pes, and even elks, but
apparently never yet trodden by the foot of man. Now, our Club men felt
like travelling on clouds, as they careered along the great plateau
west of the Black Hills, fully 8,000 feet above the level of the sea,
though even there the grass was as green and fresh as if it grew in some
sequestered valley of Pennsylvania. Again,

"In this untravelled world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever as they moved,"

they would find themselves in an immense, tawny, treeless plain,
outlined by mountains so distant as to resemble fantastic cloud piles.
Here for days they would have to skirt the coasts of a Lake, vast,
unruffled, unrippled, apparently of metallic consistency, from whose
sapphire depths rose pyramidal islands to a height of fully three
thousand feet above the surface.

In a few days all would change. No more sand wastes, salt water flats,
or clouds of blinding alkali dust. The travellers' road, at the foot of
black precipitous cliffs, would wind along the brink of a roaring
torrent, whose devious course would lead them into the heart of the
Sierras, where misty peaks solemnly sentinelled the nestling vales still
smiling in genial summer verdure. Across these they were often whirled
through immense forests of varied character, here dense enough to
obscure the track, there swaying in the sweet sunlight and vocal with
joyous birds of bright and gorgeous plumage. Then tropical vegetation
would completely hide the trail, crystal lakes would obstruct it,
cascades shooting down from perpendicular rocks would obliterate it,
mountain passes barricaded by basaltic columns would render it
uncertain, and on one occasion it was completely covered up by a fall of
snow to a depth of more than twenty feet.

But nothing could oppose serious delay to our travellers. Their motto
was ever "onward!" and what they lost in one hour by some mishap they
endeavored to recover on the next by redoubled speed. They felt that
they would be no friends of Barbican's if they were discouraged by
impossibilities. Besides, what would have been real impossibilities at
another time, several concurrent circumstances now rendered
comparatively easy.

The surveys, the gradings, the cuttings, and the other preliminary
labors in the great Pacific Railroad, gave them incalculable aid.
Horses, help, carriages, provisions were always in abundance. Their
object being well known, they had the best wishes of every hand on the