"Why don't you stop off at Shoshone and go down and see the falls? They are only twenty-five miles from the station," said one of the Union Pacific officials with whom I became acquainted at Denver. This was just at dark the next night after leaving Portland. I had forgotten what little I knew of those falls, excepting their name, and had no idea of going so near them on this trip, but I left the train at 3.30 the next morning, and about sunrise started out due south. "I suppose there are ranches along the road," said I to the stage-driver at this end of the route. "No, not one; and you can't get any water till you get there," said he. So with a bottle of water, which did not last much more than half the distance, I rode along over the slightly undulating lava beds, which are mostly covered with a few feet of sand and with sage brush, but which occasionally come to the surface in broken masses of dark brown, perforated, metallic sounding rocks. It certainly was not a very interesting ride of four or five hours, for jack rabbits in great numbers and an occasional gopher were the only living things I saw, and in looking across the same level, treeless country, far ahead, I had begun to wonder where the Snake River could possibly be, when suddenly I heard the roar of the falls, and came to the edge of a cañon perhaps three hundred feet deep. The rocks of this cañon, from top to bottom, are composed of this lava, and it is formed in layers from twenty to thirty feet thick, looking as if the lava had, at different times, overflowed the country to that depth, which it really had. But what was my astonishment when I found, on inquiry, that these layers in some places number as many as thirty, and that their depth in many places was several thousand feet. For instance, the Columbia River, which I had so recently seen, has cut its way through lava beds three and four thousand feet thick. And this is not all. These immensely thick beds of lava not only cover the entire surface of Idaho, but also of nearly the whole of Oregon and Washington Territory, and parts of California, Nevada, and Montana. When it is stated that the entire surface covered by this lava is not less than two hundred thousand square miles, forty times as large as Connecticut, one can only faintly comprehend the statement, and many may not believe it; but the fact remains. And to me the thought that I had been allowed to ride over a portion, a very small portion of this lava that ages ago burst out through some immense fissure or great vent in the earth's surface, this thought alone paid me for the hours of thirst endured. The simple fact that I have seen this lava bed has left on my mind one of the strongest impressions of the whole trip; an impression, if not exactly taken on dry plate, yet that was left on a very dry pate. Still no one need to come out into this country to see the effect of some ancient eruption. The hills at Meriden, Conn., and East and West Rock at New Haven, as