near Gray's Peak, was a fine spot, and I decided to visit it on my return from California.

At 1.30 p.m. I continued my journey to Cheyenne, across open plains of thin grass partly irrigated. Near me in the train was a lady chewing gum; I saw her at intervals for an hour, her jaws going regularly all the time, just like those of a cow when ruminating. Not a pleasant sight, or conducive to beauty of expression. It must be tiring to beginners. We had supper at Cheyenne, good, but a crush; and then turned west up the slope towards a pass in the Rocky Mountains. The valley we ascended was among rounded hills, more like our downs than mountains. Though the country was quite wild, there were here and there lines of high posts and rails of strong, rough timber, sometimes on one side sometimes on the other, sometimes below and sometimes above the level of the railway. These, I was told, were snow-guards, and were placed just where experience showed they would check the drifts and keep the line clear. In a few places there were snow-sheds with one or two short tunnels, and we reached the summit level at 8 p.m., only 8240 feet above the sea. The next morning we were going through similar rolling, halfdesert scenery, with greasewood bushes and bare sand or mud flats white with alkali. At Green river, one of the upper tributaries of the great Colorado river, we got into more picturesque scenery, with rocks standing up like castles, and further on rocky valleys, with wind-worn rocks in strange detached pinnacles. Fine precipices occur at Echo Cañon and Weber's Cañon. The Devil's Slide is formed by two vertical dykes descending a steep mountain-side only two or three feet apart, leaving a narrow passage or "slide" between them.

Reaching Ogden in the afternoon, I took the train to Salt Lake City, passing the fine highly cultivated plain on the shores of Salt Lake, the fields being all irrigated. Some of the meadows were blue with the beautiful Camassia esculenta, an easily grown garden plant with us. I spent next morning roaming about the city and suburbs. The tabernacle is a wonderful hall that will seat six thousand persons, and is so

shaped that a speaker at one end can be heard distinctly over the whole building when speaking in an ordinary conversational tone. To produce this effect it is a flat semiellipsoid, so that the regularly curved ceiling is very low for the size of the building. But the result is acoustically perfect, and such as none of our architects have equalled.

The city itself is in many respects unique and admirable. It is a kind of "Garden" city, since every house (except in the few business streets) stands in from half an acre to one acre and a half of garden. Some are pretty stone-built villas, some mere rude hovels, but all have the spacious garden. And they are real gardens, the first I have seen in America, full of flowers and fruit trees, and with abundant creepers over the houses.

The streets are about one hundred and thirty feet wide, with shady trees, and a channel of clear water on both sides of each street brought from the mountain. Every garden is thus supplied with abundance of water for irrigation, when required, by small channels under the side walks, and sluice gates to regulate the supply. Crops can thus be grown during a large part of the year. I walked a few miles into the country, and seeing a small house and pretty flower garden with some of our commonest garden flowers, roses, stocks, marigolds, etc., I spoke to a homely looking woman and found she was Welsh. A good many Welsh have

become Mormons.

In the afternoon I returned to Ogden, and went on by train in the evening. All the next day (Sunday, May 22) we passed through an arid dreary country, the ground covered with saline incrustations, and almost the only vegetation the sage bush (Artemisia spinescens). At the stations in more fertile spots there was a little verdure and sometimes a few wild flowers-œnotheras or composites. At all the stations there were groups of Indians, usually with painted faces but with European dress, one old man only with the native blanket, boys shooting with bows and arrows, groups of men and women playing cards. The passengers give them money or buy ornaments, etc., and thus they live idly, get fat,

and are thoroughly demoralized. At Reno, where we supped, the country began to get less arid, and there were some good farms in the valleys. We passed over the pass of the Sierra Nevada at night, and before sunrise were in the foothills of California, bare, except for a few second-growth pines; then farms, orchard, and vineyards, with eucalyptus trees planted round the houses; then a low, flat country to Oakland, where huge ferry-boats cross the bay to San Francisco.

Here my brother John, whom I had not seen since I left for the Amazon in 1848, met me, and we went on to the Baldwin Hotel in San Francisco, where he had taken rooms. for us, and had made arrangements for me to give two lectures on Wednesday and Friday. In the afternoon we had many callers, including Professor Holden of the Lick Observatory, Dr. Leconte, Mr. Davidson of the Geological Survey, and many others, as well as one or two interviewers. Dr. Holden kindly invited us to dinner on Thursday, where we met Professor Hilgard and Mr. Sutro. The latter gentleman invited us to breakfast with him at his beautiful cottage on the cliff, looking over the Pacific and the seal rocks, and surrounded by beautiful gardens. Mr. Sutro was a wealthy merchant and one of the magnates of San Francisco; he gave us one of the most luxurious and pleasant breakfasts I ever enjoyed, beginning with cups of very hot, clear soup, followed by fish, cutlets, game, etc., with various delicate wines, tea and coffee, hot cakes of various kinds, and choice fruits. He entertained us also with interesting conversation, being a man of extensive knowledge and culture. My two lectures on "Darwinism" and "Colour" were fairly attended.

On Saturday Dr. Gibbons of Alameda, on the Bay of San Francisco, took me for a drive into the foothills to see the remains of the Redwood forest that once covered them, but which had all been ruthlessly destroyed to supply timber for the city and towns around. Our companion was Mr. John Muir, whose beautiful volume, "The Mountains of California," is, in its way, as fine a piece of work as Mr. Hudson's "Naturalist in La Plata." On our way we passed a dry hilly field, brilliant with hundreds of the lovely Calochortus luteus,

which grew in a soil of stiff, hard-baked clay. We wound about among the hills and valleys, all perfectly dry, till we reached a height of fifteen hundred feet, where many clumps of young redwoods were seen, and, stopping at one of these, Dr. Gibbons took me inside a circle of young trees from twenty to thirty feet high, and showed me that they all grew on the outer edge of the huge charred trunk of an old tree that had been burnt down. This stump was thirty-four feet in diameter, or quite as large as the very largest of the more celebrated Big Trees, the Sequoia gigantea. The doctor has searched all over these hills, and this was the largest stump he had found, though there were numbers between twenty and thirty feet. The tree derives its botanical name, sempervirens, from the peculiar habit of producing young trees from the burnt or decayed roots of the old trees. These enormous trees, being too large to cut down, were burnt till sufficiently weakened to fall, and this particular tree had been so burnt about forty years before. We lunched inside this ancient mammoth tree, and saw several others on the way back. Among the few plants I saw in flower were the Diplacus glutinosus, a favourite in our greenhouses.

The next day we went to Stockton, where my brother lived, and found his wife, whom I had last seen as a little girl, two of his sons and his only daughter, as well as two of his grandchildren. I gave one lecture in Stockton—a combination of Darwinism and Oceanic Islands-but only had a small audience. I made the acquaintance here of Mr. Freeman, a friend of my brother, who had called on me at Godalming with his wife two or three years before, on their way round the world on a pleasure tour. He told me then that he had had good luck in his business, had made a few thousand dollars, his only daughter was just married, so he thought that he and his wife might as well see the world. On asking him how he had made the money, he said, "By handling mules," and this enigmatic profession was explained as buying them in some of the Western States, where they are largely bred, and selling them in Nevada, where there was a great demand for them at the mines, etc. Now

he had taken to store-keeping, while his wife kept poultry, and as soon as they had made some more money they meant to go another tour. They had been through Central Europe and Italy, the Holy Land, India, China, Japan, and the Sandwich Islands, and had brought home many ornaments and fabrics from the East; but what Mrs. Freeman most valued were some bottles of water which she had filled with her own hands from the River Jordan. This water she had given to some of her dearest friends to baptize their children with, a distinction of the highest kind.

While in San Francisco I had agreed to give a lecture on 'Spiritualism," under the management of Mr. Albert Morton, and I went over on Sunday, June 5, and had an audience of over a thousand people in the Metropolitan Theatre. The title of my lecture was," If a Man die, shall he live again?” The audience was most attentive, and it was not only a better audience, but the net proceeds were more than for any single scientific lecture I gave in America. I had spent the morning in the fine Golden Gate Park, where I saw some eucalyptus trees over sixty feet high, with numerous acacias and other greenhouse plants growing out-of-doors. I also had a fine view of the extensive sandhills, covered with huge clumps of blue and yellow tree-lupines, which produced a splendid effect. The interesting séances I had here will be described later on.

Returning to Stockton, I went with my brother and his daughter for a few days in the Yosemite Valley. The journey there-two hours by rail and two days by coach— was very interesting, but often terribly dusty. The first day we were driving for nine hours in the foothills, among old mining camps with their ruined sheds and reservoirs and great gravel heaps, now being gradually overgrown by young pines and shrubs. Here and there we passed through bits of forest with tall pines and shrubby undergrowth, but generally the country was bare of fine trees, scraggy, burnt up, and the roads insufferably dusty. At 9 p.m. we reached Priest's (two