the North Platte a very considerable stream, though readily fordable then and there. It had already come a long distance through and out of the Mountains, and now struck eastward by Fort Laramie, for its long journey through the Plains to the Missouri. What a delightfully lazy, dreamy, lotus-eating voyage it would be, to embark upon its waters in an Indian canoe, far up among the Mountains, and float thence day by day, and week after week, adown the Missouri, _via_ the Mississippi, to the sea! At North Platte, we changed our mountain mud-wagon, for a coach lighter and less top-heavy still, and pushed on continuing to ascend. We left Colorado near Fort Halleck, and were now in Wyoming. At Bridger's Pass, we were at last fairly across the Rocky Mountains--had left the east and the Atlantic slope behind us--and turned our faces fully Pacificwards. The North Platte was the last stream flowing east, and about 3 A. M., after leaving it we struck the headwaters of Bitter Creek, a tributary of Green River, that flows thence _via_ the great Rio Colorado and the Gulf of California two thousand miles away to the Pacific. The Rocky Mountains, the great water-shed of the continent, were thus over and past; but we had crossed the summit so easily we were not aware of it, until our driver informed us. Our first introduction to the Pacific slope was hardly an agreeable one. At our great elevation the night was bitterly cold, and we had shivered through its long hours, in spite of our blankets and buffalo-robes. Routed out at 3 A. M., for breakfast, we straggled into the stage-station at Sulphur Springs, cold and cross, to find only dirty alkali water to wash in, and the roughest breakfast on the table we had seen yet, since leaving the States. Coffee plain, saleratus-biscuit hot, and salt pork fried--only this and nothing more--made up the charming variety, and we bolted it all, I fear, as surlily as bears. A confused recollection of cold, and discomfort, and misery, is all that remains in my memory now of that wretched station at Sulphur Springs, and may I never see the like again!