Last winter in the United States

by F. Barham Zincke

Or you might reach it in another way, by New York, Harrisburg, Pittsburg, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and the south branch of the Pacific Railway, which is now opened from St. Louis, by Kansas City, Leavenworth, and Lecompton, to a point called Pond Creek. By this route you would have to get your waggon and span of mules at Leavenworth, and would reach Pike’s Peak and the South Park by the Smoky Hill track. In this way you would have to travel a great deal further by waggon; and though you would pass through a very interesting country, and see many stirring and busy places, yet in these respects it cannot compete with the more northerly route. Why, to have seen Chicago is in itself an education.

Whether you go by the Denver or the Leavenworth route, the best way of getting into the South Park is to strike the Arkansas River, and follow it up till you enter the park, in which you will find the head waters both of this river and of the Platte, separated by a divide of only five miles.

Or if you wish for something easier than the South Park, and which would enable you to dispense with waggon, mules, and a man of your own, you might take the North Park at the foot of Long’s Peak. There is a good path to it from St. Vrain and Burlington, of forty-five miles; and I have no doubt but that, at the right season, you might find some gentleman, or some party, going up into the mountains for some little camping out, and who would be glad of your company. There is good shooting and fishing about Long’s Peak, and you can see from the plains the grassy park at its south side.

Or if you are more adventurously disposed, you may still be suited. The Pacific Railway is at present opened for traffic as far as Shyenne. It is, however, completed for thirty miles further, to Forts Sanders and Halleck. This takes you into the very heart of the mountains. I had the offer of being carried on to this point, if I wished it, on a construction train, and I have no doubt but that the engineer or contractor would grant the same favour to any traveller who requested it. This would bring you almost upon one of the most celebrated sporting-grounds of the mountains, the Laramie Plains; or if you could not manage it in this way, or if you take waggon and mules, it would be better to leave the rail at Shyenne. You would then start at once from the present terminus of the railway, and after having kept a course of north by west for thirty or forty miles, you would find yourself on the Laramie Plains. This is not a park among the mountains, but a vast expanse of open table-land. One advantage you would have on this ground is, that a detachment of the United States army is quartered up here, and the officers are always ready to give any assistance in their power to gentlemen who are out on the plain for sporting. What calls for more enterprise in those who camp out on the Laramie Plains is that they are still open to Indian raids, and that they are exposed, as might be expected, to very violent wind-storms.

Sporting in the Rocky Mountains.

This year of 1868 the Rocky Mountains offer a greater combination of advantages than they have done hitherto, or ever, probably, will again. Till the opening of the Pacific Railway last year they were not to be got at; but their having now been rendered so easily accessible will lead to a great deal of the game being rapidly cleared off, both by shoals of vacation-ramblers from the old States, who will flock to them with tents and guns, for their yearly excursion, and by the immediate establishment of a trade in game between the mountains and the great cities of the north and east. I suppose that never again, after this year, will a haunch of antelope venison be retailed in Denver for seventy-five cents.

CHAPTER XIX.

HOTEL CARS, REAL FIRST-CLASS CARRIAGES—AN EDITOR ON HIS COUNTRYMEN’S KNOWLEDGE—AMERICAN GRANDILOQUENCE—OF WHOM THIS IS SAID—NECESSARY TO REPEAT SOME OF WHAT ONE HEARS—‘HAVE YOU SEEN OUR FOREST?’—‘THE PACIFIC RAILS WILL CARRY THE COMMERCE OF THE WORLD’—LARGE ACQUAINTANCE AMERICANS HAVE—AN AMERICAN ON LETTERS OF INTRODUCTION—NIAGARA—THE AMERICAN AND CANADIAN FALLS—WHAT IS IN THE MIND MAGNIFIES WHAT ONE SEES—THE STONE THOUGH IT HAS CHIPPED OUT—ICE-BRIDGE—HOW NIAGARA IS PRONOUNCED—A WEEK OF CANADIAN WEATHER—A SNOW-BOUND PARTY AT NIAGARA.

On returning from the mountains, I left Chicago for the east in an hotel car. This kind of carriage combines a sleeping-berth with a travelling kitchen, and supplies you by day, just as the sleeping-cars do, with a comfortable sofa to yourself. In front of this a table may be placed when needed, on which you can have served in a few minutes whatever you please. In this way you may without leaving the carriage have all your meals for a journey of a thousand miles. No objection can be made either to the materials or to the cooking of what is supplied. These sleeping, hotel, and English cars are not merely devices for diminishing the inconvenience of a long journey, and enabling one to economise time, but they also act completely as first-class carriages. After you have paid for your ticket at one uniform price with all the rest of the passengers, you find in the train the steward of the sleeping-car (sometimes there is an office in the town), and pay him so many dollars more, and secure in this way a place to yourself, for night and day, in the special kind of car. It would give offence to call them first-class carriages; but from what has been said it will be understood that they do at all events incidentally supply this advantage. And as there is also a ladies’ carriage, into which well-dressed gentlemen are admitted, and furthermore a caboose for negroes, emigrants, and very dirty people, in which the wound that is inflicted on their dignity is compensated for by a reduction of the fare, American railway trains, although they profess to put all their passengers on a footing of democratic equality, do in fact allow them to classify themselves.

Tall Phrases Discounted.