"Considered as a railroad route, this valley is remarkably favorable, the rise from Deer Lodge City to the pass or divide between the waters of the Pacific and Atlantic being quite gentle, and even on the last few miles, the summit, about 5,000 feet above the sea, may be attained without employing a gradient exceeding fifty feet to the mile, with a moderate cut. The whole forty miles from Deer Lodge City to the summit of the Rocky Mountains by this route can be built as cheaply as roads are built through prairie countries generally. A little more work will be required in passing to the east side from this side, down Divide Creek to Wisdom or Big Hole River; but the line will be highly favorable on an average all the way to the Jefferson Fork of the Missouri River. This favorable pass comes into connection more particularly with the Yellowstone Valley route to the main Missouri Valley. A remarkable circumstance connected with this pass will convey a very clear view of its peculiarly favorable character. Private parties engaged in gold mining, in the gold-fields which exist abundantly on both sides of the Rocky Mountains, have dug a ditch across this summit which is only eighteen feet deep at the apex of the divide, through which they carry the waters of 'Divide Creek,' a tributary of the Missouri, across to the Pacific side, where it is used in gold-washing, and the waste water passes into the Pacific Ocean. This has been justly termed highway robbery." There are half a dozen passes nearly as low,--Mullan's, Blackfoot, Lewis and Clark's, Cadotte's, and the Marias. Going through the Deer Lodge Pass, we find that the stream changes its name very often before reaching the Pacific. The little brook on the summit of the divide, turbid with the washings of the gold-mines, is called the Deer Lodge Creek. Twenty-five miles farther on it is joined by a small stream that trickles from the summit of Mullan's Pass, near Helena, and the two form the Hell Gate, just as the Pemigewasset and Winnipesaukee form the Merrimac in New Hampshire, receiving its name from the many Indian fights that have taken place in its valley, where the Blackfeet and Nez Perces have had many a battle. The stream bears the name of Hell Gate for about eighty miles before being joined by the Blackfoot, which flows from the mountains in the vicinity of Cadotte's and Lewis and Clark's Passes.