AUTHOR OF "IN A LONDON SUBURB," "WAR, WAVES, AND WANDERINGS."   LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, Limited . 1887. [ All rights reserved. ] CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS. AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF THE LATE FRANCIS FRANCIS (AUTHOR OF "A BOOK ON ANGLING," ETC., ETC., ETC.), AN OLD-FASHIONED SPORTSMAN "SANS PEUR ET SANS REPROCHE."...

The following sketches were made at different times and during various cruises in the States. The earlier ones are fairly close records of the scenes and incidents which they profess to describe. My movements in the country referred to in the two latter were, however, too desultory to admit of similar treatment; in some cases I traversed the same ground two or three times, and remained for weeks without gleaning anything that would be of interest to the ordinary reader. In the trips detailed in

If the reader has ever undergone the Ordeal by Baggage at an American railway station in the middle of the night, he will appreciate our feelings when we learnt that we should not reach Emigrant Gap until 1 a.m. Emigrant Gap is situated near the summit, or the highest point attained by the Central Pacific Railway in its passage of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. En route for San Francisco we had arranged to halt there for some quail shooting, and in due course the train deserted us, half asleep, up

"At what time does the stage start for Magdalena?" I inquired of the bar-tender at the "Metropolitan Hotel," Tucson, where the Southern Pacific Railway had just landed me. "Magdalena?" he drawled. "Well, guess you'll have to wait here till Saturday now. Stage went out this morning at eight o'clock." It was nine o'clock on Tuesday. En route from the station I had seen quite enough of Tucson to put my ill-luck in its strongest light. But the bar-tender did not seem to realise that there could be a

Note. —The following sketch has, locally speaking, no place in the present collection. But since it is somewhat similar in its nature to the others, since it describes a day's fishing with the well-known angler to whom the book is dedicated, and since, moreover, it serves to mark the interval which elapsed between the time when the foregoing and succeeding sketches were written, I nevertheless introduce it. There is a wind which belongs only to spring mornings and they are chary of it. Soft, and

With his back against a pine-log, B. sits cleaning his gun, and, for the moment unoccupied, I smoke and watch "Texas" singeing a plucked grouse over the camp-fire. Opposite to him, "Mac" is engaged in baking a damper in an enormous frying-pan, the ringed handle of which is propped against a deadwood stick. The fire itself, built just above the highest water-mark, is composed of drift-wood and confined between two pine-logs, on either end of which are arranged our tin cooking utensils. In the bac

At the Gray Place we found Lieut. Huse, who had come up from the supply camp at Lang's; and as he was returning on the following day, and we had decided sooner or later to go there also, we drove down together. Eighteen miles in the teeth of a wind that would have driven an old Dutch lightship, with only a jury-mast and a small flag set, at the rate of fifteen knots an hour. How it came roaring up the funnel of that valley out of the very heart of the great, mysterious Sierra Madre—steadily, obs

There are two things that the settler will find gaining a hold on him after a short residence in Mexico, namely, cigarette smoking and indolence. Very few foreigners successfully resist the seduction of the siesta . However fierce their original abhorrence of the practice may be, gradually the climate saps and softens it, and induces them to regard it leniently. It is hopeless to attempt to combat the native predisposition to midday slumber. The custom of generations has become an instinct. For

Twenty-six miles from Corralitos lay Casas Grandes, a place containing between two and three thousand inhabitants, and a fair type of the collection of ruins, partial ruins, patched ruins, ruins deserted, ruins inhabited, and a few passable adobe houses, that in Northern Mexico is dignified by the denomination, town. The site occupied by it appears to have been a favourite one from early times, some interesting ruins of Aztec buildings still remaining here, and traces of labour that must be refe

On this occasion we encountered in his shop a character well known in this part of the world, one "Apache Bill" by name, who was at present residing in Ascension, but had been absent when we previously passed through the town. "Apache" was a ragged, six-foot, dark-eyed, dark-haired, bottle-nosed, bibulous-looking, able-bodied "loafer," who wore mocassins in town , and whose hands were never out of his pockets save for the purpose of lifting a glass, rolling a cigarette, or making an elaborate bo