Nature's holiday--Through wonderful country--Brown negroes a libel on mankind--The Wild-flower State--The black problem--A piebald flirt--The hippopotamus and the flea--A narrow escape--The home of the swamp-goblin--Is the moon a fraud? CHAPTER XXIX. Frogs, in the swamp and as a side-dish--Negroids of the swamp age--Something like a mouth--Honour in your own country--The Land of Promise--Civilization again. CHAPTER I. FROM NEW YORK TO CHICAGO. By the Pennsylvania Limited--Her Majesty's swine--Glimpses of Africa and India--"Eligible sites for Kingdoms"--The Phoenix city--Street scenes--From pig to pork--The Sparrow line--Chicago Mountain--Melancholy merry-makers. "DOES the fast train to Chicago ever stop?" was the question of a bewildered English fellow-passenger, Westward-bound like myself, as I took my seat in the car of the Pennsylvania Limited mail that was to carry me nearly half the distance from the Atlantic to the Pacific. "Oh, yes," I replied, "it stops--at Chicago." By this he recognized in me a fellow-innocent, and so we foregathered at once, breakfasted together, and then went out to smoke the calumet together. -- To an insular traveller, it is a prodigiously long journey this, across the continent of America, but I found the journey a perpetual enjoyment. Even the dull country of the first hour's travelling had many points of interest for the stranger--scattered hamlets of wooden houses that were only joined together by straggling strings of cocks and hens; the others that seemed to have been trying to scramble over the hill and down the other side but were caught just as they got to the top and pinned down to the ground with lightning conductors; the others that had palings round them to keep them from running away, but had got on to piles as if they were stilts and intended (when no one was looking) to skip over the palings and go away; the others that had rows of dwarf fir-trees in front of them, through which they stared out of both their windows like a forward child affecting to be shy behind its fingers. These fir-trees are themselves very curious, for they give the country a half-cultivated appearance, and in some places make the hillsides and valleys look like immense cemeteries, and only waiting for the tombstones. Even the levels of flooded land and the scorched forests were of interest, as significant of a country still busy over its rudiments. "All charcoal and puddles," said a fellow-traveller disparagingly; "I'm very glad we're going so fast through it."