d the Mississippi. You must not suppose that these mountains
are everywhere as low as here; far down south-west, in North Carolina,
there are summits more than six thousand feet high. Maize and fruit are
grown in the valleys, and there are fine forests of pines and foliage
trees. And there are places where you lose yourself in dense clumps of
rhododendrons and climbing plants. And there are wild recesses where men
never go, but where bears and wolves have their haunts among broken
branches and twigs, fallen trunks and moss-grown granite boulders, and
where nothing is changed since the time when the Indian tribes went on
the war-path. But where are you bound for?"

"I am going to Pittsburg to look for work, for I was a smith at home."

"Oh, Pittsburg! I was foreman in some steel works there for two years,
and I have never seen anything more wonderful. You know that this town
has sprung up out of the earth as if by magic. When petroleum springs
were discovered, it increased at double the rate, and now it is one of
the world's largest industrial towns, and, as regards iron and steel,
the first in America. Here materials are manufactured to the value of
more than nineteen million pounds annually. Almost inexhaustible
deposits of coal are found in the neighbourhood. More than twenty
railway lines converge to Pittsburg, which also has the advantage of
three navigable rivers, and a network of canals. And round about the
town are suburbs full of machine factories, steel works, and glass
works. The neighbourhood has a million of inhabitants, a third of them
foreigners, mostly Slavs, Italians, and Hungarians. You have a kind of
feeling of oppression when you see from a height this forest of reeking
factory chimneys, and when you think of the unfortunate men that slave
under this cloud of coal smoke. There is a hammering and beating
everywhere, and a rumble of trains rolling over the rails. Overheated
furnaces bubble and boil, and sparks fly out under the steam hammers. At
night you might think you were in the bottom of a volcano, where lava
boils under the ashes ready to roll out and destroy everything. A weird
reddish-yellow light flames forth from thousands of fires, lighting up
the under side of the thick smoke cloud. I am sorry for you if you are
going to Pittsburg. You had much better travel straight on to Chicago.
Not that Chicago is a paradise, but there are better openings there, and
you will be nearer the great West with