Running south from New York, the country we passed through until night fell was very beautiful. That, and some I saw near Lake Erie months later, was the most charming pastoral country I beheld in the States. It was quite equal to anything in England, which is so rich in pastoral scenery. One charm in American travel is, that, in traversing that mighty continent, you see scenery equal to, and like, the best that any country on earth produces. While executing the enormous distances on American rail lines, you lie down at night, the last of the twilight having shown you rural scenes--peaceful villages, ivy-clad churches, browsing cattle, waggon teams and green fields. You awake in a desert--a real desert like the great African ones. Far as the eye can reach, for hours and hours as the train rolls on, sand and nothing else. Not a house, not an inhabitant, no water anywhere. You close your eyes that night on the arid waste, and lo! next morning you are in Swiss scenery. Great fir-clad mountains, capped with snow, border the rail, a precipice is below, and you shudder as you realize how near you are to the edge. A mountain stream, with numerous cascades, accompanies you for miles. Domestic animals are confined to a small breed of horses and goats, but if lucky you may see a large stag, or a grizzly bear, and possibly have a shot at the latter. Before evening all changes again. Vast and interminable plains of grass, with an occasional sluggish stream. Cattle by the thousand in great flocks, sometimes grazing peacefully, sometimes driven by wild-looking cowboys on wiry horses with the high-peaked Mexican saddles and long whips. Here again you may travel for hours and see no habitation. Trees, too, there are none. It seems to be a country designed by nature for cattle only, and such is indeed the use it is put to.