of boats. I should
not have known that I was upon a deep and rapid river, but for the
huge flat-bottomed boats that I saw lying frozen in along the banks.
It was easy to mistake the enormous breadth of ice for a wide field
covered with snow. As we proceeded across we met numbers of sledges,
coaches, and omnibuses driving over the ice along a track made in the
deep snow not far from our bridge.

[Illustration: _'Westward by Rail.' Longmans._ 1871.]

After passing through Council Bluffs, we soon lost sight of the town
and its suburbs, and were again in the country. But how different the
prospect from the car window, compared with the bare and unsettled
prairies which we had traversed for so many hundred miles west of
Omaha! Now, thick woods extend on both sides of the track, with an
occasional cleared space for a township, where we stop to take up and
set down passengers. But I shall not proceed further with my
description of winter scenery as viewed from a passing railway train.
Indeed, I fear that my descriptions heretofore, though rapid, must be
felt somewhat monotonous, for which I crave the reader's forgiveness.

I spent my fifth night in the train pretty comfortably, having
contrived to makeup a tolerable berth. Shortly after I awoke, we
crossed the Mississippi on a splendid bridge at Fulton. What a noble
river it is! Here, where it must be fifteen hundred miles from its
mouth, it seemed to me not less than a mile across. Like the Missouri,
however, it is now completely frozen over and covered with thick snow.

We are again passing through a prairie country, the fertile land of
upper Illinois, all well settled and cultivated. We pass a succession
of fine farms and farmsteads. The fields are divided by rail fences;
and in some places stalks of maize peep up through the snow. The
pretty wooden houses are occasionally half hidden by the snow-laden
trees amidst which they stand. These Illinois clusters of
country-houses remind one very much of England, they look so snug and
homelike; and they occupy a gently undulating country,--lovely, no
doubt, in summer time. But the small towns we passed could never be
mistaken for English. They are laid out quite regularly, each house
with its little garden surrounding it; the broad streets being planted
with avenues of trees.

The snow is lying very heavy on the ground; and there are drifts we
pass through full twenty feet deep on either side the road. But the
day is fine,