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It IS hardly necessary to add that the articles, as thus reprinted, retain a good many erroi:^ and faults of arrangement which would have been carefully rorrerli'd on revision, if the work had been re-si'f in book type and arranged in book fashion. Among the errors which those who know America are pretty sure to (It'trcf /« the Hubstitnlion of '^ Mississippi" for "Missouri" in several of the earlii'r chapters. Tlirsc tiro great riv<'rs, u^hose names are someivhat alike, which run nearly parallel to each other for hundreds of miles, and finally unite to form one grand strea)n, are easily confounded even by those who Juive a fair superficial knoivledge if the geography of the States. It is the Missouri (which Is really fhi larger stream . — Tr I'elled fr.nii Veovil to (Croydon) liomlon liilt ,," 4. —C'loydoii to Liverpool 211 ,, 5 to I.I.— liiveijiool t> (j-.i'bec jior All in Line steanuT I'.trisiiin ... ^,02'.) ,, 1(i-17. "Ni;;ht 1> mtfi-oni Qiieb'v to Moiitre;il IMi) ,, IK. — .Montreal to l)i('kiiis.)n's LiniliUL'. by rail, and Ir c'J liv lioat down tlie St. J,awrei;co ISijiiils t ) .\innteil Kin ,, '20.— Montre il to (»tl iwa by rail, and thenco to llrockville 1>\ r.iil IS).") ,, 21. - I{roc!. .M.ii'pii'tte to Unlnth (I, ike supcrinr)liy boit :m „ 14 Mnlnthtost. I'.ml (Minnesota) 150 ,, l."!. — .St. I'.iid to .Minneapiilis mill roturii |(l ,, 10. -St. I'anI to Sionx City ([ow.i) 270 ,, 17. -S|oiix<'ity to itni ilia 100 ,, 17— l-^. - Omaha to Dciiv.t .509 ,, 21.— Denvir to niai'!; ll.iwk and Centr.il City ami return .. ... SO „ 22.-l)eiiver to Leadville 171 „ 2:l -1,e;idvill.. to D.'uver 171 ,, 2''> "2i!.— Diniverto .Silt Lako Citv (149 ,, 2s— 2.I.— S.ilt bake City to San riaiicisco ... 9:^2 Sept. .1—,").— Sin I'riiiiisco to Silt bike City ... 9.'J2 ,, .5 -ti. -Silt Like CitV to I'ueldo (!14 ,, 7. -I'li'Ido to Cliini.i(New .Mexi'o) ... 22:i ,, 7— S. — (Miatna to Denver ;i4lj „ !I-PI, — Denver to Kans IS Citv 0119 „ 10 -II. -Kansas City to St. Louis ."323 ,, in.— St. Ijonis to Ciiieinnati 340 ,, 14. Cliicimi iti t 1 Uielmiond ([ndiana) 70 ,, 1."). -Kii'biiioiid to Cincinnati 70 ,, l.j— 111. Cineinnati to Washington 5Si ,, 1^. — \VasIiiny;toii to P.iltinioro 40 ,, 20. -lliltiinore to I'liiladrlphia m „ 22.— PhilaO.'Iphiato Now York 90 ,, 2><. -New Vork to P,.istou 233 ,, 2'.». -l!o.iton to Lewistim (Maine) 140 O.t. I. L'wi-^ton to Boston 140 ,, 4. - llnstin to .Ii.jin-town 2.")0 ,, ,'). .bihnstown lo .Vlliany iiO ,, 0.— .Mil my to New York bv boat on Hudson IJivin- IV, ,, 1 1 to 2!!. — New York to Liverpo il by White Star ste ui'er (/('/•//irroii? ,, 2% I, iverpoiil to Croydon ,, 24. — (.Jroydoii to \eovil Total 1S,0.-,S Where I have not otherwise ilescribed the mode ot travelling it is to be understood that tho journeys were made by lail. It will lie seen that T have accounted in this list for those journoj,^ .,nly which were made by sea, on the lakes 01' rivers, or by rail between the various cities. The numerous short journeys within or around the various cities are not iu'duiled. These, on a moderate estimate, would bring the total distance travelled up to l.S,.">OU miles, or about three-fourths oi the circum- ference of tho Karth. " And do you call that reiif ':'' somebody asks. '\\'"ell, honestlv, I do not know that I can. Supposa we call it chiiivic instead. l)osa m of I one ef to into ssional ng the e;ies by ape of rind reorea- pxtion have f RoinK a legal and a nbered ilie that, tliongli the work he did for hi« friend wa» like his own in /.//■'/, the ciroumst mces in whicli he did it weio ditleieiit. He waH, of cuwrsi', in a dilfcront; at- nio-ipheie, and nmid I'iU'cruiit 8uriouiiilini{g, from thoio nt humo ; iiini, what was e lually iiniiortant, tlie sense of rt-Hjionsibility unilor which Ids woik for his own diet '> would lie done, was no Ioniser felt wiien he was co- operating with his friend. Kveiyl)ody, 1 supiioso, has heard of tiie famous inill-horse whii:h, when it wanted a " eiian:;e,'' simply turned round rvtul walked in the nppositt) dirention to that in whicli it had hueit (,'oini;. (N.l!. 'J'his is not a had story, but the lir-'t teller thereof forgot to explain what kind of mill the philosopliical beast work'Ml in, that he was able to reverse the motion of the macliinery without oausinji a general smash-up of tilings.) Why I AooPTcn the Above Koi'te. Most of the visitors to America both go to and return from New 'N'ork. As no doubt some curious person or otlier will want to know wliy I was eccentric enough to lio otherwise, I may perhaps as well explain at the out- set the considerations which determ'ncd my route. In the first place, I wanted to avoid cros^in,' the Atlantic earlier thin May or later than October. In such stoiimers as aie now running, the passage nia^ bo made safely enough all the year round ; but tiiough a winter voyage may be fairly safe, there is no gieat amount of pleasure to be got out of it. As I was confined (or rather confined myself i to the l)eriod between May and Dctolier, it was impossibla to avoid speiidin.; the hottest ]>art of the summer in Aineiica, and the worst placesto be in during the exces- sive heats are the gieat cent''al and eastern cities. Agi'.n, I wanted to see the app -..ich to Canada by the Nt. Lawrence Oulf and Hiver. laojonlingly so arranged my journey as to go out by the '^t. I.awrence route (the more n.)rtherly) and to return by the New York rmite. During the hutte.-uiiil the church .\gain in a frame - tias time in a liitferent one. Kither the church or the ship was cleai ly on the move ; and as chmviies are not, so far as my e-xpcrience goes, accustomed to walk about, I pre- sently arrived at the i '"vitalile conclusion tliat the I'lU-isian was turning Diinil. i!ut thit turning of a ship l.'iO yards in length, iu a river like the Mer.sey, is a tedious process, anil in our case th- turning tide was left to do the work iu its own leisiirely way. The motion of the huge ship as she swung round was so slow as to lie almost imperceptible, and tlie evening was well advanced before the giant engines weie called upon to commence their eight days' task. Trni:.-* .\n;) rosr-OrFicE RF.<;rr..\Tioxs. It may seem strange to the uninitiated that a great mail ste liner shoulti set out on an Atl iiitio voyage in this exceedingly deliiierate fashion, especially in these days, when the i?reat steamshipcompanies .ire straining every nerve to reduce the length of the pa-sage to the shortest possible number of minutes. Hut theie are many things in heaven and earth (and on the sua) that are not dreamt of in a Lmilsman's philo-ophy. A mail steamer has to reckon both with tides and with the re luireuients of the I'ost Ollice. The sand bar which lies olFtlie mouth of the .Mersey rati oidy be crossed by the largest ships within an hour or two of hixh water (before or after). The tides, therefore, determine the bonis of siilin;; from Liverpool, On the otlier h ind, the rostmnster-' ieneinl fixes the hours for t!ie transfer of the mails t) the steanierr^at (.^ueenstown and M'jville. The steamers for New York go to the south of Ireland, calling at (.lucensc >wii for mails ; those for Nova Scotia and the St. Lawrence keep north of Ireland and take up the mails at Moville, an insigni- ficant place in Lough Foyle, a few miles from Londonderry. The arrangement iietween the I'ost Office and .Messrs. Allan is that the mails shall be handled to the latter at .Moville aliout hve or six o'cloclt on I-'riday evening. The ste.imers, therefore, have to lea .-e Liverpool at such an hour on Thursday as to allow of their crossing thebar at ornear high water, and of their being in Lough Koyle by tlie appointert hour on Friday afternoon. When, as in the cue of the I'liri^ian on .July 5th, the sti amer getj o it of the Mersey early on Thursday evening, slie is .ible to steam t) .Moville in quite a leisurely way and thou have several hours to spare. In Irish W.\ters. We, of course, passed to the south of thf Tsle of Man early in the night, and through the North Channel, between the Irish and Scottisli coasts, a few hours later. When I carne on deck in the mornin:?, we were passing Kathlin Island : and the hills of Cmtire -that curious, long, narrow peninsula, which .Scotlanii throws out like a huge [lier in the direction of the Irish ciast— were sinking out of sight over our stern. Very soon after- wards, we were alneast of the Giant's t,'iiuseway, and many eyes were strained, and many glasses brought into re juisition, in the hope that a glimpse might be obtained of that great natural curiosity. Put the distance was apparently too great. I could not myself discover anything like the strange columnar basaltic rock, and the owner of tie best ulast on bonrd appeared to boe(|ually at a loss. Having failed to hco the curi- OHity, w? a^fieoil unitniniously that tlie thin^ was prob- ably not worth aeeing, and that wu wure nut a bit 0, and comprised persons of various nationalities, Hnglish, (German and Scandinavians pre- dominating, as usual. As the ship lay in the quiet waters of the Irish lough, these emigrants (for such nuarly all of them were) were 'ounging or strolling about those parts of the lower deck sot apart for their use. These poor people cei tainly constituted a curious but deeply interesting study. They were of all sorts, sizes, ages, and degrees of tidiness or seediness. Little children were tumbling over each other in their boister- ous mirth, happily unconscious of the miseries which the coming week miebt possibly have in store for them, and of the hardships wh;oii they might have to endure while their parents were making homes for them in a strange land. There were old people— men and women whose lives' work was evidently nearly over, and who, let us hope, were on their w.^y to spend the evening of their lives in the homes of prosperous sons and daughters who had preceded them to the Land of Promise. There were clean, tidy, serious-look- ing men and women in the prime of life — the very pick and flower of the working classes of Europe, the best of all emigrants. This is the class whose physical strength, remarkable powers of en- durance, unflagging industry, and indomitable perse- verance have done more than all other causes to build up the Great Kepublio, and, I may add, tlie great, though smaller. Dominion of Canada. But there were f^ few person! amon^ the emigrants (they were, I am glad to sfty, a small minority) whose slatternly appear- ance indicated that they would be as little of an acqui- sition to tho Now World as they were of a loss to the Old World on whioh they had tiirneil their backs. The steerage of an ocean steamer, although a palace compared with the corresponding places in emigrant sailing ships a gonoration ago, is hanlly even now the place which a lady would choose for making an elabor- ate toilet in. liut tidy people will contrive somehow or other to be tidy anywhere— always provided that, if thoy are at sea, the sea behaves itself. For sea-sick- ness is the one thing which levels all alike— duke and p.tuper, lew and (lentile, Tory and Uadical ; rendering menauil women alike utterly o))liviuus tooverythinglike "appearances'' ami conventionalisms, and to agooddeal more. ISut when the sea is tolerably calm and the weather favourable, those steiTage passengers who happen to have cleanliness and tidiness in their blood are almost invariably clean and tidy, notwithstanding t leir limitL-d accommodation. Those who are slatternly at such times would ]>robably be slatternly all the same if they had tho run of all the saloon accommodation. Lookin;^ down upon the great crowd of emigrants as we layat rest in Lough Foyle, and thinking particularly of the women and children, whose sutferings are very great in bad weather, I felt benevolently disposed to revoke the hope I had half entertained that I might be fortunate onougli to see a storm— a moderate one, of course. " For the sake of these poor people," I said to myself, " I will gladly resign the pleasure of seein:^ how tho J'ariHian performs in a gale. I will take all that on trust from some old salt who has seen her do it.' I did not, it is true, recite any liturgy, in the hops of somehow helping to bring my desires to pass ; but my desires were none the less heartfelt. I certainly felt that, in giving up the hope (let me say the half-hox>e\ shall I say the half- hojie, not unmixed with just a little apprehension?) of seeing a gale, I was acting in a 8]>irit of genuine self- sacrifice. In short, I "felt good," as tho Americans say. But then what was I, as against 650 of my kind, that I should prefer my " pleasure " to theirs ? At the risk of getting a little ahead of my story, I may here remark that my self-sacrifice had its reward. We had a beautiful passage. No cargo of emigrants ever crossed the Atlantic under pleasanter auspices ; and, of course, I was done out of my gale. That is still a " treat " in store, though I have crossed the ocean again since July. FCN FOR THE EinORANTS. While we still lay at Moville, it began to be pretty evident that the steerage passengers, at any rate, would not be allowed to suffer much from the tedium of the voyage. A party of Salvationists, or some similar body, formed themselves into a group and sang some of their stirring "hymns." I take the personal respon- sibility of us.ng the word "stirring," but I quote the word " hymns " because I do not care for the heavy responsibility of calling tho words by that name. Any- how, the singers made things lively for a time. But there was a rival body of vocalists, con- sisting of three or four Germans, who sang Eart songs very nicely, and were attentively listened to y saloon and steer.ige passengers alike. The "boss" entertainer, however (as we are on the way to America, we may as well begin to use the American language), was a young Englishman brimming over with comicality, and as lithe and active as a greased monkey. For houri some oon- sang led to boss " erica, lage), sality, bouri ■I \ at a ilretoh, this lively yoiin;; gentlemtin kept the whole ship in a roar. He ooulil deliver a Teinpuriinco leotiiro, lireiioh a Normon, or H[ieak on any other concoivablo subject, with nnmovod gravity. Kroni tli«! work of a lecturer, ho would ])aH4 to tint of an ftuctioneor. Standing on a nisol i>;iit of tiio deck, witii hundreds of the omlKrints crowdin;^ ruuml him, ho ]>ut anytliin;; ami cvurythin^' up to auction, from the great ship hcrstdf down to the sii diby hat of a fulIow-passenKcr. If the owulm' of tli(> hat objected, he " put up ■' the owner himsidf, desci ibod his numerous defects v'ith the greatest candour, and started the bid- din){ at aOout '2\i\. Competition w.is soiUL'tiines so slack th;if lie had to buy in the " lot ' ;it two or three shillings ; but sometimes the jiassen^or was suld and hiindad over to the buyer, with no end of curious ad- vice as to how he was to bo tre tteil. It was useless lor anybody to protest or to resist. The comic mm wis master of the situation. It was so cleur that his fun wai entirely good-humoured, without the smallest trace ofmalice, thatanyresentmontshownbyhishuman'Mots" or other victims was instantly laughed away. Those who had been most successfully held up to ridicule, or made the objects of the rouc;hest horse-iilay, wore compelled at last, by the very infection of merriment, to join, more or less grimly, in the boisterous lauehter which had been raised at their own expense. My travelling companion souifhtan opportunity of iiucstioninir this comic man as to his occjupation and his object in emigrating. lie said at first that he was a butcher, and was going to America in the hope of tindinj; s imething to do in his own line. " Hut," my friend said, " you have surely dono something in your time beyond butcher- ing?" and he then admitted that hn had had an engagement at one of the liirmingham theatres. His peculiar talent would certainly r m to waste in a slaughter-house, and I have very little doubt that by this time he is "corner man" in some trou]ie of " nigger " melodists or leading comedian at a theatre. TiiK Mails. But I must not forget that we are still at Moville. It was not until after five o'clock that the Londonderry tug came alongside with tlie Canadian mails. Those who had never before seen a foreign mail had their e}'es opened as to the extent of the correspondence between England and her greatest colony. It seemed as if the flow of he.avy bags, crammed with letters and newspapers, from the tug to the Parisian, would never cease. How many tons the mail weijjhed I cannot say, but 1 have little doubt that the baes would have filled two largo vans. The smartness with which our ship was got under way as soon as the last bag was on board was in striking contrast to the leisurely fashion in which we left the Mersey the night before. The circumstances had, of course, changed. The Parisian had now Her Majesty's mails on board, and her captain's business forthwith was to push on so as to land those mails at Rimouski, on the St. Lawrence, at the earliest pos- sible moment. Within, J should say, five minutes of the delivery of the last bag, the iron giantsdown in the hold of the ship began to sway their mighty arms up anddown and to and fro, and from that labour they never once ceased until, at noon on the following Friday, we cast anchor opposite Kiraouski. Phogrkss in Atl.vntic Navigation. The Parisian is the newest, the largest, and the fast- est of the famouB Allan line of steamers, and is a fair example of the flue vessels )>y which communication ii now 'uiintained bi'twuen this country and Vinerica. Theso Nhips aro ilosorvedly ronkoniMl anion.; the great- est triiiiiiplis of scientific skill, liy nioansof tlicm. the navu itiou of t'le >t'inn;o-t of ovaiis (ino Noiih Atlantic) has lionn rcdui-el to a m.ittor of almost abso- lute ceita.iily and safety. And wh la the sitoty of the navi^'ation has increase I with the lajise oi every suc- cesick<-ns made tlio memor ibie voya;{o wliioli he aft'ir- wards described (as only o oo iM describe iti in his "American Notes. " His stoamei' (called a " packet " in those days) was tbo Hr tMinia. She and her sister ships were regarded as marvels. The liriiitnniii w.is ri vessel of l,i.'i*0 ton.s, and it took her 1"^ days to carry Charin DicUcns to JSo-iton. The second generation of steamships reduced the passa'^e to New York ( wiiicli is farther than Jioston) to thirteen or fourteen days ; ami when, some years later, a line of still finer l)oit8 reduced the time to ten or eleven days, it was thought that finality had at last been reached. ISut there is no sndi thing as finality in the march of science. Ten years ago, the jia^sage was i'odiiue(l to nine days, and the size of the ships bioiigli. uj) to l,0()J or l,"iiM» tons. Thy last ten years have, however, witnessed a further marked advance in lioth tonna^'e and speed. There .are now on the New Vork route at least four vessels of from 7.0)') to S,()i)i» tons, \\f.., the / lionv; of tha .Vnohor ' Line ; the Scrria. of the C'unaid Lino : the Al'i^ltii and '' Orejiin, of the (iuion Line. All tlieso vos els aro ' capable of mikin.; tins run from ],iverpool t i New Vork in less thm eight days ; two of them ^^mx do it, un ler I specially fa vouialile conditions, in a little over seven, Tiio Allan boat-i do nut run t > New Vork. Their chief route is from Liverpool to (jiuahec. Durin.; the winter, the .St. Lawrence is fro/.on, and the steamers then land their mails at Halifax. As f remarked at the outset, the /'art.t/a't is the latest and finest addition to the Allan fleet. She is only about three years old, and emboilies every improvement which had been effected in marine architecture up to the time she was designed. She is about 4oO feet (150 yards) in length and 4(1 feet in breadth, and she is of r),.oOi) tons burden. Her saloon is a beautiful apartmeni: extending across the whole width of th^ ship about mid-way between the bows and the engines. This arrangement, which is now almost universally adopted by the great steamship companies, kee|)s the salooi; almost entirely free from that ugly and stomach disturbing vibration which is invariably felt in a siloon situated astern of the engines, and therefore over the scrtw-shaft. The first-class cabins aro grouped about the neighbourhood of the saloon — some being forward of it, and others (the l.irger number) filling tlie space on each side between the saloon and the engines. A Hit; Namk for a LiTit.K THi.va. T>ut why, in the name of outraged Reason, do the steamship com|>anies conspire to c.ill thnii cabins " -^tato-rooms '! '' The word " state-room " has a ina;^- nificent roll about it, and suggests to the mnooents wno have never been to sea a lofty and spacious iimrtinent, of a kind which is found only in the palaces of the wealthy. As regards three-fourths of the " state- rooms " in all the Atlantic steamers, the reality is a closet about 6^ feet square, with two berths (one over A tlio other) on ono Hidu, a niirrow flxml nofa on the ()|i|iositM H(lu, nn I (i ficti Hpaco, from two to tlirot) ffut wiiht, ill whioli tin; two ocou|iantH havo to dress, Miiilrt-g', iinil lio tlioir ti){htiiii{ if they h.ippcn to '|Uiirrul. Talk uhout " room to Hwin.; a I'at ! " Wliy, tlieru is not room to Hwiiiv; ii lilitid kitten. 'I'iiorit aio, of oiPii.HO, hii({oi' "' Htato-roomt," inti'mleil to nct'ommoilaie tiirue or four poraoiiM, liut thcsu Ciin oiily ))u Bucuroil for iho uxclusivo us(! of ono or two per^'Oiis by extra payment. My frioml niul I, for in^tauco, socurt'il a tlireu-liuriii room in the /'•wi-'i'in. Tlii.s was over 10 fuut h)iiK, iinil we were alilo to have all our haKgn^u witii us, instead of senilin;^ the Kruatcr part down into tiie holil. All the oaliiiiH, whether hir^e or small, are beautiliilly furnlHliud, iinil tverytliiii'^ aliout them is as clean as a now pin. 'I'ho ventilation is luually nood, even when the state of the weather does not allow the hull's eye windows to ho opened. There was, moreover, no suspicion on hoard the i'nc/.i/Vj/i that the cal)in c(ur..ained any other living creatures beyond those who had piiil their fares. This iniinunitv is not always to be relied on at sea, as tho following true nar- rative will show, A Folli-TOOTKI) liKDKKI.r.OW. In tho montli of .Fuly, IHSl, I was on a voyag;o to (iihraltar on liou-d the rt;nii.sular and Oriental steamer Mirmpnrr — not, iii old ho it, liy any means. My cabin, which I was sup|ins.>,| to h ivt' to myself, oponed upon the deck — an arr.ini^oinciit, by the way, wliiuh would ni'tdoatall in ves.sids if^ulnly Mavi;4atini{ the stormy North Atlantic. I )uriii',' the li>st or s 'cond ni„'ht after leivinj; Southaiiipton. mv slei'p was a ({oo 1 deal dis tuibed— why, I rouhl not toll, alih<'- to be dreaded are the disabliiig of tho ruilder ancl tho break- down of tho engines. Tho latter mishap, wli'ch generally ta'uebec on tho trip on which I went by her. It was dilHcult to realise that there was such a host on board. The ship is so large, and contains so many apartments of one sort and another, that a thousand persons are stowed away out of sight with the greatest ease. Jn fact, the vessel can carry several hundred more than were aboard her on this .luly pas- sage, for her steerage alone is certified to have accom- modation for about a thou.sand, If, therefore, slio ever haiipens to carry out hor full complement, she must at such times have something liko 1,400 persons on board. I may add that so little did she appear liko crowded when I crossed in her, that 1 had no idea, until we readied (.Quebec, that I had formed one of a company of about a thousand. Tlie exact numbers were :— Cabin passengers, 124 ; intermediate, 47 ; steerage, S : total passengers. 829. The crew was probably at least l.')0 more. Cabin Passknuijks' Accom.modation. To the cabin (lassenger, life on board agre.it Atlantic steamer is (weather permitting) very much like life in a 1 first olaSMliotol. I'liii'li pi'i'-oii Imm a nimI hi (lie riiIooii itllotte'l t(i III in at tlit< liiHt iiii'nl miil tlint rim I lii> ro'iiiiis throii«lii)iit till' Miy.iyc. Till- se its ill tlio silouiiof iliu /'((/•/ji ((/I urn cufliid'HMl chirrs w'ilcli, ;linu.;h li\i'l to the tioor (a ver.v av emiirv iiru.Miitiiin), revolve on their centres, HO that nny iliner iiiny tuin round, i-Ih •. mid loiivo the tillo, without diMtiiil'in;; hii* iu.'i;,hhoiirs, and as proiii|iily ;is the most iKherseciiciiin^^t.inces may render necessury. l!roiila8t ton, liinclieDii >t one. and ilinncr at six. Theioiwin) regular meal after dinner, but tea, colico, and li^dit iofie»'i merits are nerved to tlioHo who rC'iiiiro thtin U|> to tho tlnio at which the inlooii in cloHed. 'I'he nalocni is the chief .sitting-room for cabin jmssen- gers between mods an ! lUiiin:^ thi ■vonin.; : hut th • I'lirixKtii hug, in adilition, a hanvlsnmo niiartinunt over the saloon, eontainiiiL; a ])iano and a nuinhi'r of card talilos, and surrounded by I'lxiii iously cusliioned Kcats. This room is lij^hted mainly from a'lo- e by a s! tho Saloon, and a ^cntlcmeir.s sinukiiii,' room in n distant uart of tl o h Our voj ■|). Ouu VovAci;. was simiily a week'; pleasure trii>. The Kta was al)-olutely calm on every i in which was e\en then doiii;,' business siinewhat further south. A\'o had no win I wli,ite\er, and thou,'li tho water w.'S not Kiiiooth, tho waves wuie. 'J'li.it, pu hap-, sounds Iri,sh like ; but what 1 me.in is this that tho surface was iirokon into Ion;;, regular waves. There was no foam, and tho surfaco of each wa\c was as siiooth as if, like Yankee li;;htnini,', it had bi.'on Kioased. Tliis was the only day when I noticed more tli in two or three empty chairs at meals. Thero were a ^ood many I'l.oiit I's on that occasion, forthe ship rolled from side to siile with a lons{, regular, majestic movement, which was very jiretty to sec, but (to some peoiile) eminently unploas.uit to feel. l''or the first and only timoduring tho voyage, tho guards {" fiddles" as some call them) had to bo attached to the tables. For tho bone it of people who stay at home, 1 may remark that: theso guards are sim])ly narrow strips of woodli\el to the tables, to pie\ent tho phites and dishes from coining o!f in a sort of avalanche into the diners' l.ips when the slii)) is cxceptionaliy far gone in lil r ti> \ ISir iir roMuT. "T osiils of I'.ritairi whiten e>ery s. a !' That \% ■* xery [irei ty and p.ii riotic ,i-.seriioii wlieb one otteii hi irs after dinner, win n ora'ois aie f>dl of w lie, and of iiietapbois (iiiJxe 1). Thero is only oue driwb.ok to tho assurtiiiii, but til at is nuiiouh. It. i-. not tnio -no^ nearly enough, iiideoJ, to justify tho mot poetical of orator- in makiii.^ it. My oipeiience i^ coiitinod t<> tl;e Hay of Kiscay and the North Atlantic, but they are tho most freijuoiitel of ,dl seas. In a vuvage to liiliraltir, the vessels on pisses aro eoitainlv ve'v iminpnnis ; but that, of course, is bei'iui^e all the ISritisli tr.ilbc to llio .Muditerraroan, to Indi.i, t'iiina, .\ustralii, tlieiape - to all parts, inleod, o\cept .\morica is eoncoii trate 1 on that loii'.e. Tho ci^e is very dilfereiit on llio routes followed by tho .Vinoricin steain'rs, .Vftur gettng clear of tho Irish cost, we ^inlited only two vessels (both l:w,.t( steamers) until we k<>i fairly inti the St. Law ■ ; o, .My oxperieiue on t t ri tuiii v.i\a'.;o was very siinil i We |ias-ed only three \e.-els between tho neiglib.mriK' d of New N'oik .md C.ipe Cleir. Hundreds of v.-ssals are, ot' course, alwuyn cm .^ ii^ ; but tho Lteit •' waste of w.it ts " .s o .;ruit th ct thero isploiit' •■. elbiiv, ioomffiral. Coll si'iis seldom oi'iuir out on ilio broii'l Atlantic. It i< in tho crowdtel apiu.Piiches to ti.e j,'ieiit ports, and especially in log,'y we.itlier, thnt lu.j sorious dangers of siicii a mishaii need bea|ipreheiKlod, AOH.VNI) I'Allllii II')\. -ANOTIIKII fl.t.r.slO.N DONi: Idll. On tho moriiiiig of the day on which wo siKlifrd land (Wed lie -day, .lillv I Ith) 1 w is ea:l"d aily to s e a gran I pidc ssioii of iiu'berg , Wo had bfcii bio'.ing out for tlies" wanderes the whole o! the pievious d.iy, and hail .it last be .;uii to fear that wi^ weic goiii:,' to miss tiie si^lit ('.ipt.i'ii Wylio (-.joo.! liipi.tin and courteous gontlciii 111) re .vssui ed Us, however, bv pio mising in t luit Wi; sliould |iositive!y lie tri' ih'd to a display if wo were good. lie had apparently made arrangomouts witli the iiDitherly winds ;iiid eii'roiiis to deliver a supply of i -e olf tiio Labrador cua.st on that parti ulai- Wediii'sd.iy morning. Too dis[d ly was superb, and did grear credit to all con I'm'-il. Tlieio were simpler of all sorts of ice'iei^s, frmn the loi.g, low mass, like a lloitin,' islani, to tlie majestic, moon- tain-like mass, from LX) to '3)U fiet in lioi.;lit. Tio fantastic shapes and ox'iuisitidy delicate eo'anus of iho ice were the wonder and the admiration of all be- holders. One oiithiisias^tic passenger, who hapjiened to have a photogiapliio apparatus, took " piurrdts "of one or two of the line-t masses through his o.iiiin win- dow. Their nfi/t/^e: he cau,,'it accuritely eiiouijh, but their oxiiuisite tints of blue and green were beyond tlie reach of any ph'itograpliic process yet invented. Yi't (Uie thing larked those liergs suUliine, (I beg tho late liOrd liyron's nardon for siying so.) I examined tho largest of them carefully, from top to bottom, by means of my glass ; and not finding what I looked for, I cried (aildrnssing nobody in particular) : " Wiioro's Mie boar?"' '' \VhMt beat ';"' somebody asked. " Wliut beat ?" 1 replieil ; " why. th'' bear. Were you never a boy '.' (and I looked my ipiestioner strai.,'bt in the eye. ) If you never wore, I beg to remark that I was — at (alas I) some ancient period of the world's history. And as a child, my att-ntion was fre piontly drawn to pictures of ico-borgs. But never an ice berg diil T see thus re)uesented v'lich had not on soino part of it a huge polar bear, sitting on its haunches, and looking as ■ad and dinconsolnto m if he hnd just returned from his mother-in-law's funeral or cremation. I ask, therefore, ' AV hero's the bear ?' " And then I looked the hu(;e ice mountain up and down again, but no trace of living creature could I see. Then I sadly woke up to the fact that another of my youthful illusions had vanished ; and I asked myself seriously, in the words of tViat cheerful author, Mr. Mallock, "is life worth living?" The artists who draw ice-bergs fancy, I suppose, that to " throw in " an old bear is to give a reasonable and appropriate finishing touch to their pictures. But these gentlemen trifle with truth, and, as we have seen, en- courage illusions the dissipation of which causes the keenest pangf). Ladies and gentlrmen, let us, in ait and in everything else, stnnd by the Fact, even if we do not, like Chelsea and Boston philosophers, spell it with a big F. TiiE Shortest Rcn on Record. Ours was in more ways than one a memorable voyage. I have already remarked on the thoughtful considera- tion of the Atlantic in giving us a rocking (and thrt n gentle one) on only asingleday. But, besides being a very calm passage, ours was up to that time the shortest ever made from land to land, on the Quebec route. I saw the last of the Irish lights after ten o'clock on the even- ing of Friday, .July Gth, and at tliree o'clock on the following Wednesday afternoon we sighted Belle Isle, at the entrance of the Straits of Belle Isle, between Labrador and Newfoundland. Accordin?; to the ship's mode of reckoning, our time from laud to land was only 4 days 17 hours 2.*) minutes — the shortest time on record. Belle Isle is 750 miles from Quebec, so that a steamer •- nearly two and a half days in the Strait of Belle Isle, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the River !St. Lawrence, after sighting land. The parts of Labrador and Newfoundland which skirt the strait arc barren and inhospitable in the extreme. Although it was the 10th ot July when we steamed up the strait, a good deal of snow was lying on the Labrador side, almost down to the water's edge— and this, be it remembered, in about the same latitude as London and Bristol. After passing the strait, we again lost sight of land for some hours, the Oulf of St. I^wrence being an almost land-locked sea of con- siderable size. Passing to the south of the dreary-look- ing island of Anticosti, more than 100 miles in length, we presently approached the real River St. Lawrence, which for a long distance is a mere arm of the sea, and a very wide one. The weather being very thick after we first sighted Anticosti, we missed all the grand scenery which skirts the river on both sides, especially where the Saguinay River joins it. We readied Rimouski at noon on Friday. There we landed the mails, which were taken thence to Quebec (150 miles) by rail, arriving at that city before us. Here, also, we landed a few pas- sengers, including the Prime Minister of Nova Scotia, one or two other gentlemen bound for the same colony, and a few others who wished to catch trains at Quebec before the steamer could possibly arrive there. It was nearly 11 o'clock at night before we who remained on board sighted the lights of the city, rising tier above tier from the water's edge. Quebec is called the Gibraltar of America ; and those who have seen the original Gibraltar from the l)«y on a dark night, or who have looked up at the Old Town and the Castle of Edinburgh at night from Princes Street, can form a Tery good idea of what Quebec looked like when I first set eycB on it. The Saloon Passengers. The Parisian'^ saloon passengers comprised, among others, the Enrl and Countess of Onslow, Col. Alan Gardner ; Mr. "W. D. Howells, the popular American novelist, with his wife and three children ; the Hon. W. T. Pipes, Prime Minister of Nova Scotia ; Mr. Dingloy, a prominent newsuaper proprietor in Maine, and Mrs. Dingley ; three or four Catholic priests, belong- ing to one of the religious orders which the French Government has recently suppressed ; one or two Protestant clergymen ; Mr. Power O'Donoghue, Mus. Doc, whose aid in getting up concerts was invaluable ; Dr. Souvielle, a French doctorsettledin Canada, whose quack-like advertisements are in all the colonial papers ; Mr. Rose, formerly British chief consul in Sicily, and brother of the Mr. Rose who was recently carried off by ')ri;^'nds near Palermo and redeemed fora large sum ; LI. Davies, the proprietor of the largest pork -packing establishment in Canada ; and a little, good-tempered cosmopolitan named Husbands, whose address was Valparaiso " and elsewhere," and who was understood ins. J me vague way to be largely interested in telephone patents. This little man was to us what the comic butcher aforesaid was to the emigrants. He kept things lively. He got up con- certs, balls, subscriptions for seamen's hospitals and the like, and, indeed, made himself generally use- ful. There was plenty of musical talent on board, and he knew how to get at it. His concerts were very suc- cessful ; and on the evening when we were running up the Straits of Belle Isle he arranged for a ball, some of the dances bein? dubbed "Iceberg Waltz," "Labra- dor Lancers," "Newfoundland Polka," &c. Alto- gether, that five feet of merry humanity named Husbands was a great acquisition to the ship. Nobody had the blues while he was " around, " as the Americans say. I should like to say a good deal more about my fellow-passengers, but I have already spun too long a yarn about my voyage. Some of the passengers, whose acquaintance I made, I afterwards saw in their own homes, and I|must content myself with a brief refer- ance to these when I describe the kindness and hos- pitality with which they received me 4 my travelling companion. THE AMERICAN RAILWAYS. A Stkam-madk Country. "Made by steam !" Such is the inscription which many manufucturers attach to their goods. The United States and Canada might be very appropriately labelled in the same fashion. But for steam power, those great countries must have been still in a state of nature to an infinitely larger extent than they are to-day. It hap- pened that, within a generation of the revolution which freed the colonies south of the St. Lawrence from Eng- lish rule, the genius of Watt, of Fulton, and of Stephenson revealed to the world the existence of a force which was capable of doing all the mere physical work of the human race. Two of these great inventors showed that the subtle fluid of water was a power whose sphere was not con- fined within the narrow bounds of factory walls, but was perfectly capable of taking the place of horses on our roads and of the winds on the ocean. The era of steam locomotion had come. At that time, the United States were little more than a coast line. All the con- siderable cities were on or near the Atlantic seaboard ; and, except in the neighbourhood of the great rivers, 6 race, subtle con- but les on ra of United con- ard ; ivers, the whole of the vast Interior was almost entirely un- explored. The American: hailed the advent of tlie new power with characteristic enthusiasm, and set themselves with their traditional energy to the task of securinK all the advantages it offured. The old States were soon knit together with a network of railway lines which placed all the chief cities in communication with each other. The rivers, too, were soon alive with steamboats. In or about the year 1S40, steam naviga- tion hid so far advanced that steamships began to traverse the Atlantic regularly, liy this meins, the unappropriated but fertile soil of the West w,is brought within easy reach of the overflowing poi)ulations of Europe, and at the same time the markuts of the Old World were brought nearer to the al)ounding harvests of the New World. The Eastern States having been sup- plied with such railwavacccommodationas they required, the eyes of speculators and engineers began to be turned westward. In a very short time, the railroad pioneers were seen to be plunfting into prim Lval forests and crossing prairies which had hitherto been the home of the wild beast, and of thealmoatequally savage Indian. And wherever the railroad went, there jiopulation immediately followed. Agricultural immigrants settled down in thousands within easy reach of the new roads, and set to work to grow crops, whicli were carried otf over those roads, either to the great cities of the Eastern States or to the still more dist.int European consumer. Very soon, th(i Mississippi was reached at more points tlian one, and here for a time the railway men drew rein. Tint the halt was only a brief one— a sort of breathing-time preparatory to the longer runs which had yet to be accoinjilislieil beyond the Father of Waters. It was not until the year 1865 that the first rail was laid on the 1 'nion Pacific Railway — the great road which, with the Central Pacific, now covers the 1,1)00 miles between the Mississippi at Omalia and the Pacilic coast at San Francisco. Besides these great original trunk linns, the country west of the Mississippi is now intersected by thousands of miles of roads constructed 'i>y other com- panies, and every year adds largely to tlie mileage. It is perfectly safe to assert that no otlier known power could have done what steam has done during the last 40 years in enabling the Americans to take possession of their vast herit:ige of territoi-y, in the names of humanity and civilization. I may remark, in this connection, that, apart from railways and steam-boats, the Americans have mado steam their servant of all work to even a greater extent than we have in England — that is to say, wlierever water power has not been procurable. 1 make this exception because it is an important one ; for, owing to the abundance of water-power, especially in the New England States, mmy manufactures which in this country are carried o^' entirely by means of steam are there conducted in the neighbourhood of great water- falls, which supply all the power needed. The Extent ov Ameuican Kailwavs. The best way of forming lomcthing like an intel- ligible idea of the extent of the American railway system is to compare, or rather to contrast, its mileage with that of the railways in this country. The total length of railwiiys in Great Britain and Ire- land is about 18,r)00 miles. American railways represented mileage of 113,.129 miles at the end of 18S2. The lines opened during 1882 alone measured 11,591 miles. The mileage of those opened during 188:i is muoh less ; but I shall probably be within the mark if I say that America (exclusive of Canada) has at the presjnt moment 120,000 miles, or about six and a half times our own mileage. If the immense area of North America be taken into account, 12it,000 miles of railway cannot be regarded as large ; but when we regard the mileage in proportion to the population, wo koo tliat it is very great. We have lf<.r)00 miles to 35,000, 0(K) of pojiulation. America has 120,000 miles to a population of 51,000,000. In other word.", there is one mile of railway in the British Islands to every I'.tOO persons, where.as the Cnited States have one mile to every 425 persons. Their mileage is, therefore, pro- portionately nearly live times as great as ours. There are, however, other ways of estimating a rail- way system besides measuring its mere length ; and when we do this with reference to the British ar.d the Ameri- can systems, we Britishers come out with flying colours. The greater part of the American railways have only a single line. A double line is as much an exception in the States and Canada as a single line is in England. Most of the trunk lines whicli connect the great cities in the Eastern States are double. The N'ew York Central and Hudson River Railroad (Vanderbilt's trunk line) has four tracks over the greater part of its length, and in this respect resembles tho.se parts of the London and North Western and tlio Great Western which are nearo.it to London. But with tliese ami a few other exceptions, all the lines are single. As the land required for tho lines seldom cost the companies a cent, as the lines are mo.stly single, and as (as wo shall see presently) there is an almost entire absence of bridges, the cost of con- struction was, of course, tritling compared with tliat of our English railways. As a matter of fact, the total capital of all the American railroad companies at the end of 1882 was only about seven hundred millions sterling, which is little if any more than British com- panies have paid for the construction of one-eighth of the same mileage. Land Grant.s. The construction of railways through the vast solitudes of the uninhabited West has been greatly facilitated by tho system of (Jovernment grants of land. The Union Pacilic, the Central Pacific, the Northern Pacific, the Canadian Pacific, the Chicago and North Western, and several other great comiianies have received free gifts of "millions of acres of land alongside thelinestheyhaveconstructed— or, as they say, "built." The Canadian I'acitic is to have twenty-five millions of dollars and twenty-five millions of acres for render- ing the Dominion tho vast service of connecting tho Atlantic with tho Pacific by a line wholly within Canadian territory. An official in the land ottice of tho Chicago and North Western told me that ho had still a trille of some seventeen million acres to dispose of —that is to say, a territory equal to aliout seventeen county Somersets. He talked about having half a kingdom for sale just as coolly as if he had been otter- ing a cask of sugar or a suit of clothes. The officials of tho Union Pacific at Omaha told mo pretty much tlie same, but 1 forget the e.sact acreage in their case. Tho land grants are arranged in this fashion :— The map of the district through which tho proposed line is to jiass is marked out, to a distance of 20, 2.5, or 30 miles on each side of the track, into square blocks, exactly like a chess-board. These blocks, or sections, are six miles sciuare, nuil therefore contain .S(> square miles. Each section is then sub-divided in the same i way into 36 square and equal parts, each part being, of 10 courBO, An exact square mile. In some of the Stiitos (I be- lieve in all), two 8(|uaro miles out of evcrylJOaredGvotoil to the purpose of foundi ng and maiiitaiiiiiii; puWic schools, and the remaining 'M s qnare miles are divided eipially between the ('Ovcrnment and the company. Supposing (to revert to the chess-board simile) the squares to be coloured black and white alternately, the (iovernment retains the black sijuares and the company takes the white squares. As soon as the railway is made, settlers begin to arrive. Kvery settler makes business for the railway, and at the .lamc time adds to the value of the remaining land. 'l"he result is that, in many cases, the railway lands come in time to represent an enormous value, and the principal proprietors of the lines become million- aires. One-half of the stock of the Central and Southern Pacific Railroads is said to belong to four persons- men who live in splendid palaces at San Francisco, and of course one-half of the unsoM lands of these com- panies belonu's necessarily to the same four lucky in- dividuals. The Americans are beginning to use strong language about these huge land monopolists, and it is no doubt unfortunate that such vast tracts of the country should be in the hands of a very few persons. I'ut a bargiin is a bargain, and it is hardly fair to forget that the Oovernment granted the land in return for what, at t'le time, was regarded as a fair equivalent — the construction of railways which no capitalists were prepared to m.\ke unless thus aided. It is now generally admitted that it would have been better to give the companies a fair amount in "cash down," rather than to place millions of acres of the soil at their disposal. It is easy to be wise after the event, but the monopolists can hardly be expected to surrender the advantages of the bargain they made at a time when the public took a different view of the case. It is, however, pretty certun that no more grants will he made to railway companies in the shape of land. The Li.n'ks. " The line " is an expression almost unknown in America. What we call the " line" isthere universally known as the "track.' A double line is, of course, called a " double track." A level crossing— the crossing of a line and an ordinary road on the same level — is known in America as a " crossing at grade."' Such crossings, instead of being the rare exceptions, as they are in England, are in America almost universal. Of this I shall have more to say presently. In the early days ot railroads (the Americans have no "railways;'' they are all "railroads"'), tlio lines, especi- ally in remote districts, were laid in a very rough and primitive fashion. The rails were often of wood, shod with iron, which was nailed to the wood jiretty much as a tire is nailed to the rim of a wheel. Sometimes the iron would get loose, and ultimately come off ; but as the speed was not very great and the lines were usually level with the surrounding country, sorious harm sel- dom resulted, even if a train ran off, or (same thing) was "ditched," to use another expressive word of the American railway vocabulary. Those who fancy that the bulk of the western lines are still of this primitiv., kind are vastly mistaken. 'J'he truth is, all the great main lines, in the West as well as in the East, are B))lendidly laid, in many cases with heavy steel railu. No inspection is needed to satisfy one as to their solidity of construction. The smoothness with which the cars run almost everywhere is ample evidence of the fact. There are exceptions, of course, but they are few, and are to bo met with only on crossoountry and compara- tively unimportant roadi. Wood being more plentiful than iron, the iron rests into which the rails of an English railway are wedged, and which we call chairs, are entirely di8i)ensed with on the other side of the .Vtlantic, and an unusual numl)er of timber ties (sleepers, as we call them) are used in- stead. The rails are simply spiked to these ties, just as the rails wore fastened to the sleepers on the Somerset k Dorset Railway in the early days of that line. English railway engineers have never considered this mere spiking of the rails to the sleepers sufficient, but it is evident that the experience of the Americans has satisfied them that the plan, as they practise it, is a safe as well as a cheaji one. The gauge of most of the American railways is the same as the standard gauge in England (4ft. Kjin.), but there are some notable oxceptions. I travelled nearly 2,000 miles in Color ido and Ttah over narrow-gauge lines— (.c, over lines only three feet wide. But though the line is narrow, it does not at all follow that the cariiages are narrow too. Indeed, the carriages (or rather the " cars," for the Americans never apply the word " carriage " to a railway vehicle) overhang the track on both side^ in a manner which to any English- man is simply amazing, and to a timid Englishman very suggestive of danger. Hut the narrow-gauge lines are apparently safe enough, except in the event of a serious obstruction being encounterea on the line. In that case, the risk of the train being upset is manifestly greater than it would be if the engine rested on a broader base. I shall have occasion further on to doscrilie a serious mishap which was due to a train running down a stray horse, and the results of which I had the good or bail fortune to witness. From the Alleghany Mountains in the East to the Rocky Mountains in the West, America is virtually one vast pla , intersected in all directions by t'le Mis sissippi and Missouri Rivers and their numerous tribu- taries. I do not mean by this that the whole of the immense area tiius indicated is at about the same level as comp ired with the level of the sea. This is by no means the case. The land, of course, rises from tlic Mississippi both to the l-'ast and to the M'est. The traveller who leaves Omaha or Kansas City (botli on the river) for Denver or I'ueblo, at the foot of the Hocky Mountains, rises more than 4,000 feet before he reaches the end of his 20 or 24 hours' journoy. But he is unconscious of being thus raiseil the greater part of a mile in i)erpendicular height. He is travelling all tlio time over a gently undulating and apparently boundless plain, and has no idea that he is going up- hill continually. Such, however, is the case. But for all railway construction purjjoses, the country may be regarded as almost perfectly thit. There are no mountain ranges (no hills, indeed, wortli the name) to be crossed between the Alleghanies and the itockies. The result is that, as regards that vast central district, the railway angineers had few obstacles to contend with except the great rivers, which it was necessary to bridge as a matter of course. For hundreds of miles "end-on," the construction of their lines did not involve the mak- ing of a cutting or embankment ten feet deep or high. In fact, the track often follows the gentle undulations of the prairie for scores of miles together, without rising a foot above or sinking a foot below the level of the surrounding country. The European traveller, moreover, notices with astonishment that, except in the thickly -settled districts, the lines are entirely unfenced. Out on the prairies and the deserts of the Far West, fences are clearly un- nccesiary ; for thu wild r nimals are very few in number, 11 and those that are to be seen are not large enough to imperil anything; but their own lives even if tlicv stray on the rails. JSut in many of the partially-settled dis- tricts tho absence of fences is a nuisance and a daULrer. Trains have fre(iuently to pull up to allow tlie eniiineer. as the driver is called, to drive off cows and horses which ])crBist in remaining on tlie rails in spite of the dismal shriek of his steam whistle. At nii^ht, the en-jine-; liavo to carry large and very powerful head lamps in order to sjare olf the trespassers, or, failing that, to enable tlie drivers to discover them in tinia. Sometimes the lamps, powerful as they are, fail to do either the one thins or tlie other. In such cases, the erring beast is made mincemeat of in a twinklin:;, and sometimes the train is thrown olf the railp. In the thickly-settled iStates, fencing is universal. Beyond ttie Mississipid, it is as universally neglected. In the intermediite dis- tricts, the use of fences is extending, hut not fast enoui^h. Another remarkable feature of the American railways is the almost entire absence of bridges over or under ordinary roads. Except in or ne.ir some of the greit cities, the crossings are all on the level. It is ijossible to travel thousands of miles without p.issing under or over a single road bridge. On the prairies or in the newly- sottled districts, the level crossini,'s are all that can be reasonably ex|)ected ; but in and near tho cities they are ilaii?erous in the cxtieme. It is only in tho very thickest parts of the cities that the crossings arc pro- tecteil by means of uates and si;,'nalmen. I'^verywhere else, they are perfectly open, the following notice being in every c:iso displayed on a board : — " Itailroad Crossing. Look out for the Cars." The driver is supposed to cause his engine bell to be rung when apinoaching a crossing, but the ride is, I am afraid, often broken. At any rate, tho pajiers contain every day accounts of dreadful accidents at such crossings, and the sacrifice of life thus caused appears to b; regarded as a sad but unavoidable accompaiument of railway travelling. One of the most amazing things, indeed, about tlie American railway system is tho way in which tho lines nro carried into and through some of the largest and busiest cities on the same lev(d as the streets, or even along the streets them- selves. The approach to a great city, such, for instance, as Chicago, is tedious in the extreme. While the train is still eight or ten miles from the terminus, it slackens speed and begins to make repeated stoppage.?, the engine bell tolling continuously. The last ten miles of the journey, through the city suburbs, take as long to cover as the previous 30 miles. The rejieated stoppages are at first very jiuzzling to the stranger, but he soon discovers the cause. Not only do the lines cross ordinary roails on the level, but they cross other railways in the same way. Aii'(j»'/.v aie nut /irovidei citlfv with a xiijnnl or " aiiiniiimia / "How horribly dangerous, espoci.dly at night 1" is the involuntary comment on this statement. Not at all ! Collisions between trains at level crossings are very rare, and they are absolutely impossible if the very simple but peremptory order of the com- panies is observed. The order is simply this— that every train shall come to a dead stand a few yards short of every crossing. The one word "Stop I" in larj;e letters on a board is displayed in tho driver's face as he apiiroaches the crossing ; and he invariably stops in such a position that the engine is within a few yards of the crossing, where he can eee up and down the cross line. It IS obvious that, so long as this system is rigidly adhered ^Q no train can ever traver^ie a ciosaing at mure than a walking pace. If two trains approach the crossing at the same moment, they come to a stand>y the facts ; for the railway trallic, the liorse traffic, and the foot traffic are in some cases mixed up in a manner which is per- fect' , astounding. Itimning slowly into a busy terminus like that of IJullalo, you see horses and vehicles moving along both sides of the train without a ghost of a fence between them and the cars. iMore than this, you see lads, and even young children, jumping on the steps of the cars to steal a ride, just as they run behind ordinary vehicles in England. I remember seeing a number of boys jump on the rear i)latform of a Balti- more and Philadelphia train, ride across a very long bridge (probably a mile), and jump off at the other end. (The train slackened to a walking pace, if it did not actually stop, at both ends. ) The brakesman was in the rear car, but ho took no notice of tho boys, and it w.is evident that theirs was a kind of freak which was regardeil with toleration. Thk Engink-. The general appearance of the American locomotive is familiar to everybody in these days of universal photography and illustrated newspapers. The staring head lamps tbe large bell, the huge funnel-shaped chim- ney, the driver's "cab,' and the curious sprawling con- cern in front, known as the "cow-catchor," mark it out as a distinct species of tho genus locomotive. .Stripped of these few pcculiaridos, tho American engine would not differ materially from its European cousins. Tho boiler is usually made of great length and small diameter, and the weight of tho sti uctiiro is thus spread over a base of unusual length. The fore part of the enginc usually rests on a four-wheel or six-wheel bogie car- riage, the wheels being very small. The larger wheels, whether there be two pairs or three pairs, are always all of the same si/.o, and coupled together on both sides. The whistle is a thing of terror, which nobody who has heard it can ever get out of his ears. The shrill, prolonged shriek of an English engine, whose ■team is 12 blowing off at l.iOlbs., find whose driver is savajTcly impatient, is not a pleiisant thinp; to hear at close quarters, ISiit the Atnerican whistle is like the loudost of Knglish whistles, emitted by an engine suffering f ri{,'htfully from hroncliitis. The maiters of this instru- ment of torture appear to pitch the thins (if there is any "pitch " about it) in a lower icoy than finds favour nt the Crowe or Swindon works ; and tlio result is a Hurly growl of a most unearthly kind, which appears to be more penetrating than even our own shrill wiiistle, 'J'he same «rulf, ill-teinprrod noise is omitted, by way of si(i;nal, by the American steam-boats ; and between the boats iind the trains, a sojourner in a busy city wiiere there are a good many of both, has a lively timo of it, I hope [ liave said enough to make it clear that, as regards steam whistles, my patriotism is beyond question. Tlio British article, in this line at least, for mo, for mo ! Hut the American engine has two strings to its bow — it has a large, heavy, sonorous bell, as well as a growl- ing but penetrating whistle. A stranger to the country, sleeping near a great railway-station for the first time, is apt to wonder why all the city church bells begin to toll so persistently early i.i the morning. Ho presently dis- covers that the bells which distu' b his slumbers are those of locomotives, and not of c.iurch steeples. The bell is the signal by which the stoker gives notice that the engine is moving, or that it is approaching a level crossing. Indeed, tho stoker lias time for little else tlian pulling his bell-cord when his train is running into or out of a large town. The tolling sometimes begins a quarter or half-an-hour before the terminus is rcacheil, and continues with only brief intermissions until the train finally stops. One can have too much of this rather monotonous bell-ringing. I did more than once. But it is decidedly less objec- tionable than the whistle, and it is quite clear that the engine must make a good deal of noise of some sort or other so long as railway and ordinary traffic are so strangely mixed up as they are at present. The object of the great funnel-shaped chimney is not so ajiparent at first sight as that o*' the bell. Tlie funnel is, as a matter of fact, a receptacle for a great many of the aslies and small cinders which would other- wise be driven out of the chimney. The scittering of hot cinders is an evil against which it is necessary to provide, in a country where wood is often used as fuel, and where, in the dry season, serious fires are easily caused. The wide mouth of the funnel is covered with wire gauze. The steam and the finer ashes escape freely, but the larger particles which the blast carries forward and upward are stopped and f.all back into the part of the funnel arranged for their reception. The great head light, with its powerful reflector, is designed, as before |explained, to frighten animals off the track, and to enable the driver to see some distance ahead. The "cow-catcher" is intended to throw off any animals which may be foolish enough to defy or to dis- regard an approaching train. It is a strongly-made frame of wood, strengthened still further with iron stays. From the level of tho framework of the engine, it slopes downward, and outward to right and left, like a fan. Its outer edge is so near the rails, that any obstruction rising more than six inches above them must necessarily be caught by it. The central point of the cr ./-catcher is the most forward. From that point it slopes rapidly backward until it fairly covers both rails. The appara- tus thus presents two faces to any oow or other animal that challenges it to do its worst. One face looks obliquely to the right and the other obliquely to the left. Unless, therefore, an obstruction is caught in its very centre by the central point, the tendency of the collision is to throw it clear of the rails, either to ri^ht or left, according to the side or face of the apparatus which catches it. The cow-catcher is a very necessary appendage to an engine in the districts where tha lines are only partially fenced or not at all. The " Citcher " of a large engine of the ordinary gauge is, no dcubt, able to throw aside either a horse or a bullock, supposing it catches the animal in the right position. Sometimes it fails to do this, and then there is danger that the train may be derailed, I saw a narrow-gauge engine and tender, belonging to one of the Colorado lines, lying at the bottom of an embankment after a moment- ary struggle with a poor horse. In that case, the cow- catcher was smashed to pieces. So was the horse. The ordinary American locomotive is probably not larger or more powerful than the average English engine ; but American engines are not now all of the ordinary kind. One of the western railway companies has just taken a new departure in engine-building which places it far ahead of any European line. The Southern Pacific Railway Company, whose Unas run southward from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and so on till they join other lines which connect them with the Atlantic coast and the Gulf of Mexico, are preparing to carry the wheat of California to New Orleans. The Company believe that corn for the European market will pre- sently go that way, instead of making the tremendous and circuitous voyage round Cape Horn. It happens tb^.t this railway crosses a mountain chain near Los Angeles, in Southern California ; and, as there is no tunnel, the gradients on both slopes are very long and heavy. Tliey are, indeed, among the most wonderful examples of railway engineering in the world. The line is made to circle round and round in the most remark- able manner, and at one place to tie itself in a sort of knot by crossing itself at different levels. The economical working of a great traffic over this line involves the use of heavy engines of enormous power, and the Company have i jordingly gone in this direction beyond all preiicdents. An official of the Company at San Francisco told me that the Sacramento engino-shops had recently constructed an engine whose gross weight was 04 tons, and that Lis directors were so satisfied with its performances that they had decided to go a step further, and had ordered plans to be pre- pared for a giant of lO.'i tons, "But," I said, "how about your bridges ? Many American bridges are not too substantial. Were those on your southern line ever designed to carry such weights as you describe ?" The official (who was not on tho engineering staff) shrugged his shoulders and made a very dubious reply, from which I gathered that he would probably decline to accompany the lO.'i-tonner on its first trip to the south. It is clear, from what I have said, that, in the matter of heavy locomotives, if in nothing else. Uncle Sam is at present " licking Creation "—always suppos- ing that " Creation " in this ca.so means our own planet. What steam locomotives may be like in Venus or Jupiter is, of course, beside the question. The Ordinary Cabs. As I have before remarked, there are no railway "carriages " in America. All the railroad vehicles, in- eluding those for goods, are called oars. And, by the way, there are no "goods." All goods are called "freight," and the waggons in which they are conveyed so 13 are " freight oars." These are very large, square, box- like structures, invariably covered, like our " lock-up" wftggons, and ure almost exnctly alike, except in tlie colour they are piiinted and the companies' nameH tliuy bear in larije letters. They are much larger, heavier, and more capacious than any railway waggons I ever saw in Europe. The passenger cars, like the freight cars, are of immense size and height. The ordinary car consists of one long apartment, with a .'.oor at each end, a narrow passage down the middle, and 12, 14, or even 10 seats on each side. As each seat comfortably accommodates two persons, the longest cars (those with 1(J scats on each Hide) contain G4 persons each when tilled. There is a window to every seat. All the windows are supposed to open upwards like the bottom sasli of an ordinary window, but their ability to be thus raised is often purely imaginary. The sashes are made to fit very accurately, for the purpose of excluding dust in sum- mer and cold in winter, and the fit is frequently 80 very good that the strongest passengers have, after an exhausting struggle, to give up the attempt to open tliem. I myself often worked at them till I was red in the face, touched in the wind, and just a little affected in the region of the temper. Then I would do as I do when I cannot solve a conundrum— "give it up," and soothe myself by reflecting on the superiority of the familiar British institution— the light sash which slides downwards, the supple strap with the holes in it, and the convenient button by which to graduate the height of the concern. But the American window is apt to try the temper (and the health) as much when it is up as when it resists all attempts to put it up. For it cannot by any amount of force be made to go up more than about half its own height. The consequence is that the draught, instead of passing over the head (as it does when an English carriage window is only partially open), strikes the i)as- senger in the region of the side and chest, from the waist up to about the neck. Further, if the passenger wants to put his head out, he can only do so by means of a regular gymnastic feat ; and getting it in again safely is still more difficult. If the somewhat heavy sash does happen to move easily in its grooves, the pas- senger who puts his head out has, moreover, to count on the possibility of its dropping on his neck through the slipping of the fastening. I was more than once guillotined in this fashion, and I found that the position was undignified as well as awkward. I am afraid, in- deed, that ray fellow-passengers bughed at me, for I regrettc' ^-^ observe that a disposition to make fun of other p.opio 9 trials has been duly inherited by cnr American cousins. Every American car has a small w.c. in one corner, and the sleeping and drawing-rooui cars have two such closets — one for ladies at one end, and one for gentlemen at the other end. These are conveniences which are indispensable in a country where the journeys are often meaeured by days rather than by hours. Thuy constitute the one important feature of the American railway system which I would like to see grafted on to our own system. How to adapt it to our separate compart- ments is tlie question to bo solved, and I confess 1 do not see how it is to be done. A closet for each and every compartment is, of course, out of the question— so, at least, it appears in the present stage of our railway development. At the same time, it is obvious that some such addition is becoming more and more desirable, for the express trains on our long main lines are year by year increasing the distances they run without drawing roiu. Every ordinary American car is furnished with a stove, and in the sleeping and parlour cars the heat is equally diffused by means of small iron pipes, which run along the sides and are coiled under the seats. In the matter of heating, the American railway companies (except in the iSouth) have no option. The winters aro so :^cvero in most of the States, and particularly in Canaila, that artificial heat is an absolute necessity. The car stoves do I'leirworkeffectually — tooelJeotually, indeed, except whei the cold is very intense. For, as the New York papc s were complaining in Uctjber, the l)orter who tends tlie stove knows no gradations of heat. To him, a tire is a fire ; and when, at the first suspicion of winter, he is tuld to light one, he lights it and keeps it up just as zealously as if the thermometer were already 40' below zero. Then, say the New York pajiers, the passengers curse inwardly, and wish that it were always either July, when no fire is needed at all, or January, when the bisjgest tiie that can be made is tolerable. The car seats are comfortably cushioned with red or green velvet. The backs arc padded in the same way, and are so arranged as to be reversible. Tliis arrange- ment allows of all the ])assengers facing the engine, in whatever direction the train may be running. It also allows a party of two, or three, or four, to sit so as to face each other, just as passengers do in our compart- ments. But tlie weak uoint about the seats is the low- ness of their backs, which do not; reach tlio shoulder of a man of average height. The head is thus without that rest which the padded backs of our tirst-ulass and second-class carriages afford. I do not see how the backs can be made higher in the ordinary cars, unless the system of reversible backs were sacrificed. But there is no reason whatever, so far as I can see, why the backs of the seats in the I'uUman curs should not be made a foot higher. For they are not required to be reversible. They are, in fact, fixtures, and when bed-time comes they are continue 1 almost to the roof of the car by a moveable partition which is slid in above them. A foot of this partition, if not th-e whole of it, might just as well be added to the permanent backs of the seats. Another institution of the American cars, which might be imported into England with advantage, if it could anyhow be adapted to our separate-compartment system, is the iced- water cistern. The American summers being hotter than ours, a water supply is an absolute necessity ovev there, and no car is without one, if I may judge from my own observation. The cistern, with a suitable drinking glass, or a small metal bowl hanging from a chain, is at the end of the car ; and if the car is full of passengers, it has customers every two or three minutes. (Jn some of the eastern lines, the accommodation is carried one step further — the water is carried through the cars, every half- hour or so, by a lad, who supplies glasses of it to all who ask as they sit. Drinking iced water is everywhere a great institution in America. Indeed, it is greatly overdone, and the Americans are said to impair their digestion seriously by it, for the water is taken into the stomach in a state of iey coldness, and in hot weather the dose is very f reijuently repeated. I may add that the ice-water cistern is not confined to the railway cars. It is to be found in wait- ing-rooms, public institutions, offices, hotels, and every place of public or semi-public resort, and is, in spite of its abuse, a source of great comfort and luxury. The " mashers ' and other systematic London theatre-goers, who aro accustomed to get their "nips" at the 14 theatre bar§ between the nets, wouM bp consiJer- nbly aurpiised, if they went to some of the Amurioan theatres, to find thnt the only drink availiilile is iced water, carried roiunl in ghisses on a snrt of lirire cruet- •tand. It is, however, u fact t*iat this was the state of ati'airs at more than one of the theatres I attended. I am, of course, not prepared to a>l. The Sleeping C.\h. The American sleeping car is the natural outcome of the country's geoj;raphic il bi^'uess. It is only in one direction that a railway journey from London need occupy more tl\an a fairly long dav. The one exception is, of cour e, the extreme N )rth of Scothnd, and the traffic between that rem ito region and the metropolis would not of it?elf have been sufficient to justify the running of sleeping coa -hes. " Sleepers ' (to use the concise American name) are, as a matter of fact, now run on the m lin lines to the North of England and Scotland ; but they have been ])Ut on solely for the benefit of those who. in order to save time or for other reasons, prefer to travel by night rather than by day. It was for a dilferent reason that such coaches were first put on in America. There the distances are so great that thousands of people are constantly setting out on journeys which cannot possibly be accom- plished in 12 or !•"> hours, and which often extend to two, four, and even six days and nights. A traveller from New Yor'f to San Francisco cannot get over his .S.MOO miles in much less than 140 hours, even by the quickest trains. He is travelling all that time, with the exception of the 20 or 30 minutes allowed three times a day for meals. Indeed, 0:1 far as Chicago or St. Louis, he can now go witiiout leav- ing the cars at all ; for the comjianies who work the lines to those cities are now running splendid dining cars, in which excellent meals are served, as the train travels, for about Ss (75 cents) per head. Tiieso cars are picked up at particular stations, and dropped at other stations an hour or two later. iiut to return to the '' sleeper." I met with two kinds — the Pullman and the Wagner. The Pullman is the commoner of the two ; the great company pr sided over by Mr. Pullman, the inventor of the car, hiving obtained the right to run their cars over all the prin- cipal lines. A stranger entering a " sleeper" in the day- time notices that the seats, instead of having, like those of the ordinary car, reversible backs, so that all the passengers may face the engine, have fined backs, and are arranged in pairs— on' of the p»ir facing the ot'iei'. They are, in fact, arranged just as the two seats in our English compartments are. There are 12 seats (six I)airs) on each side of the car, with the vsual passage down the middle. But instead of each seat containing two persons, it contains only one, although quite large enough for two. A car which, if seated in the usual w,iy, would hold 01 persons, is thus devoted to the accoff'modation of only 2J. ?]veryone, there- fore, has ample elbow-room. Each passenger has at least three foet of beautifully cushioned seat, with padded back, all to himself, and with an electro-plated spittoon thrown in ; and hisoppodte neighbour enjoys tlie same acoo;nmodation. The car is elegantly decorateil, and the floor is covered with a handsome carpet. The win- dows a '0 double, so that in winter the cold may be the more effectu .lly excluded. At one end there is a small retiring-room, with w.c, wash-basin, and other toilet requisites, for ladies. The gentlemen are similarly provided for at the opposite eml, and they have a cosy little smoking-room besides. Handsome mirrors abound 21 m a f , 1 of I'l ca m( Lie, wa by juf int| ca pa 1 St in all parts of the car. If the bncks of the seats were a foot higher and the window* opened dilfemiitly, a "sleeper" would, by day, he all that the most exacting of piis.sengoiB could ilcmand, Hut it is ni^ilit -or ratiier ove!iin« ; for sot;iuty in tho l'iillin:in car retires fjirly, knowing it may possibly bo called at an " eatinij stution ' for breiikfast by six in tiio moininf,'. The negro or mulatto attend int, anxious to begin tlie last and most important of liis day's tasks, walks through the car and oasts his knowing eye upon all tho passeniters in turn. If he rinds a pair uuiragud in cardjilayiiiK or in lively conversation, he passes thoin by, concluding that they ilo not want to be put to botl just yet. Jiut it he sees a solit.iry traveller do/ing, or gazing with a bored and wearied expression out into the darkness, he asks : " Shall 1 fix you, cap'n ? " — or "ma'am,'' as tiio c.ise may be. The passenger answers with a sleepy " Ves I'' and moves into a neighbouring seat for a few minutes, to give the ditrkie room to operate. If there is a second pa-^senaer in the section (the section consists of the pair of seats facing c;ich other), he or she must clear out too. There must, indeed, be some sort of agreement between the pair as to when the bed-making business shall begin, It does not follow that buth need retire at once ; for, apart from the smokinj-room, a seat may always be obtained for an hour on sutForaiice in some other section. The darkie beijins by lifting oif tho two cushioned se its ami dragging out of tho ilepths beneath a couple of uncovered pillows and two short pii.'oes of wood. The latter he i>laces across the knee- space between the two seits, and puts the seats on tliem, drawing the jiadded backs (which are also move- able) down into tho i)laces which the two seats had previously occupied. A level, padded couch, about six feet long, is thus constriictod of the two seats and the two backs. .Tumping ui) on the edge of this co ich, the attendant turns a handle in the sloping side of the roof, and lets down on a pair of hinges a whole panel of the carved roof, about the size of an ordinary door. This concern is simply a huge wooden flap, of whose existence the passenger has not hitherto dreamt, attiched to the side of the car, just above the window, by its hinges ; it drops until exactly level, and is so suspended by two chains att iched to the roof. A wooden partition, reaching from t.ie back of the seat to the roof, is slid in at each end of the section, and tlio section assumes the form of two hertiis, one about three feet above t le oth'r, exactly like a pair of berths at sea, Tlie upper bertli, when let down, is seen to contain all the materials (except the linen) for making up two beds. There are for each berth a thin mattvess, a blanket or two, and a thick rug. There are, l)esides, two heavy and handsome rep oi' i)ens to bo a male (I don't see, by the way. how " he'' can bo any- thing else), he prob.ibly slijjs olf his boots and kicks them under tho lower berth, where ho will find them o'er, u in the morning, divests himself of bis outer envelopes, and mounts to his berth in his shirt-sleeves. Ho must finish his undressing as best ho can, sitting on his bed. If the pis-enger who shares tho section with him has retired before liim, and drawn the curtains well together, he cannot very well avoid se|;arat- ing tiem and stepping on the edge of the lower berth in mounting to his own. If the lower-berth passenger is a lady and he is a gentleman, he will, of course, manage this business properly, though 1 confess candidly I do not know exactly how to define " l)roperly " in such a connection. He will, at any rate, not be m ire wanting in propriety than flio guests of that famous backwoods " hotel '' where there was only a single room for all-comers. In that case (so, at least, a veracious Western newspaper says) a rhnlk line w.is drawn across the middle of the tloor. One side of the room was for ladies and tlie other side was for gentlemen ; and it w.is a standing order of the house and a point of honour with the guests that iiuhodii looked (I'l'oS'i tlie Inir, 1 confess that, in this part of the subject, I am get- ting a little out of my depth ; still, as 1 desirj to lie a full and faithful chronicler, I must i)ersevere. The truth is, then, the proprieties of life are a good deal ignored in a sleeping-car, just as they aro on boavd ship, if you happen to be travelling alone (i mean with- out a friend to share your section), you can never know with whom your lot may be cast. If you aro a gentle- man, you may have a lady either alioveor below you; and 1 suppose it follows, as a matter of course (or shall I siy as a corollary 'r), that, if you are a 1 idy, you may hajipen to share a se ;tion with a gentleman. As there aro young and old, agreeable and disagree ible iiersons of both sexes, and as the occupants of the same section have to face e;ich other all day as well as sleep one above tho other all n'lglit, even a saint might be forgiven tor having .•ionie i)references as to the kind of comiianion ho is paired with. On one occasion, I was put in with a very prim, shari)-featured, angular shouldered, stony- visaged lady of uncertain age -a New England spinster of the strong-mimled sort, to all appearance. I liail tho ticket for the lower berth, which is usually preferred to the upper 1 began to look forward rather sadly to the prospector a night and a tl ly in siieh compmy ; but, fortunately, my companion soon discovered that tho sole occupant of one of tho ( ther sections was a lady with a baby, and, to my great relief, s'io speedily got herself and her belongings transferred to the vncant berth. Perhaps 1 cannot better close my remarks on this part of mv subject than in tho words au.su there are only one or twopissenyer trains da ly. aiul[iartlyliet!auso tliey h;ivo tj piss numerous froij;lit trains. Ka.st of the Mi-souri, the s])oeil is fjreatei'. -My first c\perionco of anything like (iO milm an hour was K''i"»-''l 'J" my return journey, Ixitweun Ivans. is City and St. I.oui.s ; ami the nearer I ^'ot to tlio gruit cities of the Kast, tiie oftenor w is t!iis -pLu I attained, li.tween \\'.isliini{ton, lialtimoro, I'hilailolpliia, and Xew York, the seivice of trains is a very tine one, and the speed is at many po.nts e lual to that of oir be^t I'^n^lisli e^iiresses. I went from U sliin;ton to 15 iltimore ( li) milesi in '>'i minutes, in spite of three stoppa;;us aiicl the usual tedious slowin;? over the munoroiis crossiixs in the noisiibourhood of both cities. A fe»v days earlier, a spuci.il train carried J'resident Arthur over t.jiat same l) miles in 4 t minutes — a feat which could not ho ijre itly surpassed even in this country. Uetw.^un the Atl '.ntic coast and«.'liicago, als I, the speed is very gre.it. The com|ietition in that direction i.s ex;eediii:;ly keen, the traveller havinij choice of three or fo ir routes. J>y at least two of those routes (the Xew Yor'c (.'ent:al and Lake Shore and the Pennsylvania), the distance of nearly 1,0)1) ndles is acaoniplishud m les. than 2i hours. The trains run over 10) miles at a stretch, the eui^ines taking up watjr, as tliey run, from slui'low trou;hs, arter the f tshion of the London an I Xorth Western expresses. Tn: Nl'.mueu of C'l.vssks. Xothin?; is more common in this country than the notion that there i; only one class of railway c.irriages in America. Many Americans encoura.'e this delusion, in spite of patent facts ami with the onject, apparently, of maintaining the character of their countrymen for consistency with their democratic principles. I have said enough already about onlinary cars, ])ariour cars, and sleeping cars to show th it the common helief his no foundation in fact. ]?ut besi les these three classes of cars, all the great trunk lines running west war 1 have special cars for emigrants ; some have reclinin;j;-ehair cars ; and on at least one west- ern lino I saw ca s mai'krd ditinuly "second class," It is perfectly a'isurd for any American to decli.re that there is only one class. The woid "class ' is certainly not in ordinary use to descr be the existiii:^ ditleiencus. I'ut if the Americans have not the word, they have the tiling itself, and it is a mere (juilible on the.r part to repies.uit their system of classes as essen- tially different fioin ours. The truth is, the rich and well-to do may (as I have already described) i)urchase e.Ktr.i space, increased comf.>rt, and a certain freedom from annoyance, which are out of the reach of theii- poorer fellow-travellers, precisely as they may and do in England. I do not know why any .Vmcrican should regard the class system as inconsistent with tlemocratic institutions. A rich American does not refuse to live in a grand house and to eat costly foo 1, merely because such luxuries are beyond the reach of his jioorer countrymen. On the contrary, he is very lavish in securing for himself all tlie advantages which hit money can buy, whether in the matter of increased comfort in travellin,' or in any other way. In thii respect, helloes exactly w! at rich peo[)le do (and, up to a certain point, have a right to do) all the world over. Tui: TlCKKT Xtl.S.VNCE. The triin boin-.; open to the conductor (or guard) from end to end, all that rcl ites to the examination, marking, and collecting of tickets is done as the train is running. In m iny respects this is a very convenient arrangement, but it has its drawbacks. The con- veniences are these : — Tlieic is no c dlection of tickets at the station gates, and the iilatforms are therefore ordinarily open to all. I'uither, a person can jump " aboard '' at the very last moment witiiout a ticket, knowing that the conductoi can supply him with one. There are, indued, many so-called " stations 'out Wesb without a sin;,'Io ollicial to issue tickets or do anything else. 1 have seen " stations" which, so far as I could discover, consisted solely of a post bearing the name of the place. Any passenger who is taken ui> at one of these spots must necessarily get his ticket of the con- ductor. (I ought to have explained before now that the Americans almost invariably call a station a " depot," pronouncing the word as if spelled " deepo.") Xow for the drawbacks of the ticket system. When- ever a train stops frefpiently in a thickly-jieopled district, orowils of passeng'jrs are, of course, constantly getting in and out of the cars. The new-comers are distrihuteii throughout tho train, and it is impossible for a conductor, even if the owner of a patent mennuy of exceptional horsepower, to distinguish between chem and the pas engers who were in the cars before. The cmi-e luenco is that, after every stoppage, he has to walk through the tiain and examine all the tickets ; and on some of the eastern lines this incessant tlemand to see tho tickets becomes jierfectly exasperating. The worst case I met with was on the hoston ami Albany lino, about '200 miles in length. In that distance, my ticket was positively demanded, taken from me, perforated, and returned nine times. At last, havini? been awoke out of a pleasant doze two or tlireo times, my stock of patience ran out to tho last dregs, and I began to re;ard the conductor as an implacable personal enemy, as clearly beyoml the palo of the law as tiie rattlesnake and the '"griz/.ly." What would have haiipened to that conductor if he had returned the ticket to me after the tenth examination, J do not care to say — the truth is, I .jn"t exactly know. Fortunately, he [lut tie much-perforated thing — the "holy"' thing, may I say V — into his pouch, and cscajied alive into tho next car. Out West, the ticket nuisance is not nearly so bad. The runs are longer, the conductor has more time to become acquainted with his through passengers, and the number getting in an 1 out is small. Having once shortrn your ticket, you will sometimes not be trouliled again until a fresh con- ductor takes charge of tho tra'n. If you are in a "sleeper," the Tullman attendant will hold your ticket and show it when necessary. On many lines, moreover, the conductor will supply you with a piece of coloured card, indicating that you are going the whole length of his section. This he will stick into your hat or into the back of your seat, where he can see it every time he passes through, and you will hear no more about your ticket while h« remains in charge. Why the eatern lines do not adopt this or some such plan I am puzzled to know. I am IS ■till more puzzled to underitand why the Amerioani continue to tulernte so nee'llessly worrying a Hytitem as I hi descrihcil. It h only fair to them to say that the. "rin- cipal liotels, and at numerous othces belon;.{ing to the companies or to private spesulators called "scalpers." The approaches to some of the busiest dop^lt^ are beset with the touts of these speculators, who lie in wait for persons who look like travellers, and offer through tickets to various points at reduced rates. An Ent;lishman is amazed to find that there is apparently no such thmsj as a fi.xed fart between any one important point and another. In one sense, there is a fixed fare in every ca^e — the fare charj^ed when the ticket is bought at the station, liut the traveller soon discovers that the station fare is in every case the maximum, and that, if he is about io take a long jour- ney extending over several lines, I's policy is to secure his ticket somewhere else. We will suppose (to take an extreme case) that he wants to f;o right across the continent, from New York to San Francisco. If he takes a through ticket at the station from which he starts, he will pay IS.') dollars for it. But if he makes empiiries at the various ticket offices in New York, he will find the through ticket olfered at various prices, ranging from 133 down to I2;l dollars. Possibly there may be i)laces where it can be got at a still cheaper rate, but 123 dollars was the lowest (|uotation I happened to hear of. I was lonjj; puzzledby tbesedilferences, andatlast I asked a San Francisco agent to explain how they were brought about. His explanation was this : — "I am,'' he said, "the chief agent for California of the Chicago and Alton Kailway. and I am also interested in sending traffic eastward over the lines of the Denver and llio Grande and the Atcheson, Topeka, and Santa F6. These three lines form parts of one of the competing routes to New York and the East generally. The lines of several other companies, with which I have no direct concern, make uji the remainder of the route. The full fare to \ew York is 135 dollars. That is what you jiay if you go to the Central Pacitic dejjot here, and take your ticket. l!ut I can book you through, if you go by way of the three lines I am in- tere.ited in, for VIA dollars. The diltorence of 12 dollars comes entirely out of the pockets of my threj eompanies. In short, they make that reduction to ensure that the traffic goes their way, the other companies receiving their shares of the total 13.5 dollars without deduction." This explanation made the matter clear enough. But there are occasionally other and still wider differences in the fares when two competing com- panies happen to be more or less at war. While I was in the West, the lines which connect Chicago with Kansas City, St. Louis, and Louisville were the scene of a short but sharp contest, in which three or four com- panies were involved. Kach company charged the others with sidling tickets, tbrougli "scalpers," at lose than the standard faros. There were charges and denials of d shonourablc conduct all round, and a good deal of dirty linen was wasi ed m public. Day by day, the fares wont down, until at last tickets were issued from Chicago to St. Louis (a distance of nearly 30) miles) for I dollars (lia.'td). This mad competition did not last long, but the public naturally made a rush to take advantage of it while it ilid last. My readers will gather from all this that a stranger who is travelling labours under serious disadvantages. Without muchexpenence and great local knowledge, it is often impossible to make sure that one is not piyiun ^ great deal more than the minimum pi ice for a tiiket. The system of selling tickets in hotels and other places apart from the line is a con- venience, no doubt; b-.it the advantages are to a great extent counterbalanced by the impossibility of knowing when you have found what the Ameri ans call " bottom prices. " Ch.vos AnoLisuF.n. Great Britain extends over so few degrees of longi- tude that the difference in the solar or natural time of her extreme eastern and extieme western points scarcely exceeds half-an hour, and no real inconvenience is caused by the observance of London time all over the country. l>ut the case of the 't nited States is very different. 'I'he natural time of New York is more than three hours ahead of that of San Francisco ; that is to say, the sun rises and sets more than three hours earlier in the former cilj .han in the latter. It would obviously be very inconvenient to make so vast a country kee)> the time of any one place; there would, of course, be a great and awkward difference between the natural and the artificial time. The consequence is that, up to about two months ago, American " railway time "was chaos— the despair alike of officials and of travellers. In the same city — nay, sometimes in the same station — two or three differ- ent companies, whose lines run out in different directions, observea as many different times. Thosain« company, if its line was a long one running east and west, started its trains by the time of one place, stopped them at many stations by the time of some other place, and arranged fortlieir arrival at the distant; terminus by the natural time of that terminus. At some of the meeting-places of the trunk lines, the confusion was simjily maddening to a stranger, the evil being intensified by the difficulty— I might say the impossibility— of obtaining information from the station officials. I am glad to say the r.dlroad companies have at last, since my return, come to an understand- ing among them-^elves and adoi)ted something like a sanesystnm. Seein.; the impossibility of observing one unifnrm time over so vast an extent, they have adopted what is known as the hour system. Fifteen degrees of longitude rejuesent exactly one hour of time. The country h.is a'jrordingly bi'en divided into three or four belts, each 1.") degrees wide from east to west. The same time will be observed at all ])laces within one of these belts ; and as the time to be observed is the time of the exact centre of the belt, the natural time and the rail- way time will nowhere differ from each other more than half-an-hour. When it is twelve o'clock in No. 1 belt, containing New York and the other eastern cities, it will be eleven o'clock in all parts of Belt No. 2, (the belt next further west), ten o'clock in all parts vi 1 in he scene of four com- arged the ^," at lese larges and )und, and rasi ed m mt down, •ago to St, ] dollars I lonK, but antaijft of i» om all this ider serious 1 great local 9 Bure that 3 minimum I tickets in no is a con- e to a great of knowing iW "bottom !es of longi- natural time tern points iconvenier.ee I nil over the fttes is very is more than 3 ; that is to hours earlier It would ike so vast )lace ; there I awkward he artificial t two months -the despair same city — three differ- nt directions, lilt! company, vest, started ped them at er place, and minus by the ome of the confusion the evil ght say the m the station . companies understand- ethinK like a )bservins one have adopted een degrees f time. The three or four St. The Si»me . one of these le time of the and the rail- other more lock in No. 1 lastern cities, Belt No. 2, in all parts id ; i)f Holt N'o .^, and so on, going Imckward an hour fur fvery !•"• de^^n-es. Tlii- iidvaiitagi's of tlii-* plan are obvious. The iliiruieucu >■>' tiiiU! will in nW cases he an o\acthiiur, or exactly two or tliri'c hums, as tiio ca^i'mnyl'e; ninl t'vory )ii'r-on \\'.t\\ a fair i\nowlod,'0 of th(! j;('o:,'ra|>liy of tlm country will lie ahlc to iiMor- tiiin for hiin^L'lf (with a map, if not without; what linio is observei! in any particular |ilace. IXt'OHM.XTIOX .SCAIKK. I spoke just now of tlie ilithciilty of ulit inin,' infoiiiia- tion at the railway statinns. In many places that iliiliculty pissoH nil belief. The timu ot dt'|i.irture, tlio position in the station of tin." re luiind train, ami many other facts which the stran(,'er wants to know, are app.irently closr suciets. When I was at the liulfalo dcp .t, oiui of the mo>t im- ))')rtaiit in the States, 1 unuld not tind a sineili' time tilile in any part of the buiM:nj;. I asked the ticket cleik for one. Ho saiil his stock was exiiausted, ami asked ino wlir.t train I w.iiitud to go by. I tuM him that was the very (|Ue>tion I wanted to settle by consulting a table. I wished to select from among several tiains a gooil and i|uick one which suited my plans. Thinking there might bo a timetable on the depirtme platfoim, I walked in tliat direction, but was st(ippe 1 by an olliii ,1, who told me I must get my t'cket before passing the spot where he was posted. F had at la^t to buy my ticket without having obtained any (letinite information, beyond the bare starting time. The (pie-itions then arose -first, whether the train was to leave by New York time, by liutValo time, or by Cohimbu^ time ; secondly, which of those times the St ition clocks weie s mposed to he keeiiing. I could not satisfy myfclf on cither of thc~e ])oints, and so I sim]'ly sat down and waited for the train. At Council IJlutfs, a s'lort transfer train carries westw.ird-liouiid passengers over the .Mississippi bridge to Omaha, where thoy enter the I'nion I'aiiiio cars When I and my companion arrived at Council ItlufTs, it cost us an anxious tiampto and fro over th' whole station, and an ini|uiry extend- ing over L"i or L'i) minutes, to asceitain With certainty which was the transfer train and at what time it crosse 1. There were few olhcials to he seen. .Some of them returned to oor iniiuiries the stereotyped rciily. 'I couldn't tell you I '' Others took no notice whatever of our (piestions, while stil) another set Hung a curt and unintelligible answer over their shouldeis at us as they movep"nd a day witliaiiold l!i idpiut friend, i'.eforo leav- ingthe Itichir.oml (h'pMt on my arrival, I in luiroil for the clock by which t' e trains were started, so that I might see how far it dilfered from my watch and arrange to be back in good time for my return train. I at last found a single cloc'<, loit an o:h« i d whom I cpieationed admitteil that th it instriimi'tit bore no particular rela- tion to the departure of tiie tiains. On being prissed further, lie "guessed " there ini< a clock upstairs by which the tiains were dispatche(|, but it was in a pri\ate room or ollice wheio jias- sengers couhl n\c.i!.\i;i:-Ciii:(Ki.\(i System. " f.uggage " is a word entirely unknown in Anierict, A traveller's belon.dngs aie theie invariably called bag- gage. The Ami rican mo le of "checking'' baggage is entirelvdiflcreiitfrom oiii' system of lahelling. Inthetirst ))lace, their plan is a tidier an 1 more cleanly one than ours. Instead of sticking on three or four s(|uaieincl es of thin paper with a dab of stale paste or messy gum, and, by frr'iurnt repetitions of the dose, gradually ilefacin.' aud dirtying ti e handsomest of trunks and portmanteaux, the .Vmei ican ba,'gago man attaches a hrass laliel by moans of " 'vather strap. This label bears the name or luiobe. f the station to which tho passenger is going, and the passenger is supplied with a duplicate label exactly like the first-named. Tho package is only delivered up on the production of this du))licate label ; and as long as tho passenger holds that label, he may rest r.ssured that his baggage will not be got liold of )y any thieves except those connected with the railway. Tho advantages of this system, apart from its tidine-s, are obvious enough. In this country, every |)assenger must "claim'' hia luggago when the train reaches its terminus. He has no evi- dence to offer tint he is the actual owner of what he claims ; and if he is a nervous Der.son, not much given to travelling, he may, when he sees tho usual struggle goin^ on round a mountain of baggage, worry himself seri- ously (:;nd, I may add, unnecessarily) as to the chances of his property lieing cnaimed by somchody else. No traveller in Americ I, who once understands the check- ing syst m, ever feels the s luillest inxiety of this kind. If you are staying only a few hours in the town to which your baggage is choiked, and do not want the baggage carried to your hotel, you have nothing to do but to walk out of the station the moment the train arrives, without giving yourself the smallest concern about your belongings. You may rest assured that, whenever you choose to resume your journey, you will find your trunk in the station baggage-room, and be allowed to take possession of it, or to check it on A\ ;!- 20 KDother stnge, on producing; the duplicate ht:\n^ label which was hmdetl to you at startin;;. If you happen to have tiikoii a tiukot for a lorm journey, with thi- in- tention of " stopping over '' (that is, hrua'Kiii^i your journey) lit viiiiouH intcrinoliato i»liicon, you niiiy chrck your l)ai;i;u.;o on to v.irious jioints. Any trtink w'licli you lire not likely to wunt till you iciicii your distiiui- tion o.in ho eliou'.od tlirou;ih at once, and you c;in claim it on your airival, ();hur pack i^es may lie checked to and picked up at intermediate points. When a train is approac dnij a 1 crgu town, the ajjent of an express or delivery comp my passes tlirou^h tlie train and asks each passtuiiier if he has any l)i,','a^'o to clieok for any one ot the hotel* (or, iiiil.o I, any other addre-^s) in that town. 'I'ho'O who w.sh their hai,'ij;aKe thus (hdivered give him their a Idresscs or the names of their hote's and li.ind him their l)a,':;axo checxs, in ifturn for which he (iivDS tlium his own company's checks. Within an hour or two of the arrival of t ;() train, the haij^iigo is duly delivered accoiilini; to the instructions given. Tho chariiQ for this service is soinctimoH monstrously higli, as W(! sliull eii presently, but the convenience of tho arrangement is beyond dispute. Although the checking sys'em may occasionally fail, a< r.ny system worked l)y fallible humanity is hound some- titnes to do, I certainly wonder the English coaipanies have not long since adopted some such arrangement. Their reason i)robal)ly is that the existing I'higlish system is not, in actual inactice, so utterly ai)surd as it looks ; and that mucli must ho conceded. It hapijened that, in my case, the chocking system failed twice in tho very same week. On our approach- ing ('incinnati, the express man came through tho car HS usual, and both rny friend and I checked part of our baggage for tlie Ihirnett llouso Hotel, My friend's trunk was duly delivered at that hotel within an hour of our arrival, but my own was missing. After a long hunt for it at the station and at tho olKco of tho express company, and after telephoning for it to other parts of the city, I liad to "give it up " and go to bod. .Some time in the small hours, a porter woke mo to tell me that the missing ))ortmanteau had, after all, been found at the depot. A few days later, I was leaving "Washington for 15 dtimore, and my bagjta^o was duly checked in the hall of the Washington hotel. Tho express van, however, went to tho station witliout it, and it had to follow me by a later train. Two such failures of the checking system in a single week, in tho experience of a single person, are, I think, very uncom- mon. Indeed, several American gentlemen, to whom I described my experience, declare 1 that it was unpre- cedented. This I can readdy believe ; for if tliero is a hit of bad luck going about the continent I happen to be in, and looking for asuitabh; resting-idace, it is pretty sure to take up its quarters with me. Baggage Smashers. Nothing less than insjuration can enable me to do justice to this theme, and I shall infallibly make a mess of it unless all the deities that pn.side over tho pen-and- ink business forthwith come to my aid. 'I'liere were several things wliich tho writer of the latter part of tho Book of Proveibs said were beyond his com- prehen ad corner 10 side of )f similiir 3 day, and •ule is to upon the lavitition. e made to aded. the n? them- discovered ck trunks them away cad a car, they have ta i\ro very f moderate ther hand, the huy;e ■e than two en piled to 10 smasher essential for the that a train d that the ae for that one of the id up under ion bes'.ns. as the head tho better, _ tlie more iniashed and e». Uydint . perfection 'ces of bag- gravitation, ■If. Seizing h one clever the bottom sists (to put turning tho its centre of ear e, se. Lioa barroWi if tlio trunk happtfn nut itself serioUMly injuiod ; liut it is |>ri>tt\ certain that { anything frasilo whicii may I'O in-idi; is lioptdossly | (lamiined, even if it is roli<>>l u|) in all :iii' owners dirty i liiiou rtiiil pankod in tho \ery centre of tlio box. J'.iit the bc-t fun fur thf! Mui l^hels comes in whrn the llr-t trunk is a li^ht and rather we.ik ouo, ami the second is a drummer's (commcioial travollei'.-) sample case, duly prepared, by means of heavy iri«n clamps on all corners and od^!l■s, to take either tiie ttftn- sive or the defensive. In this cas>\ tiio smash is as certain and as complete as wlion an drph mt siin down on a band-liox. Nobody can stand and watch a jiarty of ollicials unloading l)ii;;.: igo in tliis fashion with- out foelins an almost uncontiollalilo desire to i,'i) round nnd administer a vigorous kick to them all in turn. Tlifiir misi^iiicvousncss is of so cynicral and gratuitous a kind that it is ditlicult to beliovo they are not all in tho secret pay of the trunk-makers ; — spcakinsj of whom, by the bye, reminds me tint I was aitonished at their number and the extent of their business, until 1 saw how the porters wore everyw'.icre iloiiig their level best to send them custon-.ers. If tho porters are not bribed b> the trunk-mak rs, I sco no way of oxplainini? their doliberately mischievous doinsfs, e\c pt on a theory which ovn only bo expressed in /Vmericanese — viz., that their conduct must lie due to " i)ure cussed- ness." A T.MK OF A Til INK. I have 80 far doalt with tho baa;2nge smasher ami his diabolical works g irally. L(!t us come to i)articolars. licfore leavini{ h no, I asked a leadio'.; ironuinm,'i'r whit he could roc immenl in t'le wiy of trunks forsMoli a journey as mine. He showoil mo an iron l)ox intciidi'd specially for Indian tia\ellers, and thoret'ore calloil the "Suez Trunk.'' It looked all rij;ht, 1 s-at upon it, jumped tipon it, tried 1 1 twist tho hiu-'os, and in various other ways subjected it to whit 1 re^'ardcd as reasonable tests. Hut I had not then been to the right market for experience. if anybody were to otl'er me such a trunk now for a similar purpose, I should ask :—" Has , I umbo ever sat on it, with darlins; Alice in his lap ? Has it been tested in a hydraulic press till the cylinder burst? Has it been tired out of an 81- ton guu against a l(i-inch armour-plate ? AVill you take back tho pieces, at a small reduction from tho original price, if, alter all, the smashers break it up '/ If you answer all tlie.se questions in the athrmativo, I may possibly risk having it." IJut, innocent that I was, I bought tho trunk without asking all this. Our gentle English porters, awed ])erhaps by i!i gortjeous appearance (it was painted a bright yellow), took it up ton.lorly and laid it down with care. So did the steam boat pyople. But before I had made more th.in two or three railway journeys on tlie other side, its splendour was a good deal dimmed. Tho smashers, perliaps, h.id heaid Oscar Wilde lecture, and olijected to primitive colours. Anyhow, they noon began to knock olf the yellow paint ; but, what was more serious, the trunk was "lefore long so battered nnd twisted out of shape tl ■• looking and unlocking became difficult. I!y le ti i e I reached Denver (I did not carry further west), it had assumed somewhat tiie appear- ance of an old tin kettle which has lieen kicked about the streets for a week. The jointed piece of brass which goes into the lock (I fo;getthen imo of t'le thing) had been twisted off ; and a Denver brazier, who no doubt combines (on his trade card) "careful workman- ship "with " moderate charges, " was g">od enough to snider it on fur a doll ir ( is '.'d'. It is only fair to this obliging tr idt sman to say that a dollar was poxsibly iv modoratu eliarjjo aceordiiig to tiiu lucil standard, for a l prices. A leather lan-tmantoau which I had with mo was in almost i'..( pitiable a condi- tion a-i tho trunk. Its lock, also, was smashed. I hac' lost my k s r.f itoth trunk and portmanteau, and as I neared New '.'ork, I liogan to wonder liow I was ti> get them open wiihoiit a locksmith's ai I. I'ut tho r.ulway smashers ha I s,i\ ed me all trouble on that scoi e. Hefoi e leaving New ^■olk, I lionght a reL."ilition American trunk, duly armed at all points with iron. I uave tho nioi tal rem litis of the '" .Sue/. " to tho ue id porter ol the hotel, siiLigesting with soinu little ilitiilence thit ho mg'it. iierh ips, tind it useful ; bin his coiintenanco said mo-t elo pieiitly : " I ought to hiiM; a halt' dollar for the trouble i> ice of a single hour. And each CO iiplete journey to and fro me:>.'is, of course, four bangs of the door, or thirty-two langs in the hour. I once asked a doceiit-lo iking book boy on a Michigan Central train to lie goo 1 enough to shut the doors gently if he must c( -le through the car so often. I re- minded him that there might be sick, or tired, or nervous people in the train to whom tbo everlasting alaminin,' m''.;ht l>e torture, i he lad inoked at me as if a new revelation had burst upon his astonished vision, and it was perfectly clear to me thai it had never be- fore entered his, head, or been suggested to iiim, that his noises might jiossi.jly be disagreeable. He was a well- disiiosed lad ; and h iving fairly realised that what I had said might be true, he presently came to me spon- taneously and promised that he would attend to my renuest. The newspaper boy is no doubt the chief disturber of the peace in the ord nary cars, but he is not the only one, and perhaps I cannot convey a clearer idea of the extent and character of the disturbances than by means of a sample. Here, then, is a sort of time-table of an American car : — 12.0— Train starts. 1-.-— Several persons, carrying their lighter bangage, come in from the next car in search of seats. Some settle down in vacant places ; others try their luck further on. 1-.4 -Roy V itU newspapers. 12.(5 —C inductor comes through to examine tickets. 12.8— j'li'^scnger A, hungry for a " weed," goes into smoking c.ir. 12.10 —Xewspajier boy recurns. 12.12 — t'onductor does ditto, 12.14 -Passenger 15 loifs tiirough — in at one door, out at the other — for no apparent reason. 12.1(i -Ihakesman does the same. 12.18- 15oy with books. 12.2i) -Ihakesinan loafs back again. 12.22— I'assenger 15 follows his example. 12.24— Con luctor opens the door, looks in, and slams it aL'aiii. 12.2ii — Boy returns with books. 12.28 — I'assenger C walks throug'i, 12..S0— Train stops at a station. I2.:i2 - Same as 12.2 over again. 12.t'i4--Conductor again punches tickets, 12..'}il — ]joy with cindy. Every two miautcs i „ ,... - l\ c l\. f„,. fi,„ ,.„,^ Kepetition of one or other of the lOi tne le-iD > I !_• t . of the journey. \ above-mentioned nioveu..rK I wish to guard myself against being supposed to say that there is no set-otf to all this incessant movement and noise. Itiscertain, for instance, that individual passen-ers are safer from ass.iultin these huge cars than they can ever be in our sm ill compartments. In some of the more lawless districts, it would be simply putting a iiremiiuii on robbery and violence to run carri:iges constructed on the English system. The pipsonce of many in the car constitutes the safefy of each. This is true, at any rate, as regards such assault i on individual passengers as sometimes happen in tliiscountry, andas would happen far oftenerin Americaundersimilar circumstances. Rut I am not sure that the boot is not on the other leg as regards those attacks on trains by organized bands of desperhuoBs which sometimes happen in the Far Weifc, I- i J 4 ; 'V-f M 23 tvaliiut ready Jill him pass Ferent k'nds And each course, four he hour. I a Mii^higan ,t the doors often. I re- or tired, or o everlasting i^ at me as if lished vision, ad never be- i liim, that his } was a well- at what I had to me spon- \ttend to my f disturber of not the only r idea of the han by means e-table of an liter baijsjase, arch of seats, s ; others try le tickets, d," goes into one door, out Lson. and slums it other of the nioveiiiv-r*'H. ,ipised to say ,ut movement i;it individual liuj;e cars than nts. In some 11 lie simply violence to ^lish system, r constitutes at any rate, ;il passengers I would happen (Stances. But I I other leg as lized bands of the Far Weit. One or two desperate men, with revolvers levelled at the passengers' heads and witu the cry "Hands up I " have often overawed a whole c ir-full of persons and paralyzed all resistance, while an armed confederate went round and made a "collection '' of the money and watches of the passengers. If these p.tssongers wore distributed through a dozen or twenty compartments, the few rufnans could not thus overawe all at once ; and the chances are that, if they attempted to take the compartments in detail, they would find them- selves taken in flank and rear by those passengers who, for the moment, were free from their attentions. As regards the safety of passengers from attack and robbery, the car system has, however, tlie advantage on the whole. It must, moreover, be admitted that the right to pass from car to car and occasionally to stand on the plat- form is a valuable one ; and if it were only used care- fully and in moderation, nobody would complain. I have myself stood for hours on the car platform when passing throush grand mountain or river sceneiy, and have on such occasions been very thankful for the liberty so to do. On some of the mountain lines of Colorado and Utah, open " observation cars '" are attached to the trains at the most romantic points, and the passengers are able to walk to and fro between these and the ordinary cars at (deasure as the train is run- ning. AVithout such open cars, it would be impossible to obtain any clear conception of the grandeur and prodigious depth of the numerous gorges or canons through which i/bese lines have been carried. The Americnns are very proud of their railway sys- tem, as they have ample reason to be ; but some of them iire a little too impatien of criticism. These (they are fortunately a minority) appear to regard the national travelling arrangements as " given by inspira- tion." Nobody may question their absolute perfection. The railway system is a sort of arl; of the covenant, which no rude foreign hand may touch. It happens, moreover, that the people who are thus so over-sensitive to criticism are the very people who invite it and insist on having i* Thrt moment they discover tbn^ they are in the company of an Englishmm wh^* has seen a good deal of tlie country, they begin to question him about the railways, and are not satisSed until they have dragged his oirlnion out of liim. They are sometimes far from satisfied even then— supposing the Englishman has the audacity to declare that he prefers the English system to theirs. I Fight it Out. I met with a number of Americans of this class, and I will try to convey some idea of a discussion I had with one cf them. I arrived at Kansas City from Denver afttr a journey of 23 hours, and, after less than half-an-hou .''s stoppage, started by another train for St. Lou's,anigl:trunof 12hoursmoro. Ihad hadsometrouble with the conductor and the station officials about a seat to which I 'vas entitled in a reclining-chair car, and I was not at the moment in a suitable frame of mind to J'"' more than the barest justice to any existing Ameri- can institution. It co happened that, soon after leav- ing Kansas City, I found that an American gentleman and myself were the sole occupants of the little smok- ing saloon at the end of the car, I beg to remark that I was not put there because I wanted to smoke, smok- ing being an accomplishment which I have never yet mastered, but simply in order that I might be at hand to pop into a reclining - chair that was to be vaoated within an hour or two, My companion, having first put an impenetrable cloud betwe. n him and myself, proceeded to cro8s-(|ue.uvrcing upon it of so vast a structure as an Allan liner is a busiiie.-s demaniling gieat caution, even in the day-time. At night, it is a still more ticklish matter ; and tlie process of getting alongside Mie quay appeared tedious in the extreme. At last, however, we were safelv moored to a tiinber-built wharf at Point Levis, on the opposite side of the river to (i)uebec. Tiieu we wont to bed— t'j bed, l)ut not to sleep. "We had fondly hoped that, as the monst'T engines were at last at rest, we should have an undisturbed night ; but this was not to be. As ill luck would have it, some of the pipes by which the boilers discharged their water and steam passed immediately under our cabin, and a discharge of some sort was going on for hours at a stretch. Those who know the kind of noise which steam, or hot water under pressure, jn'oduces when discharged into cold water will readily appreciate the hideous concert wliich some of those engineer fellows kept up for our benefit nearly all night. However, we were impatient to tread the soil of the New World, and we turned out early. A WoonEX "WoiiLn. " What a very wooden world this New World is ! " Such was my first impression. Wood was the only thing visilile in the immediate neighbourliood of the wharf. As lliave already stated, the wharf itself was of timber. Close alongside it were a woodon custom-hi)Use, a wooden emigrant dei)"it, and a wooden railway-station. Running along the river-side, from the station to the ferry landing-place, was a straggling street of wooden houses, having wooden sidewalks (tlie Americans never say " footiiath "'), and here and there wooden crossings for the beuotit of those who might want to get from one side to the other of t e track of deep, black mud which constituted the roadway. I'A-on the mud con- sisted largely of disintegrated timber, as I found, in due time, was the case in all cities where wood is largely used in the streets and footways. The St. Lawrence. The St. Lawrence is at least a mile wide at Quebec, and the view of the city, as we looked at it across that splendid stream in the early morning, was superb. " I'-eiutiful for situation ;tlie joy of the whole earth !" was my verdict as we first set eyC'* on it iu t'le daylight. The verdict was borrowed from a far-olT land ami time, but it was to tlio jioint, and saved me the trouble of " finding " an original one. And so this vast stream which rushes aloii'j; botwuen me and the city, glistening in tl e morning sunshine, is the St. Lawrenco I ilere, tlion, are the surplus walersof Superior and -Michigan, of Huron, ImIo, and Ontario — that peerless j;rouj> of fresh waler seas. Ami hcio, too (tor the prosi' of the artitijial will somehow intrude on the poetry of the natiir il) ll.ws oueanwards the .sew:ige of Chiiago. of .Milwaukee, of Detroit, of I'levelaiid, of r.utfalo, and of many a famous city hesides. It is, however, satisfactury to know that in such a prodigious mass of water as this, llowing, as it dojs, many hun- dreds of miles, the sewage of the largest e.\isting cities could pruducc no appreciabh' detilement. Some of this water fell in lain more thin 2.M0i) miles away to the north-west, amid the uno\plore I forests which drain into Lake Superior-. I'art of it hails from the higli'i .lids of Minnesota and Wisconsin ; and if some of it had only fallen lOD yards further west, it wo.ihl have tlowed into the Mississippi, and so to the Oull of INIe.xico, instead of hurrying down here past (.^)iiebec to the Atlantic. Here, in slioit, is the jainage of parts of half a-dozen great American States, and of nearly the whole of the Canadian Dominion westward to the borders of JIanitoba. This vast volume of water has, moreover, had a romantic journey. It has leaped Niagara, and lashed itself into fury in the narrow, rocky, tortuous gorge which forms tlie e.\it from that stupendous cataract. It has gliaed noiselessly amid the thousand cunniiels of the Thousand Islands, and danceil meriily down the series of famous rapids which ends at Montreal. Hence to the ocean its course is ])eaceful and une\ entful. It grailually broadens out, and l)eoomes more and more distin:;tly briny in flavour, until it is at last absurd t > regard it any longer as a river ; but it is as imposs'ble to s-iy exactly where river ends and sea begins as it is to say when childhood verges into youth or youth into manhood. A Nick ',>rK>Ti().\ i-mu tiik t:rsTOMS OFiTfi.vr,.^. Ihit we must come down for a time from Xahiro to Man. Nature may make great ri/ers, but she never levies imjiort duties ; and, lo I here is a custom-house, and here are the agents of the Dominion of Caiiaila curious to know what wo have in our trunk-i. I cluly ojien mine and await the good pleasure of the officials. Canada, I am sorry to say, has almost as absurd a tarilf as the I'nited States ; but I have not time at this moment to demonstrate its absurdity, and wo will, if you please, t ike that for granted, till we meet with some rabid Protectionist whom it may lie worth while to try to convert from the error of his ways. In due time, an olHcer l)egaii to pay his attentions to me. He was not very young, and aitpaiently not disjiosed to take much trouble. Instead of searching the o)ien trunks, he catechised me. Had I anything to declare ? he asked. " Your list of dutiable article.s is so long," I said, " that I uinnot juetend to reply with certainty ; but the only article I have any doubt about is an old gold w.atch which is in that trunk." " \\ hy didn't you put'n in your pijckot, sir '.'" a.sked a smart bov who was .staii ling by, in a tone which clearly evpres^ed pity for my greenness. I answered with a look of virtuous indignation, as much as ti say : "Do you think me capable of trying to do your precious (iovern- ment out of its dues, stupid as I think its policy'.'" This smart boy spoke, however, for the v/liole Continent — Can ida and the Stages alike. Almost everybody one meets in both countries is nn-out and out Protectionist, strongly advocating heavy import duties on every article of foreign production ; but, so far as I can learn, not a man 26 r) V i.il! or woman on either side of the St. Lawrence faili to gmiiKgle in fts large a quantity of foreisin goods as possible on every return journey from Europe. In this matter, at least, American " patriotism " is about as hol- low as the frothy, noisy thing whicli pa.ssos under the same name among cert:un classes in Kns;land. The customs othcer called in his wanderins; wits, and apidied them to the question of the watch. After some consideration, ho said he thougl: <; it must pay, but he seemed in no hurry to announce that this was his decision absolutely. Indeed, he hung about in a fashion which, in my innocence, rather puzzled nie at the moment, but which I thought I fully understood half-an hour later, when a young man of Montreal told me he had prevented the opening of about halfa-ton of works of art and other valuables by a judicious tip of two sovereigns to one of the other officials. I offered no tip, but patiently awaited develop- ments. The officer at last went away and fetched another of his species, and together they gravely discussed the great watdi question. It pre sently occurred to me to inform them that the watch was a deceased lady's bequest to a relative, was really going through to Michigan, and would be on Canadian soil only a few days. In this new light, the question was re-discussed, and the verdict ultimately was that the watch mi;^ht pass. I then signed a declara- fcion that my baggage contained nothing , dur- ing the Seven Years' War, the English, under General AVolfe, attacked the city and bombarded it. On Sept. 13th tiok place the fi st battle of the Plains of Abraham, in which both Wolfe.and Montcalm, the French commander, fell, and England g.iined at one blow an empire. The French, indeed, recaptured the city the next spring, but at the treaty of peace in 17tj3 Louis XV. ceded the whole of New France to the English. In December, 177i>, a small American force, under (ieneral Montgomery, attempted its capture, but failed, after losing 700 men and their commander. The popu- lation of the city at that time was only 5,000. In 1801 it was 5'.K1(90, and in 1871 it was 59,0'J!), the decrease being attributed to the withdrawal of the British troops forming the garrison. (,)uebeo is, however, still a French city, although under an English colonial Government. The great majority of the people are of French descent, and are Catholics in religion. This is equally true of the whole of the Province of Quebec. The inhabitants are appar- ently in comfortable circumstances, but they are much less enterprising and progressive than the English and Scotch, who abound in the more western provinces of the Dominion. They have few manufactures, and their agriculture is of a very primitive and unscientific typt>. The city is full of Catholic institutions — churches, colleges, convents, and the like. Some of these own large properties in the city, and this fact is said to account to some extent for the unprogressive and unimproving character of the plaoe. Canada is not the only country in which religious corporations are bad landlords. A Magnificent Position. I spoke just now of the magnificence of the position of Quebec, and must try to convey some idea of what it is like. The city lies at tlieend of a peninsula formed by the River St. Lawrence and the River Charles at the point where they unite. The Charles is to thj north and the Sc. Lawrence to the south. (I must heie remark that, for convenience 8>ke, I have hitherto spoken of the St. Lawrence as if it ran from west to east. This is not strictly true. The direction is, in- deed, almost exactly from south-west to north-east. When I speak of the nortli bank, I, of course, strictly speaking, mean the north-west bank; and cicn vivxa.) The peninsula runs out to a point where the two rivers unite, but is probably two miles wide at the south- western end of the city. On the St. Lawrence side, clill's rise almost from the water's edge to a great height. At the extreme point of the peninsula, the cliffs are les< abrupt, and there is next the river a belt of tolerably level gro\md, a few hundred yards in width. On the side of the Charles River, this belt widens out to about a mile. The centre of the peninsula thus con- sists of an elevated tablelaml, with more or less abrupt descents on three sides out of four. The highest part of this raised plain is surrounded by a wall of about three miles in circuit, and the southern corner of this fortified enclosure is occupied by the Citadel, which stands at a height of 33i feet above the river. The town covers the level ground at the foot of the clift's, and straggles up the clitfs themselves into the fortified enclosure, which it nearly fills. It is, indeed, gradually spreading itself over the tableland outside the walls. It will, I think, be understood from this description why Quel)ec lias been called the Gibraltar of America, and why its elevated Citadel has always been re?a.(led as well-nigh impregnable. 'I'hero is certainly no stronger place on the whole American Continent. The pride of Quebec, aid the most attractive point to strangers, is a pu')lic promenade called Durham Terrace. This is an area of large extent, on the very edge of the clilF, abuve tlie St. Lawrence, and is entirely floo;ed over with pine board. The view from this com- manding position is superb. Immediately below him, the observer looks down the chimneys and into the back windows of the narrow fringe of houses which is inter- posed between the foot of the clitf and the water's edge. Immediately beyond this line of houses lies the shipping of the pjrt, which fringes the shore right round the end of the peninsula (where there is a pro- tecting pier) as far as the Charles River. The principal feature in this splendid scene is, of course, the majestic St. Lawrence itself, coming down on the right from the direction of Montreal and disappearing many miles away to the left on its way to the ocean. Immediately oppo- site is Point Levis, backed by an abrupt and lofty range of hills, whose slopes are dotted in a most picturesque fashion with trim, idoasant, comfortable looking resi- dences. A few miles down the river lies the large park- like expanse of the Island of Orleans, a favourite place of resort for the citizens and visitors. The city itself, with its quaint houses, numerous churches and other public buildings, roofed with shining tin, straggles down the abrupt slopj towards the point of the pro- montory in most picturesque confusion. The whole place has a most un-.\merican look. There is nothing pain- fully new about it. and it is whollv wanting in the rush and "go" which are so characteristic of most American cities. One might, indeed, very well imagine Quebec to have been transported bodily from some ancient European country and dropped down complete just where we see it. On fine evenings, especially Sun- day evenings, Darhim Terrace is crowded with citizens of all ages and classes, promenading to and fro, con- versing with all tlie vivacity of the race to which t!iey belong, seeing and being seen, and enjoying the grand panorama and whatever air may happen to be stirring. The icene at such tim,'s is a very pretty and animated one. There is a lift, or elevator, by wh ch, at the cost of two or three cents, one may be quickly dropped into tlie street below, or as quickly raised from the street to the terrace. I should say that stout and elderly people are very likely to patronise this convenient apparatus litierally, especially in hot weather, for the iiscent is n trying one, as we sh ill see presently. There are several other points of view in the city from which the look- out is little if any inferiorto that from Durham Terrace. l^uoboc does not possess alai'ge number of imposing pu'ilio buildings. The old Parliament House was des- troyed by fire only a shore time ago, and its ghastly, blackened ruins formed one of the most striking objects in the ne.ir view from the Terrace when I was tbere. The new Parliament House, which appeared to have been ready for use before the fire destroyed the old building, is outside the city, in a suburb con- taining many new and attractive residences. Most of the public buildings are connected more or less dosdy with theOatholicChurch. Such are the Cathedral, numeroue ohurohes, the great Laval 2S F*^ i^*<. fl rnivGi.sity, hcvi'imI convonts. iiuiiiiurus, and liosjjitvls. Tliero are, liowo\ur, one or two laijjij hospitals with which the dominant Ciiurch liaB notliin;; to do, and (lii've is also a Protestant Cathe'lral. The PostOtlicois a mo li>ni ;ii,d rathiU' hundsomo biiililins;. On thu spot w lora W'olfo foil in the moment of victory stands a plain colnmn, hearing a siiitalile inscription. I need hardly say that wo did not leave the city nntil wo had visited a place whore (to use an Fris'i assassin's euphemism) ^o much history had been made. The battle which Wolf(! won in his last hours deprived France of her greato-t colony, and was altoirother one of the most strikin;{ and momentous events in the (so- far) brief history of the North American Continent. The IlrLi-s \su riir, .Stukki's. The (diiof ascent from the low n- to the upper town is a tortious thorouslifare called .Mount lin Ilill Street. Tiie inhabitants apparently named this street on the same ))rincii)le on which children describe something exceptionally lari;e as " a great big thing." A single qualification iloes not convoy their meaning adequately, and they therefore pile up the adjectives, at the risk of beinj; guilty of tautoloijy. The people of Quebec appear to have b;'en in a similar ditKculty with re;,'ard to the street in question. It is so amazingly and alarmingly steep that neither simple " Hill Street '" nor simjila " ]\Iountain Street "conveyed anadoMUate concejition of the gradient. 'J'lie two names were therefore combined, and so we get. Mountain Hill Street. That, at least, is my theoiy of tlie origin of the name : and if it is not a true one, it ou'j;ht to be. If the theory does not lit the facts, why —hang the facts! I have as much right to s,iy that out boldly as certain other theorists have to whisi)er it to thomselve-i, and to proceed ([u etiy on the assumption that they ran strangle inconvenient facta. There are, liy the way, several other appro ichcs to the upper town which are hardly less steep than Jlountain Hill Street. If a street is on an incline of about 4.")', its very steep- ness is a sufficient reason why it should be kept in the best ))ossible condition. 'J'hat, at least, is a reasonable proposition in this country. JUit in Canada, and esjjecially in (J^uebec, its reasonableness is not admitted. "The steeper the street, the worse the road 1" That is the motto on which l,)uebec acts, whether it believes in it or not. The city streets are abominable everywhere ; but those which leail up the steep sides of the hill are — . Ikit language (that is, polite. Parliamentary, ( 'liristian language) fails me, and 1 do not use .\ny other sort. How mil 1 convey my meaning when all the choicest adjec- tives are inadeipiatc, and all the strongest expletives inadmissible V I have been over some of the worst roads which the most iiarsimonions of English highway boards are sup- ]iosed (pure supposition I) to keep in repair, I have tramped in '^'' weathers along those straight unstoned thoroughfi of black mud or blaci: dust, acconling to the seasoi' .lioh aio called "droves," and which in- tersect the ors of Somersetshire. I have climbed Swiss mouu. ■: ■■ by tracks which are the lieds of foam- ing torrents alter rain, and rough mule paths at all other times. I liave scr.imbled over the smooth, rounded, anuebec : and I declare that, for unspeakable vileneis, the Quebec streets " take the cake," as the Amer'can.s put it. I'verybody knows that, if a st ep street is not kept in some sort of order, it soon falls into a condition of disoiiler such as no level th )rou.5h- faro can e iual. Tnis is especially true of a city where the rainfall is o,;casionally heavy, and the downrush of water, therefore, very great. (Quebec is just such a iilacc ; and, so far as I could see, the torrents which rush down from the upper town after storms are left to work their own sweet will on the roads. The beds of mountain torrents— tlie hilly streets aie sim))ly that, and nothing more. This is amazing enough, iiut theie is something more amazing to be told. I was informed by persons wliose truthful- ness could not be questioned (the aged minister of the old Baptist Church among others) that the roads had, of late, considerably improved ! I " Cood heavens !"' 1 exclaimed (I hope that is not an inadmissil)le oNpletive), " what, then, in the name of all the gods at once '" (Shii/:epcare) " did the roads used to be like '.''' My informants could not tell me — that, I knew, was impossible ; they could only re- assert : " They're better now I'' Candour, moreover, compel -1 me to admit that there were, in some parts of the city, some symptoms that "repairing" was going on. Opposite our hotel, for instance, several loads of stones, ranging from the size of my head downwards, had bten tipped at random into the street : and over these hu;,'e boulders the vehicles lurched and bumped until their occupants had fairly to hold on with a firm grip, just as if they wore in a gale on boird a " beam-eador." I sought to find a cause for this disj;raceful state of thing-!, but I got no satisfactory explanation. The head porter at the hotel " guessed," indeed, that the city government w.is corrupt, and that now and then t' e bottom fell out of the city chest, with t'le unfortunate result that the funds which ought to be applied to iniprovements some- how disappeared. That there is coiruption in the Dominion and the Provincial (Jovernments, I shall ])retty conclusively show next week ; and that the cor- ruption .should find its way down from headquarters to the municipalities is not, per- haps, 8ur|)rising. The marvel is that the mass of the citizens, who are prenimably decent, rational people, should stand this sort of thing year after year. It is perfectly s.ife to assert that the unnecessary wear-and-tear sustained by hor.ses and vehicles, to say nothing of human nature itself, through the infamous condition of the streets of t hotel we entered, I may as well let tlietu mike their bow here. I left a volume of " Appleton's Ouide'' on the desk of tlio writing-room of the .St. I.ouis Hotel, late on Siturday evening. Xext morning it had dis- appeared, and it never came bajk. In my innocence (the genuine quality of wliic'i my readers inu-t have discovered by this time) I comidaiiied of my loss to the elegant gcntlouian who acted as " boss " to the two or three (leople behind the desk. He looked at me with a sort of pity, and then proceeded to exjilain to me that if I " left things lying around," I must expect to lose them. IJooks, sticks, umbrellas, coats, and the like, were, ho said, sure to go, if so left. " Then such things are regarded as common jiroperty here'.'' I suggested. He gave me to understand that I had about liit the mark, and that I was only disjilaying my greenness by aujiposing that a notice pinned up at his desk would be at all likely to lead to the recovery of the book. On the whole, I came out of that interview with the impression that the head clerk thought that nobody was to blame but my>e!f, that I had b 'en a bit of a fool to allow myself to be robbed of my hook, and that the thief who had taken it had done a lather smart and creditable thing. It this was )ii)t what the head clerk thought, 1 can only beg his pardon, and plead that his tone and manner belied him. TllK F.VI.LS AND THK K0.\1) TO THK>f. There are two fine waterfiiUs near Quebec. One of these (the Chaudiere) is on the southern side of the St. Lawrence, 10 miles from I'oint L"vis. A stream .3."iU feet wide falls from a height of l.")!) feet. The Falls of .Montmoronci are on the i >uobec side and only eight mile-i iilf. A-. we had not time to see botii falls, we selected the latter, as beinj somewhat nearer and mere acci ssible. Wochartere la two- wheeled vehicle peculiar to (^)uebec and c illod a (•<(/■ i7i(' (French of course, and iironounced in luiglish "calash '). The body of this machine is suspended from stout leather straps, somewhat in the style of the old English post cha se. It cairies two persons, lie-il'S the driver, wlio sits on an uncomfort- ablo front sea; by himself. In susiiendiiig the body on leather springs, tlie inventor of t'le apparatus no (loubt had in view the execrable roads ever which it was intended to run. Ilut whether leither has any advantage over steel in (,>uobec is questionable. All I can say is that, by tho time wo had got clear of the city and crossed the bridge over the Charles iUver— a distance of perhaps two miles — both my companion and Ir^-lF^ 30 myself were aa sore as if we bad bean bdaten. The roughness of the streets was of two kinds. In the upper part ot the city the roads were rocky, in the lower part bojjgy- Of th« former I have already said something, but tlie latter have equal claims on my attention. The streets in the lower and more level regions, then, were plentifully furnished with un- fathomed holes full of black mud, precisely like the bad places in a Somersetshiru " drove." I have said they were unfathomed, and so they vfeTe—bn me ; for I certainly did not alight and drop a plumb-line into their depths ; hut I do not wish it to be sui)posed that I declare the holes unfathomable— quite another thing. At every yard or two of distance, one wheel of our extremely lively vehicle went down into the unfathomed depths, and I was forthwitli o:\nnoned against my com- panion, or he against me, with a force which threatened mutual annihilation. Hefore the rocking of the calash had had time to subside, the road suddenly dropped out from under the other wheel, and he who had just before been the target became the projectile, and was in his turn hurled against his neigh- bour. As for our driver, no doubt his joints had all been dislocated and his muscles ren- dered insensible to further bruising yeara ago ; and as he was working " by the piece," he rattled away as heedlessly as if he were on the smoothest of asphalte. AVe had at last to insist on his driving more slowly and keeping a sharp look-out for pitfalls ; and we declared we must get out if he did not. But there were ups as well as downs. The streets are so bad that crossings for foot passengers have to be provided at every corner. These crossings are of wood, much rounded in the centre to allow the rain and mud to run off ; and where the streets are very badly worn, they stand up above the surface like one-half of a long barrel. Driving over numerous crossings of this sort was bad enough ; but the half barrels had this advantage over the isolated pitfalls, that they jerked both wheels up and let them down at the same moment, and thus saved the mutual cannon iding whicli I have already described. Regarded as a whole, that ride of two miles or thereabouts was so bad that, if I were an imaginative writer instead of the most prosaic and matter of-fact scribe, I should most certainly declare that our recent luncheons were shaken down into our boots, our teeth out of our heads (a not improbable event in the case of what the Americans call "store teeth"), and ourselves out of our clothes. But the country highway board, or whoever the ro.id authorities may be just outside of Quebec, disc' arge their duties infinitely more efficiently than the city people. As soon as we crossed the Charles River bridge, we were on a decent road, and the ride thence to the falls was a very pleasant one. The trim, comfortable- looking wooden houses of the Canadian-French agricul- turists stud both sides of the road all the way. There are few signs of actual wealth to be seen ; but then the signs of abject poverty are at least equally few. The people are apparently a steady-going race, content to jog on as their fathers jogged, and not caring much for any new-fangled notions either in the way of scientific farming or of religion. Those of them who are not engaged in agriculture are employed in lumbering operations— that is, in bringing timber down from the forests, cutting it up into " lumber " (planks), and ship- Fiing it to distant parts. There are some very extensive umbering establishments close to the falls. These Falls of Montmorenoi are wondrously beauti- ful. The stream is only about 50 feet in width, b«t it falls from a height of 250 feet, and the dashing of the water against the rocks gives it the appearance of a torrent of milk. A few hundred yards from the foot of the full, the stream is lost in the mighty mass of the St. Lawrence. A series of fli;.;hts of wootlen steps, with resting places at each stage, enables tlie visitor from above to descend to a splendid point of view near the bottom, and immediately in front of the fall. Tliis platform is usually drenched with the mist-like spray from t'e fall, and the visitor who in- tends to descend would do well to carry a m ickintosh with him. There is another thing he should remember if he happen to be a " weight-carrier " or at all short in the winil— that if he goes down, he has to come up again. I can )>ersonally vouch for the fact that coming up those enilles< ladders is no joke on a blazing day. It is, however, necessary to go down in order to realize the height of the fall. The guidebook-! .say it is 'J.")0 feet, Tho'-e who do not go down are very likely to declare that to be a fib. Those who do go down (and come up again) know and feel it to be the truth, if not something less. Unfortunately, this beautiful fall lias fallen into the hands of private "peculators, who levy a toll on all visitors. I should be dispos-d to spill a little ink over these people, or rather over the folly which has allowed them to secure possession, were it not that I have bigger game of the same species awaiting me at Niagara. I must reserve myself till I get there, for I shall then require the a'd of all the strong things in my limited vocabulary. The drive back from the falls to Queliec was one of the most charming of all my American experiences. The city, clustering around and clambering over its precipitous central seat, just as Kdinburgh surrounds and covers its Castle Kock, stood up before us, calm and queenly, its tin roofs glistening in the sunshine. We were too far olf to hear the noises of its streets, or to see the naked rock and the wretched (piagmire of its thoroughfares. 'Twas distance that lent enchantment to the view, but the enchantment was very complete whik it lasteil. The outline of every building within the range of vision stood out as clear and well-defined as if we were only a mile off, instead "f six or eight miles. I felt disposed to ask whether the French who first settled the district had brought with them that marvellous transparency of atmosphere for which, at certain seasons, the neighbourhood of Paris is famed ; for I have never seen anything so like that clear vision of Quebec as the views I have sometimes had of the French capital from the windmill of Montmartre, the terrace of the ruined chateau of St. Cloud, and the heights of Menilmontant. But see, here is the Charles River again, and here, too, is the end of the decent bit of country road. And now for the second edition of Purgatory. But I for- bear — mainly out of consideration for the sharer of my perils and my sufferings, who may possibly see these lines, and may not desire the pain of going through his trying experiences, even in imagination, a second time within a few minutes. Behold us, then, safe back in the dining-room of the .St. Louis Hotel, replacing, as fast as tht. waiters and the flies will let us, the material which our urive has (figuratively) shaken down into our boots. Excursion Parties is thk Way, Those eminent excursion and tourist agents— Messrs. Cook, Mr. Gaze, Mr. Caygill, and the rest— have their counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic, and the Americans are "Cooked " about their vast continent on a scale becoming their eminence in all that is big. I 4 r\ 31 ■^ ^ 'i During the holiday stngon, the trains, the steamers, i\n(l the hotcU are full of these huRe truvelliiiii \):(rtit'H, nnil in their presence the individual traveller is some- times a little lost 8i^;ht of unle s he takes ci\re to as ert himself. There were two such paitios in Quetiec when we were there. One of them, l.a lin,', I think, from I'hiladelphia, were mostly youn;; people of both sexes, connected witii some religious body. They had secured a great many of the best rooms at our hotel ; and when Sun- day evening came, they filled the lar;,'e driwing-room to overflowing. There were some guo I sinijers among them, and the-;e treated all who could get within ear- shot of the drawing-room doors to an excellent im- promptu sacred concert. Li^teninij to the charmin.^ voices of some of the lady vocalists, I was disposed to forgive and foiget my buiishment to a rather po )r bed- room on the toi>-Hoor. Uiit we found next morning, on going, in what we thought good time, to secure "staterooms'" on boanl the evening boat for Mon- treal, that the conductor of this party had forestalled ui, and seemed every good roam in the boat ; and I certainly did then wish the conductor and his wiiole party in another and a better nlace. (Xo harm, I hope, in so benevolent a wish as that.) It was, liowever, a case of Hobson"8 choice. AV'e had to take the excursion party's leavings, or leave their leavings ; and as it was necessary we should push on, and it was part of our plan to stick to the river as long as possible, we accepted the best berths we could get. When the time came for embarking, we hired a vehicle to convey our baggage down to the (juay, but we took very good care not again to trust ourselves to ride down Mountan Hill Street. A steamer runs each way between (Juebec and Mon- treal every night. These steamers start about five in the afternoDn, and reach their destinations early in tiie morning. I shall have a little to say about these splendid boats further on. I wish first to supply some account of one of my fellow-passengers. This I will give in the letter form in which I wrote it for a Michigan news- paper while the circumstances were fresh in my memory. Here it is : — A Prokessok ok thk Akt and Science of COKIU-'I'TION. "Sir, — I am an English journalist on my travels; and, being deeply interested in whatever concerns the public and national life of Canada and the States, I am doing my best to keep my eyes and e irsopentoall that appears to have a bearing on these great s ibjects. " I landed at (Quebec from the Pari.-!i'U) on the 1 Ith inst. ; and on my way from Quebec to Montreal by boat, I met with so remarkable a political phenomenon, that I am anxious to photograph it while its features are still fresh in my memory. I call the phenomenon 'it,' but it was really a ' he,' being no less than a mem- ber of the Dominion House of Commons. This i)er- son (I do not care to soil the word ' gentle- man ' by applying it to him) was a some- what elderly man, who told me he was a manufacturei of wood pulp, and represented a county or district somewhere down by the Saguinay Hiver. He did not give me his name, but I heard him referred to by a name whichsounded tome 8omewhatlil,000 doUirs, and I drew the clio [ue for tho money.' "He subse luently assured mo that all was fish that came to his net, inasmu h as he wa-t accustomed to buy up opposition journals as well as opposition and neutral votes. He had, ho said, bou;^ht up two or three news- papers that were in his way, and he added that he still had the machinery of one or two of them stowed away in a safe place, ready for use whenever lie might find it desirable to set up an organ to expre-is his own lofty and enlightened views. " I was so nstoni-hed at this man's shameless confes- sions and cynical creed, that I could find little to say at the moment, further than to express a belief that things were not nearly so black as he had painted them. His assertions may, of course, be untrue. I, being a stranger, have no means of testing their truth. If thoy are false, the author of the falseliood appears t ) me to be none the loss a phenomenon on that; ac ount ; for it is to mo almost inconceivable th it a man should affect a shameless cynicism and an utter political dishonesty which are, in reality, foreign to his character, Tlie most reasonable anil charitable con- clusion api)ears to me to be that this man jjaiuted him- self with tolerable accuracy, while he grossly maligned tho m iss of the Canadian people. I'eing himself utterly destitute of political i)rinciple, he had, to use an I'higlish metaphor, ' measured other people's corn with his own bushel,' and attributed to .all his countrjmen the political vices which he had allowed to master his own conduct. I am no blind optimist ; but I utterly refuse to believe, on tho evidence oi^ a man who himself revels in corr'ui)tion, and then boasts of it, that the whole Canadian people are politically corrupt. 'J'hey have, I think, allowed themselves to be misled into the ado|)tion of a protectionist policy, but I have no doubt whatever that they will in due time wake up to the gravity of their mistake. ISIeantime, it is both the duty and the interest of all decent Grits and National Policy men alike to do all in their power to rescue their Legislature from the disgr.ice which must inevit d>ly rest upon it so long as it contains men of the stamp of my fellow-voyager from Quebec to Montreal on the night of July Kith. C. C. "Cass City, July 31." The M.r.'s Little Mokal stou\. I omitted to tell in tho foregoing letter a story which the hoary old sinner told mo in illustration of his genius for practical joking. Ho was himself nominally a Catholic, but I suspect that his real creed was not a very long one. Anyhow, ho regarded Sun lay (as most French Catliolics do, whether tiiey live in I''rance or in Canada) as a suitable day foi' anything in tho shape of sport or amusement. This by way of preface. Now for his story. He had recently, lie said, a Protestant gentleman of iMontreal staying at his house among other visitors. This gentleman arrived on a Saturday, and was duly informed that ar- rangements had been made for some grand game (I forget now exactly what) to bo played next day (Sunday). He was invited to join, but declined, on tho ground that ho was nut accustomed to spend his Sun- days in such a fa-hion. His Sabl.atar anisni was, however, of a sterner i|Uality tiian his Temperance principles; for oa the Saturday evening his hospitable host, who had well plied him with liquor, had to see him carried to bed, dead drunk and fa^t asleep. He slept till the middle of Sundiy forenoon, when his host went to his beilside, woku him, and asked him hoiv inoi/i more di'js /(■■ intend' d to ftcfji. On demand- ing an ex[danation of this odd i|Uestion, he was gravely informed that he had slept about 'M hours, and that it was already Monday forenoon. He rose and dressed ; and, being told that the amusements of the previous day were to l)e continued, he consented to join in them. It was not until thj fun and the day were both over that he was duly informo'l, amid the iioistorous mirth of his host and the other guests, that ho had devoted the whole of the Sabbath to amusement. How the I'rotestant Sabliatarian Ijoked, and what he said, wlien ho learnt how ho had been befooled, my informant did not say ; but I shall never forget the keen relish with which my fellow-passenger told the story, or tlie boisterous laughter to which his own recital of the circumstances moved him. Ho evidently regarded tho alfair as the very perfection of a joke. Cert duly, no moralist can defend the host's sh ire in the business ; but, on tho other hand, it is not very easy to pump u)) much sympathy for his drunken Sabbatarian visitor. I should say that Catholic host and Protestant visitor were about eijually worthy of each other. TiiK QcEBiX' ASM) Montreal Steamboat.^. The steamer on which I made the acquaintance of the corrupt and cynical M.V. was a fair specimen of tho fine vessels which navigate tho rivers and lakes of America. 1 have never seen anything like them in Euro[)e. Some of the famous ple.isure boats on the Clyde will iirobably accommodate more passengers ; but then they are adapted id day passages only, and provide no sleeping accommodation whatever. iJut the American boats, like the American trains, traverse suih vast distances that they have to provide for both day and night. iSlost of the American river boats are still propelled by means of paddle wheels, although on the ocean the wheel has been almost universally banished in favour of tho more compact and economical screw. IJut the chief peculiarity of the river boats is that they are driven by a single beam engine, placed in tho very centre of the vessel. AVhen an Englishman sees for the first time the huge arms of the beam swaying up and down at a great height above the deck, he is apt to •A3 tory which ion of his noinini\llv was not a ly (as most lanco or in 10 shapo of face. Now I'lotostnnt his house nrrivpd on that 111- u\ game (I 1 next (lay inod, on tlio 1(1 his 8un- Miisni wan, roinpcranco 8 hospitable hail to se(3 nsh^c|i. He I, when his I asked him On demand- was gravely houi'.s, and He rose amusements lUiimed, he not until he was duly lis host and whole of the Trotestant sn ho learnt lid not say ; ;h which my boisteious rcumstancus alfaii' as the moralist can but, on the up u]) much tor. I should n' were about HBOATS. [uaintance of specimen of and laltes of ike them in boats on the passengers ; es only, and er. liut the ins, traverse vide for both till propelled he ocean the I in favour of but the hat they are in tho very man sees for swaying up he is apt to w think the arrangement clumay and not by any means graceful. Appearances apart, there is no doubt some practical reason why the American steamboat builders adhere to this peculiar arrangement, but I have never heard what that reason is, One disadvantage attending this arrangement is that it always spoils tho saloon of the boat. In the case, for instance, of our Cjuebec and Montreal boat, tho saloon would have been much finer and more striking than it was, but for the large space abstracted from its very centre by the engine. Not that anybody unacituuinted with tho construction of the boat would have guessed that the engine was there. All that was visible was a partitioned space, occupying the whole width of the saloon except a narrow passage on each side. This par- tition was rendered as sightly as possible by means of moulded panels and handsome mirrors ; but the obstruc- tion was there, and the tine room sutfercd accordingly. The saloon, thus qut almost into two by the engine space, was an apartment nearly as long as the boat and probably nearly 20 feet high. It was lit entirely from the roof, being lined completely on both sides by two tiers or storeys of " state rooms." (Grand name for a little thing again.) Tlie upper tier was reached by means of wide and handsome staircases adjoining tho engine space, and by galleries running along both sides of the saloon. The saloon itself was handsomely carpeted, and furnished in drawing- room style with tables, easy chairs, lounges, and hassocks, in quite a luxurious fashion. At sunset, the room was beautifully lighted by means of numerous lamps suspended from the roof. Each end of the saloon opened upon a small covered deck, amply pro- vided with chairs ; and it was as we sat on the stern deck, enjoying the coolness of the evening and the beauty of the river scenery, that the Canadian JM.l'. unfolded to me his peculiar code of etliics. The "state-rooms " were the usual diminutive cabins, containing as a rule two berths each. I strongly advise any of ray readers who may happen to find them- selves on board a boat of this kind to take possession of one of the comfortable lounges in tlie open saloon and sleep there, rather than turn into a tiny " state- room " with a stranger. If the boat is not crowded, and you can secure a cabin to yourself, well and good — a cabin accommodates one comfortably enough ; but for my own part I very much jirefer a sofa in the saloon to one-half of a cupboard, shared with a passenger whom I never saw before and may never see again— a man who may be a Garfield, but who may possibly be a Guiteau, or (worse !) an O'Donovan Kossa ; who may be a decent person of unobjectionable habits, but who may, on the other hand, chew continuously and spit copiously. The greater part of our run from Quebec to JMontreal (180 miles) was made during the night, and we there- fore saw little of the river scenery. The view back- ward on leaving Quebec, which we did see, is very tine. The upper city and the Citadel, crowning the highest point of the rocky promontory, stood up majestically tlirough the clear evening air, and remained in view an incredibly long time. The approach to Montreal was equally interesting. The eyes of all strangers were first strained to catch a view of that "eighth wonder of the world," the Victoria Bridge. The busy factories, the fine public buildings, the graceful spires, the cr(>wded wharves, and, behind all, the abrupt mountain height from which the city took its name, caused us at ta« outset to form a favourable opinioa of the pros- perity, the beauty, and the ploturesquenesi of the city. This impression we retained, with few qualifications, after making the acqnaintan 'e of the place. We walked from the boat to the Wndsor Hotel— a longer and hotter journey than we bargained for, and by the time we reached tiiere, wo were (not to put too fine a point on it) ready for breakfast. Uavin;; taken possession of the bed-rooms allotted to us, wo were shown into a dining-room, which, for si/e, for tho beauty and costliness of its decorations, and for generally attractive a|>pearance, surp.issed anything we subse(|ueiitly met with in any part of the country (either in Canada or the States). As the Windsor Hotel is admittedly one of the tinest, if not the tinest, hotel on tlie continent, and as it is a fair type of tirst-class American hotels, per- haps I may as well, before proceeding further, endea- vour to give some idea of this huge and splendid building. A GKK.\T AMEKtt'AN HOTKL. AVhen I say that the Windsor at Montreal is possibly the finest hotel on tiio American Continent, I am not thinking of mere si/o, or of any other single qualifica- tion. 1 speak of it as a whole. There are inucli larger hotels in the United States, the Talaco at .Saii Kranci.sco, with its I.IJOO beds, being the largest of all. There are others which in some special feature jirobably surpass tho Windsor. But I have been at the Palmer House, Chicago ; the Palace, San Francisco ; ami the Fifth Avenue, New York, admittedly three of the grandest hotels in the States, and l am disposed to think that, regarded as a whole, the Windsor is at least e(iual to any one of them. The cost of the building, with its furni- ture and decorations, amounted to millions of dollars. 'Ihe extent and costliness of tlie decorations of certain places of public resort in America aro indeed amazing, regarded from the sober standpoint of an Knglisbman. One of my fellow-passengers on my return voyage from New York was a young English artist, in the employ of a famous lioston firm, who was to be married the day after his arrival in Liverpool, and to sail with his wife for Boston next day. He told me that, among other first-class " jobs " he had in hand, was tho decoration of a large new dining-room in a famous restaurant at New York ; and he assured me that his instructions were to spend 120,000 dollars on that one room. That may, of course, have been an exaggeration ; but after having seen tlie (liiiing-rooiii of the Windsor, and some- what similar places elsewhere, I feel under no actual necessity to doubt my fellow passenger's fi;,ures. The Windsor Hotel stands on an elevated site, at the corner of a large open space called Dominion S(iuare. It was in this square, by the way, that the people of Montreal built their grand ice palace and held their " ice carnival " last winter. Similar high jinks are in progress there again this year. The ice palace, lit with the electric light, is said to be indescribably beautiful. The Governor-General (Lord Lansdowne) and his lady have come dc "n from the capital exi)ressly to see the fun and to hjlj) in it. When the time comes to pull down the "palace," a large part of the material is stowed away in the ice vaults of the Windsor for sum- mer use. The Windsor, like most other American hotels, has two visitors' entrances, one of which is intended spejially for parties comprising ladies, who are thus enaliled to reach the staircase or elevator without coming in con- tact with the smoking, expectorating groups which aro generally scattered about the main hall. The elevator, n- 84 or, ai we call it, the lift, ii an institution in evflry American hotel of any ini|)ortance. The holKhts of the buildinga are often bo great, that it would be impossible to induce guests to take rooms on the upper tloors if they were compelled to walk upstairs whenever they wanted to get to them. In some of the larger hotels, there are two elevatois, one or other of which is going nit, Montrenl contained about 7,000 inhabitants. In IWil, the popula- tion had increased to 00,S2;i. and in 18S0, to 140,747. The commerce of Montreal is very large, as, though it is 500 miles from the si-a, its ailvant igeous position at the head of ship-navigation on tlie St Lawrence, and at the foot of the great chain of improved inland waters extending from the Lachine Canal to the western shores of Lake Superior, has made it the chief shipping- port of the Dominion of Canada. In 1880 its imi)ort8 were valued at 37,103,869 dols., and its exports at 30,224,904 dols. Montreal is a great manufacturing citv, and there is scarcely a branch of trade which is not represented there. The public buildings and many of the private ones are very fine, bearing testimony to the wealth as well as tht taste of the inhabitants. The Roman Catholic Cathedral of Notre Dame is the largest church on the North American Continent, although I am disposed to th'nk its capacity, like that of most public buildings, is vastly exaggerated. The guides and guide-books aay it will seat from 10,000 to 12,000 person.^, but 1 sh-^uklnot care to be in it with 7,000 others. Still, a congregation of 7,000 is an immense one, and there can be no doubt that the bi..;ding is exceptionally large. The Cathedral has a fine peal of bells, one single bell of which weighs abov , 14 tons. The chief thing I remember about the interior of the building is that it is over-decorated. The amount of paiuting and gilding is prodigious. But even this great church is to be surpassed by a new Catholic cathedral whioh hasbeen begun on a site near the Windsor Hotel. This new building is to be on the plan of St, Peter's at Home, and will cost a vast sum of money. When I was at iNIoiitreal, the works were suspended owing to a temporary lack of funds. There can be no doubt, however, that .li the money reijuired will be forthcoming in due time ; for though Montreal is not so exclusively Catholic as Quebec, tl e Jvomanists con- stitute a large majority even there, and comprise among them many wealthy people. There are several other C'atholio churches, one of them (the .Jesuit Church in Bleury Street) having a very fine interior. Thr Pr-.Idstant Episcopal Cithedral (Christ Church) harj a spire 224 feet in height, and is regarded as llie most perfect specimen of EnL;lish-Gothic architecture in America. The Presbyterians, Unithrians, Congreg^- tionalists, and Methodists also have handsome churches ; and I need hardly add, after what 1 have said about the larj^eness of the Catholic population, that monasteries, nunneries, and hospitals more or less associaJ^ed with those institutions, abound. The Court House, City Hall, Market, and principal banks are all remarkable for their handsonu architecture. The McGill College is a fine educational establishment, occupying a splendid site on the slope of the Mountain. The private residences in the same part of the city, Duilt of a greyish limestone, are beautiful in the oxtreme. Similar residences are found in large num- bers on SLerbrooke Street, which is the Belgravia of Montreal. St. Catherine and Dorchester Streets, whiv".h are parallel with Sherbroohe, but somewhat nearer the centre o* tue city, are also more or less fno'don.able. It was on walking througli these handsome buburbs in the upper part of Montreal that I was for the first time impressed with the amazing extent to which wealth is diffused in the New World ; but at Montreal X WM 01^7 on th« thre.iiiold of that woild. " What about the roads of Montreal ?' may be asked by somebody who remembers the very iiualified praise I bestowed on those of Quebec. Well, it must be admitted that Montreal is in this respect a long way ?n advance of the sister city, and to one who is fresh from Quebec the roads at first siglit appear excellent. But when they are compared with the streets of an English city, they must be pronounced very bad. They are neither so rocky as some of tuooC at Quebec, nor so full of deep i^it-falls as some others ; but in the matter of cleanliness there is little to choose. Many of the streets of Montreal are filthy in the extreme. Whether they are ever cleaned is more thau I can say, but they look as if they never were. And this look is not ]>eculiar to Montreal. It is common to the majority of American cities. The roadways of the busy streets are almost everywhere covered with a thick coating "f black mud. The city authorities dare not let this mud dry in the hot weather, for then it would change to a deep layer of impalpable dust, which the patient citizens would probably find utterly intolerable. The authorities, therefore, industriously water the filth morning, noon, and night, md it is consequently seldom met with in any drier form than that of a thick, sticky paste, while it is more often semi-liquid. Even in the driest weather, it splashes over the kerb-stones, over the boots of j)edestrians, over the spider-like wheels of the private vehicles, up the telegraph poles, and, where the sidewalks are nar- row, far up the walls of handsome business buildings ami palatial hotels. The tram-car rails, which are usually very badly laid and maintained, are very often completely covered with the black, sticky paste, which is scjueezcf' s side for a moment as a car ))asses and then lazily f' .vsback till it finds its former level. Except at the street co: ners, where paved crossings are maintained in a more or less decent state, it is often impossible, even in the liottest weather, to cross the roadway without gcttir.g ankle-deep in the sooty slime. "But why don't they take the mud away, instead of everlastingly watering it ?"' somebody asks. I, also, have often asked the same question, and I am still wait.iiiBr for .•\n answer. The foregoing description applies fairly enough to many of thestree'-s of Montreal, but not to all of them, for an attempt is certainly made in some of the fashion- able suburban roads lo keep things a little more decent. But why all parts of a great and rich city should not be kept clean is a question which I cannot answer. There must be municipal cor- ruption or municipal mism magement on a grand scale, wherever the first duties of a city government are neglected in the disgraceful manner I have described, But, as I remarked with reference to the streets at Quebec, the patience and forbearance of the citizens are inexplii able. The fault is clearly the people's own. Somebody has said that every nation has as good a government as it deserve.s, and the doctrine has a good deal to say for itself. Whether it is entirely sound or not, it cannot be doubted that every self-governed city has as good streets as it deserves. The Victoria Buidge. The grandest and most impressive thing at Montrek^ apart, of course, from the natural features of the dis- trict, is the great bridge which carries the Grand Trunk Railway across the St. Lawrence. I remember what a f usa was made, when I was a boy, over Stephen- sons (then) greatest fe.'^t— the throwing of the Britannia Bridge over the Menai JStraita for the Chester ^nd H(dy< '■■I ■j 37 r be asked d praise I ) admitted 1 advance m Quebec nt. But ts of an very bad. of ^uuoC •^jit-falls jieanliness E Montreal r are ever : as if they Montreal, ties. The verywhere The city 3t weather, impalpable bably find therefore, and night, any drier B it is more , it splashes )edestrians, vehicles, up Iks are nar- is buildings which are very often aste, which es and then ixceptatthe intained in 8t>ible, even ay without t why don't ^erlastingly often asked an answer. enough to ill of them, ;he fashion- a little a great a question licipal oor- rand scale, nment are described, streets at citizens are ople's own. as good a lias a good sound or verned city head Railway. And that was undoubtedly a great feat in its day, 30 or 40 years ago, for the Britannia Bridge was the first erection in which the tubular form was adopted and subjected to a severe test on a large scale. The test was borne successfully, and from that time to this the Britannia Bridge has, without a moment's interruption, formed a link in the great highway which binds together the capital of the Empire and the capital of Ireland. The tubular principle has been since alopted in the construction of bridges all over the world, but in no case has it been an diel on so gigantic a scale as at the Victoria Bridge at ]\.i ontreal. This wonderful erection is simply the Britannia Bridge enormously lengthened. Instead of consi'iting of only three spans, as does its humble mother in North Wales, the Victoria Bridge consists of no less than 24 spans, each span forming a distinct length of tube. The number of piers is 23, without counting the two terminal abutments. The total length of the bridge is !t,l'J4 feet, or more than a mile and three-(iuarters. Fancy a Britannia Bridge nearly two miles Ion)?, and you have some conception of what ihe Victoria Bridge is like. The iron tube through which the trains pass is 22 feet high and 1(5 feet wide. There are three millions of cubic feet of masonry in the piers and abutments, and 8,000 tons of iron in the tubes. The central span is .330 feet and the others are 242 feet each. The heiglit of the bottom of tie tube above the summer level of the river is CO feet in mid-stream. The whole of the work was accomiilished between Midsummer, 18.'')4, and Christmas, 1859. The engineer was Robert Stei)henson, the designer of the Britannia Bridge and the son of Oeorge Stephenson, the inventor and constructor of the first railway locomotive w);ijh came into actual use. Tlie fcolal cost of the bridge waii over six and a quarter millions of dollars. It was for.nally opened w'cli much pomp and ceremony by the I'rincfa of Wales during his visit to America m 1800. It cannot be s:iid that the appearance of the Victoria Bridge is picturesque. I am afraid, indeed, that, if Mr. Kuskin were to set eyes on it, he would be moveil to curse it forthwith in immortal English, as defiling and uttering spoiling a grand natural prospect. But we are not all blessed with Mr. Huskin's eves, or with I\Ir. Kuskin's magic power over words ; and to thnsn of us who are common place and matter-of-fact, that long and painfully straighl; hollow iron bcxin. resting on numerous pillars of masonry which were uil turned out of the same mould, is a grand triumph of civilization and human fekiP over dead rratter and blind force. Possibly it mars the landscape, but then it binds together great states ; and, if you please, Mr. Kuskin, the utilitarian view of the matter must not\o' altogether lost sight of. The piers of the bridge have a ery lop-sided look which is at first very puzzlinsr 'j the stranger. This appearance is due to the precautions which had to ie a.iopted to protect the bridge from floating ice. The erection of such a bridge across an ordinary river would have been a mere matter of money, after the exjierienco gained by Stephenson in North Wales. B^t the St. Lawrence is not an ordinary river. It is frozen over every winter to a depth of several feet, nnd it is, besides, the one outlet of system of lakes in which, even if they are never frozen over, vast quantities of ice are regularly formed. The consequence is (hat, when the winter first sets in, as well as when the ice breaks up in the sp. ag, the piers of the bridge are subjected to tremcE lous strams. I cannot do better than quote from a work of Mr. Bras-^ey's a description of the forma- tion and breaking up of the ico. Mr. Brassey says :— " lee begins to form in tlio St. Lawrence in December. Thin ice first app^^ars in quiet places, where the current is least felt. As winter advances, ' anchor," or ground ice, cornea down the stream in vast qtjantities. This anchor ica appears in rapid currents, and att,\ches itself to the rocks in the beil of the river, in llie form of a spongy substance. Immense quantities accumulate in an inconceivably short time, increasing until the miss Is several feet thick. A very slight thaw, even tliat produced iiy a bright simshine at noon, disengay;es this mass, when, rising to the surface, it passes down the river with the current. This spec.es of ice appears to grow only in the vicinity of rapids, or v.here the water ha*, become aerated by the rapidity of the current. Anchor ice sometimes accumulates at the foot of tlie rapid- in such quantities as to form a bar acros.s the river, some miles in extent, keeping the water several feet above tho ordinary level. The accumulation of ico continues for several weeks, until the river is quite full. This causes a general risinj; of the water, until large masses float, and moving fartlier down the river, unite with accunnilatinns pre>'iously ^sounded, and thus form another barrier ; ' pack- ing ' in places to a hei^'ht of "20 or liO feet. As the winter advances, tlie lakes bec. very simide one, but it is most effective. A gl.ince at a railway !iia|> of America will show the importance of the connection elfeotcd by this great bridge. It is, as 1 have before remarked, tho only bridge of any sort which crosBei the 8tt Lawrence 88 proper ; and it is, apart from «tcr.Tn'..«iiL», «ne only connection between Canada and the States below Niagara — that is, over a distance of nearly 1,000 miles. It is, moreover, the only mil connection between the maritime provinces of the Dominion (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Qutsbeo) on the one hand, and the western provinces oa tho other. With- out the Victoria Bridge, the railway system of Canada would be like a chain with a missinc; link. Vast as was the cost of the structure, the outlay was fully jastifled by the importance of the connections it was designed to supply. To Montreal the bridge has been of special advantage, for the city has been brought by it into direct communication with the whole of the Province of Quebec south of the river, with all six of the New England States, with the great States of New York and Pennsylvania, and, indeed, with all tho Eastern and South-eastern parts of the Union. Round the Mountain. The favourite drive at Montreal, t\nd one which no visitor should miss, even if ho is in the city only a day, is that known as "round the Mountain." The entire drive is about ninemiles ia length, and affords oppor- tunities of seeing Mount Royal Park, Mount Royal Cemetery, and the superb panorama which the top of the Mountain commands. We duly took the drivo, in the company of a gentleman resident in the city ; but owing to the heavy rain which poured down pitilessly duiing the greater part of the journey, we saw nothing of the Park, and very much less than we wanted to see of the Cemetery. I have sel- dom seen such tremendous and persistent rain. (Jur driver shut up the carriage as close as possible, bul:; the wuter found its way in in spite of all his effortj, and we were compelled to resort to our wateri>roof3. As foe the driver himself, he appeared to be in imminent dan:;er of being washed otf his seat. But we had already dis- covered that, in the matter of weather, Montreal does nothing by halves. We had witnessed one of the heaviest thunder-storms I had over seen in my life. The extremes of temperature to which tho dis- trict is subject are notorious. We were told that, on the Sunday week before we arrived, the heat was so territio that the inmates (all males) of certain boarding establishments simply "lay around" the houwe all day, attired in a sinsjle garment of the flimsiest material. The effor' :K continuing to exist was thu only one of which they lels capable. How the members of mixed households survived we wore not informed. But the weather goes just as far in the opposite diresfcion in winter. The cold is then intense. 'I'be thermometer freiiuently marks 40" below zero, and haa been known to go much lower. Ears, noses, and toes have to be care- fully protected, or tiiey are most unoeromonioudy nipped bv Jack Frost. Winter is, however, less dreaded than a hot summer ; skating, toboggoning. building ice palaces, and other seasonable winter amusements being extremely popular among all cUibses. Toboj;;{oning, I ought perha|is to explain, is tho game of slid ng down an ice slope, at railroad speed, seated on a sort of mmia- ture sledge. It is an exciting amusement, notiiltogether free from danger. But I am digressing, and must return to the subject with which I started, the drive round the Mountain. It was amid the drenching rain I have very inade- quately described that our driver, by many devious, zigzag ways, climbed the back of tho hill and drove us through th« Cemetery, I bad often beard oi the beauty of Anerican cemeteries, and the little I saw of this one f>.i Mon real prepared me somewhat for the much larger and more beautiful ones which I visited further on. The cemeteries that fringe our large cities covey no idea whatever of tho last resting-places of Ameri'^aa citizens, and those of Paris are equally unlike them. Tea first thought which strikes one on entering an American cemetery is that those who laid it out had an unlimited supply of land at their disposal. This, of course, was the case, and the matter is one in which the Americans necessarily have the advantage over us. Instead of having to buy land at a price which is calculated by the yard or the foot, as any person or company must do who desire to establish a cemetery near a great English town, the American burial authorities have in most c^.ses been able to acquire as many square miles as they might requit.v either for nothing or for the merest tri.le per acre. And they have taken care, while they were about it, to securo enough, for most of the cemeteries are of enormous size. Another thing which strikes the stranger is that the number of poor, cheap, plain monuments is wonderfully small. Almost everybody who dies appears to leave relatives with the means and the will to commemorate his virtues in marble. The ugly regulation " headstone," which renders an average English grave-yard so hideous, is conspicuous by its absence, for those who cannot afford a really handsome monument to their deported friends appear to erect nothing at all. The result of the great abundance of land k that the cemeteries are never crowded. Instead of the interminable rows of graves, packed as close together as books in a librarr, which roiulei many of our large cemeteries so hideously mono- tonuus, the American graves are scattered about in groups, with large patches of turf and wood between, in most picturesque confusion. Elegant and costly rnonuir.cnts rise in groups, here on the top of a steep eminence, there beside a natural or artificial lake, yomlor from the midst of a beautiful grove. As the paths, the turf, the shrubs, and all the other features of the cemetery are generally kept in excellent order by dint of a most profuse expenditure, the effect is charming in the extreme. Personally, I think cremation the most rational, the safest, an I the least repulsive mode of disposing of the dead ; but if I am to be burled at all, nothing could possibly be better calculated to reconcile me to my fate than a sight of one of the great American cemeteries, coupled with a promise from my executors that that should be my own resting-place. It will be gathered from what I have said that the American burial aut'ori- ties have selected the most picturesque sites available. This has evidently been the case in most instances. It would certiiinly have been impossible for the people of Montreal to find a more beautiful site naturally than that which they did select on the northern slope of their Mountain. Having driven in and out. and round about, and ud and down the cemetery, amiil the drr"\cbing rain, until he seemed to have covered many miles, our coachman at last emerged into the woods which cr>^wn the summit of the Mount lin, nud pulled up in an open space, where some thoughtful "authorities " had built a refresliment house, ami a staging from which to view the panorama. And what a panorama ! The rain wus obIi;;ing enough to cease to fall just as we reached the summit, and the peerless landscape: wa-^ -;.' the more charming for the million ii(iui i d'.:<.monI» which hung from the treei aud the moi; tor* whioi' 89 ^? glistened on ten thousand roofs. Immediately below UB, on the steep slope of the Mountain, were scattered, one above another, the fine m» nylons and trim villas of the aristocracy of Montreal, the fineiit among many fine houses beini; that of Sir Hugh Allan, one of the great shipping firm of Allan Bros., who, by the way, has since died, if be was not then recently dead. Beyond the region of handsome residences, ^hioh thus girdled the hill and straggled up its side, lay the great city, stretcliing out to right and left, its numerous tall spires pointing skyward on every hand. Further off again was the mighty St. Lawrence, its widely- separated banks tied together by something which appeared at that distance little bct'.r.- than a thick cord, but Vi^hich we knew to be the gigantic Victoria Bridge, of which I recently gave some account. From this distant standpoint, the insignificance of the bridge, when contrasted with the vast scale on which Nature had constructed her works, was finely brought out. And yet I could not forget that, tiny as the bridge was relatively, it constituted a splendid triumph of science and skill over blind physical force. Away to the right, where the river came into sight, we could distinctly see the ruib, the foam, and the turmoil of the Lachine A (ills, the last and most remarkable of that series of ,/ id descents in the river of which I shall presently say more. Altogether, this view from the Mountain above Montreal was one of the finest and most impres- sive of the many sights I ^aw in iihe course of my long journey. Shooting the Rapids. They have been " shot " daily, several months in every year, for at least forty years, and they appear none the worse for it. Wc " shot " them in our turn, and left them uninjured. But perhaps I had better explain at once that the shooting is not done with a gun, but by means of a steam-boat. " Shooting the rapids " is, in short, simply going dowu them on board a large and comfortable vessel. First let me describe this section of the river. The St. Lawrence proper, as I need hardly explain, flows out of the north east corner of Lake Ontario, and carries oft tae whole of the prodigious mass of water which hp- upper ' The ;. ' Or.i 0, sizes, sha^ . is known as hope shortly beauty. At ic" rinded by way of Niagara from the four ;8 - '■ inerior, Michigan, Huron, and Erie. '•! .. immense width on emerging from -.Tii^ ;n the first 40 miles of its course is \h ; loss than ],6!)2 ialandii of various A',\d i ppearances. This part of the river b ' ce of the Thousand Islands, and I to say someching about its exquisite the lower end of t>"> lake, the river gradually contracts to a width of t ' ;'i; '•.wo miles, and for the next 50 miles it is comparai.- "ly uninteresting. There are, indeed, two small raj^ ^ in this sec- tion, known as the Gallopes and the Rapide de Flat ; but the descents are so moderate that the boats go down under full steim, and the recollection of them i^ entirely effaced by fhe serif-^ of grander rapids which have to be "she"," low.^r iowp by all who go on to Montreal by boat. It was Ku • '"7 er series which we descended, and which I Btroi;y : N ,,-i8v.' dl visitors to Canada by all means to see As our general courfio lay up the river, a little manciuvrin;; wax needed to bring these rapids into our rout i. We had, in fact, to go a long way up the river banl: oy rail, and lucr? return to Montreal down the rapids by boat, Then, in order to " work in " the Thousand iBlands, which should on no account be missed, we returned to the river after seeing Ottawa, and took boat for Toronto at Brockville, which is situated at the lower end of the Lake of the Thousand Islands. We thus managed to see the two most in< teresting parts of the river, and to miss the inter- mediate and less picturesque section. We left Montreal in the morning by a train on the Grand Trunk Railway for a station called Wales, 77 miles distant. Most of the intermediate stations bore evidence in their names that the neighbouring settle- ments were French in nationality and Catholic as to faith. We passed Lachine (pronounced Lasheen, of course), Valois-ville, St. Anne, St. Dominique, Riviere Beaudette, and Coteau. But there was a sprinkling of English names ; for, besides Wales (our terminus for the day), wo found Beaconsfield, Lancaster, Pummere- town, and Cornwall. Leaving Montreal at 7.40, we accomplished the 77 miles run to Wales in about three hours. This is a fair average speed for a Canadian ;..ll./ay. There are express trains which make some- what better time, but the best of these do not stop at the wayside station where we wanted to alight. Wales, so far as we could see, consisted of the wooden shed dignified by the name of "station "or "depot "and one solitary house. There 'ere no Welshmen visible, and no sign of any such place as Llanfechbwlchlyn- goedmawr. Two persons, however, alighted besides ourselves. One was a postman and the other a drummer (traveller) in the boot and shoe line. It was clear, therefore, that we had not strayed beyond the bounds of civilization. There were evidently people not far otf who were accustomed to receive letters and to wear boots. This was encouraging, so far. But no St. Lawrence was visibl <, and the drummer, with whom we soon fell in, was as '^norant of the locality as we were. He, however, wanted, like ourselves, to reach Dickin- son's Landing, a place on the river bank ; and, guided solely by the light of nature, we walked away along a stra'-jht, dusty road, which never heard of M'Adam, and must be a quagmire after heavy rain. The drummer presently got within hail of the postman, who was emerging from a side path, and of liitn he inquired the way to the river. The postman's reply was of that brief, unsatisfactory character of which we afterwards had ample experience, but we gathered from it in a hazy tashion that we were on the right road ; and the drummer, denouncing the postman as a "surly cuss," led on. Wo followed, and very soon the great river came in sight. We fo md, on reaching the landing-place, that our steamer vas not likely to be there tor an hour or two, and we accordingly improved the time by making a determii ed, hut 1 fear unsuccessful, attempt to convert theclrunmer to orthodox free trade doctrines. Like riost Canadians, he was a Protectionist of the most stiff-necked kind. The country, he said, was mjst prosperous under its new fiscal system. No manufac- tured articles could be imported either froui Eurojie or the States without paying a very heavy import duty. The result was that Canada was beginning to make everything she wanted, and that the working classes in the towns had constant work and high wages. That " foreigners," whether Englishmen or Americans, should be allowed to " flood the Dominion" with cheap goods was, hu held, an outrage, which ought to be strenuously resisted. On a man in this benighted state, depending for his living on one of the protected indus- tries, my free-trade lessons had, of course, no effect ; ! 4 (: i *-r|ft?*« rl 40 And I had to leave him to the teachings of future experience, which, in due season, will demonstrate the folly of the policy now so popular among the Canadians as surely as their great river flows to the sea. We had also some talk o.-er a fence with a young farmer who was ploughing with a couple of well-fed horses l>etween his rows of potatoes. The soil was deep, rich, and black, and not a stone was visible. The farmer, who was dressed exactly like a young English labourer, said that both the land and the house which stood upon it were his own. He was, he said, a Dutchman, though he talked excellent English, and he was taking things in a very leisurely way. But there was an air of supreme satisfaction about him, and an appearance of solid comfort about his surroundings. If he was really content (as he appeared to be) to be shut out from the world, and to make the passage of an occasional steamer on the river serve by way of variety to his somewhat mono- tonous existence, his lot was clearly not an unhappy one. It was past mid-day when our steamer hove in sight. And now for the actual " Shooting of the Rapids," This is a business which, in my candid opinion, has been over-written. The amount of gush that has been wantonly wasted over it by an u:itold numlier of writers is proiligiotis. I am not now referring to what has been said about the scenery of the rapids, or the pleasant character of the trip, 'J'hese cannot well be exaggerated. AVhat I take exception to are those descriptions of the descent which represent it as a feat demanding almost as much courage as taking part in a forlorn hope, I have read accounts which spoke of the excitement and su pense of the passengers as painful and intense, and of the tears which flowed freely down the writers' and their fellow-travellers' cheeks. Judging from what I myself saw and felt, I take the liberty of saying that the greater part of this sort of writing is rubbish pure and undefiled. There is excitement, of course ; but to all except the most nervous and un- reasoning of mortals, it is a very pleasant excitement, which adds vastly to one's enjoyment of the trip. I use the word "unreasoning " advisedly. These rapids have been thus navigated daily by steamboats for at least 40 years, at all times when the river has been clear of ice, and hitherto the serious accidents have been very few. Some of the guide-books say there has never been one, but I have reason to think this is a mistake. At any rate, dangerous as the " shooting " process loo' s, experience has proved that the element of danger is extremely small. The pilots who steer the boats have by long experience obtained the most minute knowledge of every yard of the track, and a skill in guiding the vessels through the tortuous channels between the abounding rocks which appears almost superhuman. Every passenger knows all this ; and, unless his reasoning faculties are completely controlled by his timidity, he feels that the danger is a great deal more apparent than real. The distance from Dickinson's Landing, where we boarded the boat, to Montreal is between 80 and tlO miles, and in that distance the river falls about 200 feet. If this fall were spread evenly over the whole distance, it would at no point be excessive ; but, as a matter of fact, there is little or no fall in some 50 miles of the journey. The descent of the whole 200 feet is accom- plished within a total distance of 30 miles ; and oven within those 30 miles there are lengthy stretches in which the fall is comparatively slight. It will be seen, therefore, that the descent at certain points is very great. There are six distinct rapids below Dickinson's Landing, viz,, the Long Sault (pronounced " Long Sow "), the Coteau, the Cedars, the Split Hock, the Cascade, and the Lachine, I say they are "dis- tinct " because they bear distinctive names, but, in reality, two or three of them follow so closely upon each other as to form a connected series. Ic is easy enough, apart from the dithculty of steer- ing, to take a vessel down these rapids. You have simply to get her fairly into the current, and no mortal power can then stop her until she has either dashed herself to pieces on a rock or reaciied the bottom of the descent. But, on the other hand, no mortal power can take a vessel up these watery hills. The most power- ful steamer ever built would beat the water in vain if it made the attempt. Tlie swift current is resistless. These rapids are, therefore, a complete bar to the naviga- tion of the St. Lawrence ; and as the St. Lawrence is the connecting link between the great lakes and the Vtlnntic, it has been found necessary to circui.i- / he river. Splendid canals have, there- f. ten cut, here along one bank and there alu.i, le other, so that vessels may be able to give me go by to the river wheiever its fall is too rapid to allow of navigation. These canals are fur- nished with immense locks, by meius of which vessels of considerable size may be lifted step by step up the whole 200 feet. The passenger steamers wnich daily shoot the rapids have, of course, to return this way ; but the process is a tedious one, and few passengers care to waste their time over it. The boats, in tact, go down lull and go up empty. The import- ance of these canals will be obvious to all who understand the geography of the northern part of the Korth American continent. From the most remote corners of the great lakes— from Chicago on Michigan and from Duluth on Superior — corn-laden vessels can sail to Buffalo, at the lower end of Lake Erie. Near there they enter the Wellind Canal, and by that means give the go-by to Niagara Falls and get into Lake Ontari' From Ontario they either go direct down the S^ Lawrence, through the series of canals already described, or cross the country by means of the Kideau Canal to the Ottawa Kiver, and so on to the St. Lawrence, just above Montreal, By one or other of these routes— partly lake, partly canal, and partly river — vessels of several hundred tons burden can now sail direct from Chicago out into the Atlantic, and so to Liverpool or any other European port. The boat enters the Long Sault Rapid a few minutes after leaving Dickinson's Landing. This rapid is nine miles in length, and its total fall is nearly 50 feet. Up to about the year 1840, it was not thought possible to navigate these rapids ; but tlie direction taken by the timbei' rafts which constantly float down was then carefully noticed. A practicable channel wafj thus dis- covered, ami soon afterwards the passage wasattemptod by steamboats, under the guidance of Im'iian pilots. From that time to this, the rapid has been regularly "shot." As we approached the head of the Long Sault, there was consiilerable stir on board— iiot, so far as 1 could discover, because any considerable number of the pas- sengers were alarmed, but because all — male and female alike — were desirous of securing positions from which to obtain a good view. The bow of the vessel— the part which would necessarily come to grief first if the boat ran on a rook — was II m 41 there could he pas- 1 female which sel— the grief - was crowded. Chairs were at a premium, and those who could not obtain sitcinK accommodation were con- tent to stand rather than retire to a le.ss advantageous position. The beginning; of the descent was very clearly marked. We could feel that the boat had been seized and was being hurried along by a power which, so far as those on board and all their machinery were concerned, was resistless. But I did not notice that the descent was so sudden and rapid that the river appeared to drop away from under the bows, while the stern was lifted out of the water. Judging from descriptions I have read, and from gorgeously- coloured pictures of the performance issued by the steamboat companies, that is what some imaginative people have seen at some time or other. The descent is, however, rapid enough for all whose demands for excitement are moderate, ^t would probably be voted insufficient by one who huu h'^no through a course of trapeze performances, of being ilrbJ ou' a cannon, or of putting an empty head into the mouth of a lion with an empty stomach. But for my own taste, and ap- jiarently for the tastes of the majority of the passengers, the slight spice of risk involved in the trip afforded just excitement enough. Few things ever proved to me more trulv enjoyable. In the first place, the sight was magnificent. The river, which is here of great width, is studded with islands, varying in size from a few square yards to manv acres. Most of these are beauti- fully wooded, and the river ed