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place, according as the snow falls thick or is drifting. That is where the road is on a level, with perhaps an opening amid the rolling hills on one side or the other; but when we pass through a cutting we are protected by a snow-shed, usually built of boards supported on poles.

At Laramie City we stop for breakfast. The name of "city" is given to several little collections of houses along the line. I observe that the writer of the "Trans-continental Guide-book" goes almost into fits when describing the glories of these "cities," which, when we come up to them, prove to be little more than so many clusters of sheds. I was not, therefore, prepared to expect much from the City of Laramie, and the more so as I knew that but a few years since the original Fort Laramie consisted of only a quadrangular inclosure inhabited by trappers, who had established it for trading purposes with the Indians. I was accordingly somewhat surprised to find that the modern Laramie had suddenly shot up into a place of some population and importance. The streets are broad and well laid out; the houses are numerous, and some of them large and substantial. The place is already provided with schools, hotels, banks, and a newspaper. The Railway Company have some good substantial shops here, built of stone; and they have also provided a very commodious hospital for the use of their employés when injured or sick—an example that might be followed with advantage in places of even greater importance.

After a stoppage of about half an hour we were again careering up hill past Fort Saunders and the Red Buttes, the latter so called from the bold red sandstone bluffs, in some places a thousand feet high, which bound the track

on our right. Then still up hill to Harney, beyond which we cross Dale Creek bridge-a wonderful structure, 650 feet long and 126 feet high, spanning the creek from bluff to bluff. Looking down through the interstices of the wooden road, what a distance the thread of water in the hollow seemed to be below us!

At Sherman, some two hours from Laramie, we arrived at the summit of the Rocky Mountain ridge, where we reached the altitude of about 8400 feet above the sealevel. Of course it was very cold, hill and dale being covered with snow as far as the eye could reach. Now we rush rapidly down hill, the breaks screwed tightly down, the cars whizzing round the curves, and making the snow fly past in clouds. We have now crossed the back-bone of the continent, and are speeding on toward the settled and populous country in the East.

At Cheyenne we have another stoppage for refreshment. This is one of the cities with which our guidebook writer falls into ecstasies. It is "The Magic City of the Plains"-a place of which it "requires neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet to enumerate its resources or predict its future!" Yet Cheyenne is already a place of importance, and likely to become still more so, being situated at the junction with the line to Denver, which runs along the rich and lovely valley of the Colorado. Its population of 8000 seems very large for a place that so short a time ago was merely the haunt of Red Indians. Already it has manufactories, warehouses, wharves, and stores of considerable magnitude, with all the usual appurtenances of a place of traffic and busi

ness.

Before leaving Cheyenne I invested in some hung buf

falo steak for consumption at intervals between meals. It is rather tough and salt, something like Hamburg beef; but, seasoned with hunger, and with the appetite sharpened by the cold and frost of these high regions, the hung buffalo proved useful and nutritious.

For several hundred miles our track lay across the prairie-monotonous and comparatively uninteresting now in its covering of white, but in early summer clad in lively green and carpeted with flowers. I read that this fine, cultivable, well-watered country extends seven hundred miles north and south, along the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains, with an average width of two hundred miles. It is said to be among the finest grazing land in the world, with pasturage for millions of cattle and sheep.

Shortly after passing Antelope Station the track skirts the "Prairie Dog City," which I knew at once by its singular appearance. It consists of hundreds of little mounds of soil, raised about a foot and a half from the ground. There were, however, no dogs about at the time. The biting cold had doubtless sent them within doors. Indeed, I saw no wild animals on my journey across the continent excepting only some black antelopes with white faces that I saw on the plains near this Prairie Dog City.

For a distance of more than five hundred miles-from leaving Cheyenne until our arrival in Omaha-the railway held along the left bank of the Lodge Pole Creek, then along the South Fork or Platte River, and finally along the main Platte River down to near its junction with the Missouri. When I went to sleep on the night of the 11th of February-my fourth night in the railway

train-we were traveling through the level prairie, and when I woke up on the following morning I found we were on the prairie still.

At seven in the morning we halted at the station of Grand Island, so called from the largest island in the Platte River, near at hand. Here I had breakfast, and a good wash in ice-cold water. Although the snow is heavier than ever, the climate seems already milder; yet it is very different indeed from the sweltering heat of HonoIulu only some twelve days ago. At about 10 A.M. we bid adieu to the uninhabited prairie—though doubtless, before many years are over, it will be covered with farms and homesteads—and approached the fringe of the settled country, patches of cultivated land and the log huts of the settlers beginning to show themselves here and there alongside the track.

Some eighty miles from Omaha we cross the north fork of the Platte River over one of the usual long timber bridges on piles, and continue to skirt the north bank of the Great Platte, certainly a very remarkable river, being in some places three quarters of a mile broad, with an average depth of only six inches! At length, on the afternoon of the fifth day, the engine gives a low whistle, and we find ourselves gliding into the station at Omaha

CHAPTER XXVI.

OMAHA то CHICAGO.

Omaha Terminus.-Cross the Missouri.-Council Bluffs.-The Forest.Cross the Mississippi.-The cultivated Prairie.—The Farmsteads and Villages.-Approach to Chicago.-The City of Chicago.--Enterprise of its Men.-The Water Tunnels under Lake Michigan.-Tunnels under the River Chicago.—Union of Lake Michigan with the Mississippi. -Description of the Streets and Buildings of Chicago.-Pigs and Corn. -The Avenue.-Sleighing.-Theatres and Churches.

I HAVE not much to tell about Omaha, for I did not make any long stay in the place, being anxious to get on and finish my journey. It was now my fifth day in the train, having come a distance of 1912 miles from San Francisco, and I had still another twenty-four hours' travel before me to Chicago. There was nothing to detain me in Omaha. It is like all places suddenly made by a railway, full of bustle and business, but by no means picturesque. How can it be? The city is only seventeen years old. Its principal buildings are manufactories, breweries, warehouses, and hotels.

Omaha has been made by the fact of its having been fixed upon as the terminus of the Union Pacific Railroad, and by its convenient position on the great Missouri River. It occupies a sloping upland on the right bank, about fifty feet above the level of the stream, and behind it stretches the great prairie country we have just traversed. On the opposite bank of the Missouri

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