nd substantial. The place is already
provided with schools, hotels, banks, and a newspaper. The Railway
Company have some good substantial shops here, built of stone; and
they have also provided a very commodious hospital for the use of
their employes when injured or sick--an example that might be followed
with advantage in places of even greater importance.

After a stoppage of about half an hour, we were again careering
up-hill past Fort Saunders and the Red Buttes, the latter so-called
from the bold red sandstone bluffs, in some places a thousand feet
high, which bound the track on our right. Then still up-hill to
Harney, beyond which we cross Dale Creek Bridge--a wonderful
structure, 650 feet long and 126 feet high, spanning the creek from
bluff to bluff. Looking down through the interstices of the wooden
road, what a distance the thread of water in the hollow seemed to be
below us!

At Sherman, some two hours from Laramie, we arrived at the Summit of
the Rocky Mountain ridge, where we reached the altitude of about 8400
feet above the sea-level. Of course it was very cold, hill and dale
being covered with snow as far as the eye could reach. Now we rush
rapidly down-hill, the brakes screwed tightly down, the cars whizzing
round the curves, and making the snow fly past in clouds. We have now
crossed the backbone of the continent, and are speeding on towards the
settled and populous country in the East.

At Cheyenne, we have another stoppage for refreshment. This is one of
the cities with which our guidebook writer falls into ecstasies. It is
"The Magic City of the Plains"--a place of which it "requires neither
a prophet nor the son of a prophet to enumerate its resources or
predict its future!" Yet Cheyenne is already a place of importance,
and likely to become still more so,--being situated at the junction
with the line to Denver, which runs along the rich and lovely valley
of the Colorado. Its population of 8000 seems very large for a place
that so short a time ago was merely the haunt of Red Indians. Already
it has manufactures, warehouses, wharves, and stores of considerable
magnitude; with all the usual appurtenances of a place of traffic and
business.

Before leaving Cheyenne, I invested in some hung buffalo steak for
consumption at intervals between meals. It is rather tough and
salt,--something like Hamburg beef; but seasoned with hunger, and with
the appetite sharpened by the cold and frost of these high