A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains
by Isabella L. Bird · English · Gutenberg #755 · 431,468 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains
Author: Isabella L. Bird
Release date: December 1, 1996 [eBook #755]
Most recently updated: January 1, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LADY'S LIFE IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS ***
A LADY'S LIFE
IN THE
ROCKY MOUNTAINS
Isabella L. Bird
Introduction by
Ann Ronald
University of Nevada, Reno
To My Sister,
to whom
these letters were originally written,
they are now
affectionately dedicated.
Contents
Introduction, by Ann Ronald
LETTER I
Lake Tahoe--Morning in San Francisco--Dust--A Pacific
mail-train--Digger Indians--Cape Horn--A mountain hotel--A pioneer--A
Truckee livery stable--A mountain stream--Finding a bear--Tahoe.
LETTER II
A lady's "get-up"--Grizzly bears--The "Gem of the Sierras"--A tragic
tale--A carnival of color.
LETTER III
A Temple of Morpheus--Utah--A "God-forgotten" town--A distressed
couple--Dog villages--A temperance colony--A Colorado inn--The bug
pest--Fort Collins.
LETTER IV
A plague of flies--A melancholy charioteer--The Foot Hills--A mountain
boarding-house--A dull life--"Being agreeable"--Climate of
Colorado--Soroche and snakes.
LETTER V
A dateless day--"Those hands of yours"--A Puritan--Persevering
shiftlessness--The house-mother--Family worship--A grim Sunday--A
"thick-skulled Englishman"--A morning call--Another atmosphere--The
Great Lone Land--"Ill found"--A log camp--Bad footing for
horses--Accidents--Disappointment.
LETTER VI
A bronco mare--An accident--Wonderland--A sad story--The children of
the Territories--Hard greed--Halcyon hours--Smartness--Old-fashioned
prejudices--The Chicago colony--Good luck--Three notes of admiration--A
good horse--The St. Vrain--The Rocky Mountains at last--"Mountain
Jim"--A death hug--Estes Park.
LETTER VII
Personality of Long's Peak--"Mountain Jim"--Lake of the Lilies--A
silent forest--The camping ground--"Ring"--A lady's bower--Dawn and
sunrise--A glorious view--Links of diamonds--The ascent of the
Peak--The "Dog's Lift"--Suffering from thirst--The descent--The bivouac.
LETTER VIII
Estes Park--Big game--"Parks" in Colorado--Magnificent scenery--Flowers
and pines--An awful road--Our log cabin--Griffith Evans--A miniature
world--Our topics--A night alarm--A skunk--Morning glories--Daily
routine--The panic--"Wait for the wagon"--A musical evening.
LETTER IX
"Please Ma'ams"--A desperado--A cattle hunt--The muster--A mad cow--A
snowstorm--Snowed up--Birdie--The Plains--A prairie schooner--Denver--A
find--Plum Creek--"Being agreeable"--Snowbound--The grey mare.
LETTER X
A white world--Bad traveling--A millionaire's home--Pleasant
Park--Perry's Park--Stock-raising--A cattle king--The Arkansas
Divide--Birdie's sagacity--Luxury--Monument Park--Deference to
prejudice--A death scene--The Manitou--A loose shoe--The Ute
Pass--Bergens Park--A settler's home--Hayden's Divide--Sharp
criticism--Speaking the truth.
LETTER XI
Tarryall Creek--The Red Range--Excelsior--Importunate pedlars--Snow and
heat--A bison calf--Deep drifts--South Park--The Great Divide--Comanche
Bill--Difficulties--Hall's Gulch--A Lord Dundreary--Ridiculous fears.
LETTER XII
Deer Valley--Lynch law--Vigilance committees--The silver spruce--Taste
and abstinence--The whisky fiend--Smartness--Turkey Creek Canyon--The
Indian problem--Public rascality--Friendly meetings--The way to the
Golden City--A rising settlement--Clear Creek
Canyon--Staging--Swearing--A mountain town.
LETTER XIII
The blight of mining--Green Lake--Golden
City--Benighted--Vertigo--Boulder Canyon--Financial straits--A hard
ride--The last cent--A bachelor's home--"Mountain Jim"--A surprise--A
night arrival--Making the best of it--Scanty fare.
LETTER XIV
A dismal ride--A desperado's tale--"Lost! Lost! Lost!"--Winter
glories--Solitude--Hard times--Intense cold--A pack of wolves--The
beaver dams--Ghastly scenes--Venison steaks--Our evenings.
LETTER XV
A whisky slave--The pleasures of monotony--The mountain lion--"Another
mouth to feed"--A tiresome boy--An outcast--Thanksgiving Day--The
newcomer--A literary humbug--Milking a dry cow--Trout-fishing--A
snow-storm--A desperado's den.
LETTER XVI
A harmonious home--Intense cold--A purple sun--A grim jest--A perilous
ride--Frozen eyelids--Longmount--The pathless prairie--Hardships of
emigrant life--A trapper's advice--The Little Thompson--Evans and "Jim."
LETTER XVII
Woman's mission--The last morning--Crossing the St. Vrain--Miller--The
St. Vrain again--Crossing the prairie--"Jim's" dream--"Keeping
strangers"--The inn kitchen--A reputed child-eater--Notoriety--A quiet
dance--"Jim's" resolve--The frost-fall--An unfortunate introduction.
Letter I
Lake Tahoe--Morning in San Francisco--Dust--A Pacific
mail-train--Digger Indians--Cape Horn--A mountain hotel--A pioneer--A
Truckee livery stable--A mountain stream--Finding a bear--Tahoe.
LAKE TAHOE, September 2.
I have found a dream of beauty at which one might look all one's life
and sigh. Not lovable, like the Sandwich Islands, but beautiful in its
own way! A strictly North American beauty--snow-splotched mountains,
huge pines, red-woods, sugar pines, silver spruce; a crystalline
atmosphere, waves of the richest color; and a pine-hung lake which
mirrors all beauty on its surface. Lake Tahoe is before me, a sheet of
water twenty-two miles long by ten broad, and in some places 1,700 feet
deep. It lies at a height of 6,000 feet, and the snow-crowned summits
which wall it in are from 8,000 to 11,000 feet in altitude. The air is
keen and elastic. There is no sound but the distant and slightly
musical ring of the lumberer's axe.
It is a weariness to go back, even in thought, to the clang of San
Francisco, which I left in its cold morning fog early yesterday,
driving to the Oakland ferry through streets with side-walks heaped
with thousands of cantaloupe and water-melons, tomatoes, cucumbers,
squashes, pears, grapes, peaches, apricots--all of startling size as
compared with any I ever saw before. Other streets were piled with
sacks of flour, left out all night, owing to the security from rain at
this season. I pass hastily over the early part of the journey, the
crossing the bay in a fog as chill as November, the number of "lunch
baskets," which gave the car the look of conveying a great picnic
party, the last view of the Pacific, on which I had looked for nearly a
year, the fierce sunshine and brilliant sky inland, the look of long
RAINLESSNESS, which one may not call drought, the valleys with sides
crimson with the poison oak, the dusty vineyards, with great purple
clusters thick among the leaves, and between the vines great dusty
melons lying on the dusty earth. From off the boundless harvest fields
the grain was carried in June, and it is now stacked in sacks along the
track, awaiting freightage. California is a "land flowing with milk
and honey." The barns are bursting with fullness. In the dusty
orchards the apple and pear branches are supported, that they may not
break down under the weight of fruit; melons, tomatoes, and squashes of
gigantic size lie almost unheeded on the ground; fat cattle, gorged
almost to repletion, shade themselves under the oaks; superb "red"
horses shine, not with grooming, but with condition; and thriving farms
everywhere show on what a solid basis the prosperity of the "Golden
State" is founded. Very uninviting, however rich, was the blazing
Sacramento Valley, and very repulsive the city of Sacramento, which, at
a distance of 125 miles from the Pacific, has an elevation of only
thirty feet. The mercury stood at 103 degrees in the shade, and the
fine white dust was stifling.
In the late afternoon we began the ascent of the Sierras, whose sawlike
points had been in sight for many miles. The dusty fertility was all
left behind, the country became rocky and gravelly, and deeply scored
by streams bearing the muddy wash of the mountain gold mines down to
the muddier Sacramento. There were long broken ridges and deep
ravines, the ridges becoming longer, the ravines deeper, the pines
thicker and larger, as we ascended into a cool atmosphere of exquisite
purity, and before 6 P.M. the last traces of cultivation and the last
hardwood trees were left behind.[1]
[1] In consequence of the unobserved omission of a date to my letters
having been pointed out to me, I take this opportunity of stating that
I traveled in Colorado in the autumn and early winter of 1873, on my
way to England from the Sandwich Islands. The letters are a faithful
picture of the country and state of society as it then was; but friends
who have returned from the West within the last six months tell me that
things are rapidly changing, that the frame house is replacing the log
cabin, and that the footprints of elk and bighorn may be sought for in
vain on the dewy slopes of Estes Park.
I. L. B.
(Author's note to the third edition, January 16, 1880.)
At Colfax, a station at a height of 2,400 feet, I got out and walked
the length of the train. First came two great gaudy engines, the
Grizzly Bear and the White Fox, with their respective tenders loaded
with logs of wood, the engines with great, solitary, reflecting lamps
in front above the cow guards, a quantity of polished brass-work,
comfortable glass houses, and well-stuffed seats for the
engine-drivers. The engines and tenders were succeeded by a baggage
car, the latter loaded with bullion and valuable parcels, and in charge
of two "express agents." Each of these cars is forty-five feet long.
Then came two cars loaded with peaches and grapes; then two "silver
palace" cars, each sixty feet long; then a smoking car, at that time
occupied mainly by Chinamen; and then five ordinary passenger cars,
with platforms like all the others, making altogether a train about 700
feet in length.
The platforms of the four front cars were clustered over with Digger
Indians, with their squaws, children, and gear. They are perfect
savages, without any aptitude for even aboriginal civilization, and are
altogether the most degraded of the ill-fated tribes which are dying
out before the white races. They were all very diminutive, five feet
one inch being, I should think, about the average height, with flat
noses, wide mouths, and black hair, cut straight above the eyes and
hanging lank and long at the back and sides. The squaws wore their
hair thickly plastered with pitch, and a broad band of the same across
their noses and cheeks. They carried their infants on their backs,
strapped to boards. The clothing of both sexes was a ragged, dirty
combination of coarse woolen cloth and hide, the moccasins being
unornamented. They were all hideous and filthy, and swarming with
vermin. The men carried short bows and arrows, one of them, who
appeared to be the chief, having a lynx's skin for a quiver. A few had
fishing tackle, but the bystanders said that they lived almost entirely
upon grasshoppers. They were a most impressive incongruity in the
midst of the tokens of an omnipotent civilization.
The light of the sinking sun from that time glorified the Sierras, and
as the dew fell, aromatic odors made the still air sweet. On a single
track, sometimes carried on a narrow ledge excavated from the mountain
side by men lowered from the top in baskets, overhanging ravines from
2,000 to 3,000 feet deep, the monster train SNAKED its way upwards,
stopping sometimes in front of a few frame houses, at others where
nothing was to be seen but a log cabin with a few Chinamen hanging
about it, but where trails on the sides of the ravines pointed to a
gold country above and below. So sharp and frequent are the curves on
some parts of the ascent, that on looking out of the window one could
seldom see more than a part of the train at once. At Cape Horn, where
the track curves round the ledge of a precipice 2,500 feet in depth, it
is correct to be frightened, and a fashion of holding the breath and
shutting the eyes prevails, but my fears were reserved for the crossing
of a trestle bridge over a very deep chasm, which is itself approached
by a sharp curve. This bridge appeared to be overlapped by the cars so
as to produce the effect of looking down directly into a wild gulch,
with a torrent raging along it at an immense depth below.
Shivering in the keen, frosty air near the summit pass of the Sierras,
we entered the "snow-sheds," wooden galleries, which for about fifty
miles shut out all the splendid views of the region, as given in
dioramas, not even allowing a glimpse of "the Gem of the Sierras," the
lovely Donner Lake. One of these sheds is twenty-seven miles long. In
a few hours the mercury had fallen from 103 degrees to 29 degrees, and
we had ascended 6,987 feet in 105 miles! After passing through the
sheds, we had several grand views of a pine forest on fire before
reaching Truckee at 11 P.M. having traveled 258 miles. Truckee, the
center of the "lumbering region" of the Sierras, is usually spoken of
as "a rough mountain town," and Mr. W. had told me that all the roughs
of the district congregated there, that there were nightly pistol
affrays in bar-rooms, etc., but as he admitted that a lady was sure of
respect, and Mr. G. strongly advised me to stay and see the lakes, I
got out, much dazed, and very stupid with sleep, envying the people in
the sleeping car, who were already unconscious on their luxurious
couches. The cars drew up in a street--if street that could be called
which was only a wide, cleared space, intersected by rails, with here
and there a stump, and great piles of sawn logs bulking big in the
moonlight, and a number of irregular clap-board, steep-roofed houses,
many of them with open fronts, glaring with light and crowded with men.
We had pulled up at the door of a rough Western hotel, with a partially
open front, being a bar-room crowded with men drinking and smoking, and
the space between it and the cars was a moving mass of loafers and
passengers. On the tracks, engines, tolling heavy bells, were mightily
moving, the glare from their cyclopean eyes dulling the light of a
forest which was burning fitfully on a mountain side; and on open
spaces great fires of pine logs were burning cheerily, with groups of
men round them. A band was playing noisily, and the unholy sound of
tom-toms was not far off. Mountains--the Sierras of many a fireside
dream--seemed to wall in the town, and great pines stood out, sharp and
clear cut, against a sky in which a moon and stars were shining
frostily.
It was a sharp frost at that great height, and when an "irrepressible
nigger," who seemed to represent the hotel establishment, deposited me
and my carpetbag in a room which answered for "the parlor," I was glad
to find some remains of pine knots still alight in the stove. A man
came in and said that when the cars were gone he would try to get me a
room, but they were so full that it would be a very poor one. The
crowd was solely masculine. It was then 11:30 P.M., and I had not had
a meal since 6 A.M.; but when I asked hopefully for a hot supper, with
tea, I was told that no supper could be got at that hour; but in half
an hour the same man returned with a small cup of cold, weak tea, and a
small slice of bread, which looked as if it had been much handled.
I asked the Negro factotum about the hire of horses, and presently a
man came in from the bar who, he said, could supply my needs. This
man, the very type of a Western pioneer, bowed, threw himself into a
rocking-chair, drew a spittoon beside him, cut a fresh quid of tobacco,
began to chew energetically, and put his feet, cased in miry high
boots, into which his trousers were tucked, on the top of the stove.
He said he had horses which would both "lope" and trot, that some
ladies preferred the Mexican saddle, that I could ride alone in perfect
safety; and after a route had been devised, I hired a horse for two
days. This man wore a pioneer's badge as one of the earliest settlers
of California, but he had moved on as one place after another had
become too civilized for him, "but nothing," he added, "was likely to
change much in Truckee." I was afterwards told that the usual regular
hours of sleep are not observed there. The accommodation is too
limited for the population of 2,000,[2] which is masculine mainly, and
is liable to frequent temporary additions, and beds are occupied
continuously, though by different occupants, throughout the greater
part of the twenty-four hours. Consequently I found the bed and room
allotted to me quite tumbled looking. Men's coats and sticks were
hanging up, miry boots were littered about, and a rifle was in one
corner. There was no window to the outer air, but I slept soundly,
being only once awoke by an increase of the same din in which I had
fallen asleep, varied by three pistol shots fired in rapid succession.
[2] Nelson's Guide to the Central Pacific Railroad.
This morning Truckee wore a totally different aspect. The crowds of
the night before had disappeared. There were heaps of ashes where the
fires had been. A sleepy German waiter seemed the only person about
the premises, the open drinking saloons were nearly empty, and only a
few sleepy-looking loafers hung about in what is called the street. It
might have been Sunday; but they say that it brings a great accession
of throng and jollity. Public worship has died out at present; work is
discontinued on Sunday, but the day is given up to pleasure. Putting a
minimum of indispensables into a bag, and slipping on my Hawaiian
riding dress[3] over a silk skirt, and a dust cloak over all, I
stealthily crossed the plaza to the livery stable, the largest building
in Truckee, where twelve fine horses were stabled in stalls on each
side of a broad drive. My friend of the evening before showed me his
"rig," three velvet-covered side-saddles almost without horns. Some
ladies, he said, used the horn of the Mexican saddle, but none "in the
part" rode cavalier fashion. I felt abashed. I could not ride any
distance in the conventional mode, and was just going to give up this
splendid "ravage," when the man said, "Ride your own fashion; here, at
Truckee, if anywhere in the world, people can do as they like."
Blissful Truckee! In no time a large grey horse was "rigged out" in a
handsome silver-bossed Mexican saddle, with ornamental leather tassels
hanging from the stirrup guards, and a housing of black bear's-skin. I
strapped my silk skirt on the saddle, deposited my cloak in the
corn-bin, and was safely on the horse's back before his owner had time
to devise any way of mounting me. Neither he nor any of the loafers
who had assembled showed the slightest sign of astonishment, but all
were as respectful as possible.
[3] For the benefit of other lady travelers, I wish to explain that my
"Hawaiian riding dress" is the "American Lady's Mountain Dress," a
half-fitting jacket, a skirt reaching to the ankles, and full Turkish
trousers gathered into frills falling over the boots,--a thoroughly
serviceable and feminine costume for mountaineering and other rough
traveling, as in the Alps or any other part of the world.
I. L. B.
(Author's note to the second edition, November 27, 1879.)
Once on horseback my embarrassment disappeared, and I rode through
Truckee, whose irregular, steep-roofed houses and shanties, set down in
a clearing and surrounded closely by mountain and forest, looked like a
temporary encampment; passed under the Pacific Railroad; and then for
twelve miles followed the windings of the Truckee River, a clear,
rushing, mountain stream, in which immense pine logs had gone aground
not to be floated off till the next freshet, a loud-tongued, rollicking
stream of ice-cold water, on whose banks no ferns or trailers hang, and
which leaves no greenness along its turbulent progress.
All was bright with that brilliancy of sky and atmosphere, that blaze
of sunshine and universal glitter, which I never saw till I came to
California, combined with an elasticity in the air which removed all
lassitude, and gives one spirit enough for anything. On either side of
the Truckee great sierras rose like walls, castellated, embattled,
rifted, skirted and crowned with pines of enormous size, the walls now
and then breaking apart to show some snow-slashed peak rising into a
heaven of intense, unclouded, sunny blue. At this altitude of 6,000
feet one must learn to be content with varieties of Coniferae, for,
except for aspens, which spring up in some places where the pines have
been cleared away, and for cotton-woods, which at a lower level fringe
the streams, there is nothing but the bear cherry, the raspberry, the
gooseberry, the wild grape, and the wild currant. None of these grew
near the Truckee, but I feasted my eyes on pines[4] which, though not
so large as the Wellingtonia of the Yosemite, are really gigantic,
attaining a height of 250 feet, their huge stems, the warm red of cedar
wood, rising straight and branchless for a third of their height, their
diameter from seven to fifteen feet, their shape that of a larch, but
with the needles long and dark, and cones a foot long. Pines cleft the
sky; they were massed wherever level ground occurred; they stood over
the Truckee at right angles, or lay across it in prostrate grandeur.
Their stumps and carcasses were everywhere; and smooth "shoots" on the
sierras marked where they were shot down as "felled timber," to be
floated off by the river. To them this wild region owes its scattered
population, and the sharp ring of the lumberer's axe mingles with the
cries of wild beasts and the roar of mountain torrents.
[4] Pinus Lambertina.
The track is a soft, natural, wagon road, very pleasant to ride on.
The horse was much too big for me, and had plans of his own; but now
and then, where the ground admitted to it, I tried his heavy "lope"
with much amusement. I met nobody, and passed nothing on the road but
a freight wagon, drawn by twenty-two oxen, guided by three fine-looking
men, who had some difficulty in making room for me to pass their
awkward convoy. After I had ridden about ten miles the road went up a
steep hill in the forest, turned abruptly, and through the blue gloom
of the great pines which rose from the ravine in which the river was
then hid, came glimpses of two mountains, about 11,000 feet in height,
whose bald grey summits were crowned with pure snow. It was one of
those glorious surprises in scenery which make one feel as if one must
bow down and worship. The forest was thick, and had an undergrowth of
dwarf spruce and brambles, but as the horse had become fidgety and
"scary" on the track, I turned off in the idea of taking a short cut,
and was sitting carelessly, shortening my stirrup, when a great, dark,
hairy beast rose, crashing and snorting, out of the tangle just in
front of me. I had only a glimpse of him, and thought that my
imagination had magnified a wild boar, but it was a bear. The horse
snorted and plunged violently, as if he would go down to the river, and
then turned, still plunging, up a steep bank, when, finding that I must
come off, I threw myself off on the right side, where the ground rose
considerably, so that I had not far to fall. I got up covered with
dust, but neither shaken nor bruised. It was truly grotesque and
humiliating. The bear ran in one direction, and the horse in another.
I hurried after the latter, and twice he stopped till I was close to
him, then turned round and cantered away. After walking about a mile
in deep dust, I picked up first the saddle-blanket and next my bag, and
soon came upon the horse, standing facing me, and shaking all over. I
thought I should catch him then, but when I went up to him he turned
round, threw up his heels several times, rushed off the track, galloped
in circles, bucking, kicking, and plunging for some time, and then
throwing up his heels as an act of final defiance, went off at full
speed in the direction of Truckee, with the saddle over his shoulders
and the great wooden stirrups thumping his sides, while I trudged
ignominiously along in the dust, laboriously carrying the bag and
saddle-blanket.
I walked for nearly an hour, heated and hungry, when to my joy I saw
the ox-team halted across the top of a gorge, and one of the teamsters
leading the horse towards me. The young man said that, seeing the
horse coming, they had drawn the team across the road to stop him, and
remembering that he had passed them with a lady on him, they feared
that there had been an accident, and had just saddled one of their own
horses to go in search of me. He brought me some water to wash the
dust from my face, and re-saddled the horse, but the animal snorted and
plunged for some time before he would let me mount, and then sidled
along in such a nervous and scared way, that the teamster walked for
some distance by me to see that I was "all right." He said that the
woods in the neighborhood of Tahoe had been full of brown and grizzly
bears for some days, but that no one was in any danger from them. I
took a long gallop beyond the scene of my tumble to quiet the horse,
who was most restless and troublesome.
Then the scenery became truly magnificent and bright with life.
Crested blue-jays darted through the dark pines, squirrels in hundreds
scampered through the forest, red dragon-flies flashed like "living
light," exquisite chipmunks ran across the track, but only a dusty blue
lupin here and there reminded me of earth's fairer children. Then the
river became broad and still, and mirrored in its transparent depths
regal pines, straight as an arrow, with rich yellow and green lichen
clinging to their stems, and firs and balsam pines filling up the
spaces between them, the gorge opened, and this mountain-girdled lake
lay before me, with its margin broken up into bays and promontories,
most picturesquely clothed by huge sugar pines. It lay dimpling and
scintillating beneath the noonday sun, as entirely unspoilt as fifteen
years ago, when its pure loveliness was known only to trappers and
Indians. One man lives on it the whole year round; otherwise early
October strips its shores of their few inhabitants, and thereafter, for
seven months, it is rarely accessible except on snowshoes. It never
freezes. In the dense forests which bound it, and drape two-thirds of
its gaunt sierras, are hordes of grizzlies, brown bears, wolves, elk,
deer, chipmunks, martens, minks, skunks, foxes, squirrels, and snakes.
On its margin I found an irregular wooden inn, with a lumber-wagon at
the door, on which was the carcass of a large grizzly bear, shot behind
the house this morning. I had intended to ride ten miles farther, but,
finding that the trail in some places was a "blind" one, and being
bewitched by the beauty and serenity of Tahoe, I have remained here
sketching, reveling in the view from the veranda, and strolling in the
forest. At this height there is frost every night of the year, and my
fingers are benumbed.
The beauty is entrancing. The sinking sun is out of sight behind the
western Sierras, and all the pine-hung promontories on this side of the
water are rich indigo, just reddened with lake, deepening here and
there into Tyrian purple. The peaks above, which still catch the sun,
are bright rose-red, and all the mountains on the other side are pink;
and pink, too, are the far-off summits on which the snow-drifts rest.
Indigo, red, and orange tints stain the still water, which lies solemn
and dark against the shore, under the shadow of stately pines. An hour
later, and a moon nearly full--not a pale, flat disc, but a radiant
sphere--has wheeled up into the flushed sky. The sunset has passed
through every stage of beauty, through every glory of color, through
riot and triumph, through pathos and tenderness, into a long, dreamy,
painless rest, succeeded by the profound solemnity of the moonlight,
and a stillness broken only by the night cries of beasts in the
aromatic forests.
I. L. B.
Letter II
A lady's "get-up"--Grizzly bears--The "Gems of the Sierras"--A tragic
tale--A carnival of color.
CHEYENNE, WYOMING, September 7.
As night came on the cold intensified, and the stove in the parlor
attracted every one. A San Francisco lady, much "got up" in paint,
emerald green velvet, Brussels lace, and diamonds, rattled continuously
for the amusement of the company, giving descriptions of persons and
scenes in a racy Western twang, without the slightest scruple as to
what she said. In a few years Tahoe will be inundated in summer with
similar vulgarity, owing to its easiness of access. I sustained the
reputation which our country-women bear in America by looking a
"perfect guy"; and feeling that I was a salient point for the speaker's
next sally, I was relieved when the landlady, a ladylike Englishwoman,
asked me to join herself and her family in the bar-room, where we had
much talk about the neighborhood and its wild beasts, especially bears.
The forest is full of them, but they seem never to attack people unless
when wounded, or much aggravated by dogs, or a shebear thinks you are
going to molest her young.
I dreamt of bears so vividly that I woke with a furry death hug at my
throat, but feeling quite refreshed. When I mounted my horse after
breakfast the sun was high and the air so keen and intoxicating that,
giving the animal his head, I galloped up and down hill, feeling
completely tireless. Truly, that air is the elixir of life. I had a
glorious ride back to Truckee. The road was not as solitary as the day
before. In a deep part of the forest the horse snorted and reared, and
I saw a cinnamon-colored bear with two cubs cross the track ahead of
me. I tried to keep the horse quiet that the mother might acquit me of
any designs upon her lolloping children, but I was glad when the
ungainly, long-haired party crossed the river. Then I met a team, the
driver of which stopped and said he was glad that I had not gone to
Cornelian Bay, it was such a bad trail, and hoped I had enjoyed Tahoe.
The driver of another team stopped and asked if I had seen any bears.
Then a man heavily armed, a hunter probably, asked me if I were the
English tourist who had "happened on" a "Grizzly" yesterday. Then I
saw a lumberer taking his dinner on a rock in the river, who "touched
his hat" and brought me a draught of ice-cold water, which I could
hardly drink owing to the fractiousness of the horse, and gathered me
some mountain pinks, which I admired. I mention these little incidents
to indicate the habit of respectful courtesy to women which prevails in
that region. These men might have been excused for speaking in a
somewhat free-and-easy tone to a lady riding alone, and in an unwonted
fashion. Womanly dignity and manly respect for women are the salt of
society in this wild West.
My horse was so excitable that I avoided the center of Truckee, and
skulked through a collection of Chinamen's shanties to the stable,
where a prodigious roan horse, standing seventeen hands high, was
produced for my ride to the Donner Lake. I asked the owner, who was as
interested in my enjoying myself as a West Highlander might have been,
if there were not ruffians about who might make an evening ride
dangerous. A story was current of a man having ridden through Truckee
two evenings before with a chopped-up human body in a sack behind the
saddle, and hosts of stories of ruffianism are located there, rightly
or wrongly. This man said, "There's a bad breed of ruffians, but the
ugliest among them all won't touch you. There's nothing Western folk
admire so much as pluck in a woman." I had to get on a barrel before I
could reach the stirrup, and when I was mounted my feet only came
half-way down the horse's sides. I felt like a fly on him. The road
at first lay through a valley without a river, but some swampishness
nourished some rank swamp grass, the first GREEN grass I have seen in
America; and the pines, with their red stems, looked beautiful rising
out of it. I hurried along, and came upon the Donner Lake quite
suddenly, to be completely smitten by its beauty. It is only about
three miles long by one and a half broad, and lies hidden away among
mountains, with no dwellings on its shores but some deserted lumberers'
cabins.[5] Its loneliness pleased me well. I did not see man, beast,
or bird from the time I left Truckee till I returned. The mountains,
which rise abruptly from the margin, are covered with dense pine
forests, through which, here and there, strange forms of bare grey
rock, castellated, or needle-like, protrude themselves. On the
opposite side, at a height of about 6,000 feet, a grey, ascending line,
from which rumbling, incoherent sounds occasionally proceeded, is seen
through the pines. This is one of the snow-sheds of the Pacific
Railroad, which shuts out from travelers all that I was seeing. The
lake is called after Mr. Donner, who, with his family, arrived at the
Truckee River in the fall of the year, in company with a party of
emigrants bound for California. Being encumbered with many cattle, he
let the company pass on, and, with his own party of sixteen souls,
which included his wife and four children, encamped by the lake. In
the morning they found themselves surrounded by an expanse of snow, and
after some consultation it was agreed that the whole party except Mr.
Donner who was unwell, his wife, and a German friend, should take the
horses and attempt to cross the mountain, which, after much peril, they
succeeded in doing; but, as the storm continued for several weeks, it
was impossible for any rescue party to succor the three who had been
left behind. In the early spring, when the snow was hard enough for
traveling, a party started in quest, expecting to find the snow-bound
alive and well, as they had cattle enough for their support, and, after
weeks of toil and exposure, they scaled the Sierras and reached the
Donner Lake. On arriving at the camp they opened the rude door, and
there, sitting before the fire, they found the German, holding a
roasted human arm and hand, which he was greedily eating. The rescue
party overpowered him, and with difficulty tore the arm from him. A
short search discovered the body of the lady, minus the arm, frozen in
the snow, round, plump, and fair, showing that she was in perfect
health when she met her fate. The rescuers returned to California,
taking the German with them, whose story was that Mr. Donner died in
the fall, and that the cattle escaped, leaving them but little food,
and that when this was exhausted Mrs. Donner died. The story never
gained any credence, and the truth oozed out that the German had
murdered the husband, then brutally murdered the wife, and had seized
upon Donner's money. There were, however, no witnesses, and the
murderer escaped with the enforced surrender of the money to the Donner
orphans.
[5] Visitors can now be accommodated at a tolerable mountain hotel.
This tragic story filled my mind as I rode towards the head of the
lake, which became every moment grander and more unutterably lovely.
The sun was setting fast, and against his golden light green
promontories, wooded with stately pines, stood out one beyond another
in a medium of dark rich blue, while grey bleached summits, peaked,
turreted, and snow slashed, were piled above them, gleaming with amber
light. Darker grew the blue gloom, the dew fell heavily, aromatic
odors floated on the air, and still the lofty peaks glowed with living
light, till in one second it died off from them, leaving them with the
ashy paleness of a dead face. It was dark and cold under the mountain
shadows, the frosty chill of the high altitude wrapped me round, the
solitude was overwhelming, and I reluctantly turned my horse's head
towards Truckee, often looking back to the ashy summits in their
unearthly fascination. Eastwards the look of the scenery was changing
every moment, while the lake for long remained "one burnished sheet of
living gold," and Truckee lay utterly out of sight in a hollow filled
with lake and cobalt. Before long a carnival of color began which I
can only describe as delirious, intoxicating, a hardly bearable joy, a
tender anguish, an indescribable yearning, an unearthly music, rich in
love and worship. It lasted considerably more than an hour, and though
the road was growing very dark, and the train which was to take me
thence was fast climbing the Sierras, I could not ride faster than a
walk.
The eastward mountains, which had been grey, blushed pale pink, the
pink deepened into rose, and the rose into crimson, and then all
solidity etherealized away and became clear and pure as an amethyst,
while all the waving ranges and the broken pine-clothed ridges below
etherealized too, but into a dark rich blue, and a strange effect of
atmosphere blended the whole into one perfect picture. It changed,
deepened, reddened, melted, growing more and more wonderful, while
under the pines it was night, till, having displayed itself for an
hour, the jewelled peaks suddenly became like those of the Sierras, wan
as the face of death. Far later the cold golden light lingered in the
west, with pines in relief against its purity, and where the rose light
had glowed in the east, a huge moon upheaved itself, and the red
flicker of forest fires luridly streaked the mountain sides near and
far off. I realized that night had come with its EERINESS, and putting
my great horse into a gallop I clung on to him till I pulled him up in
Truckee, which was at the height of its evening revelries--fires
blazing out of doors, bar-rooms and saloons crammed, lights glaring,
gaming tables thronged, fiddle and banjo in frightful discord, and the
air ringing with ribaldry and profanity.
I. L. B.
Letter III
A Temple of Morpheus--Utah--A "God-forgotten" town--A distressed
couple--Dog villages--A temperance colony--A Colorado inn--The bug
pest--Fort Collins.
CHEYENNE, WYOMING, September 8.
Precisely at 11 P.M. the huge Pacific train, with its heavy bell
tolling, thundered up to the door of the Truckee House, and on
presenting my ticket at the double door of a "Silver Palace" car, the
slippered steward, whispering low, conducted me to my berth--a
luxurious bed three and a half feet wide, with a hair mattress on
springs, fine linen sheets, and costly California blankets. The
twenty-four inmates of the car were all invisible, asleep behind rich
curtains. It was a true Temple of Morpheus. Profound sleep was the
object to which everything was dedicated. Four silver lamps hanging
from the roof, and burning low, gave a dreamy light. On each side of
the center passage, rich rep curtains, green and crimson, striped with
gold, hung from silver bars running near the roof, and trailed on the
soft Axminster carpet. The temperature was carefully kept at 70
degrees. It was 29 degrees outside. Silence and freedom from jolting
were secured by double doors and windows, costly and ingenious
arrangements of springs and cushions, and a speed limited to eighteen
miles an hour.
As I lay down, the gallop under the dark pines, the frosty moon, the
forest fires, the flaring lights and roaring din of Truckee faded as
dreams fade, and eight hours later a pure, pink dawn divulged a level
blasted region, with grey sage brush growing out of a soil encrusted
with alkali, and bounded on either side by low glaring ridges. All
through that day we traveled under a cloudless sky over solitary
glaring plains, and stopped twice at solitary, glaring frame houses,
where coarse, greasy meals, infested by lazy flies, were provided at a
dollar per head. By evening we were running across the continent on a
bee line, and I sat for an hour on the rear platform of the rear car to
enjoy the wonderful beauty of the sunset and the atmosphere. Far as
one could see in the crystalline air there was nothing but desert. The
jagged Humboldt ranges flaming in the sunset, with snow in their
clefts, though forty-five miles off, looked within an easy canter. The
bright metal track, purpling like all else in the cool distance, was
all that linked one with Eastern or Western civilization.
The next morning, when the steward unceremoniously turned us out of our
berths soon after sunrise, we were running down upon the Great Salt
Lake, bounded by the white Wahsatch ranges. Along its shores, by means
of irrigation, Mormon industry has compelled the ground to yield fine
crops of hay and barley; and we passed several cabins, from which, even
at that early hour, Mormons, each with two or three wives, were going
forth to their day's work. The women were ugly, and their shapeless
blue dresses hideous. At the Mormon town of Ogden we changed cars, and
again traversed dusty plains, white and glaring, varied by muddy
streams and rough, arid valleys, now and then narrowing into canyons.
By common consent the windows were kept closed to exclude the fine
white alkaline dust, which is very irritating to the nostrils. The
journey became more and more wearisome as we ascended rapidly over
immense plains and wastes of gravel destitute of mountain boundaries,
and with only here and there a "knob" or "butte" [6] to break the
monotony. The wheel-marks of the trail to Utah often ran parallel with
the track, and bones of oxen were bleaching in the sun, the remains of
those "whose carcasses fell in the wilderness" on the long and drouthy
journey. The daybreak of to-day (Sunday) found us shivering at Fort
Laramie, a frontier post dismally situated at a height of 7,000 feet.
Another 1,000 feet over gravelly levels brought us to Sherman, the
highest level reached by this railroad. From this point eastward the
streams fall into the Atlantic. The ascent of these apparently level
plateaus is called "crossing the Rocky Mountains," but I have seen
nothing of the range, except two peaks like teeth lying low on the
distant horizon. It became mercilessly cold; some people thought it
snowed, but I only saw rolling billows of fog. Lads passed through the
cars the whole morning, selling newspapers, novels, cacti, lollypops,
pop corn, pea nuts, and ivory ornaments, so that, having lost all
reckoning of the days, I never knew that it was Sunday till the cars
pulled up at the door of the hotel in this detestable place.
[6] The mountains which bound the "valley of the Babbling Waters,"
Utah, afford striking examples of these "knobs" or "buttes."
The surrounding plains were endless and verdureless. The scanty
grasses were long ago turned into sun-cured hay by the fierce summer
heats. There is neither tree nor bush, the sky is grey, the earth
buff, the air blae and windy, and clouds of coarse granitic dust sweep
across the prairie and smother the settlement. Cheyenne is described
as "a God-forsaken, God-forgotten place." That it forgets God is
written on its face. It owes its existence to the railroad, and has
diminished in population, but is a depot for a large amount of the
necessaries of life which are distributed through the scantily settled
districts within distances of 300 miles by "freight wagons," each drawn
by four or six horses or mules, or double that number of oxen. At
times over 100 wagons, with double that number of teamsters, are in
Cheyenne at once. A short time ago it was a perfect pandemonium,
mainly inhabited by rowdies and desperadoes, the scum of advancing
civilization; and murders, stabbings, shooting, and pistol affrays were
at times events of almost hourly occurrence in its drinking dens. But
in the West, when things reach their worst, a sharp and sure remedy is
provided. Those settlers who find the state of matters intolerable,
organize themselves into a Vigilance Committee. "Judge Lynch," with a
few feet of rope, appears on the scene, the majority crystallizes round
the supporters of order, warnings are issued to obnoxious people,
simply bearing a scrawl of a tree with a man dangling from it, with
such words as "Clear out of this by 6 A.M., or----." A number of the
worst desperadoes are tried by a yet more summary process than a
drumhead court martial, "strung up," and buried ignominiously. I have
been told that 120 ruffians were disposed of in this way here in a
single fortnight. Cheyenne is now as safe as Hilo, and the interval
between the most desperate lawlessness and the time when United States
law, with its corruption and feebleness, comes upon the scene is one of
comparative security and good order. Piety is not the forte of
Cheyenne. The roads resound with atrocious profanity, and the rowdyism
of the saloons and bar-rooms is repressed, not extirpated.
The population, once 6,000, is now about 4,000. It is an ill-arranged
set of frame houses and shanties [7] and rubbish heaps, and offal of
deer and antelope, produce the foulest smells I have smelt for a long
time. Some of the houses are painted a blinding white; others are
unpainted; there is not a bush, or garden, or green thing; it just
straggles out promiscuously on the boundless brown plains, on the
extreme verge of which three toothy peaks are seen. It is utterly
slovenly-looking, and unornamental, abounds in slouching
bar-room-looking characters, and looks a place of low, mean lives.
Below the hotel window freight cars are being perpetually shunted, but
beyond the railroad tracks are nothing but the brown plains, with their
lonely sights--now a solitary horseman at a traveling amble, then a
party of Indians in paint and feathers, but civilized up to the point
of carrying firearms, mounted on sorry ponies, the bundled-up squaws
riding astride on the baggage ponies; then a drove of ridgy-spined,
long-horned cattle, which have been several months eating their way
from Texas, with their escort of four or five much-spurred horsemen, in
peaked hats, blue-hooded coats, and high boots, heavily armed with
revolvers and repeating rifles, and riding small wiry horses. A
solitary wagon, with a white tilt, drawn by eight oxen, is probably
bearing an emigrant and his fortunes to Colorado. On one of the dreary
spaces of the settlement six white-tilted wagons, each with twelve
oxen, are standing on their way to a distant part. Everything suggests
a beyond.
[7] The discovery of gold in the Black Hills has lately given it a
great impetus, and as it is the chief point of departure for the
diggings it is increasing in population and importance. (July, 1879)
September 9.
I have found at the post office here a circular letter of
recommendation from ex-Governor Hunt, procured by Miss Kingsley's
kindness, and another equally valuable one of "authentication" and
recommendation from Mr. Bowles, of the Springfield Republican, whose
name is a household word in all the West. Armed with these, I shall
plunge boldly into Colorado. I am suffering from giddiness and nausea
produced by the bad smells. A "help" here says that there have been
fifty-six deaths from cholera during the last twenty days. Is common
humanity lacking, I wonder, in this region of hard greed? Can it not
be bought by dollars here, like every other commodity, votes included?
Last night I made the acquaintance of a shadowy gentleman from
Wisconsin, far gone in consumption, with a spirited wife and young
baby. He had been ordered to the Plains as a last resource, but was
much worse. Early this morning he crawled to my door, scarcely able to
speak from debility and bleeding from the lungs, begging me to go to
his wife, who, the doctor said was ill of cholera. The child had been
ill all night, and not for love or money could he get any one to do
anything for them, not even to go for the medicine. The lady was blue,
and in great pain from cramp, and the poor unweaned infant was roaring
for the nourishment which had failed. I vainly tried to get hot water
and mustard for a poultice, and though I offered a Negro a dollar to go
for the medicine, he looked at it superciliously, hummed a tune, and
said he must wait for the Pacific train, which was not due for an hour.
Equally in vain I hunted through Cheyenne for a feeding bottle. Not a
maternal heart softened to the helpless mother and starving child, and
my last resource was to dip a piece of sponge in some milk and water,
and try to pacify the creature. I applied Rigollot's leaves, went for
the medicine, saw the popular host--a bachelor--who mentioned a girl
who, after much difficulty, consented to take charge of the baby for
two dollars a day and attend to the mother, and having remained till
she began to amend, I took the cars for Greeley, a settlement on the
Plains, which I had been recommended to make my starting point for the
mountains.
FORT COLLINS, September 10.
It gave me a strange sensation to embark upon the Plains. Plains,
plains everywhere, plains generally level, but elsewhere rolling in
long undulations, like the waves of a sea which had fallen asleep.
They are covered thinly with buff grass, the withered stalks of
flowers, Spanish bayonet, and a small beehive-shaped cactus. One could
gallop all over them.
They are peopled with large villages of what are called prairie dogs,
because they utter a short, sharp bark, but the dogs are, in reality,
marmots. We passed numbers of villages, which are composed of raised
circular orifices, about eighteen inches in diameter, with sloping
passages leading downwards for five or six feet. Hundreds of these
burrows are placed together. On nearly every rim a small furry
reddish-buff beast sat on his hind legs, looking, so far as head went,
much like a young seal. These creatures were acting as sentinels, and
sunning themselves. As we passed, each gave a warning yelp, shook its
tail, and, with a ludicrous flourish of its hind legs, dived into its
hole. The appearance of hundreds of these creatures, each eighteen
inches long, sitting like dogs begging, with their paws down and all
turned sunwards, is most grotesque. The Wish-ton-Wish has few enemies,
and is a most prolific animal. From its enormous increase and the
energy and extent of its burrowing operations, one can fancy that in
the course of years the prairies will be seriously injured, as it
honeycombs the ground, and renders it unsafe for horses. The burrows
seem usually to be shared by owls, and many of the people insist that a
rattlesnake is also an inmate, but I hope for the sake of the harmless,
cheery little prairie dog, that this unwelcome fellowship is a myth.
After running on a down grade for some time, five distinct ranges of
mountains, one above another, a lurid blue against a lurid sky,
upheaved themselves above the prairie sea. An American railway car,
hot, stuffy and full of chewing, spitting Yankees, was not an ideal way
of approaching this range which had early impressed itself upon my
imagination. Still, it was truly grand, although it was sixty miles
off, and we were looking at it from a platform 5,000 feet in height.
As I write I am only twenty-five miles from them, and they are
gradually gaining possession of me.
I can look at and FEEL nothing else. At five in the afternoon frame
houses and green fields began to appear, the cars drew up, and two of
my fellow passengers and I got out and carried our own luggage through
the deep dust to a small, rough, Western tavern, where with difficulty
we were put up for the night. This settlement is called the Greeley
Temperance Colony, and was founded lately by an industrious class of
emigrants from the East, all total abstainers, and holding advanced
political opinions. They bought and fenced 50,000 acres of land,
constructed an irrigating canal, which distributes its waters on
reasonable terms, have already a population of 3,000, and are the most
prosperous and rising colony in Colorado, being altogether free from
either laziness or crime. Their rich fields are artificially
productive solely; and after seeing regions where Nature gives
spontaneously, one is amazed that people should settle here to be
dependent on irrigating canals, with the risk of having their crops
destroyed by grasshoppers. A clause in the charter of the colony
prohibits the introduction, sale, or consumption of intoxicating
liquor, and I hear that the men of Greeley carry their crusade against
drink even beyond their limits, and have lately sacked three houses
open for the sale of drink near their frontier, pouring the whisky upon
the ground, so that people don't now like to run the risk of bringing
liquor near Greeley, and the temperance influence is spreading over a
very large area. As the men have no bar-rooms to sit in, I observed
that Greeley was asleep at an hour when other places were beginning
their revelries. Nature is niggardly, and living is coarse and rough,
the merest necessaries of hardy life being all that can be thought of
in this stage of existence.
My first experiences of Colorado travel have been rather severe. At
Greeley I got a small upstairs room at first, but gave it up to a
married couple with a child, and then had one downstairs no bigger than
a cabin, with only a canvas partition. It was very hot, and every
place was thick with black flies. The English landlady had just lost
her "help," and was in a great fuss, so that I helped her to get supper
ready. Its chief features were greasiness and black flies. Twenty men
in working clothes fed and went out again, "nobody speaking to nobody."
The landlady introduced me to a Vermont settler who lives in the "Foot
Hills," who was very kind and took a great deal of trouble to get me a
horse. Horses abound, but they are either large American horses, which
are only used for draught, or small, active horses, called broncos,
said to be from a Spanish word, signifying that they can never be
broke. They nearly all "buck," and are described as being more "ugly"
and treacherous than mules. There is only one horse in Greeley "safe
for a woman to ride." I tried an Indian pony by moonlight--such a
moonlight--but found he had tender feet. The kitchen was the only
sitting room, so I shortly went to bed, to be awoke very soon by
crawling creatures apparently in myriads. I struck a light, and found
such swarms of bugs that I gathered myself up on the wooden chairs, and
dozed uneasily till sunrise. Bugs are a great pest in Colorado. They
come out of the earth, infest the wooden walls, and cannot be got rid
of by any amount of cleanliness. Many careful housewives take their
beds to pieces every week and put carbolic acid on them.
It was a glorious, cool morning, and the great range of the Rocky
Mountains looked magnificent. I tried the pony again, but found he
would not do for a long journey; and as my Vermont acquaintance offered
me a seat in his wagon to Fort Collins, twenty-five miles nearer the
Mountains, I threw a few things together and came here with him. We
left Greeley at 10, and arrived here at 4:30, staying an hour for food
on the way. I liked the first half of the drive; but the fierce,
ungoverned, blazing heat of the sun on the whitish earth for the last
half, was terrible even with my white umbrella, which I have not used
since I left New Zealand; it was sickening. Then the eyes have never
anything green to rest upon, except in the river bottoms, where there
is green hay grass. We followed mostly the course of the River
Cache-a-la-Poudre, which rises in the Mountains, and after supplying
Greeley with irrigation, falls into the Platte, which is an affluent of
the Missouri. When once beyond the scattered houses and great ring
fence of the vigorous Greeley colonists, we were on the boundless
prairie. Now and then horsemen passed us, and we met three wagons with
white tilts. Except where the prairie dogs have honeycombed the
ground, you can drive almost anywhere, and the passage of a few wagons
over the same track makes a road. We forded the river, whose course is
marked the whole way by a fringe of small cotton-woods and aspens, and
traveled hour after hour with nothing to see except some dog towns,
with their quaint little sentinels; but the view in front was glorious.
The Alps, from the Lombard Plains, are the finest mountain panorama I
ever saw, but not equal to this; for not only do five high-peaked
giants, each nearly the height of Mont Blanc, lift their dazzling
summits above the lower ranges, but the expanse of mountains is so
vast, and the whole lie in a transparent medium of the richest blue,
not haze--something peculiar to the region. The lack of foreground is
a great artistic fault, and the absence of greenery is melancholy, and
makes me recall sadly the entrancing detail of the Hawaiian Islands.
Once only, the second time we forded the river, the cotton-woods formed
a foreground, and then the loveliness was heavenly. We stopped at a
log house and got a rough dinner of beef and potatoes, and I was amused
at the five men who shared it with us for apologizing to me for being
without their coats, as if coats would not be an enormity on the Plains.
It is the election day for the Territory, and men were galloping over
the prairie to register their votes. The three in the wagon talked
politics the whole time. They spoke openly and shamelessly of the
prices given for votes; and apparently there was not a politician on
either side who was not accused of degrading corruption. We saw a
convoy of 5,000 head of Texas cattle traveling from southern Texas to
Iowa. They had been nine months on the way! They were under the
charge of twenty mounted vacheros, heavily armed, and a light wagon
accompanied them, full of extra rifles and ammunition, not unnecessary,
for the Indians are raiding in all directions, maddened by the reckless
and useless slaughter of the buffalo, which is their chief subsistence.
On the Plains are herds of wild horses, buffalo, deer, and antelope;
and in the Mountains, bears, wolves, deer, elk, mountain lions, bison,
and mountain sheep. You see a rifle in every wagon, as people always
hope to fall in with game.
By the time we reached Fort Collins I was sick and dizzy with the heat
of the sun, and not disposed to be pleased with a most unpleasing
place. It was a military post, but at present consists of a few frame
houses put down recently on the bare and burning plain. The settlers
have "great expectations," but of what? The Mountains look hardly
nearer than from Greeley; one only realizes their vicinity by the loss
of their higher peaks. This house is freer from bugs than the one at
Greeley, but full of flies. These new settlements are altogether
revolting, entirely utilitarian, given up to talk of dollars as well as
to making them, with coarse speech, coarse food, coarse everything,
nothing wherewith to satisfy the higher cravings if they exist, nothing
on which the eye can rest with pleasure. The lower floor of this inn
swarms with locusts in addition to thousands of black flies. The
latter cover the ground and rise buzzing from it as you walk.
I. L. B.
Letter IV
A plague of flies--A melancholy charioteer--The Foot Hills--A mountain
boarding-house--A dull life--"Being agreeable"--Climate of
Colorado--Soroche and snakes.
CANYON, September 12.
I was actually so dull and tired that I deliberately slept away the
afternoon in order to forget the heat and flies. Thirty men in working
clothes, silent and sad looking, came in to supper. The beef was tough
and greasy, the butter had turned to oil, and beef and butter were
black with living, drowned, and half-drowned flies. The greasy
table-cloth was black also with flies, and I did not wonder that the
guests looked melancholy and quickly escaped. I failed to get a horse,
but was strongly recommended to come here and board with a settler,
who, they said, had a saw-mill and took boarders. The person who
recommended it so strongly gave me a note of introduction, and told me
that it was in a grand part of the mountains, where many people had
been camping out all the summer for the benefit of their health. The
idea of a boarding-house, as I know them in America, was rather
formidable in the present state of my wardrobe, and I decided on
bringing my carpet-bag, as well as my pack, lest I should be rejected
for my bad clothes.
Early the next morning I left in a buggy drawn by light broncos and
driven by a profoundly melancholy young man. He had never been to the
canyon; there was no road. We met nobody, saw nothing except antelope
in the distance, and he became more melancholy and lost his way,
driving hither and thither for about twenty miles till we came upon an
old trail which eventually brought us to a fertile "bottom," where hay
and barley were being harvested, and five or six frame houses looked
cheerful. I had been recommended to two of these, which professed to
take in strangers, but one was full of reapers, and in the other a
child was dead. So I took the buggy on, glad to leave the glaring,
prosaic settlement behind. There was a most curious loneliness about
the journey up to that time. Except for the huge barrier to the right,
the boundless prairies were everywhere, and it was like being at sea
without a compass. The wheels made neither sound nor indentation as we
drove over the short, dry grass, and there was no cheerful clatter of
horses' hoofs. The sky was cloudy and the air hot and still. In one
place we passed the carcass of a mule, and a number of vultures soared
up from it, to descend again immediately. Skeletons and bones of
animals were often to be seen. A range of low, grassy hills, called
the Foot Hills, rose from the plain, featureless and monotonous, except
where streams, fed by the snows of the higher regions, had cut their
way through them. Confessedly bewildered, and more melancholy than
ever, the driver turned up one of the wildest of these entrances, and
in another hour the Foot Hills lay between us and the prairie sea, and
a higher and broken range, with pitch pines of average size, was
revealed behind them. These Foot Hills, which swell up uninterestingly
from the plains on their eastern side, on their western have the
appearance of having broken off from the next range, and the break is
abrupt, and takes the form of walls and terraces of rock of the most
brilliant color, weathered and stained by ores, and, even under the
grey sky, dazzling to the eyes. The driver thought he had understood
the directions given, but he was stupid, and once we lost some miles by
arriving at a river too rough and deep to be forded, and again we were
brought up by an impassable canyon. He grew frightened about his
horses, and said no money would ever tempt him into the mountains
again; but average intelligence would have made it all easy.
The solitude was becoming somber, when, after driving for nine hours,
and traveling at the least forty-five miles, without any sign of
fatigue on the part of the broncos, we came to a stream, by the side of
which we drove along a definite track, till we came to a sort of
tripartite valley, with a majestic crooked canyon 2,000 feet deep
opening upon it. A rushing stream roared through it, and the Rocky
Mountains, with pines scattered over them, came down upon it. A little
farther, and the canyon became utterly inaccessible. This was
exciting; here was an inner world. A rough and shaky bridge, made of
the outsides of pines laid upon some unsecured logs, crossed the river.
The broncos stopped and smelt it, not liking it, but some encouraging
speech induced them to go over. On the other side was a log cabin,
partially ruinous, and the very rudest I ever saw, its roof of
plastered mud being broken into large holes. It stood close to the
water among some cotton-wood trees. A little higher there was a very
primitive saw-mill, also out of repair, with some logs lying about. An
emigrant wagon and a forlorn tent, with a camp-fire and a pot, were in
the foreground, but there was no trace of the boarding-house, of which
I stood a little in dread. The driver went for further directions to
the log cabin, and returned with a grim smile deepening the melancholy
of his face to say it was Mr. Chalmers', but there was no accommodation
for such as him, much less for me! This was truly "a sell." I got
down and found a single room of the rudest kind, with the wall at one
end partially broken down, holes in the roof, holes for windows, and no
furniture but two chairs and two unplaned wooden shelves, with some
sacks of straw upon them for beds. There was an adjacent cabin room,
with a stove, benches, and table, where they cooked and ate, but this
was all. A hard, sad-looking woman looked at me measuringly. She said
that they sold milk and butter to parties who camped in the canyon,
that they had never had any boarders but two asthmatic old ladies, but
they would take me for five dollars per week if I "would make myself
agreeable." The horses had to be fed, and I sat down on a box, had
some dried beef and milk, and considered the matter. If I went back to
Fort Collins, I thought I was farther from a mountain life, and had no
choice but Denver, a place from which I shrank, or to take the cars for
New York. Here the life was rough, rougher than any I had ever seen,
and the people repelled me by their faces and manners; but if I could
rough it for a few days, I might, I thought, get over canyons and all
other difficulties into Estes Park, which has become the goal of my
journey and hopes. So I decided to remain.
September 16.
Five days here, and I am no nearer Estes Park. How the days pass I
know not; I am weary of the limitations of this existence. This is "a
life in which nothing happens." When the buggy disappeared, I felt as
if I had cut the bridge behind me. I sat down and knitted for some
time--my usual resource under discouraging circumstances. I really did
not know how I should get on. There was no table, no bed, no basin, no
towel, no glass, no window, no fastening on the door. The roof was in
holes, the logs were unchinked, and one end of the cabin was partially
removed! Life was reduced to its simplest elements. I went out; the
family all had something to do, and took no notice of me. I went back,
and then an awkward girl of sixteen, with uncombed hair, and a painful
repulsiveness of face and air, sat on a log for half an hour and stared
at me. I tried to draw her into talk, but she twirled her fingers and
replied snappishly in monosyllables. Could I by any effort "make
myself agreeable"? I wondered. The day went on. I put on my Hawaiian
dress, rolling up the sleeves to the elbows in an "agreeable" fashion.
Towards evening the family returned to feed, and pushed some dried beef
and milk in at the door. They all slept under the trees, and before
dark carried the sacks of straw out for their bedding. I followed
their example that night, or rather watched Charles's Wain while they
slept, but since then have slept on blankets on the floor under the
roof. They have neither lamp nor candle, so if I want to do anything
after dark I have to do it by the unsteady light of pine knots. As the
nights are cold, and free from bugs, and I do a good deal of manual
labor, I sleep well. At dusk I make my bed on the floor, and draw a
bucket of ice-cold water from the river; the family go to sleep under
the trees, and I pile logs on the fire sufficient to burn half the
night, for I assure you the solitude is eerie enough. There are
unaccountable noises, (wolves), rummagings under the floor, queer
cries, and stealthy sounds of I know not what. One night a beast (fox
or skunk) rushed in at the open end of the cabin, and fled through the
window, almost brushing my face, and on another, the head and three or
four inches of the body of a snake were protruded through a chink of
the floor close to me, to my extreme disgust. My mirror is the
polished inside of my watchcase. At sunrise Mrs. Chalmers comes in--if
coming into a nearly open shed can be called IN--and makes a fire,
because she thinks me too stupid to do it, and mine is the family room;
and by seven I am dressed, have folded the blankets, and swept the
floor, and then she puts some milk and bread or stirabout on a box by
the door. After breakfast I draw more water, and wash one or two
garments daily, taking care that there are no witnesses of my
inexperience. Yesterday a calf sucked one into hopeless rags. The
rest of the day I spend in mending, knitting, writing to you, and the
various odds and ends which arise when one has to do all for oneself.
At twelve and six some food is put on the box by the door, and at dusk
we make up our beds. A distressed emigrant woman has just given birth
to a child in a temporary shanty by the river, and I go to help her
each day.
I have made the acquaintance of all the careworn, struggling settlers
within a walk. All have come for health, and most have found or are
finding it, even if they have not better shelter than a wagon tilt or a
blanket on sticks laid across four poles. The climate of Colorado is
considered the finest in North America, and consumptives, asthmatics,
dyspeptics, and sufferers from nervous diseases, are here in hundreds
and thousands, either trying the "camp cure" for three or four months,
or settling here permanently. People can safely sleep out of doors for
six months of the year. The plains are from 4,000 to 6,000 feet high,
and some of the settled "parks," or mountain valleys, are from 8,000
to 10,000. The air, besides being much rarefied, is very dry. The
rainfall is far below the average, dews are rare, and fogs nearly
unknown. The sunshine is bright and almost constant, and three-fourths
of the days are cloudless. The milk, beef, and bread are good. The
climate is neither so hot in summer nor so cold in winter as that of
the States, and when the days are hot the nights are cool. Snow rarely
lies on the lower ranges, and horses and cattle don't require to be
either fed or housed during the winter. Of course the rarefied air
quickens respiration. All this is from hearsay.[8] I am not under
favorable circumstances, either for mind or body, and at present I feel
a singular lassitude and difficulty in taking exercise, but this is
said to be the milder form of the affliction known on higher altitudes
as soroche, or "mountain sickness," and is only temporary. I am
forming a plan for getting farther into the mountains, and hope that my
next letter will be more lively. I killed a rattlesnake this morning
close to the cabin, and have taken its rattle, which has eleven joints.
My life is embittered by the abundance of these reptiles--rattlesnakes
and moccasin snakes, both deadly, carpet snakes and "green racers,"
reputed dangerous, water snakes, tree snakes, and mouse snakes,
harmless but abominable. Seven rattlesnakes have been killed just
outside the cabin since I came. A snake, three feet long, was coiled
under the pillow of the sick woman. I see snakes in all withered
twigs, and am ready to flee at "the sound of a shaken leaf." And
besides snakes, the earth and air are alive and noisy with forms of
insect life, large and small, stinging, humming, buzzing, striking,
rasping, devouring!
[8] The curative effect of the climate of Colorado can hardly be
exaggerated. In traveling extensively through the Territory afterwards
I found that nine out of every ten settlers were cured invalids.
Statistics and medical workers on the climate of the State (as it now
is) represent Colorado as the most remarkable sanatorium in the world.
I. L. B.
Letter V
A dateless day--"Those hands of yours"--A Puritan--Persevering
shiftlessness--The house-mother--Family worship--A grim Sunday--A
"thick-skulled Englishman"--A morning call--Another atmosphere--The
Great Lone Land--"Ill found"--A log camp--Bad footing for
horses--Accidents--Disappointment.
CANYON, September.
The absence of a date shows my predicament. THEY have no newspaper;
_I_ have no almanack; the father is away for the day, and none of the
others can help me, and they look contemptuously upon my desire for
information on the subject. The monotony will come to an end
to-morrow, for Chalmers offers to be my guide over the mountains to
Estes Park, and has persuaded his wife "for once to go for a frolic";
and with much reluctance, many growls at the waste of time, and many
apprehensions of danger and loss, she has consented to accompany him.
My life has grown less dull from their having become more interesting
to me, and as I have "made myself agreeable," we are on fairly friendly
terms. My first move in the direction of fraternizing was, however,
snubbed. A few days ago, having finished my own work, I offered to
wash up the plates, but Mrs. C., with a look which conveyed more than
words, a curl of her nose, and a sneer in her twang, said "Guess you'll
make more work nor you'll do. Those hands of yours" (very brown and
coarse they were) "ain't no good; never done nothing, I guess." Then
to her awkward daughter: "This woman says she'll wash up! Ha! ha! look
at her arms and hands!" This was the nearest approach to a laugh I
have heard, and have never seen even a tendency towards a smile. Since
then I have risen in their estimation by improvizing a lamp--Hawaiian
fashion--by putting a wisp of rag into a tin of fat. They have
actually condescended to sit up till the stars come out since. Another
advance was made by means of the shell-pattern quilt I am knitting for
you. There has been a tendency towards approving of it, and a few days
since the girl snatched it out of my hand, saying, "I want this," and
apparently took it to the camp. This has resulted in my having a
knitting class, with the woman, her married daughter, and a woman from
the camp, as pupils. Then I have gained ground with the man by being
able to catch and saddle a horse. I am often reminded of my favorite
couplet,--
Beware of desperate steps; the darkest day,
Live till to-morrow, will have passed away.
But oh! what a hard, narrow life it is with which I am now in contact!
A narrow and unattractive religion, which I believe still to be
genuine, and an intense but narrow patriotism, are the only higher
influences. Chalmers came from Illinois nine years ago, pronounced by
the doctors to be far gone in consumption, and in two years he was
strong. They are a queer family; somewhere in the remote Highlands I
have seen such another. Its head is tall, gaunt, lean, and ragged, and
has lost one eye. On an English road one would think him a starving or
a dangerous beggar. He is slightly intelligent, very opinionated, and
wishes to be thought well informed, which he is not. He belongs to the
straitest sect of Reformed Presbyterians ("Psalm-singers"), but
exaggerates anything of bigotry and intolerance which may characterize
them, and rejoices in truly merciless fashion over the excision of the
philanthropic Mr. Stuart, of Philadelphia, for worshipping with
congregations which sing hymns. His great boast is that his ancestors
were Scottish Covenanters. He considers himself a profound theologian,
and by the pine logs at night discourses to me on the mysteries of the
eternal counsels and the divine decrees. Colorado, with its progress
and its future, is also a constant theme. He hates England with a
bitter, personal hatred, and regards any allusions which I make to the
progress of Victoria as a personal insult. He trusts to live to see
the downfall of the British monarchy and the disintegration of the
empire. He is very fond of talking, and asks me a great deal about my
travels, but if I speak favorably of the climate or resources of any
other country, he regards it as a slur on Colorado.
They have one hundred and sixty acres of land, a "Squatter's claim,"
and an invaluable water power. He is a lumberer, and has a saw-mill of
a very primitive kind. I notice that every day something goes wrong
with it, and this is the case throughout. If he wants to haul timber
down, one or other of the oxen cannot be found; or if the timber is
actually under way, a wheel or a part of the harness gives way, and the
whole affair is at a standstill for days. The cabin is hardly a
shelter, but is allowed to remain in ruins because the foundation of a
frame house was once dug. A horse is always sure to be lame for want
of a shoe nail, or a saddle to be useless from a broken buckle, and the
wagon and harness are a marvel of temporary shifts, patchings, and
insecure linkings with strands of rope. Nothing is ever ready or whole
when it is wanted. Yet Chalmers is a frugal, sober, hard-working man,
and he, his eldest son, and a "hired man" "Rise early," "going forth to
their work and labor till the evening"; and if they do not "late take
rest," they truly "eat the bread of carefulness." It is hardly
surprising that nine years of persevering shiftlessness should have
resulted in nothing but the ability to procure the bare necessaries of
life.
Of Mrs. C. I can say less. She looks like one of the English poor
women of our childhood--lean, clean, toothless, and speaks, like some
of them, in a piping, discontented voice, which seems to convey a
personal reproach. All her waking hours are spent in a large
sun-bonnet. She is never idle for one minute, is severe and hard, and
despises everything but work. I think she suffers from her husband's
shiftlessness. She always speaks of me as "This" or "that woman." The
family consists of a grown-up son, a shiftless, melancholy-looking
youth, who possibly pines for a wider life; a girl of sixteen, a sour,
repellent-looking creature, with as much manners as a pig; and three
hard, un-child-like younger children. By the whole family all courtesy
and gentleness of act or speech seem regarded as "works of the flesh,"
if not of "the devil." They knock over all one's things without
apologizing or picking them up, and when I thank them for anything they
look grimly amazed. I feel that they think it sinful that I do not
work as hard as they do. I wish I could show them "a more excellent
way." This hard greed, and the exclusive pursuit of gain, with the
indifference to all which does not aid in its acquisition, are eating
up family love and life throughout the West. I write this reluctantly,
and after a total experience of nearly two years in the United States.
They seem to have no "Sunday clothes," and few of any kind. The sewing
machine, like most other things, is out of order. One comb serves the
whole family. Mrs. C. is cleanly in her person and dress, and the
food, though poor, is clean. Work, work, work, is their day and their
life. They are thoroughly ungenial, and have that air of suspicion in
speaking of every one which is not unusual in the land of their
ancestors. Thomas Chalmers is the man's ecclesiastical hero, in spite
of his own severe Puritanism. Their live stock consists of two
wretched horses, a fairly good bronco mare, a mule, four badly-bred
cows, four gaunt and famished-looking oxen, some swine of singularly
active habits, and plenty of poultry. The old saddles are tied on with
twine; one side of the bridle is a worn-out strap and the other a rope.
They wear boots, but never two of one pair, and never blacked, of
course, but no stockings. They think it quite effeminate to sleep
under a roof, except during the severest months of the year. There is
a married daughter across the river, just the same hard, loveless,
moral, hard-working being as her mother. Each morning, soon after
seven, when I have swept the cabin, the family come in for "worship."
Chalmers "wales" a psalm, in every sense of the word wail, to the most
doleful of dismal tunes; they read a chapter round, and he prays. If
his prayer has something of the tone of the imprecatory psalms, he has
high authority in his favor; and if there be a tinge of the Pharisaic
thanksgiving, it is hardly surprising that he is grateful that he is
not as other men are when he contemplates the general godlessness of
the region.
Sunday was a dreadful day. The family kept the Commandment literally,
and did no work. Worship was conducted twice, and was rather longer
than usual. Chalmers does not allow of any books in his house but
theological works, and two or three volumes of dull travels, so the
mother and children slept nearly all day. The man attempted to read a
well-worn copy of Boston's Fourfold State, but shortly fell asleep, and
they only woke up for their meals. Friday and Saturday had been
passably cool, with frosty nights, but on Saturday night it changed,
and I have not felt anything like the heat of Sunday since I left New
Zealand, though the mercury was not higher than 91 degrees. It was
sickening, scorching, melting, unbearable, from the mere power of the
sun's rays. It was an awful day, and seemed as if it would never come
to an end. The cabin, with its mud roof under the shade of the trees,
gave a little shelter, but it was occupied by the family, and I longed
for solitude. I took the Imitation of Christ, and strolled up the
canyon among the withered, crackling leaves, in much dread of snakes,
and lay down on a rough table which some passing emigrant had left, and
soon fell asleep. When I awoke it was only noon. The sun looked
wicked as it blazed like a white magnesium light. A large tree-snake
(quite harmless) hung from the pine under which I had taken shelter,
and looked as if it were going to drop upon me. I was covered with
black flies. The air was full of a busy, noisy din of insects, and
snakes, locusts, wasps, flies, and grasshoppers were all rioting in the
torrid heat. Would the sublime philosophy of Thomas a Kempis, I
wondered, have given way under this? All day I seemed to hear in
mockery the clear laugh of the Hilo streams, and the drip of Kona
showers, and to see as in a mirage the perpetual Green of windward
Hawaii. I was driven back to the cabin in the late afternoon, and in
the evening listened for two hours to abuse of my own country, and to
sweeping condemnations of all religionists outside of the brotherhood
of "Psalm-singers." It is jarring and painful, yet I would say of
Chalmers, as Dr. Holland says of another:--
If ever I shall reach the home in heaven,
For whose dear rest I humbly hope and pray,
In the great company of the forgiven
I shall be sure to meet old Daniel Gray.
The night came without coolness, but at daylight on Monday morning a
fire was pleasant. You will now have some idea of my surroundings. It
is a moral, hard, unloving, unlovely, unrelieved, unbeautified,
grinding life. These people live in a discomfort and lack of ease and
refinement which seems only possible to people of British stock. A
"foreigner" fills his cabin with ingenuities and elegancies, and a
Hawaiian or South Sea Islander makes his grass house both pretty and
tasteful. Add to my surroundings a mighty canyon, impassable both
above and below, and walls of mountains with an opening some miles off
to the vast prairie sea.[9]
[9] I have not curtailed this description of the roughness of a
Colorado settler's life, for, with the exceptions of the disrepair and
the Puritanism, it is a type of the hard, unornamented existence with
which I came almost universally in contact during my subsequent
residence in the Territory.
An English physician is settled about half a mile from here over a
hill. He is spoken of as holding "very extreme opinions." Chalmers
rails at him for being "a thick-skulled Englishman," for being "fine,
polished," etc. To say a man is "polished" here is to give him a very
bad name. He accuses him also of holding views subversive of all
morality. In spite of all this, I thought he might possess a map, and
I induced Mrs. C. to walk over with me. She intended it as a formal
morning call, but she wore the inevitable sun-bonnet, and had her dress
tied up as when washing. It was not till I reached the gate that I
remembered that I was in my Hawaiian riding dress, and that I still
wore the spurs with which I had been trying a horse in the morning!
The house was in a grass valley which opened from the tremendous canyon
through which the river had cut its way. The Foot Hills, with their
terraces of flaming red rock, were glowing in the sunset, and a pure
green sky arched tenderly over a soft evening scene. Used to the
meanness and baldness of settlers' dwellings. I was delighted to see
that in this instance the usual log cabin was only the lower floor of a
small house, which bore a delightful resemblance to a Swiss chalet. It
stood in a vegetable garden fertilized by an irrigating ditch, outside
of which were a barn and cowshed. A young Swiss girl was bringing the
cows slowly home from the hill, an Englishwoman in a clean print dress
stood by the fence holding a baby, and a fine-looking Englishman in a
striped Garibaldi shirt, and trousers of the same tucked into high
boots, was shelling corn. As soon as Mrs. Hughes spoke I felt she was
truly a lady; and oh! how refreshing her refined, courteous, graceful
English manner was, as she invited us into the house! The entrance was
low, through a log porch festooned and almost concealed by a "wild
cucumber." Inside, though plain and poor, the room looked a home, not
like a squatter's cabin. An old tin was completely covered by a
graceful clematis mixed with streamers of Virginia creeper, and white
muslin curtains, and above all two shelves of admirably-chosen books,
gave the room almost an air of elegance. Why do I write almost? It
was an oasis. It was barely three weeks since I had left "the
communion of educated men," and the first tones of the voices of my
host and hostess made me feel as if I had been out of it for a year.
Mrs. C. stayed an hour and a half, and then went home to the cows, when
we launched upon a sea of congenial talk. They said they had not seen
an educated lady for two years, and pressed me to go and visit them. I
rode home on Dr. Hughes's horse after dark, to find neither fire nor
light in the cabin. Mrs. C. had gone back saying, "Those English
talked just like savages, I couldn't understand a word they said."
I made a fire, and extemporized a light with some fat and a wick of
rag, and Chalmers came in to discuss my visit and to ask me a question
concerning a matter which had roused the latent curiosity of the whole
family. I had told him, he said, that I knew no one hereabouts, but
"his woman" told him that Dr. H. and I spoke constantly of a Mrs.
Grundy, whom we both knew and disliked, and who was settled, as we
said, not far off! He had never heard of her, he said, and he was the
pioneer settler of the canyon, and there was a man up here from
Longmount who said he was sure there was not a Mrs. Grundy in the
district, unless it was a woman who went by two names! The wife and
family had then come in, and I felt completely nonplussed. I longed to
tell Chalmers that it was he and such as he, there or anywhere, with
narrow hearts, bitter tongues, and harsh judgments, who were the true
"Mrs. Grundys," dwarfing individuality, checking lawful freedom of
speech, and making men "offenders for a word," but I forebore. How I
extricated myself from the difficulty, deponent sayeth not. The rest
of the evening has been spent in preparing to cross the mountains.
Chalmers says he knows the way well, and that we shall sleep to-morrow
at the foot of Long's Peak. Mrs. Chalmers repents of having consented,
and conjures up doleful visions of what the family will come to when
left headless, and of disasters among the cows and hens. I could tell
her that the eldest son and the "hired man" have plotted to close the
saw-mill and go on a hunting and fishing expedition, that the cows will
stray, and that the individual spoken respectfully of as "Mr. Skunk"
will make havoc in the hen-house.
NAMELESS REGION, ROCKY MOUNTAINS, September.
This is indeed far removed. It seems farther away from you than any
place I have been to yet, except the frozen top of the volcano of Mauna
Loa. It is so little profaned by man that if one were compelled to
live here in solitude one might truly say of the bears, deer, and elk
which abound, "Their tameness is shocking to me." It is the world of
"big game." Just now a heavy-headed elk, with much-branched horns
fully three feet long, stood and looked at me, and then quietly trotted
away. He was so near that I heard the grass, crisp with hoar frost,
crackle under his feet. Bears stripped the cherry bushes within a few
yards of us last night. Now two lovely blue birds, with crests on
their heads, are picking about within a stone's-throw. This is "The
Great Lone Land," until lately the hunting ground of the Indians, and
not yet settled or traversed, or likely to be so, owing to the want of
water. A solitary hunter has built a log cabin up here, which he
occupies for a few weeks for the purpose of elk-hunting, but all the
region is unsurveyed, and mostly unexplored. It is 7 A.M. The sun has
not yet risen high enough to melt the hoar frost, and the air is clear,
bright, and cold. The stillness is profound. I hear nothing but the
far-off mysterious roaring of a river in a deep canyon, which we spent
two hours last night in trying to find. The horses are lost, and if I
were disposed to retort upon my companions the term they invariably
apply to me, I should now write, with bitter emphasis, "THAT man" and
"THAT woman" have gone in search of them.
The scenery up here is glorious, combining sublimity with beauty, and
in the elastic air fatigue has dropped off from me. This is no region
for tourists and women, only for a few elk and bear hunters at times,
and its unprofaned freshness gives me new life. I cannot by any words
give you an idea of scenery so different from any that you or I have
ever seen. This is an upland valley of grass and flowers, of glades
and sloping lawns, and cherry-fringed beds of dry streams, and clumps
of pines artistically placed, and mountain sides densely pine clad, the
pines breaking into fringes as they come down upon the "park," and the
mountains breaking into pinnacles of bold grey rock as they pierce the
blue of the sky. A single dell of bright green grass, on which dwarf
clumps of the scarlet poison oak look like beds of geraniums, slopes
towards the west, as if it must lead to the river which we seek. Deep,
vast canyons, all trending westwards, lie in purple gloom. Pine-clad
ranges, rising into the blasted top of Storm Peak, all run westwards
too, and all the beauty and glory are but the frame out of which
rises--heaven-piercing, pure in its pearly luster, as glorious a
mountain as the sun tinges red in either hemisphere--the splintered,
pinnacled, lonely, ghastly, imposing, double-peaked summit of Long's
Peak, the Mont Blanc of Northern Colorado.[10]
[10] Gray's Peak and Pike's Peak have their partisans, but after seeing
them all under favorable aspects, Long's Peak stands in my memory as it
does in that vast congeries of mountains, alone in imperial grandeur.
This is a view to which nothing needs to be added. This is truly the
"lodge in some vast wilderness" for which one often sighs when in the
midst of "a bustle at once sordid and trivial." In spite of Dr.
Johnson, these "monstrous protuberances" do "inflame the imagination
and elevate the understanding." This scenery satisfies my soul. Now,
the Rocky Mountains realize--nay, exceed--the dream of my childhood.
It is magnificent, and the air is life giving. I should like to spend
some time in these higher regions, but I know that this will turn out
an abortive expedition, owing to the stupidity and pigheadedness of
Chalmers.
There is a most romantic place called Estes Park, at a height of 7,500
feet, which can be reached by going down to the plains and then
striking up the St. Vrain Canyon, but this is a distance of fifty-five
miles, and as Chalmers was confident that he could take me over the
mountains, a distance, as he supposed, of about twenty miles, we left
at mid-day yesterday, with the fervent hope, on my part, that I might
not return. Mrs. C. was busy the whole of Tuesday in preparing what
she called "grub," which, together with "plenty of bedding," was to be
carried on a pack mule; but when we started I was disgusted to find
that Chalmers was on what should have been the pack animal, and that
two thickly-quilted cotton "spreads" had been disposed of under my
saddle, making it broad, high, and uncomfortable. Any human being must
have laughed to see an expedition start so grotesquely "ill found." I
had a very old iron-grey horse, whose lower lip hung down feebly,
showing his few teeth, while his fore-legs stuck out forwards, and
matter ran from both his nearly-blind eyes. It is kindness to bring
him up to abundant pasture. My saddle is an old McLellan cavalry
saddle, with a battered brass peak, and the bridle is a rotten leather
strap on one side and a strand of rope on the other. The cotton quilts
covered the Rosinante from mane to tail. Mrs. C. wore an old print
skirt, an old short-gown, a print apron, and a sun-bonnet, with a flap
coming down to her waist, and looked as careworn and clean as she
always does. The inside horn of her saddle was broken; to the outside
one hung a saucepan and a bundle of clothes. The one girth was nearly
at the breaking point when we started.
My pack, with my well-worn umbrella upon it, was behind my saddle. I
wore my Hawaiian riding dress, with a handkerchief tied over my face
and the sun-cover of my umbrella folded and tied over my hat, for the
sun was very fierce. The queerest figure of all was the would-be
guide. With his one eye, his gaunt, lean form, and his torn clothes,
he looked more like a strolling tinker than the honest worthy settler
that he is. He bestrode rather than rode a gaunt mule, whose tail had
all been shaven off, except a turf for a tassel at the end. Two flour
bags which leaked were tied on behind the saddle, two quilts were under
it, and my canvas bag, a battered canteen, a frying pan, and two
lariats hung from the horn. On one foot C. wore an old high boot, into
which his trouser was tucked, and on the other an old brogue, through
which his toes protruded.
We had an ascent of four hours through a ravine which gradually opened
out upon this beautiful "park," but we rode through it for some miles
before the view burst upon us. The vastness of this range, like
astronomical distances, can hardly be conceived of. At this place, I
suppose, it is not less than 250 miles wide, and with hardly a break in
its continuity, it stretches almost from the Arctic Circle to the
Straits of Magellan. From the top of Long's Peak, within a short
distance, twenty-two summits, each above 12,000 feet in height, are
visible, and the Snowy Range, the backbone or "divide" of the
continent, is seen snaking distinctly through the wilderness of ranges,
with its waters starting for either ocean. From the first ridge we
crossed after leaving Canyon we had a singular view of range beyond
range cleft by deep canyons, and abounding in elliptical valleys,
richly grassed. The slopes of all the hills, as far as one could see,
were waving with fine grass ready for the scythe, but the food of wild
animals only. All these ridges are heavily timbered with pitch pines,
and where they come down on the grassy slopes they look as if the trees
had been arranged by a landscape gardener. Far off, through an opening
in a canyon, we saw the prairie simulating the ocean. Far off, through
an opening in another direction, was the glistening outline of the
Snowy Range. But still, till we reached this place, it was monotonous,
though grand as a whole: a grey-green or buff-grey, with outbreaks of
brilliantly-colored rock, only varied by the black-green of pines,
which are not the stately pyramidal pines of the Sierra Nevada, but
much resemble the natural Scotch fir. Not many miles from us is North
Park, a great tract of land said to be rich in gold, but those who have
gone to "prospect" have seldom returned, the region being the home of
tribes of Indians who live in perpetual hostility to the whites and to
each other.
At this great height, and most artistically situated, we came upon a
rude log camp tenanted in winter by an elk hunter, but now deserted.
Chalmers without any scruple picked the padlock; we lighted a fire,
made some tea, and fried some bacon, and after a good meal mounted
again and started for Estes Park. For four weary hours we searched
hither and thither along every indentation of the ground which might be
supposed to slope towards the Big Thompson River, which we knew had to
be forded. Still, as the quest grew more tedious, Long's Peak stood
before us as a landmark in purple glory; and still at his feet lay a
hollow filled with deep blue atmosphere, where I knew that Estes Park
must lie, and still between us and it lay never-lessening miles of
inaccessibility, and the sun was ever weltering, and the shadows ever
lengthening, and Chalmers, who had started confident, bumptious,
blatant, was ever becoming more bewildered, and his wife's thin voice
more piping and discontented, and my stumbling horse more insecure, and
I more determined (as I am at this moment) that somehow or other I
would reach that blue hollow, and even stand on Long's Peak where the
snow was glittering. Affairs were becoming serious, and Chalmers's
incompetence a source of real peril, when, after an exploring
expedition, he returned more bumptious than ever, saying he knew it
would be all right, he had found a trail, and we could get across the
river by dark, and camp out for the night. So he led us into a steep,
deep, rough ravine, where we had to dismount, for trees were lying
across it everywhere, and there was almost no footing on the great
slabs of shelving rock. Yet there was a trail, tolerably well worn,
and the branches and twigs near the ground were well broken back. Ah!
it was a wild place. My horse fell first, rolling over twice, and
breaking off a part of the saddle, in his second roll knocking me over
a shelf of three feet of descent. Then Mrs. C.'s horse and the mule
fell on the top of each other, and on recovering themselves bit each
other savagely. The ravine became a wild gulch, the dry bed of some
awful torrent; there were huge shelves of rock, great overhanging walls
of rock, great prostrate trees, cedar spikes and cacti to wound the
feet, and then a precipice fully 500 feet deep! The trail was a trail
made by bears in search of bear cherries, which abounded!
It was getting dusk as we had to struggle up the rough gulch we had so
fatuously descended. The horses fell several times; I could hardly get
mine up at all, though I helped him as much as I could; I was cut and
bruised, scratched and torn. A spine of a cactus penetrated my foot,
and some vicious thing cut the back of my neck. Poor Mrs. C. was much
bruised, and I pitied her, for she got no fun out of it as I did. It
was an awful climb. When we got out of the gulch, C. was so confused
that he took the wrong direction, and after an hour of vague wandering
was only recalled to the right one by my pertinacious assertions acting
on his weak brain. I was inclined to be angry with the incompetent
braggart, who had boasted that he could take us to Estes Park
"blindfold"; but I was sorry for him too, so said nothing, even though
I had to walk during these meanderings to save my tired horse. When at
last, at dark, we reached the open, there was a snow flurry, with
violent gusts of wind, and the shelter of the camp, dark and cold as it
was, was desirable. We had no food, but made a fire. I lay down on
some dry grass, with my inverted saddle for a pillow, and slept
soundly, till I was awoke by the cold of an intense frost and the pain
of my many cuts and bruises. Chalmers promised that we should make a
fresh start at six, so I woke him up at five, and here I am alone at
half-past eight! I said to him many times that unless he hobbled or
picketed the horses, we should lose them. "Oh," he said "they'll be
all right." In truth he had no picketing pins. Now, the animals are
merrily trotting homewards. I saw them two miles off an hour ago with
him after them. His wife, who is also after them, goaded to
desperation, said, "He's the most ignorant, careless, good-for-nothing
man I ever saw," upon which I dwelt upon his being well meaning. There
is a sort of well here, but our "afternoon tea" and watering the horses
drained it, so we have had nothing to drink since yesterday, for the
canteen, which started without a cork, lost all its contents when the
mule fell. I have made a monstrous fire, but thirst and impatience are
hard to bear, and preventible misfortunes are always irksome. I have
found the stomach of a bear with fully a pint of cherrystones in it,
and have spent an hour in getting the kernels; and lo! now, at
half-past nine, I see the culprit and his wife coming back with the
animals.
I. L. B.
LOWER CANYON, September 21.
We never reached Estes Park. There is no trail, and horses have never
been across. We started from camp at ten, and spent four hours in
searching for the trail. Chalmers tried gulch after gulch again, his
self-assertion giving way a little after each failure; sometimes going
east when we should have gone west, always being brought up by a
precipice or other impossibility. At last he went off by himself, and
returned rejoicing, saying he had found the trail; and soon, sure
enough, we were on a well-defined old trail, evidently made by
carcasses which have been dragged along it by hunters. Vainly I
pointed out to him that we were going north-east when we should have
gone south-west, and that we were ascending instead of descending.
"Oh, it's all right, and we shall soon come to water," he always
replied. For two hours we ascended slowly through a thicket of aspen,
the cold continually intensifying; but the trail, which had been
growing fainter, died out, and an opening showed the top of Storm Peak
not far off and not much above us, though it is 11,000 feet high. I
could not help laughing. He had deliberately turned his back on Estes
Park. He then confessed that he was lost, and that he could not find
the way back. His wife sat down on the ground and cried bitterly. We
ate some dry bread, and then I said I had had much experience in
traveling, and would take the control of the party, which was agreed
to, and we began the long descent. Soon after his wife was thrown from
her horse, and cried bitterly again from fright and mortification.
Soon after that the girth of the mule's saddle broke, and having no
crupper, saddle and addenda went over his head, and the flour was
dispersed. Next the girth of the woman's saddle broke, and she went
over her horse's head. Then he began to fumble helplessly at it,
railing against England the whole time, while I secured the saddle, and
guided the route back to an outlet of the park. There a fire was
built, and we had some bread and bacon; and then a search for water
occupied nearly two hours, and resulted in the finding of a mudhole,
trodden and defiled by hundreds of feet of elk, bears, cats, deer, and
other beasts, and containing only a few gallons of water as thick as
pea soup, with which we watered our animals and made some strong tea.
The sun was setting in glory as we started for the four hours' ride
home, and the frost was intense, and made our bruised, grazed limbs
ache painfully. I was sorry for Mrs. Chalmers, who had had several
falls, and bore her aches patiently, and had said several times to her
husband, with a kind meaning, "I am real sorry for this woman." I was
so tired with the perpetual stumbling of my horse, as well as stiffened
with the bitter cold, that I walked for the last hour or two; and
Chalmers, as if to cover his failure, indulged in loud, incessant talk,
abusing all other religionists, and railing against England in the
coarsest American fashion. Yet, after all, they were not bad souls;
and though he failed so grotesquely, he did his incompetent best. The
log fire in the ruinous cabin was cheery, and I kept it up all night,
and watched the stars through the holes in the roof, and thought of
Long's Peak in its glorious solitude, and resolved that, come what
might, I would reach Estes Park.
I. L. B.
Letter VI
A bronco mare--An accident--Wonderland--A sad story--The children of
the Territories--Hard greed--Halcyon hours--Smartness--Old-fashioned
prejudices--The Chicago colony--Good luck--Three notes of admiration--A
good horse--The St. Vrain--The Rocky Mountains at last--"Mountain
Jim"--A death hug--Estes Park.
LOWER CANYON, September 25.
This is another world. My entrance upon it was signalized in this
fashion. Chalmers offered me a bronco mare for a reasonable sum, and
though she was a shifty, half-broken young thing, I came over here on
her to try her, when, just as I was going away, she took into her head
to "scare" and "buck," and when I touched her with my foot she leaped
over a heap of timber, and the girth gave way, and the onlookers tell
me that while she jumped I fell over her tail from a good height upon
the hard gravel, receiving a parting kick on my knee. They could
hardly believe that no bones were broken. The flesh of my left arm
looks crushed into a jelly, but cold-water dressings will soon bring it
right; and a cut on my back bled profusely; and the bleeding, with many
bruises and the general shake, have made me feel weak, but
circumstances do not admit of "making a fuss," and I really think that
the rents in my riding dress will prove the most important part of the
accident.
The surroundings here are pleasing. The log cabin, on the top of which
a room with a steep, ornamental Swiss roof has been built, is in a
valley close to a clear, rushing river, which emerges a little higher
up from an inaccessible chasm of great sublimity. One side of the
valley is formed by cliffs and terraces of porphyry as red as the
reddest new brick, and at sunset blazing into vermilion. Through
rifts in the nearer ranges there are glimpses of pine-clothed peaks,
which, towards twilight, pass through every shade of purple and
violet. The sky and the earth combine to form a Wonderland every
evening--such rich, velvety coloring in crimson and violet; such an
orange, green, and vermilion sky; such scarlet and emerald clouds;
such an extraordinary dryness and purity of atmosphere, and then the
glorious afterglow which seems to blend earth and heaven! For color,
the Rocky Mountains beat all I have seen. The air has been cold, but
the sun bright and hot during the last few days.
The story of my host is a story of misfortune. It indicates who should
NOT come to Colorado.[11] He and his wife are under thirty-five. The
son of a London physician in large practice, with a liberal education
in the largest sense of the word, unusual culture and accomplishments,
and the partner of a physician in good practice in the second city in
England, he showed symptoms which threatened pulmonary disease. In an
evil hour he heard of Colorado with its "unrivalled climate, boundless
resources," etc., and, fascinated not only by these material
advantages, but by the notion of being able to found or reform society
on advanced social theories of his own, he became an emigrant. Mrs.
Hughes is one of the most charming, and lovable women I have ever seen,
and their marriage is an ideal one. Both are fitted to shine in any
society, but neither had the slightest knowledge of domestic and
farming details. Dr. H. did not know how to saddle or harness a horse.
Mrs. H. did not know whether you should put an egg into cold or hot
water when you meant to boil it! They arrived at Longmount, bought up
this claim, rather for the beauty of the scenery than for any
substantial advantages, were cheated in land, goods, oxen, everything,
and, to the discredit of the settlers, seemed to be regarded as fair
game. Everything has failed with them, and though they "rise early,
and late take rest, and eat the bread of carefulness," they hardly keep
their heads above water. A young Swiss girl, devoted to them both,
works as hard as they do. They have one horse, no wagon, some poultry,
and a few cows, but no "hired man." It is the hardest and least ideal
struggle that I have ever seen made by educated people. They had all
their experience to learn, and they have bought it by losses and
hardships. That they have learnt so much surprises me. Dr. H. and
these two ladies built the upper room and the addition to the house
without help. He has cropped the land himself, and has learned the
difficult art of milking cows. Mrs. H. makes all the clothes required
for a family of six, and her evenings, when the hard day's work is done
and she is ready to drop from fatigue, are spent in mending and
patching. The day is one long GRIND, without rest or enjoyment, or the
pleasure of chance intercourse with cultivated people. The few
visitors who have "happened in" are the thrifty wives of prosperous
settlers, full of housewifely pride, whose one object seems to be to
make Mrs. H. feel her inferiority to themselves. I wish she did take a
more genuine interest in the "coming-on" of the last calf, the
prospects of the squash crop, and the yield and price of butter; but
though she has learned to make excellent butter and bread, it is all
against the grain. The children are delightful. The little boys are
refined, courteous, childish gentlemen, with love and tenderness to
their parents in all their words and actions. Never a rough or harsh
word is heard within the house. But the atmosphere of struggles and
difficulties has already told on these infants. They consider their
mother in all things, going without butter when they think the stock is
low, bringing in wood and water too heavy for them to carry, anxiously
speculating on the winter prospect and the crops, yet withal the most
childlike and innocent of children.
[11] The story is ended now. A few months after my visit Mrs. H. died
a few days after her confinement, and was buried on the bleak hill
side, leaving her husband with five children under six years old, and
Dr. H. is a prosperous man on one of the sunniest islands of the
Pacific, with the devoted Swiss friend as his second wife.
One of the most painful things in the Western States and Territories is
the extinction of childhood. I have never seen any children, only
debased imitations of men and women, cankered by greed and selfishness,
and asserting and gaining complete independence of their parents at ten
years old. The atmosphere in which they are brought up is one of
greed, godlessness, and frequently of profanity. Consequently these
sweet things seem like flowers in a desert.
Except for love, which here as everywhere raises life into the ideal,
this is a wretched existence. The poor crops have been destroyed by
grasshoppers over and over again, and that talent deified here under
the name of "smartness" has taken advantage of Dr. H. in all bargains,
leaving him with little except food for his children. Experience has
been dearly bought in all ways, and this instance of failure might be a
useful warning to professional men without agricultural experience not
to come and try to make a living by farming in Colorado.
My time here has passed very delightfully in spite of my regret and
anxiety for this interesting family. I should like to stay longer,
were it not that they have given up to me their straw bed, and Mrs. H.
and her baby, a wizened, fretful child, sleep on the floor in my room,
and Dr. H. on the floor downstairs, and the nights are frosty and
chill. Work is the order of their day, and of mine, and at night, when
the children are in bed, we three ladies patch the clothes and make
shirts, and Dr. H. reads Tennyson's poems, or we speak tenderly of that
world of culture and noble deeds which seems here "the land very far
off," or Mrs. H. lays aside her work for a few minutes and reads some
favorite passage of prose or poetry, as I have seldom heard either read
before, with a voice of large compass and exquisite tone, quick to
interpret every shade of the author's meaning, and soft, speaking eyes,
moist with feeling and sympathy. These are our halcyon hours, when we
forget the needs of the morrow, and that men still buy, sell, cheat,
and strive for gold, and that we are in the Rocky Mountains, and that
it is near midnight. But morning comes hot and tiresome, and the
never-ending work is oppressive, and Dr. H. comes in from the field two
or three times in the day, dizzy and faint, and they condole with each
other, and I feel that the Colorado settler needs to be made of sterner
stuff and to possess more adaptability.
To-day has been a very pleasant day for me, though I have only once sat
down since 9 A.M., and it is now 5 P.M. I plotted that the devoted
Swiss girl should go to the nearest settlement with two of the children
for the day in a neighbor's wagon, and that Dr. and Mrs. H. should get
an afternoon of rest and sleep upstairs, while I undertook to do the
work and make something of a cleaning. I had a large "wash" of my own,
having been hindered last week by my bad arm, but a clothes wringer
which screws on to the side of the tub is a great assistance, and by
folding the clothes before passing them through it, I make it serve
instead of mangle and iron. After baking the bread and thoroughly
cleaning the churn and pails, I began upon the tins and pans, the
cleaning of which had fallen into arrears, and was hard at work, very
greasy and grimy, when a man came in to know where to ford the river
with his ox team, and as I was showing him he looked pityingly at me,
saying, "Be you the new hired girl? Bless me, you're awful small!"
Yesterday we saved three cwt. of tomatoes for winter use, and about two
tons of squash and pumpkin for the cattle, two of the former weighing
140 lbs. I pulled nearly a quarter of an acre of maize, but it was a
scanty crop, and the husks were poorly filled. I much prefer field
work to the scouring of greasy pans and to the wash tub, and both to
either sewing or writing.
This is not Arcadia. "Smartness," which consists in over-reaching your
neighbor in every fashion which is not illegal, is the quality which is
held in the greatest repute, and Mammon is the divinity. From a
generation brought up to worship the one and admire the other little
can be hoped. In districts distant as this is from "Church
Ordinances," there are three ways in which Sunday is spent: one, to
make it a day for visiting, hunting, and fishing; another, to spend it
in sleeping and abstinence from work; and the third, to continue all
the usual occupations, consequently harvesting and felling and hauling
timber are to be seen in progress.
Last Sunday a man came here and put up a door, and said he didn't
believe in the Bible or in a God, and he wasn't going to sacrifice his
children's bread to old-fashioned prejudices. There is a manifest
indifference to the higher obligations of the law, "judgment, mercy and
faith"; but in the main the settlers are steady, there are few flagrant
breaches of morals, industry is the rule, life and property are far
safer than in England or Scotland, and the law of universal respect to
women is still in full force.
The days are now brilliant and the nights sharply frosty. People are
preparing for the winter. The tourists from the East are trooping into
Denver, and the surveying parties are coming down from the mountains.
Snow has fallen on the higher ranges, and my hopes of getting to Estes
Park are down at zero.
LONGMOUNT, September 25.
Yesterday was perfect. The sun was brilliant and the air cool and
bracing. I felt better, and after a hard day's work and an evening
stroll with my friends in the glorious afterglow, I went to bed
cheerful and hopeful as to the climate and its effect on my health.
This morning I awoke with a sensation of extreme lassitude, and on
going out, instead of the delicious atmosphere of yesterday, I found
intolerable suffocating heat, a BLAZING (not BRILLIANT) sun, and a
sirocco like a Victorian hot wind. Neuralgia, inflamed eyes, and a
sense of extreme prostration followed, and my acclimatized hosts were
somewhat similarly affected. The sparkle, the crystalline atmosphere,
and the glory of color of yesterday, had all vanished. We had borrowed
a wagon, but Dr. H.'s strong but lazy horse and a feeble hired one made
a poor span; and though the distance here is only twenty-two miles over
level prairie, our tired animal, and losing the way three times, have
kept us eight and a half hours in the broiling sun. All notions of
locality fail me on the prairie, and Dr. H. was not much better. We
took wrong tracks, got entangled among fences, plunged through the deep
mud of irrigation ditches, and were despondent. It was a miserable
drive, sitting on a heap of fodder under the angry sun. Half-way here
we camped at a river, now only a series of mud holes, and I fell asleep
under the imperfect shade of a cotton-wood tree, dreading the thought
of waking and jolting painfully along over the dusty prairie in the
dust-laden, fierce sirocco, under the ferocious sun. We never saw man
or beast the whole day.
This is the "Chicago Colony," and it is said to be prospering, after
some preliminary land swindles. It is as uninviting as Fort Collins.
We first came upon dust-colored frame houses set down at intervals on
the dusty buff plain, each with its dusty wheat or barley field
adjacent, the crop, not the product of the rains of heaven, but of the
muddy overflow of "Irrigating Ditch No.2." Then comes a road made up
of many converging wagon tracks, which stiffen into a wide straggling
street, in which glaring frame houses and a few shops stand opposite to
each other. A two-storey house, one of the whitest and most glaring,
and without a veranda like all the others, is the "St. Vrain Hotel,"
called after the St. Vrain River, out of which the ditch is taken which
enables Longmount to exist. Everything was broiling in the heat of the
slanting sun, which all day long had been beating on the unshaded
wooden rooms. The heat within was more sickening than outside, and
black flies covered everything, one's face included. We all sat
fighting the flies in my bedroom, which was cooler than elsewhere, till
a glorious sunset over the Rocky Range, some ten miles off, compelled
us to go out and enjoy it. Then followed supper, Western fashion,
without table-cloths, and all the "unattached" men of Longmount came in
and fed silently and rapidly. It was a great treat to have tea to
drink, as I had not tasted any for a fortnight. The landlord is a
jovial, kindly man. I told him how my plans had faded, and how I was
reluctantly going on to-morrow to Denver and New York, being unable to
get to Estes Park, and he said there might yet be a chance of some one
coming in to-night who would be going up. He soon came to my room and
asked definitely what I could do--if I feared cold, if I could "rough
it," if I could "ride horseback and lope." Estes Park and its
surroundings are, he says, "the most beautiful scenery in Colorado,"
and "it's a real shame," he added, "for you not to see it." We had
hardly sat down to tea when he came, saying "You're in luck this time;
two young men have just come in and are going up to-morrow morning." I
am rather pleased, and have hired a horse for three days; but I am not
very hopeful, for I am almost ill of the smothering heat, and still
suffer from my fall, and not having been on horseback since, thirty
miles will be a long ride. Then I fear that the accommodation is as
rough as Chalmers's, and that solitude will be impossible. We have
been strolling in the street every since it grew dark to get the little
air which is moving.
ESTES PARK!!! September 28.
I wish I could let those three notes of admiration go to you instead of
a letter. They mean everything that is rapturous and
delightful--grandeur, cheerfulness, health, enjoyment, novelty,
freedom, etc., etc. I have just dropped into the very place I have
been seeking, but in everything it exceeds all my dreams. There is
health in every breath of air; I am much better already, and get up to
a seven o'clock breakfast without difficulty. It is quite
comfortable--in the fashion that I like. I have a log cabin, raised on
six posts, all to myself, with a skunk's lair underneath it, and a
small lake close to it. There is a frost every night, and all day it
is cool enough for a roaring fire. The ranchman, who is half-hunter,
half-stockman, and his wife are jovial, hearty Welsh people from
Llanberis, who laugh with loud, cheery British laughs, sing in parts
down to the youngest child, are free hearted and hospitable, and pile
the pitch-pine logs half-way up the great rude chimney. There has been
fresh meat each day since I came, delicious bread baked daily,
excellent potatoes, tea and coffee, and an abundant supply of milk like
cream. I have a clean hay bed with six blankets, and there are neither
bugs nor fleas. The scenery is the most glorious I have ever seen, and
is above us, around us, at the very door. Most people have advized me
to go to Colorado Springs, and only one mentioned this place, and till
I reached Longmount I never saw any one who had been here, but I saw
from the lie of the country that it must be most superbly situated.
People said, however, that it was most difficult of access, and that
the season for it was over. In traveling there is nothing like
dissecting people's statements, which are usually colored by their
estimate of the powers or likings of the person spoken to, making all
reasonable inquiries, and then pertinaciously but quietly carrying out
one's own plans. This is perfection, and all the requisites for health
are present, including plenty of horses and grass to ride on.
It is not easy to sit down to write after ten hours of hard riding,
especially in a cabin full of people, and wholesome fatigue may make my
letter flat when it ought to be enthusiastic. I was awake all night at
Longmount owing to the stifling heat, and got up nervous and miserable,
ready to give up the thought of coming here, but the sunrise over the
Plains, and the wonderful red of the Rocky Mountains, as they reflected
the eastern sky, put spirit into me. The landlord had got a horse, but
could not give any satisfactory assurances of his being quiet, and
being much shaken by my fall at Canyon, I earnestly wished that the
Greeley Tribune had not given me a reputation for horsemanship, which
had preceded me here. The young men who were to escort me "seemed very
innocent," he said, but I have not arrived at his meaning yet. When
the horse appeared in the street at 8:30, I saw, to my dismay, a
high-bred, beautiful creature, stable kept, with arched neck, quivering
nostrils, and restless ears and eyes. My pack, as on Hawaii, was
strapped behind the Mexican saddle, and my canvas bag hung on the horn,
but the horse did not look fit to carry "gear," and seemed to require
two men to hold and coax him. There were many loafers about, and I
shrank from going out and mounting in my old Hawaiian riding dress,
though Dr. and Mrs. H. assured me that I looked quite "insignificant
and unnoticeable." We got away at nine with repeated injunctions from
the landlord in the words, "Oh, you should be heroic!"
The sky was cloudless, and a deep brilliant blue, and though the sun
was hot the air was fresh and bracing. The ride for glory and delight
I shall label along with one to Hanalei, and another to Mauna Kea,
Hawaii. I felt better quite soon; the horse in gait and temper turned
out perfection--all spring and spirit, elastic in his motion, walking
fast and easily, and cantering with a light, graceful swing as soon as
one pressed the reins on his neck, a blithe, joyous animal, to whom a
day among the mountains seemed a pleasant frolic. So gentle he was,
that when I got off and walked he followed me without being led, and
without needing any one to hold him he allowed me to mount on either
side. In addition to the charm of his movements he has the catlike
sure-footedness of a Hawaiian horse, and fords rapid and rough-bottomed
rivers, and gallops among stones and stumps, and down steep hills, with
equal security. I could have ridden him a hundred miles as easily as
thirty. We have only been together two days, yet we are firm friends,
and thoroughly understand each other. I should not require another
companion on a long mountain tour. All his ways are those of an animal
brought up without curb, whip, or spur, trained by the voice, and used
only to kindness, as is happily the case with the majority of horses in
the Western States. Consequently, unless they are broncos, they
exercise their intelligence for your advantage, and do their work
rather as friends than as machines.
I soon began not only to feel better, but to be exhilarated with the
delightful motion. The sun was behind us, and puffs of a cool elastic
air came down from the glorious mountains in front. We cantered across
six miles of prairie, and then reached the beautiful canyon of the St.
Vrain, which, towards its mouth, is a narrow, fertile, wooded valley,
through which a bright rapid river, which we forded many times, hurries
along, with twists and windings innumerable. Ah, how brightly its
ripples danced in the glittering sunshine, and how musically its waters
murmured like the streams of windward Hawaii! We lost our way over and
over again, though the "innocent" young men had been there before;
indeed, it would require some talent to master the intricacies of that
devious trail, but settlers making hay always appeared in the nick of
time to put us on the right track. Very fair it was, after the brown
and burning plains, and the variety was endless. Cotton-wood trees
were green and bright, aspens shivered in gold tremulousness, wild
grape-vines trailed their lemon-colored foliage along the ground, and
the Virginia creeper hung its crimson sprays here and there, lightening
up green and gold into glory. Sometimes from under the cool and bowery
shade of the colored tangle we passed into the cool St. Vrain, and then
were wedged between its margin and lofty cliffs and terraces of
incredibly staring, fantastic rocks, lined, patched, and splashed with
carmine, vermilion, greens of all tints, blue, yellow, orange, violet,
deep crimson, coloring that no artist would dare to represent, and of
which, in sober prose, I scarcely dare tell. Long's wonderful peaks,
which hitherto had gleamed above the green, now disappeared, to be seen
no more for twenty miles. We entered on an ascending valley, where the
gorgeous hues of the rocks were intensified by the blue gloom of the
pitch pines, and then taking a track to the north-west, we left the
softer world behind, and all traces of man and his works, and plunged
into the Rocky Mountains.
There were wonderful ascents then up which I led my horse; wild
fantastic views opening up continually, a recurrence of surprises; the
air keener and purer with every mile, the sensation of loneliness more
singular. A tremendous ascent among rocks and pines to a height of
9,000 feet brought us to a passage seven feet wide through a wall of
rock, with an abrupt descent of 2,000 feet, and a yet higher ascent
beyond. I never saw anything so strange as looking back. It was a
single gigantic ridge which we had passed through, standing up
knifelike, built up entirely of great brick-shaped masses of bright red
rock, some of them as large as the Royal Institution, Edinburgh, piled
one on another by Titans. Pitch pines grew out of their crevices, but
there was not a vestige of soil. Beyond, wall beyond wall of similar
construction, and range above range, rose into the blue sky. Fifteen
miles more over great ridges, along passes dark with shadow, and so
narrow that we had to ride in the beds of the streams which had
excavated them, round the bases of colossal pyramids of rock crested
with pines, up into fair upland "parks," scarlet in patches with the
poison oak, parks so beautifully arranged by nature that I momentarily
expected to come upon some stately mansion, but that afternoon crested
blue jays and chipmunks had them all to themselves. Here, in the early
morning, deer, bighorn, and the stately elk, come down to feed, and
there, in the night, prowl and growl the Rocky Mountain lion, the
grizzly bear, and the cowardly wolf. There were chasms of immense
depth, dark with the indigo gloom of pines, and mountains with snow
gleaming on their splintered crests, loveliness to bewilder and
grandeur to awe, and still streams and shady pools, and cool depths of
shadow; mountains again, dense with pines, among which patches of aspen
gleamed like gold; valleys where the yellow cotton-wood mingled with
the crimson oak, and so, on and on through the lengthening shadows,
till the trail, which in places had been hardly legible, became well
defined, and we entered a long gulch with broad swellings of grass
belted with pines.
A very pretty mare, hobbled, was feeding; a collie dog barked at us,
and among the scrub, not far from the track, there was a rude, black
log cabin, as rough as it could be to be a shelter at all, with smoke
coming out of the roof and window. We diverged towards it; it mattered
not that it was the home, or rather den, of a notorious "ruffian" and
"desperado." One of my companions had disappeared hours before, the
remaining one was a town-bred youth. I longed to speak to some one who
loved the mountains. I called the hut a DEN--it looked like the den of
a wild beast. The big dog lay outside it in a threatening attitude and
growled. The mud roof was covered with lynx, beaver, and other furs
laid out to dry, beaver paws were pinned out on the logs, a part of the
carcass of a deer hung at one end of the cabin, a skinned beaver lay in
front of a heap of peltry just within the door, and antlers of deer,
old horseshoes, and offal of many animals, lay about the den.
Roused by the growling of the dog, his owner came out, a broad,
thickset man, about the middle height, with an old cap on his head, and
wearing a grey hunting suit much the worse for wear (almost falling to
pieces, in fact), a digger's scarf knotted round his waist, a knife in
his belt, and "a bosom friend," a revolver, sticking out of the breast
pocket of his coat; his feet, which were very small, were bare, except
for some dilapidated moccasins made of horse hide. The marvel was how
his clothes hung together, and on him. The scarf round his waist must
have had something to do with it. His face was remarkable. He is a
man about forty-five, and must have been strikingly handsome. He has
large grey-blue eyes, deeply set, with well-marked eyebrows, a handsome
aquiline nose, and a very handsome mouth. His face was smooth shaven
except for a dense mustache and imperial. Tawny hair, in thin
uncared-for curls, fell from under his hunter's cap and over his
collar. One eye was entirely gone, and the loss made one side of the
face repulsive, while the other might have been modeled in marble.
"Desperado" was written in large letters all over him. I almost
repented of having sought his acquaintance. His first impulse was to
swear at the dog, but on seeing a lady he contented himself with
kicking him, and coming to me he raised his cap, showing as he did so a
magnificently-formed brow and head, and in a cultured tone of voice
asked if there were anything he could do for me? I asked for some
water, and he brought some in a battered tin, gracefully apologizing
for not having anything more presentable. We entered into
conversation, and as he spoke I forgot both his reputation and
appearance, for his manner was that of a chivalrous gentleman, his
accent refined, and his language easy and elegant. I inquired about
some beavers' paws which were drying, and in a moment they hung on the
horn of my saddle. Apropos of the wild animals of the region, he told
me that the loss of his eye was owing to a recent encounter with a
grizzly bear, which, after giving him a death hug, tearing him all
over, breaking his arm and scratching out his eye, had left him for
dead. As we rode away, for the sun was sinking, he said, courteously,
"You are not an American. I know from your voice that you are a
countrywoman of mine. I hope you will allow me the pleasure of calling
on you." [12]
[12] Of this unhappy man, who was shot nine months later within two
miles of his cabin, I write in the subsequent letters only as he
appeared to me. His life, without doubt, was deeply stained with
crimes and vices, and his reputation for ruffianism was a deserved one.
But in my intercourse with him I saw more of his nobler instincts than
of the darker parts of his character, which, unfortunately for himself
and others, showed itself in its worst colors at the time of his tragic
end. It was not until after I left Colorado, not indeed until after
his death, that I heard of the worst points of his character.
This man, known through the Territories and beyond them as "Rocky
Mountain Jim," or, more briefly, as "Mountain Jim," is one of the
famous scouts of the Plains, and is the original of some daring
portraits in fiction concerning Indian Frontier warfare. So far as I
have at present heard, he is a man for whom there is now no room, for
the time for blows and blood in this part of Colorado is past, and the
fame of many daring exploits is sullied by crimes which are not easily
forgiven here. He now has a "squatter's claim," but makes his living
as a trapper, and is a complete child of the mountains. Of his genius
and chivalry to women there does not appear to be any doubt; but he is
a desperate character, and is subject to "ugly fits," when people think
it best to avoid him. It is here regarded as an evil that he has
located himself at the mouth of the only entrance to the park, for he
is dangerous with his pistols, and it would be safer if he were not
here. His besetting sin is indicated in the verdict pronounced on him
by my host: "When he's sober Jim's a perfect gentleman; but when he's
had liquor he's the most awful ruffian in Colorado."
From the ridge on which this gulch terminates, at a height of 9,000
feet, we saw at last Estes Park, lying 1,500 feet below in the glory of
the setting sun, an irregular basin, lighted up by the bright waters of
the rushing Thompson, guarded by sentinel mountains of fantastic shape
and monstrous size, with Long's Peak rising above them all in
unapproachable grandeur, while the Snowy Range, with its outlying spurs
heavily timbered, come down upon the park slashed by stupendous canyons
lying deep in purple gloom. The rushing river was blood red, Long's
Peak was aflame, the glory of the glowing heaven was given back from
earth. Never, nowhere, have I seen anything to equal the view into
Estes Park. The mountains "of the land which is very far off" are very
near now, but the near is more glorious than the far, and reality than
dreamland. The mountain fever seized me, and, giving my tireless horse
one encouraging word, he dashed at full gallop over a mile of smooth
sward at delirious speed.
But I was hungry, and the air was frosty, and I was wondering what the
prospects of food and shelter were in this enchanted region, when we
came suddenly upon a small lake, close to which was a very trim-looking
log cabin, with a flat mud roof, with four smaller ones; picturesquely
dotted about near it, two corrals,[13] a long shed, in front of which a
steer was being killed, a log dairy with a water wheel, some hay piles,
and various evidences of comfort; and two men, on serviceable horses,
were just bringing in some tolerable cows to be milked. A short,
pleasant-looking man ran up to me and shook hands gleefully, which
surprised me; but he has since told me that in the evening light he
thought I was "Mountain Jim, dressed up as a woman!" I recognized in
him a countryman, and he introduced himself as Griffith Evans, a
Welshman from the slate quarries near Llanberis. When the cabin door
was opened I saw a good-sized log room, unchinked, however, with
windows of infamous glass, looking two ways; a rough stone fireplace,
in which pine logs, half as large as I am, were burning; a boarded
floor, a round table, two rocking chairs, a carpet-covered backwoods
couch; and skins, Indian bows and arrows, wampum belts, and antlers,
fitly decorated the rough walls, and equally fitly, rifles were stuck
up in the corners. Seven men, smoking, were lying about on the floor,
a sick man lay on the couch, and a middle-aged lady sat at the table
writing. I went out again and asked Evans if he could take me in,
expecting nothing better than a shakedown; but, to my joy, he told me
he could give me a cabin to myself, two minutes' walk from his own. So
in this glorious upper world, with the mountain pines behind and the
clear lake in front, in the "blue hollow at the foot of Long's Peak,"
at a height of 7,500 feet, where the hoar frost crisps the grass every
night of the year, I have found far more than I ever dared to hope for.
[13] A corral is a fenced enclosure for cattle. This word, with
bronco, ranch, and a few others, are adaptations from the Spanish, and
are used as extensively throughout California and the Territories as is
the Spanish or Mexican saddle.
I. L. B.
Letter VII
Personality of Long's Peak--"Mountain Jim"--Lake of the Lilies--A
silent forest--The camping ground--"Ring"--A lady's bower--Dawn and
sunrise--A glorious view--Links of diamonds--The ascent of the
Peak--The "Dog's Lift"--Suffering from thirst--The descent--The bivouac.
ESTES PARK, COLORADO, October.
As this account of the ascent of Long's Peak could not be written at
the time, I am much disinclined to write it, especially as no sort of
description within my powers could enable another to realize the
glorious sublimity, the majestic solitude, and the unspeakable
awfulness and fascination of the scenes in which I spent Monday,
Tuesday, and Wednesday.
Long's Peak, 14,700 feet high, blocks up one end of Estes Park, and
dwarfs all the surrounding mountains. From it on this side rise,
snow-born, the bright St. Vrain, and the Big and Little Thompson. By
sunlight or moonlight its splintered grey crest is the one object
which, in spite of wapiti and bighorn, skunk and grizzly, unfailingly
arrests the eyes. From it come all storms of snow and wind, and the
forked lightnings play round its head like a glory. It is one of the
noblest of mountains, but in one's imagination it grows to be much more
than a mountain. It becomes invested with a personality. In its
caverns and abysses one comes to fancy that it generates and chains the
strong winds, to let them loose in its fury. The thunder becomes its
voice, and the lightnings do it homage. Other summits blush under the
morning kiss of the sun, and turn pale the next moment; but it detains
the first sunlight and holds it round its head for an hour at least,
till it pleases to change from rosy red to deep blue; and the sunset,
as if spell-bound, lingers latest on its crest. The soft winds which
hardly rustle the pine needles down here are raging rudely up there
round its motionless summit. The mark of fire is upon it; and though
it has passed into a grim repose, it tells of fire and upheaval as
truly, though not as eloquently, as the living volcanoes of Hawaii.
Here under its shadow one learns how naturally nature worship, and the
propitiation of the forces of nature, arose in minds which had no
better light.
Long's Peak, "the American Matterhorn," as some call it, was ascended
five years ago for the first time. I thought I should like to attempt
it, but up to Monday, when Evans left for Denver, cold water was thrown
upon the project. It was too late in the season, the winds were likely
to be strong, etc.; but just before leaving, Evans said that the
weather was looking more settled, and if I did not get farther than the
timber line it would be worth going. Soon after he left, "Mountain
Jim" came in, and said he would go up as guide, and the two youths who
rode here with me from Longmount and I caught at the proposal. Mrs.
Edwards at once baked bread for three days, steaks were cut from the
steer which hangs up conveniently, and tea, sugar, and butter were
benevolently added. Our picnic was not to be a luxurious or
"well-found" one, for, in order to avoid the expense of a pack mule, we
limited our luggage to what our saddle horses could carry. Behind my
saddle I carried three pair of camping blankets and a quilt, which
reached to my shoulders. My own boots were so much worn that it was
painful to walk, even about the park, in them, so Evans had lent me a
pair of his hunting boots, which hung to the horn of my saddle. The
horses of the two young men were equally loaded, for we had to prepare
for many degrees of frost. "Jim" was a shocking figure; he had on an
old pair of high boots, with a baggy pair of old trousers made of deer
hide, held on by an old scarf tucked into them; a leather shirt, with
three or four ragged unbuttoned waistcoats over it; an old smashed
wideawake, from under which his tawny, neglected ringlets hung; and
with his one eye, his one long spur, his knife in his belt, his
revolver in his waistcoat pocket, his saddle covered with an old beaver
skin, from which the paws hung down; his camping blankets behind him,
his rifle laid across the saddle in front of him, and his axe, canteen,
and other gear hanging to the horn, he was as awful-looking a ruffian
as one could see. By way of contrast he rode a small Arab mare, of
exquisite beauty, skittish, high spirited, gentle, but altogether too
light for him, and he fretted her incessantly to make her display
herself.
Heavily loaded as all our horses were, "Jim" started over the half-mile
of level grass at a hard gallop, and then throwing his mare on her
haunches, pulled up alongside of me, and with a grace of manner which
soon made me forget his appearance, entered into a conversation which
lasted for more than three hours, in spite of the manifold checks of
fording streams, single file, abrupt ascents and descents, and other
incidents of mountain travel. The ride was one series of glories and
surprises, of "park" and glade, of lake and stream, of mountains on
mountains, culminating in the rent pinnacles of Long's Peak, which
looked yet grander and ghastlier as we crossed an attendant mountain
11,000 feet high. The slanting sun added fresh beauty every hour.
There were dark pines against a lemon sky, grey peaks reddening and
etherealizing, gorges of deep and infinite blue, floods of golden glory
pouring through canyons of enormous depth, an atmosphere of absolute
purity, an occasional foreground of cottonwood and aspen flaunting in
red and gold to intensify the blue gloom of the pines, the trickle and
murmur of streams fringed with icicles, the strange sough of gusts
moving among the pine tops--sights and sounds not of the lower earth,
but of the solitary, beast-haunted, frozen upper altitudes. From the
dry, buff grass of Estes Park we turned off up a trail on the side of a
pine-hung gorge, up a steep pine-clothed hill, down to a small valley,
rich in fine, sun-cured hay about eighteen inches high, and enclosed by
high mountains whose deepest hollow contains a lily-covered lake, fitly
named "The Lake of the Lilies." Ah, how magical its beauty was, as it
slept in silence, while THERE the dark pines were mirrored motionless
in its pale gold, and HERE the great white lily cups and dark green
leaves rested on amethyst-colored water!
From this we ascended into the purple gloom of great pine forests which
clothe the skirts of the mountains up to a height of about 11,000 feet,
and from their chill and solitary depths we had glimpses of golden
atmosphere and rose-lit summits, not of "the land very far off," but of
the land nearer now in all its grandeur, gaining in sublimity by
nearness--glimpses, too, through a broken vista of purple gorges, of
the illimitable Plains lying idealized in the late sunlight, their
baked, brown expanse transfigured into the likeness of a sunset sea
rolling infinitely in waves of misty gold.
We rode upwards through the gloom on a steep trail blazed through the
forest, all my intellect concentrated on avoiding being dragged off my
horse by impending branches, or having the blankets badly torn, as
those of my companions were, by sharp dead limbs, between which there
was hardly room to pass--the horses breathless, and requiring to stop
every few yards, though their riders, except myself, were afoot. The
gloom of the dense, ancient, silent forest is to me awe inspiring. On
such an evening it is soundless, except for the branches creaking in
the soft wind, the frequent snap of decayed timber, and a murmur in the
pine tops as of a not distant waterfall, all tending to produce
EERINESS and a sadness "hardly akin to pain." There no lumberer's axe
has ever rung. The trees die when they have attained their prime, and
stand there, dead and bare, till the fierce mountain winds lay them
prostrate. The pines grew smaller and more sparse as we ascended, and
the last stragglers wore a tortured, warring look. The timber line was
passed, but yet a little higher a slope of mountain meadow dipped to
the south-west towards a bright stream trickling under ice and icicles,
and there a grove of the beautiful silver spruce marked our camping
ground. The trees were in miniature, but so exquisitely arranged that
one might well ask what artist's hand had planted them, scattering them
here, clumping them there, and training their slim spires towards
heaven. Hereafter, when I call up memories of the glorious, the view
from this camping ground will come up. Looking east, gorges opened to
the distant Plains, then fading into purple grey. Mountains with
pine-clothed skirts rose in ranges, or, solitary, uplifted their grey
summits, while close behind, but nearly 3,000 feet above us, towered
the bald white crest of Long's Peak, its huge precipices red with the
light of a sun long lost to our eyes. Close to us, in the caverned
side of the Peak, was snow that, owing to its position, is eternal.
Soon the afterglow came on, and before it faded a big half-moon hung
out of the heavens, shining through the silver blue foliage of the
pines on the frigid background of snow, and turning the whole into
fairyland. The "photo" which accompanies this letter is by a
courageous Denver artist who attempted the ascent just before I
arrived, but, after camping out at the timber line for a week, was
foiled by the perpetual storms, and was driven down again, leaving some
very valuable apparatus about 3,000 feet from the summit.
Unsaddling and picketing the horses securely, making the beds of pine
shoots, and dragging up logs for fuel, warmed us all. "Jim" built up a
great fire, and before long we were all sitting around it at supper.
It didn't matter much that we had to drink our tea out of the battered
meat tins in which it was boiled, and eat strips of beef reeking with
pine smoke without plates or forks.
"Treat Jim as a gentleman and you'll find him one," I had been told;
and though his manner was certainly bolder and freer than that of
gentlemen generally, no imaginary fault could be found. He was very
agreeable as a man of culture as well as a child of nature; the
desperado was altogether out of sight. He was very courteous and even
kind to me, which was fortunate, as the young men had little idea of
showing even ordinary civilities. That night I made the acquaintance
of his dog "Ring," said to be the best hunting dog in Colorado, with
the body and legs of a collie, but a head approaching that of a
mastiff, a noble face with a wistful human expression, and the most
truthful eyes I ever saw in an animal. His master loves him if he
loves anything, but in his savage moods ill-treats him. "Ring's"
devotion never swerves, and his truthful eyes are rarely taken off his
master's face. He is almost human in his intelligence, and, unless he
is told to do so, he never takes notice of any one but "Jim." In a
tone as if speaking to a human being, his master, pointing to me, said,
"Ring, go to that lady, and don't leave her again to-night." "Ring" at
once came to me, looked into my face, laid his head on my shoulder, and
then lay down beside me with his head on my lap, but never taking his
eyes from "Jim's" face.
The long shadows of the pines lay upon the frosted grass, an aurora
leaped fitfully, and the moonlight, though intensely bright, was pale
beside the red, leaping flames of our pine logs and their red glow on
our gear, ourselves, and Ring's truthful face. One of the young men
sang a Latin student's song and two Negro melodies; the other "Sweet
Spirit, hear my Prayer." "Jim" sang one of Moore's melodies in a
singular falsetto, and all together sang, "The Star-spangled Banner"
and "The Red, White, and Blue." Then "Jim" recited a very clever poem
of his own composition, and told some fearful Indian stories. A group
of small silver spruces away from the fire was my sleeping place. The
artist who had been up there had so woven and interlaced their lower
branches as to form a bower, affording at once shelter from the wind
and a most agreeable privacy. It was thickly strewn with young pine
shoots, and these, when covered with a blanket, with an inverted saddle
for a pillow, made a luxurious bed. The mercury at 9 P.M. was 12
degrees below the freezing point. "Jim," after a last look at the
horses, made a huge fire, and stretched himself out beside it, but
"Ring" lay at my back to keep me warm. I could not sleep, but the
night passed rapidly. I was anxious about the ascent, for gusts of
ominous sound swept through the pines at intervals. Then wild animals
howled, and "Ring" was perturbed in spirit about them. Then it was
strange to see the notorious desperado, a red-handed man, sleeping as
quietly as innocence sleeps. But, above all, it was exciting to lie
there, with no better shelter than a bower of pines, on a mountain
11,000 feet high, in the very heart of the Rocky Range, under twelve
degrees of frost, hearing sounds of wolves, with shivering stars
looking through the fragrant canopy, with arrowy pines for bed-posts,
and for a night lamp the red flames of a camp-fire.
Day dawned long before the sun rose, pure and lemon colored. The rest
were looking after the horses, when one of the students came running to
tell me that I must come farther down the slope, for "Jim" said he had
never seen such a sunrise. From the chill, grey Peak above, from the
everlasting snows, from the silvered pines, down through mountain
ranges with their depths of Tyrian purple, we looked to where the
Plains lay cold, in blue-grey, like a morning sea against a far
horizon. Suddenly, as a dazzling streak at first, but enlarging
rapidly into a dazzling sphere, the sun wheeled above the grey line, a
light and glory as when it was first created. "Jim" involuntarily and
reverently uncovered his head, and exclaimed, "I believe there is a
God!" I felt as if, Parsee-like, I must worship. The grey of the
Plains changed to purple, the sky was all one rose-red flush, on which
vermilion cloud-streaks rested; the ghastly peaks gleamed like rubies,
the earth and heavens were new created. Surely "the Most High dwelleth
not in temples made with hands!" For a full hour those Plains
simulated the ocean, down to whose limitless expanse of purple, cliff,
rocks, and promontories swept down.
By seven we had finished breakfast, and passed into the ghastlier
solitudes above, I riding as far as what, rightly, or wrongly, are
called the "Lava Beds," an expanse of large and small boulders, with
snow in their crevices. It was very cold; some water which we crossed
was frozen hard enough to bear the horse. "Jim" had advised me against
taking any wraps, and my thin Hawaiian riding dress, only fit for the
tropics, was penetrated by the keen air. The rarefied atmosphere soon
began to oppress our breathing, and I found that Evans's boots were so
large that I had no foothold. Fortunately, before the real difficulty
of the ascent began, we found, under a rock, a pair of small overshoes,
probably left by the Hayden exploring expedition, which just lasted for
the day. As we were leaping from rock to rock, "Jim" said, "I was
thinking in the night about your traveling alone, and wondering where
you carried your Derringer, for I could see no signs of it." On my
telling him that I traveled unarmed, he could hardly believe it, and
adjured me to get a revolver at once.
On arriving at the "Notch" (a literal gate of rock), we found ourselves
absolutely on the knifelike ridge or backbone of Long's Peak, only a
few feet wide, covered with colossal boulders and fragments, and on the
other side shelving in one precipitous, snow-patched sweep of 3,000
feet to a picturesque hollow, containing a lake of pure green water.
Other lakes, hidden among dense pine woods, were farther off, while
close above us rose the Peak, which, for about 500 feet, is a smooth,
gaunt, inaccessible-looking pile of granite. Passing through the
"Notch," we looked along the nearly inaccessible side of the Peak,
composed of boulders and debris of all shapes and sizes, through which
appeared broad, smooth ribs of reddish-colored granite, looking as if
they upheld the towering rock mass above. I usually dislike bird's-eye
and panoramic views, but, though from a mountain, this was not one.
Serrated ridges, not much lower than that on which we stood, rose, one
beyond another, far as that pure atmosphere could carry the vision,
broken into awful chasms deep with ice and snow, rising into pinnacles
piercing the heavenly blue with their cold, barren grey, on, on for
ever, till the most distant range upbore unsullied snow alone. There
were fair lakes mirroring the dark pine woods, canyons dark and
blue-black with unbroken expanses of pines, snow-slashed pinnacles,
wintry heights frowning upon lovely parks, watered and wooded, lying in
the lap of summer; North Park floating off into the blue distance,
Middle Park closed till another season, the sunny slopes of Estes Park,
and winding down among the mountains the snowy ridge of the Divide,
whose bright waters seek both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. There,
far below, links of diamonds showed where the Grand River takes its
rise to seek the mysterious Colorado, with its still unsolved enigma,
and lose itself in the waters of the Pacific; and nearer the snow-born
Thompson bursts forth from the ice to begin its journey to the Gulf of
Mexico. Nature, rioting in her grandest mood, exclaimed with voices of
grandeur, solitude, sublimity, beauty, and infinity, "Lord, what is
man, that Thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that Thou
visitest him?" Never-to-be-forgotten glories they were, burnt in upon
my memory by six succeeding hours of terror.
You know I have no head and no ankles, and never ought to dream of
mountaineering; and had I known that the ascent was a real
mountaineering feat I should not have felt the slightest ambition to
perform it. As it is, I am only humiliated by my success, for "Jim"
dragged me up, like a bale of goods, by sheer force of muscle. At the
"Notch" the real business of the ascent began. Two thousand feet of
solid rock towered above us, four thousand feet of broken rock shelved
precipitously below; smooth granite ribs, with barely foothold, stood
out here and there; melted snow refrozen several times, presented a
more serious obstacle; many of the rocks were loose, and tumbled down
when touched. To me it was a time of extreme terror. I was roped to
"Jim," but it was of no use; my feet were paralyzed and slipped on the
bare rock, and he said it was useless to try to go that way, and we
retraced our steps. I wanted to return to the "Notch," knowing that my
incompetence would detain the party, and one of the young men said
almost plainly that a woman was a dangerous encumbrance, but the
trapper replied shortly that if it were not to take a lady up he would
not go up at all. He went on to explore, and reported that further
progress on the correct line of ascent was blocked by ice; and then for
two hours we descended, lowering ourselves by our hands from rock to
rock along a boulder-strewn sweep of 4,000 feet, patched with ice and
snow, and perilous from rolling stones. My fatigue, giddiness, and
pain from bruised ankles, and arms half pulled out of their sockets,
were so great that I should never have gone halfway had not "Jim,"
nolens volens, dragged me along with a patience and skill, and withal a
determination that I should ascend the Peak, which never failed. After
descending about 2,000 feet to avoid the ice, we got into a deep ravine
with inaccessible sides, partly filled with ice and snow and partly
with large and small fragments of rock, which were constantly giving
away, rendering the footing very insecure. That part to me was two
hours of painful and unwilling submission to the inevitable; of
trembling, slipping, straining, of smooth ice appearing when it was
least expected, and of weak entreaties to be left behind while the
others went on. "Jim" always said that there was no danger, that there
was only a short bad bit ahead, and that I should go up even if he
carried me!
Slipping, faltering, gasping from the exhausting toil in the rarefied
air, with throbbing hearts and panting lungs, we reached the top of the
gorge and squeezed ourselves between two gigantic fragments of rock by
a passage called the "Dog's Lift," when I climbed on the shoulders of
one man and then was hauled up. This introduced us by an abrupt turn
round the south-west angle of the Peak to a narrow shelf of
considerable length, rugged, uneven, and so overhung by the cliff in
some places that it is necessary to crouch to pass at all. Above, the
Peak looks nearly vertical for 400 feet; and below, the most tremendous
precipice I have ever seen descends in one unbroken fall. This is
usually considered the most dangerous part of the ascent, but it does
not seem so to me, for such foothold as there is is secure, and one
fancies that it is possible to hold on with the hands. But there, and
on the final, and, to my thinking, the worst part of the climb, one
slip, and a breathing, thinking, human being would lie 3,000 feet
below, a shapeless, bloody heap! "Ring" refused to traverse the Ledge,
and remained at the "Lift" howling piteously.
From thence the view is more magnificent even than that from the
"Notch." At the foot of the precipice below us lay a lovely lake, wood
embosomed, from or near which the bright St. Vrain and other streams
take their rise. I thought how their clear cold waters, growing turbid
in the affluent flats, would heat under the tropic sun, and eventually
form part of that great ocean river which renders our far-off islands
habitable by impinging on their shores. Snowy ranges, one behind the
other, extended to the distant horizon, folding in their wintry embrace
the beauties of Middle Park. Pike's Peak, more than one hundred miles
off, lifted that vast but shapeless summit which is the landmark of
southern Colorado. There were snow patches, snow slashes, snow
abysses, snow forlorn and soiled looking, snow pure and dazzling, snow
glistening above the purple robe of pine worn by all the mountains;
while away to the east, in limitless breadth, stretched the green-grey
of the endless Plains. Giants everywhere reared their splintered
crests. From thence, with a single sweep, the eye takes in a distance
of 300 miles--that distance to the west, north, and south being made up
of mountains ten, eleven, twelve, and thirteen thousand feet in height,
dominated by Long's Peak, Gray's Peak, and Pike's Peak, all nearly the
height of Mont Blanc! On the Plains we traced the rivers by their
fringe of cottonwoods to the distant Platte, and between us and them
lay glories of mountain, canyon, and lake, sleeping in depths of blue
and purple most ravishing to the eye.
As we crept from the ledge round a horn of rock I beheld what made me
perfectly sick and dizzy to look at--the terminal Peak itself--a
smooth, cracked face or wall of pink granite, as nearly perpendicular
as anything could well be up which it was possible to climb, well
deserving the name of the "American Matterhorn." [14]
[14] Let no practical mountaineer be allured by my description into the
ascent of Long's Peak. Truly terrible as it was to me, to a member of
the Alpine Club it would not be a feat worth performing.
SCALING, not climbing, is the correct term for this last ascent. It
took one hour to accomplish 500 feet, pausing for breath every minute
or two. The only foothold was in narrow cracks or on minute
projections on the granite. To get a toe in these cracks, or here and
there on a scarcely obvious projection, while crawling on hands and
knees, all the while tortured with thirst and gasping and struggling
for breath, this was the climb; but at last the Peak was won. A grand,
well-defined mountain top it is, a nearly level acre of boulders, with
precipitous sides all round, the one we came up being the only
accessible one.
It was not possible to remain long. One of the young men was seriously
alarmed by bleeding from the lungs, and the intense dryness of the day
and the rarefication of the air, at a height of nearly 15,000 feet,
made respiration very painful. There is always water on the Peak, but
it was frozen as hard as a rock, and the sucking of ice and snow
increases thirst. We all suffered severely from the want of water, and
the gasping for breath made our mouths and tongues so dry that
articulation was difficult, and the speech of all unnatural.
From the summit were seen in unrivalled combination all the views which
had rejoiced our eyes during the ascent. It was something at last to
stand upon the storm-rent crown of this lonely sentinel of the Rocky
Range, on one of the mightiest of the vertebrae of the backbone of the
North American continent, and to see the waters start for both oceans.
Uplifted above love and hate and storms of passion, calm amidst the
eternal silences, fanned by zephyrs and bathed in living blue, peace
rested for that one bright day on the Peak, as if it were some region
Where falls not rain, or hail, or any snow,
Or ever wind blows loudly.
We placed our names, with the date of ascent, in a tin within a
crevice, and descended to the Ledge, sitting on the smooth granite,
getting our feet into cracks and against projections, and letting
ourselves down by our hands, "Jim" going before me, so that I might
steady my feet against his powerful shoulders. I was no longer giddy,
and faced the precipice of 3,500 feet without a shiver. Repassing the
Ledge and Lift, we accomplished the descent through 1,500 feet of ice
and snow, with many falls and bruises, but no worse mishap, and there
separated, the young men taking the steepest but most direct way to the
"Notch," with the intention of getting ready for the march home, and
"Jim" and I taking what he thought the safer route for me--a descent
over boulders for 2,000 feet, and then a tremendous ascent to the
"Notch." I had various falls, and once hung by my frock, which caught
on a rock, and "Jim" severed it with his hunting knife, upon which I
fell into a crevice full of soft snow. We were driven lower down the
mountains than he had intended by impassable tracts of ice, and the
ascent was tremendous. For the last 200 feet the boulders were of
enormous size, and the steepness fearful. Sometimes I drew myself up
on hands and knees, sometimes crawled; sometimes "Jim" pulled me up by
my arms or a lariat, and sometimes I stood on his shoulders, or he made
steps for me of his feet and hands, but at six we stood on the "Notch"
in the splendor of the sinking sun, all color deepening, all peaks
glorifying, all shadows purpling, all peril past.
"Jim" had parted with his brusquerie when we parted from the students,
and was gentle and considerate beyond anything, though I knew that he
must be grievously disappointed, both in my courage and strength.
Water was an object of earnest desire. My tongue rattled in my mouth,
and I could hardly articulate. It is good for one's sympathies to have
for once a severe experience of thirst. Truly, there was
Water, water, everywhere,
But not a drop to drink.
Three times its apparent gleam deceived even the mountaineer's
practiced eye, but we found only a foot of "glare ice." At last, in a
deep hole, he succeeded in breaking the ice, and by putting one's arm
far down one could scoop up a little water in one's hand, but it was
tormentingly insufficient. With great difficulty and much assistance I
recrossed the "Lava Beds," was carried to the horse and lifted upon
him, and when we reached the camping ground I was lifted off him, and
laid on the ground wrapped up in blankets, a humiliating termination of
a great exploit. The horses were saddled, and the young men were all
ready to start, but "Jim" quietly said, "Now, gentlemen, I want a good
night's rest, and we shan't stir from here to-night." I believe they
were really glad to have it so, as one of them was quite "finished." I
retired to my arbor, wrapped myself in a roll of blankets, and was soon
asleep.
When I woke, the moon was high shining through the silvery branches,
whitening the bald Peak above, and glittering on the great abyss of
snow behind, and pine logs were blazing like a bonfire in the cold
still air. My feet were so icy cold that I could not sleep again, and
getting some blankets to sit in, and making a roll of them for my back,
I sat for two hours by the camp-fire. It was weird and gloriously
beautiful. The students were asleep not far off in their blankets with
their feet towards the fire. "Ring" lay on one side of me with his
fine head on my arm, and his master sat smoking, with the fire lighting
up the handsome side of his face, and except for the tones of our
voices, and an occasional crackle and splutter as a pine knot blazed
up, there was no sound on the mountain side. The beloved stars of my
far-off home were overhead, the Plough and Pole Star, with their steady
light; the glittering Pleiades, looking larger than I ever saw them,
and "Orion's studded belt" shining gloriously. Once only some wild
animals prowled near the camp, when "Ring," with one bound, disappeared
from my side; and the horses, which were picketed by the stream, broke
their lariats, stampeded, and came rushing wildly towards the fire, and
it was fully half an hour before they were caught and quiet was
restored. "Jim," or Mr. Nugent, as I always scrupulously called him,
told stories of his early youth, and of a great sorrow which had led
him to embark on a lawless and desperate life. His voice trembled, and
tears rolled down his cheek. Was it semi-conscious acting, I wondered,
or was his dark soul really stirred to its depths by the silence, the
beauty, and the memories of youth?
We reached Estes Park at noon of the following day. A more successful
ascent of the Peak was never made, and I would not now exchange my
memories of its perfect beauty and extraordinary sublimity for any
other experience of mountaineering in any part of the world. Yesterday
snow fell on the summit, and it will be inaccessible for eight months
to come.
I. L. B.
Letter VIII
Estes Park--Big game--"Parks" in Colorado--Magnificent scenery--Flowers
and pines--An awful road--Our log cabin--Griffith Evans--A miniature
world--Our topics--A night alarm--A skunk--Morning glories--Daily
routine--The panic--"Wait for the wagon"--A musical evening.
ESTES PARK, COLORADO TERRITORY, October 2.
How time has slipped by I do not know. This is a glorious region, and
the air and life are intoxicating. I live mainly out of doors and on
horseback, wear my half-threadbare Hawaiian dress, sleep sometimes
under the stars on a bed of pine boughs, ride on a Mexican saddle, and
hear once more the low music of my Mexican spurs. "There's a stranger!
Heave arf a brick at him!" is said by many travelers to express the
feeling of the new settlers in these Territories. This is not my
experience in my cheery mountain home. How the rafters ring as I write
with songs and mirth, while the pitch-pine logs blaze and crackle in
the chimney, and the fine snow dust drives in through the chinks and
forms mimic snow wreaths on the floor, and the wind raves and howls and
plays among the creaking pine branches and snaps them short off, and
the lightning plays round the blasted top of Long's Peak, and the hardy
hunters divert themselves with the thought that when I go to bed I must
turn out and face the storm!
You will ask, "What is Estes Park?" This name, with the quiet Midland
Countries' sound, suggests "park palings" well lichened, a lodge with a
curtseying woman, fallow deer, and a Queen Anne mansion. Such as it
is, Estes Park is mine. It is unsurveyed, "no man's land," and mine by
right of love, appropriation, and appreciation; by the seizure of its
peerless sunrises and sunsets, its glorious afterglow, its blazing
noons, its hurricanes sharp and furious, its wild auroras, its glories
of mountain and forest, of canyon, lake, and river, and the
stereotyping them all in my memory. Mine, too, in a better than the
sportsman's sense, are its majestic wapiti, which play and fight under
the pines in the early morning, as securely as fallow deer under our
English oaks; its graceful "black-tails," swift of foot; its superb
bighorns, whose noble leader is to be seen now and then with his
classic head against the blue sky on the top of a colossal rock; its
sneaking mountain lion with his hideous nocturnal caterwaulings, the
great "grizzly," the beautiful skunk, the wary beaver, who is always
making lakes, damming and turning streams, cutting down young
cotton-woods, and setting an example of thrift and industry; the wolf,
greedy and cowardly; the coyote and the lynx, and all the lesser fry of
mink, marten, cat, hare, fox, squirrel, and chipmunk, as well as things
that fly, from the eagle down to the crested blue-jay. May their
number never be less, in spite of the hunter who kills for food and
gain, and the sportsman who kills and marauds for pastime!
But still I have not answered the natural question,[15] "What is Estes
Park?" Among the striking peculiarities of these mountains are
hundreds of high-lying valleys, large and small, at heights varying
from 6,000 to 11,000 feet. The most important are North Park, held by
hostile Indians; Middle Park, famous for hot springs and trout; South
Park is 10,000 feet high, a great rolling prairie seventy miles long,
well grassed and watered, but nearly closed by snow in winter. But
parks innumerable are scattered throughout the mountains, most of them
unnamed, and others nicknamed by the hunters or trappers who have made
them their temporary resorts. They always lie far within the flaming
Foot Hills, their exquisite stretches of flowery pastures dotted
artistically with clumps of trees sloping lawnlike to bright swift
streams full of red-waist-coated trout, or running up in soft glades
into the dark forest, above which the snow peaks rise in their infinite
majesty. Some are bits of meadow a mile long and very narrow, with a
small stream, a beaver dam, and a pond made by beaver industry.
Hundreds of these can only be reached by riding in the bed of a stream,
or by scrambling up some narrow canyon till it debouches on the
fairy-like stretch above. These parks are the feeding grounds of
innumerable wild animals, and some, like one three miles off, seem
chosen for the process of antler-casting, the grass being covered for
at least a square mile with the magnificent branching horns of the elk.
[15] Nor should I at this time, had not Henry Kingsley, Lord Dunraven,
and "The Field," divulged the charms and whereabouts of these "happy
hunting grounds," with the certain result of directing a stream of
tourists into the solitary, beast-haunted paradise.
Estes Park combines the beauties of all. Dismiss all thoughts of the
Midland Counties. For park palings there are mountains, forest
skirted, 9,000, 11,000, 14,000 feet high; for a lodge, two sentinel
peaks of granite guarding the only feasible entrance; and for a Queen
Anne mansion an unchinked log cabin with a vault of sunny blue
overhead. The park is most irregularly shaped, and contains hardly any
level grass. It is an aggregate of lawns, slopes, and glades, about
eighteen miles in length, but never more than two miles in width. The
Big Thompson, a bright, rapid trout stream, snow born on Long's Peak a
few miles higher, takes all sorts of magical twists, vanishing and
reappearing unexpectedly, glancing among lawns, rushing through
romantic ravines, everywhere making music through the still, long
nights. Here and there the lawns are so smooth, the trees so
artistically grouped, a lake makes such an artistic foreground, or a
waterfall comes tumbling down with such an apparent feeling for the
picturesque, that I am almost angry with Nature for her close imitation
of art. But in another hundred yards Nature, glorious, unapproachable,
inimitable, is herself again, raising one's thoughts reverently upwards
to her Creator and ours. Grandeur and sublimity, not softness, are the
features of Estes Park. The glades which begin so softly are soon lost
in the dark primaeval forests, with their peaks of rosy granite, and
their stretches of granite blocks piled and poised by nature in some
mood of fury. The streams are lost in canyons nearly or quite
inaccessible, awful in their blackness and darkness; every valley ends
in mystery; seven mountain ranges raise their frowning barriers between
us and the Plains, and at the south end of the park Long's Peak rises
to a height of 14,700 feet, with his bare, scathed head slashed with
eternal snow. The lowest part of the Park is 7,500 feet high; and
though the sun is hot during the day, the mercury hovers near the
freezing point every night of the summer. An immense quantity of snow
falls, but partly owing to the tremendous winds which drift it into the
deep valleys, and partly to the bright warm sun of the winter months,
the park is never snowed up, and a number of cattle and horses are
wintered out of doors on its sun-cured saccharine grasses, of which the
gramma grass is the most valuable.
The soil here, as elsewhere in the neighborhood, is nearly everywhere
coarse, grey, granitic dust, produced probably by the disintegration of
the surrounding mountains. It does not hold water, and is never wet in
any weather. There are no thaws here. The snow mysteriously disappears
by rapid evaporation. Oats grow, but do not ripen, and, when well
advanced, are cut and stacked for winter fodder. Potatoes yield
abundantly, and, though not very large, are of the best quality, mealy
throughout. Evans has not attempted anything else, and probably the
more succulent vegetables would require irrigation. The wild flowers
are gorgeous and innumerable, though their beauty, which culminates in
July and August, was over before I arrived, and the recent snow
flurries have finished them. The time between winter and winter is
very short, and the flowery growth and blossom of a whole year are
compressed into two months. Here are dandelions, buttercups,
larkspurs, harebells, violets, roses, blue gentian, columbine,
painter's brush, and fifty others, blue and yellow predominating; and
though their blossoms are stiffened by the cold every morning, they are
starring the grass and drooping over the brook long before noon, making
the most of their brief lives in the sunshine. Of ferns, after many a
long hunt, I have only found the Cystopteris fragilis and the Blechnum
spicant, but I hear that the Pteris aquilina is also found. Snakes and
mosquitoes do not appear to be known here. Coming almost direct from
the tropics, one is dissatisfied with the uniformity of the foliage;
indeed, foliage can hardly be written of, as the trees properly so
called at this height are exclusively Coniferae, and bear needles
instead of leaves. In places there are patches of spindly aspens,
which have turned a lemon yellow, and along the streams bear cherries,
vines, and roses lighten the gulches with their variegated crimson
leaves. The pines are not imposing, either from their girth or height.
Their coloring is blackish green, and though they are effective singly
or in groups, they are somber and almost funereal when densely massed,
as here, along the mountain sides. The timber line is at a height of
about 11,000 feet, and is singularly well defined. The most attractive
tree I have seen is the silver spruce, Abies Englemanii, near of kin to
what is often called the balsam fir. Its shape and color are both
beautiful. My heart warms towards it, and I frequent all the places
where I can find it. It looks as if a soft, blue, silver powder had
fallen on its deep-green needles, or as if a bluish hoar-frost, which
must melt at noon, were resting upon it. Anyhow, one can hardly
believe that the beauty is permanent, and survives the summer heat and
the winter cold. The universal tree here is the Pinus ponderosa, but
it never attains any very considerable size, and there is nothing to
compare with the red-woods of the Sierra Nevada, far less with the
sequoias of California.
As I have written before, Estes Park is thirty miles from Longmount,
the nearest settlement, and it can be reached on horseback only by the
steep and devious track by which I came, passing through a narrow rift
in the top of a precipitous ridge, 9,000 feet high, called the Devil's
Gate. Evans takes a lumber wagon with four horses over the mountains,
and a Colorado engineer would have no difficulty in making a wagon
road. In several of the gulches over which the track hangs there are
the remains of wagons which have come to grief in the attempt to
emulate Evans's feat, which without evidence, I should have supposed to
be impossible. It is an awful road. The only settlers in the park are
Griffith Evans, and a married man a mile higher up. "Mountain Jim's"
cabin is in the entrance gulch, four miles off, and there is not
another cabin for eighteen miles toward the Plains. The park is
unsurveyed, and the huge tract of mountainous country beyond is almost
altogether unexplored. Elk hunters occasionally come up and camp out
here; but the two settlers, who, however, are only squatters, for
various reasons are not disposed to encourage such visitors. When
Evans, who is a very successful hunter, came here, he came on foot, and
for some time after settling here he carried the flour and necessaries
required by his family on his back over the mountains.
As I intend to make Estes Park my headquarters until the winter sets
in, I must make you acquainted with my surroundings and mode of living.
The "Queen Anne mansion" is represented by a log cabin made of big hewn
logs. The chinks should be filled with mud and lime, but these are
wanting. The roof is formed of barked young spruce, then a layer of
hay, and an outer coating of mud, all nearly flat. The floors are
roughly boarded. The "living room" is about sixteen feet square, and
has a rough stone chimney in which pine logs are always burning. At
one end there is a door into a small bedroom, and at the other a door
into a small eating room, at the table of which we feed in relays.
This opens into a very small kitchen with a great American
cooking-stove, and there are two "bed closets" besides. Although rude,
it is comfortable, except for the draughts. The fine snow drives in
through the chinks and covers the floors, but sweeping it out at
intervals is both fun and exercise. There are no heaps or rubbish
places outside. Near it, on the slope under the pines, is a pretty
two-roomed cabin, and beyond that, near the lake, is my cabin, a very
rough one. My door opens into a little room with a stone chimney, and
that again into a small room with a hay bed, a chair with a tin basin
on it, a shelf and some pegs. A small window looks on the lake, and
the glories of the sunrises which I see from it are indescribable.
Neither of my doors has a lock, and, to say the truth, neither will
shut, as the wood has swelled. Below the house, on the stream which
issues from the lake, there is a beautiful log dairy, with a water
wheel outside, used for churning. Besides this, there are a corral, a
shed for the wagon, a room for the hired man, and shelters for horses
and weakly calves. All these things are necessaries at this height.
The ranchmen are two Welshmen, Evans and Edwards, each with a wife and
family. The men are as diverse as they can be. "Griff," as Evans is
called, is short and small, and is hospitable, careless, reckless,
jolly, social, convivial, peppery, good natured, "nobody's enemy but
his own." He had the wit and taste to find out Estes Park, where
people have found him out, and have induced him to give them food and
lodging, and add cabin to cabin to take them in. He is a splendid
shot, an expert and successful hunter, a bold mountaineer, a good
rider, a capital cook, and a generally "jolly fellow." His cheery
laugh rings through the cabin from the early morning, and is
contagious, and when the rafters ring at night with such songs as "D'ye
ken John Peel?" "Auld Lang Syne," and "John Brown," what would the
chorus be without poor "Griff's" voice? What would Estes Park be
without him, indeed? When he went to Denver lately we missed him as we
should have missed the sunshine, and perhaps more. In the early
morning, when Long's Peak is red, and the grass crackles with the
hoar-frost, he arouses me with a cheery thump on my door. "We're going
cattle-hunting, will you come?" or, "Will you help to drive in the
cattle? You can take your pick of the horses. I want another hand."
Free-hearted, lavish, popular, poor "Griff" loves liquor too well for
his prosperity, and is always tormented by debt. He makes lots of
money, but puts it into "a bag with holes." He has fifty horses and
1,000 head of cattle, many of which are his own, wintering up here, and
makes no end of money by taking in people at eight dollars a week, yet
it all goes somehow. He has a most industrious wife, a girl of
seventeen, and four younger children, all musical, but the wife has to
work like a slave; and though he is a kind husband, her lot, as
compared with her lord's, is like that of a squaw. Edwards, his
partner, is his exact opposite, tall, thin, and condemnatory looking,
keen, industrious, saving, grave, a teetotaler, grieved for all reasons
at Evans's follies, and rather grudging; as naturally unpopular as
Evans is popular; a "decent man," who, with his industrious wife, will
certainly make money as fast as Evans loses it.
I pay eight dollars a week, which includes the unlimited use of a
horse, when one can be found and caught. We breakfast at seven on
beef, potatoes, tea, coffee, new bread, and butter. Two pitchers of
cream and two of milk are replenished as fast as they are exhausted.
Dinner at twelve is a repetition of the breakfast, but with the coffee
omitted and a gigantic pudding added. Tea at six is a repetition of
breakfast. "Eat whenever you are hungry, you can always get milk and
bread in the kitchen," Evans says--"eat as much as you can, it'll do
you good"--and we all eat like hunters. There is no change of food.
The steer which was being killed on my arrival is now being eaten
through from head to tail, the meat being hacked off quite
promiscuously, without any regard to joints. In this dry, rarefied
air, the outside of the flesh blackens and hardens, and though the
weather may be hot, the carcass keeps sweet for two or three months.
The bread is super excellent, but the poor wives seem to be making and
baking it all day.
The regular household living and eating together at this time consists
of a very intelligent and high-minded American couple, Mr. and Mrs.
Dewy, people whose character, culture, and society I should value
anywhere; a young Englishman, brother of a celebrated African traveler,
who, because he rides on an English saddle, and clings to some other
insular peculiarities, is called "The Earl"; a miner prospecting for
silver; a young man, the type of intelligent, practical "Young
America," whose health showed consumptive tendencies when he was in
business, and who is living a hunter's life here; a grown-up niece of
Evans; and a melancholy-looking hired man. A mile off there is an
industrious married settler, and four miles off, in the gulch leading
to the park, "Mountain Jim," otherwise Mr. Nugent, is posted. His
business as a trapper takes him daily up to the beaver dams in Black
Canyon to look after his traps, and he generally spends some time in or
about our cabin, not, I can see, to Evans's satisfaction. For, in
truth, this blue hollow, lying solitary at the foot of Long's Peak, is
a miniature world of great interest, in which love, jealousy, hatred,
envy, pride, unselfishness, greed, selfishness, and self-sacrifice can
be studied hourly, and there is always the unpleasantly exciting risk
of an open quarrel with the neighboring desperado, whose "I'll shoot
you!" has more than once been heard in the cabin.
The party, however, has often been increased by "campers," either elk
hunters or "prospectors" for silver or locations, who feed with us and
join us in the evening. They get little help from Evans, either as to
elk or locations, and go away disgusted and unsuccessful. Two
Englishmen of refinement and culture camped out here prospecting a few
weeks ago, and then, contrary to advice, crossed the mountains into
North Park, where gold is said to abound, and it is believed that they
have fallen victims to the bloodthirsty Indians of the region. Of
course, we never get letters or newspapers unless some one rides to
Longmount for them. Two or three novels and a copy of Our New West are
our literature. Our latest newspaper is seventeen days old. Somehow
the park seems to become the natural limit of our interests so far as
they appear in conversation at table. The last grand aurora, the
prospect of a snow-storm, track and sign of elk and grizzly, rumors of
a bighorn herd near the lake, the canyons in which the Texan cattle
were last seen, the merits of different rifles, the progress of two
obvious love affairs, the probability of some one coming up from the
Plains with letters, "Mountain Jim's" latest mood or escapade, and the
merits of his dog "Ring" as compared with those of Evans's dog "Plunk,"
are among the topics which are never abandoned as exhausted.
On Sunday work is nominally laid aside, but most of the men go out
hunting or fishing till the evening, when we have the harmonium and
much sacred music and singing in parts. To be alone in the park from
the afternoon till the last glory of the afterglow has faded, with no
books but a Bible and Prayer-book, is truly delightful. No worthier
temple for a "Te Deum" or "Gloria in Excelsis" could be found than this
"temple not made with hands," in which one may worship without being
distracted by the sight of bonnets of endless form, and curiously
intricate "back hair," and countless oddities of changing fashion.
I shall not soon forget my first night here.
Somewhat dazed by the rarefied air, entranced by the glorious beauty,
slightly puzzled by the motley company, whose faces loomed not always
quite distinctly through the cloud of smoke produced by eleven pipes, I
went to my solitary cabin at nine, attended by Evans. It was very
dark, and it seemed a long way off. Something howled--Evans said it
was a wolf--and owls apparently innumerable hooted incessantly. The
pole-star, exactly opposite my cabin door, burned like a lamp. The
frost was sharp. Evans opened the door, lighted a candle, and left me,
and I was soon in my hay bed. I was frightened--that is, afraid of
being frightened, it was so eerie--but sleep soon got the better of my
fears. I was awoke by a heavy breathing, a noise something like sawing
under the floor, and a pushing and upheaving, all very loud. My candle
was all burned, and, in truth, I dared not stir. The noise went on for
an hour fully, when, just as I thought the floor had been made
sufficiently thin for all purposes of ingress, the sounds abruptly
ceased, and I fell asleep again. My hair was not, as it ought to have
been, white in the morning!
I was dressed by seven, our breakfast hour, and when I reached the
great cabin and told my story, Evans laughed hilariously, and Edwards
contorted his face dismally. They told me that there was a skunk's
lair under my cabin, and that they dare not make any attempt to
dislodge him for fear of rendering the cabin untenable. They have
tried to trap him since, but without success, and each night the noisy
performance is repeated. I think he is sharpening his claws on the
under side of my floor, as the grizzlies sharpen theirs upon the trees.
The odor with which this creature, truly named Mephitis, can overpower
its assailants is truly AWFUL. We were driven out of the cabin for
some hours merely by the passage of one across the corral. The bravest
man is a coward in its neighborhood. Dogs rub their noses on the
ground till they bleed when they have touched the fluid, and even die
of the vomiting produced by the effluvia. The odor can be smelt a mile
off. If clothes are touched by the fluid they must be destroyed. At
present its fur is very valuable. Several have been killed since I
came. A shot well aimed at the spine secures one safely, and an
experienced dog can kill one by leaping upon it suddenly without being
exposed to danger. It is a beautiful beast, about the size and length
of a fox, with long thick black or dark-brown fur, and two white
streaks from the head to the long bushy tail. The claws of its
fore-feet are long and polished. Yesterday one was seen rushing from
the dairy and was shot. "Plunk," the big dog, touched it and has to be
driven into exile. The body was valiantly removed by a man with a long
fork, and carried to a running stream, but we are nearly choked with
the odor from the spot where it fell. I hope that my skunk will enjoy
a quiet spirit so long as we are near neighbors.
October 3.
This is surely one of the most entrancing spots on earth. Oh, that I
could paint with pen or brush! From my bed I look on Mirror Lake, and
with the very earliest dawn, when objects are not discernible, it lies
there absolutely still, a purplish lead color. Then suddenly into its
mirror flash inverted peaks, at first a dawn darker all round. This is
a new sight, each morning new. Then the peaks fade, and when morning
is no longer "spread upon the mountains," the pines are mirrored in my
lake almost as solid objects, and the glory steals downwards, and a red
flush warms the clear atmosphere of the park, and the hoar-frost
sparkles and the crested blue-jays step forth daintily on the jewelled
grass. The majesty and beauty grow on me daily. As I crossed from my
cabin just now, and the long mountain shadows lay on the grass, and
form and color gained new meanings, I was almost false to Hawaii; I
couldn't go on writing for the glory of the sunset, but went out and
sat on a rock to see the deepening blue in the dark canyons, and the
peaks becoming rose color one by one, then fading into sudden
ghastliness, the awe-inspiring heights of Long's Peak fading last.
Then came the glories of the afterglow, when the orange and lemon of
the east faded into gray, and then gradually the gray for some distance
above the horizon brightened into a cold blue, and above the blue into
a broad band of rich, warm red, with an upper band of rose color; above
it hung a big cold moon. This is the "daily miracle" of evening, as
the blazing peaks in the darkness of Mirror Lake are the miracle of
morning. Perhaps this scenery is not lovable, but, as if it were a
strong stormy character, it has an intense fascination.
The routine of my day is breakfast at seven, then I go back and "do" my
cabin and draw water from the lake, read a little, loaf a little,
return to the big cabin and sweep it alternately with Mrs. Dewy, after
which she reads aloud till dinner at twelve. Then I ride with Mr.
Dewy, or by myself, or with Mrs. Dewy, who is learning to ride cavalier
fashion in order to accompany her invalid husband, or go after cattle
till supper at six. After that we all sit in the living room, and I
settle down to write to you, or mend my clothes, which are dropping to
pieces. Some sit round the table playing at eucre, the strange hunters
and prospectors lie on the floor smoking, and rifles are cleaned,
bullets cast, fishing flies made, fishing tackle repaired, boots are
waterproofed, part-songs are sung, and about half-past eight I cross
the crisp grass to my cabin, always expecting to find something in it.
We all wash our own clothes, and as my stock is so small, some part of
every day has to be spent at the wash tub. Politeness and propriety
always prevail in our mixed company, and though various grades of
society are represented, true democratic equality prevails, not its
counterfeit, and there is neither forwardness on one side nor
condescension on the other.
Evans left for Denver ten days ago, taking his wife and family to the
Plains for the winter, and the mirth of our party departed with him.
Edwards is somber, except when he lies on the floor in the evening, and
tells stories of his march through Georgia with Sherman. I gave Evans
a 100-dollar note to change, and asked him to buy me a horse for my
tour, and for three days we have expected him. The mail depends on
him. I have had no letters from you for five weeks, and can hardly
curb my impatience. I ride or walk three or four miles out on the
Longmount trail two or three times a day to look for him. Others, for
different reasons, are nearly equally anxious. After dark we start at
every sound, and every time the dogs bark all the able-bodied of us
turn out en masse. "Wait for the wagon" has become a nearly maddening
joke.
October 9.
The letter and newspaper fever has seized on every one. We have sent
at last to Longmount. The evening I rode out on the Longmount trail
towards dusk, escorted by "Mountain Jim," and in the distance we saw a
wagon with four horses and a saddle horse behind, and the driver waved
a handkerchief, the concerted signal if I were the possessor of a
horse. We turned back, galloping down the long hill as fast as two
good horses could carry us, and gave the joyful news. It was an hour
before the wagon arrived, bringing not Evans but two "campers" of
suspicious aspect, who have pitched their camp close to my cabin! You
cannot imagine what it is to be locked in by these mountain walls, and
not to know where your letters are lying. Later on, Mr. Buchan, one of
our usual inmates, returned from Denver with papers, letters for every
one but me, and much exciting news. The financial panic has spread out
West, gathering strength on its way. The Denver banks have all
suspended business. They refuse to cash their own checks, or to allow
their customers to draw a dollar, and would not even give green-backs
for my English gold! Neither Mr. Buchan nor Evans could get a cent.
Business is suspended, and everybody, however rich, is for the time
being poor. The Indians have taken to the "war path," and are burning
ranches and killing cattle. There is a regular "scare" among the
settlers, and wagon loads of fugitives are arriving in Colorado
Springs. The Indians say, "The white man has killed the buffalo and
left them to rot on the plains. We will be revenged." Evans had
reached Longmount, and will be here tonight.
October 10.
"Wait for the wagon" still! We had a hurricane of wind and hail last
night; it was eleven before I could go to my cabin, and I only reached
it with the help of two men. The moon was not up, and the sky overhead
was black with clouds, when suddenly Long's Peak, which had been
invisible, gleamed above the dark mountains, all glistening with
new-fallen snow, on which the moon, as yet uprisen here, was shining.
The evening before, after sunset, I saw another novel effect. My lake
turned a brilliant orange in the twilight, and in its still mirror the
mountains were reflected a deep rich blue. It is a world of wonders.
To-day we had a great storm with flurries of fine snow; and when the
clouds rolled up at noon, the Snowy Range and all the higher mountains
were pure white. I have been hard at work all day to drown my
anxieties, which are heightened by a rumor that Evans has gone
buffalo-hunting on the Platte!
This evening, quite unexpectedly, Evans arrived with a heavy mail in a
box. I sorted it, but there was nothing for me and Evans said he was
afraid that he had left my letters, which were separate from the
others, behind at Denver, but he had written from Longmount for them.
A few hours later they were found in a box of groceries!
All the hilarity of the house has returned with Evans, and he has
brought a kindred spirit with him, a young man who plays and sings
splendidly, has an inexhaustible repertoire, and produces sonatas,
funeral marches, anthems, reels, strathspeys, and all else, out of his
wonderful memory. Never, surely was a chamber organ compelled to such
service. A little cask of suspicious appearance was smuggled into the
cabin from the wagon, and heightens the hilarity a little, I fear. No
churlishness could resist Evans's unutterable jollity or the contagion
of his hearty laugh. He claps people on the back, shouts at them, will
do anything for them, and makes a perpetual breeze. "My kingdom for a
horse!" He has not got one for me, and a shadow crossed his face when
I spoke of the subject. Eventually he asked for a private conference,
when he told me, with some confusion, that he had found himself "very
hard up" in Denver, and had been obliged to appropriate my 100-dollar
note. He said he would give me, as interest for it up to November
25th, a good horse, saddle, and bridle for my proposed journey of 600
miles. I was somewhat dismayed, but there was no other course, as the
money was gone.
[16] I tried a horse, mended my clothes, reduced my pack to a weight of
twelve pounds
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