NOTES ON AN AMERICAN TOUR. 
177 
NOTES OF AN AMERICAN TOUR. 
BY \V. P. MARSHALL, M.I.C.E. 
(Continued from page 150.) 
Tn St. Louis city, visited next, a singular sight was 
witnessed, illustrating the primitive nature of the original 
construction of the town ; the principal street was under 
repair for repaving and lowering a portion to make it level, 
and get a good foundation. Half the width of the roadway 
was closed for the purpose, and there was a two-horse plough 
at work ploughing up that portion and turning up original 
field soil; the original ground having been simply covered 
with rough concrete for laying stone blocks, and just laid on 
the surface of the field in making the primitive road of the 
young settlement. 
Then came a long railway ride of two days and nights 
continuously across Kansas State into the heart of the 
Rocky Mountains in Colorado. The railway crossing the 
open prairie of Kansas is an extraordinary sight, a nearly 
level plain of grass to the extreme horizon, like a view at 
sea, without a single object in sight sometimes, not a fence 
nor a hedge or tree, nor any trace of animal life except stray 
skeletons and horned skulls. The railway is carried straight 
across the prairie, on the surface of the ground, without any 
fence or ditch, and only a row of telegraph poles to be seen 
running alongside. The prairie on tire was seen one night, 
a grand sight; the fire was a long way off, near the horizon, 
but there was a grand effect of flame and smoke. 
Breakfast was served next morning in the train, served 
just as at an American hotel, at a number of little tables 
for four persons each, ranged down both sides of a Pullman 
dining car. The dining car was shunted at the next station 
to another train going back in the opposite direction, for 
giving the passengers breakfast in that train also, there being 
no refreshment station within half a day’s distance. 
The comical little prairie dogs (a kind of marmot) were 
seen in quantities scampering about alongside the railway, 
often standing up like rabbits squatting on their hind legs 
on the top of their hillocks in amusing attitudes, and then 
suddenly plunging head foremost into their burrows. They 
