mountains make a western horizon, and Salt Lake,
an inland ocean, ripples and shimmers under the
noonday sun, fifteen miles away. Broad streets,
with the irrigating brooks pouring down their gut
ters ; good hotels ; large and well-supplied stores ;
an abundant market ; a large and well-appointed
theatre, run in the name and for the benefit of the
Church ; gardens luxurious with fruit, the peach
and the strawberry most abounding, and bountiful
with vegetables ; hot sulphur springs in the suburbs,
inviting most luxurious baths ; summer days, dry
and pure, yet cool nights, — all these will seduce the
senses and minister to our joy, and the traveller

4

50 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEX.

may well sing with Bishop Heber that " every pros
pect pleases, and only man is vile." A drive out to
Salt Lake, and a bath and a sail, if they are to be
had, guarding the mouth and eyes from the water,
which is sharply salt, and the stomach from sea
sickness, for the wind makes short waves on this
sea ; an attendance, if it is Sunday, — and we should
manage to have our visit cover a Sabbath, — upon
the services in the grand Church Square, where we
shall see the old and new tabernacles, and the foun
dations of the grand Mormon cathedral, as well as
an audience of several thousand Mormons, affording
an interesting human study ; a walk under the high
wall around Brigham Young's equally grand square
opposite, with tithing-house, home for thirty wives
and seventy children, private school-house for the
family, all the central business offices of church and
state, stables and warehouses to match so mammoth
an establishment, and gardens of grapes and peaches
and pears and flowers and vegetables, all within the
— counting up, as we walk, the contending

THE MOUNTAINS AND THE MOKMONS. 51

passions and conflicting experiences, the crushed
loves and the subdued hates, the moral murders
perpetrated, the physical murders planned, enfold
ed in this ten-acre circuit of wall; an excursion
back to the mouth of the canyon that overlooks
city and valley ; a numbering of the front-doors of
the long, low adobe cottages, as the simplest means
of learning how many wives each owner has, and
wondering if half of these children, that swarm in
every door-yard, and play around every mud-puddle,
have any idea who their fathers are, — these em
brace all that such passing travellers, can hope or
need to see and experience of Utah and the Mor
mons ; and for these from two to four days will
suffice.

We shall busy ourselves, of course, with a dozen
questions and a dozen theories about Mormonism,
about polygamy and Brigham Young, and when and
how they are all coming to an end ; perhaps, if we
hear earnest Mormons talk, we shall wonder in our
hearts if it is possible they are right, and this little

52 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

leaven in Utah is, as they say, bound to leaven the
whole American lump, and polygamy become the
law of the sexes, and Mormonism the religion of the
future, — which is all well enough if we keep our
wondering doubts to ourselves. We may know, if
we observe closely and think intelligently, that no
social, political, and religious organization, all bound
into one and proceeding from a common head, so
foreign to all our principles of life and growth, as
this of Brigham Young in Utah, exists elsewhere in
America, nor even in Europe, indeed ; and it will
take but little knowledge of history and its philos
ophy, and less of the American instinct of life and
of man's progress, to convince us that it must give
way,- and be swept almost into forgetfulness by the
advancing tide of American emigration and Amer
ican civilization. There is nothing in our American
fundamentals that is not outraged in the theories
and practice of the autocracy that rules here in
Utah ; and unless we are going speedily back to the
civilization of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, this

•THE MOUNTAINS AND THE MORMONS. 53

will not be, cannot be. And yet a beautiful and
prosperous city of twenty-five thousand inhabitants,
and a surrounding territory of near one hundred
thousand, making a garden here in the dry desert
of this central basin of the continent, will impress
us wonderfully, as it ought, with the power of a
religious fanaticism, directed by a lordly will, and
organizing a faithful, simple industry, to create
wealth, and to set in motion many of the elements
of progress and civilization. But for the pioneer-
ship of the Mormons, discovering the pathway, and
feeding those who came out upon it, all this central
region of our great West would be now many years
behind its present development, and the railroad,
instead of being finished, would hardly be begun.

V.

FROM SALT LAKE TO THE PACIFIC.

r I "HERE is no end to the anomalies of nature in
this great interior American basin, of which
the Salt Lake Valley is alike the threshold, the gem,
and a sub-specimen. But the study of them is now
accompanied with so many drawbacks that the
pleasure-traveller will, after leaving Salt Lake City,
seek to put the whole region between him and the
Sierras as speedily as possible. Ascending and
passing out of the Valley, the road skirts the
northern shore of the lake, crossing Bear River,
its chief tributary, and going through the Promon
tory Mountains that come down from the north into
the lake. Here the two companies building the
railroad, from east and west, joined their tracks,
though the point of actual connection is at Ogden,
in the valley below ; from here the stage lines start,

FKOM SALT LAKE TO THE PACIFIC. 55

northeast and northwest, to Montana and Idaho ;
and from here, too, the Union or Eastern Pacific
company intends to stretch a branch road up to
and along the Snake branch of the Columbia Eiver,
through Idaho, and down the Columbia to the sea,
thus making for itself a distinct connection with the
Pacific Ocean. The distance is six hundred and
fifty miles, but for half of it steamboats can run
on the rivers, so that the first construction, to
insure steam communication, is comparatively not
large, and will hardly require more money than
the profits of the company in building the main
line.

Stretching out from Salt Lake through high
broad valleys or plains, barren and forbidding,
the road seeks the Humboldt Valley, and follows
that river for two hundred and thirty miles. This
is the old emigrant route across the continent,
cheerless and dreary enough, indeed, but far more
tolerable than the old stage-road, which led us
south of Salt Lake, and crossed Nevada at about

56 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

its centre. The river is sluggish and muddy,
and fertilizes but a narrow strip of land in its
path ; it lies along a trough between high vol
canic table-lands on the north, and the ranges of
mountains that every fifteen or twenty miles lead
off south through Nevada, and out of whose snows
it gathers its feeble waters. Where the road enters
the valley wide and watery meadows spread out
a sickly oasis, and where it leaves it the same
phenomenon is repeated ; for the rest, there is little
to divert the traveller, nothing to inspire him but
the dry, clear air, and the rounded outlines of the
bare hills. Elko, where the main tributary of the
Humboldt comes out of the snow-capped East
Humboldt mountains, which are ten thousand to
twelve thousand feet high, and the backbone of
the great basin, is the point of departure for the
new silver-mines of "White Pine, the latest sen
sation of the sensation-loving Pacific coast. They
lie one hundred and forty miles south of the rail
road, in Southeastern Nevada, and if they hold

FROM SALT LAKE TO THE PACIFIC. 57

out as they have begun, with a pretty sure prom
ise of five millions the first year, they will force
the first southern cross railroad to the Colorado,
and checkmate Mormonism in the south.

A little farther out we touch a bit of emigrant
sentiment in Maggie Creek from the north, so
named for a pretty little Scotch girl, pet of one
of the early columns of the army of civilization
crossing this way years ago. Here is Carlin, a
town of hopes, as marking a point of departure
from the West for Idaho. Near here, too, if the
locomotive breaks down, the traveller may refresh
himself by climbing a little knob, a few rods from
the road, and find that nature has improved an
old crater by turning it into a mammoth hot sul
phur bath-tub. At Argenta he will be invited
to a stage ride of ninety miles up the Eeese Eiver
valley to Austin ; but if he has ever invested in
any of its mines, he will decline with a shudder,
and set his face resolutely west. The glory of
Austin is a trifle dimmed now; but it has had

58 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

its five or six thousand inhabitants, and was the
successor of " Washoe," and the forerunner of "White
Pine, in the series of mining movements that have
made Nevada, and even threaten to perpetuate her
existence as a State against every other Divine gift
and grace.

If we are bent on novelty, eighteen miles farther
west we shall switch off our car for half a day,
and borrow horses and gallop away south, among
the barren hills and more barren valleys, into the
Whirlwind Valley, where sulphurous waters beat
and bubble beneath the surface, like numerous
struggling hidden pumps or steam-engines, and
occasionally burst out in columns of burning
water and clouds of hot steam. Great, still pools
invite to a bath, yet mayhap would overtake the
bather with a scalding,xcrystallizing explosion, and
leave him a monumental statue of his temerity,
and a neW wonder of Nature in the Great Basin.
Frequently she revenges herself here for her stint
in all the ordinary natural graces by these deposits

FROM SALT LAKE TO THE PACIFIC. 59

of seething chemicals, that seem to be faint breath
ings of dying volcanoes, or the early efforts of new
ones.

Passing between the Trinity Mountains on the
north and the West Hurnboldt on the south, and
through a mining district of great hopes, large pros
pecting, and small returns, the road now leaves the
Humboldt River, which sneaks off among the hills
to die in the sands, and, crossing the Truckee Des
ert, forty miles of the dreariest country it has
yet passed, — arid, alkalish, and Arabic, the only
life, lizards and jackass rabbits, £he only landscape
feature, dry, brown, and bare mountains, the
only hope, the en^i, — the track brings us within
the waters and the winds of the California moun
tains.

Along the Truckee to Reno, we should there take
a day to see Virginia City and Gold Hill, fourteen
miles away on a branch road. The great Comstock
lode lies under these two towns ; they are built
along the mountain-side, upon the crust of the

• 60 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

great silver-mine of America, with open depths be
neath of from five hundred to one thousand feet,
and more miles of streets below than above ; and
they are the theatre of the most systematic and ex
tensive if not the most successful mining operations
in this country. The mines in this lode have
yielded over eighty millions in gold and silver
since 1860, .reaching sixteen millions, or their high
est year's return, in 1867, but falling off one half in
1868, and giving signs now of being nearly worked
out. It is in the hope of their renewal, at least of
a more profitable working, that Congress is besought
to give millions for a tunnel from far down the val
ley in under the mountain to the lode at a point
below its present excavations. But with any real
faith in the future possibilities of the mine, the
money for the work can be raised in California and
Nevada easier than it can be bored and bought
through Congress. The question at issue is one of
life or death to these towns; but they are well
worth even the hurried traveller's visit, as well for

FEOM SALT LAKE TO THE PACIFIC. 61 «

their historical relations to silver-mining, to the
settlement and organization of Nevada, and to the
Pacific Eailroad, as for offering the best opportunity
for observing the processes of quartz mining and
milling, and not a little, indeed, for the uniqueness
of their location and the surrounding natural ob
jects of interest.

The " Steamboat Springs " in the neighborhood
repeat the phenomena of Whirlwind Valley. Car
son, the capital, lies pleasantly in an adjoining val
ley nearer the great mountains ; but the mountains
themselves now invite us more strongly, and we
are soon moving swiftly among their gurgling waters
and soughing pines, — rarer water and grander forest
than we have seen before, — with towering walls of
rock and distant snow-fields, that are full of Alpine
memories. The snow-sheds over the track shut out
the best of the mountain scenery, and we must stop
near the summit of Donner Lake, a beautiful sheet
of water, already a favorite summer resort for Cali
fornia, and type of a series of grand lakes along the

62 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

upper Sierras, that add a rare charm to tlieir many
other scenic attractions. A day or two heiv will
make us familiar with the numerous beauties of
this mountain range, the grand forests, the castel
lated rocks, the wedded summer and winter, the
dry,^pure air, the mosses, the flowers and moun
tain fruits, and refresh us for the descent into
the hot suns and the brown valleys of California's
summer.

The railroad passage over these mountains is the
greatest triumph of engineering skill and labor on
the whole line. The track going west ascends
twenty-five hundred feet in fifty miles, and descends
six thousand feet in seventy-five miles. There are
over a mile of tunnels on the route, and a million
of dollars were spent in blasting-powder alone for
the construction. Majestic, frowning peaks hang
over us, deep, almost fathomless gorges lie beiimth
us, as we follow out and around the long ridges in
the descent into California ; and amid scenes more
bold and impressive than any we have yet passed

FROM SALT LAKE TO THE

through, we pass out into the lower valleys, and
reach California's capital, Sacramento.

Three lines invite us thence to San Francisco :
the river-boats ; a short-cut railroad to Vallejo at
the head of the bay, with a twenty-mile ferriage ; or
the Pacific Eailroad's proper prolongation around
through Stockton to Oakland, the rural suburb
and school-house of San Francisco, lying opposite,
and an hour's steamboat ride away, on the bay.
By and by rails will circuit the bay, and we may
go into the heart of San Francisco without " break
ing bulk" or touching water. Sacramento, Stock
ton, and Oakland are all worth a passing glance.
They are inland rural cities, like Cleveland and
Columbus in Ohio, or Hartford, Springfield, and
Worcester in New England, pleasantly located by
the water, brisk with local trade and developing
manufactures, mature in social and religious ele
ments, rich in many beautiful homes ; they rank
next to San Francisco among the towns of Califor
nia. Sacramento and Stockton stand respectively at

64 THE PACIFIC KAILROAD — OPEN.

the heads of the Sacramento and San Joaquin val
leys, which form, north and south, the great interior
basin and agricultural region of the State, and whose
waters uniting pour westward and circle San Fran
cisco with her wealth of bay.

VI.

SAN FRANCISCO.

"O UT it is at San Francisco that we shall linger
and take in the essence of California life, and
cast the future of California's wealth. First we
shall go to the Occidental, Cosmopolitan, Euss, or
Lick Hotels, and live at three dollars a day, — spe
cie, mind you, now, — as well as at the Tremont or
Fifth Avenue. Perhaps we shall have a mind to
try that " peculiar institution " of the city, the
"What Cheer House," where meals and lodgings
are fifty cents each, with a library and natural his
tory and mineralogical museums thrown in ; we
shall certainly want to test the French restaurants,
where, at sharp six and a private table, we may
have for a dollar and a half as good a dinner of
four or five courses, wine included, as Parker or
Delmonico will give us for a five-dollar bill.

66 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

The fruit surprise will have been broken to us as
we came down from the mountains ; but still the
wonder grows at the sight of the city fruit-stands,—
Sweetwater and Black Hamburg and Muscat grapes
at from five to twelve cents a pound, and poorer
qualities at half the price ; strawberries the season
through ; peaches and pears, more fair and luscious
and large than our senses were ever accustomed to ;
fresh figs, oranges, limes, and bananas, — all at
moderate prices, and all in such abundance on the
hotel tables and in the streets as to make a fruit-
famished New-Englander rub his eyes and prick his
flesh lest he be in a fairy-land dream. Then the
more substantial articles of food: here is flour at
half Atlantic prices, and vegetables of every kind,
spring, summer, and fall varieties, all at once in
fullest perfection; here are fresh salmon twelve
months in the year, at from ten to twenty cents a
pound, and smelts at eight cents, and fresh cod,
bass, shrimps, anchovies, soles, even herrings, every
treasure of the sea; and game as various, and at

SAN FEANCISCO. 67

prices that in many instances shame our Eastern
markets. The materials for living are in as rich
supply here as the art of their preparation is per
fect, and it will not take the thrifty mind long to
calculate that, so far as food is concerned, a family
can be supported more cheaply in San Francisco
than in New York or Boston. The rates quoted
are, of course, specie ; but wages and profits are
also in specie, and are higher, generally, than
currency wages and profits in Eastern cities.

The summer, we must remember, is apt to be
chillier than the winter in San Francisco ; and
though the morning sun may seduce us, it will
never do to venture out for the day in shoes and
white stockings or without overcoats. Montgomery
Street is Wall Street and Broadway united, and at
all hours of the day is full of business life and fash
ionable gayety, — the promenade of richly dressed
women, the busy arena of " cornering " and " cor
nered " men. To the right, chiefly on made land, flat
and regular, lie the heavy business squares of the

68 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

city ; to the left we mount, through retail shops to
homes, with weary legs and bended backs, the great
sand-hills that are such a blessing to street contrac
tors, such a trial to land-owners and tax-payers, yet
for us such a grand point of view over city and sur
roundings, over the wide range of interior waters
that gather here from all the State, and, with delay
ing, lingering movement, circle the city as with a
sea, and then reluctantly and yet with majestic
sweep pass through the line of rocks by the Golden
Gate into the Ocean. We must be sure and get this
grand view of city and bay from several points ;
it is a revelation in itself of the future Pacific Coast
Empire, certainly of San Francisco's security as its
metropolis.

The San Franciscans, having begun wrongly on
the American straight line and square system of
laying out the city, are tugging away at these hills
with tireless energy, to reduce the streets to a grade
that man and horse can ascend and descend without
double collar and breeching help ; but there is work

SAN FRANCISCO. 69

in it for many a generation to come. They would
have done better in accepting the situation at the
first, chosen Nature engineer and architect in chief,
and circled the hills with their streets and build
ings, instead of undertaking to go up and then
through them. Such a flank attack would have
been much more successful and economical and
given them a vastly more picturesque city.

In town, the buildings of the Mercantile and
Young Men's Christian Associations, and of the
California Bank, the financial king of the coast,
will attract us ; the school-houses and churches will
show that New England has been aggressive here
for years ; the machine-shops and woollen-mills will
suggest that we talk lower of Lowell and Holyoke
and Pittsburg ; and the stores and shops and little
factories of all sorts, springing into success all about
our wandering paths in city and suburbs, will prove
to us that here are a people not only capable of
going alone, but already doing so. San Francisco is
only twenty years old, yet she has one hundred and

70 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

fifty thousand inhabitants, a third of the population
of the whole State ; her manufactures aggregate
thirty millions a year, which exceeds the gold and
silver products of the State, and equals the wheat
crop ; her commerce employs from forty to fifty
steamships and three thousand sailing vessels ; and,
already the third, she will soon be the second com
mercial city of the nation. It is not best to burden
our soul with many statistics ; but if we expect to
get along without either a quarrel with or the con
tempt of our California friends, we must show that
we know on what this Caesar of cities is feeding, and
how fat she is sure to be. They talk lovingly as
well as grandly of " Frisco " out here, and they only
allow New York to be ranked as a rival when they
are in their most condescending moods. Boston is
where Starr King came from, and that is glory
enough for her, and she ought to be forever grate
ful to California for giving him fit field for his
powers, and so renown to liis birthplace.

In the clear, quiet morning, before the wind

SAN FRANCISCO. 71

sucks in over these sand-hills through the Golden
Gate, and the coarse dust blinds and stings, we
will drive out to the ocean at the Cliff House.
It is an hour's ride, and the road is smooth and
hard. We might well stop for an hour at Lone
Mountain Cemetery, and see how San Francisco
is making a fit burial-place, under adverse cir
cumstances, and pays tribute to the memory of
Broderick and James King of William, proud
martyrs to the political and social reformation
of the town and State. On the rocks before the
Cliff House, — where we shall take our second
breakfast or lunch, — an army of huge seals creep
up to sun themselves and bark, and great, gawky
pelicans flap about; and, getting down under the
bank, we lie on the hard sands, and try to realize
that this is the Pacific Ocean, and that beyond
lie the Sandwich Islands and China and Japan.
Driving back along the hard beach for miles,
our horses trotting to the roll of the ocean, we
attack the city from another quarter, see its proud

72 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

Orphan Asylum, its old Mission grounds, and
appreciate how much room for growth these wide-
rolling sand-hills afford.

The ever-present Chinese will pique our curi
osity. "We must look into their homes, compact,
simple, yet not over clean or sweet-smelling quar
ters, into their restaurants, and their theatre, if it
is open, and into their "Josh Houses." Their
stores invite us with open doors, and tempt our
pockets with all the various specialties of Chinese
manufacture at reasonable prices. The few are
men of stature and presence, with faces of refine
ment and gentle strength; the many go sneaking
about their work, a low type of man, physically and
mentally, that are imported here like merchandise,
and let out to labor under a system only half re
moved from slavery itself. But they are an impor
tant element in the industry and progress of all
this side of the continent. Except for their labor,
the Pacific Eailroad would have been at least two
years longer in building. Twelve thousand of

SAN FRANCISCO. 73

them have done nearly all the picking and drill
ing and shovelling and wheeling of the road from
Sacramento to Salt Lake. They furnish the prin
cipal labor in the factories ; they make cigars ; they
dig and work over neglected gold-gulches ; they
are cooks ; they count the specie in the banks ;
they almost monopolize the clothes washing and
ironing ; in all the lighter and simpler departments
of labor, where fidelity to a pattern, and not flexi
bility and originality of action are required, they
make the best and most reliable of workers. At
least seventy-five thousand of them are scattered
over these Pacific States west of Utah ; and though
our American and European laborers quarrel with
and abuse them ; though the law gives them no
rights but that of suffering punishment ; though
they bring no families, and seek no citizenship;
though all the Chinese women here are not only
commercial, but expressly imported as such ; though
they are mean and contemptible in their vices as
in their manners ; though they are despised and

74 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

kicked about on every hand, — still they come and
thrive, slowly better their physical and moral and
mental conditions, and supply this country with the
greatest necessity for its growth and prosperity, —
cheap labor. What we shall do with them is not
quite clear yet ; how they are to rank — socially,
civilly, and politically — among us, is one of the
nuts for our social science students to crack, — if
they can ; but now that we have depopulated Ire
land, and Germany is holding on to its own, and so
the old sources of our labor supply are drying up,
all America needs them, and, obeying the great nat
ural law of demand and supply, Asia seems almost
certain to pour upon and over us countless thou
sands of her superfluous, cheap-living, slow -chang
ing, unassimilating, but very useful laborers. And
we shall welcome, and then quarrel over and with
them, as we have done with their Irish predecessors.
Our vast grain, cotton, and fruit fields ; our extend
ing system of public works ; our multiplying sys
tem of manufactures, all need and can employ

SAN FEANCISCO. 75

them. But must they vote, and if so, to what
effect ?

The garden-yards of San Francisco homes, as of
other California towns, welcomed us lovingly, and
will bid us a sweet adieu. Great open conserva
tories, with daily artificial waterings in summer,
they maintain freshness of color and vigor of bloom
the whole year through. Eoses of every name and
variety, never dying and never resting ; heliotropes
and fuchsias climbing over fences and houses, —
in fact, all our New England June to October
blooms make perpetual summer gayety of color
and gratefulness of odor, at little outlay of means,
around every individual house. The climate of
the city is more even than of the country, — never
so warm, never so cold ; not soft or kind to invalids,
but a tonic and a preservative for the well, and
keeping labor up to its fullest capacity for the
whole twelvemonth.

Let us look into Wells, Fargo, & Co.'s express on
Montgomery Street, before we leave San Francisco,

76 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

for an illustration of how much more thoroughly
these new people on the Pacific coast meet the
exacting wants of our civilization than either
Europe or the Eastern States. Here, for ten cents
(three to the Government for the permission and
seven for the work), your letter is taken and carried
anywhere on the broad continent, delivered, if its
direction bears a local habitation and a name, and
mailed in the nearest post-office, if it has not ; here
you can ship merchandise, small or great, to any
known spot on the- globe's surface ; here you can
buy gold or greenbacks ; here draw on your Eastern
correspondents, and receive the cash down ; here
they will bargain to carry anything for you any
where, yourself included ; to bring you anything,
send for anything, sell you anything, supply you
with information on any given topic ; and generally
set you up in knowledge, money, business, and char
acter. Our Eastern express companies never began
to make themselves half so useful or omnipresent
San Francisco will impress all her visitors deeply

SAN FRANCISCO. 77

in many ways. We see it is very new ; yet we see
it is very old. Civilization is better organized here
in some respects than in any other city except
Paris ; some of its streets look as if transplanted
from a city of Europe ; others are in the first stages
of rescue from the barbaric desert. Asia, Europe,
and America have here met and embraced each
other ; yet the mark of America is over and upon
all ; an America in which the flavor of New Eng
land can be tasted above all other local elements ;
an America in which the flexibility, the adapt
ability, and the all-penetrating, all-subduing power
of its own race are everywhere and in everything
manifest.

VII.

CALIFORNIA AT LARGE.

of San Francisco California has
many a choice wonder in nature, many a
rare development of industry to show its visitors.
But summer tourists may be choice in their selec
tions. A few days for railroad excursions into the
valleys of the coast mountains about San Francisco
will show us some of the grand wheat-fields, the
orchards, and the vineyards; will exhibit the ad
vantages of an agriculture that can begin ploughing
and planting in December, keep them up till April,
and then begin to harvest, and keep at that till
October, with no barns necessary for housing ani
mals or crops ; will open to ns beautiful natural
groves of oaks ; will reveal to us charming little
nooks of rural homes among the adjoining hills ;
will invite us to health-giving sulphur-baths and

CALIFORNIA AT LARGE. 79

soda-springs more delightfully located than Sharon
or Saratoga ; will give us a peep into the gardens
of the old Catholic missionaries among the Indians,
now overgrown with peach, plum, and fig trees,
where we may have the novelty of picking the ripe
figs from trees nearly as large as the big elms on
Boston Common ; will — if we go far enough — a
two days' ride — take us into the wild valley of the
Geysers, where a miniature hell sends up its sul
phurous waters, and burns and poisons all the earth
and air within its reach, and where you peer into
each crevice and around every corner in sure faith
of seeing the Monster of Evil switching his tail
in vengeful activity ; again will carry us into the
grand forests of redwood in the coast mountains, —
sponsor and promise of the mammoth trees of the
Sierras, — a light, delicate, reddish cedar that enters
largely into the lumber supply of the San Francisco
market; will introduce our curious steps to the
great quicksilver mine of New Almaden, the rival
of the Almaden mine of Spain ; or will set us down

80 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

under the mountains by the ocean's shore at Santa
Cruz, the Nice of our Pacific coast, where the pure
air breathes soft and low, and invalids rejoice in
relief. Farther down, Los Angelos invites us, with
stories of the tropical wealth of Southern California,
of grape-vines as trees, of orange and olive, of lemon
and banana groves, of cotton plantations, of agricul
tural wealth unbounded, of a climate so dry and
even, so soft and sweet, as to surpass Italy's.

But most of us will wait for the Southern Pacific
Railroad, already moving out from both sides, to in
troduce us to this latter region of almost fabulous
wealth and beauty; and, after a hasty run, with
wide-open eyes, into Napa, Sonoma, and Santa
Clara valleys, perhaps into that of Eussian Eiver,
we shall prepare for the one great wonder which
we came out to see, — the Yosemite Valley. For
this, ten days, a full purse, and Professor Whitney's
new and model guide-book and maps, one of the
best incidental gifts of the geological survey of the
State, — these and a camping suit, with duster and

CALIFORNIA AT LARGE. 81

overcoat, are essential. The best way to go is by
night boat or early morning cars to Stockton ; and
then by stage one hundred miles up the San Joaquin
valley, — 0 how dry and dusty ! — through rich
wheat-fields, into and through, too, that magnificent
ruin, that football of Wall Street, Fremont's Mari
posa estate. In one of the dying villages of this
principality, Bear Valley or Mariposa, saddle-horses
and guides are procured. If possible, add tents,
blankets, and food, and travel independent of
ranches or hotels. The first day, after leaving the
stage, and going up »into the mountains, we shall
reach White and Hatch's for dinner, to which point
we may, if we choose, ride in wagons, and get to
Clark's ranch for supper. Here we shall wish, of
course, to stop over for a day, to see the Big Trees
of the Mariposa Grove. These are four or five
miles' distance from Clark's, and> if possible, we per
suade him to go with us. He is the State's agent
for the care of the Yosemite Valley and the Grove,
and a genuine child of the great nature around him ;

-'*&£?*$*

82 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

and whether within his wide-spreading cabins, or
under his protecting haystack, or in your own
tent by the side of his grand open-air fires, he
will care for us as father for children, and be proud
to have us praise his trees, his river, and his
mountains.

Another day — the fourth — takes us into the
grand Valley, after a hundred miles of wagon and
forty of saddle riding from Stockton; every man
and woman of us making sure to dwell long upon
the first views that are opened to us as we come out
of the woods, and look over into the depths below,
and on to the heights above and beyond. Only
seeing is believing what this gorge in the mountains
reveals. It is Nature speaking to man in a way
.that proves and exalts her supremacy. There are
simple hotels here ; but if we have tents and blan
kets, we should pass each of our three days and
nights at different points in the Valley, one in the
lower part, under El Capitan, another where the
music of the Yosemite Fall will lull us to sleep, and

CALIFORNIA AT LARGE. 83

the third by the lake, or in the neighborhood of the
Vernal Fall. All the main features of interest are
within a ten-mile line, and the three days will give
us ample time to see them comfortably. But these
will hold not an hour too much ; and no week in
any life could be more memorable than the one that
should be spent under the rocks and by the side of
the waters of the Yosemite.

Another week may be also profitably spent by
the lover of rare and majestic nature among the
High Sierras circling the Yosemite Valley. Here,
upon and among mountains from eight thousand to
thirteen thousand feet high, we find beautiful lakes
and bright rivers, grand rock and mountain scen
ery, and a repetition in miniature of the Yosemite
Valley itself, caUed the Hetch-Hetchy Valley ; and
if we choose to prolong our ride down the Nevada
side of the mountains to Mono Lake, we shall dis
cover in that sheet of water, fourteen miles long
by nine wide, truly a Sea of Death. No living
thing can exist in it ; its waters will consume

84 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

leather, and thoroughly decompose the human body
in a few weeks ; and though it receives various pure
streams from out the mountains, it poisons all from
its fountains of death, and, like Salt Lake, has no
apparent outlet, and is even more of a puzzle to
geologists and chemists than that better known in
land sea.

The return trip from the Yosemite should be
made by the Coulterville trail and road, keeping
our original outfit with us. There are ten miles
more of horseback riding on this route ; but it in
troduces us to a change of scenery, and a remark
able cave, called Bower's Cave, and invites us by a
short detour to visit the Calaveras Grove of Big
Trees, the first discovered and best known of these
forest wonders. There are some eight collections of
these mammoth trees scattered along the Sierra
Mountains within a distance of one hundred and
fifty miles ; the tallest trees yet measured are full
three hundred and twenty-five feet high, and are in
the Calaveras collection ; and the largest in circum-

CALIFORNIA AT LARGE. 85

ference are in the Mariposa Grove, and measure over
ninety feet ; while the greatest age that any yet
scientifically tested in that respect can claim is
about thirteen hundred years. Their beauty of
shape and color is as striking as their size ; and no
visitor to California will omit them in his tour of
its curiosities.

Though the mining interests of California *have
fallen behind those of agriculture and manufactures,
and seem destined to still greater decay, there are
some features of them decidedly worth a stranger's
study. Grass Valley is the centre of the most
extensive successful gold quartz mining; and its
operations are not dissimilar to those of Central City
in Colorado and Virginia City in Nevada. But the
disembowelling of the dead rivers of California for
the loose deposits of gold left in their beds by the
convulsions of nature in ages long past, the deep
excavations, and the grand hydraulic processes re
sorted to for the purpose of reaching them, develop
both natural phenomena and great ingenuity and

86 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

boldness in man, that rank among the curiosities of
the State. These dead rivers are not dry, open beds ;
but huge strata of sand, gravel, and quartz, filling
up what were once river channels, and lying now
from a hundred to a thousand feet beneath the foot
hills of the mountains. They lie parallel with the
Sierra Nevadas, and diagonally to the rivers now
comi^ out of the mountains ; they were sponged
up and filled up by the upheaval of the hills ; and
their place was made known by the modern streams
cutting down through them, and revealing on the
walls of the canyon the peculiar gold-bearing ma
terials that now occupy their beds. Out of these
dead rivers three hundred millions in gold have
been taken, and they still yield eight millions a
year. Much capital and labor are requisite to carry
on mining operations in them : tunnels are run
along their lines, and great streams of water are
brought down from the mountains, through miles of
ditches and troughs, and poured, by the aid of hose,
with many times more force than the streams from

CALIFORNIA AT LARGE. 87

a steam fire-engine, upon a hillside, to tear it to
pieces and get at the gold materials, or into the gold-
beds themselves to wash out the precious particles.
The ruin and waste that such operations spread
around are frightful ; rivers are choked up with the
sands and stones sent down by these washings ; and
broad valleys of alluvial are made a desert by the
overspreading tide of hills they set afloat.

But it is no longer proper to consider California
as especially a mining State. Many of the mining
villages and camps along under the mountains have
been wholly deserted ; nearly all are decreasing in
population — it is very sad and very odd to see so
new a country so soon old and decaying ; and the
agriculture and commerce and manufactures of the
State are each, even now, in advance of the mining
interest in wealth and productiveness. The mining
counties have fallen off twenty-five per cent in
population since 1860, while that of the agricultural
counties has doubled, and that of San Francisco
trebled in the same time. The agricultural products

88 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

of 1868 footed up sixty millions of dollars, against
twenty-six millions in metals. There are thirty
million grape-vines growing in the State ; and the
wine manufactured in 1866 amounted to from three
to four millions of gallons, and in 1868 to eight
millions. The wine was at first crude and coarse,
but, as the .virulent richness of the soil is tempered
by use, and greater care and science are used in the
manufacture, its quality rapidly improves. Finer
kinds of the grape than the old Mission are coming
rapidly into cultivation, and will still more surely
improve the quality and diversify the varieties of
the wine. The wheat crop of California in 1868
was fifteen millions of bushels ; the barley, eight
millions, — this grain being fed freely to horses
on the Pacific coast ; the wrool, fifteen millions of
pounds ; the butter, five millions, and the cheese,
three millions, and still much butter and cheese are
imported from the East. The exports of domestic
produce, aside from metals, amounted to seventeen
millions in 1868 ;• the chief item being wheat, of

CALIFORNIA AT LARGE. 89

which no other State in the Union raised so large a
surplus in that year, and, with a contribution of four
million bushels of surplus from Oregon, California
is holding over for higher prices, or the contingency
of a bad year, probably close on to a two years' sup
ply, for her own wants.

With such suddenly developed, yet securely held
wealth as these few facts illustrate, the future of
California looms beTore the visitor with proportions
that astound and awe. Her nature is as boundless
in its fecundity and variety as it is strange and
startling in its forms. While Switzerland has only
four mountains that reach as high as thirteen thou
sand feet, California has one or two hundred, and
one, Mount Whitney, that soars to fifteen thousand
feet, and is the highest peak of the Eepublic. She
has a waterfall fifteen times as high as Niagara.
All climates are her own ; any variety which her
long stretch north and south does not present, her
mountains and valleys introduce. Dead volcanoes
and sunken rivers abound in her mountains ; the

90 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

largest animal of the continent makes his covert
in her chaparral ; the second largest bird of the
world floats over her plains for carrion ; the bones
of the oldest man have been dug out of her depths ;
the biggest nugget of gold (weighing 195 pounds
and worth $ 37,400) has been found among her
gold deposits; she has lakes of such rarity that
a sheet of paper will sink in their waters, so vora
cious that they will eat up a man, boots, breeches,
and all, in thirty days, so endowed in their foun
tains that they will supply the world's apothecaries
with borax, sulphur, and soda ; she has mud vol
canoes and the Yosemite Valley ; she grows beets
of 120 pounds, cabbages of 75, onions of 4, turnips
of 26, and watermelons of 80 pounds, and has a
grape-vine 15 inches thick, and bearing 6,500
pounds in one season. Her men are the most en
terprising and audacious ; her women the most self-
reliant and the most richly dressed ; and her chil
dren the stoutest, sturdiest, and the sauciest of any
in all the known world ! Let us worship and move
on!

VIII.

\

THE SANDWICH ISLANDS.

r I ^0 us of the East the Sandwich Islands are
a remote foreign kingdom, where our whalers
refit, and to the conversion of whose heathen we
dedicated all the sanctified pennies of our child
hood. But here in California they are counted
as neighbors, dependencies, ay, surely and soon
possessions of the American Eepublic. We have
converted their heathen ; we have possessed their
sugar-plantations ; we furnish the brains that carry
on their government, and the diseases that are de
stroying their natives ; we want the profit on their
sugars and their tropical fruits and vegetables ; why
should we not seize and annex the islands them
selves ? At any rate, the familiarity with which
the Eastern visitor finds " the Islands " spoken of
in California, the accounts he receives of their

92 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

strange scenery, their wonderful volcanoes, their
delightful climate, — all will strongly invite him
to make them a visit. Indeed, though his portfolio
may contain choicest specimens of coloring and of
contour, — new harmonies of tint, new measures of
grandeur, fresh surprises of form, — gathered in so-
journings among the mountains and parks of Col-
orada, or in the deep canyons of the Sierra, yet he
must not close it feeling that he has exhausted the
revelations that this Western World has to make to
him, until he has added a few sketches at least of
the yet more unique scenery of the Hawaiian Isl
ands. So, if time permits, let us see the utmost
possibilities and varieties of the Republic, and de
vote to these at least a couple of months.

This little group of breezy, sunny islands, stand
ing like an outpost of the great army of islands,
little and big, that guard the eastern coast of Asia,
yet offering itself as a kind of neutral ground on
which the Eastern and Western Worlds have met
and joined hands, lies about two thousand miles

THE SANDWICH ISLA

southwest of San Francisco, and is brought into
close communication with it by means of a semi
monthly steamer. A voyage of ten days, — days
of uninterrupted sunshine and serenity on this most
smiling of seas, — and the passenger will find him
self rounding the bold, bare headland of Diamond
Point, which stands guard over the little bay and
city of Honolulu. The first view of this miniature
capital of a petty kingdom can hardly fail to disap
point us ; it is but a village of unpretending wooden
houses, clustered for the most part around the bay,
and stretching out, here and there, a long arm up
into the hills toward which it slopes. But one has
not come so many thousand miles from home to see
a counterpart of Boston or New York, and the first
walk on shore will offer a suggestion at least of the
pleasure that awaits him in the thousand novel
shapes and aspects of a changed hemisphere. After
two or three weeks here, spent in early morning or
evening gallops into the wonderful valleys of the
range of hills that cut the island in two, varied with

94 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

climbs to the different summits, from which, on each
side of you, the little island seems to roll away and
leap and tumble in great billows of green, into the
sea ; and with the day rounded in on cool and fra
grant verandas, among these intelligent, hospitable
people, with whom kindness to the stranger is the
first of duties, — the visitor will find it hard to
believe that the other islands can promise greater
attractions.

The first expedition usually made is to the active
volcano Kilauea, situated on the Island of Hawaii,
the easternmost of the group. For this the indis
pensable articles by way of outfit are, first, a water
proof (in case of a lady, a bloomer dress of heavy
woollen material) and a saddle, as all the journeying
must be made on horseback ; to these may be added
whatever articles of comfort or convenience the in
dividual taste may suggest ; but it is desirable that
all should not exceed the capacity of a pair of sad
dle-bags. To sail direct to Hilo, which is the most
common course, instead of landing on the other side

THE SANDWICH ISLANDS. 95

of the island at Kawaihae, and making a partial cir
cuit of the island, is to rob one's self of a rich and
rare experience of pleasure. It is a journey of three
or four days, and attended with some fatigue and
discomfort, but to the enthusiastic sight-seer the
^annoyances will prove far more than overpaid by
the pleasures. After a day of monotonous scenery,
the road winds round the base of Mauna Kea, and
comes out close to the sea ; and then begins the
romantic part of it, through a succession of preci
pices, — or great cracks, they might be called, —
from one hundred to five hundred feet deep, and
so steep that General Putnam's feat of riding down
stairs seemed nothing to the perils of such a de
scent. But these palis, as the natives call them,
are as beautiful as they are appalling ; their steep
sides are covered with every shade of green, from
the silver-leaved kukui to the dark purple fronds
of pulu fern, — masses and tangles of vines and
trees, and at the bottom of each a roaring, tumbling
brook, or narrow arm of the sea. On this side of

96 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

the island, also, lie the rich sugar-plantations under
whose hospitable roofs the traveller must look to
find his shelter and his victual.

But Hilo will not suffer him to pass her by
without stopping to pay a tribute of admiration to
her beautiful bay and cultivated and generous in
habitants, giving him at the same time the oppor
tunity to take breath before the last and longest
day of his journey. Kilauea lies four thousand
feet high on the side of the lofty Mauna Loa, and
a gradual ascent of thirty miles lands you suddenly
on the edge of its enormous, yawning chasm. So
vast is it that it is impossible to get any idea of its
gigantic proportions till you have climbed down its
almost perpendicular walls, and traversed its ten-
mile circuit. The condition of its activity varies
greatly at different times ; sometimes a chain of
fiery lakes, connected by subterraneous channels,
hems in the molten mass ; sometimes it overleaps
its barriers, and pours out rivers of fire over the
floor of the crater. No words can depict the awful

THE SANDWICH ISLANDS. 97

fascination of those fiery caldrons, boiling and
hissing and roaring, and tossing up fountains of
liquid flame. The most effective time to see them
is at evening. Then the whole sky is lighted up
with the reflection of the fire, and the surrounding
darkness serves to heighten the effect of the glow
ing, seething mass.

In striking contrast with Kilauea stands the stu
pendous extinct volcano of Haleakala, almost the
greater wonder of the two. It occupies the eastern
half of the Island of Maui, and is a cone of ten
thousand feet high. Its crater is three times the
size of Kilauea, — that is, thirty miles in circum
ference, — and more than a thousand feet deep.
Parties who visit this are accustomed to take their
camping equipage, and to pass a night on the top
of the mountain, not only because the excursion
would be too fatiguing for a single day, but also
because, through the day the crater is filled with
light clouds and mist, which only depart with the
setting sun. No scene could possibly combine more
7

98 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

elements of the grand and the beautiful than this
does ; the soft flocculent masses of clouds silently
rolling in and out of these Tartarean depths,
through the great gap in the mountain-wall, toward
the sea, occasionally breaking to reveal the fright
ful darkness beneath ; then, as the sun sinks, it
touches the whole cloud-landscape with a rose-
gray glow ; long lines of trade-wind cloudlets, like
fleets of phantom ships, go scudding over the sea ;
the three lofty summits of Hawaii, and the lesser
heights of the islands surrounding Maui, repeat the
sunset tints, and the whole seems like a scene of
enchantment. Maui also can boast of a valley that
deserves to be mentioned by the side of the Yo-
semite, though different enough in outline and in
coloring to forbid rivalry ; and these, together with
the most picturesque mountain group of all the
islands, the richest sugar-plantations, and the most
generous and free-handed proprietors, make for
Maui the greenest spot in the memory of every
traveller.

THE SANDWICH ISLANDS. 99

It is impossible,, in the limits of such a brief
sketch as this, to do more than roughly outline
the chief points of interest of these far-off islands.
The climate, too, lends its subtle attraction, being
just that delicious blending of heat and coolness
that leaves one puzzled to know whether he is only
comfortably warm or refreshingly cool. One who
has two or three months of leisure cannot better
bestow it than in going to see all this for himself ;
and he will obtain from the warm-hearted island
ers every possible help and suggestion he may
need to make his journey easy and profitable, with
only one drawback, and that is, that at every place
he may stop, with the exception of Honolulu, he
must accept the freely-offered hospitality of the
foreign residents, nor dare to make any return,
except in friendship's coin.

IX.

OREGON. — PUGET'S SOUND. — THE COLUMBIA
RIVER.

' I ^HE Islands, however, involve, with the rest,
a full five or six months, and cannot be put
into the two or three months' plan with which we
left home. But Oregon, the Columbia Eiver, and
Idaho can ; and if you please we will go home that
way. It will take but two weeks longer than the
straight railroad line back, and even the most super
ficial circuit of our New West will be incomplete
without it. Good ocean steamers will cany us
around to Portland, Oregon, from San Francisco
within two days ; but if the roads are tolerable and
the stage service what it should be, we shall prefer
to go overland. The cars take us up the grand
valley of the Sacramento through Marysville to
Oroville, and leave about five hundred miles for

OREGON. 101

the stage. We ride then through broad, alluvial
meadows, golden brown with wheat, enlivened by
a frequent old oak grove ; past Chico, where, if
possible, we should linger to see General Bidwell,
and his twenty-thousand-acre farm, with gardens
and orchards to correspond ; past Ked Bluffs, the
head of navigation on the Sacramento Eiver, where
the widow and daughters of old John Brown live in
quiet village honor and usefulness, nursing the sick^
teaching the young; into narrowing valleys, the
Coast Eange and the Sierras meeting and embra
cing each other ; over pleasant hills with occasional
plantations of apple, pear, and grape, growing here
most luxuriantly ; along under the grand shadows
of Mount Shasta, monarch of the Northern Sierras,
and the Mont Blanc of California ; over higher
hills and into the cross valleys of Northern Cali-*
fornia and Southern Oregon, — the Trinity, Kla-
math, Eogue, and Umpqua Eivers coursing wildly
to the sea, — many a gem of oak grove on the
way, the green misletoe and the gray moss pen-

102 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

dent from the branches, and the gay madrona-tree
Ugh ting up the scene ; many a broad interval n
of grass and grain welcoming flocks or reapers ;
through and in sight of forests of pines, cedars,
spruces, balsams, birches, and ash, greener and
more diversified than those of California, and
grander in individual size and collective extent
than those of the Alleghanies or the White Hills,
— stopping in the Umpqua valley to have an
hour's chat on the philosophy and practice of
politics with Jesse Applegate, a wise old pioneer
of Oregon, — finding everywhere beauty, novelty,
and exhilaration in nature; and come out at last
into the garden of Oregon, the Willamette valley.
Xever elsewhere have our eyes looked upon a scene
of picturesque rural beauty like that spread before
us, as the stage comes out of the hills and woods,
and we overlook the broad meadows, with their
wide, open groves, rising and falling in softly un
dulating lines, and the hills standing far apart to
frame the picture. The parks of Old England,

OREGON. — PUGET'S SOUND. 103

the valleys of New England, the prairies of Illi
nois, the mountains of Colorado and California,
all seem to have contributed their special ele
ments, their choicest treasures, to make up this
scene. Through this valley of the Willamette
(or Wallomet, as some of the Oregonians insist
on spelling the name), one hundred and twenty-
five miles long and fifty miles wide, the railroad
or the steamboat may quicken our speed ; but we
shall wish to linger over its wealth of beauty
and wealth of agriculture. Prosperous villages
lie along the river, and sixty thousand people
already live upon the soil. Wheat, corn, and
fruit are the chief products ; and there is no
stint in the return.

Portland lies on the Willamette, just before it
enters the Columbia, has from eight to nine thou
sand inhabitants, who pay almost a New England
respect to the Sabbath, and dreams sometimes that
it is a rival to San Francisco. It would be well if,
now we are here, we could run across Washington

104 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

Territory, — a two days' ride through thicker forests
of larger trees even than any we have before seen,
always excepting the grand mammoth groves of Cal
ifornia, — and visit that northern wealth of water,
Puget's Sound. Steamboats carry us through it to
Victoria, on Vancouver's Island, and back, and the
ride is a revelation of new beauties and new wealth.
Magnificent forests line its shores ; the largest ships
can move close to its banks ; there is lumber here
for all nations and all time ; snow-covered moun
tains, grand in form, smiling in visage, rise on the
right and left; and we come back penetrated with
a new wonder at the far-reaching bounty of our
Northwest, and a trifle impatient that the British
drum-beat is even temporarily sounded over a por
tion of such waters, over an acre of such excellent
forests for ship-timber and profitable lumber gener
ally. A week's time would suffice to make this ex
cursion from Portland to Victoria and back, and
most recompensing investment would it prove.
But we promised to return homeward by the

THE COLUMBIA RIVER. 105

Columbia Eiver. Elegant steamers convey us into
and up its mile-and-a-half broad sea-sweep. Soon
we pass Fort Vancouver, where Grant, Hooker, and
McClellan all served apprenticeship, and Grant dis
tinguished himself by raising a crop of potatoes ;
and it was while here, too, that our new President
left the army, to come back in the hour of national
distress, — rescued himself, rescuing us. Mount
Hood appears next upon the scene, the pride of
Oregon, and fit rival to California's Shasta, — in
deed, a grand pyramid of snow in the distance ;
but soon now we enter the exciting theatre of con
flict between river and rock, that distinguishes the
Columbia Eiver above all other known rivers, and
endows it with a beauty and a grandeur that the
Ehine, the Hudson, and the Northern Mississippi
can hardly unitedly claim. Two short railroads
of five and fourteen miles convey passengers and
freight around rapids and rocks in the river, where
boats cannot pass, to other boats of equal excel
lence above.

X.

IDAHO. — SHOSHONE FALLS.

"T^AST of the mountains the close, rich forests
disappear, the hills are bare and l>rown as in
Nevada, and the boat-ride grows monotonous. At
Umatilla or Walla- Walla, some three hundred miles
above Portland, we come to the present head of
navigation, and take stages for a ride of five hun
dred miles over the Blue Mountains, through the
Grande Konde valley, along the valley of the Snake
Eiver, where steamboats can and may soon help us
over another one hundred and fifty miles of the
way, into and through Idaho, and on to Salt Lake
and the railroad again. That portion of this ride
over the Blue Mountains and through the Grande
Eonde Valley is most satisfactory for scenery. The
ascent and descent of the mountains are easy, the
roads hard and smooth, and the views, near and re-

IDAHO. — SHOSHONE FALLS. 107

mote, very grand and inspiring. Gorges and parks,
forests and meadows alternate with fine panoramic
effect ; and a bath in the warm sulphur springs by
the roadside will relieve the weariness of the body.
Through Idaho, whose gold-mines seem to hesitate
in their productiveness, and whose towns are either
fading or at a standstill, and along the Upper Snake,
the country bears a dull, barren uniformity, and
high volcanic table-lands begin to appear and
absorb the landscape.

Here, within from one hundred to one hundred
and thirty miles of the north end of Salt Lake,
are to be found several peculiar and grand freaks
of Nature, which the traveller should leave the
stage for a day or two to observe. The first, com
ing east, is the canyon of the Malade Eiver, a
branch of the Snake on the north ; for miles it
flows through a narrow gorge of solid lava rock, in
some places fifty feet deep, and yet only eight or
ten feet across, the confined waters coursing rapidly
and angrily along below. Next, at Snake Eiver

108 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

Ferry, the waters of its Lost Eiver Branch, having
sunk beneath the ground a long distance back,
emerge to light again just at the point of junction,
and pour over rocks one hundred and fifty feet
high into the main stream. Ten or fifteen miles
from this point, though only seven miles from the
stage-road at another place, are the Shoshone Falls
in the Snake Eiver itself. They rank next to
Niagara in the list of the world's waterfalls, and
by some visitors are held to be entitled to the first
rank in majesty of movement and grandeur of sur
rounding feature. All about is volcanic rock,—
wide lava fields give an awful silence for this
grand voice of Nature to speak in. The river, two
hundred yards wide, deep and swift, has worn itself
a channel one hundred feet down into the rock ;
then, as if in preparation for the grand leap, it
indulges in a series of cascades of from thirty to
sixty feet in height, and, now gathering into an un
broken body, it swoops down, in a grand horseshoe
shape, twelve hundred feet across, a two hundred

IDAHO. — SHOSHONE FALLS. 109

and ten feet fall, into the bottomless pit below.
The river is not so wide as Niagara, nor the volume
of water so great, but the fall is higher, and quite
as beautiful. It is difficult to get near to the falls,
because of the high, rough, and perpendicular
walls of rock that guard the stream; but they
Can be reached with hard climbing both above and
below. A perpendicular pillar of rock rises one
hundred feet in the midst of the rapids above ;
islands halt in the stream just over the cataract ;
and two huge rocky columns stand on each side of
the falls, as if to sentinel the scene, and guard it
from sacrilegious hands. Either by a day's detour
in the trip from the Columbia Eiver to Salt Lake,
as we have suggested, or by a special journey of
three or four days from the railroad at the latter
point, these distinctive and distinguished marvels
of nature will soon be freely visited by Pacific
Eailroad travellers, and the details of their sublim
ity more thoroughly catalogued by pen and pho
tograph for the general public.

XI.

MONTANA AND HOME.

"XT OW again at Salt Lake, — time, money, and
disposition holding out, and the season favor
able, — there will, indeed, be great temptation to
round our travel with the stage ride through Mon
tana to Fort Benton on the Upper Missouri, and
follow down that river in one of its steamboats to
Omaha again. It is about three hundred miles by
stage to Virginia City, Montana, four hundred and
twenty-five to Helena, and near six hundred to Fort
Benton, and the fare through one hundred and forty
dollars. The roads are excellent, the stage service
the best on the continent, and the scenery across
the high, open plains, along the fertile valleys, and
through the favorable passes in the upper liocky
Mountain ranges, fresh, picturesque, and every way
inviting. Colorado is scarcely more favorable for

MONTANA AND HOME. Ill

farming and stock-growing purposes than Montana.
The ride is among the head- waters of the Missouri
Kiver, and grand mountains follow as guides and
guards, and yet not to obstruct, along the entire
pathway. In Montana, too, we can see mining in
all its phases, more readily than perhaps anywhere
else, — by paning, " long toms," sluicing, hydraulics,
and quartz-mills ; each and all are in operation
there now and near together. The boat ride down
the Missouri will be long, slow, and tedious ; the
stream is muddy, the banks for the most part high,
barren, and uninviting; the time will perhaps be
ten days or two weeks; but the experience will
prove very instructive, and the journey will afford
opportunity for reaping and digesting all the sum
mer harvest of the senses. Bancroft Library

Or, postponing Montana for a more convenient
season, and indulging our unsatisfied curiosity in
another peep over Brigham Young's garden and
harem wall, and our weary bodies in another bath
in the warm pools of fresh sulphur water in the

112 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

suburbs of Salt Lake City, we close our Pacific
Railroad excursion by a two days' ride in the cars,
back over the mountains and across the plains to
Omaha, which places us again on the threshold of
the East and of Home.

Over all this country, through which we have so
hastily travelled, the careful hand of science has
yet but little passed. Professor Whitney has done
much to map the past and present of California,
and inventory its varied resources ; if sustained by
the State, he will complete a work that will be of
incalculable benefit to its people, and a great gift to
the scientific knowledge of the world. Several
young graduates of his survey, with aid from the
general government, are fast completing a thorough
scientific examination and report of a belt across
the continent, along the fortieth parallel, or the
line of the Pacific Railroad. This will prove of
great interest and value. Professor Powell, an en
thusiast in geology and natural history from Illi
nois, spent last summer, with a party of assistants,

MONTANA AND HOME. 113

in a scientific exploration of the parks and moun
tains of Colorado, and, after wintering in the wilds
of Western Colorado, he proposes this season to ex
tend his observations into the almost unknown land
of Southwestern Colorado and Northeastern Arizona,
and perhaps test the safety of the passage of the
great canyon of the Colorado of the West. Here
lies, as yet, the grand geographical secret of our
Western empire. For three hundred miles this
river, which drains the western slopes of the Eocky
Mountains for several hundred miles, is confined
within perpendicular rock walls, averaging three
thousand feet in height, down which there is no safe
descent, up which there is no climbing, between
which the stream runs furiously. One man is re
ported to have gone through it, and come out alive ;
to explore it, and report upon it, is the dangerous
yet fascinating undertaking of Professor Powell.
For the rest, our scientific knowledge of the moun
tains and plains and deserts of our far West de
pends upon the reports of government engineers,

114 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

and the railroad surveys, — valuable, indeed, but
incomplete, and provoking rather than allaying the
curiosity of the scholar.

The Indians are not likely to interfere with
Pacific Eailroad travel. The fears of travellers
may be spared on that account. Neither among
the parks and mountains of Colorado, nor in the
valleys of California and Oregon, nor in the Sierra
Nevada mountains, shall we be likely to meet
them, save as humble, peaceful supplicants for
food and tobacco. They may appear on the routes
through Idaho and Montana. But greater danger
is to be apprehended from " the road agents," or
highway robbers. In Nevada and California, and
in Idaho, they have occasionally introduced the
Mexican banditti style of operating on travellers ;
rarely killing their victims, and only making sure
to get all their money and watches, and whatever
treasure the express messenger on the stage may
have in hand. This Western country is destined,
probably, to go through an era of that sort of

MONTANA AND HOME. 115

crime. The vicious and vagrant populations that
followed the progress of the railroad in its build
ing, and have been set loose by its completion,
and the similar elements turned adrift by the
failure of mining enterprises, both furnish the
needy and desperate characters for the business.
Not unlikely they may grow bold enough to stop
and " go through " a railroad train. Short and
sharp should be the dealing with this class of
marauders, when they begin their career, and then
it will speedily close. But the chance of being
victims of their interference with our journeyings
is not great enough to excuse any of us in stay
ing at home, when such inviting pleasures and
such wide-reaching experiences as the Pacific
Railroad, open, offers to us all, lay along, around,
and beyond its track.

These are but scant outlines of the new and
larger half of our Republic. We have given lines
where only pages could properly picture a scene,
describe an experience, or develop a capacity.

116 THE PACIFIC RAILROAD — OPEN.

Arizona, New Mexico, and Lower California —
three territories as remarkable, perhaps, in natural
wonders and resources as any in our New West —
have hardly been touched upon ; but only specu
lators or adventurers will be readily tempted into
their difficulties and dangers now; and we fear
the early travellers by the new pathway of iron
will be appalled by the variety of entertainment
to which we here invite them. But if they start
with the protest that we have promised too much,
they will return with the confession that the half
was not told them.

Whatever we go out to see, whatever pleasures
we enjoy, whatever disappointments suffer, this,
at least, will be our gain, — a new conception of
the magnitude, the variety and the wealth, in
nature and resource, in realization and in promise,
of the American Republic, — a new idea of what
it is to be an American citizen. He is past ap
peal and beyond inspiration who is not broad
ened, deepened, greatened, every way, by such ex-

MONTANA AND HOME. 117

perience of the extent, capacity, and opportunity
of this Nation, and who does not henceforth per
form his duties as its citizen with increased fidel
ity and a more sacred awe of his trust.

APPENDIX.

OUTLINE FOR A Two MONTHS' JOUENEY TO THE PACIFIC
STATES BY THE PACIFIC RAILROAD.

Days.

From Omaha to Cheyenne and Denver . . .2
Excursions in Colorado ..... 9

To Salt Lake City 2

Stay in Salt Lake City 2

To Virginia City, and there ..... 2

To San Francisco, with two days to stop on the way 3
In and about San Francisco . . . . .7

Yosemite Valley and Big Trees . . . .10

Overland to Oregon ...... 6

From Portland to Victoria, through Washington Ter
ritory and Puget's Sound, and back ... 7
From Portland to Salt Lake by Columbia River,
Idaho, and Shoshone Falls .... 8

From Salt Lake to Omaha . . . . .2

Total .... 60
This is obviously a short allowance for so com-

120 APPENDIX.

preliensive a journey ; but every traveller can en
large it to suit his comfort and convenience. He
cannot advantageously cut down Colorado, San
Francisco and its neighborhoods, or the Yosemite,
but may well add a week to each. Another
month would allow the traveller to return through
Montana and down the Upper Missouri, besides
scattering an extra week along through the pre
vious portions of his journey. Two months more
still — or from June 1 to November 1 — would
include, with all the above, a liberal excursion to
the Sandwich Islands. And the weather in all
these five months would be favorable for every
part of the grand trip ; only in the Islands would
waterproofs and umbrellas be needed. For the two
months' journey we would recommend July and
August ; for the three, July, August, and Septem
ber. California is in its summer glory in April
and May ; but that is too early for its mountains
or the Yosemite ; and the parks and mountains
of Colorado, though passable in June, are much
more accessible in July and August.

TABLE OF RAILROAD DISTANCES.

121

Miles.

963

,1,019

490

Miles.

154 154

137 291

123 414

102 516

TABLE OF RAILROAD DISTANCES BETWEEN THE ATLANTIC
AND PACIFIC OCEANS.

New York to Chicago .' ' .
Boston to Chicago ....
Chicago to Omaha ...

Pacific Railroad.

Omaha to Grand Island ....

Grand Island to North Platte

North Platte to Sidney ....

Sidney to Cheyenne ....

[Branch road to Denver, 110 miles.]

Cheyenne to Laramie ....

Laramie to Bryan .....

Bryan to Church Buttes

Church Buttes to Bridgejr

Bridger to Echo City .....

Echo City to Ogden ....

[Branch road to Salt Lake City, 40 miles,
and point of union of the Central Pa
cific and Union Pacific roads.]

Ogden to Corinne, Bear River .

Corinne to Promontory City

[Stage lines for Idaho and Montana.]

Promontory to Monument Point .

572

858
885
912

56

286

27

27

74 986
44 1,030

24 1,054
29 1,083

27 1,110

122 APPENDIX.

Monument Point to Humboldt Wells . 142 1,252

Humboldt Wells to Elks ... 56 1,308
[Stage line to White Pine.]

Elks to Carlin 23 1,331

Carlin, to Argenta 49 1,380

[Stage line to Austin.]

Argenta to Humboldt . . . . 141 1,521

Humboldt to Wadsworth ... 68 1,589

Wadsworth to Reno .... 34 1,623
[Branch to Virginia City, 17 miles.]

Reno to Truckee 35 1,658

Truckee to summit of Sierra Nevadas . 14 1,672

Summit to Dutch Flat .... 39 1,711

Dutch Flat to Colfax .... 12 1,723

Colfax to Sacramento . . . . 55 1,778

Sacramento to Stockton . . . 45 1,823

Stockton to San Francisco . . . 79 1,902

Chicago to San Francisco .... 2,392

New York to San Francisco .... 3,355

Boston to San Francisco 3,411

THE END.

h, Bigelow, and Company.

OUR NEW WAY
ROUND THE WORLD;

OK,

WHERE TO GO AND WHAT TO SEE.

BY

CHARLES CARLETON COFFIN.

One volume. 540 pages. Printed from new, large-sized, clear type,
containing several full-page Maps, showing steamship lines and
routes of travel, and profusely illustrated with more than 100 en
gravings, reproduced from photographs and original sketches.

Crown octavo. Morocco Cloth. Price* $3.00.

The author of this volume is the well-known correspondent "CARLBTON" of
the Boston Journal, whose letters during the war were admired wherever read,
for their plain, clear, concise narrative. He left the United States in July, 1866,
and has recently returned, having made the tour of the world.

It is believed that no letters have ever been given to the American public
which have been so universally accepted and praised as those written by Mr.
Coffin during the last eight years.

Mr. Coffin's present volume is one of unusual importance, embodying an ac
count of his recent travels round the globe. In view of the recent completion of
the Pacific Railroad, which has made Canton and Shanghae our near neighbors,
it possesses peculiar interest, not only to the general reader, but to every one
interested in the development of the commerce of the country, inasmuch as it
gives in detail just the kind of information which the people of the United States
require in relation to China, Japan, and India. It is full of information upon
the manners and customs of the people of those countries, their present condi
tion, their future prospects, a.nd their social life ; also upon the great changes
now taking place in those vast empires, embracing half the population of the
globe. To the traveller, " Our New Way round the World " will be an indis
pensable guide-book, showing him what route to take in his journey, what steam
ships and railway connections are to be made, what points are worthy of his
attention, and furnishing him with numerous useful hints touching the expenses
by the way.

*** For sale by all booksellers, or sent, post-paid, to any address, by the
Publishers,

FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.,

124 Tremout Street, Boston.

FOURTH EDITION.

OLDTOWN FOLKS,

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE,

AUTHOR OF '• UNCLE TOM'S CABIN," "AGNES OF SORRENTO," ETC.

One vol. 1 viiiio. 616 pages. Price, $ 2.00.

" It is the first novel which Mrs. Stowe has written since 1862, and is one of
the best she ever wrote, so far as regards the power of its character-drawing,
the richness of experience developed, the delicate humor and genuine pathos of
its descriptions, and its all-pervading tenderness, catholicity of spirit and com
prehension of the most various types of character.

"It is in the autobiographic form, and the few incidents of a plot remarkably
simple and straightforward are skilfully made to serve as connecting links to a
series of portraits of typical New England characters, as developed in all of their
original and peculiar features during the generation which came to maturity at
the time of the Revolution, and during the next succeeding years." — New York
Evening Mail.

"It exhibits actual New England life, in the ante-railway times, and while
the element of pathos is not deficient, the volume abounds in racy humor.
Above all, it is rich in delineations of character, — not mere sketches, put here
and there upon the canvas, in isolated situations, as if they had very little
connection with the action of the story, but moving through it like things of
life, and so peopling the various scenes that the most insignificant among
them would be missed. This is very high commendation, but Mrs. Stowe fully
merits it. Her various personages are not portraits, but men, women, and chil
dren, with whom we became thoroughly acquainted as we went through the
story. There is not a thing done nor a word said in this story that one can hon
estly affirm is not exactly in accordance with human nature, in such or such
circumstances of action and utterance. Even Sam, who talks a great deal, in a
very peculiar patois, does not speak too much. Finally, with regret for being
unable, from limited space, to give some extracts, we have to pronounce ' Oldtown
Folks ' a charming and very original story." — Philadelphia Press.

*»* For sale by all Booksellers. Sent , post-paid, on receipt of price, by
the Publishers,

FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.,

124 Tremont Street, Boston.

TWENTY-THIRD EDITION.

THE GATES AJAR

BY

E. STUART PHELPS.

One vol. IGmo. . . Price, $ 1.50.

This powerful and original story has excited general interest, both
by the novel views presented concerning the future life, and by the
fascinating style in which the story is told.

" The Gates Ajar is the title of a small but significant volume. On a slender
thread of incident, — the story of a great sorrow and of its gradual consolation,
told in the form of a journal, — a theory of life in heaven is set forth, and the
common notions entertained of it by Christians are severely criticised. ....
The whole volume is full of life. It is a work of genius." — Examiner and
Chronicle (New York).

"Of all the books which we ever read, calculated to shed light upon the utter
darkness of sudden sorrow, and to bring peace to the bereaved and solitary,
we give — in many important respects — the preference to ' The Gates Ajar.' "
— congregationaltst (Boston").

" Such an appeal to what is deepest, tenderest, and holiest in the human heart
has been rarely made. Only a woman who has known sorrow and been sanc
tified by it could have conceived such a book as this ; only a woman of the
rarest mental gifts, and of eminent symmetry and wholeness of being, could
have wrought out the conception as it is embodied in this volume." — Morning
Star.

V" For sale by all Booksellers. Sen*, post-paid, on receipt of price, by
the Publishers,

FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.,

124 Tremont Street, Boston.

EIGHTH EDITION.

MURRAY'S

ADVENTURES in the ADIRONDACK^

One vol. 16mo. 8 full-page Illustrations.
Price, $1.50.

" This book is a guide to the best hunting and fishing region of America.
It is more ; for its descriptions are charming, and the pure gold of enchant
ment is thrown over them, so that the book is bewitching to a novice in the
sportsman's art. It is mirthful, for we laughed until our sides ached over some
of the sketches. ' The Ball,' and the description of 4 Southwick's dancing,' we
have hardly recovered from yet. ' Jack-shooting in a Foggy Night ' made our
very ribs sore. Some of the sketches are grand masterpieces of fine writing,
and the whole work superior. We predict for it an immense sale and a multi
tude of enthusiastic friends." — Providence Press.

" His ' Adventures in the Wilderness ' constitute a capital guide to those who
desire to enjoy the free air of heaven and free life b.» fi»-ld and flood. There is
a great deal of cubdued humor and quiet fun in the pages before us ; that Jack-
ehooting adventure is related with great spirit ; ' Running the Rapids ' kept
us almost breathless while we read ; ' Phantom Falls ' is a weird narrative :
and, as a quiet and thoughtful production, let us commend ' Sabbath in the
Woods ' to readers of all moods of mind." — Philadelphia Press.

%* For sale by all Booksellers. Sent, post-paid, on receipt of price, by the
Publishers,

FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.,

124 Tremont Street, Boston.