This year of 1868 the Rocky Mountains offer a greater combination of advantages than they have done hitherto, or ever, probably, will again. Till the opening of the Pacific Railway last year they were not to be got at; but their having now been rendered so easily accessible will lead to a great deal of the game being rapidly cleared off, both by shoals of vacation-ramblers from the old States, who will flock to them with tents and guns, for their yearly excursion, and by the immediate establishment of a trade in game between the mountains and the great cities of the north and east. I suppose that never again, after this year, will a haunch of antelope venison be retailed in Denver for seventy-five cents. CHAPTER XIX. HOTEL CARS, REAL FIRST-CLASS CARRIAGES—AN EDITOR ON HIS COUNTRYMEN’S KNOWLEDGE—AMERICAN GRANDILOQUENCE—OF WHOM THIS IS SAID—NECESSARY TO REPEAT SOME OF WHAT ONE HEARS—‘HAVE YOU SEEN OUR FOREST?’—‘THE PACIFIC RAILS WILL CARRY THE COMMERCE OF THE WORLD’—LARGE ACQUAINTANCE AMERICANS HAVE—AN AMERICAN ON LETTERS OF INTRODUCTION—NIAGARA—THE AMERICAN AND CANADIAN FALLS—WHAT IS IN THE MIND MAGNIFIES WHAT ONE SEES—THE STONE THOUGH IT HAS CHIPPED OUT—ICE-BRIDGE—HOW NIAGARA IS PRONOUNCED—A WEEK OF CANADIAN WEATHER—A SNOW-BOUND PARTY AT NIAGARA. On returning from the mountains, I left Chicago for the east in an hotel car. This kind of carriage combines a sleeping-berth with a travelling kitchen, and supplies you by day, just as the sleeping-cars do, with a comfortable sofa to yourself. In front of this a table may be placed when needed, on which you can have served in a few minutes whatever you please. In this way you may without leaving the carriage have all your meals for a journey of a thousand miles. No objection can be made either to the materials or to the cooking of what is supplied. These sleeping, hotel, and English cars are not merely devices for diminishing the inconvenience of a long journey, and enabling one to economise time, but they also act completely as first-class carriages. After you have paid for your ticket at one uniform price with all the rest of the passengers, you find in the train the steward of the sleeping-car (sometimes there is an office in the town), and pay him so many dollars more, and secure in this way a place to yourself, for night and day, in the special kind of car. It would give offence to call them first-class carriages; but from what has been said it will be understood that they do at all events incidentally supply this advantage. And as there is also a ladies’ carriage, into which well-dressed gentlemen are admitted, and furthermore a caboose for negroes, emigrants, and very dirty people, in which the wound that is inflicted on their dignity is compensated for by a reduction of the fare, American railway trains, although they profess to put all their passengers on a footing of democratic equality, do in fact allow them to classify themselves. [Sidenote: _Tall Phrases Discounted._]