22 
THROUGH WONDERLAND. 
Ruskin, likens it to a great cathedral, with painted windows, and full of treas¬ 
ures of illuminated manuscript. But, as we take our stand on the brink of the 
Falls, with twelve miles of sculptured rock spread out before us, rising from 
1,500 to 2,000 feet in height, and all aflame with glowing color, we have to 
acknowledge, with a distinguished writer and a no less celebrated artist, that, 
neither by the most cunningly wrought fabric of language, nor the most skillful 
manipulation of color, is it possible to create in the mind a conception answer¬ 
ing to this sublime reality. For countless ages, frost and snow, heat and 
vapor, lightning and rain, torrent and glacier, have wrought upon that myste¬ 
rious rock, evolving from its iron, its sulphur, its arsenic, its lime and its lava, 
the glorious apparel in which it stands arrayed. And the wondrous fabrication 
is still going on. The bewildered traveler would scarcely be surprised to see 
the gorgeous spectacle fade from his vision like a dream : but its texture is 
continually being renewed the giant forces are ever at work ; still do they— 
“ Sit at the busy loom of time and ply. 
Weaving for God the garment thou seest Him by.” 
For the minor wonders of this world of marvels, the formations of geyserite 
and the petrified forests, Tower and Gibbon Falls and the cliffs of volcanic 
glass, the caldrons of boiling mud and transparent pools of sapphire blue, the 
reader is referred to special guides to the Park. 
It only remains to be stated that there is regularly established transporta¬ 
tion daily between all the principal points, that the distances are not fatiguing, 
that the charges are reasonable, and the equipment everything that could be 
desired. 
The angler need scarcely be reminded that this is the far-famed region 
where the juxtaposition of streams of hot and cold water enables him to cook 
his fish as fast as he can catch them, without moving from his seat or taking 
them off the hook ! 
WESTWARD STILL. 
Resuming his westward journey at Livingston, the traveler finds himself 
ascending the first of the two great mountain barriers that had to be sur¬ 
mounted by the engineers of the Northern Pacific Railroad. By a grade of 116 
feet to the mile, the line reaches, twelve miles from Livingston, an elevation of 
5,565 feet above sea-level. Here it is carried under the crest of the range by a 
tunnel 3,610 feet in length, from which it emerges into a fine, rocky canon, at 
the western portal of which is the military post of Fort Ellis. A few minutes 
more, and the train runs into Bozeman, a beautifully situated and flourishing 
little city of twenty years’ growth. Few cities can boast of more magnificent 
scenery, majestic snow-capped ranges standing out against the sky on every 
side. 
Westward for thirty miles extends the rich and fertile Gallatin valley. It is 
no uncommon thing to get forty bushels of hard spring wheat, or sixty bushels 
