Pedal and Path

Across the Continent
Awheel and Afoot.

GEORGE B. THAYER.

ACCOUTRED FOR THE START.—(Frontispiece.)

PEDAL AND PATH

Across the Continent
AWHEEL AND AFOOT,

GEORGE B. THAYER.
[Member of the Connecticut Bicycle Club,]

HARTFORD:
Evening Post Association.
1887.

PREFACE.

Close confinement to mercantile business for a dozen or more years brought on a feeling of discontent with the monotonous routine, that I at length tried to drive away by taking a little recreation on a bicycle. The machine, I found, was not only a source of great enjoyment, but it soon became a thing of practical value to me in the transaction of business. I took intense delight in riding the wheel a dozen miles to Hartford buying goods, quite content to let those who would sit inertly riding by me in the cars, and it was not long before the idea of taking a short vacation presented itself.

A vacation of more than a day was a pleasure of which I had denied myself for so many years that it was a question with me whether the sun would not stand still if I ventured out of the little orbit in which I had moved so many years. But I finally decided to run the risk. At the end of five days, after riding one hundred and seventy-five miles, I came back more than ever pleased with the mode of locomotion and its advantages in sight-seeing. So intense had become my desire to travel, to visit the places of interest here at home, that I then made business arrangements which would permit a more prolonged absence, and took a three weeks’ trip of five hundred miles, and soon after a six weeks’ trip of one thousand two hundred miles through the most interesting parts of New England.

Instead of quieting my rising passion for sight-seeing, these delightful journeys only added fuel to the flames. They showed clearly to me the possibilities of a trip to California, the independence and economy possible to such a trip, and the good results to be obtained from such a mode of traveling in preference to any other. So with no desire or intention of making or breaking any records, or covering the whole distance on the wheel, the trip was started and carried out with the sole object of taking all the pleasure possible and of acquiring a knowledge of the country and the people who live in it. An account of the trip across the continent was written in occasional letters to the Hartford Evening Post, as whose representative I was everywhere most courteously received. Although this little volume is to all purposes a binding of those letters, with considerable revision, in book form, I have been able when seated quietly at my own desk to give fuller details at certain interesting points, and to round out a narrative which was sometimes rather meagre from having been written out in the fields to escape too curious observation of passers-by, in a friendly barn which sheltered me from the rain, on jolting freight-trains, in the cloud-enveloped house on Pike’s Peak, on one of the dizziest points overhanging the Yosemite, on a tossing steamer on the misnamed Pacific, and while waiting for the regular spouting of “Old Faithful” in the Yellowstone, as well as in many other situations not conducive to the production of comprehensive and artistic literary work.

To the wheelmen of the country, Greetings! The fraternal feeling everywhere manifested between them has, I believe, not a parallel in any social or secret order. To their spontaneous and unfailing kindness was due much of the pleasure of the trip, and if any wheelman should want a more detailed account than I have given, of any portion of the route taken, I should be only too glad to furnish him with all the information I possess.

G. B. T.

Chapter I.

Westward Ho! The beginning of a Seven Months’ Wheeling Tour across the Continent.

For this trip, which covered a distance of 11,000 miles from Hartford, Connecticut, circuitously to San Francisco, California, and return, nearly 4,300 of which was made upon the machine, a forty-six inch Expert Columbia, taking me across twenty-three States and Territories, and through hundreds of the finest cities and towns in the Union, and some of the most magnificent scenery in the world, I was equipped with a blue cap that I wore throughout the whole journey with comfort, brown blouse, thin undershirt, brown corduroy knickerbockers, brown stockings, and low canvas shoes. The baggage in the knapsack consisted of a coat, blouse, pair blue knickerbockers, three summer undershirts, night-shirt, six pairs stockings, six handkerchiefs, needles and thread, buttons, and plenty of stout string, a box of salve, a bottle of tannin and alcohol, a bottle of Jamaica ginger, razor, shaving brush, hair brush, tooth-brush, shaving soap, toilet soap, leather strap with wire hook at one end, a sponge, long rubber tube for drinking, knife and fork, shoe laces, piece of cement, box matches, a candle, coil of pliable wire, two dozen pedal-balls, pedal shaft, chain and Yale lock, pocket mirror, railroad maps, and a good supply of stationery and postal cards. On top of the knapsack was strapped a gossamer coat, gossamer leggings, rubber cap, and a pair of rubber overshoes. The whole weighed a little over fifteen pounds. It will be observed that among the articles enumerated no mention has been made of any weapon of defense. Although implored by some of my friends not to enter upon the Western wilds without a pistol, I decided to maintain my habitual faith in the honesty and good will of the average American and to depend upon diplomacy and conciliation in the circumvention of the exceptional villain. I expressed a valise along to different cities as far as Denver, but found I could carry all necessary clothing in the knapsack, and so left the valise at that place till my return from California, when I sent it directly home.

After anxiously waiting for the frost to be taken out of the ground by a warm rain that finally came, I started out on the 10th of April, 1886. The roads to Berlin were full of hard, dry ruts, and through Wallingford sandy as usual. This, in addition to the fifteen pounds of baggage in my knapsack, the soft condition of my muscles, the thirty mile ride the day before,—first one in four months,—these circumstances, taken together, had the effect to make me somewhat weary, and after reaching New Haven, and completing over fifty miles that day, I was tired. Those wheelmen who envied me the trip in the morning would have changed their feeling to pity had they seen me groping along in the dark from North Haven nearly fagged out. The next day, Sunday, was certainly a day of rest, but Monday I rode up the gentle grade of the Farnham drive to the top of East Rock in the morning, and in the afternoon about the city with a Yale student, Mr. Geo. Kimball of Hartford,—a fine rider, who struck a gait that outwinded me and that would have used him up in a day or two, I think. For variety, I spent a couple of hours looking over the fine specimens of ancient life in Peabody museum, and afterwards made the acquaintance of Messrs. Thomas and Robbins of the New Haven Club. Tuesday, a drizzling rain prevented a start till nearly noon, and the ride around Savin Rock to Milford was anything but enjoyable, especially when wearing a rubber suit which retained the perspiration like a hot house, which it really was for me. It was the bitter with the sweet, and the bitter came first, for the roads improved to Stratford and Bridgeport, at which latter place the open-hearted J. Wilkinson, a dealer in bicycles, accompanied me through the city and on to Fairfield, showing his nationality by characterizing places in the road as “beastly.” A decided fall in the temperature was now followed by a thunder storm which drove me under shelter for the night at Green Farms.

Inquiries for a wheelman at South Norwalk, the next morning, brought out in reply, “There is a man down at the carriage-shop, beyant, that could fix your fhweel, I guess”; but not looking for that kind of a wheelman, I soon found one, Mr. Chas. Warren, who piloted me along to Stamford, where I had a pleasant chat with William A. Hurlburt, the well known State representative. At Greenwich I met three riders, two of whom it was plain to be seen by the dusty condition of one side of their suits had taken recent tumbles. One was Consul E. W. Reynolds, another Dr. E. N. Judd, vice-president of the Greenwich Club, and I did not learn the name of the third. So with this unknown quantity it is safe to leave the reader to ponder over which two of the three took headers, for I could not be so base as to give a clue to the names of the unfortunate ones, all three of whom were very fine gentlemen. Other wheelmen soon came up, meat carts and express teams stopped on the corner, small boys gathered around, and innumerable dogs filled in the chinks, till fearing the knapsack would soon be arrested for obstructing the highway, I reluctantly dragged it away and carried it along to Port Chester, where, with a parting look at the Sound, I started across the country to White Plains and to Tarrytown. The roads improved all the forenoon, and from the Sound to the river were very good. It was nearly dark at Tarrytown, but having some acquaintance with the accommodating landlord at the American House, Sing Sing, I kept on by the monument that marks the spot of Major Andre’s capture, down into “Sleepy Hollow,” made memorable by Washington Irving, and up to the Old Dutch Church, built in 1699. With a mania which I shall never entirely outgrow, for finding the oldest dates in a grave-yard, I opened the creaking iron gate, and walked in among the tipsy tombstones, and, with the scanty aid of the twilight and the full moon, found many dates nearly as old as the church itself. The iron latch snapped back into place with a remarkably loud click, it seemed to me, as I came out, for everything was wonderfully still, even for a grave-yard, and as I went slowly on through the woods, meeting Italian organ-grinders, passing bands of gypsies camped out by the roadside, and coasting silently down unknown hills in the dark, I really think I must have looked like a genuine goblin astride of a silver broomstick. But there was a novelty about it that I rather enjoyed.

Chapter II.

Through the Highlands of the Hudson River.

Soon after leaving Port Chester, frequent explosions attracted my attention, and when within two miles of Tarrytown I came to a cluster of cheap shanties out in the woods, and found that it was the location of Shaft No. 11 of the new aqueduct for New York city. This shaft was only sixty feet deep, and as dump cars of rocks were constantly coming up, and empty cars going down, I thought it would be a fine thing to go down into the bowels of the earth. But no amount of entreaty, no amount of newspaper influence behind me would induce the foreman to give his consent without a permit from headquarters, so I rode over to Tarrytown, hunted the city all over, and finally got the coveted piece of paper from D. D. McBeau, the superintendent. I laid awake half the night thinking of the grand chance before me, and started off next morning from Sing Sing to Shaft One, eight miles directly out of my way, over a hilly and muddy country. Here were more cheap shanties off in the mountains and crowds of negroes and Italians loafing around in the woods, waiting for their turn to go down to work. Rum-holes were numerous and doing a thriving business. The powder and oil clerk gave me an old coat and a pair of rubber boots to put on, and when the empty car was ready I crawled over into it and boldly stood up in the mud beside an Italian, who grinned and said something I could not understand. While waiting for the bell to ring I found this hole was 360 feet deep instead of sixty. That information caused me to look over the side of the car down into the dark where the loaded car comes up—the cars go up and down like the buckets in a well—and try to imagine how far down a fellow would go. If anything should break I did not suppose it would jar me much more to drop 360 feet than it would sixty, but it was the uneasy feeling falling during the longer interval that I began to believe I would avoid. What would happen afterwards I never thought of, but it was the long time going down so far before anything could happen that troubled me. I did not want to run the risk of waiting so long. Then I began to think of what they told me before I got into the car, how the day before the cable slipped, a wheel or something dropped—I did not mind much what they said I was so intent on getting into that car—and how the brains of the man beneath were scooped up into a cigar-box and taken away, and how twelve men were sitting on that cigar-box, or all there was of the man’s body below his shirt collar, at the same time I was hanging over that black hole. I did not object so much to being carried away in a cigar-box, or being sat upon afterwards, but somehow I did not think it such a big thing to go down after all. I began to imagine how it looked down there, and the more the workmen urged me the less I wanted to go. It wouldn’t pay anyhow. I could just as well imagine how it looked and not go. All this time if the bell had rung I should have had no choice, but I finally crawled out, just in time, feeling very foolish, and returned the coat and boots unsoiled. A mile farther I came to Croton dam and the head of the new aqueduct. I may use that hard earned and once highly prized piece of paper some other time when I feel more like it. A brief description of this great work may not be uninteresting.

The present aqueduct runs near the Hudson River, but the rich property holders along its course would combine to effectually prevent another aqueduct from boring its way through their fine grounds, so the only thing to be done was to go back five or six miles into the mountains and tunnel the whole distance of thirty-five or forty miles. The head of the two aqueducts are close together, but whereas the old one winds along the banks of the Hudson on the surface, the new one takes a straight course from New York, the first nine miles being a bee line. Every mile or two holes are dug down into the mountain, these shafts varying from 50 to 400 feet in depth, and then tunnels are started out in opposite directions till they meet those being dug from the next shaft. This tunnel goes through solid rock, under swamps and ponds, through mountains, and finally passes under the Harlem River, eighty feet beneath its bed, into the city. Think of a hole eighteen or twenty feet in diameter being dug as far below the surface of the earth as the Genius of Connecticut on the dome of the Capitol at Hartford is above it; this hole going from Hartford down under the Meriden hills and coming out at New Haven. How do those railroad tunnels through the Alps compare with this? There are about twenty-five of these shafts, and six or seven hundred men are constantly working, day and night, down in the bowels of the earth. The tunnels are lighted by the Schuyler Electric Light Company of Hartford. The average fall to New York is eight inches to the mile, and the water will not run much faster than a mile an hour. I have probably ridden over this tunnel half a dozen times during the past two days, and every farmer along its course for twenty-five miles knows about how far underneath him these men are working. Frequently an explosion that shakes buildings five miles away reminded me of what was going on.

Asking of a good woman to-day how much the bread and milk I had of her would be, she replied, “Five or ten cents if thee is able to pay.”

After a few minutes pleasant talk at Peekskill with Chief Consul E. F. Hall, a slight built, dark complexioned gentleman of, perhaps, 30, wearing glasses, I hired a boatman and crossed the river, a mile and a half wide at this place, to Jones’s Point. This was done partly to avoid the sandy roads running far east from the river to Garrison’s, but principally to get a better view of the entrance to the Highlands. The sun was only half an hour high, but I loitered along, never thinking of the night. The road which winds along the side of the mountain was too stony to ride; but who would want his attention diverted by riding when there was such grand scenery on all sides? The West Shore trains were rushing up and down along the river fifty feet almost perpendicularly below me, the Hudson River trains on the opposite side were just as busy, and the sun brought out the features of Anthony’s nose with great distinctness as it rose nearly 1,500 feet straight up from the east bank of the river. The sun went down some time before I began to wonder if any farmers lived along that rugged region, for not a house was in sight for miles, but hearing some one chopping upon the side of the mountain somewhere, I pushed my machine up a cow-path till my wind was all gone, and found there was a house half a mile farther on. Coming to the barn, in front of which a good looking woman of 30 was milking, I told her how I hoped to reach West Point that night, but the rough roads delayed me, and could I stay over night? The husband was inside, she said, and seeing some one in there in the dark I retold my story, only to find out I was talking to the hired man. Finally the husband, who was in a box stall milking, came out and said “yes” without more ado. The house was close to the river, and soon after supper was over, and we were all sitting in the dining-room talking, a knock was heard. The man of the house said “Come in,” but no one came. Soon the knock was repeated, with the same answer, and finally the door slowly opened and a small, dried up, middle-aged man came shuffling in, blinking and muttering “Is John here?” But John was not there; so Walter sat down by the stove and immediately fell into a deep reverie, occasionally arousing himself to inquire for John. Finally John came in, and then it seems Walter wanted to be taken home in John’s boat, up the river about a mile. So John said, good naturedly, “Come out and get in then,” and walked across the gang-plank, out to where the boat was moored. Walter started out into the bright moonlight, going very unsteadily, and reached the gang-plank without any serious trouble, but here he slowed up. The women-folks said “Help him across, John,” but Walter started, very cautiously, without waiting for help, and had got half way across when he stepped off into the air and went down out of sight with a splash. John was so tickled he laid down in the boat and roared, and when Walter came up, bareheaded and looking very sleek, John couldn’t stop laughing long enough to help him, leaving him hanging there by the gang-plank in the water up to his neck, sputtering, “Zis the river John, zis the river?” But poor Walter was soon helped out, wrapped up in blankets, and taken home in the boat.

The ride next morning of five or six miles to West Point was over a road that would compare favorably with the best city roads, and after spending an hour about the grounds, seeing all the captured Mexican cannons, and wondering where the captured cannons of the war of 1812 were—I guess that was not a very good war for capturing cannons—I crossed to Garrison’s and found a road that for fifty miles, and probably farther, is as fine as there is anywhere about Boston. The grades are easy, the coasting so perfect I almost forgot there was a brake on the machine. For miles and miles fine rows of elms and maples line the sides of the road. To say I enjoyed it seems tame. At Cold Spring I explained the workings of the cyclometer to a gentleman, and opposite the “Cro’ Nest,” meeting the same one again, he returned the favor by showing me the situation of the Storm King Bridge, that is soon to be built. It is at the northern entrance to the Highlands and at one of the wildest parts of the whole river. On both sides are high mountains with bold fronts, the one on the east jutting out into the river. Around this projection there is just room enough for one team to pass between the rocks and the river, the railroad tunneling through the rocks at this point. It is to be a cantilever bridge, and, if I understand it, is to be built nearly a mile in length and upon four or five piers. These iron piers are raised to the height of nearly 250 feet above the river, but how deep the river is at this point I did not learn. At other points it is 200 feet and over. When these piers are at the required height an arm or span is built out in one direction and another of equal length in the other direction, and so on till the spans meet in the center between the piers. It is like building four or five immense capital T’s and extending the arms out till they meet. Imagine those men up in the air 250 feet, and working out on the end of one of those immense spans 500 feet from the center of the pier. At Po’keepsie I found quite a nest of wheelmen at the office of the Buckeye shops, a policeman escorting me to the place to the evident delight of all the small boys, who thought I was under arrest. Representative Adriance is a tall, sandy complexioned gentleman of 35 or 40, with a full beard, and Captain Edward A. King is dark complexioned and smooth, full faced, and under 25. Both of these gentlemen treated me very cordially, as did others there, and I would be glad to be walked off by a policeman any time to meet such fine fellows in a strange city. Saturday morning, after crossing from Rhinecliff to Kingston and traveling twelve miles over some sandy roads that would have been impassable but for a fair side-path, I found, upon reaching Saugerties, that I had made a mistake by not going up the east side and crossing to the same point, but forgot all about it as the terraced Catskills came in view. At Palenville the hard work commenced, pushing the machine to the top, and, after two hours of sweating and puffing, I arrived. Since a boy I had been told there was plenty of room at the top, and so I found it, 1,200 of them, all empty. Notwithstanding that fact, I was obliged to take an apartment on the first floor front, that is, the piazza. The board was very plain, too. The one under me was not only planed but painted. I did not stay long.

Distance traveled in six days, 251 miles.

Chapter III.

Up the Catskills and along the Erie Canal.

Now that the trees are bare, the terraced appearance of the Catskills is plainly visible, and in climbing up by the new mountain road to the Hotel Kaaterskill, along the northern slope of the Kaaterskill Clove, one wonders at first why the numerous little houses scattered all along up this Clove are not in danger of the catastrophe that befell the Willey House in Crawford Notch, New Hampshire. The sides of the Clove are as steep as the Notch, although not as high, but the rock formation of the Catskills preserves these little hamlets. A landslide here would have to go down a gigantic pair of stairs, while in the White Mountains it would be like slipping off a gothic roof. Half an hour’s rest was sufficient after the tough climb of four miles up the gentle grade, as they called it, of the new road. It was very steep all the way up, and at places very dangerous, a single wire holding up a row of posts which themselves seemed bent on going over, being the only protection against a fall of fifty feet or more. I reached the falls in the rear of the Laurel House just as the western sun was filling the Clove with rainbows, and after convincing myself with some difficulty that the whole mountain would not tip over if I stepped too heavy, I crawled around the amphitheater, little by little, till the water came down directly between the stairs and myself. The ice all around the pool rose up very much like the crater of a volcano, down into the center of which the water plunged from 150 feet above. While I was creeping along backside of this ice crater there was a loud crack, loud enough to be heard above all the other noises, and my feet went down about three inches. A thin shale of ice under my feet had broken, that was all, but my heart came up as my feet went down, and it remained about six inches above its ordinary level for some time.

That night the lively conversation, accompanied by sly winks, and short little words of the gouty but genial proprietor, J. L. Schult, helped to make the evening pass pleasantly, especially when Mr. Schult, of Dutch descent himself, would slyly refer to the Yankee origin of his wife, a quiet, kind lady of Connecticut parents.

Sunday morning came off delightfully clear and cool, and after a ride of a couple of miles by the railroad station and the lake, on one side of which the ice still covered the surface while on the other side buds on the trees were bursting, I reached the Mountain House and sat down for a few minutes, but wishing to be alone crossed over to the Pine Orchard Hotel. A few steps farther brought me to the Beach House where, avoiding contact with people when Nature had so much to say to me, I sat down under the shade of the Catskill Mountain House, and for four hours was undisturbed as I lay there taking in the fine view of the Hudson, the finest, I think, to be had from any of the mountain hotels. If any one is puzzled to account for so many hotels in this section of the mountains, he is no more confused than I was when I had the same building pointed out to me at different times as the Mountain House, the Pine Orchard Hotel, the Beach House, and the Catskill Mountain House, but like the various officers which centered in Pooh-Bah they are all one.

Celebrated as the Catskills are, Connecticut can boast of some hills that out-rank them in one respect, and that is age. The Litchfield Hills in plain sight across the river are not only the tallest in the State but they claim to be about as old as the Adirondacks. The river Saguenay has worn a wrinkle 1,500 feet deep down the face of some rocks of the same age. But the Connecticut hills don’t show their age like that, old as they are. They were well along in their youth when the rocks were born over which flow the waters of Niagara, and the White Mountains, now both bald and grey, had then not even been thought of. They were in the meridian of life when the Rockies came upon the stage, and had passed that point long before the Alps, Pyrennes, Himalayas, and the rocks of which the pyramids are built, had risen above the surface of the ocean. So their real grandeur consists, certainly not in their size, but in the fact that the group of mountains to which they belong, the Laurentian range, as well as the Adirondacks, has remained above the sea level longer than any other land upon the face of the globe. Not once during this time have they ever bowed to the god of the sea. They are not so pretentious as some of their richer and more lofty followers, but in their ripe old age the Litchfield Hills have acquired a weather-beaten and a most enviable title to the first families of creation.

I understood from a wheelman that the coasting down the other side of the mountains toward Catskill was fine, and to enjoy that was my idea in working so hard to get the machine up, but the road was too steep and rough and so all the labor was lost. Crossing the river again at Catskill I rode on to Hudson by moonlight, and the next day kept on, over mostly fine roads, through Kinderhook, where some writers claim the identical “Sleepy Hollow” of Washington Irving is located, to Albany. Washing off some of the dust and dirt I put on a coat and went up to the capitol. Finding I was a stranger those in charge furnished a guide, who took me all over the magnificent structure. To give an idea of the cost of the interior decorations, it will be enough to state that one side of the senate chamber is covered with slabs of Mexican onyx, the cost of this room alone amounting to over one million dollars. On the way out of the city I stopped at the Albany Bicycle Club House, a large two story building, situated on a prominent corner, with a fine lawn in front. The house is nicely furnished, with all conveniences, but the club has of late become more of a social than an athletic club. At Schenectady the only glimpse I had of Jacob W. Clute, the active wheelman of this thriving city, was through the cracks of the court-room door as he was cross-examining a witness, but S. R. James, who has a large crockery establishment here, mounted his tricycle and piloted me along the sidewalks to the tow path. Mr. James has been at different times president and captain of their club, and is a good-sized man of sixty, with side whiskers and moustache.

On the tow-path, at last. A path nearly 300 miles long and perfectly level for forty, fifty, and sixty miles on a stretch. How I looked forward to it. How I longed to get to it. How I thought the hard work was over when I reached it. What fun it would be to ride for hours without a dismount; what time I could make. This and a great deal more I had thought about, read of, and talked over. The great tow-path, the bicyclers’ paradise! Now I was there. Well, to state facts, it is no path at all, it is a common highway, and a very common one too, for everybody uses it. The soil is a mixture of clay and coarse, very coarse, gravel. Round, loose stones filled the ruts and every part of the road. The inside edge of the bank is cobbled and the outside edge full of little cross ditches. Now, where was a wheel to go? Go in the middle and the wheel would take a serpentine course; try to follow a rut and the loose stones would throw the wheel in and out. The outside edge was terribly jolting, the inside edge dangerous, for a variation of an inch or two and the course of the wheel would throw a rider into the mud and water ten feet below in the empty canal. But for all that I tried the celebrated tow-path for ten, twenty, thirty miles, and long miles, too. After bumping along for a mile or two I would get off and walk. Then pound along for two or three miles farther and dismount again, more to prevent the saddle from becoming ruined than anything else, for even a Kirkpatrick’s saddle couldn’t stand everything. Water is as necessary to a wheelman as to a locomotive, and yet there was none to be had excepting at the lock-houses several miles apart and then only in a well, down in some warm swamp; no gushing little streams of sparkling, cool water, such as spring out of the rocks and hills all along the regular highways. The only shade was under the bridges that cross the canal at frequent intervals, where a rider can sit down in the dirt and think how nice it might be on the grass beneath the shade of a pine tree. No matter what part of the road you took it required the strictest attention to business, and after following a rut with every muscle hard and every nerve taut for an hour or two, it became monotonous, to say the least.

The canal follows the south side of the Mohawk River and passes through very few villages, while on the other side of the river are many places, through each of which there must be a mile or two of nice riding, yet I stuck to the canal on principle for six long hours, and left it at Fonda for good. It may be, when the boats are running, that the mules’ kicking abilities are employed, when they slack rope, in firing the million of round stones out of the road, and in that way make the tow-path rideable, but if every mule on the line of the canal had kicked me, personally and individually, with all four feet and all on the same spot, I should not have been any sorer than I was that night. The next day fifty-six miles were made with less labor and decidedly more pleasure over the common roads than was the forty-five miles the day before, and if the tow path was the only way to Buffalo, the next train home would have had me for a passenger. All the way to Syracuse the tow-path, from what I could see in crossing it, is very much the same rough riding, and whenever anyone advised me to take it to a certain place I writhed with pain at the very idea.

At Little Falls the West Shore double tracks, the canal, the river, the four tracks of the New York Central, and the highway are all brought into close proximity by the perpendicular ledges of rocks on both sides of the valley, and the rocks along the highway and in the river are worn and scooped out by action of the elements, very much as they are at Diana’s Baths, near North Conway. It is no uncommon occurrence on the Central road to see a passenger train chasing and overtaking a freight train, while a third train will scoot in between the two, with a fourth train close on to them. There is nothing dull about a trip up the Mohawk valley, even alone on a bicycle.

It is the general opinion that the mud this spring has been the deepest of any for many years, some say twenty-five years; and often I ride over places, now dry and dusty on the surface, that bend and crack like thin ice. A wagon laid up beside the road, with a wheel wrenched off by the deep hard ruts, or a place where rails and boards have been used to extricate a mired horse, are sights of almost daily occurrence. Once I passed a hole in the road where a fine pair of draft horses were ruined. A week sooner and the roads would have been impassable for a bicycle. Even now the ruts prevent any very fast riding. The road scraper has only been used in a very few places, and as the roads have become more dry and dusty the small wheel has become more independent, going off to one side on little excursions of its own, to the natural disconcertment of its rider. After traveling over 400 miles I have had no tumbles, but as I was following a narrow ridge between two ruts, a fly, about as large as the head of a pin, flew into my eye, immediately enlarged itself to the size of a barn, and the next instant I was in the dust. It takes the weak things of this world to confound the bicyclist. The religious crank who has painted the stones and rocks of Connecticut with warnings in regard to the future life has been using the same means of conversion all over York State, and in many places he has taken advantage of alarming situations to enforce his arguments. For instance, in the Highlands below West Point is a deep ravine, down the sides of which the road winds and crosses a bridge nearly 100 feet above the river, on which is posted a sign “dangerous.” The bridge totters under my feet, and right here, painted in staring blue letters are these words: “Prepare to meet thy God,” and “Repent now or you will go to hell.”

The knapsack attracts considerable attention along the route, especially from the dogs. Some only give a single low grunt, while others of more sound than sense follow it for a quarter of a mile or more; but every dog has something to say in regard to the trip. Coasting down into Peekskill the knapsack was accompanied by seven (actual count) dogs of various sizes and colors, some turning hand springs, others whirling around within a very small circle, and all performing some sort of gymnastic evolutions in front, on the side of, or behind the knapsack, and each one displaying his vocal powers to the best of his ability. Sometimes a dog of light weight and wit will chew away at my canvas shoes while they are revolving on the pedal, and another will tug away at my stocking while I drink at a well, but constant exposure has so toughened my sensibilities that I can walk along with the cold nose of a savage bull dog bumping against the calves of my legs without a shudder.

Going from Ilion to Frankfort I had a lively brush with a horse car, the highway and track running side by side, of such uncertain result that the passengers became as interested in the race as the driver himself. When passengers took or left the car the stops would give me the lead, but then the driver would run his horse and leave me behind, for the road was not the best, but I finally left them behind for good.

At Utica I met a dozen or more of the members of the bicycle club at their rooms during the evening. The members are mostly young men and nearly all riders, and bicycling has certainly taken a firm hold at this place. Messrs. Arthur J. Lux and F. E. Manchaw were especially friendly to me. But at Syracuse, where I stopped the next night, the atmosphere is very different. With equally good roads, a larger population, with club rooms, rent free, in the Y. M. C. A. building, a beautiful structure in a city of fine buildings, with all things seemingly favorable, the club hardly numbers a dozen lifeless members. Will. H. Olmstead, the first bicycle rider in Syracuse, a middle aged gentleman with a full black beard, kindly assisted me with information. For six miles out of Utica the sidewalk is without a single gutter to oblige a dismount, and at Syracuse there seems to be the same regard for the personal comfort of bicyclists. That day I met the first unpleasant treatment at a farm-house. Stopping for something to eat, the farmer, who was coming in from the barn to dinner, said rather sharply, “What do you do for a living.” I told him what I was doing. “Why don’t you go to work and earn your dinner,” said he. That “riled” me a little, but I only said I expected to pay for what I had, and had intimated nothing to the contrary. He softened perceptibly, and as the savory smell wafted from the kitchen had increased my ravenous appetite, I jingled the few coins in my pocket in retaliation, till the crabbed old man actually smiled and invited me in, as cordially as it was possible for one of his disposition to do. Then disliking to beg and buy both I said so, and went a few rods to the next house, where I could not force any money on the good woman for the bountiful meal I had there.

I stopped for a meal at a way-side hotel, when, upon leaving, the German proprietor, knowing of the intended length of my trip, said, “Hold on one minute,” and he ran back into the house. Returning directly with a small business card three or four inches square, on the back of which was a railroad map of the United States, in which the State of Connecticut did not appear larger than the end of a lead pencil, he said, “There, now, you go ’long, and when you come to a road you just take out your map and there you are. You will have to ask no questions. I am glad I thought of it.” Thanking him, I went on.

Passing through places with such familiar names as New Hartford and Vernon, by houses—built of small cobble-stones, the size of an egg, laid in cement in rows like bricks, and arched over the doors and windows, making a very pretty appearance—by cheese factories with the accusing question painted in large black letters on a board nailed to the whey tank, “Who Steals the Whey?” (every farmer helps himself to enough whey to pay for the milk he brings, and it looks as if some helped themselves to a little more), by acres of hop-poles already stuck, by droves of mules all tied together, with an immense draft horse leading them along and another bringing up the rear: genuine horse guards, that trudged along past the bicycle without so much as deigning to look at it, while the captive mules, the tow-path mules, shied out at it; through Oneida Castle and through Auburn, where a minstrel brass band marching through the streets and a knapsack and bicycle going down the sidewalk gave the small boys and big ones, too, for that matter, altogether too much to attend to just at dinner-time, I finally came to the lake at Cayuga. Here a pleasant ride of half an hour across the lake in a row boat made a very agreeable change from the hot, dusty riding of the last three or four days, and then on to Geneva for the night. Next morning a cold rain drove me into a barn and finally into the farmer’s house where I surprised the ancient granger in the act of making up his weekly letter to an agricultural journal. Here ends the second week of the trip.

Distance traveled during the week 288 miles; distance from starting point 557 miles.

Chapter IV.

At Niagara and along Lake Erie.

At Canandaigua I had a short interview with Doctor A. G. Coleman. He is short and rather thick set, with gray hair and full beard. His conversation was very entertaining; his bicycling experience in Denver and California naturally interesting me very much.

The artificial hatching of trout at Mumford, New York, is a sight that is well worth a journey, even from a long distance. The ground occupied is small, only two or three acres, and the building in which the hatching is done is only the size of an ordinary barn, but there is an immense amount of interest concentrated in this small area. There are a dozen or fifteen small ponds, perhaps ten feet square, boarded up on the sides, in which are the various kinds of trout from a year to twelve or fifteen years of age. Brook salmon, California brook, and German trout are the principal kinds raised here. I laid down on a plank that crosses one of the ponds, where the water comes pouring into it, and put my hand down into the water. Probably five hundred of these speckled beauties, the common brook trout, varying from one to two pounds in weight, were struggling to get through the wooden grates into the water above, and they wriggled and twisted through my fingers and bit the flesh as if they resented the interference, but otherwise paid no attention to it. Many would even allow me to take them out and hold them for a few seconds. The water was actually solid with fish, for there were over 3,000 of them in this one pond. Lying on the grass beside another pond in which were some fine specimens of salmon trout, there were within a foot of my hand trout varying from a foot to two feet and a half or three feet in length and weighing from five to eighteen pounds, all lying perfectly still on the bottom, too lazy to stir. Then I went into the building where Jim—everybody knows Jim after one visit—told me how they propagate and care for the millions of tiny things, even selecting individual cases for special care. Half a dozen men were here picking out the poor eggs and doing different kinds of work. The eggs are about half as large as a lead pencil in diameter, and the poor ones are white, the others colorless. In one of the many shallow troughs in the building through which water is constantly running were thousands of eggs spread out just ready to hatch. When they break through the shell the little fish are scarcely longer than the egg itself, which remains attached to them and is finally absorbed. Millions of these eggs, as well as millions of these little trout not an inch long, are annually shipped to all parts of the country. Seth Green came in, and a few minutes’ chat with the jovial, gray bearded, two hundred and fifty pound man would make anyone wish to come again and know him better. Then I went out to see them take the spawn. During the spawning season the trout run up a long covered sluiceway at the head of each pond, and a net placed at the lower end of this covered brook catches every fish in it after the boards are removed and the trout driven down with a pole. The men hauled out about a bushel and a half at the first pond and about two bushels at the second, and emptied them into tubs filled with water. The females were parted from the males,—they separated them much faster than a farmer could sort rotting apples—and then the females were taken out by the men on their knees and squeezed dry of every egg in them. Occasionally a few drops of milk were pressed from a male into the pan with eggs to fecundate them, which occurred in a few seconds, and the males were thrown back into the pond, the female being put into a separate pond and tenderly cared for. Thus, in about fifteen minutes 50,000 eggs, or about three quarts, were obtained, and this process is carried out every day during the season. The female brook trout only live to be five or six years old, such necessarily rough handling naturally shortening their lives, and the males are turned loose down the stream after about the same age, but the salmon trout attain the age of fifteen or eighteen years. To put an edge to the enjoyment of this visit, that was intense to one interested in all out-of-door sports, Jim took a pan of chopped liver and the instant the meat struck the water in one of the ponds, three thousand yellow bellies made the water foam and boil with their lightning-like flashes. Then he threw some to the big ones, those lazy fifteen and eighteen pounders. They made some troubled waters, too, a thousand of them, four tons of trout flesh all in motion, handsome fellows that would come sailing, mouths wide open, towards the surface and flop their bodies, nearly a yard in length, entirely out of water. Connecticut fishermen, who tramp for miles with cold, soaked feet and return home with a wet back and a hungry stomach, having secured only a few ounces of trout meat, can, perhaps, get a faint idea from this hurried description of what is to be seen here, but they ought to come and see it themselves. Of course, fishing in a hatching pond would lack the zest which men naturally feel in killing a wild thing, but “I have known it done.”

Those that are turned loose down the stream make very poor eating, for their life diet of liver and lights renders their meat very tasteless. It evidently needs the piquancy of a spider or fly to give a true gamey flavor. Just before reaching Lima, I stopped at Mr. Augustus Metcalf’s, to make inquiries about the roads, and his son Willard, being a wheelman, kindly invited me to stay over night. My short visit with them will always be remembered with pleasure.

All the way from Syracuse, in fact all the way from Albany to Buffalo, I took the old, original turnpike. No matter whether I finally decided to take the “lower” road between intermediate places, or the “upper” road or the “middle” road or the “river” road or the “ridge” road or the “middle ridge” road, or a plank, clay, sand, or gravel road; whatever road I happened to be on some old farmer would soon tell me I was traveling on the “old original turnpike between Albany and Buffalo.” One went back so far as to say that the said turnpike followed an old Indian trail, and they all seemed to take pride in mentioning the fact that their farms are situated on what was once such a celebrated thoroughfare. But there is another fact in regard to old highways that rests on a more substantial foundation than the disputed question as to which is the “old original.” The main street leading out of Utica west towards Syracuse is called Genesee street, into Syracuse it is East Genesee, out of Syracuse West Genesee, and so on through Auburn, I think, and all the principal places until Buffalo is reached by going into the city by the same Genesee street.

Going up the Mohawk valley the view one gets is not very extended, but after leaving Syracuse, clear through to Batavia, 125 miles, the country is undulating, and from the top of the many hills a traveler gets a fine view of a most beautiful country. Although the leaves were not yet out when I passed through this section, the grass was green, and the cherry trees were in bloom on Good Friday. Fine shade trees abound along the highways, and through many of the places a double row lines the principal streets, and fine sidewalks and level riding make a trip through this section, even so early in the season, very enjoyable. Arriving at Buffalo, the instant I crossed his threshold Mr. C. W. Adams, secretary of the Buffalo Bicycle Club, made me feel perfectly at home. He is dark complexioned, below the medium height, smooth faced, wears glasses, and is about 25 years of age. I found in traveling farther west that his hospitable manner and winning ways have made him a favorite with all wheelmen who have met him. It was not enough to take me about the finest rides in that beautiful city, after supper, and find a very entertaining escort for me about the city the next morning, but a trip to the falls and the bridge with him the next afternoon made my visit at Buffalo the pleasantest by far of any short stop I have had during a tour of many pleasant experiences. In the city there are fifteen or twenty miles of asphalt pavements as smooth as glass, block asphalt excepted, besides miles and miles of fine park roads, and with such drives it is not strange that the club is outgrowing its old club house—old only in name—and is moving into a very large two-story building on the main street, which will soon be nicely filled up with everything that such a genuine riding, working, racing, hospitable club needs. Judging from the dozen or more members of the club that I met, such kind, open-hearted, courteous fellows deserve all the success that the nutmeg stranger they took in could wish them, and that is unlimited. By train to the falls and out upon Goat Island on our wheels. I dared to follow where Mr. Adams led, but being ahead he didn’t notice I took the inside rut of the driveway that runs around the island close to the edge, where a fall to one side would have sent my friend and machine over the bank into the rapids. I can follow as narrow a path on a wheel as anyone in some places, but around the edge of Goat Island is not one of those places. After visiting the place a dozen times or more I might, perhaps; but the first—yes, it was the first time I ever saw Niagara. When I tried to express myself about it every word sounded so flat, so meaningless, so utterly unfit. I might as well try to define the Infinite. I had nothing to say and was dumb, and am yet whenever I think of it. It seems about fifty years ago an insurrection broke out in Canada and the steamer Caroline was used by some filibustering Americans a few miles above here to help the fuss along. But the Canadian authorities finally seized the steamer, touched a match to it and set it adrift. How it came down over the rapids, all afire from stem to stern, and went over the falls, can better be imagined than described, at least by me. In conversation about the occurrence, near the stairs that lead down to where the tower used to stand, and telling how I should like to have seen it, the hackman said with a condescending air: “O yes, but that is only one of many grand scenes that you have missed by coming here late,” and from his manner I inferred that strange and wonderful things had occurred on this river for the last 10,000 years at least, and that if I had come in when the doors first opened the one price of admission would have taken me through the entire show. Considering the amount of time and labor required to put this play upon the stage, or hack, rather, the wonder is, not Niagara by any means, but that these poor palæozoic hackmen can afford to exhibit for the price they do. The unfortunate delusion abroad that they charge only for the scene in the play that is being acted now is undoubtedly a great mistake, and they suffer in the estimation of the public accordingly. Their price is for what has occurred since the curtain rose in the Upper Silurian down to the present and until the curtain falls where Erie and Ontario are one. Those who come early and stay late and are not satisfied will doubtless have their money refunded at the close of the entertainment. At least such was the intimation of the man I met. Down a couple of miles to the suspension bridge, a look at the cantilever bridge,—a structure that in its construction was more wonderful than in its completed state, for the arms of the immense iron piers were built out over the river till they met in the middle—across the river and down to the whirlpool and back, and the day, a red letter one, was ended.

AN ENTERTAINING ESCORT.—(Page 31.)

Thursday morning was clear and cool, and I left Buffalo with a last look at the black cloud of smoke hovering over it that stretched, thinner and thinner, far out over the lake. The roads were fine along the shore, and once or twice I laid down on the grass on the edge of the cliff that juts out over the water, perhaps forty feet below, and tried to imagine I was tired so I could have an excuse for stopping, but the cool breezes at my back urged me on and the certain prospect of fine road ahead kept me going, and so all day long I paddled onward, always with the wind and sometimes like it. The breeze next day blew strong, from the southeast, at right angles to my course, but the road remained good. Once I stopped under a shed to avoid a slight shower, but soon found a red handkerchief hanging at my waist was not a safe thing to have around a barn-yard, for a bull over the fence near me almost immediately began to paw the ground and bellow, and so I moved on without much delay. At times the wind would blow me out of the road on to the side, and when I got fairly braced to tack against it at an angle of forty-five degrees, more or less, it would suddenly let up and back into the road I would go with a rush, the wheel leaving a sort of self-registering mark behind that indicated the velocity of the wind at the different points in the road. Notwithstanding the wind and ten miles of sand and clay, too soft and rutty to ride, the 200 miles from Buffalo to Cleveland was made in three days, with two or three hours to spare, so any wheelman can judge of the general average of the roads. I never saw as long a stretch of fine wheeling.

Just here a word about guide-boards. In Connecticut, as we all know, guide-boards are a feature of every main and almost all cross-roads throughout the State, and are usually a great help to travelers by road. But along the Sound they grew scarcer, until coming into York State they were wanting entirely. In riding over 500 miles through different parts of that State, I remember seeing but four public guide-boards, and two of those were placed there by Poughkeepsie wheelmen. The roads are no straighter than in other States, and so the only thing to do in case of doubt is to take the side of safety and ask questions. These delays many times a day amount to a great deal, but there is no other way. But the instant I crossed the State line into the northwest corner of Pennsylvania every road and cross-road had a guide board. The change is like magic. And here in Ohio they go so far in the guide-board business as to tell you which way you can go to a certain place without crossing a railroad. For instance, to-day I passed a board which read: “Painesville without R. R. crossing 2 miles,” another way being shorter. For miles around Buffalo in every direction the land is very low and wet, requiring much ditching, but it rises gradually on towards Cleveland, after passing Erie, which like Buffalo is situated nearly on a level with the lake, and the towns, such as Conneaut, Ashtabula, and Painesville, seem to increase in size as the land rises to a higher level, till Cleveland, largest of all, stands on a higher bluff than any. After leaving Buffalo the streams that flow into the lake gradually increase in size also, and they wear a channel down through the solid rock which rises almost perpendicularly on each side. These ravines, at each one of which is a town or city, increase in depth as the general level of the land rises. So, as one travels west from Erie over an apparently level country, there are constantly seen larger streams, deeper ravines, higher levels, and larger cities. The Lake Shore and Nickle Plate railroads are of course obliged to cross all these ravines, and their bridges increase in height till some of them are over one hundred feet above the river bed. I passed close by the Ashtabula bridge where, many will remember, a terrible accident occurred a few years ago on a cold December night.

Speaking about railroads reminds me of a little incident of yesterday. All the railroads along the route have adopted the four whistles for a crossing, the Hudson River and New York Central being the only exceptions, I think, so the familiar signal first used by the New York and New England Railroad in the Eastern States is constantly heard. Yesterday I sat down under a tree to rest a few minutes when I heard in the distance the whistle of a train, and being near the tracks, waited to see the train pass. It came no nearer for some time, but I noticed the crossings seemed to be at regular intervals apart. Still the train did not come. Finally, happening to turn my head on one side the sound came from above, and looking up into the tree I saw a small brown bird that at regular intervals would swell up and utter a sound that nine persons in ten would mistake for the four whistles of a locomotive in the distance.

The other day, in turning out to pass a team, I carelessly rode into some hard clay ruts that threw me instantly,—so suddenly that I turned almost a complete somersault. That is, I thought I did, for some time, for the blow I received on the back of the head that made it snap for a while could not be accounted for upon any other supposition than that I had gone clear over and struck the back of my head on the hard ground. I did not note just the position I was in when I picked myself up; the person in the wagon did that probably; but I was painfully aware that something hit me, hard too. It was the fifteen-pound knapsack that flew up and hit me a stunning blow on the back of the head. If I had been at home I would have bandaged my head, gone into an easy chair, and called the doctor. As it was, I simply remounted, trundled on, and was all right again in an hour.

Nine hundred and eighteen miles in three weeks.

Chapter V.

Through Ohio and Indiana.

Riding slowly through Mentor, Ohio, a small place with two stores and a meeting-house, I overtook a man driving a raw-boned bay horse that jogged along in a lifeless sort of a way. The driver too seemed to be tired, as he leaned forward holding his body up by resting his elbows on his knees, but this shiftless acting man drove into the yard at Garfield’s old home and was Mrs. Garfield’s farmer. Views of the homestead and its surroundings are familiar to every one, but a large two-story stone addition is being built that alters the appearance of the house somewhat. This handsome addition is doubtless fire-proof, and the lower windows are protected with heavy iron bars, giving the whole addition the appearance of an elegant prison, but it is designed, I am told, to preserve all of Garfield’s books, papers, and other valuables.

Six miles east of Cleveland, a city named after a Connecticut surveyor, is the Lake View Cemetery, at which place I stopped a few minutes at the tomb that holds the remains of Garfield, guarded by a squad of United States infantry. The use of the tomb was given to Mrs. Garfield by a private family until such time as the remains could be deposited in their final resting place on the top of a hill a short distance away. The Garfield monument, the massive foundation of which is barely finished, and of which George Keller of Hartford, is the architect, is on a site that commands a fine view of the lake, the city, and the surrounding country for miles; the most beautiful location in that part of the State.

Euclid is a small village full of rum-holes, and surrounded by mud and water, the most forsaken place I have yet seen, and in every respect, excepting distance, Euclid avenue in Cleveland is as far removed from Euclid as Paradise from Purgatory. Buffalo has streets as beautiful, with better pavements, but none as long. The poplar seems to be the popular tree, long stately rows lining the sides of the street. I was using the sidewalk on what is called the “bob” side of this street when a rider, using the pavement on the opposite, the “Nabob” side, warned me I had better get off the sidewalk, and so I rode into the city over poor pavements with the gentleman that proved to be the president of the Cleveland club, Mr. H. B. Payne. Plank roads are a necessity in the clay soil of the outer suburbs of Cleveland, but covered with two or three inches of mud and sunken about eight or ten inches below the level of the ground, these plank roads are neither pleasant to look at nor easy to ride over. Much of the low, wet land between Buffalo and Cleveland that will not produce a profitable crop of any of the cereals, is lately being used in raising grapes, currants, and other small fruits. This industry, new for this section of the country, is assuming enormous proportions, and I passed acres and acres of land entirely devoted to grapes. In fact the country seemed to be one vast vineyard, and I could easily imagine what a delicious sight it must present in the fall of the year, and my parched mouth seemed to get drier as I rode past the immense cellars that I knew were full of the cool wine. The route I was to take to Columbus was given me very explicitly at Cleveland as far as Wellington, and from that place I was told to “go right on to Columbus,” from which I understood that the latter place was only a short distance ahead. But at Wellington, wheelmen could tell me nothing, livery stable keepers could only guess at the best route, which I was equally able to do, and so I struck out blindly. I went right on, not always right, however, often wrong, but still I went. The Ohio wheelmen are to issue a road book soon, but if the information in it is no more extended than the knowledge of roads possessed by all the northern Ohio wheelmen I have met, from the consuls up to the riders of baby bicycles, the value of the book will not be very great.

And this is the kind of country I went into. Land, low, level, and wet. Very little land under cultivation and that little producing a very thin crop of wheat. Houses small and out of repair. Barns tumbling down and propped up. No pebbly brooks or clean wells, but plenty of stagnant pools and plenty of warm rain-water to drink. If a farm-house has happened to burn down the farm is deserted. Nobody seemed to be doing anything and everybody was waiting for the land to dry up or something to turn up. The farmers were all fat, good natured, and wanted to talk. The roads were in awful condition, full of hard, dry ruts, and chunks of clay, that would beat a man’s brains out if his head came in contact with them. No one was going from place to place, and over a portion of one main road only two teams had passed in three days—since the last rain. Everybody seemed to have settled down into the wet clay and to become contented; as happy as a great fat hog wallowing in the mud and grunting with satisfaction. To be sure there are a few places of three or four thousand inhabitants scattered along through this otherwise thinly populated section, but this is the general impression a traveler gets. I had to walk over a good portion of the road and so had plenty of chance to observe the condition of things for seventy-five miles south of Cleveland.

Besides, the farmers are as ignorant as they are indolent, knowing little about their own State and less about other States. Not one in ten of them could tell me within a hundred and fifty miles the distance to Columbus, their own capital. One man persisted in thinking Connecticut was a small village with a cotton mill, in the State of Rhode Island, and I could not hammer—we were in a blacksmith’s shop out of the rain at the time—I could not hammer anything else into the fat old simpleton’s head. Then, in the large towns along the way, as if to add insult to injury, the people, in talking to me about this section of poor roads and poor farmers, referred to them as “Yankee roads” and “Yankee farmers.” But the people out here, although rather despising the close, saving habits of the average New Englander, yet do respect the perseverance, the tenacity, the sort of bull-dog grip that they think the inhabitants of the Eastern States are noted for. They pity the farmers of New England who contend against a stony, barren soil, but they regard with admiration their constant endeavors to obtain a competency. Here they get their living, such as it is, so easy. At the risk of making a too egotistical illustration of how they regard a little perseverance I will give a little incident that occurred at Wellington, a place of three or four thousand inhabitants. A large portly gentleman, fifty or sixty years old, sitting in a carriage in front of a fine residence, stopped me to ask the inevitable questions, where from, where to, and all about it. Then he “hollered” loud enough for all Wellington to hear, “Wife, wife, come out here and see this boy; this boy from Connecticut. Come all the way on a bicycle, goes sixty and seventy miles a day some days; going clear out to Denver on it. There’s an Eastern boy for you, that’s Eastern grit, that is. That’s Eastern,” and he smiled all over his round face and wished me all the good luck in the world.

FROM MUD TO MEADOW.—(Page 40.)

Tuesday I experienced some of the difficulties of the Western mud. A light drizzling rain in the morning made the roads too slippery to ride, and walking was hardly possible. The sticky mud accumulated under the brake and between the forks till, obliged to turn the machine around and push it backwards with the little wheel in the air, the big wheel finally stuck fast and slid along in the road. Then in pushing up hill with all the strength I had my feet would slip back and in going down hill I slipped up, paradoxical as it may seem. But a heavy rain the next morning made the highways impassable for a pedestrian even, and so I took to the lots, avoiding the plowed fields whenever possible. Through ordinary soil the sides of the roads would be passable, but all the holes made by cattle during the spring mud for the last twenty-five years remain to-day just as they were made along the sides, and when these holes are filled with water it is not pleasant to have your foot slip into one of them and then have the water squirt all over you, therefore I took the lots, climbing post and rail fences, crawling through and lifting the machine over barbed wire fences, any way to get along, but all day I made only twelve miles and worked hard too.

A DRAG THROUGH THE MUD.—(Page 40.)

Along in the afternoon a gentleman in a buggy, the first team I had seen during the day, offered to help me along a mile or so. Seated in the backside of his buggy with my legs hanging off and dragging the machine after me, I thought that was not just the advertised way of going “right on to Columbus,” but it was to Columbus I was going, someway. If the machine was muddy the day before, it was plastered all over now. The sticky clay would accumulate under the forks and saddle, and drop off in such big chunks that at times I did not know but I had kept hold of the wrong chunk, and had left the machine back somewhere in the road. Then from the shape of the mass of mud near the locality where the cyclometer was last seen, I observed that the ingenious little appliance was gliding gracefully along bottom-side up. But all this did not last. The roads dried up before night so I could walk in them. A mound of clay beside the road marks the spot where I cleaned up the machine, and after passing through Ashland, Mansfield, and some other smaller places, the next day, thirty-five miles above Columbus I came to a “double-track” road and the hard work was over. These double-track or “summer” roads, as they are called, are made of coarse gravel on one side, and the natural soil, the clay, on the other, the clay track being preferred in the summer, and the gravel in the winter and spring. But I forgot to mention one little incident of the day before. In jumping into a team-wagon for a short ride, the corduroy breeches, with a loud report, split open across the seat, really to such an extent that a change of apparel was absolutely necessary, but before I could get to a barn, in which to disrobe, I met several teams, in which were young ladies, and I know they thought me very bold to turn about and face them after they had passed. Stopping at Cardington, I found a wheelman, Mr. Samuel Brown, who was also a tailor, and he put my breeches in riding order again.

The State capitol at Columbus is a heavy, square, granite building, with piles of immense grindstones laid one on top of the other that answers for pillars in front. It has very much the appearance of an Egyptian temple, and is dark inside and dingy out. The buildings in these Western cities, whether built of marble, granite, sand-stone, or brick, all soon have the same dingy look, the smoke from the immense amount of soft coal used being the probable cause. The members of the legislature there convened all had an easy-going happy way about them, and the clerk and messengers were slow and innocent in their manners, in sharp contrast to the business-like, clean-cut appearance of many Eastern legislators, and the rapid actions of Eastern clerks and messengers. On the way out of the city I passed the insane asylum, an institution that to outward appearances will accommodate more patients and that certainly did produce more noise by yelling lunatics than the one at Middletown, Conn. Both north and west of Columbus for many miles log huts are seen on all sides, some deserted, but most of them still occupied, that confounded clay pasted into the cracks between the logs, making the best kind of protection against the weather. Great black sows with chunked little black pigs are as plenty by the roadside as hens and chickens are in the East, and they are often seen roaming around the streets in good sized towns.

Three miles west of Dayton is the Soldiers’ Home, and as I rode through the entrance to the grounds, a big Dutchman stopped me, but finding my object was simply to ride about the grounds and out again, he said: “Vell, when you get up into the crowd be very careful, for some are blind and some deaf, and if you run into one h—l will be to pay.” There was quite a crowd, four or five thousand of them, some fishing, some watching the alligator, all seemingly enjoying themselves about the grounds—grounds that are laid out in beautiful shape, and that contain everything almost that would make life happy. All enjoying themselves? No, not all, for over on the farther side of the grounds several hundred were laying away, with military honors, one who had gone over to the silent majority, and as they filled his grave another grave was being dug.

Mr. T. J. Kirkpatrick of Springfield, is of medium size, middle aged, light complexioned, with light-colored side-whiskers and mustache, and from my ten minutes’ talk with him I am satisfied that if there had been no other route from Cleveland to Columbus than the one the local consul at Cleveland gave me, Kirkpatrick would have started out and made one for the occasion. He is one of those men who can’t do enough to help you along, and is an honor to the L. A. W.

The “pike” from Columbus to Indianapolis is a road that originally must have been built at great expense, for it is raised fifteen feet or more along some of the low lands, and now is kept in excellent repair,—a broad, level, and very straight highway, so straight that in forty-four miles there are only two slight bends in it, and so level in places that for twelve miles there is not the slightest rise or depression. In the western part of Ohio the land is just rolling enough to make some very fine coasting, and at times you can look straight ahead eight or ten miles, to the top of an apparently very high hill where the telegraph poles seem to come together, they are so far off, and the task of climbing that hill makes you faint in anticipation, but long before you get there the hill has faded away (another illustration of the maxim never to climb a hill until you get to it), the grade up it has been so gradual, and then, at last, you can look back and see another hill just as high that you have come down without knowing it. The very numerous toll-gate keepers along this pike charge two cents a mile for a horse, so if I had had one of flesh and blood, the expense one day would have been $1.52, but it being of steel and rubber, and only part of a rubber tire on the little wheel at that, the cost for toll was nothing. The road from Buffalo to Cleveland I thought was high water-mark, but this pike is so uniformly good for 180 miles that it must have first place.

The appetite such a journey as this gives one is no small part of the pleasure of the trip, everything tastes so good. The truth was never more plainly stated than by a Spartan waiter. Dionysius was taking a “hasty plate of soup,” at one of those free lunches they gave there in Greece so often, when, pushing back from the table, he complained that the black broth was not highly seasoned enough for him. The waiter roared it through the hall “Seasoned! We season it by running, sweating, and getting tired, hungry, and thirsty.” It is truly wonderful how such exercise does increase a person’s digestive ability. I can imagine to a certain degree just how Milo, a Grecian athlete, must have enjoyed himself. Twenty pounds was the amount of his daily bread, and the same quantity of meat, besides fifteen quarts of wine, taken afterwards, no doubt, for his stomach’s ache. One day, feeling somewhat faint from lack of nourishment, he knocked a four-year-old in the head with his fist, and devoured the whole “beef critter” during the day. To some this may at first appear incredible, but there is one explanation, at least, that is plausible: Milo must undoubtedly have been a wheelman.

The first night out from Columbus I stopped at a farm-house. I walked around to the side door and was just going into the dining-room, when a man, with black hair, wild eyes, and thin pale face came out. He took one sharp look at me, and turning suddenly, slammed the glass door in my face, rushed through the dining-room, and pulling a spread from the table in his flight, and covering himself up with it, disappeared. But not for a great while. As I was eating supper he came back through the room, slamming the doors in his wild rush, and ran out into the yard, as if the very devil was after him. Then I could see him out in the dark, his eyes glaring in at me through the window, and after a while, when everything was still, bang! would go some door, and away he would run through the room into the bed-room again. Still he said nothing, had not spoken for years, they told me. Once or twice during the evening he came slowly into the room, sidling along with his face averted, and his hands apparently warding off some blow coming from where I sat, and during the night I heard an occasional crash as if the side of the house had fallen in. It was that lunatic trying to get out of the cage in which they confined him, while the inmates of the house were asleep.

Distance traveled in four weeks, 1,257 miles.

Chapter VI.

At Chicago.

I had hardly crossed the Indiana State line when the tire on the rear wheel broke in two pieces and came off. Luckily, I was not far from Richmond where a wheelman gave me a second-hand eighteen inch tire, which he cut down to fit the sixteen inch wheel, and by wiring it on occasionally I reached Chicago with no further trouble on my part from the wheel. Just before reaching Indianapolis, however, the machine was the cause of a broken buggy wheel. I had just dismounted to avoid a drove of cattle, when a horse, coming towards me, suddenly decided to go the other way. I stood still in my tracks but that made no difference, the horse cramped the buggy so short that the front wheel went to pieces, and had not the men jumped out and grabbed the horse by the bit, just as they did, there would have been more trouble. As it was, they left the buggy by the roadside and walked a short distance to their destination, without expressing an opinion that I was in any way to blame for the accident.

The State capitol at Indianapolis is a building of the Grecian style of architecture, 300 feet wide, 500 feet long, and three stories high. It has been seven years in building and two years more will be required to complete it, but the stones have become so stained and dingy from the smoke that smuts everything out of doors in all these Western cities that the structure from the outside already looks like an old building. Several of those in authority about the building were very anxious to have me know that the dirty appearance of the outside would all disappear when the building was completed, but no amount of scrubbing will make it clean until the use of soft coal is done away with. The smoke from that coal discolors everything, and the finest stone buildings are bereft of much of the beauty from this cause. The Palmer House, a stone building here in Chicago, for instance, was painted white less than two years ago to get rid of the smutty appearance that it had acquired, but even now it looks as dirty and dingy as though it had never been painted. Scrub and paint all they may there is not a building in all the West, I believe, that looks as clean and white on the outside as our own State capitol on Bushnell Park. But to return to the capitol at Indianapolis. Black and dirty as it will always look on the outside, on the inside it is to be almost entirely pure white, giving it, in comparison with the capitol at Albany and our own, a much cheaper look. But it is superior to either of those other buildings in one respect and that is, as far as I could see, there has been no settling or chipping. One of the finest corridors in the Albany capitol is so sadly marred in appearance by the settling of the foundation that the breaks and cracks in the panels on the side are noticeable to every one. But the dome to the Indiana capitol, which is to be 300 feet high, is not yet finished, and the proof of the stability of building has thus hardly been furnished. A very interesting part of my two hours’ clambering over the building and about the works was the sawing and planing of the stones used in the construction. The stone mouldings and cornices and all the straight work on the whole building is done by machinery just as the wood used in the construction of a wooden building is prepared in advance. The carving was the only work done by hand in preparing the stones for the masons to place in position.

The county court house at Indianapolis is typical of one very noticeable phase of the Western desire for display. It is a fine substantial building no doubt, but inside it is one conglomeration of different kinds of marble; panels, walls, balustrades, everything inside almost is marble; all the kinds and colors that are in existence are represented here, and many kinds are to be found nowhere else in the world but here: all these are mixed up in the most gaudy manner possible. But look a little closer and there is not a bit of marble there, it is all paint, imitation. And where the paint is wearing off the fraud is badly exposed, giving the whole building the appearance of a decided sham. Another instance of this desire for display that is not shown by counterfeiting at least, is seen in the elegant barber’s shop at the Palmer House. Set into the tiling on the floor are nearly four hundred silver dollars that add nothing at all to the beauty of the floor. But many of the buildings that have been erected here in Chicago within the last three or four years are very substantial and whatever there is about them is real and not flashy in appearance. Clustering around the Board of Trade Building, which probably is the finest building of the kind outside of New York, are many handsome structures occupying a quarter of a square, that go up into the sky ten, twelve, and thirteen stories high.

I have spoken of the hogs and pigs that are seen all along the roadside through Ohio and Indiana. The numerous sheep that are feeding along the highways show some sense by simply turning to one side to let me pass, and often bleating after me as I leave them behind as if they were sorry to have me go; but the pigs will start up and run along ahead, scaring all the others with their short, quick grunts, until a drove of a dozen or fifteen are bobbing along and running into each other in their foolish attempt to get out of the way. Then they will all suddenly stop, stand perfectly still, and let me pass without flinching. If Eastern people who have a prejudice against Western pork could see what the hogs are fed upon they would have good reason to change their opinions. The hogs eat a great deal of grass and are not confined to any muddy, filthy pen as they are in the East, but roam around the woods and fields as do the cows and sheep. In the fall corn on the ear is thrown out into the lots to them, and I can’t see how pork could be fatted in any cleaner way.

While the hog is being discussed I must tell what I saw of the manner of his death at the Union Stock Yards just outside of the city limits. Prominent among the many buildings at the yards that cover 365 acres is an office of the Illinois Humane Society, which gives a visitor the impression that he will see nothing but kind treatment and humane ways of killing the beef and hogs, and as far as the cattle are concerned there is nothing objectionable about the process, for a bullet in the brain renders them insensible at the outset. But the hogs—well, this is what I saw. A dozen or more at a time are driven into a pen in one of those immense packing houses. A man slips a chain quickly around one of their hind legs and they are jerked up into the air by machinery, so that their heads are about four or five feet from the floor. They are suspended on little pulleys which roll them along into another pen where a man cuts their throats. This man was standing in clotted blood ankle deep, and the squealing, kicking row of hogs threw blood all over him, which he frequently washed off at a barrel of water near. A hog was jerked up about every ten seconds, and there would be six or eight at a time hanging with their throats cut. Before they had time to die or grow very weak from the loss of blood they were dropped on to an inclined board, and from there they slipped off into the scalding tub. Sometimes two or three would collect on this board and then they would all slide off into the hot water together. Very few of them were dead when they went in, and they would go plunging and struggling around in there, throwing the water in every direction, till gradually becoming weaker they would lie still, a dozen of them, in the long narrow tub at a time, and be turned over and over by men with poles very much as cooks turn nut-cakes over with a fork in the hot fat. Why such haste should be used in getting them into the hot water I cannot see, and I understand the Humane Society have tried unsuccessfully to stop such inhuman work, but this is the sight I came unawares upon, a spectacle that I have not enlarged upon or exaggerated in the least. The hogs were simply drowned in hot water. The rest of the work I rather enjoyed. The scalded hogs were taken out and placed upon a revolving wheel, covered with scrapers, which took all the hair off excepting around the head and legs. This wheel was wide enough to hold three hogs at a time, and they were turned over several times in order to scrape all sides of them. Then men finished up the scraping with knives, the heads were taken off with two or three strokes of the knife, and from the time the hog was first seized by the leg till he was cut up two or three men were at work on him all the time, one set of men passing him along to the next, each doing certain parts of the work. Thus 2,500 hogs a day are put to death by this one set of men, and there was machinery in this same packing house for two other sets of man, so that seven or eight thousand hogs are scalded to death, scalded from the inside as well as from the outside, every day. This packing house is in full operation, and this is only one of many such houses in the stock-yards. I remember now there was an invitation prominent over the door of the Humane Society to make “complaints at this office,” and every time I think of the horrible work being perpetrated so near by, I wonder of what earthly good is such a society. I only regret that I did not complain at the time, useless as it would undoubtedly have been, but then I did not realize what an awful sight I had seen. The enormity of the cruelty has grown on me since. But let me change the subject. A bowl of bread and milk in the middle of the day is to be had, almost for the asking, and it not only serves to quench thirst, but what strength it gives is sooner felt than if the food was of a more solid nature. One day I asked an old lady for a bowl of bread and milk, and she brought me the milk in a bowl with two huge slices of bread thrust down into the milk whole, and then she handed me a two-tined fork to eat it with. Often when I am caught out between places at night and have to ask accommodations at farm-houses, I can usually get taken in by saying “a bowl of bread and milk will do for supper.”

One night, soon after the machine had been put into the front parlor,—the farmers always think the best room in the house none too good for that “silver” horse, as some of them term it—and the knapsack had been laid away in the corner, the husband came in from the barn with two pails of milk, followed by his little boy, who was just old enough to walk if no threshold or hole in the rag carpet interfered with his progress. The milk was placed in the buttery on the floor, and the little youngster of course had to see that it was done all right. Then the farmer came out and everything was quiet for a minute, when suddenly there was a splash. As it so often happens to such toddling young ones, the little fellow’s toes suddenly flew up from some unaccountable reason, and he sat down into one of those foaming pails of milk. He never said a word, but sat there perfectly still until his mother, happening to go into the buttery, saw the floor covered with milk, and she jerked him out of that pail as one would pull a close-fitting cork out of a bottle, and with very much the same kind of a sound. When supper was ready, in reply to her question, I said I preferred “cold morning’s milk to the warm or warmed over night’s milk.”

About forty miles above Indianapolis, in a sparsely settled district, I passed a small church filled to overflowing with people, and a little further on I met a funeral procession. It had been raining during the morning, but among the fifty or more teams that formed the procession, there was but one top carriage, two buggies, and the rest were all heavy team-wagons. In these farm wagons with boards for seats, were whole families that had come a dozen miles, probably, to attend the funeral. From this it seems that buggies and business wagons are luxuries that the average Western farmer does not yet feel able to afford.

At Lafayette, I called at the home of Mr. Frank A. Lewis, to inquire as to the condition of the roads farther on, and his mother kindly asked me in to supper. Before that was finished, Frank returned with several wheelmen, among them Mr. Wal. Wolever, a young photographer. Here the pikes or gravel roads which made the riding excellent so far came to an end, and there was nothing before me for 120 miles to Chicago but black clay roads. It had rained heavily for three successive nights, and after riding over 1,300 miles to reach a city that is not 1,000 miles by direct routes from Hartford, I may, perhaps, be forgiven for wishing to avoid three hard days’ work, without any practical return for it in knowledge or experience by taking the train to Chicago. After reaching that city, and being kindly received by friends and old schoolmates, it was with a strong feeling of thankfulness for my own safety, that I read the accounts of the terrible cyclones and floods that had passed through sections of Ohio and Indiana, carrying away bridges that I had so lately ridden over in safety, and perhaps killing men and women from whom I had so recently received kind treatment.

The system of beautiful parks that environ Chicago, and the boulevards that connect them are the pride of the city, and the citizens have good reason for being so proud of them. Only a few years ago the whole country around about the city was a low level wet prairie, but now there are six as beautiful parks as are to be found in almost any city in the country; parks filled with lakes, cascades, brooks, hills, groves, grottoes, wild animals and tame ones, and everything almost that is to be found in places where nature furnishes things to order. In Lincoln Park, for instance, is a mound of earth, a hill I suppose they call it, that is probably the highest point of land for many miles near the city, but this, like everything else in these parks, is artificial. All through Ohio and Indiana there is much land that has not yet been cleared, and these clumps and strips of timber give a variety to the country that would otherwise have been very monotonous to me, riding for hours and hours as I did over nearly level roads. These woods have little if any underbrush, and the grass through them is kept closely cropped by cows, sheep, and hogs, so that these two States are filled with hundreds of beautiful groves that invite a lazy wheelman to stop and stay awhile in the cool shade.

AN IMPROMPTU SHAVE.—(Page 54.)

One day, wishing to get rid of the several days’ growth of bristling beard on my face, I took out my shaving apparatus, hooked the leather strap to the brake handle, honed the razor, found an old can, brought some water from a brook near by, pinned the pocket mirror on a tree, and got as clean a shave as I ever had, washing my face with one corner of a handkerchief, and drying it with the other end.

But the open level prairie that surrounds Chicago on all sides must have a sort of depressing influence on the thoughts and ideas of those who are born and brought up without the variety of brooks, hills, mountains, and ocean. The first question usually asked me by farmers, who probably have never traveled far from their prairie homes, is: “How far do you live from the salt water?” and when I tell them the distance, which until this trip always seemed to me considerable, but which to them, with their distances and so many things on such an immense scale, seems trifling, they act as if a sniff of the salt sea air from a distance of forty or fifty miles would be a blessing that they could hardly hope for. And yet Lake Michigan, to me, would seem a very good substitute for the ocean in everything but the taste of the water. Two of these parks are washed by the waters of this lake, and so badly washed too that the shore at Jackson Park is rip-rapped for nearly a mile, making a beautiful white-stone beach. The boulevards are laid out on as grand a scale and with as little regard to expense as are the parks. The grand boulevard is Commonwealth avenue in Boston over again, only it is twice as long, with a very broad avenue in the center and a street of good width on each side, one for equestrians and the other for wheelmen, I should judge, for it is very smooth. Ten rows of beautiful elms stretch away in a straight line for two miles, the larger ones having rows of smaller ones on each side. Drexel boulevard has two broad avenues, lined with trees on the outside, and the center filled with lovely flower-beds, for over a mile in length. Other boulevards laid out on a similar plan but not in so finished a condition, connect the different parks, making a continuous drive of nearly forty miles, all as smooth as the most fastidious wheelman could desire. Then there are the lake drives, Dearborn and Michigan avenues, and many other streets too numerous and common to mention, common nowhere but in Chicago though. Chicago wheelmen know so little about coasting, that it seemed quite a novelty to them to see an Eastern boy ride with his legs over the handles, and when I coasted down into one of the tunnels that run under the Chicago River, and disappeared in the darkness, their eyes stuck out with wonder. It was a novelty to me, too, for the dripping water gave me quite a shower bath before I came out on the other side.

Distance traveled on the wheel, 1,420 miles.

Chapter VII.

Across the Mississippi.

My time was so taken up in visiting old friends and seeing the sights in Chicago that I found no opportunity to make the acquaintance of many wheelmen in that city, but I met Mr. B. B. Ayers, who kindly gave me directions for pursuing the journey westward, and so after a week’s stay in Chicago I started for Minonk, 125 miles away to the southwest, to visit friends in that place, and the two days and a half passed on that journey were the hardest of the trip thus far. One would naturally think 1,500 miles of riding in the past five or six weeks would have so strengthened the muscles of my arms that they would not trouble me at least, but the hard, lumpy, rutty black clay roads of Illinois were too much for them. My elbows became so stiff I could hardly bend them, and the nervous strain occasioned by the constant jar was very exhausting. Once I was induced to take the railroad track and found very good riding for a few miles. At the station they told me the next train would not be along for an hour and it would come from the direction in which I was going, so I rode along unconcerned, for I could see ahead for miles. Suddenly, without the least warning, the sound of a short, sharp whistle from behind caused me to jump off and into the ditch as I never did before. It was well I did so quickly, for an extra locomotive immediately rushed by, and I came to the sudden conclusion it would be a long while and the roads pretty bad before I should again leave them to ride on a railroad track.

Two turnpike companies once started to build a pike from Indianapolis to Lafayette, Ind., seventy miles, but when within two miles of each other there was a disagreement between the two companies and that intervening piece of road has never been finished. Although there is a great deal of travel over this splendid pike there is not public spirit sufficient to fill up this gap of two miles, and for years the traveling public have driven off the ends of these two turnpikes into two miles of the deepest mud fordable. In Illinois there are no pikes even, all dirt roads; roads that are to-day in the same condition they were when the country was first settled; not a day’s work has ever been expended upon them. I passed farm after farm on which were fine houses, large substantial barns and hundreds of heads of stock, and every indication of a rich soil and worldly prosperity, and yet the road directly in front of these farm-houses has remained in such a condition for years, that for six months out of the twelve it is really dangerous for man or beast to travel after dark. I stopped one night in a fine brick house that in the East would cost four or five thousand dollars, and yet this house could only be reached by a lane in which the mud for six months in the year was hub deep, and a fine fat sow with a litter of pigs had full possession of the front yard, if such a mud hole could be called a yard. Another case I remember where the houses, barns, and stock indicated the farmer’s prosperous condition, and yet there was no well, nothing but rain water to drink. The fact is, all these things—and I could keep on mentioning them to the end of the chapter—serve to illustrate the intense Western desire for display to the neglect of comfort. The stately domes of their numerous court-houses seen on all sides make a big show. Their large barns with the farmer’s name painted on the side in red letters or shingled into the slate roof advertise the owner’s name and financial standing. Whatever is above ground, whatever can be seen from a distance, whatever makes a great display receives the cordial support of the average Westerner, but when you look for a fine country road, free of toll gates, or a good, deep well, or a nice cool cellar, or anything, no matter how much it might add to the personal comfort of the possessor, but which is below the surface or unseen from the surrounding country, you may look in vain for these evidences of a moderately high state of civilization. The diet of Western families is simply abominable. It is pork, fried pork, every meal. Their meals are as monotonous as their scenery. A farmer, rich in money, lands, and houses, will live for weeks on pork, when beef, mutton, turkey, and chicken are in great abundance on all sides and so cheap as to be almost unsalable. And yet, probably because their stomachs are out of sight and the satisfying effect of a good square meal is quieting and not of the spread-eagle effect, the farmers live upon the freshest and plainest sort of food. If the Western stomach could be inflated and placed in some commanding position it would be supplied with the choicest viands and the farmers would pour out their money to fill it to overflowing.

The other Sunday I came along to a meeting-house just after the bell stopped tolling, and riding out under the shed, I slipped off my knapsack, buttoned on a clean collar, put on my coat, and went in as quietly as possible, but every one in church except one old lady looked around at me, and I lost most of the Scripture lesson in consequence of this counter attraction. From her actions, afterwards, I think the said old lady was deaf and did not hear me come in, which accounts for her apparent neglect. Soon after a portly old gentleman came waddling up the opposite aisle, and after putting his hat, cane, and numerous other articles of extra baggage over in the seat in front, he held on to the back of that seat to break the fall, finally letting go and sitting down like a trip hammer. He immediately began to box the congregation, and had gone from east around to northwest, when he fetched up against me and put me under close inspection for so long that I wickedly comforted myself knowing that I gave him a crick in the neck. Very soon many in the congregation with eyes reverently closed and heads on one side in imitation of Alexander the Great, were apparently absorbing their spiritual food through their mouths, when the choir of eleven noises followed the sermon with “Asleep in Jesus.” The choir kept well together for a while, although one or two had to feel around in advance for the first note, but the last line was always too much for the tenor, and with their leader gone all discipline vanished and they came leisurely home in squads, three and four at a time. But slow and solemn as the singing was, the organist broke loose during the interlude, scampered up and down the scale, trilled, stumbled, snorted, and galloped off into the lots so far I thought he never would get back, and during his last escapade he stepped on a note that stuck, and that note loudly persisted in being heard through the benediction and sometime after the congregation had dispersed. When the organ breathed its last, the boys, old and young, all came out to see me off, and stayed so long it broke up the Sunday-school; so altogether, unintentionally, I caused a good deal of trouble.

Going through Aurora I met two wheelmen, Messrs. G. O. and Chas. W. Clayton, one of whom, but since my return I cannot tell which, accompanied me for 10 or 12 miles on my way.

Three-fourths of the area of the State of Illinois—a State eleven times as large as Connecticut—is underlaid with seams of soft coal, and at Minonk, where I spent several days in visiting relatives, is the most productive mine in the State. Over 700 tons a day are raised from a depth of 500 feet, and the machinery works with such rapidity that a ton of coal is raised and emptied in twenty-two seconds. After screening, great quantities of the coal, smaller than chestnut size, are sold to farmers, who feed it out to their hogs with beneficial results. The refuse rock and clay from this mine is carried up an inclined railroad and dumped, making a mound perhaps seventy-five feet high. The inhabitants think it quite a treat to climb to the top, they get such a grand view. It really is the highest point of land for miles around, and the view of a town ten miles away is to them quite a sight. Horses in droves in the lots or loose by the roadside are very common, but there is one peculiarity that distinguishes them from all the other domestic animals I have seen. The instant they catch sight of the bicycle they invariably come boldly toward it half a dozen paces and then turn and run like all the other animals. They seem to want to find out as soon as possible the nature of the machine, but their courage is short lived.

At Lacon I crossed the Illinois River, which was half a mile wide at this point. The river is very sluggish, falling only one inch to the mile for 300 miles.

During several days I had felt sleepy all the time, doubtless due to overeating and lack of exercise in Chicago, and, so, frequently I would lay down beside the road and sleep soundly for an hour or two, the hard clay bed not disturbing my slumbers in the least. In fact I had, by this time, become quite a veteran in this respect, being able to rest peacefully anywhere I felt inclined to stop.

At Rock Island I left the State of Illinois, which has a high-license system that works admirably, as far as I could judge from the frequent inquiries made, and crossed the Mississippi River into the prohibition State of Iowa. Imagine my surprise to find beer and liquor sold as openly as soda water in the city of Davenport. The State law is circumvented and nullified in this manner: The city council passed a law obliging all dealers in soda water and like temperance drinks to take out a license. If a man sells soda water, and nothing stronger, this law is not enforced against him; but if he sells liquor in connection with his soda he is prosecuted, not for selling liquor, mind you, but for selling soda without a license. Thus, beer and liquor is sold openly, and the city of Davenport has reaped a revenue of over $3,000 from this source within a few weeks. Before I got through the State of Iowa I could judge better of the practical workings of their prohibitory law, but the first day in the State certainly puzzled me. At one small village all the inhabitants seemed to be devoting the whole time that day to dancing and drinking beer. They were Germans, and it is needless to add that there was no downright drunkenness to be seen there. Even in Grinnell, a place of 3,500 inhabitants, that has never had an open saloon, the “boys” have their beer shipped in to them on such occasions as Memorial Day and the Fourth of July.

Traveling alone as I have, most of the way, I could appreciate to a limited extent the lonely task Thomas Stevens performed in crossing this country as he did, but never have I realized until I reached Iowa to what extent he had been shut out from nearly all intelligent communication with human beings in his journey through Europe and Asia.

About one hundred miles west of Davenport is a settlement of Bohemians. They number six or eight thousand, and their little villages are scattered along the Iowa River for a distance of ten miles or more. Their system of families is very much like the Shakers in Enfield, Conn., and beside keeping their farms up in excellent condition they manufacture woolen goods, starch, and some other articles of commerce. But not one of them that I met could speak a word of English, so that my experience for two or three hours was in a slight degree like what Stevens suffered for many weeks and months. All I could do was to make signs.

Although I left Connecticut before the grass had hardly begun to turn, since then I have seen nothing else but one everlasting sea of green. The country is more rolling in Iowa than in any of the States west of New York through which I have passed, but that change in the scenery was not of much relief. Thus far I had not seen the smallest kind of a wild flower to break the monotony of that color, green, dark and rich as it was. Imagine with what pleasure I came upon a sandy ridge of hills that were covered with a beautiful variety of wild flowers, whose colors seemed particularly bright to me, probably because they were the first I had seen in seven weeks of outdoor life. I spent an hour or more in picking flowers and in biting off the sweet tips of honey-suckles.

It is curious how many old veterans the sight of the knapsack brings to the surface. Very often when I lay it aside for a rest some one will pick it up and try it on so handily that I know without his telling me what his experience has been. And the recent speech of that arch traitor, Jefferson Davis, stirs these old soldiers from the top of their heads to the very soles of their feet. Imagine the feelings of one of these, a large-framed, well-formed man of forty, who walked around Minonk with me, up the coal shaft and down, without much apparent difficulty, and yet this same man, John W. January, suffered a thousand deaths at Andersonville, where his feet rotted off, and where he was reduced to forty-five pounds in weight, his bones alone almost weighing that much. Jeff. Davis’s words don’t exactly stir him to the soles of his feet, but from the words he and so many others, with whom I have talked, have indignantly uttered, I think these old heroes are sorry they were not allowed to do up the job more thoroughly at the time of the war.

The bicycle is getting to be more of a wonder the farther west it goes. Everywhere I stop crowds quickly gather, and then the inevitable string of questions! At Rutland, Ill., the landlord, who was a native of Connecticut, gave me all I could eat, but would not let me go till I had ridden all over the sidewalks and gutters in the town, under his direction. A few miles east of Grinnell I found I could not reach that place the night I was expected, so I took a freight train. While waiting for the train the whole town came down to the station, and to escape being almost bored to death I went out back of the station to wash my hot feet. But still there was no rest. An Irishman who lived in Hartford “thirty year ago,” was the first to find me, then two or three natives went through the same old list of questions, and finally a colored gentleman came around to pay his respects, just as I was wiping my refreshed feet on the grass. When the train arrived I laid out on one of the long benches, placed along the side of the caboose, and went fast to sleep, apparently. But at every station there was something in the air that told the inhabitants there was an object as strange as a wild man from Borneo on board, and the caboose was quickly filled with a gaping crowd of men, women, and children. One passenger who had already got some points of the trip, related all he knew and more, too, to the assembly, and it required considerable composure to keep on breathing regularly and keep my eyes shut with some old woman looking right down into my face and sighing for my lifeless condition, but as long as my eyes were closed no one asked me any questions, and that was a great relief.

As this is a plain unembellished tale of a bicycle journey in which facts are reported as they exist, not as we would like to have them, I may as well acknowledge, though not without a twinge, that during the first week out the chafing of a stocking strap brought out a boil on the side of my leg. The next week a second comforter appeared underneath that member, and painful as it is to acknowledge it (the bitterest pangs are now past), in a few days some six or eight more obtruded themselves, seriously interfering with the saddle. After some days of dogged persistence in riding and trying to rise above them (which efforts from the nature of the case were obviously futile), I succumbed and pleaded for a ride on a freight train; and when that gentleman passenger, who knew the real cause of my desire to take the train, told a lady passenger who was very anxious to know, too, that I took the train because—and he hesitated—because I “had got hurt,” his answer pleased me so I was sure the lady, who was looking straight at me from the opposite side of the car, would think I was writhing with pain even in my sleep. “Poor boy!” she responded, sympathetically,—“How dreadful! I do hope he will recover!”

Distance traveled on the wheel, 1830 miles.

Chapter VIII.

Across the Missouri.

Cyclones are getting to be so common in this Western country that the people are endeavoring to guard against them as they do against fire, but with this difference: they do not try to protect their property against the cyclone; it is useless; they simply wish to save their lives, that is all. Insurance on property against loss by wind is now customary all over the country, but if these cyclones increase in frequency as they have in the past few years, it is only a question of time when life insurance companies will consider it an extra risk to live in this Western country. I experienced a feeling of nearness to the cyclone that was sufficient when I read the accounts of the terrible destruction of life and property in Ohio a few weeks ago, for I had a delightful journey only a few days before through some of the towns that were so soon afterwards swept away in a twinkling. But my stay in Grinnell, of a couple of weeks, was like living on an old battle-field. The dead, of course, have gone from sight, but the wounded are to be seen on all sides. I went out calling and met an old lady still suffering from an injury received four years ago. I saw another go limping by and heard she had a hip broken at the same time, and, while riding, I met a lady whose head was so crushed during that terrible storm that she now has frequent spells of insanity. I began to wonder if any one in Grinnell had escaped uninjured. Let the clouds even now gather, black and threatening, and the people live the awful experience of that night over again. The streets are soon filled with women and children, carrying what few valuables they can, all hurrying to some cave for safety. I crawled into one of these caves one day. It was in the cellar of a fine residence, and is a room not larger than six by eight feet, and not over four feet high, with strong brick walls on the sides and heavy timbers overhead, and amply ventilated, and into this small hole, not long ago, twenty-four women and children huddled for two or three hours one night, some praying, others crying, and all suffering from mortal fear as long as the storm lasted. Almost every house in Grinnell that has a cellar has a cave of some kind in it, a room boarded up and covered over thick with earth to protect the occupants from falling bricks and timbers. Not only here but all through the West a cave is now considered an essential part to every dwelling. But think of the mental suffering the people of these Western States endure whenever there is a severe storm or even indications of one. If those Eastern people could see the photographic views that I have seen of the destruction wrought by a Western cyclone, they would never assign, as a cause of their complete demolition, the flimsy manner in which the houses are built. If they could have seen the two college buildings, one built of stone, the other of brick, each as large and as solidly built as any Eastern edifice, if they could have seen these two buildings demolished and crushed like so many eggshells—in less than two minutes—what would they think of the superior safety of our Eastern houses? How many frame houses would stand such a blow? Everything was as calm and still as death that terrible night when, without any premonitory roar or warning, the cyclone struck the town like the report of a cannon, and in less than five minutes it had finished its work, ending it as easily with the two college buildings as it commenced it with the small frame houses. Although it was early in the evening, fifty-eight persons were instantly killed and many more wounded; but let it come again, day or night, it will never catch Grinnell people unawares. They watch the clouds to this day, as they would some fell demon hovering over them, and the more timid ones early rush to their caves. Many outlandish lies have been written about the power of the cyclone, but the cold fact, the bare truth is more wonderful than any stories man can invent. One only needs to come here and talk with the people about the cyclone to be convinced that their experience for a few minutes was as terrible as that of a great battle, and I was as fascinated with their stories as I ever was talking with old soldiers.

“I should know you were an Easterner from your talk,” is a remark I hear on all sides, and so I have tried to learn what there is about the talk of a native of New England that distinguishes him from people west of there. It is not because he speaks so flat, for through New York every one spoke more so than I could. I pronounced the town of Fonda just as it is spelled, and yet every one there called it “Fundy.” Utica was “Utiky,” Lima was “Limy,” and everything else was pronounced in the same flat manner. I supposed this to be a peculiarity of New Englanders, but New Yorkers rather excel in that style of speech. Out here in Iowa, where friends have an unflinching frankness quite remarkable, they tell me whenever I say anything particularly flat my nose flies up into the air to emphasize it. That may be a trait peculiar to myself, but it is some comfort to know that people outside of New England have lingual peculiarities as marked as those coming from the Eastern States. In Ohio and Indiana I met a great many persons who never pronounce the personal pronoun “I” as we do. It is always “Ah” instead of “I.” “Ah thought so,” “Ah heard so.” I supposed that was more Southern than Western; but if so, many of Southern birth are now living in these States. The farther West I go the more I notice the way they roll their R’s. That letter is brought out with a peculiar force in every word in which it occurs. Here, there, however, harvest, horses, father, mother, and all such words are spoken as if there were two or three r’s in them instead of one. Whenever they accost me it is “O, George,” while in the East it would be, “Say, George.” Then two short grunts are very often used out here instead of yes or no. Emphasize the first grunt and it means no; emphasize the second, with a slightly rising accent, and it means yes. This is a common form of expression, with colored people everywhere, I think, but here, with white children, it is the most common way of saying yes or no, and many older persons use it.

They have no brooks or streams here, but everything is called a “crick,” pronounced very short, too. That name is applied sometimes to good-sized rivers. These peculiarities of speech do not seem to be acquired by persons living here, who were born and brought up in the East, but their children acquire them readily, and everywhere on the trip, going and coming, I noticed these peculiarities more in the talk of the women and children than in the men. I could only account for this from the fact that men go out into the world more and come in contact and consequently talk more with persons using fewer provincialisms.

The students at the Iowa College in Grinnell had a field-day while I was there, and during the games and races I could but notice the striking difference between the features of these students and those of Eastern young men. These Iowa boys have heads large and well shaped enough, but their features are disproportionately large. Their eyebrows are large and overhanging, their cheek bones are prominent, their noses are heavy, mouths large, and under jaw bones strong and marked. There is nothing brutal or exactly coarse about their faces, but everything about them is large and heavy. I hardly saw a small-featured, clean-cut, really refined face among the one hundred and fifty young men.

The attendance at church in Grinnell is larger in proportion than in any place in the East, probably. With a population of 3,500 the regular attendance at the Congregational Church alone is eight or nine hundred.

When I left Grinnell, two members of their bicycle club, Messrs. Lee Taylor and Geo. Lewis, accompanied me for twenty miles or more, and although I was very glad of their company, the frequent tumbles they took coasting, made me sorry they had undertaken the ride, with the thermometer up in the nineties.

Iowa roads are decidedly better than those through Illinois. Although there is the same system of repairing the highways in both States—the ancient system of farmers working out their road tax where they choose—yet Iowa farmers not only scrape their roads, but in many places they were laying tiles along up the worst hills in order that the roads might be drained in the spring. I saw more work done on the roads the first afternoon in Iowa than I saw the whole week in Illinois. And there is another thing to be said in favor of these Western clay roads, roads that for hundreds of miles have been as rough as any cobble street in a New England city (it is simply just to give the devil his due), a rider can go within half an inch of a clay rut and yet his wheel will not slide down into the rut. This has saved me many a tumble.

Another thing: during dry spells, such as we are having throughout the West now, the dust gets very fine but never very deep. The clay is so tough it does not get cut up as much as our Eastern roads do during a drought. But the coasting in Iowa, of which I expected so much, for the country is a rolling prairie, was simply dangerous. The hills are so full of hard hummocks, “dive holes” the wheelmen here call them, that it shakes a fellow up terribly. Once I went off, going down a steep hill at such a rate that my hands and knees struck the ground simultaneously, and the knapsack tunked me on the back of the head at about the same time, as if to remind me of man’s fallen estate.

In almost every Western State the towns are just six miles square and the roads cross each other at right angles at intervals of one mile; consequently in traveling across the country diagonally, as I have most of the time, it was necessary to travel much farther than if the roads had been left as they were before the towns and counties were laid out. Through Iowa the old stage road followed the “divide” (what we call a ridge in the East) in many places, but when the towns were laid out the road was made straight across the country, up and down some very steep hills, in the western part of the State. The log barns, pig pens, and corn cribs, so common in Ohio and Indiana, disappear almost entirely in Illinois and Iowa, and instead appear thatched barns and sheds. Poles are set in the ground and a cheap frame fastened to them, the sides are perhaps covered with rough sheathing boards and the roof thatched with hay; that constitutes the most common barn to be seen in this part of the West. It is no wonder so many cattle perish here during the severe winters. Heavy timber is very scarce, which accounts for the lack of log cabins and other log buildings.

Speaking about timber reminds me that they have no woods out here. They always say “when you get through the timber” instead of when you get through the woods. They don’t have any swamps here either, they are all “sloughs,” pronounced “slews.” When the Rock Island road was first built it was a common sight on looking out of the car window to see seams of coal near the surface in the cuts through which the railroad ran. Now there are many farmers in Iowa who can go out and dig up enough coal in a few minutes to last all day in their stoves.

Since I left Connecticut I have hardly seen a clear stream of water. The Croton and Hudson Rivers were both very roily from the heavy spring rains, and farther West the streams are muddy the year round. Many times I have longed to strip and take a bath, but the water was unfit for anything but hog wallows. I wonder if the black soil and the consequently black muddy waters of these Western States has had anything to do with the color of the hair on the hogs. A white hog here in the West is as uncommon as a black hog in the East. When this country was first settled the hogs were probably brought from the East, and were white. Would wallowing in the black mud and water for weeks and months during the hot summer season gradually change the color of their hair to correspond to that of the soil in which they spend so much of their time? This question must be left to the evolutionists, who have explained, to their own satisfaction at least, so many questions of a like nature.

The cultivation of small fruits in the West has assumed immense proportions. Strawberries have glutted the markets to such an extent that the price will hardly pay for the transportation. Five cents a quart at retail has been the ruling price in many of these Western cities. Blackberries, raspberries, and other small fruits will also be very abundant. The extent to which the farm-work is done by machinery is truly wonderful. The farmer rides while he plows, harrows, and plants the corn, and the wheat is mostly sown in drills. The expense of ditching the land has been very great, amounting in some cases to ten dollars an acre, but now a machine digs the ditch, throws the dirt one side, lays the tiling and covers it up again. Still later in the season I shall probably see the wonderful harvesting machines. Fields of corn containing from a hundred to one hundred and fifty acres are common, in fact that is about the average crop raised by every farmer here. But how they work! From 4 in the morning till 8 at night. They would as soon think of stopping “to do the chores” in the middle of the afternoon as at 6 o’clock. With all the help from the machinery and horses, the Western farmer works very hard, much harder than the New England farmer. And in Iowa he does not seem to be in very good circumstances. His house is small and in poor repair, and his barns are poorer still. With corn at 18 cents a bushel, wheat lower than ever, butter 10 and 12 cents, eggs 8 cents, and all other farmers’ produce at like low figures, it requires immense crops to amount to much of an income.

The people out here also raise large families of children. Such is doubtless the case in all newly settled countries, but it is mentioned as a curious fact that people who have lived childless in the East for years, move out here, and immediately they are blessed with a goodly number of healthy boys and girls.

The gilded dome of the capitol at Des Moines can be seen for eight or ten miles in some directions, but the proportions of the dome are not so graceful as those of our own in Connecticut. The outside diameter is over 80 feet, with the inside 66 feet, while the height is 275 feet. The gilded part has a row of circular windows half way up, and compared with our own the whole dome has a decidedly more “squatty” appearance. The building is 240 by 360 feet, and inside is finished very nicely. The staircases, door casings, wainscoting, pillars, and panels are all or nearly all of genuine marble. In a country where there are so many public buildings that are decorated inside with imitations of every kind of marble known, it is quite refreshing to see so much here that is real. Thirty-two kinds of marble are used in the building. The house has only 100 members, the senate 50, the increase in population making no difference in the number of members, and yet the hall of the house is a very large room, 74 by 91 feet, and 47 feet high, and it is elegantly finished in marble, scagliola, and black walnut. These pillars of scagliola on the sides of the room are nearly as large as those at the entrance of our capitol at Hartford, and are very dark and rich in color. This material can only be used where there is little weight resting on the pillars for they are made of plaster of Paris with an iron rod in the middle. This rod is placed inside of a hollow cylinder, and plaster of Paris, variously colored, and mixed with glue to prevent its hardening quickly, is packed around it with occasionally a chunk of white plaster of Paris laid near the outside of the pillar, when the pillar is taken out of the case, placed in position and nicely polished, the various colors being brought out with a most beautiful effect. The senate chamber is finished in more elegant style, if anything, than the house, but it seemed a pity to see in such a nicely furnished room, in the rear of the president’s chair, two large panels of a sickly green colored marble, that were imitations of the real article, and very poor imitations, too. But the structure taken as a whole is so well constructed, and so nicely furnished, that it seems almost incredible that the cost of the whole in its finished state will not be over $3,000,000.

In Western Iowa I encountered frequent steep hills, too steep for safe coasting; and after rather ungracefully spinning down one of the steepest, to the astonishment of on-looking pedestrians, I concluded to take a railroad train to Omaha, which I reached in a few hours, after completing my 1980th mile on the wheel.

Chapter IX.

At the Base of the Rockies.

Omaha is booming as it never was before. Twenty years ago, when Congress granted a charter to the Union Pacific Railroad Company, the charter stated that the east bank of the Missouri River should be the eastern terminus of the road, but as there was no bridge over the river, the work of building the road naturally commenced on the west side of the river, and this gave Omaha a start that it has improved upon ever since. Council Bluffs, situated on the east side, about three miles from the river, has always keenly felt the remarkable success of its rival, and has used all its power to compel the Union Pacific road to make the east side of the river the terminus; but Omaha has thus far been, and the chances now are more strongly in favor than ever of its always being, the practical terminus of the road. When the bridge was built the Union Pacific trains were still made up on the west side, until Council Bluffs threatened to apply to Congress for the repeal of the charter, when a large transfer depot was built on the east side, but, mark it, as far away from “the Bluffs” and as near the river as possible. Now the stock-yards, which were first built near the transfer depot, are being removed to Omaha, wholesale firms are moving from the Bluffs over to the other side, and, altogether, Council Bluffs is to be pitied; for, since it was a good sized place itself, it has jealously seen its rival start from nothing until now it is four times as large as itself.

The bridge, which was built soon after the road was finished, is now found to be wholly inadequate, and a new double track bridge is soon to take the place of the old one,—one not so very old either. It seems a pity that so much labor should be rendered useless. The iron piers were driven down, section by section, into the shifting bed of the river, until men were working at the peril of their lives down seventy or eighty feet below the water, and these piers rise sixty feet above the river, and support an immense iron bridge; and yet all this labor and much of the material will soon be dead property, for part of the bridge has already been replaced by one with two tracks. The piers of the new bridge are of stone and two of them are finished, having been sunk to the same depth as the iron ones were. Probably the old bridge being in position helps to facilitate the building of the new one, but the old one will be all removed excepting the piers. The old ferry-boats are gone now, and all teams are driven into the rear end of a train of large box cars and thus taken across, leaving the train at the opposite end from which they entered it. There is soon to be a new Union depot at Omaha, built on an immense scale. The smelting works, already the largest in the country, are being extended. The stock-yards and packing houses are beginning to affect the Chicago business in that line of trade; the wholesale houses are drawing business clear from the Pacific coast; a new Board of Trade Building is being built, besides many other fine blocks, and, altogether, things were never booming more in Omaha than now. Most of their streets are of asphalt, and a cable line of street cars is under contract.

I heard a fire alarm one day and expected to see fire engines go tearing by, but not one did I see. They have no use for them in case of fire. Their reservoirs are situated on so high a hill that the force of the water is sufficient to throw a stream over the tallest building. Only hose carriages and hook and ladder companies are needed. The city water, pumped from the muddy Missouri, is really the purest in the world. It comes two thousand miles from the Rocky Mountains, and passes no city that can possibly defile the purity of its immense volume. The fine sand is filtered from it, and the supply will be never failing.

But the river itself has changed even more in its appearance than the city, although that has grown from eighteen thousand to seventy thousand in sixteen years; but these changes are much more noticeable to me after an absence from the city of that length of time than to residents. Then the river ran south along the bluff on the east side of the valley, turned sharply to the northwest, and soon again turned south close to Omaha; but ten years ago, during a high flood, the river, in a single night, cut across this ox-bow of four miles in length and only a mile wide, and commenced eating into the banks near the Union Pacific railroad shops and smelting works. All the bags in the country, for miles around, were brought to Omaha, filled with sand and dumped into the river at this point, and engines, flat cars, and hundreds of men were employed day and night, trying to hold the river in check with immense rocks and broken stones. It was a hard fight, but the sand bags and rocks finally conquered, and now the river is roughly rip-rapped to a depth of nearly fifty feet and for a mile in length. Sixteen years ago there was danger the river would cut across near Council Bluffs, and leave Omaha high and dry three miles to the west of it; but now there is more probability of its cutting across six miles above, and coming down into the bend of the ox-bow again. As it is now, this ox-bow is “Cut-off Lake,” a clear body of water that is much appreciated by boatmen and bathers. Even nature seems to work on the side of Omaha.

There is a peculiarity of the clay soil here, very remarkable. In the lowering and grading of streets incident to such a growing city, many houses are left twenty and even twenty-five feet above the grade, and yet when the soil is dug perpendicularly down within a foot of the foundation of these houses, brick ones as well as frame, they remain perfectly firm and secure for months and even years, a few little creases only being worn, by the rains and frosts, down the face of these walls of clay. The clay bluffs across the river, one or two hundred feet high, are nearly perpendicular now in some places, and yet they have been exposed to the weather for centuries, perhaps, long before the pale-faced white settler knew of them at least.

After riding six hundred miles through the States of Illinois and Iowa, over the prairies, both level and rolling, I am frank to acknowledge that the prospect of five hundred miles more of the same kind of scenery did not make me over enthusiastic to travel it on my wheel. The riding, so far, has not been monotonous, and I did not want it to become so. The object of the trip was not to make or break records, and thus far, whenever I have found it desirable to take a train, I have done so. But the ride through Nebraska would be so very similar to what I had already experienced in Iowa, that I thought a day’s ride on the cars would do me no harm and the time saved could be very profitably used in the mountains. The object of my trip is to see the most of the country in the best possible way, and thus far I think I have been fairly successful. The distance to Omaha traveled by rail has been about 250 miles, and by wheel 2,000 miles, and the total expense, including about eight dollars car fare, has been not quite forty dollars. This includes all repairs to wheel, clothes, and every expense whatsoever. I probably have stopped over night at farm-houses half the time, which has been the chief aid in making the expense so light, but the accommodations have many times been better than at some of the hotels. I have ridden till nearly dark and then taken a hotel or farm-house, just as it happened. Much of the time, seventy days, since leaving home has been spent in visiting friends, but one can travel over the same route, in the same manner, without a friend to visit on the way for less than a dollar a day.

Thus far I have been very lucky in not getting caught out in many showers, and it really has rained very little where I have been. A heavy rain at Omaha prevented further progress on the wheel, at least for a few days, and decided me to take the train. Partly through the influence of Mr. Charles M. Woodman, a wheelman, employed in the Union Pacific office, I secured a ticket to Denver at reduced rates. A cap has been the only thing I have worn on my head; the skin on my nose has peeled off several times, and of course, my face and hands are as brown as my seal-brown trousers. Even corduroy breeches could not stand the pressure of those lumpy clay roads, and I have been obliged to have them reseated with thick buckskin, dyed to match. My weight has been reduced from fifteen to eighteen pounds, but a ravenous appetite soon makes up for that reduction whenever I stop riding. The weight of the knapsack is hardly noticed now.

I have written sometimes of the ignorance of the farmers in certain sections of the West, and perhaps now it will be no more than fair to refer to the utter lack of knowledge of their country of some persons in Connecticut. Many thought snow drifts and mud would prevent any wheeling outside of Connecticut for weeks after I started, but, as far as I could see, the roads settle in “York State” as early as in Connecticut. At any rate, I saw no snow or mud, unless it was up in the mountains. Another thing that troubled some folks was how I should get across the streams and rivers out West. The idea that occasionally I might find a real bridge did not seem to enter their minds. The fact is, not yet have I come to the smallest creek or pond of water but which I crossed dry shod. Bridges are built here wherever they are needed, just as they are in the East. Some Connecticut people went so far as to doubt whether they had any roads out here at all. Many a one asked me how I could ride across the prairie, and they seemed to take it for granted I should ride upon the railroads, bumping along over the half-covered ties. But strange as it may seem to those persons, the people out here have horses and wagons, and ride over public highways and bridges, very much the same as we do in the East. They have churches and school-houses, Sunday-schools and revivals, morning prayers and a blessing before meals, just as they do in staid old New England. They are just as civilized and decidedly more open and free hearted than in any part of Connecticut, only perhaps they are not quite so refined; that is all the difference. To those who have seen the Western people this talk may seem superfluous, but there are many people in Connecticut, intelligent on every other subject, who show supreme ignorance in regard to the manners and customs of the people of their own country. And as for its being thinly settled, any one can judge as to that when I say I have not been over half a mile from a house at any time, unless it was up in the Highlands of New York. There has been no more danger or difficulty in making the trip than there is in traveling through New England. Thus far the need of a revolver has never presented itself, neither has the idea of getting one.

Well, I took the train at Omaha and was soon gliding swiftly through the same rolling prairie that I had seen so much of in Iowa. But these waves of green soon began to subside as the ocean does after a storm, and the sun went down on a country as level and smooth as the ocean itself. From the car window I could see the roads were excellent—a mixture of sand and clay—but I did not regret that I was on twelve wheels instead of two. The newsboys on the trains out here are newsmen, full grown men. The one on the up train worked steadily all the afternoon with his papers, books, oranges, bananas, etc., and finally, when every one was tired of the very sight of him, he brought in a basket of toys, and, sitting down on the arms of the seats, amused the children in the car with snakes and jumping-jacks for half an hour or more. Great liberty is allowed passengers traveling such long distances, and little boys play leap-frog and perform all sorts of gymnastic exercises in the aisle.

Along toward midnight the passengers had begun to thin out, and almost every one had found a whole seat for himself, and had lain down with his head or heels sticking out into the aisle. The conductor came through occasionally, but was careful not to disturb any one, and in picking his way along down this gauntlet of bare heads and big feet, he would only hold up his lantern and peer into a face whenever that head hung over into the aisle where a pair of boots projected half an hour before. Everything had been quiet for some time, and the train at midnight was running rapidly, when a low, plaintive moan issued forth from the seat just ahead of me. The voice was rather low, at first, and the sound was rather mournful. A head hung over into the aisle in a very reckless manner, and the mouth was wide open, and yet there was no complaint. The poor sufferer gradually raised his voice, and one after another in the car had risen up and looked around till the car once more seemed to be well filled with passengers. The somnorganist ran up the scale, pulled out all the stops, and, doubled up as he was, the knee-swell was used with powerful effect. It was soon becoming evident that either the head would drop clear off and roll down the aisle or that the bellows would burst, for the sound, loud as it was, came out under great pressure, when a long suffering but very patient passenger in a seat opposite jumped up and grabbing the poor fellow by the shoulder almost yelled in his ear, “Look here, stranger, do you know you have got the nightmare like a horse?” The roars of laughter that followed were not diminished by the fact that the man opposite did not realize he had said anything to cause it. I soon found four seats together, and taking the cushions out and placing them lengthwise of the car, made a very good bed, for I am so short I could lie at full length.

The sun rose next morning over very much the same kind of a level country, but snow-capped mountains were easily seen in the distance, and a few hours later the train rolled into the station at Denver.

Chapter X.

On Pike’s Peak.

We reached the top last night in a blinding snow and hail storm, with the lightning snapping and cracking around our heads and the thunder rolling around on all sides of us, below as well as above. But in order to have it clearly understood how it came to be “we,” and how we came to get here, I must go back a little and give an account of the trip since leaving the train at Denver.

The streets of that city are not paved, but they are so hard and smooth most of the year that no one could find any fault with them. The fine sand packs down very hard. The train which I took in Omaha reached Denver so early in the morning that I found very few business men at their stores and so I rode around the principal streets, visited their fine county court-house, which must have cost in the neighborhood of $300,000, and looked with wonder at the snow-capped mountains to be seen at the end of every street, seemingly only a few miles away to the north or west. Streams of clear water run down the gutters of most of the streets, which gives to the city a very cool and refreshed appearance. But one need not look to the streams of water to feel revived; the very air was as crisp and cool as an October morning in Connecticut. It became so cold in the cars the night before that there was no sleep for any one not provided with blankets to cover him, and they tell me this is a sample of their weather all through the summer. In the middle of the day the sun is hot, but in the shade it is never uncomfortable. It is a very dry atmosphere, so that there is very little perspiration to be seen on a person’s face when exercising. For several weeks the salt sweat has run down my forehead, in the heat of the day, and into my eyes, making them smart and look glossy, but here the perspiration dries before it can reach one’s eyebrows. After being taken about the city and entertained by Chief Consul Geo. F. Higgins (a royal good fellow, light complexion, of medium height and build, and wearing a moustache), and after being escorted out of the city by another member of the club,—Mr. F. J. Chamard, also a light complexioned fellow, we started on for Colorado Springs together. J. A. Hasley, a member of the Kansas City Bicycle Club, reached Denver a few days before I did, intending to take a trip in the same direction I was going, and that is how we came to climb Pike’s Peak together.

This chapter, and perhaps others to follow, will give our experiences nearly in the order in which they occurred.

The first thing that surprised me was the sort of grazing country to be seen on all sides. A farmer in Connecticut who would turn his cattle out into such a scanty pasture to get a living would be a fit subject for prosecution by the Humane Society. I had supposed that Colorado was the finest grazing country in the world, and was never more surprised than to see the dry, sandy, brown appearance of the country. Only at a distance did it look green; close to, but a few scanty bunches, or rather spears of grass could be seen. Actually, such fields in the Eastern States would not be considered fit for even sheep pastures. The only way the herds of horses and cattle get a living is by traveling. They are at liberty to roam over thousands of acres, and in that way manage to subsist. The winters are not very severe, but it is no wonder so many cattle perish when the supply of grass, scanty at the best, is covered with a few inches of snow. Irrigation is carried on to a great extent, but from what I can see it was more for the purpose of watering the stock than for bringing the land up to a high state of cultivation. So far I have seen very little land producing a fair crop of fodder, and that is all they intend to raise. There is no turf to be seen growing naturally.

The ride south, from Denver to Colorado Springs, was over a very fair road, although there was probably ten miles of walking in the seventy-five miles. To the east of us was a level or slightly rolling country, while on the other side the snow-covered mountains loomed up apparently only twenty-five miles, but in reality seventy-five miles away. Even the foot-hills, so called, mountains four and five thousand feet above us, were twenty-five miles distant. Such is the clearness of the atmosphere one would think he could walk over to them in a couple of hours. That afternoon, just after the sun had sunk beneath the snowy tops, we struck some Colorado mosquitoes. The first intimation we had of their presence, while riding along at a lively gait, was a prickling sensation all over the calves of our legs, and my stockings were actually black with them. An Eastern mosquito will usually be somewhat embarrassed in his business affairs by a slight motion of the body or a wave of the hand, but these in Colorado are not annoyed in the least by the circular motion of a flying wheelman’s legs, and will alight upon his calves and proceed to business with a dispatch that is equaled nowhere else in the world. And be it said to the credit of their excellent military discipline, they never stop drilling or desert their post till they are crushed or brushed away. Once I jumped from the machine in agony, and such a jar would tend to dislodge an ordinary specimen of this kind of animal, but not so with these; every one remained at work, and thirteen perished at a time from one slap of my hand. Many a dismount resulted nearly as disastrously to the enemy, but this cost too much in time, and brushing away while riding was finally resorted to as the least expensive means of warfare. They seemed to go in swarms like bees, and made a noise nearly as loud. The next morning we rode through another army of them, but the only lasting result of the whole fight has been to give us a very satisfying occupation, whenever there was nothing more important on hand, in scratching the different areas of our legs below the knees and regularly returning to the same locality always with renewed relish.

Prairie dogs were quite common along the road, and they would sit on their little mounds and remonstrate with us in a squeaking voice for disturbing them, till we were close upon them. Jack rabbits were not so common, only three or four having been seen thus far.

That night we walked down a lane to a ranch to find shelter for the night, when a horse, taking fright at our machines, tried to jump over the gate at the foot of the lane, and in doing so, gate, horse, and all came down in a heap together with a crash. The horse jumped up and went off limping, but we thought the next ranch would be a safer place for us, and so we kept on a couple of miles and got an excellent supper, but our bed was on the floor in an old store-room. This slight hardship was soon forgotten in the crisp, cool air of the next morning, and we rode along, hugely enjoying the mountain scenery on our right, till we met a drove of horses and cattle in the road, where barbed-wire fences inclosed the highway on both sides. The horses took fright first and stampeded down the road followed by the cows and calves, the seventy-five or a hundred head leaving a great cloud of dust behind them. The ranchman, who was driving them to water, tried his best, with the vigorous use of his lungs and a shovel in his hands, to stop them by running backwards and forwards across the road, and after we had dismounted and gone clear out to the fence he succeeded in driving them past us. Coming up all out of breath and his eyes flashing with excitement, the full-bearded ranchman yelled, “By J——s, you fellows will get shot down here before you go very far with them things! If my horses had gone over that wire fence, by J——s, I should have wanted to put a hole through you,” then cooling down a little at our expressed regrets, he said, oaths omitted, “a while ago, coming from Denver with a load of oats, I met a couple of fellows on their velocipedes and they were yelling and hollering, and did not offer to stop. My horses saw them first, and started down the hill as if nothing was hitched to them. They turned down the railroad track and took that forty hundred of oats over those ties as if they were feathers. I finally stopped them down in the cut, but I was mad, you bet. Those dudes were strangers around here or they would not have said what they did to me. They told me to go talk to a dog and to do some other things. They did not know enough to keep their mouths shut after they had got me into that fix. So I just pulled my belt gun and held it up. ‘Now,’ says I, ‘you just come back or I will corral you. While I go out and stick up a couple of flags, you just lay down those things and go and pack those bags of oats out here into the road.’ They wouldn’t at first, but finally did, and it did me good to see them New York dudes tugging away at them 300 pound sacks. I unhitched the horses and made them fellows pull the wagon back and load the oats in again, but they emptied both their bottles before they got through.”

To appreciate this story, and the manner in which it was told, one needs to hear it highly spiced, as it was with the huge oaths and many of the strange expressions used out here. The conversation turned on other subjects, and before he finally bade us “good luck,” I learned that droves of mares and a few stallions are turned out loose, and in a short time each stallion has selected his drove of mares to look after and guard, and no mare from any other drove will be allowed to come near his drove. One day a mule tried to get near a drove and the stallion was kept busy all day biting and driving that mule away, who scampered off only to return again to bother the stallion so much he had no chance to eat for hours. With cattle it is the same, the bulls selecting their drove of cows to guard and none from any other drove need apply for admission.

As we traveled south, the range of foot-hills turned to the east until we rode along nearly at the base of them. The top of Pike’s Peak was plainly to be seen over these foot hills all day, and this snow-covered peak seemed to travel south on the other side of this range of hills just as fast as we did. It looked more like a hooded ghost peering over the green hills at us than a mountain peak 14,000 feet high. As we rode along it would go out of sight behind a hill, only to reappear again farther south, always keeping just so far ahead of us. This game of hide and seek did not end till we reached Colorado Springs, where the peak was directly west of us.

We had ridden but a few miles from Denver, when the thin air began to affect me. Hill climbing was out of the question, and the smallest patch of sand or the slightest up grade would make me puff like a winded horse. I tried to breathe entirely through my nose, but the suffocating feeling was unbearable, and so I rode along, mouth wide open. The dry atmosphere parched my tongue and mouth, and my tongue, shriveled to half its size, rattled around in my mouth like a wooden spoon in a bowl. Again I tried to keep my mouth shut, but that was impossible, so I made up my mind to get used to it, and rode miles without any water. Even water would only keep my mouth moist a short time.

We reached Palmer Lake, a pleasant resort 7,000 feet high, about noon. This place is nearly 1,000 feet higher than either Denver or Colorado Springs, and the grade descends both to the north and south. The foot-hills, three or four thousand feet higher, are close by to the west, and to the east the country is a rolling sea of green. But the most beautiful sight of all is the wild flowers. White, red, yellow, blue, purple, violet, in fact all the colors imaginable are seen in great profusion on all sides, acres and acres of nothing else, these beautiful little flowers not over three or four inches high growing so closely together as to crowd out what little green grass tried to grow there. In fact, while all the colors of the rainbow but this one lived closely and happily together, green seemed to be an outcast among them. And the colors which one would naturally think would be pale and faded growing in such a dry and sandy soil were just the opposite. I never saw such vivid colors. The varieties were mostly foreign to me, but I shall always remember the colors. Occasionally, rising above these fields of little flowers, were red and white thistles, red and white cactuses, and Spanish bayonets, or soap weed as they call it, all in full blossom, too.

I can’t begin to describe the delightful ride down from Palmer Lake. The coasting over a road, perfectly smooth, that wound around and over little knolls that gave a wavy motion to the ride; this was enjoyment enough in itself, but to go gliding along without using a muscle in this delightful manner, and see the foot hills, perfectly green to their tops, and the pure white peaks sparkling in the sun rising just above them, all only a mile or two away seemingly, on the right, and to the left these immense fields of the very brightest and most beautiful flowers ever seen, growing close up to the road and stretching out into the distance till their colors were lost in the pale-green of the rolling prairie—to thus imperfectly describe the scene is all I can do; one must see it to realize it.

Saturday morning, early, we reached Manitou, where water power furnishes the hotels with electric lights, and started up Ute Pass on our wheels, to visit the Grand Cavern. We were going to leave our wheels and walk up, but a guide told us it was good riding over the other side of this mountain, from the Cave of the Winds down through Williams Cañon, back to Manitou; so we pushed the wheels up a mile over a very good carriage road, six or eight hundred feet high, to the Grand Cavern, with the intention of going across, but here the fun commenced. The only way across was by a narrow trail, but the guide at the cavern said it was all down hill, and so we kept on. The trail went down the side of the mountains very steep, and we had not gone far when it was evident it was the wrong trail, and so back we started; but it took us both to get one wheel up at a time, and the way it made us puff—well, strong as we both were it took every ounce of strength we had to get back. After hunting around awhile we found the right trail, and started on in the direction of Williams Cañon, which was plainly to be seen just below. The trail came to an end at the edge of the cañon, which was three or four hundred feet straight down, but an immense hole, perhaps twenty-five feet across, went down into the bowels of the mountain about two hundred feet, to the entrance of the Cave of the Winds. Rickety ladders and shaky stairs wound down around the inside of this hole, and down these we must go with our wheels! Yes, the guide was right, it was down hill with a vengeance. We took my wheel first, it being the lightest, and Hasley went down a few rounds on the ladder and then took hold of the big wheel and held it firm so that the rubber tire slid down the ladder. I held on to the handle bar with one hand and the ladder with the other, and thus we reached the bottom of the first ladder, step by step, but safely. The next pair of steep stairs went under the shelving rocks so close that there was not room to get the wheel down, and so we lifted it over the edge of the railing, and I let it down as far as I could with one hand, and Hasley ran down to the next stairs underneath and caught the wheel as I let go. The rest of the stairs were not so steep, but a single misstep at any time would have sent us all to the bottom of this hole in unseemly haste. Getting Hasley’s wheel down was a repetition of our first experience, only his was heavier, and the stairs creaked more, and it was more difficult to get his machine over the railing and let it down at arm’s length, to be caught by the other underneath; but at the entrance of the cave, stairs led down under a boulder, suspended as that one was at the Flume in the White Mountains, and out into the daylight of the cañon, and we were soon down in the road, hardly realizing how we had got there.

DESCENT INTO THE CAVE OF THE WINDS.—(Page 92.)

The scenery down the cañon was so grand, and the whole trip was so exciting, that we did not regret at the end that we had taken our wheels where no other wheels have ever been, and where no other wheels ever ought to be taken again.

While we were taking a late breakfast at the Cliff House at Manitou—Manitou is at the very base and almost surrounded by mountains—a young gentleman asked us if we would escort two young ladies up to the top of Pike’s Peak, and of course we were only too glad to have the opportunity. But at the last moment one of the ladies refused to go, because it would prevent her attending the first hop of the season; and the other lady who was so enthusiastic that her sense of propriety barely prevailed over her intense desire to climb up the peak, said, sadly disappointed, as she left us: “Now I will go up to my room and have a good cry,” and her eyes were already running over.

The scenery up the ravine for two or three miles was magnificent, huge boulders filling the gorge, down which a good-sized stream went dashing over and under these boulders in every conceivable manner. In fact, the sides of the mountains up a thousand feet, were covered with huge boulders just on the point of rolling down, and once in a while between them we could catch a glimpse of the country below. Five miles up the trail, which is a very good foot path, is the Half Way House, and we felt much encouraged to find it had taken us only two hours. But from there up, for four miles, the trail went through timber mostly, and we began to get winded. Hasley kept his mouth shut most of the time, which I could not do from the first; but for two hours we had not a drop of water to drink.

Just below timber line, which is 12,000 feet above the sea, we met parties coming down, three and four at a time, and they encouraged us by saying: “Only four miles farther,” “Keep your strength for the last two miles,” “You will have to leave the trail the last mile and follow the telegraph poles up over the snow.” Still our legs held out all right, but I began to get dizzy whenever I looked up or stooped to drink at a running stream of snow-water. Finally, snow was the only thing to moisten our mouths, but we both drank or ate very sparingly of this. About one thousand feet above timber line we had to cross snow-drifts one or two hundred feet across, and very soon our feet were cold and wet. Sometimes the snow would let us down to our hips, and then we would wallow along to some projecting rocks and climb up. This took my breath the worst of anything, and I laid down on the rocks, completely exhausted sometimes.

ABOVE TIMBER-LINE.—(Page 94.)

About this time a snow-storm commenced, and the wind blew so cold we could only stop a short time to get our wind. The flashes of lightning were getting to be altogether too frequent to be pleasant, and the snow and hail were so blinding we could scarcely see from one telegraph pole to another, for now we had left the trail, and were climbing straight up the side of the peak, with nothing in sight but rocks and boulders half covered with snow. Sometimes we slipped down through these boulders, and then after crawling out, the only thing to do was to lie down with our backs to the driving storm and get rested. When I started on again it was to stagger like a drunken man, for I was dizzy most of the last mile all the time. When we were sure the top must be just over the brow of the steep hill we were slowly climbing, we finally reached there only to see those telegraph poles leading almost straight up into the air and out of sight up the steepest and most rocky hill we had yet encountered. Once in the blinding snow-storm we lost track of the poles, but it was only because one had been blown down, and the next was hidden entirely from view. Finally, after crawling, staggering, and climbing up and over the last mile of rocks, and using up an hour and a half in doing it, I caught sight of a big stone house through the fog and snow, and yelled to Hasley with all the strength I had left, and that wasn’t much: “Look at the chimneys.”

Those who have done any mountain climbing can better imagine our feelings at that moment than I can describe them. Much as we regretted it at first, how thankful we were those ladies had not started up with us, for we never could have reached the top with them. But, as if to repay us for being deprived of their presence, those beautiful little wild flowers accompanied us all the way up, growing brighter in color, if that were possible, the higher up they grew, until on the very top of the peak, 14,147 feet above the sea, we picked a lovely little bouquet from beneath a few inches of snow. These tiny flowers, not more than an inch in height, grow close to a melting drift of snow and ice wherever there is the least bit of sand or soil to nourish them. The two signal service men, Messrs. Ramsay and Potter, did everything possible for us, and in a very short time we were ourselves again. These two men were so kind and considerate toward us, and made us feel so much at home, that we concluded to prolong our stay on the summit until Monday.

Distance traveled on the wheel, 2,075 miles.

Chapter XI.

Back to Denver.

“The sun is about to rise,” whispered Mr. Ramsay, as he softly opened our room door and then disappeared. Mr. John P. Ramsay is the Government signal officer in charge of the station at Pike’s Peak, a young wheelman that everyone likes from the first. We were sleeping soundly in a comfortable bed on the top of the Peak this Sunday morning, entirely oblivious of the somewhat severe experience we had in climbing, the afternoon before, but at the first sound of the call we jumped out of bed, slipped on our shoes, and, wrapping some heavy blankets around us, went out the east door and stood on a mat, which was frozen stiff, and where the wind blew about our bare legs and up the folds of the blanket with decidedly too much freedom. We waited there fifteen or twenty minutes, shaking from head to foot, but the sight amply repaid for the discomfort. The sun was sending great broad streamers up into the sky, and a bank of black clouds, which in the distance looked like a range of mountains, still hid the sun from view. We looked over the brow of Pike’s Peak, which, on top, is nothing but huge boulders and rocks imbedded in banks of snow, down upon other peaks twelve or thirteen thousand feet high surrounding us on all sides, and looking cold and black in the dim light of the morning. At the base of the Peak on which we stood the level plains stretched out probably 150 miles to the east, where a band of gold was just beginning to gild that bank of clouds. No fog, or mist; nothing obstructed the view in any direction, and everything, even in the darkness, seemed to stand out with peculiar clearness. Soon the broad streamers faded away, the band of gold rendered more dazzling by the blackness of the clouds, began to widen till the whole bank of clouds seemed to be one mountain of gold. Finally, after a long while, as it seemed to us shivering in the cold, the upper outlines of the sun could just be seen through the fiery clouds, and when the round ball stood out clear and distinct above the clouds we crawled back to bed and to sleep. Is seems almost useless to try to describe such a scene, for no one can get an idea of the sight from the most perfect description.

GOVERNMENT STATION, SUMMIT OF PIKE’S PEAK.—(Page 97.)

The house up there, built of stone, contains six good-sized rooms. Six or eight persons can be comfortably housed over night, and no one who has experienced the difficulties of the climb would complain of the food, for we had a variety and it was well cooked. I sat out doors nearly all day in the warm sun and the view was not hidden till nearly night. We could look down into the streets of Colorado Springs, fifteen miles away, almost as one would upon a checker board.

During the day several parties came up, some on horses, to within a mile and a half of the top, where snow covers the trail and renders further progress on horseback impossible, but everyone looked pale and exhausted. Hot coffee brought them around all right in a short time. A party of us went over to the north side of the Peak and tumbled rocks down the side. Some of these went crashing down nearly two thousand feet before they stopped.

During the afternoon clouds gathered, but just before sunset the sun came out and the shadow of the Peak was plainly seen against the clouds to the east. Even the shadow of the square stone house was discerned, and then two of us went out to one end of the house, and surely, there we were, standing like the spectres of the Brocken near the shadow of the house, out over the plains twenty-five miles away and fourteen thousand feet above the ground. To be sure our shadows were not as clean cut as though we were nearer the object on which the shadows were cast, but anyone could see the general form.

About 9 o’clock that night a terrific thunder storm raged out over the plains to the northeast. The highest clouds were not much above, and most of them far below us. We heard none of the thunder and saw very little of the lightning as it flashed, but the whole mass of clouds was lighted up incessantly. It was a grand sight. The whole sky to the north, west, and south, was perfectly clear, and the stars shone out with remarkable clearness, notwithstanding the full moon was shining so brightly and placidly out over the plains to the east. Everywhere else the world was at peace, but in the northeast those clouds made silver by the light of the moon, were rolling and tumbling and were constantly lighted by the fiery flashes of lightning. And yet not a sound was to be heard. There was no wind, and everything above and below was so quiet and still. And from the northeast, where we could see such a great commotion, there was not the faintest sound. If there had been no clouds anywhere that night the stillness would have seemed natural enough, but to see such a terrific storm raging (and I never saw lightning before), and to see the wind tearing those clouds all to pieces, and yet to have everything so silent you could almost hear yourself think, that was a most weird situation.

The weather on Pike’s Peak is hardly more severe than it is below, even during the winter. For severity, it is not to be compared with that of Mt. Washington. The wind never blows harder than seventy-five or eighty miles an hour. The roof of the house is a common tin one. They keep up a wood fire the year round. The telegraph wires are not kept in repair, so the weather reports are only sent in by rail. Pike’s Peak is not in reality a very important weather station.

As if to give us one more startling effect before we started down, the next morning opened cloudy. The morning before we seemed to be on the edge of some great ocean that stretched out to the east as far as the eye could reach, but now we were cast away at sea ourselves. The clouds covered the whole earth in all directions and were so solid and motionless that they looked like one great sea of light gray marble, beautifully carved and polished, but we were high above this sea of marble, and were looking down upon it. The sun had just risen above it when I opened my eyes, and I could hardly believe what they told me. The light brought out every line and feature of the glassy clouds, and the peak on which we were was, apparently, only about 2,000 feet above the level of this sea, for it surrounded us on all sides. Occasionally, here and there, other peaks pierced through the clouds like so many rocky islands, but there was not a rift anywhere to indicate that there was a beautiful earth beneath this great ocean of gray, polished marble, solid enough apparently to walk upon. Very soon the sun took the polish off the clouds, and before long they grew fleecy and soon broke up and passed away.

Leaving our friends at the top with regret, for I could have spent a month there with the utmost enjoyment, we started down and reached the base, without trouble or fatigue, in three hours and a half, a journey of twelve miles that consumed seven hours in going up, besides using the last ounce of strength we had in doing it, too. Coming down we picked a few flowers near the top to send home, but every few yards a new variety showed itself, and of course we had to get a few of that kind, too, till our hands were full of the beautiful tiny little things. Then we swore off and would not pick another one; but then another variety, prettier than any of the others, peeped up at us between the rocks, and before we came down to timber line, 12,000 feet above the sea, pockets, hands, and hats were full of the bright colored little flowers. After a hearty meal at the Cliff House we mounted, and our machines were so thoroughly rested they almost ran away with us down the grade out of Manitou.

To the Garden of the Gods next. All along the base of the mountains, from Denver south for seventy-five miles, are immense slabs of red and white sandstone projecting into the air edgewise, and running parallel with the range of mountains. Some of these slabs must have been 500 or 1,000 feet high originally, but the action of the rain and frost on their crumbling nature has reduced many of them to steep ridges of red and white soil, along the center of which runs the remnant of the original slab, looking like the backbone of some pre-historic animal. In the Garden of the Gods a few of these slabs remain with very little debris about their base. Some of them, five or six hundred feet long, stick right up into the air three or four hundred feet high, and they are so honey-combed and the edges so rounded and worn, that the action of water is plainly to be seen on them. No one can visit this part of the country without being impressed with the idea that these mountains were once the rocky shores of an immense ocean and the incessant action of the waves has wrought out all the curious-shaped rocks and ledges which make Colorado so celebrated. But when the subject is broached as to what force in nature was powerful enough to turn these strata of rocks up edgewise in the first place, a traveling wheelman drops that subject as he would an ichthyosaurus.

Glen Eyrie is another place about a mile above, that abounds in these same slabs, not so large, and more slender and needle shaped. This place is private property and is nicely fixed up with drives, trout ponds, and fountains. The drives through these places of interest are very fine, and when we started back to Colorado Springs over a high, level road, running along a high ridge, the wind sent us along as we never rode before. On the level, a brake was necessary, and we even went coasting up good steep grades. This kind of riding lasted for nearly five miles, and was enjoyed intensely, but after a short stop at the “Springs” with a few very enthusiastic wheelmen, among them Messrs. Walker and Parsons, we turned about for Denver, and faced that same strong wind for fifteen miles, till we found a good resting place for the night at a ranch, which is simply a good farm-house. The next morning after we got over the divide, near Palmer Lake, the wind sent us flying again down the grade. Such coasting! Sometimes side by side, at other times in single file, we passed the fields of wild flowers that seemed to have improved since we last saw them; for the pale yellow blossoms of the cactus plants, as large as the palm of our hand, were much more numerous than a few days before. Then we scattered horses and colts, cows and calves, in all directions; dreadfully scared the poor little prairie dogs that were caught away from home, and made the others who were perched on their mounds, terribly excited. The little animals sometimes dig their holes in the middle of the road, and as we went noiselessly along, we thought we might sometimes catch them unawares, but no. Prairie dogs have ears. They always heard us coming, and would keep up a constant squeaking noise till the last minute, and sometimes after they had dodged out of sight they would pop their heads up once more, utter one last squeak, and disappear for good.

I have often wondered why so many plants grow here supplied with thorns and sharp pointed leaves. There are the thistles, cactus, Spanish bayonet, and two or three other species, the names of which are unknown to me, but the extent to which their sharp points will penetrate a wheelman’s stockings can be accurately stated; even the spears of grass are as sharp pointed as a needle. They do say that sheep will eat the cactus at certain times in the year. It is not stated at just what period in their existence the sheep do this, but it is probably a short time before they cease to exist. When their bill of fare is limited to a single article of diet, men have been known to eat obnoxious things, and probably the sheep eat the cactus for the same reason. O yes, Colorado is a great grazing country, noted for being such. It is also noted for being a country where sometimes forty per cent. of the stock die in a single winter, simply because there is nothing to eat. The land will not produce enough to keep them alive. Let the snow come a few inches deeper than usual, and the only thing for the stock is to starve to death. The ranchmen don’t pretend to house their stock or store up fodder enough to keep them alive when the snow has covered the few spears of grass too deep to be uncovered by pawing. I am told that horses, raised in a warm climate, do not know enough at first when turned out into a field covered with snow, to paw the snow away and nibble the grass underneath, but they soon learn to do so from seeing others, but even pawing does not always save the poor creatures. I was agreeably surprised, in talking with a ranchman, to hear him express himself strongly in favor of a law to prevent anyone raising more stock than he could house and feed during the winter. The desert of Sahara, judging from what I have read, is nearly as good for farming as that part of Colorado I have seen is for stock raising. New York tenement houses and Colorado stock farms are equally good for producing young lives and for killing them off young, too. The ranchman who expressed a desire to put a hole through us for scaring his horses on our way down to the Springs, now recognized and waved his hand to us as we returned. We stopped at a farm-house to get some milk, and while waiting in the dining-room I noticed with surprise well-worn books in the book case, such as “Draper’s Intellectual Development of Europe,” “Geographical Distribution of Animals,” by Wallace, “Elements of Geology,” by Le Conte, “English Men of Letters,” by Morley, other books by Geike, and many more of like nature. Think of such books as these being read out here on a Colorado ranch, 2,200 miles away from the intellectual hub of the universe! I am sorry to say the ranchman by birth is not an American, but an Englishman.

A little farther on, and we overtook a lady on horseback. She did not hear us, but the horse did, and began to act skittish, and not knowing what to make of his actions the lady jumped off. We got by without much trouble, however, but it would never do to ride on leaving the lady dismounted. Here was a state of things. Not a house in sight for miles over the level prairie, not a wagon, box, or anything but a barbed-wire fence to assist the lady to regain the saddle, and with her long riding habit it was impossible to do it alone. One thing, and only one thing could be done. One of us must clasp his hands together on his knee, and in thus making a step for her, help her to mount into the saddle. Now, there were two of us, one tall, the other short. For her to step up on the knee of the taller one would be more difficult than to step up on the knee of the shorter one. So it fell to the lot of the embarrassed writer to do the service. The lady mounted easily to the saddle and we left her.

On reaching Denver and looking back over the trip, I felt I had accomplished all and more than I really expected to do when I left home. Not but that I had a strong desire before I started to see the wonders in California, but I thought if I reached Pike’s Peak, it would be doing a great deal, all I felt confident of doing then. But now that I reached the goal of my spring ambition so easily, no small consideration would induce me to turn back. I was in better physical condition than when I left home, and the farther I went the more confidence it gave me to continue the journey across to the Pacific.

Distance on the wheel, 2,158 miles.

Chapter XII.

Across the Plains.

Until now I had expressed a valise, with extra baggage, along to the different cities, but found I could carry everything I needed in the knapsack; and so, leaving the rubber suit behind with the valise, for I was entering a rainless district, and putting on a thinner pair of trousers, I left Denver on the 24th of June.

We started on again, in a northerly direction, accompanied for several miles by Mr. J. W. Bryant, and reached Longmont, after a ride of thirty-five miles over miserable roads, rendered more miserable by the water that overflows them from the numerous ditches along the way. Here we found that a ride back to the southwest, to Boulder, and into the mining regions of Boulder County, would make a pleasant little side excursion, and so the next noon we rode over to Boulder, twenty miles, and stopped an hour or so at one of the sampling works. Here large quantities of ore are bought off the miners, and crushed and ground fine as flour, ready to be shipped to the smelting works at Denver and other points.

The process of finding the amount of gold or silver in a sample of ore is very interesting. After the ore is reduced to a fine powder, a small quantity of it, perhaps a teaspoonful, is nicely weighed out, and put into an earthern saucer, with perhaps ten times that amount of lead ore in the same powdered state. The saucer is placed in a furnace, and the lead soon absorbs the gold and silver and settles to the bottom, leaving the worthless part of the powder to rise to the top in the shape of dark-colored glass. This button of lead, with the gold and silver absorbed in it, is then placed in a little cup made of burnt bone. This cup is then placed in the furnace and the bone absorbs all the lead, leaving a speck of the precious metal about as large as the head of a small pin. The gold and silver are then separated by placing this speck in nitric acid, which absorbs the silver, and the pure gold is left in the bottom of the glass. I understand that this process, on a small scale, is practically the same as that employed at the large smelting works. In this way miners can find out at a very little expense just what their ore is worth per ton from a comparatively small sample.

We started up Boulder Cañon, a gorge in the mountain that is very picturesque, but whose sides are not so perpendicular as those of Williams Cañon at Manitou. We rode and walked up this cañon nine miles to Salina, where we stayed at night. A large stream comes roaring down the cañon, and the narrow gauge track of the Colorado Central Railroad goes up at a very steep grade. The course of the stream is so crooked and the cañon so narrow, that in the nine miles there are over fifty railroad bridges. All along up the cañon the sides of the mountain are fairly honey-combed with holes, dug during the mining excitement in 1859, and since, but now the holes, shanties, and everything about the region seems to be deserted.

Salina is a genuine mining town of perhaps a hundred inhabitants, and entirely different from anything that I expected. I supposed that even now a man took his life in his hands when he visited one of these mining towns, but during the evening, and all the time we were there, the place was as quiet and peaceable as any New England town—decidedly more so than any factory village. I saw many well-dressed young ladies and gentlemen all going in one direction, and found it was the night for the temperance lodge to meet, and that the members include all but about a dozen persons in the community. During the evening two little boys at the boarding-house seemed to want to get acquainted, and so I asked one how old he was. “My brother is eight years old, and I am ten days older than he is,” he answered. How that could be the little fellow was unable to explain, and so am I.

The next morning we visited the First National Mine, which, to all outward appearances, is nothing more than a small shanty up the side of the mountain, with a heap of rocks thrown out to one side of it. Inside is a hole in the floor just large enough for a half barrel bucket to go through, and beside this hole is a trap-door just large enough to let a man’s body down. The rocks are raised by a windlass run by horse power outside.

With old coats and hats on and a lighted candle in our hands, we followed the overseer down through the trap-door. The ladders down which we climbed were straight up and down, and about all I could see as I followed the others was the light of their candles. About once in fifty feet we came to a platform and then started down another ladder. The ladders went close to one side of the shaft, which was protected with heavy timbers on the sides, and on the other side was the hole down which the bucket went, two hundred and fifteen feet, to the bottom. It was rather awkward holding on to the rounds of the ladder with a candle in one hand, but I kept a firm grip till the rounds began to get slippery from the mud and water, and then the descent was anything but pleasant. Sometimes the ladders, instead of going straight down, leaned over from the top a little, and then it was hard work to keep my feet from slipping off. It was so dark in there I could only see the black bucket hole on one side and the two lighted candles beneath me, and how far down a fellow would go, should his hands or feet slip off the slimy rounds, I had no idea; only I know every nerve in my body was strung up and every muscle was hard.

At last, and it seemed an age, we got down to where the men were working. Two hundred feet down, tunnels, just large enough for men to work in, were run out in opposite directions, and at the ends of these tunnels the men were drilling and blasting. And what were these men after, down in this hole in the solid rock, over two hundred feet from the surface? Simply to get out a little narrow streak of dark-colored rock, not over two or three inches wide. This little streak went nearly straight down into the earth, and these men were following it wherever it went, excavating probably fifty tons of refuse rock in order to get one ton of the ore sufficiently valuable to work up.

Then we started up, and as I was the last to go up I was wondering all the way if I could keep my hold on the rounds if one of the others should slip and drop on me; but they did not have occasion to test my grip in that way, and we reached the top all right, only I had to stop and rest once, more because of the nervous excitement than anything else, and then you can imagine my feeling, suspended over that black hole with just strength to keep from falling, but with none to go higher. The memory of that experience will never be very pleasant to me.

Up three miles farther into the mountains and we came to Gold Hill, another mining town, full of saloons, but otherwise harmless, then down Left Hand Cañon, over a very fair road, out upon the plains again, and back to Longmont. On our way back we stripped off our clothes and took a bath in one of the ditches near the road.

A pleasant ride the next day of thirty miles brought us to Fort Collins, where I found many former residents of Connecticut.

The mosquito record of thirteen killed at one slap has been broken several times since reference was last made to the subject. The mosquitoes, which swarm everywhere, rarely trouble us about the hands or head, but the revolving motion of the legs seem to attract them, and they collect on our stockings in regular military array, every one headed toward the knee—of all the hundreds, and perhaps thousands, that have alighted on us, we never have seen one headed the other way—and many of them in straight lines, four and six in a row. Once, after enduring the pricking sensation as long as I could, I jumped off my wheel, and with a single slap on each stocking put thirty-two of the sweet singing little creatures on their way to the place where everybody sings. This was the result of the first two blows, and there were several outlying sections to be heard from that increased this number somewhat, for a Colorado mosquito that escapes death the first slap is sure to wait for the second one. In fact, one could almost tell the size of my hand by the area of crushed mosquitoes on my stockings, which was almost entirely surrounded by those still waiting and working. The reader may say the habits of these mosquitoes are of little interest to him, but to me the mosquitoes had points of keen interest about them.

The number of light complexioned men in Colorado is very noticeable. I began to observe it at Denver and at Colorado Springs, and at Manitou it was even more marked, till it seemed as if every man, woman, and child had light, very light-blue eyes, and a light moustache; that is, every one that wears a moustache of any color. Wheelmen, guides, cowboys, they all had the same smiling blue eyes that seemed to win one’s confidence at the outset. Denver is noted for having many confidence men and bunco steerers, but there is no class of men I would sooner trust myself with than the ranchmen, guides, and cowboys of Colorado. They like to open one’s eyes by telling what they have done in the past, but in the mountains, mines, or on the plains a traveler is as safe in their hands as he would be in any city in the East.

There is a decided improvement in the general aspect of the country north of Denver, through Longmont and Fort Collins, upon what we saw south of that city for seventy-five miles. There is less stock-raising and more farming. We passed many fields of wheat, corn, and alfalfa. The latter is of the same nature as red clover and grows nearly as high as herdsgrass. Once sown it never needs to be restocked, and three and sometimes four large crops are cut from it during the season. It is almost impossible to plow it up when once it is thoroughly rooted, and one person told me the roots would go down into the ground nearly fifty feet in search of moisture. I give this as a Colorado li—statement. But the only thing that will kill it out is water, too much of it, for it can be drowned out, finally.

This brings me to the most important interest of Colorado, and that is water. Nearly all through the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, through which I have ridden, States from seven to eleven times as large as Connecticut, the great question that directly interests all the farmers, and that indirectly concerns every one dependent upon the success of farming, is how to get rid of the water. In some of those States great ditches, six, eight, or ten feet deep, and miles in length, are dug, and smaller ditches and tile drains lead into these main channels, and thus in the spring the water to a great extent is drained away, so that the land will dry off and be fit to cultivate.

But the cost of this system of drains and ditches is very great, amounting on some farms to ten dollars an acre. But in Colorado, a State over twenty times as large as Connecticut, water is the one subject uppermost in the minds of the people, as it is farther east, but here it is how to get it, not how to get rid of it. There is the same system of large ditches running for miles and miles through the country, and these are tapped at convenient points by smaller ditches, so that the water is spread out over the sandy, barren-looking country, till by reversing the means used in those other States, the land is brought up into a high state of cultivation. And it does seem as if they even reverse the laws of gravitation, and make the water run up hill, for many and many a ditch seems to go up over and around a hill that is higher than the head of the ditch. There is one advantage, too, the farmers here have over those farther east, and that is, they can have a wet or dry season, just as they choose, for the supply of ditch water is never failing. These main ditches are dug by stock companies, and the stock is in the market just as other stocks are. The water privileges are sold to the farmers, and in some cases the price is twelve to fifteen dollars an acre for perpetual lease. It is singular that in one section of the country it should cost nearly as much per acre to get rid of the water as it does in other sections to procure it.

But this ditch water is a great boon to the people in other respects than for agricultural purposes, and that is for drinking. At first I always preferred the well-water, but as I traveled up into the alkali districts the ditch water was much more wholesome to drink, and now I shun everything else. To be treated to ice-water at a farmer’s house, appeared at first rather extravagant on their part, but the ditch water in summer gets so warm, ice-water is almost a necessity. Still, a barrel full of this roily water bailed up in the morning and placed in the shade or down cellar and allowed to settle, will remain pure and palatable for a long while. At one ranch where we stopped, the drinking water was brought nine miles, although a well of alkali water was near the house. At another house I was pulling up the bucket over a pulley, and thought the bucket would never reach the top, when the rope broke, and down went the bucket, 140 feet to the bottom of the well that was not even curbed or stoned up. It is needless to say we did not stop to get the bucket out or to get a drink.

The annual rainfall is not only increasing in Iowa and Nebraska, but in Colorado also. It is a true saying, civilization brings rain. In the former States it is the natural result of the breaking up of so much prairie land. That clay soil packed down hard by centuries of rain would formerly shed water like a duck’s back, but once loosened and broken up, it tends to retain the water like a sponge, and the more moisture retained, the greater the rainfall. In Colorado, the extensive irrigation practiced tends to produce the same result; the dry, sandy soil is becoming moist and filled with vegetable matter, till in some instances the land needs only the usual rains to produce good crops. This increased moisture in the atmosphere has another effect, and that is upon the health of consumptives. Instances are occurring where these invalids are leaving the plains with their net work of ditches and are going up into the dryer mountain air.

Leaving Fort Collins, or “Collins” as it will shortly be called, we tarried Monday night at a large sheep ranch on the way to Laramie, where shearing commenced the next morning. The owner has nearly 10,000 sheep in his different camps, and six California shearers began shearing at the rate of about 150 sheep a day for each man. The sheep were caught by the hind leg and sat upon their haunches between the legs of the shearer, and, commencing at their necks, the white and cream-colored fleeces rolled off the sheep with surprising rapidity. Occasionally, a piece of flesh would go with the fleece, and hardly a sheep escaped without some bright red streaks or spots upon it, the blood making a sharp contrast in color against the clean white appearance of the naked sheep.

After watching the operation for an hour or more, we started up across the foot-hills to get to the Laramie road on the other side, passing a stream where the water was as red as blood from the red mud or sand being washed down. These foot-hills are immense ledges of rocks that look very much as I have seen ice packed up against the banks of the Connecticut River when the ice breaks up in the spring. Looking at these foot-hills toward the west, they present the appearance of so many rounded hills of gravel and sand; but go up into and pass through them, and turn about and look at them in the opposite direction, and it seems really as if, ages ago, the crust of the earth had been broken up, as ice is in the spring, and the immense cakes of red and white sandstone had been jammed and forced up against the broad shoulders of the Rocky Mountains, till these slabs of stratified rock, several hundred feet thick, overlapped each other, and some of them were even forced up into almost perpendicular positions.

Wherever I have passed through these foot-hills, whether at Manitou, Boulder, or at Fort Collins, the country has the same general appearance: that of some immense rock-jam forcing the cakes from the east up on the banks of the Rocky Mountains. Much of the red sandstone is very red, and the contrast between that and the white sandstone is strongly marked, the red and white hills being mixed up promiscuously. We followed a very good road up through the foot-hills for awhile, but the wagon tracks grew fewer and fewer, as they branched off in different directions, till we struck a common trail, and as we wound around the north side of a high rocky hill this trail disappeared entirely, and we found ourselves off among the barren and sandy foot-hills without the slightest road, trail, or habitation in sight for miles. We debated some time which direction to take, but finally I left my knapsack and wheel and climbed up the rocky side of that hill to get a better view, when behold, there was the Laramie road, just over the hill about a mile away. We had a hard job to get our machines over, but were soon on our way, spinning over a fine mountain road that remained good for fifty miles to Laramie, furnishing some of the finest coasting I ever had. This road for many miles was probably 8,000 feet above the sea, so that this elevation had the effect to dwarf the mountains that rose only a little higher. In fact, it is generally remarked by travelers that the Rocky Mountain scenery west of Cheyenne is very tame. Many of the hills are perfectly level on top, looking at them against the horizon, and the sides slant off, the angles being as sharp and clean cut as if the hills were built by hand.

Just before reaching Laramie we noticed, off to the east on the plains, another Garden of the Gods, that far exceeds in every way the one near Manitou. It was with regret that I could only look at it from a distance of two miles or more, but the perpendicular position, the height, and the curious shape of the roads, standing up out of the level plains, was certainly very interesting.

Arriving at Laramie I inquired of the first man I met, who happened to be a good-natured Dutchman, where a certain friend of mine lived. “I don’t know,” he said, “but Johnny Wilson is the one you want to see. I will go find him for you. Any one coming so far as Conneckticut must be taken care of. Wilson knows the whole beezness,” and he ran into his store, seized his coat and escorted us up the main street of Laramie, calling out to every one he knew, “These two fellows came from Conneckticut on a bicycle,” and then he would haw-haw and laugh as if he had secured the greatest prize in the country. In vain I told him I wanted to find my friends before dark, but “Mr. Wilson is the one to take care of you. He knows the whole beezness.” We stopped on the corner to find Wilson, who, it will be surmised, is a wheelman, and men and boys, old and young, ran to that corner as if there was a fire, and in less time than it takes to write it, the sidewalk was blocked and the crowd extended out into the street. Really, Laramie was more excited at the arrival of two tired wheelmen than any place through which I have yet passed. The next morning we left the line of the Union Pacific and followed the old emigrant trail across the plains. The country is the dryest, sandiest, and most barren looking of any I had yet seen. Hour after hour we rode over a treeless and grassless country that would have been less disappointing if it had been more level, for as we slowly reached the crest of one long, gentle swell, through the deep sand, another billow, higher still, came in sight, and when we had perhaps walked to the top of that, still another, just a little higher, appeared ahead. Then over a long, level space, and we came to a shallow basin, perhaps eight miles across, on the other side of which could be seen the slender thread of our future course. Then the same rolling country with not a ranch in sight for hours.

A HOTEL FOR TWO.—(Page 116.)

That day we passed but one stream of water, and what made our thirst more severe was a strong head wind that dried and parched our open mouths till the flesh almost cracked open. About two o’clock we got some milk at a ranch, but that only satisfied our hunger, it did not quench our thirst. All day long we expected to come in sight of the railroad again at the top of every long hill, but every time we were disappointed, and we were doomed not to see railroad or telegraph pole for two days longer.

About 7 o’clock that night we came in sight of a ranch, (ranches out here are all slab huts), but there was no one at home, so we laid down and rested, as the next ranch was eight or ten miles farther on, and it was no use thinking of reaching it that night. Still no one came, and about dark we began to investigate. Flour, sugar, lard, coffee, salt, baking powder, and other things were found in the cupboard, but not a thing cooked. Well, now, with all these things before them, two half-starved boys would not go to bed hungry, “you bet.”

Hasley started out with a tin pail to milk a cow, but the cattle ran off as wild as deers and he concluded they were “all steers, any how.” Plenty of whole coffee, but no coffee-mill. I was on the point of pounding up some of the kernels with a hammer when the coffee mill was found. The smell of boiling coffee soon put a keen edge upon our already ravenous appetite, but what could we cook besides? Griddlecakes! Somehow I remembered lard was sometimes put into griddlecakes to make them short, and in a jiffy I was trying to mix three tablespoonfuls of lard into two quarts of flour with a spoon, but the ingredients would not mix well so I used my hands, forgetting that I had just used a greasy rag with which to clean the lantern globe, and that some of the thick coat of soot might have remained on my hands. Then two tablespoonfuls of Dr. Price’s baking powder was sprinkled in, and the whole wet up with water, but I must confess it was very lumpy. But if those griddlecakes, covered thick with sugar, didn’t taste good! They were light and tender, and after a few trials I could turn one, the size of a dinner plate, over without a break.

Beds of hay and plenty of blankets made us comfortable for the night, and we did not lie awake listening for the folks to come home either. Some more griddlecakes and coffee for breakfast, a card, telling who we were and where we were going, and asking them to write, was left on the table, and, man like, we left the log hut that had given us such a kind shelter, without washing up the dishes.

That forenoon, we traveled over the same desolate dry country, and by one o’clock saw no signs of getting anything to eat, when suddenly we came to the edge of a high bluff, and below was a sparkling stream of cold water and several houses, a most beautiful looking spot to us. We were soon eating heartily at a ranchman’s well-set table, and he not only would take no pay, but urged us to stay longer. That afternoon we overtook and passed an emigrant train of six or eight teams, but the usual head wind prevented us from leaving them very far behind, and it was not unpleasant having them so near.

Through Colorado, we saw plenty of harmless snakes by the roadside, and would occasionally stop and kill one to add variety to the trip, but for several days we had seen none of any kind. During the afternoon I was pushing my machine along in the sand rut, leaning my arm on the saddle, and had been trudging along with my head bent down against the gale for some time, when about three feet in front of the wheel I saw a rattlesnake wriggling slowly across the road. He stopped and so did I. The reptile turned his head toward us, ran out his tongue and crept along into the sage brush with his tail sticking up, and disappeared. For a long while after that, I saw a snake behind every bush, and never turned out into the sage brush to avoid the sand again as I had often done before. Thin stockings are not the most effective armor in which to attack one of these snakes, and since I have always allowed them to go in peace. There are plenty of dead ones along the road too, and for a few seconds, when they are curled up naturally, there is as much “business” in a dead snake as a live one. It works upon the nerves in the same powerful way.

A RATTLESNAKE DISPUTES THE WAY.—(Page 118.)

We met another emigrant with a very sick boy in his wagon, and the anxiety was plainly depicted on the father’s face when we told him the nearest ranch was about ten miles back, and no one knew whether they had any kind of medicine there or not. I never once thought of being ill myself off there, but fully realized the danger of a bite from a rattlesnake so far from any medical help.

That night we found good accommodations, and the next forenoon came in sight of the railroad once more, and crossed the bridge over the Platte River on the ties to Fort Fred Steele.

There was one thought that was uppermost in my mind, during this tramp of three days, and 110 miles, across the plains from Laramie to Rawlins, and that was the utter insignificance of a human being in such a place. One crossing these plains in the cars is too closely connected, in his immediate surroundings, with the improvements of modern civilization, to fully realize the utter helplessness of a person left to his own resources on these deserts. The worldly possessions of one going afoot across these plains, no matter how rich and extensive those possessions are, dwindle into mere worthlessness. All the gold in the world would not purchase him a drop of water. His brain, no matter how active or ingenious, cannot devise anything to satisfy his cravings of hunger. There is absolutely nothing to eat. Emigrants, to be sure, start across prepared with a good supply of food and water; but let one go, as we did, without the slightest preparation in that line—for we supposed there were small places every few miles, whereas there were only two ranches together at one place, and the others averaged ten miles apart—and he will soon realize that the only thing in this world that is of any real value to him, is good muscle and a strong will to back it up. Nothing else is of the slightest account to him, and nothing he can do will give him a mouthful of food or a drop of water, if he has not the strength to go where food and water are. Of course every one has to do that as a general thing, but here it is a question of hours of hard traveling over a desert without any sort of relief till the end. Although we did not suffer for food or water to any great extent, yet I never before fully realized the helplessness of a human being when suddenly cast upon his own resources in such a place.

There is another thing that I begin to realize, but I never expect to be able to fully grasp it, and that is the size of this country. Such a trip, although it is only as yet through a very small portion of the country, helps one to faintly comprehend the Infinite. Niagara gives one an idea of the immense power of nature in motion; here one can comprehend the vastness of nature in repose. In either place the same feeling of awe and reverence comes over one, and his own insignificance stands out very prominently.

The last ten miles to Rawlins was the most discouraging of any since leaving Laramie. The road was aggravatingly level, smooth, and hard, and ran close by the railroad, but those regular trade-winds that we had faced for the last three days prevented any riding. After a while we came to a section-house, and remained there two or three hours, till the wind died down at sunset, and then we easily pushed on to Rawlins. The only bright spot in that day’s experience occurred just before reaching Fort Fred Steele. I came upon a pasteboard box, about the size and shape of those used for expressing suits of clothes, lying in the road. A wagon wheel had crushed one corner, but inside, what a sight for hungry wheelmen! Nicely packed in rows were two dozen fresh, even warm doughnuts, all frosted with sugar, and four dozen cookies, looking equally tempting. Then did we not go down by the river where water was plenty and have a feast! What we could not hold the knapsack did, and not a crumb was wasted. We felt sorry for the ranchman who probably lost his stock of pastry on his way home, but our sorrow did not seriously affect our appetites.

Distance on the wheel, 2,467 miles.

Chapter XIII.

Among the Mormons.

Seven cents a mile is the passenger rate upon the Union Pacific Railroad west of Cheyenne. To one accustomed to the almost uniform rate of two cents a mile on Eastern roads this at first seems high, but there are many things that the Eastern roads do not have to contend with that are sources of great expense to the Union Pacific. Water, for instance, is a large item. Trains of low box cars filled with water are almost as common on this road as gravel trains on a newly constructed one. Every eight or ten miles are section-houses for the accommodation of trackmen, and each one of these places has to be furnished with a large cistern filled with water, and this water is often brought by these trains of water cars from a distance of a hundred miles or more. Then there must be water tanks for filling the engines at certain distances, and much of this water is also brought from distant rivers. Many persons pass over the thousand miles of this road and the cost of distributing the necessary amount of water along its line never enters their thoughts, but one who wheels over hundreds of miles of this waterless country, and goes with parched tongue, mouth, and throat for hours, fully realizes the absolute necessity of having water distributed along the line of the road at whatever cost.

The wages of the employees, from the common laborer up, is considerably higher than in the East—one deserves more for living out in such a barren country—so that the more one learns of the cost of running the road the less he grumbles at the high passenger fare.

But it may be asked what has a touring bicyclist to do with the railroad, and why should he feel less or more like grumbling? It is just here. We had ridden three or four days against a wind so strong that it would not allow riding much of the time even on level ground, and to keep up this discouragingly hard work for the sake simply of riding the whole distance, was not the object of the trip. We could already realize the hardships and privations of the early settlers who crossed these same plains years ago, fighting Indians the whole time. Of that part we, of course, knew nothing, but our experience was sufficient. I do not regret it, but it is like putting one’s head under water the first time to feel that queer sensation. It is unnecessary, though, to keep the head under for an hour or two to fully realize the feeling, so we thought about the plains, and took a freight at Rawlins.

There we found a wheelman, Mr. James Deitrick, chief train dispatcher on the Wyoming Division of the Union Pacific Railroad, whose kindness to us, especially in a pecuniary manner, will never be forgotten. We thought of him as the train slowly climbed the continental divide and went spinning down the other side, over the same monotonous stretch of sand and sage brush. A ride of seventy-five miles brought us to Green River at eleven o’clock at night. We knew nothing of the town, excepting that we wanted to find some other place to stay than at the $4 a day hotel, and were inquiring at a saloon (there were plenty of those open), when a little short man said: “Come over and stay with me. You are welcome to the best I have.” This open-hearted fellow proved to be Frank H. Van Meer Beke, an older brother of the plucky young wheelman who started last March from New York for San Francisco via New Orleans and New Mexico. Frank was formerly a member of the Kings County Bicycle Club of Brooklyn, N. Y., and we were his welcome visitors for two days longer. If his brother Fred is anything like him he is a royal good fellow.

Green River is a place of a few hundred inhabitants, without a shade tree or a patch of green grass in the whole town. During the day we took a swim in the cold waters of the river, the first stream we had seen that empties into the Pacific Ocean, and climbed some of the high rocks in the vicinity, and from their very summits we picked out the fossil remains of many a tiny little fish that had been imbedded there ages ago, when perhaps the only dry land on the face of the earth was in the Adirondacks, Canada, and in the western part of our own State of Connecticut. In the evening (Sunday evening, July 4th) stores were open, saloons in full blast, and fireworks, cannons, and bonfires added to the turmoil. They fired Roman candles into each other’s faces without the slightest warning, and the back of my shirt shows the effect of one of the bolts that scorched the skin through the flannel.

Monday our host took our machines to pieces and cleaned them thoroughly, for he was perfectly at home at that work, having had charge of a riding rink in Brooklyn, and Tuesday morning at 4 o’clock found us on our way to Evanston. We started early to avoid as much as possible the discouraging trade winds, and after crossing the river on the ties of the railroad bridge we climbed a long hill, and got a most extended view of just the same sand and sage brush. At noon, to get out of the terribly hot sun, we crawled down under a railroad bridge and ate our luncheon. We were beginning to learn to carry food along with us.

But thirty miles of sand, railroad ties, and that blazing sun drove us into another freight train, and Wednesday morning we left Evanston and before noon were riding leisurely down Echo Cañon on our bicycles. I did not regret then that I was traveling on my wheel, for the roads were good and we stopped and enjoyed the grand scenery to our heart’s content. A train went whizzing by, and I saw passengers quickly calling each other’s attention to a particularly interesting place in the cañon. With them it was simply a glance, and they were gone; with us, an abundance of time to look as long as we liked. The finest view of the best part of the cañon is to be had, I think, only from the highway. Looking up the cañon, the rocks, four or five hundred feet high projecting out into it, have very much the appearance of the bows of so many immense ocean steamers lying side by side. These rocks are a conglomerated mixture of sand, gravel, stones, and rocks thrown together promiscuously and hardened by some process of nature into one solid mass of rock again. On the outside the whole body of rocks is colored red by some action of the atmosphere, I think, but underneath they show their natural color, that of light sandstone.

Coming down the cañon we found an overall jacket lying in the road, pretty soon we came to the tailboard of a wagon, then a ball of tobacco twine, soon after a bottle (how our mouths watered) of varnish (then they did not). Then more twine and a bunch of ropes and a bag and then more twine. For five miles we could see the trail in the road where this twine had been dragged along, and whenever it happened to catch on a bush or stone the twine would be strung along for a quarter of a mile or so. A small feed box came next and finally a good horse collar. It still remains a mystery to whom all these things belonged, and the reader must conjecture for himself. We really enjoyed wondering what we should find next.

Gophers seem to take the place of prairie dogs in the high altitudes. They are somewhat smaller, but have very much the same ways of living and are more tame. One of the little fellows stopped in front of his hole one day, within a few feet of me, sat up and ate some sage leaves, came up and sniffed at the bicycle, and, indeed, seemed very friendly. I really wanted to get hold of and squeeze him.

Traveling alone so much has made me feel very friendly toward the lower animals. I have been as much inclined to stop and talk to a horse or a little pig as to a person, and many times I longed to have the different ones wait till I could get hold of and caress them. The farther I travel the more this feeling grows on me, but there is still one animal that I have not yet learned to love or to want to squeeze, and that is a rattlesnake. But I can see I am growing in grace in that respect also. Now, when I see a snake, I don’t run and jump on it, as I used to at home. The defenseless condition of my legs may have had something to do with this change of heart, but really they are the only living things that have annoyed me, thus far.

At Echo we found we were as near Salt Lake City as we should be at Ogden, forty miles further along on the line of the Union Pacific, so we started in a southerly direction over excellent roads, up the beautiful Weber Valley, and were soon eating supper at a comfortable farm-house, where everything was as homelike and pleasant as in any New England home. Desiring information, I said: “I wonder if any of those people in large canvas covered wagons we have been meeting are Mormons?” “O, yes,” the farmer’s wife replied quickly, “there are lots of them around here. They go out on fishing excursions this time of the year a great deal. What do you Eastern people think of the Mormons, anyway? Do you think we have horns?” You can imagine my surprise, but the farmer and his wife, too, joined in and talked so freely and pleasantly on the subject that I soon asked questions as freely as they answered them. “Yes,” the farmer said, “I have been married twenty-three years and have never had more than the one wife. I may sometime take another, but I don’t see my way clear to do so yet. A few Mormons around here have more than one wife, but the elections show that only one in eight throughout the whole territory are polygamists. The church does not oblige us to take more than one wife any more than it does to pay one-tenth of what we raise at tilling, and there are lots of Mormons who never do either, but if we do our whole duty we should do both. It is not enough for the Government to oblige us to give up wives we have loved and had children by, but now they are trying to pass a law to disfranchise us if we will not swear we will give up our religion. Juries are packed and we are convicted without justice. We never will give up our religion. We must submit for a while, but the time will come when we shall be delivered from our persecutors.”

This and much more was said, and it all gave me the impression that if only one-eighth of the Mormons were polygamists, the extent of the blot upon the good name of the country had been greatly over-estimated, for these people were really as kind and Christ-like as any I have met in my travels. But this was one side of the question.

During the day we climbed over the Wasatch Mountains, and came down through Parley’s Cañon into Salt Lake Valley. Although the sides of this cañon are not as precipitous as some, yet the rocks go boldly up into the air till their tops are covered with snow. The coasting down this cañon would have been very good, but the great number of team-wagons and Mormon camping parties made dismounts frequent and unpleasant. Just before reaching Salt Lake City, which lies to the northwest of the mouth of this cañon, we hid behind some bushes and took a most refreshing bath in one of the irrigating ditches, for the roads were very dusty all day.

Riding into the city about six o’clock, we had passed up Main street but a little way when, by chance, we met the secretary of the bicycle club. Before we had reached the hotel another member came tearing up the street after us, and in less than fifteen minutes ten or twelve wheelmen came into the hotel to welcome us, all this, too, without a minute’s warning from us, or without our knowing a single person in the city by name. A few days before starting, in the spring, I clipped from the L. A. W. Bulletin what few names of wheelmen I could find, and thus, in almost every city, I knew some wheelman by name; but here were only four or five League members and we knew no one, but that made no difference. They heard we were from the East and they were our friends, because we were wheelmen. Mr. A. C. Brixen, proprietor of the Valley House, where we stopped, is a wheelman, and so are several of his boarders, and although at Buffalo, Denver, and many other places I have been most cordially received, the Salt Lake City wheelmen outdid all other wheelmen in their spontaneous outburst of welcome.

Shortly after supper, the sound of a brass band playing in front of the hotel, made me wonder, as I sat in my room trying to get cool: Could it be those enthusiastic fellows had gone so far as to give us a serenade? Just then the music stopped and a knock at the door convinced me. Surely they wanted me to come out and say something, I thought; but what could I say? I had never made a speech in my life, and the very idea of doing so made me blush there in the dark in my room. But I must go out and say something to the crowd, and do the best I could. So I did; I went out trembling. The music came from some theater band out in the street in an omnibus, and just then they drove on to the next hotel, to advertise simply themselves, not me. And the expected crowd of enthusiastic admirers consisted of two men and a boy, sitting under the trees with their feet cocked up, reading, unconcernedly. I did not tremble any more. The knocker was Mr. C. E. Johnson, who wanted us to take a ride about the city in the morning with him. We did, and of him I asked more questions. “Why yes, every member of the club is a Mormon. There is only one who has two wives, and since he was fined he has only lived with one. It amuses us to see Eastern tourists come here, as many of them do, and appear afraid to ask us questions. We are glad to answer all inquiries, and believe Eastern people would not be so prejudiced against us if they knew us better,”—and much more.

The members of the club, in intelligence, personal habits, and gentlemanly conduct, will compare very favorably with any Eastern club, and they, from the first, showed such a liking for us, which we could not help but reciprocate, that I left them with more of a feeling of sadness than I have ever experienced in parting from new friends,—and for this reason: These young men who were so full of kindness to us believe in a religion that the government is totally opposed to, and which it is determined to suppress, that is, the polygamous part of it. In case of trouble, and I am afraid from what little I was able to find out in regard to the situation that there will be trouble; in that case these young wheelmen will stand up for their religion, a religion they as honestly believe in as any Eastern wheelmen do in theirs.

Then I talked a few minutes with the editor of the Tribune. “The statement,” said he, “that only one-eighth of Mormons are polygamists is misleading, certainly. The number of Mormons disqualified from voting for practicing polygamy may have been one-eighth of the whole population, but that includes every man, woman, and child, Gentiles and all. Now Gentiles and women and children are not polygamists; women and children cannot be in the very nature of the case. So that the number of Mormons, capable of being polygamists, that practice it to-day, is nearer one-half than one-eighth. As for juries being packed, the same course is being pursued here as in all courts. A man disbelieving in capital punishment cannot sit in a murder trial, for he would not convict on evidence; just so with a Mormon, he would not convict another Mormon of polygamy. The only persecution practiced is by United States deputies enforcing a United States law. The troops are quartered here in the city because there has been, and is still, need of them to preserve the peace.”

I feel that what I have learned of the trouble here is only superficial, for a two days’ stop, with much of my time otherwise occupied, is not a sufficient time to look up the subject; but one thing seems certain, it will be a very long and a very hard struggle, but the conclusion is foregone. Polygamy must go. Yesterday afternoon we went bathing in Salt Lake; as far as the view is concerned, it is like bathing in the ocean, you cannot see across the lake. It is only three or four years since the people of the city have availed themselves of the benefits of their salt water to any great extent, but now, cheap excursions run out to the lake, twenty miles distant, and returning trains frequently bring back 2,000 passengers. Yes, it is genuine salt water bathing with a vengeance, for you can’t swim in it. It is almost like trying to swim in thin mud, you can’t get along any. The water is so heavy it is almost impossible to dive to any depth, and then you bob up out of the water feet first, just like a cork. It must be really dangerous to dive from any height. Sink! You can’t sink if you try. You can walk clear across the lake and not go under; lie flat on your back with your hands under your head for a pillow, and one who has never been in any water, salt or fresh, could lie there all day without any trouble. Turn over and throw your arms out like a spread eagle, and it is just the same, or sit straight up, tailor fashion, and still you are high above the water; that is, high enough not to feel any nervousness about getting strangled. I never experienced such a pleasant sensation and never enjoyed bathing more, unless it was high surf bathing, and here that is impossible, for no wind, however strong, could raise very high waves on this genuinely heavy sea. The water was full of men, women, and children, all floating around, none swimming, some sitting bolt upright, others lying around in any position that was agreeable, and all unconcerned as to whether there was three or thirty feet of water under them.

I went out upon the beach to sit in the sun, to dry off, but soon looked like a miller; hair, neck, face, and hands, were covered with salt, and a bath with fresh water was of course necessary. This water in your mouth or up your nose is very disagreeable; in your eyes, painful; and to be strangled with it, simply terrible. Eyesight has been permanently injured by people opening their eyes under this water. I am told that it contains nearly three times as much salt as ordinary salt water, and the numerous streams of fresh water which empty into it, have no effect on its saline strength. Without any visible outlet, the only change noticeable is a slight rise in the water level.

Of course we had to visit the Tabernacle, which comfortably seats over ten thousand people, and when we were told the great organ was brought across the plains on ox-teams, over the same route we had just passed, a chord of sympathy seemed to vibrate between the organ and us. The Temple, which was commenced in 1853, and is to be finished in seven years, making the allotted forty years that must be consumed in its construction, is still nothing but four bare walls, nine feet thick and 100 feet high.

Distance traveled with the wheel, 2,625 miles.

Chapter XIV.

At the Big Trees.

With a full moon we had planned to travel most of the way across the alkali and sandy deserts of Nevada at night, and were on the point of leaving Salt Lake City to do so when the Grand Army of the Republic excursion tickets were issued, enabling anyone to go from there to San Francisco, up to Portland, Oregon, by water and return to Salt Lake via the Oregon Short Line. Returning by this route would take us within easy wheeling distance of Yellowstone Park, and with that inducement, in addition to being taken across Nevada and over the Sierra Nevada Mountains at half rates, we were not long in deciding to take the cars. But now the first financial difficulty stared us in the face. I had no trouble in Denver in getting identified, but, as I said, we knew no one and no one knew us in Salt Lake City. Letters, league ticket, and other papers were presented at the bank, but nothing would prevail on the officials to give us a penny. The only thing to do was to telegraph home, and that would probably delay us several days, and, with that discouraging alternative in view, we told our story to Mr. F. G. Brooks, a member of the bicycle club. “Wait till I see what father says,” said he, and he carried the worthless New York drafts back to the desk. The elder F. G. Brooks hesitated a moment, and then wrote his name across the back of those drafts, and we went to the bank and received $150 in gold. And the old gentleman that did that kind act was a Mormon, through and through. Surely I had reason to like the Mormons, in every respect but their religion.

Thus far, in traveling twenty-six hundred miles or more over clay ruts and mountain roads, I had taken only two tumbles, and was beginning to think there was no such thing as headers when, in gliding serenely across the street, in front of the Utah Central Depot at Salt Lake City, I rode into a ditch, concealed with fine sand, and instantly—that word makes the time altogether too long—my nose and chin were scraping along on the hard gravel. I never took such a tumble. It was like a flash. And the knapsack, as usual, unkindly butted me on the back of the head as the ground suddenly brought the trip to a close. With the blood starting from both nose and chin, and a loosened handle bar, that at first sent a cold chill all through me with the impression that it was broken, and with a knee so badly sprained that I could only limp into the cars, these things, altogether, served to remind me that carelessness and ’cycling are incompatible.

On the way to Ogden we saw several headers at work on the wheat fields, and these served to awaken me from the dazed condition in which the only kind of a header I had ever known had put me. The field headers are mowing machines that go along in front of the horses instead of behind them, as is usual with mowing machines in the East, and as it cuts the wheat down—it simply cuts off the tops or heads of the wheat, hence the name header—the wheat falls on to a long cloth roller that revolves at right angles to the direction the machine is going. A large box wagon is driven along at the left of the header and the wheat is carried up on this cloth roller and loaded into this wagon. When full another takes its place while the first wagon is being unloaded at the stack.

The Wasatch Mountains, a range that extends from below Salt Lake City to many miles above Ogden, are not dwarfed, as is the case with so many other ranges of mountains, by foot hills at their base, but they stand out bold and black, excepting where covered with snow, and are the most impressive of any mountains I have yet seen. At Ogden, through passengers are delayed two hours between the arrival of the Union Pacific and the departure of the Central Pacific trains. Half of this time is a needless delay, for the mail, baggage and express matter was all transferred long before the train left, but this is only a sample of the manner in which both roads are run.

The question of fast time is never considered in their operation. A through Eastern fruit train now makes decidedly better time than the regular passenger trains; and freight trains, as a rule, run faster between stations than passenger trains. The time tables seem to be made with the sole object of helping delayed trains get through on time, no matter how slow that time is. One train we were on was an hour and a half late at midnight, but on time before 5 o’clock the next morning, and we did not run so fast but that passengers could sleep as usual. There is talk of a new fast train being put on between Omaha and San Francisco that will shorten the time perhaps a day, but in the East even that train would not be considered anything very fast. Then the Central Pacific trains are not only run slow but sure, sure that everything is all right before they start. A brakeman comes through from the front end of the train and calls for every one’s ticket, looks at the ticket and hands it back. Pretty soon a man in uniform, a little higher up than the brakeman, but not so high as the conductor, comes along through the train from the rear end, examines carefully all the tickets, reads all the printed matter on them, punches them, and hands them back, after perhaps taking a passenger out of the cars to verify his statement in regard to an extra hole in his ticket made by some other official. Then after the tickets have been examined from the front to the rear, and scrutinized and punched from the rear end to the front end of the train, even before the train had started, to make the thing more binding the conductor himself comes through, punches all the tickets, and gives each passenger a plain piece of colored pasteboard without so much as a table of distances printed on it, a convenience many times to passengers, and which is so rotten that it breaks and falls to pieces at the least touch. Let a passenger accidentally destroy one of these valuable pieces of plain rotten pasteboard during his rolling and tumbling in his seat at night and he is looked upon by the conductor as a criminal for wantonly destroying so much valuable property, and financially crippling the railroad company in consequence, and these priceless pieces of paper are carefully gathered up at the end of each division of the road by the economical conductors, who, at night, shake and arouse every passenger who has so much of this valuable property of the company’s concealed about his person. Most of the postal, express, and baggage cars used here are now built without doors at the ends. Perhaps the numerous train robberies have caused this innovation.