Probably from sympathy with the bulk of their freight, the passenger-cars upon the Oil Creek Railway are so streaked with oil upon the outside, and so imbued with oil within, as to suggest having been used on excursions to the bottoms of the various wells; but uninviting as is their appearance, they are always crowded, and Miselle shared her seat with a portly gentleman, whom at the second glance she recognized as Viator Ignotus, and he, presently alluding to the fact of their having dined together the previous day, a conversation grew up, through which Miselle, much to her amusement, was initiated into the cabinet secrets of the two or three railway companies who divide the travel of the West, and who would appear to cherish very much the same jealousies and avenge their grievances in much the same manner as Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Brown with their neighborhood quarrels. Then Viator, producing from his pocket sundry maps and charts, foretold the career of railways yet unborn, and discoursed learnedly upon their usefulness, or, as he phrased it, their "paying prospects." Finally, the subject of railways exhausted, or rather run out, Viator paid his companion the compliment of inquiring of her the condition of public feeling in her native State as regarded the election; and the affairs of the nation were not yet completely arranged when the train arrived at Titusville, and Viator departed. The city of Titusville is probably the most forlorn and dreary looking place in these United States. To describe the irregular rows of shanties bordering on impassable sloughs of mud, the scenery, the pigs, and the people, were a thankless task, as the most eloquent words would fall short of the reality. In one of the principal streets the blackened stumps still stand so thickly that the laden wagons meander among them as sinuously as the path which foxes and squirrels wore there only three years ago,--while in curious contrast with this avenue and the surrounding buildings stands a handsome brick church, with a gilded cross upon its spire, the one thing calm and steadfast in the dismal scene. When the train again moved on, the seat vacated by Viator was taken by a young woman bound for Oil City, where her husband awaited her; but the homesickness epidemic among the female population of the Creek had already seized upon her so strongly as to unfit her for conversation; and Miselle devoted herself to the dismal landscape, privately agreeing with her companion that it was "the God-forsakenest-looking place she ever see." On either side the road lay swamps, their gaunt trees festooned, or rather garroted, with vines, and draped with gray moss; while all about and among them lay their comrades already prostrate and decaying. On the higher lands fields had been fenced in, and cleared by burning the trees, whose charred skeletons still stood, holding black and fleshless arms to heaven in mute appeal against man's reckless abuse of Nature's dearest children.