From Green River Station we doubled our track and returned to Ogden, where we took some very beautiful views of Ogden Cañon, the Narrows, Adam’s Falls, and the mountains that soar very far skyward at the city’s rear. But our stay here was limited to two days, when we took the Oregon branch of the Union Pacific for a visit to Shoshone Falls, on Snake River, which for size as well as magnificence takes a position second only to our world-wonderful Niagara. Directly after leaving Ogden the road enters the valley of Bear River, which it follows as far north as Weston Falls, a distance of about seventy-five miles. The scenery along this part of the route is almost as rugged as that of Weber Cañon, being a succession of cañons and lovely stretches of level lands brought into the highest state of cultivation by Mormon industry. At Pocatello the road branches, one of its iron arms extending northward to Helena, while the main line turns westwardly to Oregon. The district which it penetrates after leaving Pocatello is desert-like and devoid of interest almost to the western limits of Idaho, if we except the point where the road crosses Snake River. Here the American Falls go brawling and boiling over immense basaltic rocks that are struggling with the impetuous stream, and whose tops are flecked with tufts of foam thrown up by mad-dashing waves. But the waters have not yet worn a chasm through the desert, which spreads away on either side a level plain, until forty-four miles distant the dreary monotony is broken by three buttes that rise into view out of the uninviting landscape. We now enter a region that is somber beyond all power to describe; a wretched desolation that is relieved by no vegetation save of sage-brush, which straggles through little rifts in the earth and barely lifts its head above the surface. These are the lava beds that extend from Beaver Cañon all along the north side of Snake River, until they lose themselves in the stream where it turns due north and draws a boundary line between Idaho and Oregon. The land appears to have been cursed with such a fire as destroyed Gomorrah, for the eye wanders over nothing but the fiery sputa of volcanoes, that, having wrought the fullest destruction, were in turn destroyed. Everywhere we look there greets our vision waves of lava that lashed the earth until, tired of their devastating work, they became congealed, or were arrested by the hand of omnipotence. But between the knolls of scoria are occasional depressions, which are cross-seamed and cracked until in many places the fissures are hundreds of feet deep, apparently extending in depth to the very vitals of the earth. Some of the crevices are only a few inches in width, while there are others several feet broad, into which creeks have lost themselves, and lead into bottomless pits. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: