I hope it will not be imagined that I have any desire to cast obloquy on the grand efforts, supremely successful as they have been, to turn the prairie and the desert to the uses of civilised man and of the world, and to open up the Western Continent to humanity and civilisation. I am too sensible of the courtesy, ready service, and hospitality everywhere accorded to the party of English travellers of which I was one, to write one word which I thought calculated to give pain or offence to any of our many friends or to any right-minded American. _Maculæ solis!_ 'Tis a pity they are there! In a few years, perhaps, the memory that such things were will have passed away like the recollection of some evil dream. But public sentiment must make itself felt, and above all there must be some abatement of the maudlin sympathy, which is virtually on the side of crime, if it be active in averting punishment. Crime in America, especially in the Eastern States, is very much the same as it is in other countries, but in the far West there is more recklessness in dealing with human life, which, in spite of the Howard Society and of humanitarians, I believe to be connected with the indulgence extended under State laws by American judges and juries to criminals who appear to be deserving of nothing but the strict and unmitigated application of the rope. "Property" is safe, for the citizens hunt down with extraordinary energy marauders whose object is simply plunder. Ordinary robbers and gangs of burglars are speedily and summarily suppressed. It is otherwise with those who assail life and limb. The desperadoes who infest the "saloons," as they are called, with which every western settlement is sure to be provided as soon as the shingle roofs are placed on the earliest upheaval of deal planks which can be called a dwelling, have far greater immunity and freedom than burglars or robbers. Wherever the train stopped for water on our journey in New Mexico, Western Colorado, or Eastern California, a rectangular wooden box, with a verandah, open doors, windows screened by a muslin curtain, perhaps a flagstaff with the Stars and Stripes flying, a large signboard, and some high-sounding name--the "Grand Alliance," "Union League," "El Dorado," "Harmonium," "Arcadia," or the like--was visible, with the usual group of booted and bearded miners, and their horses hitched up at the door-posts in front; inside you would be certain to find men of the same class at a bar, behind which, known for miles around, the affable Charlie, Bill, or Bob was dispensing drinks and mixing cocktails, slings, and the other drinks, in which the badness of the spirit is artfully disguised by a stimulant of a more active character and more pronounced flavour, known as "bitters," and kept in subjugation by the liberal use of ice. For even in these burning regions ice is stored up as the one thing needful. The rudest miner is accustomed to it; iced drinks are consumed by classes