I 
For Forut and Stream. 
$rom (Omnlui to ^tint\d=== 
<£ffomi(;wi giuifges, Sc. 
W HEN ou my way to Nevada I stopped at Omaha and 
its vicinity for two weeks, and took a general sur- 
vey of the country for ten or fifteen miles around. Omaha is 
a growing and enterprising city, and numbers fifteen thou- 
sand inhabitants. It lies directly on the west hank of the 
Missouri River. A fine railroad bridge spans the river here 
to Council Bluffs, on the opposite shore. The latter city is 
two or three miles distant from the bank of the river, on 
a beautiful plain, and does not compare in size with 
Omaha. The overflow of the river prevents its being built 
upon its banks; for the Missouri at this place is a treach- 
erous stream, occupying a wide space for its bed, and is 
liable often to change its current from side to side. The 
country around Omaha is hilly; the timber is mostly cot- 
tonwood, which grows very rapidly, and serves for fuel 
and fencing. The Platte River, which rises in the moun- 
tains of Wyoming and empties iu the Missouri fifteen or 
twenty miles below Omaha, is also an everchanging stream. 
Although it contains sufficient water for navigable pur- 
poses, it cannot be confined within its banks. Iu Nebraska 
for a hundred and fifty miles west of the river the soil can- 
not be excelled, but beyond that it thins out into broken 
sand hills, and before it reaches Wyoming becomes a bar- 
ren waste. The eastern part of Nebraska is generally well 
watered, yet the oft-repeated storms of wind which sweep 
over its plains like a devouring sirocco, together with the 
parching droughts, arc a drawback for settlements, yet the 
population far exceeded my calculations. 
There are two tribes of Indians in this part of the State, 
who are settled about ninety miles up the river from 
Omaha, at a place called Omaha Mission. They are super- 
intended, according to the arrangement of the United States 
Government, by Quakers. A gentleman who lives there 
and supplies the Indians with goods told mo that odo of 
the tribes a year ago last Fall went with their wives and 
children on a buffalo hunt into the Territory of Wyoming, 
ami, while in the midst of their sport, were attacked by 
the Sioux— a powerful and warlike tribe, who claim to be 
the lords of the country. The Nebraskas, being weak and 
of a cowardly' nature, fled before them, losing one hundred 
of their number besides their game and horses. They re- 
turned iu the most wretched and forlorn condition imagin- 
able. Much has been written and said of the oppression 
of the Indians by the whites, but facts show that the In- 
dian is the greatest enemy of the Indiau, and if these 
Western tribes fade away and become extinct, like the Pe- 
quoits and Narragansetts, on the Atlantic shores, it will 
not be the fault of the white man, but the treachery and 
cruelty of the Indian to his brother Indian. 
The Union Pacific Railroad runs up the valley, of the 
Platte Rivera hundred miles or more, and then crosses its 
north branch. The great American desert commences iu 
the western part of Nebraska, and entering Wyoming, 
stretches the length of this territory to the base of the 
Rocky Mountains. This is a desolate region; not a tree is 
seen, and no signs of water appear for a long distance in 
this stretch of waste, yet the monotony is often broken by 
flocks of antelopes quietly feeding on the scanty herbage. 
Prairie wolves and prairie dogs abound in this region; buf- 
falo are seldom seeu from the cars, as the noise has a ten- 
dency to frighten them away, and from the present indica- 
tions a few years more will render them extinct here. 
In Wyoming the grade begins to ascend, but no one 
would think that he was ascending the Rocky Mountains, 
by an outlook from the cars. The doubling of the engines, 
however, indicates this fact. Up, up, up the laboring ma- 
chinery forces their ponderous proportions in spite of the 
heavy grade to au altitude of 9,500 feet, aud this is by no 
means the highest point in the mountains. On reaching 
their summit the problem is solved how a railroad could be 
built over a mountain so high, and why they are called 
rocky. The ideas of an Eastern man of a mountain is 
steep declivities, overhauging rocks, and yawning canons; 
but not so. The Rocky Mountains is a smooth plain of so 
vast dimensions that no oue would regard it a mountain; 
its slopes are gentle and easy of ascent. As to the rocks, 
they are like pyramids rising from a smooth plain to the 
height of one and two thousand feet from their base, as 
though they had been placed by human hands, the surface 
of the earth being left uubroken and undisturbed. These 
rocks give unmistakable evidence of volcanic action; they 
aro generally of a reddish furregineous conglomerate quartz. 
These rocks are perfectly denuded, so much so that they 
glisten in the rays of the sun. They are seen in every 
imaginable form, not in regular ranges, but seem to be 
scattered promiscuously over the surface of the mountain. 
Here fine moss-agates are found, also chalcedony. 
Sherman Station is the highest point in the mountain 
where the railroad crosses, and is five hundred and fifty 
miles from Omaha. Ogden Station is the ..terminus of tne 
Union Pacific Railroad, uud is ten hundred aud thirty miles 
from Omaha. The Pacific road runs from Ogden to San 
Francisco — a distance of eight hundred and seventy -seveu 
miles. It was at Sherman Station that I first felt the effect 
of the rarified atmosphere upon my lungs, causing breath- 
ing to be laborious. Ogden is on the western slope of the 
mountains, iu the Territory of Utah. The coal mines of 
Utah are on this slope of the mountain, lying in sight of 
the railroad. A thousand tons per day are said to be ex- 
tracted from these mines. This labor is mostly performed 
by Chinamen, who have the reputation of being faithful 
laborers. Indeed, Chinamen are the principal laborers on 
the Pacific Railroad . They all appear to be young men , 
many of them have families, and live in mud huts along 
the line of the road. This is the best bituminous coal I 
ever saw, very hard and compact, quite free from sulphur, 
and is nearly as good as the anthracite coal of Pennsyl- 
vania. The western slope of the Rocky Mountains differ 
very materially in appearance from the eastern. The rocks 
appear to be of the same furregineous quartz, but the face 
of the mountain puts on a more wild and romantic appear- 
ance. The ranges are longer and higher, with wide and 
deep gorges in their sides. The general surface of the 
earth is more broken, containing deep and wild cations; in 
these caiious signs of vegetable life appear in the form of 
grass, shrubbery, and timber. Now, the descent is down, 
down, down, for nine thousand feet until you reach the 
great valley of Utah, in which lies the celebrated Ameri- 
can Dead Sea or Salt Lake, which, like the Dead Sea of 
Asia, has no outlet. I do not say that the city of Salt Lake 
deserves to be doomed like the cities of the plains of Sodom, 
yet if its true history could be written it would doubtless 
reveal abominations quite equal to Sodom. 
In descending the mountains in Utah the railroad passes 
through deep cahons and along steep sides of declivities, 
the most wild, and fearful my eyes ever beheld. Rocks 
piled on rocks with deep gorges opening in their precipi- 
tous sides, as though cut out by human hands. There is a 
deep and awful cafiou on the side of the mountain, which 
has a subterranean entrance, called the “Devil’s Gate." The 
railroad passes within a few feet of this entrance, but not 
through it, so wo escaped whatever calamity might have 
happened. The first sign of human habitations we discov- 
ered in descending the mountain was a small settlement of 
Mormons, nestled down in a basin scooped out of the moun- 
tain side, containing perhaps a thousand acres. The rail- 
road runs along au arm of Salt Lake for a number of 
miles, while a branch from Ogden runs to Salt Lake City — 
a distance of forty miles. It is said that Salt Lake lies 
quite as low as the Pacific Ocean, but on looking at the 
scale of elevations I find this to be a mistake. 
What has formerly been termed the Rocky Mountains is 
the first rauge going west, commonly called Black Hills, 
but many are perplexed to know where the Rocky Moun- 
tains terminate on the west; for after descending into the 
great valley of Utah you begin to rise again, and continue 
the rise for three hundred miles, which carries you into the 
State of Nevada, the elevation being more than six thou- 
sand feet above the ocean, and between this and Salt Lake 
range after range of mountains rise from two to three thou- 
sand feet above their base. These mountains arc mostly 
piles of denuded rocks, rising from the smooth, elevated 
plain like those on what is commonly called the Rocky 
Mountains. From this elevation in Nevada there is a grad- 
ual descent to the Sierra Nevada Mountains— a distance of 
about two hundred and fifty miles. Mountains of rocks, 
range after range, rise through all this distance, their gen- 
eral tendency being north and south. The Sierra Nevada 
Mountains arc nearly as high as tho Rocky Mountains, and 
mark the boundary line between Nevada and California. 
The next and last range of mountains is on the coast— a 
distance of three hundred miles from the Novadas. Now, 
it may be said in truth, that the whole country from the 
Rocky Mountains to the Sierra Nevadas— a distance of one 
thousand miles — furnishes a continuous scries of mountains 
and valleys. These mountains will average perhaps twenty 
miles distance from each other, leaving valleys of this 
width between them, so that it may be said that tho Rocky 
Mountains only terminate in the Sierra Nevadas. Tlieso 
silvered ranges, which are from two to four thousand feet 
above their bases, arc but mountains upon the top and 
sides of higher and larger mountains, and the valleys, espe- 
cially in Nevada, are valleys upon the top of a high and 
exceedingly broad mountain. The people of this coast do 
not speuk of any one range of mountains as tho Rocky 
Mountains proper. Each range from the Black Hills to 
the coast has its name; also each valley lying between 
these mountains. Nevada being my place of destination 
when I left New York, I accordingly stopped at Humboldt 
Wells, Elko county, which lies iu the northeastern part of 
Nevada. The Wells is a railroad station. From this place 
Clover Valley exteuds forty miles south. 
Clover Valley , March 15/A, 1875. Rbjv. Hiram Cuase. 
For Forest and Stream. 
OFF THE LINE. 
NUMBER TWO. 
I N the Fall of ’70 Nathan and I built a home shanty at 
the southwest end of Butts Mountain, and from there 
a line of traps on the cold stream waters — Misery, Salmon 
Stream, Moose River, and the Spencer— thus giving ns the 
centre of a circle for headquarters. We designed in tho 
early Winter, before the law expired, to kill deer for the 
market, and have it answer the double purpose of bait os 
well as venison, the scent of tho blood being tho best thing 
to draw fur. We always bury the game in the snow 
till we collect sufficient to ship it, so there is another ad- 
vantage, as the snow retains the scent long ufter the car- 
cass Is gone. In this tract of lund, bounded as described, 
snow falls very early, sometimes as early as the last of Oc- 
tober, and remains. In such Falls and Winters you can 
easily find, though not always so easily kill, your game. 
But to my story. For elevcu days the sun had not shone ; 
for eleven days it had snowed, rained, or squalled — snow 
or rain, or both; everything was encased in ice; snow had 
settled from a foot and a half to about nine or ten inches, 
but it was quite solid and fine suow-shoeing, so on the 
morning of December 14th we packed our knapsacks with 
ten days’ provisions and struck for Misery. I took the 
Misery stream route from Big Cold Stream Pond, and 
Nathan took tho Cold Stream route over the mouutain. At 
night, on the shore of Big Misery, we had as the result — 
one otter, one beaver, three sable, and one mink, beside the 
usual number of grouse we had shot ou tho way. At the 
Misery we found our camp broken down. Usually it would 
not have mattered much, but this was a very bail camping 
place, especially so with the boughs all ice and no good 
wood to burn, and worse yet. the weather was getting de- 
cidedly cold, and an ominous cloud gathering in the nor’- 
west wurned us to prepare for a blow. I had seen the 
effect of tornadoes in the forest, but never hud witnessed 
one, and Nathan said he “guessed I’d see enough of it 
before morning.” Choosing the lee of a friendly hill, we 
found an old pine log four feet in diameter. It did not lie 
right, but we concluded that its protective powers ou 
