diminished the size of this little ball of ours, that 
Its adventurous inhabitants seem to have become 
unconsciously ashamod that any portion of Its 
surface should longer remain hidden from them. 
From this unrecognized cause have sprung the 
strenuous efforts to penetrate the frozen secrets 
of the North Pole, the trackless wastes of Thibet, 
the ancient mysteries of the sources of t he Nile, 
and marvelous recesses of the Kooky Mountains. 
To accomplish the last practical object several 
expeditions have been organized within the last 
ten years with the design of working out. special 
areas of considerable extent with a great deal of 
detail, including topography, geology and mi rural 
history; and more definite knowledge of t his en¬ 
tire mountainous region has thus been obtained 
during that period than In all t he previous years. 
It, Is not wit,bin the scope of this brief article to 
enumerate Ihc interesting results of these discov¬ 
eries ; If a lively spirit of Inquiry and study should 
be awakened In our readers, our Intention will be 
fully accomplished. Unknown peaks, waterfalls, 
chasms, geysers and other marvels or nature, 
have boon discovered in the course of those enter¬ 
prises, and tv multitude or old errors and miscon¬ 
ceptions corrected. The construction of the Ta¬ 
ctile Railroad has greatly facilitated and promoted 
these explora t ions, while It winds Its own serpen¬ 
tine way among many sceues of wild sublimity 
undreamed of In the days of our fathers, or even 
of our own childhood or youth. 
Trobably the most Impressive of these, for Its 
wild anrl rugged formation and Ihe numerous 
scenes of savage grandeur along its course, Is the 
far-famed Teach of Echo Canon. This Ik situated 
on the western slope of the Wahsatoh Mountains, 
one of the principal ranges Included In the gene¬ 
ral appellatloQ previously mentioned. It Is a 
narrow valley, nearly sixty miles In length. In¬ 
closed by precipitous rocks from five to eight 
hundred feet In hlght, which here and there ap¬ 
proach so closely as to form a might y gorge, and 
overhang the railroad track, as they formerly did 
the turbulent waters of the torrent to whose 
eroding action during countless ages this yawning 
fissure owes Its origin. As the train thunders 
along Its reverberating depths, glimpses are fre- 
quentiycaughtof Isolated rocky pinnacles of huge 
dimensions and dizzy hlght, of vast masses and 
lines of lurreted racks hearing the appearance or 
castles or churches, and of many other whimsical 
freaks of Imitative N'ntu.e. From the right hand 
and the loft, other gorges and chasms opening Into 
It give the dying traveler a momentarily glance 
of other scenes almost as wild ami picturesque as 
that along which Ids course winds its sinuous 
length, like a huge mythological serpent, at the 
THE WAR CALDRON 
Double, double, toils and troubles! 
Burns the fire, the caldron bubbles! 
And the hell-broth boiling- over, 
We its elements discover. 
From the bottom springs to light 
Brain of wily Muscovite, 
And his hand, its gauntlet hid 
In the skin of peaceful kid. 
And his tongue of treachery 
Cancered with a ebronio lie. 
And a flint-stone, shaped with art 
To the semblance of n heart. 
First stock, these, for broth of war 
Cooked in kitchen of the Czar. 
Double, double, tolls and troubles! 
Burns the fire, the caldron hubbies! 
Hissed from out. that seething pot. 
Ounce a whisper, '* Trust him not! 
Murd’rous is the Islamite! 
Slav, ero smitten, rise and Bmite!" 
After pause, the same voice, “ Lo! 
Islamite! the Christian foe 
Plots thy death tills very hour; 
Strike for life, than! crush the Giaour!’ 
Double, double, toils and troubles! 
Burns the fire, the caldron bubbles! 
Straightway from its lips of halo 
Burst all sounds of mortal wail— 
Shriek of woman, infant’s cry, 
Strong man’s shout of agony. 
Welt’ring, then, upon a fiood. 
Mixed of lurid flame and blood, 
Lo! the doomed, the dead, the dying; 
Lo’ the headsman’s grmly knife; 
Lo! the shreds of comely life; 
Awful eyes in dying stare 
Hands lopped off in act of prayer; 
Limbless trunk, and trunkless head: 
Beauty’s flower dishonored— 
All adown the ghastly spate. 
Whirled by murder, lust and hate, 
Drunk with venom from the tongue 
That o’er the land Foar's poison flung. 
Lo! the whisp'ror’s handiwork. 
Wrought on Christian and on Turk; 
Lo! th’ingredients, sleeping got, 
By “ Holy Itiissia" for the pot. 
From Its center easting up 
Yankee cartridge, gun of Krupp; 
Tons of Russian bounce and brag; 
Half unfurled, the Prophet’s flag; 
Bulls and bears, of every nation. 
Goring, roaring, " Death! Damnation! 
Armies swarming cross the Pruth; 
Not ono little word of truth : 
Then a lull, half hope, half fear. 
And, with eyeballs red and blear. 
Oozes forth sleek Ignatirfl, 
Wliisp'ring, “ War to us iH grief; 
But from oath there's no recoiling; 
Czar has sworn liis blood is boiling— 
His great name Is compromised; 
Theu, our troops are mobilized; 
We've borne the last that honor may, 
The motif of the (.little gong. 
And take and sing It? Can't be wrong 
To hoodwiulc kite in such a cause. 
Well, sing he must, or lose his claws; 
For, as I said, we're compromised, 
And, zounds! your Lordship, mobilized. 
ECHO CANON 
A. ROCKY MOU N'IVY I N SCENIC 
Old trappers and rangers, and also old works 
on geography, applied the term stony Mountains 
to the long series or mountain ranges west of the 
Mississippi lllver, without any lnLentlon or desig¬ 
nating by it any pari lcular group or ridge, sub- 
seqheutly the Maine Rooky Mountains supplanted 
the older appellation, and was used In the Baum 
Indefinite way. in this general sense both terms 
embraced all the multitudinous mountain ranges 
lying between the Father or Waters and the Pa¬ 
cific Ocean. Lately, however, the latter name 
has been restricted to the numerous ridges whose 
masses lie somewhat to the west of the Iflfith par¬ 
allel of longitude. These extend Horn the Arctic 
Ocean through Alaska and British America on 
the north of the United states, and through Mex¬ 
ico and Central America on the south, and are 
thence prolonged along the whole length or South 
America under the name of the Andes. The en¬ 
tire range la often called, even by people wholly 
Innocent of either poetical or anotomlcal pro¬ 
clivities, the back-bone of America. 
This mighty mountain chain, the largest on the 
globe, Is composed of a vast number or links dif¬ 
ferent from each other In length, breadth, and 
hlght, and known by a multitude of distinctive 
titles. To the east and west are a host or off¬ 
shoots running away In all directions, some or the 
peaks or which o’ertop any In the continuous 
stem, while here aud there vast mountainous 
masses, included In the general appellation, but 
honored with special names, are ell her almost or 
entirely separated from the mam chain. 
Prior lo 1563 no portion of the Rocky Mountains 
had been examined with such care and detail as 
to render maps ot them anything more than ap¬ 
proximately correct. Upwards of a half a dozen 
exploring expeditions had. it- la true, been previ¬ 
ously sent out at the public expense to examine 
the region and collect topographical Intormatlon 
with regard to It. But the country' was so vast, 
the obstructions to travel so great and unexpect¬ 
ed, the perils from hostile Indians so deterrent, 
and the fields of opera Clou so ill-defined, that very 
little precise knowledge resulted from them. The 
last decade, however, has been very prolific In dis¬ 
covery with regard to the geographical features 
of the earth. .Steam and electricity have so Inti¬ 
JUNE 23 
THE BUBAL MEW-YOBKER, 
30 ? 
Perhaps, if Bet. in different key, 
rrv.« l_.iiT....L r..:i - 
bottom of an enchanted defile. While sunk amid 
such towering precipices, so vivid is the Impres¬ 
sion of profundity that. It requires no small effort, 
of reason and remembrance to realize that ouo’s 
position Is still far higher than the summits ot the 
loftiest, peaks lu other parts of the country gene¬ 
rally considered grandly mountainous. Yot. the 
bed of Echo Canon zigzags amid its gigantic walls 
at an alt itude of five thousand live hundred feet 
above tide-water, and upwards of a thousand foot 
above the general level of the Groat Basin stretch¬ 
ing between the Wahsatoh Range and the Sierra 
Nevada. 
In the midst of scenery of this majestic nature 
the Imagination or the most prosalo Is Inevitably 
excited to unwonted vivacity, and the mind natu¬ 
rally delights I n reasoning upon or conjecturing the 
horeuloan forces capable or producing such mar¬ 
velous effects. The whole scene bears so si rlking 
nn Impress of tho Titanic might needed to gener¬ 
ate It, that, the fancy readily attributes its origin 
to some mighty convulsion or Nature, to some 
brief catastrophic display of tho energetic forces 
or the earth while still In Its vigorous youth. 
Reason may argue, vvliat overy skilled mechanic 
knows, that the effects of a small force, operating 
through long ages, are as Impressive ns those or 
a gigantic power, evoked by a transient, convul¬ 
sive effort; but the. lmagluatlou loves to picture 
such efforts, and shrinks from extending Itself 
over tho lqng, uuevontfut periods during which 
Nature almost Imperceptibly accomplishes her 
mightiest works. 
Most scientists, however, have lately come to 
the conclusion that all the Irregularities ou the 
earth’R surface have boon produced by causes, 
the same In kind, but. probably more powerful In 
degree than those which are to-day silently 
changlug the race of the globe. To offset t.hoRe, 
It Is true, must have taken a length or tlmo so 
enormous l,hat a trained Imagination alone can 
form oven a ralnt.conoept.lon of It. Two hundred 
million* of years ordinary scientists assign to tho 
operations; hut a few leisurely souls insist, that 
the present, aspect of the earth oouhl not, have 
been produced under three hundred millions. It 
Is a pleasing trait lu those gentlemen that, they 
are nearly all of them extremely generous In con¬ 
ceding to tho demands of each others’ theories 
vast epochs of Inconceivably remote time. And 
yet, after all, there may not, perhaps, bo any ex¬ 
ceptional munificence In this, for a very ordinary 
man, however miserly or Industrious, can afford 
to be exceedingly liberal even with prehistoric 
ages, and still more so with the mighty cycles or 
pro-adumlte lime. 
Most of these geniuses, In accounting for the 
present appearance of the earth, are content, to 
look back no farther than to the epoch when Its 
thin outer crust had grown slightly cool, after Its 
mass had been condensed from a glowing nebu¬ 
lous condition. As It gradually lost some ol' its 
Inherent heat by radiating it into space. Its bulk 
contracted, and here aud there vast seams occur¬ 
red In Its surface, the debris of which, together 
mately connected all the parts of the world, have, 
In effect, so thortened distances aud consequently 
ECHO CANON-WAIISATCII RANGE. 
with additions ejected from Its Incandescent in¬ 
terior, were piled up Into the mountain peaks and 
ranges that now diversify the surface of the globe. 
Similar processes are still going ou, the manifes¬ 
tations of which arc seen In earthquakes and vol¬ 
canoes. Thus the earth has been ridged mainly 
by tho action of lire, but It has also been scooped 
and leveled by that of water. The two elements 
are Irreconcilable anomies, and Ln changing 1 ho 
face of this earth of ours there are strong lie!Illa¬ 
tions that water, aided by air, will ultimately 
prove triumphant, unless the present amount of 
heat lu the globe shall receive some violent, addi¬ 
tions from abnormal, extraneous sources. Frost 
and snow and rain, aided by atmospheric Influ¬ 
ences, arc gradually disintegrating the loftiest 
mountains and yearly beating a way to the plains 
aud the ocean not a little of their triable bulk. 
Tho yawning canons that gash tho Western 
plains and the slopes of the mountains lie vc been 
hollowed out by t he Immemorial action of gentle 
streams nr headlong torrents, and according to 
some learned worthies, whose prescience of I ho 
future is only matched by their knowledge of the 
past, tho time will come when the surface or the 
earth will be a vast plain, as monotonous a- Ihc 
prairiesor Illinois. 
®Ijc j§toi‘ji-®fUfr. 
THE BOYS IN THE BE T,F RY. 
BY DAISY DALE, 
Tub streets and housetops of a great city were 
powdered with snow as crisp as pearls. It, was 
the first snow of tho season. Glittering icicles 
fringed tho eaves and gutters, and every t ree and 
twig was cased in crystal. Mansions whose win¬ 
dows were draped by costly curtains and filled 
with tropical Bowers, lighted up by blazing fires, 
looked imposing and Cheerful; plain houses looked 
neat, and homelike, but, the hovels of the poor 
looked bleak enough that snowy day. Down by 
the wharf lay a long lino of steamboats, lloiting 
palaces of zinc white, and gliding and glass w 1th 
foundations of Iron and lire and steam, upon the 
rolling water. There were the Heludeer, the 
Eclipse, the Trlbuno, the Lady Franklin, and 
many more. A row of shaky, tumbte-down 
houses fronted these, high upon ( lie wharf—an 
odd contrast. The cellars of these house.-, had 
shingles swung out. for signs, painted with lamp 
black, " llot Coffee, Ham aud Eggs;’’ "Corn- 
bread, Bacon and Beans." A few of tho more 
high-toned read “Oysters, Mince Pies, Tom-and- 
Jerry.” Low, old porches, guarded by banisters 
and rails), bung out, over tho fronts ot these tene¬ 
ments, decorated with broken r.eu-pnlsand cheese- 
boxes, lull of dead flowers; empty rabbit-boxes, 
spades, saws, rusty guns, uud tvhal, not, in art¬ 
less confusion. 
lu a front, room of the most, decent, looking 
house ln the row, dignified by t.he historic name, 
“ Boar's Dead Tavern," lay a woman dying. Poor 
Mrs. Carroll had fought against, hunger and cold, 
and a grasping landlord, for years, to keep her 
two lit tle boys alive. But she had not t hought of 
herself; now poverty had frosted her roses, and 
turned her curia all Loo soon from Jet. to silver. 
She lost hope urn) liesh and strength, and now, 
beside tho fllearning glow of the dying embers, 
she Ixio was flying. Her little boys, Lawrence and 
Edward, stood beside her wondering why she 
looked 80 white, and why her eyes had grown so 
largo and her hands so cold. 
Larry stirred up the Are anrl laid on another 
shingle, tin- it was growing dark; lie gave his 
mother atlrlnk of water and w.is going to tell her 
how many boxes of matches lio hud sold that day. 
Bur, she took a coughing spoil, aud when she 
could speak again,she said, " Larry, dear, l al e off 
my wedding ring and put It In your breast-pocket, 
aud when you have to leave tills, sell 11 uud buy 
a comfort, and blanket, to keep you and Ned 
warm. Be honest, good boys, and God will bless 
you and give you a homo.” She sank back ex¬ 
hausted, gave a little sigh that loosed her chains, 
and wafted her to the angels. 
The orphans had loved their kind mother very 
much; they gobbed aloud when she could speak 
to them no more. 
After the funeral the landlord came to see what 
he could find. They had not. so much as a pig to 
pay tho rent with. So, of course, lu Justice to 
himself, he carried off the scant furniture, and 
put on the window, “ToLet.” Tho boys were 
now in the cold, wide world alone. Larry kept 
bis Inheritance ln his pocket, for what good would 
there be In bedclothes wllhOUl a bod? lie would 
be In the strange condition of the beggars, ln that 
far-off city, where the law was that every ono 
should give them a penny; but no man would 
sell them anything to eat, and when the beggars 
starved lo death the donors came aud got, back 
the pennies. 
For the first few days the boys wandered abotft, 
receiving a tittle charity from the poor. And at 
night they slept under verandas or doorsteps, or 
wherever they could get out of the, world’s way. 
One sunny morning, as Larry stood with Ids hands 
ln his pockets, st aring the dark future ln tho face, 
a bright thought seemed to strike him; ho whis¬ 
pered it, to Ned. 
Granny Rue kept a penny shop round the next 
square. The creaking little door was timidly 
Opened, when a bell tinkled, and a fierce little 
shaggy dog sprang from under the counter and 
barked furiously at Larry as bo entered. He 
briefly staled to the penny merchant, his plan for 
a future living for himself, and an Increase of for¬ 
tune for her. 
I 
