The presiding magistrate was staggered a moment by these words; and it was not without considerable hesitation he took the warrant and prepared to fill it up.

Then Mr. Houseman, who had watched the proceedings very keenly, put in his word. "I am here for the accused person, sir, and, with your good leave, object to her committal—on grounds of law."

"What may they be, Mr. Houseman?" said the magistrate, civilly; and laid his pen down to hear them.

"Briefly, sir, these. Where a murder is proven, you can commit a subject of this realm upon suspicion. But you cannot suspect the murder as well as the culprit, and so commit. The murder must be proved to the senses. Now in this case, the death of Mr. Gaunt by violence is not proved. Indeed, his very death rests but upon suspicion. I admit that the law of England in this respect has once or twice been tampered with, and persons have even been executed where no corpus delicti was found; but what was the consequence? In each case the murdered man turned out to be alive, and justice was the only murderer. After Harrison's case, and ——'s, no Cumberland jury will ever commit for murder, unless the corpus delicti has been found, and with signs of violence upon it. Come, come, Mr. Atkins, you are too good a lawyer, and too humane a man, to send my client to prison on the suspicion of a suspicion, which you know the very breath of the judge will blow away, even if the grand jury let it go into court. I offer bail, ten thousand pounds in two sureties; Sir George Neville here present, and myself."

The magistrate looked to Mr. Atkins.

"I am not employed by the crown," said that gentleman, "but acting on mere civil grounds, and have no right nor wish to be severe. Bail by all means: but is the lady so sure of her innocence as to lend me her assistance to find the corpus delicti?"

The question was so shrewdly put, that any hesitation would have ruined Mrs. Gaunt.

Houseman, therefore, replied eagerly and promptly, "I answer for her, she will."

Mrs. Gaunt bowed her head in assent.

"Then," said Atkins, "I ask leave to drag, and, if need be, to drain that piece of water there, called 'the mere.'"

"Drag it or drain it, which you will," said Houseman.

Said Atkins, very impressively, "And, mark my words, at the bottom of that very sheet of water there, I shall find the remains of the late Griffith Gaunt."

* * * * *

At these solemn words, coming as they did, not from a loose unprofessional speaker, but from a lawyer, a man who measured all his words, a very keen observer might have seen a sort of tremor run all through Mr. Houseman's frame. The more admirable, I think, was the perfect coolness and seeming indifference with which he replied, "Find him, and I'll admit suicide; find him, with signs of violence, and I'll admit homicide—by some person or persons unknown."

All further remarks were interrupted by bustle and confusion.

Mrs. Gaunt had fainted dead away.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

Of course pity was the first feeling; but, by the time Mrs. Gaunt revived, her fainting, so soon after Mr. Atkins's proposal, had produced a sinister effect on the minds of all present; and every face showed it, except the wary Houseman's.

On her retiring, it broke out first in murmurs, then in plain words.

As for Mr. Atkins, he now showed the moderation of an able man who feels he has a strong cause.

He merely said, "I think there should be constables about, in case of an escape being attempted; but I agree with Mr. Houseman that your worships will be quite justified in taking bail, provided the corpus delicti should not be found. Gentlemen, you were most of you neighbors and friends of the deceased, and are, I am sure, lovers of justice; I do entreat you to aid me in searching that piece of water, by the side of which the deceased gentleman was heard to cry for help; and, much I fear, he cried in vain."

The persons thus appealed to entered into the matter with all the ardor of just men, whose curiosity as well as justice is inflamed.

A set of old, rusty drags was found on the premises; and men went punting up and down the mere, and dragged it.

Rude hooks were made by the village blacksmith, and fitted to cart-ropes; another boat was brought to Hernshaw in a wagon; and all that afternoon the bottom of the mere was raked, and some curious things fished up. But no dead man.

The next day a score of amateur dragsmen were out; some throwing their drags from the bridge; some circulating in boats, and even in large tubs.

And, meantime, Mr. Atkins and his crew went steadily up and down, dragging every foot of those placid waters.

They worked till dinner-time, and brought up a good copper pot with two handles, a horse's head, and several decayed trunks of trees, which had become saturated, and sunk to the bottom.

At about three in the afternoon, two boys, who, for want of a boat, were dragging from the bridge, found something heavy but elastic at the end of their drag: they pulled up eagerly, and a thing like a huge turnip, half gnawed, came up, with a great bob, and blasted their sight.

They let go, drags and all, and stood shrieking, and shrieking.

Those who were nearest them called out, and asked what was the matter; but the boys did not reply, and their faces showed so white, that a woman, who saw them, hailed Mr. Atkins, and said she was sure those boys had seen something out of the common.

Mr. Atkins came up, and found the boys blubbering. He encouraged them, and they told him a fearful thing had come up; it was like a man's head and shoulders all scooped out and gnawed by the fishes, and had torn the drags out of their hands.

Mr. Atkins made them tell him the exact place; and he was soon upon it with his boat.

The water here was very deep; and though the boys kept pointing to the very spot, the drags found nothing for some time.

But at last they showed, by their resistance, that they had clawed hold of something.

"Draw slowly," said Mr. Atkins: "and, if it is, be men, and hold fast."

The men drew slowly, slowly, and presently there rose to the surface a Thing to strike terror and loathing into the stoutest heart.

The mutilated remains of a human face and body.

The greedy pike had cleared, not the features only, but the entire flesh off the face; but had left the hair, and the tight skin of the forehead, though their teeth had raked this last. The remnants they had left made what they had mutilated doubly horrible; since now it was not a skull, not a skeleton; but a face and a man gnawed down to the bones and hair and feet. These last were in stout shoes, that resisted even those voracious teeth; and a leathern stock had offered some little protection to the throat.

The men groaned, and hid their faces with one hand, and pulled softly to the shore with the other; and then, with half-averted faces, they drew the ghastly remains and fluttering rags gently and reverently to land.

Mr. Atkins yielded to nature, and was violently sick at the sight he had searched for so eagerly.

As soon as he recovered his powers, he bade the constables guard the body (it was a body, in law), and see that no one laid so much as a finger on it until some magistrate had taken a deposition. He also sent a messenger to Mr. Houseman, telling him the corpus delicti was found. He did this, partly to show that gentleman he was right in his judgment, and partly out of common humanity; since, after this discovery, Mr. Houseman's client was sure to be tried for her life.

A magistrate soon came, and viewed the remains, and took careful notes of the state in which they were found.

Houseman came, and was much affected both by the sight of his dead friend, so mutilated, and by the probable consequences to Mrs. Gaunt. However, as lawyers fight very hard, he recovered himself enough to remark that there were no marks of violence before death, and insisted on this being inserted in the magistrate's notes.

An inquest was ordered next day, and, meantime, Mrs. Gaunt was told she could not quit the upper apartments of her own house. Two constables were placed on the ground-floor night and day.

Next day the remains were removed to the little inn where Griffith had spent so many jovial hours; laid on a table, and covered with a white sheet.

The coroner's jury sat in the same room, and the evidence I have already noticed was gone into, and the finding of the body deposed to. The jury, without hesitation, returned a verdict of wilful murder.

Mrs. Gaunt was then brought in. She came, white as a ghost, leaning upon Houseman's shoulder.

Upon her entering, a juryman, by a humane impulse, drew the sheet over the remains again.

The coroner, according to the custom of the day, put a question to Mrs. Gaunt, with the view of eliciting her guilt. If I remember right, he asked her how she came to be out of doors so late on the night of the murder. Mrs. Gaunt, however, was in no condition to answer queries. I doubt if she even heard this one. Her lovely eyes, dilated with horror, were fixed on that terrible sheet, with a stony glance. "Show me," she gasped, "and let me die too."

The jurymen looked, with doubtful faces, at the coroner. He bowed a grave assent.

The nearest juryman withdrew the sheet. The belief was not yet extinct that the dead body shows some signs of its murderer's approach. So every eye glanced on her and on It by turns; as she, with dilated, horror-stricken eyes, looked on that awful Thing.



LONDON FORTY YEARS AGO.

FROM THE MEMORANDA OF A TRAVELLER.

The Court of Chancery.—Feeling a desire to see for myself the highest embodiment of English law where it lurked—a huge and bloated personification of all that was monstrous and discouraging to suitors—in the secret place of thunder, just behind the altar of sacrifice, forever spinning the web that for hundreds of years hath enmeshed and overspread the mightiest empire upon earth with entanglement, perplexity, and procrastination, till estates have disappeared and families have died out, sometimes, while waiting for a decision,—I dropped into the Court of Chancery.

The first thing I saw was the Lord Chancellor himself,—Lord Eldon,—the mildest, wisest, slowest, and most benignant of men,—milder than Byron's Ali Pacha, wiser than Lord Bacon himself; and, if not altogether worthy of being called "the greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind," like his prototype, yet great enough as a lawyer to set people wondering what he would say next. He was quite capable of arguing a question on both sides, and then of deciding against himself; and so patient, withal, that he had just then finished a sitting of three whole days to Sir Thomas Lawrence, for a portrait of his hand,—a beautiful hand, it must be acknowledged, though undecided and womanish, as if he had never quite made up his mind whether to keep it open or shut.

And the next thing I took notice of, after a hurried glance at the carved ceiling and painted windows, and over the array of bewigged and powdered solicitors and masters,—a magnificent bed of cauliflowers, in appearance, with some of the finest heads I ever saw in my life—out of a cabbage-garden,—was a large, dark, heavy picture of Paul before Felix, by Hogarth, representing these great personages at the moment when Felix, that earliest of Lord Chancellors, having heard Paul through, says: "Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee." Lord Eldon was larger than I supposed from the portrait above mentioned. And this is the more extraordinary, because the heads of Lawrence, like those of ancient statuary, are always smaller than life, to give them an aristocratic, high-bred air, and the bodies are larger. The expression of countenance, too, was benignity itself,—just such as Titian would have been delighted with,—calm, clear, passionless, without a prevailing characteristic of any strength. "Felix trembled," they say. Whatever Felix may have done, I do not believe that Lord Eldon would have trembled till he had put on his night-cap and weighed the whole question by himself at his chambers.

* * * * *

Kean.—Wishing to see how this grotesque but wonderful actor—a mountebank sometimes and sometimes a living truth—would play at home after driving us all mad in America, I went to see him in Sir Giles Overreach. He played with more spirit, more of settled purpose, than with us, being more in earnest, I think, and better supported. There is one absurdity in the play, which was made particularly offensive by Oxberry's exaggeration. The dinner is kept waiting, and the whole business of the play suspended, for the Justice to make speeches. But the last scene was capital,—prodigious,—full of that dark, dismal, despairing energy you would look for in a dethroned spirit, baffled, like Mephistopheles, at the very moment his arm is outstretched, and his long, lean fingers are clutching at the shoulder of his victim. Being about to cross blades with his adversary, in a paroxysm of rage he plucks at the hilt of his sword, and stops suddenly, as if struck with paralysis, pale, and gasping for breath, and says,—in that far-off, moaning voice we all remember in his famous farewell to the "big wars that make ambition virtue,"—"The widow sits upon my arm, and the wronged orphan's tear glues it to the scabbard,—it will not be drawn," etc., etc.,—or something of the sort. It was not so much a thrilling as a curdling you felt.

* * * * *

Young, in Sir Pertinax.—Very good, though full of stage trick, or what they call, when they get bothered, or would like to bother you, stage business;—as where he throws his pocket-handkerchief before him on leaving the stage, somewhat after the style of Macready in Hamlet, which Forrest called le pas a mouchoir, and took the liberty of hissing. Good Scotch, generally, with a few wretched blunders, though his "booin', and booin', and booin'," and his vehement snuff-taking, and the declaration that "he could never stand oopright in the presence of a great mon in a' his life," were evidently copied from, or suggested by, George Frederick Cooke, who borrowed both from Macklin, if we may trust surviving contemporaries.

* * * * *

Robert Owen.—Breakfasted with Robert Owen, after having attended a conference of the brotherhood, where they talked a world of nonsense, and argued for a whole hour, without coming to a conclusion, about whether we are governed by circumstances or circumstances are governed by us. You would swear Owen was a Yankee, born and bred. He has the shrewd, inquisitive look, the spare frame, the sharp features, of a Connecticut farmer, and constantly reminds me of Henry Clay when he moves about. He is evidently sincere; but such a visionary! and so thoroughly satisfied that the world is coming to an end just as he would have it, that he allows no misgivings to trouble him, and never loses his temper, nor "bates one jot of heart or hope," happen what may. The last time we met—only three days ago—his great project was coming up before Parliament, and he told me, in confidence, that he was sure of a favorable result,—that he had counted noses, and had the most comfortable assurances from all the great leaders of the day,—and in short, between ourselves, that grass would be growing on the London Exchange within two years. The petition came up on the day appointed, and was allowed to drop out of the tail end of the cart, almost without a remark. But so far was he from being disheartened, that he lost no time in preparing for a trip across the Atlantic, which he had long had in contemplation, but was hindered from taking by the hopes he had been persuaded to entertain from his friends in Parliament, and by the business at Lanark,—a manufacturing place which he had built up of himself in Scotland, with eminent success, and most undoubted practical wisdom.

Wishing to leave a record with me for future ages, he wrote as follows in my album, with a cheerfulness, an imperturbability, a serene self-confidence, past all my conceptions of a visionary or enthusiast.

"I leave this country with a deep impression that my visit to America will be productive of permanent benefit to the Indian tribes, to the negro race, and to the whole population of the Western Continent, North and South, and to Europe.

"ROBERT OWEN.

"LONDON, 4th September, 1824."

What a magnificent scheme! How comprehensive and how vast! But nothing came of it, beyond the translation of his son, Robert Dale Owen, to this country,—a very clever, well-educated, and earnest, though rather awkward and sluggish young man, who has achieved a large reputation here, and will be yet more distinguished if he lives, being well grounded and rooted in the foundation principles of government, and both conscientious and fearless.

* * * * *

Old Bailey.—This and other like places, of which we have all read so much that we feel acquainted with them, not as pictures or descriptions, at second hand, but as decided and positive realities, I lost no time in seeing.

I found the court-room small, much smaller than the average with us, badly arranged, and worse lighted. A prisoner was up for burglary. He was a sullen, turbulent-looking fellow; and his counsel, an Old Bailey lawyer, was inquiring, with a pertinacity that astonished while it amused me, about the dirt in a comb. His object was to ascertain "whether it had been used or not"; and, as there were two sides to it, which side had become dirty from being carried in the pocket, and which from legitimate use. Before the prisoner was a toilet-glass, in which he could not help seeing his own pale, haggard, frightened face whenever he looked up,—a refinement of barbarism I was not prepared for in a British court of justice. I occupied a seat in the gallery, surrounded by professional pickpockets, burglars, and highwaymen, I dare say; for they talked freely of the poor fellow's chances, and like experts.

* * * * *

Joanna Baillie.—"Here," said Lady Bentham, wife of General Sir Samuel Bentham, the originator of that Panopticon, which was the germ of all our prison discipline as well as of all penitentiary improvements, the world over,—"Here is an autograph you will think worth having, I am sure, after what I have heard you say of the writer, and of her tragedies, and I want you to see her";—handing me, as she spoke, the following brief note, written upon a bit of coarse paper about six inches by four.

"If you are perfectly disengaged this evening, Agnes and I will have the pleasure of taking tea with you, if you give us leave.

"J. BAILLIE."

Now, if there was a woman in the world I wanted to see, or one that I most heartily reverenced, it was Joanna Baillie. Her "De Montfort" I had always looked upon as one of the greatest tragedies ever written,—equal to anything of Shakespeare's for strength of delineation, simplicity, and effect, however inferior it might be in the superfluities of genius, in the overcharging of character and passion, of which we find so much in Shakespeare; and, on the whole, not unlike that wonderful Danish drama, "Dyveke," or a part of "Wallenstein."

My great desire was now to be satisfied. We met, and I passed one of the pleasantest evenings of my life with Mrs. Baillie, as they called her, Lady Bentham, her most intimate if not her oldest friend, and "sister Agnes."

I found Mrs. Baillie wholly unlike the misrepresentations I had seen of her. She was rather small,—though far from being diminutive, like her sister Agnes,—with a charming countenance, full of placid serenity, almost Quakerish, beautiful eyes, and gray hair, nearly white indeed, combed smoothly away from her forehead. We talked freely together, avoiding the shop, and the impression she left on my mind was that of a modest, unpretending gentlewoman, full of quiet strength and shrewd pleasantry, with a Scottish flavor, but altogether above being brilliant or showy, even in conversation with a stranger and an author. She questioned me closely about my country and about the people, and appeared to take much interest in our doings and prospects. Her sister Agnes never opened her mouth, to the best of my recollection and belief, though she listened with her eyes and ears to the conversation, and appeared to enjoy it exceedingly; and as for Lady Bentham, though a clever woman of large experience and great resources, such was her self-denial and her generous admiration of the "queenly stranger," as I had called her friend in sport,—remembering how it was applied to the magnificent Siddons, when she represented Jane de Montfort,—that she did nothing more and said nothing more than what was calculated to bring out her friend to advantage. There was nothing said, however, from which a person unacquainted with the writings of Joanna Baillie would have inferred her true character,—no flashing lights, no surprises, no thunder-bursts. The conversation was, at the best, but sociable and free, as if we were all of the same neighborhood or household; but knowing her by her great work on the Passions, I was profoundly impressed, nevertheless, and left her well satisfied with her revelations of character.

* * * * *

Catalani.—What a magnificent creature! How majestic and easy and graceful! And then what a voice! One would swear she had a nest of nightingales and a trumpet obligato in her throat. No wonder she sets the great glass chandeliers of the Argyle rooms ringing and rattling when she charges in a bravura.

That she is, in some passages, a little—not vulgar—but almost vulgar, with a dash of the contadina, is undeniable; and she certainly has not a delicate ear, and often sings false; yet, when that tempestuous warbling in her throat breaks forth, and the flush of her heart's blood hurries over her face and empurples her neck, why then "bow the high banners, roll the answering drums," and shut up, if you wouldn't be torn to pieces by a London mob.

Say what you will, you must acknowledge—you must—that you never heard such a voice before, if there ever was one like it on earth,—so full and so impassioned, so rich and sympathetic. More educated, more brilliant organs there may be, like those of Pasta or Velluti, poor fellow!—more satisfying to the ear,—but none, I believe, so satisfying to the heart; none that so surely lifts you off your feet, and blinds and deafens you to all defects, and sets you wandering far away through the empyrean of musical sounds, till you are lost in a labyrinth of triumphant harmonies. The sad, mournful intonations of Velluti may bring tears into your eyes, but you are never transported beyond yourself by his piteous wailing.

And yet, if you will believe me, this woman has just been called out of bed to a London audience, who, instead of paying a guinea or half a guinea to hear her in opera, are paying only 2s. 6d. a head to hear her let off "God shave the King!" like a roll of musical thunder. She appears "in dish-abille" as they call it here, and in tears. And why is she summoned? Because the sufferin' people, having understood that she shares the house, insist on having their half-crowns and sixpences returned. It has been quite impossible to hear a word, ever since they were informed that she had been taken suddenly ill, and was not allowed to appear by her medical attendants. But what of that? Dead or alive, a British audience must have her out. And so a great banner was lifted on which was inscribed "Catalani sent for!" and then, after a while, as the uproar continued, and the outcries grew more violent, and the white handkerchiefs more and more stormy and threatening, another inscription appeared, "Catalani coming!" And lo! she comes! and comes weeping. But the people refuse to be comforted. And why? Because of their disappointment? Because of their passion for music? No indeed; but because they are told that she is to go snacks with the manager; and, her parsimony being proverbial, they are determined to rebuke it in a liberal spirit. Pshaw!

These people pretend to love music, and to love it with such a devouring passion that nothing less than the very best will satisfy them, cost what it may. Yet the opera-house, with the patronage of the royal family, the nobility, and the gentry, and open only twice a week, is never full even at the representation of the finest works of genius; and when such an artist as Catalani is engaged at one of the theatres, and the people are admitted for theatre prices, the first thing they do, after crowding the house to suffocation, is to call for "God save the King," or, if Braham is out, for "Kelvin Grove." Enthusiasts indeed,—carried away, and justly, by "Black-eyed Susan," or "Cherry Ripe," which they do understand, feel, and enjoy,—they are all ready to swear, and expect you to believe, that their passion is for opera music,—Italian or German, the Barber of Seville, or Der Freischuetz. And therefore I say again, Pshaw!

* * * * *

John Dunn Hunter.—This luckiest and boldest of humbugs, whose book, by the merest accident, has obtained for him the favor of the Duke of Sussex, and, through the Duke, access to the highest nobility, has just been presented at Court, and is not a little mortified that his Majesty, on receiving a copy of the book, Hunter's "Captivity among the Indians," did not inquire after his health or make him a speech. He does not so much mind paying five guineas for the loan of a court suit, consisting of a single-breasted claret coat with steel buttons, a powdered tie, small-clothes, white-silk stockings, and a dress sword,—with instructions on which side it is to be worn, and how it is to be managed in backing out so as not to get between his legs and trip him up,—nor the having to pay for being mentioned in the Court Journal by a fellow who is called the King's Reporter; but then he will have the worth of his money, and so takes it out in grumbling and sulking. Not long ago he sent a note through the penny-post, sealed with a wafer, directed to the Marchioness of Conyngham, the king's mistress, in reply to an invitation from her ladyship, which he accepted, to meet the king! At least, such was the interpretation he put upon it. And now, after all this, to be fobbed off with a bow by "Gentleman George," the "fat friend" of poor Brummell, was indeed a little too bad.

Nothing he can say or do, however, will undeceive these people. Though he cannot shout decently, cannot bear fatigue or pain, is so far from being swift of foot that he is not even a good walker, talks little or no Indian, and is continually outraging all the customs of society after getting well acquainted with them, and doing all this by calculation, as in the case of the note referred to above, they persist in believing his story. I shall have to expose him.—P. S. I have exposed him.

While speaking just now of his acquaintance with the Duke of Sussex, who was very kind to him, and a believer to the last, I said that it was obtained for him by accident. It was in this way. At the house where he lodged a Mr. Norgate of Norfolk—not far from Holkham, the seat of Mr. Coke afterward Earl of Leicester—was also a lodger. Mr. Norgate invited Hunter down to his father's, and they went over to Holkham together. And there they met the Duke of Sussex, a great friend of Mr. Coke, both being Liberals and Oppositionists. His Royal Highness took a great fancy to Hunter, got him to sit to Chester Harding for his picture, gave him a gold watch and lots of agricultural tools to subdue the Indians with, and stuck to him through thick and thin, till I found it necessary to tear off the fellow's mask.

On separating from me, before I had got possession of the facts which soon after appeared in the "London Magazine," he wrote in my album the following sententious and pithy apothegm, which, of course, only went to show the marvellous power of adaptation to circumstances which would naturally characterize the man, if his story were true. It was in this way his dupes reasoned. If he sealed a letter with a wafer, and sent it through the penny-post to a woman of rank, that proved his neglected education or a natural disregard of polite usage, and of course that he had been carried off in childhood by the Indians, and knew not where to look for father or mother, sister or brother,—while, on the contrary, if he used wax, and set the seal upon it which had been given to him by the Duke of Sussex, that showed, of course, the sagacity and readiness of adaptation which ought to characterize the hero of Hunter's narrative. In short, he was another Princess Caraboo, or young Chatterton, or Cagliostro, or Count Eliorich, all of whom were made great impostors by the help of others, the over-credulous and the over-confident in themselves.

"He who would do great actions," writes our enormous bug-a-boo, "must learn to empoly his powers to the least possible loss. The possession of brilliant and extraordinary talents" (this was probably meant for me, as he had been trying to prevail upon my "brilliant and extraordinary talents" to return to America with him, and go among the savages about the neighborhood of the Rocky Mountains, and there establish a confederacy of our own) "is not always the most valuable to its possessor. Moderate talents, properly directed, will enable one to do a great deal; and the most distinguished gifts of nature may be thrown away by an unskilful application of them.

"J. D. HUNTER.

"LONDON, 15th May, 1824."

* * * * *

Kean at a Public Dinner.—A terrible outcry just now, in consequence of certain exposures and a published correspondence. At a public dinner, he says he is going to America. The Duke of York, who presides, cries out, "No, no!" Shouts follow and the rattling of glasses, and men leap on the chairs and almost on the tables, repeating the Duke's "No, no!" till at last Kean promises to make an apology from the stage,—a perilous experiment, he will find, after which he cannot stay here. The object of Price, who has engaged him, is to kill off Cooper. The best actors now get fifty guineas a week, or twenty-five pounds a night for so many nights, play or pay, with a benefit.

* * * * *

Architecture.—I have seen no greater barbarisms anywhere than I find here. The screen of Carleton House,—a long row of double columns, with a heavy entablature supporting the arms of Great Britain,—"that and nothing more"; the doings of Inigo Jones in his water-gates and arches, with two or three orders intermixed; and the late achievements of Mr. Nash along Regent Street,—with the church spire, which has the attractiveness and symmetry of an exaggerated marlin-spike, for a vanishing point,—are of themselves enough to show that the people here have no taste, and no feeling for this department of the Fine Arts, however much they may brag and bluster.

But I have just returned from a visit to one of Sir Christopher Wren's masterpieces, which has greatly disturbed my equanimity, and obliges me to modify my opinion. It is a church back of the Mansion House; and is the original of Godefroy's Unitarian church at Baltimore, beyond all question: the dome rests on arches, and springs into the air, as if buoyed up and aspiring of itself. Bad for the music, however. Here I find West's picture of the Martyrdom of St. Stephen, with a figure which he has repeated in "Christ Healing the Sick," and a woman,—or young man, you do not feel certain which,—weeping upon the hand of the martyr, precisely as in a painting in Baltimore Cathedral by Renou, who must have borrowed or stolen it from West, if West did not borrow or steal it from him.

* * * * *

Drawings.—I have just returned from visiting a collection of drawings by the old masters,—Raphael, Michael Angelo, Rembrandt, Titian, &c., &c. Wonderful, to be sure! There is a pen-and-ink drawing by Munro, of uncommon merit; another from a capital old engraving by Tiffen, hardly to be distinguished from an elaborate line engraving, full of good faces and straight lines, with nothing picturesque. A moonlight and cottage by Gainsborough, very fine. Jackson's and Robinson's miniatures, and sketches in water-colors,—charming. Leslie's designs, with Stothard's on the same subject, are delightfully contrasted: Leslie's, neatly finished and full of individuality; Stothard's, a beautiful, free generalization, without finish. (But the engraver understands him, and finishes for him, adding the hands and feet in his own way.) It is a representation of Jeanie Deans's interview with the Queen. Leslie's figure is standing; Stothard's, kneeling: yet both are expressive and helpful to our conceptions. Here, too, I saw Rembrandt's celebrated "Battle of Death," with a skeleton blowing a horn, and helmeted and plumed, and having a thigh-bone for a battle-axe,—shadows on the shoulders of horsemen, and skeleton feet;—on the whole, a monstrous nightmare, such as you might expect from Fuseli after a supper on raw beef, but never from such a painter as Rembrandt.

* * * * *

Phrenology.—There must be something in this new science,—for they persist in calling it a science,—though I cannot say how much. Just returned from a visit to De Ville, in the Strand, in company with Chester Harding, Robert M. Sully, the painter, and Humphries, the engraver,—each differing from the others in character and purpose; yet, after manipulating our crania, this man says of each what all the rest acknowledge to be true, and what, said of any but the particular person described, would be preposterous. Why are the busts of Socrates and Solon what they should be, according to this theory of Gall and Spurzheim? Were they modelled from life, or from characters resembling them? Compared the head of a Greek boy with that of a young Hottentot. One was largely developed in the intellectual region, the other in the animal region, and the latter cries whenever his home or his mother is mentioned. Both are at school here. Thurtell's head is a great confirmation, which anybody can judge of. I must find time for a thorough investigation.

P. S.—I have kept my promise, and am thoroughly satisfied. Phrenology deserves to be called a science, and one of the greatest and best of sciences, notwithstanding all the quackery and self-delusion that I find among the professors. I have now studied it and experimented upon it for more than thirty years, and have no longer any misgivings upon the subject, so far as the great leading principles are involved.

* * * * *

Manners.—If we do not record our first impressions they soon disappear; and the greatest novelties are overlooked or forgotten. Already I begin to see women with heavily-laden wheel-barrows, without surprise. I have now learned, I hope, that a postman's rap is one, two, and no more; a servant's, one; while a footman gives from four to twenty, as hard as he can bang, so as to startle the whole neighborhood and make everybody run to the windows. Eating fish with a knife said to be fatal. Great personages give you a finger to shake. I did not know this when I took the forefinger of a cast-off mistress, the original of Washington Irving's Lady Sillicraft, a painted and withered old vixen, who meant to signify her liking for me, as I had reason to believe. Moles are reckoned such a positive beauty here that my attention has been called to them, as to fine eyes or a queenly bearing. A fine woman here means a large woman, tall, dignified, and showy, like a fine horse or a fine bullock.

Never shall I forget the looks and tones of a bashful friend, in describing his embarrassment. He was at Holkham, the seat of Mr. Coke, our Revolutionary champion, who, being in Parliament at the time, moved, session after session, the acknowledgment of our independence,—am I right here?—and actually gave the health of George Washington at a large dinner-party while the Revolutionary fires were raging. There was a large company at dinner, but for his life my friend did not know what to do with the ladies nor with his hands. Goes through room after room to get his dinner; is called upon to serve a dish he has never seen before, and knows not how to manage. Asked to take wine, and wants to ask somebody else, but cannot recall the name of a single person within reach, and whispers to the servant for relief, while his eye travels up and down both sides of the long table; is reminded of the guest who said to himself, loud enough to be overheard by the waiter behind his chair, "I wish I had some bread," to which the waiter replied without moving, "I wish you had." Durst not offer his arm to a lady, lest he should violate some of the multitudinous every-day usages of society, and so, instead of enjoying his dinner, just nibbled and choked and watched how others ate of the dishes he had never seen before. Yet this man was no fool, he was not even a blockhead; but he was frightened out of all propriety nevertheless. Poor fellow! Soon after this he went to Paris, and, having picked up a few French sentences, undertook to pass off one upon a servant who took his cloak as he entered the hotel of a French celebrity in a violent rainstorm. He flung the phrase off with an air, saying, "Mauvais temps," whereupon the word was passed up from mouth to mouth, and, to his unutterable horror, he was introduced to the company as M. Mauvais Temps.

* * * * *

Painting.—I have just been to see Mulready's famous "Lion and Lamb." He is a Royal Academician; and, spite of the cleverness we see in every touch, we are reminded of Pison's reply to the Academician, who asked what he was,—"I? O, I am nobody; not even an Academician." The picture is about eighteen by twenty-two inches, and belongs to his Majesty, George the Fourth. It represents two boys, a little child, a woman, and a dog. One boy has broken the strap of his trousers, and, bracing himself up for a clinch, is evidently encroaching on the other with his foot. He stands with his legs on the straddle, both fists made up for mischief, and head turned away in profile, with hat and books flung down upon the turf; while the other—the lamb—keeps his satchel in his hand, with one arm raised to parry the blow he is expecting. He has a meek, boyish face, and we have it in full. The back of the child is towards you, the mother terribly frightened; parts very fine, but as a whole the picture is not worthy of its reputation, to say nothing of the extravagant price paid for it,—some hundreds of guineas, they say.

* * * * *

Greenwich Fair.—Having read so much in story-books and novels, from my earliest childhood,—at one time in the gilt-covered publication of E. Newbury, St. Paul's Church Yard, and after that in larger books,—of the rioting at Greenwich Fair (another Donnybrook in its way), I determined to see for myself, and went down for the purpose, April 19th, 1824. Universal decorum characterized the whole proceedings till the day was over, after which there was a large amount of dancing and frolicking and sight-seeing and beer-drinking, but no drunkenness and no quarrelling. The people were saucy, but good-natured, like the Italian rabble, with their plaster confectionery, at a carnival. Women and girls would run down the long green slope together, which it is said the cockneys believe to be the highest land in the world, after Richmond Hill; and many of them stumble and slip and roll to the bottom, screaming and laughing as they go. This I understand to be a favorite pastime with people who are big enough to know better; for a part of the fun, and that which all seem to enjoy most, is in tripping one another up. Plenty of giants and dwarfs to be seen for a penny, with white Circassians, silver-haired, and actors of all sorts and sizes. "Walk in, ladies and gentlemen! walk in! Here's the rope-dancing and juggling, with lots of gilt gingerbread,—and all for sixpence! Here is the great Numidian lion!"—leading forth a creature not larger than a moderate-sized English mastiff,—"with a throat like a turnpike gate, and teeth like mile-stones, and every hair on his mane as big as a broomstick!" It was worth sixpence to see the fellow's face when he said this; but most of the people round me seemed to believe what they heard rather than what they saw. Actors and actresses turn out and dance and strut before the curtain.

Went into the Hospital, of which we have all heard so much, and into the Chapel. Here is the best picture West ever painted, I think. It is the shipwreck of St. Paul, with the viper and the fire: rocks rather crowded and confused; on the right are two figures, frequently, I had almost said always, to be found in his pictures, and always together. Old man on the right, capital!—Roof of the Hospital highly ornamented, though chaste, with painted pilasters, fluted; ceiling done by Sir James Thornhill, and is really a grand affair, not only for coloring and drawing, but for composition and general treatment. Architecture of the building, once a palace, worthy of the highest commendation, though it needs a back part to correspond with the two wings. Cupolas made to correspond, but seem rather out of place,—not wanted.

Had quite an adventure before I got away. I saw a young girl running down hill by herself. She fell, and stained her white frock all over one hip of a grass-green. She seemed to be much hurt and near fainting. I found her young, pretty, and modest, as you may readily infer from what follows,—usually if you hear of a woman being run over in the street, you may be sure she is neither young nor pretty,—and so seeing her greatly distressed about the figure she cut, and companionless, I took pity on her, and going with her found, after some search, an old woman in a garret with a husband, child, and grandchild, all huddled and starving in one room together. The husband was a waterman. He had "stove" his boat some years before, and was never able to get another; had two sons at sea; paid two shillings a week for the room, which they said was one shilling too dear, being only large enough to allow of two or three chairs, a table, and a turn-up bed. Poor Sarah took off her frock and washed it before me, without a sign of distress or embarrassment; and then we went off together and had a bit of a dance,—a rough-and-tumble fore-and-after,—at the nearest booth. With her bonnet off, and neat cap, her beautiful complexion and dark hair and eyes, how happened it that she was really modest and well-behaved? And how came she there? After some resolute questioning, I determined to see her home, at least so far as to set her down in safety in the neighborhood where she lived. The coach was crowded with strangers. It was late, and they were silent, and I thought sulky. Just as we were passing a lamp, after we had entered a wide thoroughfare, I saw a man's face under a woman's bonnet. Though not absolutely frightened, I was rather startled, and more and more unwilling to leave the poor girl to the mercy of strangers; for I saw, or thought I saw, signs of intelligence between two of the party; and in short, I never left her till the danger was over.

There were mountebanks and fortune-tellers and gypsies at every turn. The prettiest I met with told my fortune. "You are liked better by the women," said she, "than by the men." Very true. "You are loved by a widow named Mary." My landlady was a widow, and her name was Mary. "Which do you like best, Mary or Bessie?" In addition to Mary, there was another pleasant friend, supposed to be a natural daughter of George IV., named Bessie. But how the plague did the little gypsy know this? I found out, I believe, long after the whole affair was forgotten. There was present, without my knowledge, a man who was always full of such tricks, who knew me well, and who threw the gypsy in my way and put her up to all she knew. This was Humphries the engraver.

There was a great ball too,—a magnificent ball,—one shilling entrance. More than fifty couples stood up for a contra-dance, and tore down the middle and up outside, and cast off, as if they were all just out of a lunatic hospital. And yet, as I have said before, I believe, there was no drunkenness and no quarrelling.

* * * * *

Shooting the Bridge.—Wanting to go to the Tower, I took a boat above London Bridge at the wrong time of the tide, in spite of all remonstrances, and came near being swamped. Not being a good swimmer, and aware that people were often drowned there, I cannot understand what possessed me; but as the watermen were not afraid, and asked no questions, why should I be troubled? For aught they knew, I might be made of cork, or have a swimming-jacket underneath my coat, or a pocket life-preserver ready to be blown up at a moment's notice; and they were sure of the fee. At the mouth of the St. John's River, New Brunswick, they have a fall both ways, at a certain time of tide, through which and up and down which boats and rafts plunge headlong so as to take away your breath, while you are watching them from the bridge; but really, this little pitch of not more than three or four feet under London Bridge I should think more dangerous, and the people seem to think so too, for they are always on the watch after the tide turns, and swarm along the parapets, and rush from one side to the other, as the wherry shoots through the main arch, with a feeling akin to that of the man who followed Van Amburgh month after month to see him "chawed up" by the lion or tiger.

* * * * *

Major Cartwright.—Another fast friend of our country and the institutions of our country, and always ready to take up the quarter-staff in our defence. A great reformer, and honest as the day is long. Wrote much in favor of American independence in 1774, and, with Sir Francis Burdett and others, who chose to meddle with the British Constitution wherever they found a fragment large enough to talk about, has been visited by the government, and tried and imprisoned. His book on the British Constitution is, though somewhat visionary, both original and ingenious. He is six feet high, with a very broad chest; wears a fur cap and blue cotton-velvet dressing-gown in the sultriest weather; is a great admirer of Jeremy Bentham, Mrs. Wheeler, and Fanny Wright, by the way.

* * * * *

Woolwich.—After spending a day here under special advantages, I have succeeded in seeing whatever was worth seeing for my purpose, and in getting a fine sketch of a Woolwich Pensioner by Sully,—Robert M. Sully, nephew of Thomas Sully, and a capital draughtsman,—to serve as a companion piece for the Greenwich Pensioner by the same artist. The man had served against us in the Revolutionary War, and participated in the "affair" of Bunker Hill. The shovel hats, the long chins and retreating mouths of these aged men at Greenwich, are wonderfully hit off by Cruikshank, with a mere flourish of the pen. I have a scene in a watch-house, with half a score of heads, thoroughly Irish, drunk or sleepy, and as many more of these shovel hats, which the clever artist amused himself with scratching off,—as we sat talking together at a table,—on a little bit of waste paper, which fluttered away in the draft from a window, and fell upon the floor.

Saw a prodigious quantity of guns to be "let loose" in the dock-yard, to which I was admitted as a great privilege. When Alexander of Russia and the king of Prussia were admitted after the war, they were greatly disappointed and mortified, I was told, at seeing such a vast accumulation of warlike material. They supposed England to be exhausted.

The English artillery is far superior in details to the French, though not half so abundant. Where the French bring eighty pieces at once into the field, the English never have more than twenty pieces. The English lost only two guns in the whole Peninsular war; the French lost nearly eleven hundred, Waterloo included.

At Woolwich there are two or three hundred acres full of machinery, with saw-mills, planing-mills, &c. Saw, among other inventions and improvements, anchor shanks made largest about one third of the distance from the crown, where they always bend or break; an original screw-cutter of uncommon merit; and a perpetual capstan for drawing in wood for the mill.

* * * * *

Illuminations.—His Majesty's birthday. By one odd arrangement of colored lamps, which was intended for George IV., it reads thus, Giver, being G. IV. R. The populace break windows which are not lighted up. The king's tradesmen are most astonishing in their manifestations of loyalty; and, among others, I see an establishment with this inscription: "Bug Destroyer to his Majesty."

* * * * *

Chimney-Sweeps.—May 1. The little monsters appear in cocked hats and gilt paper, with their faces painted, and with dancing and music, and a very pretty girl pirouetting in a hogshead of cut paper, with large boys about her, like trees dancing. Of course, we are constantly reminded of Edward Wortley Montagu, and of his delightful experience with the chimney-sweeps.

* * * * *

John Randolph.—This madman is full of his vagaries here; says the most offensive things, but in such a high-bred, supercilious, if not gentlemanly way, that people cannot make up their minds about him, nor whether to cut him dead or acknowledge him for a genius and a humorist. Sir Robert Inglis says, publicly, that Mr. Randolph "on these boards" claimed for Virginia the first attempt at abolition. "And I am disposed to believe the gentleman correct," adds Sir Robert, "because of his opportunities for knowledge." Whatever related to the United States was received better than anything else in the proceedings of to-day at the Freemasons' Tavern. Very comfortable and gratifying.

* * * * *

Marquis of Stafford's Gallery.—Here I find about three hundred fine pictures, most of them by the old masters, and a large part worthy of enthusiastic admiration. Thirty-eight in the National Gallery cost sixty thousand pounds. What, then, are these worth as a collection?

* * * * *

Cary, the Translator of Dante.—Met him at Mr. Griffith's,—Sylvanus Urban's,—another great friend of our country, who insisted on my occupying the seat which Dr. Franklin used to sit in, and after him Lord Byron. Mr. Cary has a good, sensible face, is about five feet seven in height, and forty-six years old, very moderate of speech, and talks with a low voice. Among the guests were Captain Brace, who was with Lord Exmouth when he put through the Dey of Algiers after the fashion of our Preble. He seemed about sixty, with gray hair, and a youthful countenance.

* * * * *

Horticultural Exhibition.—Great show and surprising. No sales made. Pears better than ours; peaches nearly as good, and sell from a shilling to one and sixpence apiece. They resemble not our New Jersey or Maryland peaches, but such as grow about Boston. Grapes fine, nectarines capital; gooseberries, plums, mulberries, currants, all better than ours; apples wretched, "not fit to give the pigs," liked all the better for being hard, or ligneous.

I have just understood here, on the best authority, that Mr. Coke, of Norfolk, did move for an abandonment of the war, session after session, and finally gave the casting vote as mover. He did also give Washington's health at his own table once, with a large company of leading men about him, in the hottest part of the struggle. He looks like one of Trumbull's generals or statesmen, of the old Revolutionary type, and not unlike Washington himself, or General Knox.

* * * * *

Duke of Sussex.—Prodigious; even Chester Harding, who is a large man, over six feet, appears under-sized alongside of his Royal Highness. Went to a meeting for the encouragement of the arts. The Duke presided, and, being popular and willing so to continue, he made a speech. "Ladies and gentlemen," said he, "it affords me gratification to see, to recognize, so many persons assembled for the encouragement of what I may say is one of the best institutions of the country. Good deal of business coming up. I shall therefore reserve myself for the conclusion, and now call upon the Secretary to read the proceedings." Effect of the show seems to be very good. Some persons, girls and women, received three prizes.

* * * * *

Theatre.—Munden's farewell. Dosey and Sir Robert Bramble; among the finest pieces of acting I ever saw,—rich, warm, and full of unadulterated strength. Terrible crush at the entrance, the corners being neither stuffed nor rounded. Great screaming and screeching. "Take care o' that corner!" "Mind there!" "Oh! oh! you'll kill me!" "There now, lady's killed!" And it was indeed about as much as a woman's life was worth to venture into such a brutal mob. No consideration for women, as usual. They are pushed, crowded, overthrown sometimes, and sometimes trampled on without remorse or shame, as at the Duke of York's funeral.

* * * * *

Washington Irving.—Met him for the second time, and had more reason than ever for believing that, with all his daintiness and fastidiousness, he is altogether a man, hearty and generous, and his books, with all their shifting shadows, but a transcript of himself and of his unacknowledged visions and meditations. His pleasantry, too, is delightful; and, as you cannot question his truthfulness, he gains upon you continually, even while you pity his girlish sensitiveness. I do not see any picture of him that satisfies me, or does him justice. Newton cannot paint a portrait, nor indeed can Leslie; and the result is, that what we have foisted off upon us for portraits are only misunderstandings.



A YEAR IN MONTANA.

Where the Wind River Chain of the Rocky Mountains stretches far away to the east, and the Bitter Root Range far away to the northwest, like giant arms holding in their embrace the fertile valleys whence the myriad springs which form the two great rivers of the continent take their rise,—on the northern border of the United States, and accessible only through leagues of desert,—lie the gold fields of Montana. Four years ago all this region was terra incognita. In 1805, Lewis and Clarke passed through it; but beyond a liberal gift of geographical inaccuracies, they have left only a few venerable half-breeds as relics of their journey. Among the Indians, what they did and said has passed into tradition; and the tribes of which they speak, the Ke-heet-sas, Minnetarees, Hohilpoes, and Tus-he-pahs, are as extinct as the dodo. Later explorers have added little to the scanty stock of information, save interesting descriptions of rich valleys and rough mountain scenery and severe hardships in the winters. For the most part, it was a country unexplored and unknown, and held by the various Indian tribes in the Northwest as a common hunting-ground.

One bright morning in August, 1864, after a brief rest at Salt Lake, we left Brigham's seraglios for this new El Dorado. We had taken the long trip of twelve hundred miles on the overland stage, which Mr. Bowles describes in his admirable book "Across the Continent." But his was the gala-day excursion of Speaker Colfax and his party, so full of studied and constant attention as to lead Governor Bross to tell the good people of Salt Lake, a little extravagantly, that the height of human happiness was to live in one of Holladay's stages. This life loses its rose-color when nine inside passengers, to fortune and to fame unknown, are viewed as so much freight, and transported accordingly.

It is four hundred miles due north from Salt Lake City to Montana. The low canvas-covered Concord hack, in which we travel, is constructed with an eye rather to safety than comfort, and, like a city omnibus, is never full. Still, our passengers look upon even their discomforts as a joke. They are most of them old miners, hard-featured but genial and kindly, and easily distinguished from men reared in the easy life of cities. Mr. Bowles describes them as characterized by a broader grasp and more intense vitality. I could not but notice, particularly, their freedom from all the quarrels and disagreements sometimes known among travellers in the States. The heavy revolver at every man's belt, and the miner's proverbial love of fair play, keep in every one's mind a clear perception of the bounds of meum and tuum.

I must hurry over our four days' journey and its many objects of interest. All the first day we ride through brisk Mormon villages, prosperous in their waving cornfields and their heavy trade with the mines. At a distance is the Great Salt Lake,—properly an inland sea, like the Caspian and Sea of Aral,—having a large tributary, the Bear River, and no outlet. Crossing Bear River, and the low mountains beyond, we follow down the Portneuf Canon to Snake River, or Lewis's Fork of the Columbia, along which and its affluents lies the rest of our journey.

Hurrying past the solitary station-houses, and over here and there a little creek, our fourth night brings us to a low hill, which we need to be told is a pass of the Rocky Mountains. We cross this during the night, and morning dawns upon us in a level prairie among the network of brooks which form the extreme sources of the Missouri. Here, more than sixty years ago, Lewis and Clarke followed the river up to the "tiny bright beck," so narrow that "one of the party in a fit of enthusiasm, with a foot on each side, thanked God that he had lived to bestride the Missouri." It is called Horse Prairie, from the circumstance that they here bartered for horses with the Shoshonee Indians. They had often seen the men, mounted on fleet steeds, watching them like timid antelopes at a distance, but never allowing this distance to lessen. No signs or proffered presents could induce a near approach. One lucky day, however, Captain Lewis surprised a chattering bevy of their squaws and made prisoner a belle of the tribe. Finding all effort to escape hopeless, the woman held down her head as if ready for death. There was among them the same effeminate fear of capture and the same heroic fortitude when death seemed inevitable, that Clive and Hastings found in the Bengalee. But the Captain gallantly painted her tawny cheeks with vermilion, and dismissed her loaded with presents. It is hardly necessary to add, that captures of Shoshonee Sabines were not long matters of difficult accomplishment. Very soon all the chiefs followed, with a rather exuberant cordiality towards the party, and with forced smiles the explorers "received the caresses and no small share of the grease and paint of their new friends."

Lewis and Clarke called Horse Prairie by the prettier name of Shoshonee Cove. But the names they gave have passed into as deep oblivion as the forgotten great man, Rush, whose pills they publish to the world as a sovereign specific in bilious fevers. Of all the names on their map only those of the three forks of the Missouri, from President Jefferson and his Secretaries Madison and Gallatin, remain. The unpoetical miner has invented a ruder nomenclature; and on the rivers which they called Wisdom, Philosophy, and Philanthropy, he bestows the barbarous names of Big Hole, Willow Creek, and Stinking Water.

A few hours' ride brings us to Grasshopper Creek, another affluent of the Missouri, and, like them all, a crooked little stream of clear cold water, fringed with alders and willows, and with a firm pebbly bed, along which the water tinkles a merry tune. What a pity that these pure mountain children should develop to such a maturity as the muddy Missouri! Parallel with this little stream, where it winds into a narrow chasm between abrupt mountain walls, winds a crooked street, with a straggling row of log-cabins on either side, and looking from the mountain-tops very much like the vertebrae of a huge serpent. This is Bannack, so called from the Indian tribe whose homes were in the vicinity. These were the bravest, the proudest, and the noblest looking Indians of the mountains till the white man came. Yet seldom has there been a stronger illustration of the inexorable law, that when a superior and inferior race come in contact the lower is annihilated. Every step of the white man's progress has been a step of the red man's decay. And now this tribe, once so warlike, is a nation of spiritless beggars, crouching near the white settlements for protection from their old foes, over whom in times past they were easy victors.

At Bannack, in the summer of 1862, a party of Colorado miners, lost on their way to Gold Creek in the Deer Lodge Valley, discovered the first rich placer diggings of Montana. A mining town grew up straightway; and ere winter a nondescript crowd of two thousand people—miners from the exhausted gulches of Colorado, desperadoes banished from Idaho, bankrupt speculators from Nevada, guerilla refugees from Missouri, with a very little leaven of good and true men—were gathered in. Few of them speak with pleasant memories of that winter. The mines were not extensive, and they were difficult to work. Scanty supplies were brought in from Denver and Salt Lake, and held at fabulous prices. An organized band of ruffians, styled Road Agents, ruled the town. Street murders were daily committed with impunity, and travellers upon the road were everywhere plundered. Care was not even taken to conceal the bodies of the victims, which were left as food for the wolves by the roadside.

Next year, the discovery of richer mines at Virginia left Bannack a deserted village of hardly two hundred people. It is a dull town for the visitor; but the inhabitants have all Micawber's enthusiastic trust in the future, and live in expectation of the wealth which is to turn up in the development of the quartz lodes. We visited the most famous of these lodes,—the Dacotah,—almost every specimen from which is brilliant with little shining stars of gold. And deep down in the shaft of this lode has been found a spacious cave full of stones of a metallic lustre, sending out all the tints of the rainbow, and many-colored translucent crystallizations, varying from the large stalactites to the fragile glass-work that crumbles at the touch.

Leaving Bannack, the road ascends a very lofty range of mountains, and passes by much wild and picturesque scenery. Mountaineers call these ranges, where they separate two streams, by the name of "divides." They have a scanty but nutritious herbage, and are for many months in the year covered with snow. On many of them a stunted growth of hybrid pines and cedars flourishes in great abundance. These, with the quaking ash and cottonwood along the streams, are the only woods of Montana. None of the harder woods, such as oak or maple, are found. It is inconceivably grand from the top of this range to look out upon the endless succession of vast peaks rolling away on every side, like waves in the purple distance. High above them all towers Bald Mountain,—the old Indian landmark of this section,—like Saul among his brethren. I have crossed this range in the gray of a February morning, with the thermometer at thirty-five below zero, and I never felt such a sense of loneliness as in gazing out from our sleigh—little atom of life as it seemed—upon this boundless ocean of snow, whose winters had been unbroken solitude through all the centuries.

Over this divide we pass among a low range of hills seamed with veins of silver, having already a more than local reputation. The hills embosom a clear little creek called after the yellow rattlesnake, which is almost as plentiful a luxury in these wilds as the grasshopper. It is, however, less venomous than its Eastern brethren, for not even the oldest inhabitant can instance a death from its bite. Nervous people avoid it studiously, but it has many friends among the other animals. The prairie-dog, the owl, and the rattlesnake live a happy family in one burrow, and the serpent has another fast friend in the turtle-dove. These doves are called the rattlesnake's brothers-in-law, and there runs a pretty legend, that when an Indian kills one of them, or mocks their plaintive cry, they tell the rattlesnake, who lies in wait and avenges the wrong by a deadly sting. And when one of the snakes is killed, the turtle-doves watch long over his dead body and chant mournful dirges at his funeral.

The road to Virginia passes through the basin in which lie the tributaries of Jefferson Fork. It is a barren waste. Being in the rich mineral section of the country, its agricultural resources are proportionally deficient. Providence does not sprinkle the gold among the grain lands, but, by the wise law of compensation, apportions it to remote and volcanic regions which boast of little else. Along the water-courses is a narrow belt of cottonwood, and then rise the low table-lands, too high for irrigation, and with a parched, alkaline soil which produces only the wild sage and cactus. Miners curse this sprawling cactus most heartily, and their horses avoid its poisonous porcupine thorns with great care. All through these brown wastes one sees no shelter for the herds, no harvests of grain or hay, and wonders not a little how animal life—as well the flocks of antelope, elk, and deer in the mountains, as the cattle and horses of the rancheros—is preserved through the deep snows of the Northern winter. But even when the mountains are impassable, there is seldom snow in the valleys; and along the sides of the hills grow stunted tufts of bunch-grass, full of sweetness and nutriment. Horses always hunt for it in preference to the greener growth at the water's edge. And it is not an annual, but a perennial, preserving its juices during the winters, and drawing up sap and greenness into the old blades in the first suns of spring. This bunch-grass grows in great abundance, and it is only in winters of extreme severity that animals suffer from a lack of nourishing food.

Specks of gold may be found in a pan of dirt from any of these streams, followed back to the mountain chasm of its source. Upon one of them, in June, 1863, a party of gold-hunters stopped to camp on their return to Bannack, after an unsuccessful trip to the Yellowstone. While dinner was being cooked, one of them washed out a pan of dirt and obtained more than a dollar. Further washings showed even greater richness; and, hurrying to Bannack, they returned at once with supplies and friends, and formed a mining district. In the absence of law, the miners frame their own law; and so long as its provisions are equal and impartial, it is everywhere recognized. The general principle of such laws is to grant a number of linear feet up and down the gulch or ravine to the first squatter, upon compliance with certain conditions necessary for mutual benefit. In deliberations upon these laws, technicalities and ornament are of little weight, and only the plainest common-sense prevails. Prominent among their conditions was a provision—for the exorcism of drones—that every claim must be worked a fixed number of days in each week, or else, in the miners' expressive vocabulary, it should be considered "jumpable." Compliance with law was never more rigidly exacted by Lord Eldon than by the miners' judges and courts, and in the first days of this legislation a hundred revolvers, voiceless before any principle of justice, yet too ready before any technicality, fixed the construction of every provision beyond all cavil.

This was the beginning of Virginia Gulch, from which twenty-five millions of dollars in gold have been taken, and which has to-day a population of ten thousand souls. The placer proved to be singularly regular, almost every claim for fifteen miles being found profitable. From the mouth of the canon to its very end, among snows almost perpetual, are the one-storied log-cabins, gathered now and then into clusters, which are called cities, and named by the miner from his old homes in Colorado and Nevada. In travelling up the crazy road, with frowning mountains at our left, and yawning pit-holes at our right, we pass seven of these cities,—Junction, Nevada, Central, Virginia, Highland, Pine Grove, and Summit.

Virginia, the chief of the hamlets, has since developed into an organized city, and the capital of the Territory. Its site was certainly not chosen for its natural beauty. Along the main gulch are the mines,—huge piles of earth turned up in unsightly heaps. At one side of the mines, and up a ravine which crosses the gulch at right angles, lies the city. In shape it was originally like the letter T, but its later growth has forced new streets and houses far up the hillsides. Not so much regard was paid, in laying the foundations of the new city, to its future greatness, as Penn gave when he planned Philadelphia. The miner only wanted a temporary shelter, and every new-comer placed a log-cabin of his own style of architecture next the one last built. Where convenience required a street, lo! a street appeared. There were no gardens, for beyond the narrow centre of the ravine only sage-brush and cactus would grow. But the mines thrived, and also grew and thrived the little city and its vices.

Gradually a better class of buildings appeared. What were called hotels began to flourish; but it was long before the monotony of bacon, bread, and dried apples was varied by a potato. And for sleeping accommodations, a limited space was allotted upon the floor, the guest furnishing his own blankets. A theatre soon sprang up. And either because of the refined taste of some of the auditors, or the advanced talent of the performers, the playing was not the broad farce which might have been entertaining, but was confined to Shakespeare and heavy tragedy, which was simply disgusting. This style of acting culminated in the debut of a local celebrity, possessed of a sonorous voice and seized with a sudden longing for Thespian laurels. He chose the part of Othello, and all Virginia assembled to applaud. The part was not well committed, and sentences were commenced with Shakespearian loftiness and ended with the actor's own emendations, which were certainly questionable improvements. Anything but a tragic effect was produced by seeing the swarthy Moor turn to the prompter at frequent intervals, and inquire, "What?" in a hoarse whisper. A running colloquy took place between Othello and his audience, in which he made good his assertion that he was rude in speech. Since then, Shakespeare has not been attempted on the Virginia boards. "Othello's occupation's gone"; and all tragic efforts are confined to the legitimate Rocky Mountain drama. "Nick of the Woods" has frequently been produced with great applause, though the illusion is somewhat marred by the audible creaking of the wheels of the boat in which the Jibbenainosay sails triumphantly over the cataract.

Sunday is distinguished from other days in being the great day of business. The mines are not worked and it is the miners' holiday. All is bustle and confusion. A dozen rival auctioneers vend their wares, and gallop fast horses up and down the street. The drinking and gambling saloons and dance-houses are in full blast, all with bands of music to allure the passing miner, who comes into town on Sunday to spend his earnings. The discoverer of Virginia is the miner par excellence,—a good-natured Hercules clad in buckskin, or a lion in repose. All the week he toils hard in some hole in the earth for this Sunday folly. The programme for the day is prepared on a scale of grandeur in direct ratio to the length of his purse. The necessity of spending the entire week's earnings is obvious, and to assist him in doing so seems to be the only visible means of support of half the people of the town. The dance-house and the gambling-saloon, flaunting their gaudy attractions, own him for the hour their king. His Midas touch is all-powerful. I must confess, with all my admiration for his character, that his tastes are low. I know that the civilization of the East would bore him immeasurably, and that he considers Colt, with his revolvers, a broader philanthropist than Raikes with his Sunday schools. But he is frank and open, generous and confiding, honorable and honest, scorning anything mean and cowardly. Mention to him, in his prodigal waste of money, that a poor woman or child is in want of the necessaries of life, and the purse-strings open with a tear. Tell him that corruption and wrong have worked an injury to a comrade or a stranger, and his pistol flashes only too quickly, to right it. Circumstances have made him coarse and brutal, but below all this surface beats a heart full of true instincts and honest impulses. I am certain the recording angel will blot out many of his sins, as he did those of Uncle Toby. His means exhausted, he abdicates his ephemeral kingdom, and, uncomplaining, takes his pick and shovel, his frying-pan, bacon, and flour, and starts over the mountains for new diggings. Yet he gains no wisdom by experience. The same bacchanalian orgies follow the next full purse.

The Road Agents came to the new city from Bannack increased in strength and boldness. Long impunity had made them scarcely anxious to conceal their connection with the band. Life and property were nowhere secure. Spies in Virginia announced to confederates on the road every ounce of treasure that left the city, and sometimes reports came back of robberies of the coaches, sometimes of murder of the travellers, and still more frequently the poor victim was never heard of after his departure. There were no laws or courts, except the miners' courts, and these were powerless. Self-protection demanded vigorous measures, and a few good men of Bannack and Virginia met together and formed a Vigilance Committee, similar in all respects to that which has had such a beneficent influence in the growth of California. It was, of course, secret, and composed of a mere handful. It must be secret, for the Road Agents had so overawed the people that few dared acknowledge themselves as champions of law and order. They had threatened, and they had the power to crush such an organization at its inception, by taking the lives of its members. But moving stealthily and unknown, the little organization grew. Whenever a good man and true was found, he became a link of the chain. At last it tried its power over a notorious desperado named Ives, by calling a public trial of the miners. It was a citizens' trial, but the Vigilantes were the leading spirits. Ives confronted his accusers boldly, relying on the promised aid of his confederates. They lay in wait to offer it, but the criminal was too infamous for just men to hesitate which side to take, and the cowards, as always in such cases, though probably a numerical majority, dared not meet the issue. Ives was hanged without any attempt at rescue.

The proceedings thus vigorously commenced were as vigorously continued. The Road Agents still trusted their power, and the contest was not settled. The Vigilantes settled it soon and forever. One morning their pickets barred every point of egress from Virginia. A secret trial had been held and six well-known robbers sentenced to death. Five of them were one by one found in the city. The quickness of their captors had foiled their attempts at escape or resistance, and their impotent rage at seeing every point guarded sternly by armed Vigilantes knew no bounds. They were all executed together at noon. It was a sickening scene,—five men, with the most revolting crimes to answer for, summoned with hardly an hour's preparation into eternity. Yet they are frequently spoken of with respect because they "died game." All of them, drinking heavily to keep up their courage, died with the most impious gibes and curses on their lips. Boone Helm, a hoary reprobate, actually said, as the block was being removed from him, "Good by, boys! I will meet you in hell in five minutes." Harsh measures were these, but their effect was magical. One of the leaders had been hanged at Bannack, and the others as fast as found were promptly executed,—perhaps thirty in all. A few fled, and are heard of now and then among the robbers of Portneuf Canon; but under the sway of the Vigilantes life and property in Virginia became safer than to-day in Boston. For minor offences they banished the guilty, and for grave offences they took life. As their history is now recounted by the people, there is no man who does not praise their work and agree that their acts were just and for the public good. The first courts were held in December, 1864, and the Vigilantes were the earliest to support their authority. They are still in existence, but as a support and ally of the courts, and only appearing when the public safety demands the most rigorous dealing.

Virginia can never be a pretty city, but in many respects it is a model one. The earlier log-houses are now giving way to substantial stores of granite; and the number of gambling and tippling shops is steadily decreasing, the buildings being taken up by the wholesale traders. An organized city government preserves strict police regulations. Two thriving churches have grown up, and very recently the principal merchants have agreed to close their houses on the Sabbath. The old residents are bringing in their wives and children, and society constantly gains in tone. Erelong, it will compare favorably with the steadiest town in the land of steady habits.

Eight miles above Virginia is Summit. Its name sufficiently designates its location, which is at the head of the gulch and among the highest mountains. The sun is not seen there till a late hour in the winter, and the few who make it their home burrow closely as rabbits from the bitter cold and deep snows. The placer diggings are at their greatest depth here, but exceedingly rich. Here also are the richest gold lodes of the Territory. All the quartz seems impregnated with gold, sometimes in little pockets of nuggets, sometimes spattered by the intense heat of old into all forms of wires and spangles.

Quartz mining is yet in its rudest form. The gold is buried in solid rock, and requires heavy crushing-mills and cumbrous machinery, which must be built and transported at immense expense by capitalists. It is a question with such capitalists how certain is the promise of returns. The uncertainty of mining, as shown by the results of ventures in Colorado, has naturally deterred them. Under the old process of crushing the quartz to powder by stamps, and then separating the gold by amalgamation with quicksilver, but twenty-five per cent of the gold is saved. After the amalgamation a practical chemist could take the "tailings" of the Dacotah ore, and produce almost the full assay of the original rock. Very much depends in the mountain territories upon the success of experiments, now in operation, with the various new desulphurizing processes. This success established, the wealth of the territories is incalculable.

All the mining of Montana is now confined to the placer or gulch diggings. There are many of these, but probably none to compare in all respects with those at Virginia. At Bannack is found purer gold, at Biven's are larger nuggets, and many diggings at McClellan's yield larger amounts per day. But these are lotteries,—some claims paying largely to-day and nothing to-morrow, or one yielding enormously, while the next, after all the labor and expense of opening, gives nothing. They are called "spotted," while nearly every claim at Virginia has yielded with great regularity. How the gold came into these gulches is of little consequence to the miner. It suffices him to know that it is there, and his practical experience enables him to point out its location with great accuracy, though without any scientific knowledge of its origin. Most probably, far away in the Preadamite periods, when these mountains were much loftier than to-day, they were cloven and pierced by volcanic fires, and then into their innumerable vents and fissures infiltrated the molten quartz and the base and precious metals. Afterwards followed the period of the glaciers, and all the working of the seasons and chemical decompositions. Traces of the glaciers and the rotten burnt quartz of the volcanic periods exist everywhere. Thus washing and crumbling away in the waters and suns of untold springs and summers, the gold has come down the mountain gorges into the valleys below. The manner of gathering it is rude and incomplete enough. In all the gulches, at depths varying from six to fifty feet, is a bed-rock of the same general conformation as the surface. Usually this is granite; but sometimes before reaching the primitive rock two or three strata of pipe-clay—the later beds of the stream, upon which frequently lies a deposit of gold—are passed. Upon the bed-rock is a deposit, from three to four feet in depth, of gravel and boulders, in which the gold is hidden. This is called by the miners "pay-dirt," and to remove it to the surface and wash it is the end of mining. It is an expensive and laborious process indeed. The water has first to be controlled; and in mines of not too great depth this is done by a drain ditch along the bed-rock, commenced many claims below. In this all the claim-holders are interested, and all contribute their quota of the labor and expense of digging it. The district laws permit every person to run such a drain through all the claims below his own, and force every man to contribute alike towards its construction, on pain of not being allowed to use the water, even though it flows through his own land. The water controlled, the rest is mere physical labor, which only bones and sinews of iron can endure. In the shallow diggings the superincumbent earth above the pay-dirt is removed, and the process is called "stripping." In deep diggings a shaft is sunk to the bed-rock, and tunnels are run in every direction,—and this is called "drifting." The roof is supported by strong piles, but these supports too frequently give way, and hurry the poor miners to untimely deaths. The pay-dirt, in whichever way obtained, is then shovelled into the sluice-boxes,—a series of long troughs, set at the proper angle to prevent the gold from washing past, or the dirt from settling to the bottom. Managed with the skill which experience has taught, the constant stream of water carries over the sand, while the gold, being seven times heavier, sinks to the bottom, and is caught by cross-bars called "riffles," placed there for the purpose. In the lower boxes is frequently placed quicksilver, with which the lighter particles amalgamate. During the washings the larger stones and boulders are removed by a fork. These boxes, after a successful day's work, are a pleasant sight to see, all brilliant with gold and black sand and magnetic iron. All is gold that glitters. The heavy sand and iron are separated by a more careful washing by hand and by the magnet. Of course, all this system is very rude and imperfect,—so much so, that it has been found profitable in California to wash over the same earth nine times.

The gold-dust thus obtained is the only circulating medium in the Territory, and is the standard of trade. Treasury notes and coin are articles of merchandise. Everybody who has gold has also his little buckskin pouch to hold it. Every store has its scales, and in these is weighed out the fixed amount for all purchases according to Troy weight. An ounce is valued at eighteen dollars, a pennyweight at ninety cents, and so on. It is amusing to notice how the friction of the scales is made by some men—particularly the Jews, whose name is legion—to work them no loss. In weighing in, the scale-beam bows most deferentially to the gold side; but in weighing out, it makes profound obeisance to the weights. The same cupidity has given rise to two new terms in the miners' glossary,—trade dust and bankable dust. Bankable dust means simply gold, pure and undefiled. Trade dust is gold with a plentiful sprinkling of black sand, and is of three grades, described very clearly by the terms good, fair, and dirty. The trader, in receiving our money, complains if it does not approximate what is bankable, but in paying us his money pours out a combination in which black sand is a predominating ingredient. Many merchants even keep a saucer of black sand in readiness to dilute their bankable gold to the utmost thinness it will bear.

As might be expected, the courts were hardly opened before grave questions arose as to the construction of contracts based on this anomalous currency. Notes were usually made to pay a given number of "dollars, in good, bankable dust." But the laws recognized no such commodity as a dollar in dust. The decision of the court protecting a trickster in paying treasury-notes worth but fifty cents for the gold loaned by a friend, savored to the plain miner of rank injustice. To avoid even this opportunity for a legal tender, sometimes notes promised to pay a certain number of ounces and pennyweights, with interest at a fixed rate. The question was immediately sprung as to whether such an agreement was to be construed as a promissory note, or was to be sued for as a contract to do a specified act, by setting out a breach and claiming damages for the non-performance. The miners listened to the long discussions on these points impatiently, and compared the courts unfavorably with the miners' courts, which unloosed all such Gordian knots with Alexander's directness.

In the month of September, 1864, reports came to Virginia of mines on the Yellowstone. The reports were founded on some strange tales of old trappers, and were clothed with a vagueness and mystery as uncertain as dreams. Yet on such unsubstantial bases every miner built a pet theory, and a large "stampede" took place in consequence. I started with a party for the new mines, early in October. A day's ride brought us to the Madison Fork, a broad, shallow stream, difficult of fording on account of its large boulders, and flowing through a narrow strip of arable land. Very different is the Gallatin, beyond. It is cut up into narrow streams of a very rapid current, and waters a valley of surprising fertility. The Snakes called it Swift River. This valley is forty miles long and from ten to fifteen wide, and rising at its sides into low plateaus plenteously covered with rich bunch-grass. It is already pre-empted by farmers, and by easy irrigation are produced all the hardier vegetables and cereals, in quantity, size, and closeness of fibre not equalled on the Iowa prairies. The valley gradually widens as you descend the stream, until, at the junction of the Three Forks, it stretches into a broad prairie, sufficient alone to supply all the mines with grain and vegetables. A few enterprising speculators once laid out a town here, with all the pomp and circumstance of Martin Chuzzlewit's Eden. Pictures of it were made, with steamers lying at the wharves and a university in the suburbs. Liberal donations of lots were made to the first woman married, to the first newspaper, to the first church, to the first child born. But there were no mines near, and the city never had an inhabitant. The half-dozen buildings put up by the proprietors are left for the nightly carnivals of bats and owls.

On our road we passed a half-dozen huts, dignified with the name of Bozeman City. Here lives a Cincinnatus in retirement, one of the great pioneers of mountain civilization, named Bozeman. To him belongs the credit of having laid out the Bozeman Cut-off, on the road from Fort Laramie to Virginia, and he is looked up to among emigrants much as Chief-Justice Marshall is among lawyers. I saw the great man, with one foot moccasoned and the other as Nature made it, giving Bunsby opinions to a crowd of miners as to the location of the mythical mines.

Parting from him, we crossed a high range of mountains, and from their tops looked down upon the spiral line of the Yellowstone, marked by the rich tints of its willows and cottonwoods, red, yellow, and green, in the crisp frosts of October. The air on these mountain-tops is much rarefied, and so very clear and pure that objects at a great distance seem within the reach of an easy walk. The Yellowstone flows in the eastern portion of Montana through an uninhabitable desert called the Mauvaises Terres, or Bad Lands, which, mingling their soil with its waters, give it the yellow color from which it is named. These lands are vast wastes, covered with what appears to be pine ashes. No signs of vegetation are found, but they are abundant in strange petrifactions. I have seen from them petrified reptiles and portions of the human body, having a pearly lustre and inlaid with veins, and looking like the finest work in papier-mache.

The valley of the Upper Yellowstone has a thin, rocky soil, almost worthless for farming land. But what a paradise it would be for Izaak Walton and Daniel Boone! Quaint old Izaak would have realized a dream of Utopia in watching in the crystal stream its millions of speckled trout. It almost seems as if the New England trout had learned their proverbial wariness from long experience. There is none of it in these Yellowstone fish. They leap at the bare hook with the most guileless innocence. Trout are rarely found in the waters of the Missouri, but they fill all the brooks west of the mountains. They bite ravenously; one veracious traveller going so far as to assert that they followed him from the water far into the woods, and bit at the spurs on his boots. But mountaineers, even of the most scrupulous veracity, are occasionally given to hyperbole. Daniel Boone, too, would have found his paradise of a solitude undisturbed by white men, and full of wild game. Every night our camp was entertained with the hungry cry of wolves, the melancholy hooting of owls, and the growls of bears crackling the underbrush. The grizzly bear is not found in Montana; only the small black and cinnamon bears are seen. When wounded, these exhibit the most extreme ferocity; but persons who choose to avoid them will find them always willing to preserve the most distant relations. The most interesting of all the wild animals is the antelope. Every hour we passed flocks of these little fellows. They are timid as school-girls, but as inquisitive as village gossips; and while frightened and trembling at our presence, they could not resist keeping long in our view, and stopping every few moments to watch us, with most childish curiosity. Though fleet as the wind, I have seen many of the meek-eyed little fellows watch too long, and pay for their curiosity with their lives.

The most eastern settlement of Montana is at the mouth of a canon near the Yellowstone, one hundred and thirty miles from Virginia. A party of Iowa emigrants found fair prospects here, and made it their home, calling their mines Emigrant Gulch, and their half-dozen log-huts Yellowstone City. Their gulch is rich in gold, but the huge boulders, many tons in weight, make it impossible to obtain the treasure by the present rude methods. The few profitable claims are high up in the mountains, and are free from ice only in the hottest days of summer. Even the donkeys, so much in use in transporting supplies to the mountain miners, cannot travel here, and every pound of flour is carried on men's backs over giddy paths almost impassable for the chamois. Still the emigrants went to work with a will, and full of confidence. They built themselves log-cabins, not so convenient as those at Virginia,—for they had not the miner's knack of reaping large results from such limited resources,—but still substantial and comfortable. They enacted written laws, as ample as the Code Napoleon. Almost every day during our visit they met to revise this code and enact new provisions. Its most prominent feature was the ample protection it afforded to women in the distribution of lots in their prospective city, and the terrible punishment with which it visited any man who dared offer one of them an insult. They certainly founded their republic on principles of adamant, but in spite of high hopes and wise laws the boulders refused to move. Even Iowa enterprise at last gave way under constant disaster, and the people of the little city are one by one forsaking it for the older mines.

The swift Yellowstone and the Colorado rise in lakes in the enchanted Wind River Mountains. Mr. Stuart mentions the weird tales, told by trappers and hunters, of places—avoided, if possible, by man and beast—in these mountains where trees and game and even Indians are petrified, and yet look natural as in life. These trappers are accustomed to exaggerate. I remember hearing a very serious account from one of them of a vast mountain of quartz so transparent that he could see mules feeding on the other side. There is also a story of a trapper who was lost in the fastnesses of the mountains years ago, and wandered for many days among streams whose bottoms were pebbled with gold. It is the miner's romance to repeat these fables of the Wind River Mountains, and to look forward to the day when the Indians shall be forced to yield them to his enterprise.

We arrived at Virginia at the end of October, and the commencement of the long mountain winter. The snows were soon blown in deep drifts over the hills, and the roads became almost impassable. A few hardy prospecters braved them in the search for quartz lodes, but many perished, and others were brought back to the city with frozen limbs. The mines lay idle, and the business of the city, dependent upon them for support, was completely stagnant. It was humanity living a squirrel life among its little garners of roots and nuts. But as usual, the reason of humanity fell far behind the instinct of the squirrel. Before spring came, the supply of flour at Virginia failed, and the most hideous of all calamities was threatened,—a famine. The range on the Salt Lake road lay utterly impassable under more than fifteen feet of snow. No mails had arrived for three months. The fear of famine soon became a panic, and flour speedily rose from twenty dollars per sack of one hundred pounds to one hundred and ten dollars in gold. A mob was organized by the drones, who would rather steal than work; and the miners were wrought upon by statements that a few speculators held an abundance of flour, and were extorting money from the necessities of the people. The Robespierres of the new reform drew the miners into passing a resolution to place all the flour in Virginia in the hands of a committee, with authority to distribute it among the most needy, at a fair and reasonable compensation, payable to the owner. A riot followed, and the flour-merchants quietly awaited the mob behind barricades of their own flour. The County Sheriff stood at the front of these with cocked revolver, and threatened to kill the first who advanced. The thieves knew that he did not threaten idly, and, though a hundred were ready to follow, not one was bold enough to lead. The riot failed for want of a courageous leader, and towards night slowly dwindled away. Another mob followed in a few days; but the merchants had sold their flour at sacrifices, and the booty was only a few sacks. The want of this staff of life caused great suffering. All other vegetable food was rapidly consumed, and for six weeks the poorer classes were forced to live on beef alone. The effect was in all cases an inability to labor, and in some cases serious sickness.

While thus cut off from all communication with the outer world, and buried in the dull town, there was little for us to do save to study each other's characters and talk the miners' language. In all new and thinly settled countries, many ideas are expressed by figures drawn from the pursuits of the people. Among the Indians, more than half of every sentence is expressed by signs. And miners illustrate their conversation by the various terms used in mining. I have always noticed how clearly these terms conveyed the idea sought. Awkwardness in comprehending this dialect easily reveals that the hearer bears the disgrace of being a "pilgrim," or a "tender-foot," as they style the new emigrant. To master it is an object of prime necessity to him who would win the miner's respect. Thus the term "adobe," the sun-dried brick, as applied to a man, signifies vealiness and verdancy. A "corral" is an enclosure into which the herds are gathered; hence a person who has everything arranged to his satisfaction announces that he has everything "corralled." A man fortunate in any business has "struck the pay-dirt"; unfortunate, has "reached the bed-rock." Everything viewed in the aggregate, as a train, a family, or a town, is an "outfit." I was much at a loss, on my first arrival, to comprehend the exact purport of a miner's criticism upon a windy lawyer of Virginia,—"When you come to pan him out, you don't find color." But this vocabulary is not extensive, and the pilgrim soon learns to perceive and use its beauties.

Helena, the second point of importance in the Territory, is one hundred and twenty-five miles north from Virginia. We travel to it over a fine, hard road, through the low valleys of the Missouri. The beauty and richness of these valleys increase as we leave Virginia, and everywhere the green spots are becoming the homes of thrifty farmers. On the divide near Boulder Creek are wonderful proofs of the gradual levelling of the mountains, in the huge blocks of rock piled up in the most grotesque shapes. Many of these are colossal pillars, surmounted by boulders weighing many tons. The softer rock and gravel have washed down the ravines, leaving these as monuments of the primal ages. The ravines penetrate the mountain on every side, and little by little wear the monster away. The beavers choose the prettiest nooks in them for their villages, and the miner, finding the water cut off, often learns that in a single night these busy architects have built a tight and closely interwoven dam up the stream, which it takes him many hours to demolish. Is it strange that, in speaking of the beaver dam, he should sometimes transpose the words?