102 CROFUTT’S NEW OVERLAND TOURIST have built here a fine hotel, a round-house of 20 stalls, and machine-shops for division repairs. The Railroad Company employ 130 men. , The surrounding country is rough and broken, covered with sage-brush and flecked with alkali. Close above the town a fine sulphur spring rises from under the bed of blue limestone, and other springs arise from the surface of a narrow, wet ravine, which extends about a mile above the town. The bed of the ravine, as far as the water extends, is white with alkali, where the pools of stagnant water do not cover it. From 30 to 40 miles to the northeast of this station, are located the Ferris and | Seminole mining districts. The ore is sil- ver, and said by some people to be very rich. Several mills are in operation, and others will soon be erected. Coal, wood and water is abundant near the mines, and prospects are bright for the future of the district. Rawlins is the county seat of Carbon j county, and was named in honor of Gen’l J. A. Rawlins. The principal business in which the citizens are engaged is stock raising and mining. Two miles north of the station a paint mine has been discovered, which prospects now to be very valuable. It issaid to be fire-and-water proof. Two mills have been erected at the station for grinding the paint, with a daily capacity of three and ten tons respectively. The Union Pacific Railroad Company are using it to paint their cars. Leaving Rawlins, we follow up the nar- row ravine spoken of, through a natural pass about 800 feet wide, which leads be- tween two nearly perpendicular bluffs over 200 feet in height, composed of yellowish gray quartzose sandstone, overlaid with carboniferous limestone. This bluff ap- pears to have extended across the ravine sometime in the past. Perhaps a large lake was imprisoned above, which kindly burst these huge walls, and left a natural route for the railroad. Beyond the pass we follow up this dry lake bed 6 7-10 miles through a sage-brush and alkali country to Sommit—a small station where the passenger trains do not stop, and 67-10 miles further arrive at Separation—This station derives its name from the fact that at this place the various parties of surveyors who had been together or near each other for the last hundred miles, separated to run different lines to the westward; elevation, 6,900 feet. We are rapidly rising, and 15 miles fur- ther will be on the summit of the Rocky Mountains. Artesian wells are quite numerous alon the line, most of them having been finished within the past five years. They are from 326 feet to 1,145 feet in depth, flowing from 400 to 1,000 gallons an hour, in one place 26 feet above the surface. By pumping, these wells will supply from 650 to: 2,400 gallons of water per hour. The one at this station is 1,103 feet deep, in which the water stands 10 feet from the surface, and by pumping yields 2,000 gallons per hour. Fillmore—is another station where the cars do not stop. It is 7 5-10 miles west from Separation, and seven miles from Creston—Sage-brush and alkali beds are the rule now, and have been for the last 25 miles, and will be for the next 100 miles. We are now near the summit of the great “back-bone ” of the continent— the Rocky Mountains—just 7,030 feet above the level of the sea. Two and a half miles west of this point a large sign-board has been erected, bearing the following: “CONTINENTAL DIVIDE,” and marks the summit 7,100 feet above the level of the sea. This point is about 185 miles from Sherman, ‘737 from Omaha, and from San Francisco, 1,177. On this wild spot, surrounded by few evidences of vegetation—and those of the most primitive form—this little sign marks the center of the grandest range of moun- tains on the continent. Amid what seems to have been the wreck of mountains, we stand and gaze away in the vast distance at the receding lines of hill, valley and mountain peaks, which we have passed in our journey. We feel the cool mountain breeze on our cheeks, but it brings no aroma of life and vegetation with its cooling cur- rent. We feel and know that the same sky which hangs so warm and blue over the smiling valleys, looks down upon us now—but how changed the aspect; thin, gray and cold it appears, and so clear that we almost expect to see the stars looking down through the glistening sunbeams. We do not seem to be on the mountain height, for the expanse seems but a once level plain, now arched and broken into ugly, repulsive hollows and desolate knobs. Here, if a spring should rise from this