or more in height, and in all running to a height of at least a hundred feet. In still other places the uplifts have split perpendicularly, leaving fragments of a flat rectangular form, standing like the rugged tomb-stones of a giant's burial-ground, to the height of from twenty to a hundred feet.

As we penetrated further into this tract, the architectural appearances became so consistent, that one's fancy was compelled to construct a theory for itself, and did it very rationally to the effect that we were travelling through a deserted city of the conquered Titans. Those colossal square inclosures were the wine cellars and treasure-vaults of palaces thousands of feet high. In those acres of basement what vast wassail may have been held on the return of the masters from hunting megatheria, fishing for icthyosauri, or playing quoits with cross-slices off a volcano! That mighty cube of black fire-rock, which weighs a thousand tons, was but one of a single course of stones in the same rectangle, upon whose foundation the now down-tumbled house was built high as the eaves of a tall city house itself, but only at the bottom of a structure whose roof menaced the gods.

The ruined staircases to which I have referred, often stood alone in such relative position to the basement rectangles that it required no stretch of the imagination to conceive of them as the former access to the grand front entrance of the house- an appearance with which their dimensions were equally consistent. In several instances I noticed that the interior of the rectangles was paved in square blocks, with a regularity, which would lead any one ignorant of the scientific means to suppose that the area had been flagged by human labor, and presented the appearance of some

fortress court-yard. Nothing could be at once more characteristically sepulchral and Titanic than the spaces occupied by the tablets. Some of these were erect as I have described, but many lay on corner blocks, like the horizontal grave-stones of old-fashioned country church-yards. Here, stretched many a rood under the torrid sand, with prickly cactuses springing out of their brains, and wormwood out of their hearts, may lie the great warriors who fell on this same blasted heath in battle with Olympus. But they are no more silent than are the old lords of the palace who fell under the powdered ruins, the basement stones of which alone remain for witness, being lightened upon by Zeus Keraunios, and shot into the abyss, in the very ripeness of blasphemy, wassail, and defiance.

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However forced this fancy may appear to the cool reader, it irresistibly suggested itself on the spot. The shapes and sizes of all the rocks within view contributed such consistent aid to this idea, that I travelled with a sense of delightful awe, as if I were exploring the gigantic remains of some dead civilization,—a Layard of the Titans. It would hardly have surprised me to find a hierographical inscription cut upon some corner-stone in letters a cubit deep.

About one P. M. we caught sight of a silvery streak in a valley about fifteen hundred feet below our present terrace. This we soon found to be the North Platte River, whose mature stream we had left at Latham, and whose upper waters we were now about to cross at no great distance from their source. consulting a United States Survey map, it will be seen that this stream doubles on itself remarkably, rising just outside the southern wall of the mountain

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quadrilateral which incloses Laramie Plains, following the outer edge of the terraces which bound the level westerly, and reaching the Plains by an eastward return which brings it within a comparatively short distance northerly from the cradle where it sprung.

We now emerged from the gradually terraced dikes, and came to a place where the descent was so precipitous, that sitting on a coach-box one might well feel anxious about tumbling forward on the horses. Our road ran on bare cracked boulders of trap and altered sandstone; threaded black fissures; and slid, with the brake hard on, down slippery stone inclines, just over the edge of whose narrow shelf was a sheer precipice or overhanging wall of trachyte, two or three hundred feet high.

We marked the first appearance of the Platte, far to the south, in the fold of a system of round gray hills, which, as nearly as could be judged from their contour, belonged to that incoherent granite formation weathered into spherical forms, which I mentioned at Virginia Dale. The stream passed out of view to the northeastward, through a precipitous cañon of red sandstone, having frequent shelves and butments which projected several feet from the main wall, and averaging perhaps forty or fifty feet in height from the water-line. Its course traversed nearly the whole of our western horizon, being much of the way distinguishable from our elevation, by glimpses of silvery water or fringes of the always indicative cotton-wood. The round hills which close by at Virginia Dale had seemed, both in form and color, the convolutions of some petrified brain, now softened by distance, and having their gramma and sage-brush lighted by the intensest sun, looked like a

flock of Cyclop sheep, whose woolly backs were rounded for slumber as they lay down beside the still waters of the Platte. Each glimpse of those waters the sun was now turning into a pool of silver fire.

Just as we rounded a steep jutting bastion of trap, which threw us a little further towards the outer precipice, I turned away from the beautiful valley view to look upward at those grim crags and terraces, by whose staircase we were descending to the Platte. I had looked just in time, for my point of view was exactly right for the recognition of one of the greatest mimetic wonders I ever saw, even in this most Titanic and Demoniacal country.

The terrace of the Giants' Graveyard, now left behind about five hundred feet above us, was perceived to have an extension far to the southward and westward of the point where we came down from it, until, a mile in front of our present niche, it projected a bold promontory into the valley, beyond the face of the entire remaining precipice, and at least a hundred feet higher. The lower and much the larger part of this promontory was perpendicular, or overhanging; but the upper end of it, for three hundred feet, was weathered into a colossal sculpture, a head and bust of such striking sharpness and vigor, that it seemed almost as impossible that no human artist had had a hand in the work as it was inconceivable how he could have accomplished it.

Behind this promontory, up to the occiput of the sculptured head, ran the wall of a principal trap dike; and further behind, overtopping the wall in a series of ascending towers and bastions, rose a vast pile of the same tremendous cubes, which constituted

the foundations of the ruined palaces. It was an easy thing to imagine loopholes in that climbing city of strongholds; to see a spectral flag wave from the highest rampart; to wonder at the structure's grand, simple lines, as if we were criticising some splendid piece of military architecture; to delight in its idea as if Nature shared your humanity.

Braced against the westward wall of this Titanic fortress, and looking across the drowsy flock of hills shepherded by the silver crook of the Platte, due west across the green oasis which, on the river margin, hundreds of feet below, awaited us with trees, grass, springs, and dinner,— solemn, stern, and saturnine, looked forth the face of John Calvin.

If a sculptor had undertaken to copy in stone the best known likenesses of this noted theologian, the result could not have been a more striking portrait. Any person familiar with the picture, would most instantly have seen it in this head and bust. Even to the traditional Genevese cap, this was the theologian's second self. If Presbyterians ever adopt the usage of a Mecca, this is the site for that Mecca. Here sits the Prophet, bearing witness forever; and his darkened, painful face shows that the Natural Depravity whereof he testified in Geneva, has not gone out of fashion since he left that pulpit. Looking westward, round the globe, he sees plenty to derange his moral liver; and because those rocky lips have no voice to utter warning, he sends it across the valley in a form of stone. From the point where I stood, I could see hardly a place on head, cap, or face, which could have been bettered, as likeness, by a more elaborate bringing out of details. The simulation was perfect, and for nearly half a mile