To the traveler whose taste has led him to wander along the “Great back bones,” or vertebrae, of the two hemispheres, preparing the mind to draw truthful contrast, his pleasantest reveries will find him drawing comparisons between them.  He is never tired, for the subject he cannot exhaust.  When, supposing that his conclusions are at last made and that the Alps have won the highest place in favor, some forgotten scene from America will assume the form and shape of a vivid recollection, rife with scenic grandeur and sublimity, restoring the Rocky chain to its counterpoise; then, an hour of peril and fearful toil will come to memory, and, until the same mental process shall bring them again to an equilibrium, the far-famed Alps will descend in the balance.  Each have their attractions, each their grandeur, each their sublimity, each their wonderful, awful silence, each their long and glorious landscape views, while, to each, the general contour is the same.  In the point of altitude, the Rocky chain, as is well known to science, has the advantage; but, in historical science and lore, the famous Alps stand preeminent.  True, it is from ignorance that we are led to concede this, because no man can give to the world the reminiscences of the Rocky Mountains.  Their history, since the first red man entered them, must forever rest in oblivion.  In scenery these mountains of the Western Continent again carry off the palm; for, they strike the observer as being more bold, wild and picturesque than their formidable rivals.  To the foot-worn traveler, who has journeyed thirty or forty days upon the level prairies, seeing nothing to break the monotony of a sea of earth, the dark outlines of the Rocky Mountains, gradually coming into the view, never fail to prove a refreshing sight both to the physical and mental eye.  They appear as if descending from the heavens to the surface of the earth, perpendicularly, as though intended to present a perfect barrier over which no living thing should pass.  This view never fails to engross the earnest attention of the traveler, and hours of gazing only serve to enwrap the mind in deeper and more fixed contemplation.  Is there not here presented a field, such as no other part of this globe can furnish, in which the explorer, the geologist, the botanist may sow and reap a rich harvest for his enterprise?  As yet scientific research, on questions concerning the Rocky Mountains, is comparatively speaking, dumb.  But science will soon press forward in her heavenly ordained mission, borne upon the shoulders of some youthful hero, and once more the wise book-men of the gown and slipper, who, surrounded with their tomes on tomes of learned digests, are fast approaching the hour when they had better prepare their last wills and testaments, will again be distanced in the race and doomed to argue technicalities.  To the hunter, the real lover of and dependent upon the chase, there can be no comparison between the mighty Alps and the