little from day to day and from week to week. Monotony is the one word that best describes the lives of those whose lot is cast on these broad featureless surfaces. In journeying westward across the plateau over any one of the transcontinental railways a moment of excitement occurs when the even line of the western horizon is broken by the summit of a cloud-like mountain-peak. "Land ho!" is no more thrilling to voyagers on the ocean than the shouts which first made known the presence of a mountain-peak to the bands of immigrants who slowly voyaged across this sea of grass with their picturesque "prairie schooners" previous to the building of the railroads which now bind together the East and the West. The Great plateaus begin indefinitely to the south of the Rio Grande, broaden in the United States to a general width of about 400 miles, and extend far northward into Canada. Their northern limit has not as yet been determined, but is to be looked for near the head waters of the Mackenzie. The length of the plateau country is in the neighbourhood of 2,000 or 2,500 miles, and its average width about 300 miles. An estimate of the area with a generally plane surface and an elevation of from 1,000 to 6,000 feet above the sea places it at about 700,000 square miles. The eastern portion of the Great plateaus includes western Texas, Oklahoma, the central and western portions of Kansas and Nebraska, the western half of South Dakota, western North Dakota, western Assiniboia, and thence extend northward so as to include portions of Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Athabasca. On the west the plateau region includes the eastern portions of New Mexico and Colorado, extends far into Wyoming, and embraces central and eastern Montana, and thence reaches northward to Mackenzie.