Crossing The Rockies

Crossing the Rocky Mountains on the Northern Pacific Railroad affords an opportunity for a thoughtful mind to canvass the possibilities of time and wonder what shook the earth on its crazy bone. Covered with Christmas trees, snow and mules, the mountains rise about you like a thirsty crowd when some one says "beer." To climb these high places big engines coined by the hand of man so strong that they could pull anything with two ends to it, are put on ahead, and the train jogs uphill as if the grade was the other way. A man smoking a joint of flshpole got on the train at Helena, and when he wasn't setting fire to his fishpole he was telling us that he was the principal man around there and had information to let. There was a fence so near the track we thought we could read a sign on it: "Go to Fleming & Leweaux lor your condition powders;" this man told us that the fence was thirty-five miles away ttnd' still going. A mountaln that had been dug out to a'.low the train to pass by without running into the river, we found was seventy-five miles away. The train stopped at a little town called Busted Knuckle. The largest building was a saloon. A sign read "Beer 5 cents a glass," and we found that about half the people that traveled got left at that town; the saloon, instead of being a half block, as it looked, was in reality twelve miles ín the country. Near a station house a cow and a horse and a few pigs were sourrounded by a fence: the cow was standing bow-legged in order to eat grass without interfering with the fence, and the horse seemed crowded for room, while the pigs rooted around down stairs; this information tank led us to believe that the piece of ground contained 160 acres of land. more or less, according to the government survey. He got off at the next stop and took charge of a yoke of oxen