"Boonsboro! twenty minutes for dinner!!" Now, then, we shall have something in keeping with the prairie,--I suppose a deer roasted on a stake. Nothing of the sort. I went into a nice dining-room; saw a quantity of pretty girls, or rather young ladies, with short sleeves and low dresses. "Soup, sir! chicken, sir! peas, sir!" The station at Rugby is nothing to it. After twenty minutes of capital feeding, we heard, "all aboard! all aboard!" and as we left, the father of these young ladies was standing at the door, and obliged us by taking half-a-dollar, a great improvement on the English system, where, on asking the waiter for your bill, he asks: "What 'ave you 'ad?" and begins to add accordingly. The next station was Jefferson, 1,398 miles from Quebec. Here the boxes were again thrown out, and the train left for San Francisco. The boxes were left at the station, and we drove up to the hotel, about half-a-mile from the station. As this was Saturday, July 31st, we had exactly a week to select a site and to build an observatory-mount the telescope and take preliminary observations. The American parties were several weeks at their station before the day of the eclipse, and found it not too long to prepare. Jefferson city is three years old, has about eight thousand inhabitants, and looks a thriving place. The next day, after church, Mr. Douglas and I rode across the prairie to a station situated about eight miles on the railway from Jefferson. As it was nearer to the central line of eclipse, we wanted to see if it would do for the site of our observatory. I forgot to mention that the day before I left Quebec, in pulling off my boot I broke the tendon of the plantaris muscle, which made me quite lame. However, the six days' comparative rest made it much better, but still it was far from well.