MEETING OF THE EXCURSIONISTS. 18 fully and generously bestowed, which lent additional charm to our journey and will be long remembered. Resolved, That our thanks are tendered to the officers of the Pennsylvania Cen- tral, Pittsburgh, Columbus & Cincinnati, Columbus & Indianapolis, Terre Haute & Indianapolis, St. Louis, Terra Haute & Alton, and the Pacific and Missouri River Railroads, for facilities and courtesies received on the roads respectively under their supervision, each of them an important link in the lengthened line we have so happily traversed. Frederick Schley, Esq., of Maryland, moved the adoption of the resolutions, and they were unanimously adopted. Hon. Benjamin Harris Brewster, Attorney General of Pennsylvania, sustained the resolutions in an address, enforcing the claims of the enterprise upon the Government and citizens of the United States. John D. Perry, Esq., President of the Union Pacific Railway, Eastern Division, acknowledged the compliment to the Company. ‘ Judge Usher, of Indiana, spoke on behalf of the West. The meeting then adjourned to re-assemble at a convenient opportunity. SIMON CAMERON, President. ALEXANDER K. Pepricx, CmOMiosnos | Secretaries. After a quiet night’s rest in the sleeping-cars, we were summoned to an early breakfast, after which we took ambulances for Ellsworth. This is a bustling and really pleasant place, nearly six months old, and containing fifty or sixty stores and dwellings. It is located on a beautiful piece of land on the bank of Smoky Hill, which is here about the width of the Conemaugh at Blairsville, but deeper. The country around here is beautiful. The river and its numerous tributaries are skirted on either side with belts of timber, all the rest being prairie. Above the bluffs the country is undulating — more so than it is in the more eastern part of Kansas. The soil is altogether different, being a strong sandy loam, in some places thin, in others several feet in thickness. It seems to be quite destitute of lime; while in the portion of Kansas lying east of Salina (fifty miles west of Fort Riley), the only stone is limestone. Here, since we struck the “divide,” some twenty-five or thirty miles back, the only varieties of stone I have seen are two very dissimilar kinds of sandstone—one a seamless rock of very pure white sand of fine grain, and so friable that it can be pulverized between the thumb and finger; the other, which immedi- ately overlays it, is also fine grained and pure, but very hard and irregularly laminated. Having written thus far, we adjourned to Fort Harker. Yesterday afternoon, a short distance before we reached the present termination of the road, we visited what is called the ‘Pulpit Rock,” or, as it is sometimes termed, the ‘Mushroom Rock,” so called because it resembles a mushroom in having a broad table or cap poised upon a comparatively slender stem. The pedestal or stem is about ten feet high and five or six in diameter. This is composed of that soft and