SPEAKING of Virginia City, the great silver mining centre of Nevada State, I said, in “An Engineer's Holiday,” that it “lies among the foothills of the Sierra, at an elevation of 6200 feet, on the eastern face of Mount Davidson... surrounded by innumerable interlocked mountains, conical in outline, red-brown in colour, and perfectly bare of all vegetation. These stretch, as far as the eye can reach, to where the snowy tops of the Humboldt peaks stand against the sky, and the terrible sterility of the scene is enhanced rather than relieved by the thin meanderings of the Carson River, whose course is marked by a narrow green line. This is the only sign of water visible in the, arid panorama, whose bare, red cones are steeped all day in dust-haze, and lighted for a few minutes at sunset by an Alpenglow which dyes the countless peaks in as countless gradations of rosy light.”