on the side of many dishes, being, in fact, a mid-day dinner; but then no one was obliged to eat more than he liked, or drink either. Then came the longest stretch of the day, and at its close another banquet; and as the sun declined and the temperature decreased, we could take more pleasure in looking out at the fantastic forms of the vegetation which clothed the arid rocks in the desert, or on the bright green prairie, or on the towering mountains, waiting till the sun had set, generally in a blaze of glory. There were, of course, interruptions and variations as we halted at the more important places; disappointments about letters which had been telegraphed for and which were expected day after day, constituted also a matter of conversation and discourse. There was an harmonium in the sitting-room of the palace car, but no one had the art of playing it, although we had plenty of music of another sort; for after dinner the gentlemen of the railroad party who had not dined with us came in, and we were never tired of listening to the songs, so original and amusing, which they gave with great spirit and admirable time and tune, for it happened they all possessed good voices, and the melodies with which the troops of coloured minstrels have now rendered the world familiar were then new to us. During the whole of our tour the weather has been most favourable. With the exception of the rainy days in Canada, and the cold and rawness which characterised the time of our short visit to Richmond, there was nothing worse to complain of than continual sunshine. Now and then the temperature was a little too good to be pleasant when we were traversing the beds of the dry seas in the desert in Colorado and California, but that was something to look back upon with satisfaction, because there was no time lost in keeping within doors owing to the rain and storm or cold. "Within doors," however, is a phrase scarcely applicable to our mode of life, as it would imply that we were in stable habitations, whereas, as will have been seen by those who have accompanied us so far, we "lived and moved, and had our being" in railway carriages; a mode of life rendered so comfortable by all appliances, that it was sometimes no relief to be told that we would have to pass the night at an hotel.