funnel, a hatch with its cover and combings, a pilothouse and a bowsprit, with a fragment of the jibboom. Everything was made out with such mimetic distinctness that we seemed to be looking at some petrifaction where a ship, suddenly transformed to basalt, was foundering in a sea of sandstone.

stone.

I have mentioned only the two most important of many remarkable uplifts, simulating every variety of artificial object that is conceivable of execution in The human face and figure seemed among Nature's most favorite subjects for burlesque. In all the wonderful suggestions of Doré's "Wandering Jew," there is nothing to compare with the frightful stone shapes and faces which occur on this plateau. On a bright sunny day like the one we spent in crossing it, the sensation of the traveller resembles a pleasant nightmare; he feels that if he stayed a night in this wilderness of naked blocks, he would depart mad. The tract is landscape gone demoniacal. Yet even this is weak art compared with the sculptures of trap and sandstone further on toward Salt Lake.

Ten miles of gradual climbing brought us out of this plateau to another region of rolling ridges, scantily timbered with cedar, and bearing a good crop of gramma grass. We found an occasional rivulet in the valleys, and strips of positive green along its course. Coming out of a quarry whose boundaries comprised a circuit of twenty miles, and whose blocks were hewn large enough to make a cathedral out of each cube, we breathed freer, and welcomed the sight of verdure like a balm. I had never understood before the epic sublimity of that expression, "They shall pray that the mountains may fall on them," nor had I appreciated the horror of that Arabian Nights'

talisman which enabled evil magicians to keep their victims under the granite floor of the world. There was not even the piteous relief of moss or lichen, no sprig of wormwood or cedar, no green lamina of any kind, on all those tremendous buttresses, and slabs, and effigies. The slabs might have been hot tiles on the roof of some impenetrable Dantesque hell; the buttresses waited for another story to the prison which should build itself to heaven; the effigies were devil-sentries guarding the ramparts. No picture can be on a scale sufficiently large to give any idea of the effect produced by these formations on an eye-witness. Almost everybody of Oriental propensities has formed to himself some notion of the way Domdaniel, Vathek, and Aladdin caverns might be expected to look. But if any such person, of however vivid fancy, will pass from the head of the Cache la Poudre to Virginia Dale, without confessing that his most ambitious ideals have been utterly surpassed, and his mind fairly confounded, by the hard realities of trap and sandstone, I will be sure that I have not been modest in estimating other men's imagination by my own.

Between a series of perpendicular sandstone uplifts from two to five hundred feet high, and descending again to another green valley level, we reached Virginia Dale about noon. We had grown so fascinated with the scenery since daybreak that we resolved to leave the stage, and stop over till the next day. I do not know whether I have heretofore more than inferentially mentioned how great a convenience we found the Overland Company's license, always granted their travellers, to lie by whenever and as long as we pleased, without invalidating the contract for through passage.

We had only to mark on our large baggage the address in Salt Lake City where it should be left to await us, and take our minor traps, such as guns, artists' material, blankets, and small stores, into camp or ranch with us till we resumed our route. By stopping at Virginia Dale, we should give the remaining two of our party a chance to catch up with us, and have a better opportunity for sidewise explorations than might again be afforded us in the heart of the Rocky Mountain system.

The Virginia Dale Station is 752 miles from Atchison, and about 1300 from San Francisco. It is situ ated in a continuation of that lofty furrow of the range known as the Cheyenne Pass. A log-ranch and stables constitute the entire station. Beyond the buildings southerly, a mountain stream winds into a dense forest. Across the Overland trail, north of the house, rises a congeries of round gray mountains fifteen hundred feet in average height from the trail level, packed together in such close order that they resembled a school of porpoises coming up to breathe. Just below the house to the eastward, a little rivulet sang its way round coquettish curves to the large trout-stream in the far jungle, through a meadow golden green in patches where the water eddied back and the sun fell directly. We were told that trout swarmed within five miles of us; but there was not force enough at the station to spare us guides or escort, and we had moreover but little desire to catch fish when our finest crops of literary and artistic hay ought to be making. We were indebted for an unusually comfortable reception at Virginia Dale (not to speak here of other places) to the kind thoughtfulness of Mr. Otis, the Overland Road super

intendent. We called on him at Denver with letters from his brother, the well known artist, author, and physician, our friend Doctor Fessenden N. Otis of New York; found him absent on the line, left the notes for him, and never afterwards were fortunate enough to meet him personally. Just as we resumed our route from Denver, a very pleasant letter of information and guidance was put into our hands; and we were not only instructed how to find the best things, but enabled to enjoy them comfortably by still another letter from Mr. Otis, addressed to all the employees of the road, enjoining them to grant us every facility for stopping to sketch or geologize which did not involve exorbitant delay of the mail, and to treat us, in every respect of fare and accommodations, as his personal friends. This courtesy on his part was so liberal and hearty, and showed such warm appreciation of our objects, that we were more surprised than we need to have been after knowing another member of his family.

At Virginia Dale we drew this kindly document for the first time, and presented it at the stationkeeper, who instantly surrendered us the best bed he had in the house, with the exception of his own, and assured us we might have had that if his wife were not then sick on it with a violent intermittent fever. I could not imagine where a person could contract such a disease in this region, and found that it belonged to those rare cases which get settled in some one of the Western States too deeply to be cured at once by the Rocky Mountains. Poor little wife! What a terrible distance from everything to have chills and fever! I caught a single glimpse of the patient as her husband passed into the sick-room,

and saw, through all the expression of suffering which her face wore, a delicate, refined prettiness most unexpected in this savage wilderness. Love, however, seemed to make that tract bloom in the teeth of ague. I never saw a man kinder to his wife than the station-keeper. He was obliged, in her default, to manage every detail of housekeeping; and conjugal fidelity raised him to the level of the occasion. I do not believe the skillfullest artist could scour a pan to begin with that unaccustomed male who learned it yesterday for his wife's sake. His success in the initial batch of tea-biscuit I regard explicable on the ground of inspiration. Confiding and clinging to the last, like all our sex, he took in the dough to be inspected by the invalid, who entertained an indulgent spirit toward it, and relieved him from apprehensions. He was not afraid of it any more, but put it in the oven, and stayed by it with no one else near him, till it came out a triumphant straw-color, and tasted less like equal quantities of lard and potash than any Rocky Mountain tea-cake which I ever approached with a consciousness of my imminent peril. But to see the station-keeper in his great dish-washing act was to witness the favorite spectacle of the gods,a good man struggling under difficulties. A trifle redder in the face, but feeling morally developed, he came out of Destiny and the Dish-kettle without a nick in any of his crockery, left no grease-streaks when he wiped the plates, and lived fully up to his privileges in the fidelity with which he washed out the dish-cloth.

Beside this excellent man and his wife, there lived in the house a pair of stable-helpers and such drivers as stopped there transiently during off-hours. With