or a severed jugular. Instances of brutal and deliberate murder without provocation are too numerous to mention. Every species of vice and debauchery, every way that the ingenious mind of man has revealed to him of debasing and degrading himself, was here put in practice, as if the very fiends of hell were let loose on these wide plains.

Many such towns as Julesburg have nothing now to mark the spot where they stood but the rude burying-grounds which, during their existence, formed the only respectable institution patronized by the inhabitants. Some of these grave-yards (which differ only from Potters-fields in having a few rude wooden head-boards and a few enclosures, seven feet by three, fenced round with ordinary garden palings) contain curious inscriptions, such as the following: "Bill, shot by Charley L., February 13, 1868." "Here lies that sneaking, Long Tom. Daylight let through him by Date." "Jacko

called the Infant a liar. Date." For some reason or other, Julesburg maintained its enviable pre-eminence for some time, as if the bend in the railroad, like the bend in some river, collected the drifting scum and filth which would otherwise have floated on. But the hand of vengeance was already uplifted, and one night, in the midst of a scene of more than ordinary turbulence and fighting, the Sioux swept down upon them and razed the town to the ground.

Before you reach Cheyenne you see the Rocky mountains, but they do not fulfill your expectations. They are not covered with snow; they do not loom up majestically like the Alps; in fact, they look no more imposing than the Kittatinny or Blue mountains of our own State. The first line which you see is the Black Hills, and far behind these you catch occasional glimpses of the "Snowy Range," though usually in places where there is. no snow. To the south is Long's Peak, one of the highest peaks in America, and the brother to Pike's Peak, further south.

The first range does not appear more than a few miles from you, so hard is it to judge of distance in that diamond-clear atmosphere; but, in point of fact, twenty miles will not bring you to the base. It is like the appearance of the Mont en Vert to the stranger in Chamounix, or the Jungfrau to the sojourner in Interlaken. It seems as if a good morning's walk ought to

bring you to the Snowy Range, but the iron horse will be required to get there in that time.

Long's Peak is about 14,500 feet above the sea. Mont Blanc is but little more than 15,000 feet, and the Jungfrau but 12,870 feet. Monte Rosa is 14,220. All these Alpine peaks are immeasurably more imposing and beautiful than these equally high peaks of the Rocky mountains; and the reason is, that the Alps are viewed from valleys but fifteen hundred to two thousand feet above the sea, and the Rocky mountains are seen from the plains which have an elevation of five thousand to six thousand feet, or are as high as many of the celebrated Swiss passes. The Rigi opposite Luzerne, from which such an enchanting view of the Lake-of-the-four-Cantons, Mount Pilatus, and the country and lakes towards Zurich is obtained, is but 5,355 feet, while Cheyenne lies 5,931 feet above the tide. The highest peak on the Thur Alps, between the Lake-of-the-four-Cantons and Zurich, is 7,670 feet, while the Union Pacific railway crosses the easternmost range of the Rocky mountains at Sherman at 8,235 feet. So that we do in this country all the climbing-which is performed by Swiss enthusiasts (not members of the Alpine Club)-in the comfortable palace-cars of Mr. Pullman, and at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour. But what we gain in convenience let it be candidly confessed that we lose in the scenery's grandeur and beauty. A view of the mountain chain from Denver is enchantingly beautiful, especially when taken early in a bright summer's morning, just as the sun, yet under the far eastward stretching plains, touches the tops of Long's and Pike's Peaks and a few of his favorites in the Snowy Range with a ray of his light, which their white summits modify to a beautiful rose-color and fling off hundreds of miles in all directions. But the awful majesty and sublimity of the Alps are wanting. On these latter the snow lies like a vast white mantle on the broad shoulders of a Knight Templar; on the former it sets jauntily like the white feather in the cap of his page. There is another circumstance which tends to detract from the grandeur of the Rocky mountains, and that is, the different extent in these and the Alps over which vegetation is distributed. In the Alps the highest point of tree growth is five thousand five hundred feet, and the limit of eternal snow is only eight thousand five hundred feet. In the Rocky mountains the

former limit is at least over eight thousand feet, and the latter two or three thousand feet higher. In running across the Laramie, Utah, and Nevada plains, there is a certain amount of monotony which, in the first of these, may now and then be relieved by the sight of a herd of antelopes bounding away from the locomotive as it approaches. When a large herd is feeding along the line of the road, a very curious effect is produced as the locomotive startles them. They bound off on both sides directly away from the road, but check their speed as they get farther from the origin of their fear, so that they seem to be one great waveline of little deer thrown from the front of the engine as from a prow; and could an instantaneous photograph be taken of them at any time from above, they would appear in the form of a hyperbola, of which the locomotive was que focus and the railway the transverse axis.

All through Utah one sees the effects of Mormonism in the sinister Jesuitical appearance of the ignorant-looking men and the dejected bearing of the women. Still prosperity reigns

there. The roads near the railroad are lined with carts and wagons, (in some cases a Mormon family occupies three or four such vehicles ;) the towns are large and busy-looking, and the ground well cultivated. Utah is as yet in striking contrast with the adjoining State of Nevada and Territory of Wyoming in this respect. The ascent of the Sierra Nevada, on entering California, and the run through the sixty miles of snow-sheds, are very interesting features of the trip across the continent. How the train gets to the top of these mountains you do not understand; but if you are of a sympathetic nature you feel for the poor, laboring locomotive, and are relieved when the roar of the train passing through the first snow-shed meets your car, for this promises you sixty miles only to cross this difficult range, and an easy run into Sacramento over the most smiling and beautiful golden and green fields of California. Just as the descent is commenced, the train rushes down along the upper edge of the Blue Canon, which finally merges itself into the American River Canon, and forms at the junction a point called Cape Horn, around which you glide easily, lulled to a sense of sweet security by the consciousness that if the outer rail broke you would be precipitated down an abyss of two thousand feet, into the bed of the American river. As you

run on you see miles of the road zig-zagging down below you, and miles of "acequias" or ditches built along the sides of the hills, and following their contour; never crossing by a short aqueduct the mouth of a deep ravine, but following it entirely around at the same level; and acres of clay near Dutch Flat and elsewhere, which have been cut down by hydraulic mining. You run through groves of large trees, not like the stunted pines of the mountains, but firm, noble green trees, like those of the Atlantic seaboard; and a certain something whispers to you that the ocean is not far distant. The flat country between you and Sacramento (and indeed San Francisco) is only the level beach from which the waters receded when they ceased to wash the base of the Sierra Nevada. At last you enter that busy, Philadelphia-like capital, Sacramento, and embarking on steamer, at the head of one of the most beautiful bays in the world, make the remaining one hundred and fifty miles which separate you from the metropolis of the Pacific.

Seven days and seven nights of travel bring you from Philadelphia to San Francisco, and the pleasantest as well as the longest trip it is for which one can buy a ticket.

P. F., JR.

GERMAN STUDENT LIFE.

[Concluded.]

A GERMAN university building contains no dormitories, for the students find their lodgings scattered through the town. The lecture-rooms are very plainly furnished; an unpainted wooden desk is placed on a platform for the professor, in front of which long rows of wooden desks and benches of the very hardest material are arranged for the hearers. The student on entering goes to his place, which he secures by an early attendance at the first lecture of the course, sticks his inkstand into the desk by means of the sharp prong attached, and sits expectant until at the sound of the clock the professor walks in, and taking his place, sometimes sitting, sometimes standing, immediately begins his lecture.

The lecture-room presents a lively spectacle. Students flock there from all parts of the world. From beyond the Pyrenees and Apennines of the South, from the regions of Mount Parnassus and Mount Blanc, from across the Rhine, the Straits of Dover, the Atlantic-the Russian, the Spaniard, the Italian, the Greek, the Swiss, the Hungarian, the Frenchman, the Englishman, the American, come and sit down together, drawn from their far distant homes by a spiritual force as potent as the attraction of the magnet to iron. As the native Prussian must serve at least one year in the army, the future theologian often enters in military costume, and unbuckling his sword takes up the pen which is mightier, in the polemics of dogmatism as well as in literary warfare.

The first course which the beginner takes is one called Encyclopedie, which is an encyclopedic view of the department to which he will devote himself. This course of lectures aims at giving a bird's-eye view of the whole subject; marks its divisions; shows their mutual relations; describes their chief features, and enumerates with short comments the chief books written on the various subjects, so that the topic is well mapped out in its general features by the time the more minute investigation of its several parts is begun. The great feature of the lectures is their thoroughness, or grundlichkeit, of which the Germans are so fond. They not only run the subject into the ground, but they keep it there long enough to examine every root and fibre which contribute to its substance in all its ramifications. I well recollect the despair with which I marked the course of a certain professor whose lectures on "the History of Theology since Schleiermacher" I attended. He of course must describe Schleiermacher's system in order to show its influence on his successors. To do this thoroughly he must note what preceded Schleiermacher, and so we had the various systems of philosophy and theology since the middle ages described, until the end of the term found us nearly at the end of Schleiermacher's own system, not having yet begun on his successors who were to have formed the substance of the course. But this grundlichkeit though extreme is of great value, and in no respect more so than in this that it leads the instructor to present every subject in its historical connections. Philosophy, art, geography, theology, every subject treated, is treated historically, and thus placed it is