precipices, and here it rounds the famous beetling promontory known as Cape Horn. Then, coming down among the orchards and vineyards, it enters the wide and fertile Sacramento Valley, and almost at sea-level comes to the capital of California, the city of Sacramento, built on the eastern bank of Sacramento River just below the mouth of the American River. It is a busy city with thirty thousand people, and has a large and handsome State Capitol. TRANSCONTINENTAL ROUTES. The Northern Pacific Railway, the next route northward, after following up the Yellowstone River to Livingston, at the entrance to Yellowstone Park in Montana, ascends the Belt Mountains, crossing them through Bozeman Tunnel at an elevation of nearly fifty-six hundred feet. This range is an outlying eastern spur of the Rockies. The road passes the mining town of Butte, there being forty thousand people in the neighboring settlements. Here are many gold, silver and copper mines, including the great Anaconda Mine, which was sold in 1898 to the company at present working it for $45,000,000, the product of the mine being silver and copper. The Butte copper output is two hundred and fifty million pounds annually, and the smelting-works at Anaconda are the largest in the world. At Three Forks, not far away, is the confluence of the Madison, Jefferson and Gallatin Rivers, forming the Missouri. Beyond is Helena, the capital of Montana, built in the Prickly Pear Valley near the eastern base of the main Rocky Mountain range and having fifteen thousand population. This is in another rich mining district, and the "Last Chance Gulch," running through the city, has yielded over $30,000,000 gold, while all around are gold, silver, copper and lead-deposits. Twenty-four miles from Helena, the main range of the Rockies is crossed by the Mullen's Pass tunnel at fifty-five hundred and fifty feet elevation. At Gold Creek in the valley beyond, the last golden spike of the Northern Pacific Railway was driven in September, 1883, uniting the tracks which had advanced from the east and west and met there. President Henry Villard made this the occasion of great festivity, bringing many train-loads of distinguished men to the ceremony, and shortly afterwards the company, which was heavily in debt, went into a Receivership. The railroad follows the Missoula and Pend d'Oreille (the "earring") Rivers, which unite in Clark's Fork, a tributary of the Columbia River, and enters Idaho, "the gem of the mountains," or, as called by the Nez Perces, _Edah-hoe_; finally coming to Spokane in Washington State. This busy manufacturing town of over twenty thousand people was burnt in 1889, but has entirely recovered from the calamity. The Spokane River descends one hundred and fifty feet in two falls within the town, furnishing an admirable water-power. To the southwest is the confluence of the Snake and Columbia Rivers, and beyond, the railway penetrates the defiles of the Cascade Mountains, the northern