YOSEMITE FALLS.

Across America:

OR

THE GREAT WEST

AND

THE PACIFIC COAST.

BY

JAMES F. RUSLING,

Late Brevet Brigadier-General, U. S. V.

NEW YORK:

Sheldon & Company.

1874.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by
JAMES F. RUSLING,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

[PREFACE.]

In the summer of 1866, having lately concluded a tour of inspection through the West and South, and awaiting orders in Washington, it was my fortune one morning to receive the following:

"Quartermaster-General's Office, }
"Washington, D. C., July 10, 1866. }

"General:—You will immediately enter upon a tour of inspection of the affairs of the Quartermaster's Department, as administered at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and thence west via Denver City and Salt Lake City to the Pacific Coast, inspecting all intermediate Posts while en route. At Denver City you will confer with Brevet Col. Howard, A. Q. M., as to the practicability of breaking up that depot, and removing the stores to other points where needed. Thence to Salt Lake City, where a rigid inspection is needed. Thence to San Francisco, Cal.

"Upon reaching the Pacific Coast, you will confer with the Commanding General and Chief Quartermaster of the Military Division of the Pacific, and having procured necessary information relative to the locality, importance, etc. of the various Posts, you will proceed upon a careful inspection throughout California, Oregon, Nevada, and Washington and Arizona Territories. Upon completing this duty, you will return to this city, via the Isthmus, and report in person to the Quartermaster-General.

"It will be necessary to keep this Office fully informed, in advance, as to your probable whereabouts, so that instructions may be telegraphed to you at the stations where you are on duty when necessary.

"You are authorized to take a clerk with you.

---

"Very respectfully,
"Your ob't serv't.,
"M. C. MEIGS,
"Quartermaster-General, }
"Brevet Maj.-Gen., U. S. A." }
"Brevet Brig.-Gen. James F. Rusling, }
"Inspector Q. M. Dep't." }

These, my orders, were subsequently endorsed as follows:

"Headquarters of the Army, }
"Washington, D. C., July 18, 1866. }

"Commanding officers will, on the requisition of Gen. Rusling, furnish the necessary escorts to enable him to make the within directed inspections.

"By command of Lieut.-Gen. Grant,
"GEO. K. LEET,
"Ass't. Adj't.-Gen."

The general object of this tour, perhaps I should explain, in a word, was to examine into the condition of our various depots and posts West, and consider their bases and routes of supply, with a view to reducing if possible the enormous expenditures, that then everywhere prevailed there. How well or ill this was accomplished, it is not for me to say, nor is this volume the place—my Reports at the time speaking for themselves.[1]

The route thus roughly indicated was long, and in parts reputed dangerous; but for years I had cherished a desire to see something of that vast region in the sunset, and here at length was the golden opportunity. I need scarcely say, therefore, that I obeyed my orders with alacrity, and in the execution of them was absent in all about a twelvemonth. During that period, crossing the continent to San Francisco, among the Mountains, along the Pacific Coast, and thence home by the Isthmus, I travelled in all over 15,000 miles, as per accompanying Map; of which about 2,000 were by railroad, 2,000 by stage-coach, 3,000 by ambulance or on horseback, and the remainder by steamer. This book, now, is the rough record of it all, written at odd hours since, as occasion offered. Much of this journey, of course, was over the old travelled routes, so well described already by Bowles, Richardson, Nordhoff, and others. But several hundred miles of it, along and among the Rocky Mountains, a thousand or so through Utah and Idaho, and perhaps two thousand or more through Southern California and Arizona, were through regions that most overland travellers never see; and here, at least, I trust something was gleaned of interest and profit to the general reader. Moreover, my official orders gave me access to points not always to be reached, and to sources of information not usually open; so that it was my duty, as well as pleasure, to see and hear as much of the Great West and the Pacific Coast everywhere, as seemed practicable in such a period.

Of course, I kept a rough diary and journal (apart from my official Reports), and retiring from the army in 1867, perhaps these should have been written out for publication long ago, if at all. But it proved no easy task to settle down again into the harness of civil life, after being six years in the army, as all "old soldiers" at least well know. I plead only this excuse for my delay—the absorption of a busy life and health not firm; and trust these notes on Western life and scenery, if lacking somewhat in immediate freshness, will yet be considered not altogether stale. The completion of the Pacific Rail road, it will be noted, made this long tour of mine, by stage-coach and ambulance, through the Great West and along the Pacific Coast, about the last, if not the last, of its kind possible; and, therefore, under all the circumstances, it has seemed not unfitting, even at this late date, to give these pages to the world.

Writing only for the general public, it will be noticed, I have tried everywhere to avoid all military and official details, as far as practicable, and to confine myself mainly to what would seem of interest, if not value, to everybody. So, too, I have aimed to bridge the interval from 1866-7 to 1874 by such additional facts as appeared necessary; but without, however, modifying my own observations and experiences materially. If some persons, and some localities, are spoken of more flatteringly (or less) than usual, it is at least with truthfulness and candor, as things seemed to me. No doubt errors of fact have been committed, but these were not intended; and some of these, of course, were simply unavoidable in a book like this. So, too, as to style, no pretension whatever is made; but I claim merely an honest endeavor to convey some useful, if not interesting information currente calamo, in the readiest way possible, and a generous public will forgive much accordingly.

In brief, if what is here roughly said will lead any American to a better love of his country, or to a truer pride in it, or any foreigner to a kindlier appreciation of the Republic, verily I have my reward.

J. F. R.
Trenton, N. J., March, 15, 1874.

[CONTENTS.]

MAP OF
UNITED STATES
MEXICO &
CENTRAL AMERICA
to illustrate
RUSLING'S "ACROSS AMERICA"

[Across America;]

OR,

THE GREAT WEST AND THE PACIFIC COAST.

[CHAPTER I.]

FROM NEW YORK TO FORT RILEY, KANSAS.

Across America, from New York to San Francisco, may be roughly estimated as three thousand miles. The first third of this occupied us only about three days and three nights, though the whole trip consumed just less than a twelve-month. From New York to St. Louis, via Cincinnati, was our first stage, and of course by railroad. We left New York, Tuesday, July 24, 1866, by the Erie Railway, and on the following Thursday afternoon reached St. Louis in time for a late dinner. Tarrying here a day or two, to pick up some information about the Plains, we passed on to Leavenworth; and thence, after a longer pause to Fort Riley. The Union Pacific Railroad, Eastern Division (or Kansas Pacific, as it is now generally called), halted then at Waumega, some thirty miles from Fort Riley, whence we reached Riley by stage-coach. The coach itself was a lumbering, weather-beaten vehicle, with sorry teams of horses; it was a hot August afternoon, with rolling clouds of dust; we had nine passengers inside and three outside, with freight and baggage everywhere; and altogether this little stage-ride was a good initiation into the mysteries and miseries of stage-coaching across the continent.

From New York to St. Louis is already a series of towns and cities, with the country as a whole well settled up, for America. The Great West, it is soon seen, is no longer the valley of Ohio and the prairies of Illinois. It has long since crossed the Mississippi, and emigrated beyond the Missouri. What used to be called the "West" has already become the centre; and "out west" now means Kansas or Colorado, if anything at all. The Erie road, with its broad-gauge coaches, takes you through the picturesque, as well as rich and fertile regions of northern New Jersey, and western New York, whence the ride through Ohio, down the lovely valley of the Miami to Cincinnati, is substantially as through a garden. Over much of this region, it is plain to be seen, New England has left her mark, never to be effaced. Her school-houses and churches, her intelligence and thrift, are all reproduced (only slightly westernized), and one can see that he is in Yankee-land still at a glance. You might know it, by the omnipresence of white paint and green blinds, if nothing else. You see it in the average inhabitant and detect it in his speech. And yet it is Yankee-land, with enlarged freedom and independence of thought and action, and therefore doubly welcome. Southern Indiana and Illinois, you find rapidly filling up; but they still seem much behind that sunny heart of Ohio, the Miami Valley. Populated largely by the overflow from Kentucky and Tennessee—chiefly the "poor whites" of those former slave states—the results are everywhere unmistakable. Evidently, even to the passing traveller, the average Hoosier or Sucker, as yet, is much behind the average Buckeye, and he will find it a hard task to overtake him. The lineal descendant of the Cavalier and the Corncracker, how can he expect to compete successfully with the regular representative of the Roundhead and the Yankee?

Cincinnati and St. Louis strike you as large and growing cities; but they do not impress you like Chicago, at least as she did before the great fire. They seem to have taken Quaker Philadelphia, as their type and model, rather than buoyant New York. Many of their streets, you find similarly named, and a like atmosphere pervades much of their business. In talking with their magnates of trade and finance, you note a conservative tone, that illy accords with your ideas of the West, and you are inclined to wonder whether the far-famed push and pluck of that romantic region are not myths after all. Buffalo and Toledo, Cleveland and Chicago, however, would soon undeceive you—especially, Chicago. The push and drive, the enterprise and elan of New York, that are reproduced so well along our northern tier of cities, all culminated at Chicago—at least before the fire—until she seemed New York incarnate or even intensified. The metropolis and brain of the northwest, how a day in her busy streets braced and inspired one! With all her brave memories of the past, no wonder she still believes enthusiastically in herself, and even in her ashes doubted not her future!

St. Louis, long her rival in trade, we found just beginning to recover from the benumbing effects of slavery and the rebellion. The rebellion, sealing up her railroads and extinguishing her down-river trade, had given her a bad set back. But she was already fast picking up the broken threads of her commerce, and was again preparing to contend with Chicago for the palm of supremacy. Seated on the Mississippi, with a vast river trade up and down, and an immense region back of her, her geographical position could scarcely be surpassed, and no doubt she has a grand and noble future before her. Her levees, we found, thronged with steamers, some up for New Orleans 1,200 miles south; others for Fort Benton 3,100 miles north and west. Her population already exceeded a quarter of a million. Her suburbs were steadily filling up, in spite of numerous sinkholes in the limestone formation there. Her streets were already well gridironed with horse-railroads. Her facilities for business were large and increasing. And with her vast system of rivers, north to the British Dominion and south to the gulf, and her rapidly developing back country—even to the Rocky Mountains and New Mexico—nature seems to have destined her to become the great and abiding metropolis of all that region. Her vast bridge and tunnels were not yet begun, but she was already prophesying great things for the future.

From St. Louis, three hundred miles through Missouri, to Leavenworth, Kansas, you find a noble region, that needs only a live population to make it a garden. It is mostly rich rolling prairie, but with more timber and streams than in Illinois, and with limestone abounding nearly everywhere. All along the route, it was plain to be seen, Missouri had suffered sadly from slavery. Both in population and business, in town and country, clearly "the trail of the serpent" had been over her all. But the wave of immigration, now that slavery was dead, had already reached her, and we found its healthful currents everywhere overflowing her bottoms and prairies. The new-comers seemed to be largely Yankee and German, almost everywhere. France once so predominant here, was already supplanted by Germany, and the Teuton bade fair to rule Missouri soon, even then. At Hermann, where we stopped for dinner, a German Hebe tendered us excellent native wine, and the culture of the grape, we learned, had already become a leading industry of this section of the state. The sturdy Rhine-men, as true to freedom as in the days of Tacitus, were already everywhere planting vineyards, and in the near future were sure of handsome returns from petty farms, that our old time "Pikes" and "Border Ruffians" would have starved on. Throughout the ride, the Missouri or Big-Muddy, as the Indians call it, was often in sight, a broad tawny stream; and many of its bends and reaches were so beautiful, that it hardly seemed to deserve that savage criticism of Bayard Taylor's, as being "too lazy to wash itself." Its banks as a rule are higher and better, than those of the Mississippi anywhere below Cairo, and its bottom lands seemed unsurpassed in fertility.

Leavenworth, on the Missouri, where it takes a final bend north, was still the entrepôt for New Mexico and the plains. Omaha had already tapped the Colorado and Utah trade and travel, and has since mainly absorbed them, by the completion of the Union Pacific railroad. But Leavenworth still had a large trade and travel of her own, as a point of departure for New Mexico and the Plains, and seemed destined to maintain it. Only a decade or so before, she was without a house or inhabitant; but now she claimed thirty-thousand people, and was rapidly increasing. We found many handsome stores and elegant residences everywhere going up. Her streets were fast being graded and macadamized, and the guttering especially was most solid and substantial. She had several daily papers already, with weekly editions of a large circulation. Many of her stores were doing a wholesale business of a million of dollars annually. A fine Catholic church was being erected, which when completed promised to be the chief ornament of the city. But the largest and showiest building there then was a combined brewery and dance house, which augured badly for the town. Off on the suburbs of the city, we passed a park of wagons or "prairie-schooners," acres in extent, tangible evidence that we had already struck the commerce of the Plains.

By Lawrence and Topeka, already towns of several thousand people, over the historic plains of Kansas, we sped along up the valley of the Kaw or Kansas to Waumega; and thence, as I have said, by stage to Fort Riley. Junction City, just beyond Fort Riley, at the confluence of the Republican and Smoky Hill rivers, we found to be a hamlet of several hundred people, and already growing rapidly. It had been projected, with the expectation that the railroad would bend north here, and ascending the Republican go thence to Denver, which would have made Junction the last station and grand depot for all New Mexico and much of the Rocky Mountain region. But, as it had been decided afterwards to keep on up the Smoky Hill instead, Junction had missed of much of its importance. Its location, however, was good, at the confluence thus of two rivers; and with its single street of straggling houses, of all styles of architecture, and in every stage of construction, it was a good specimen of a frontier town, in the first year of its settlement.

The country as a whole, thus far through Kansas, much surpassed our expectations. Not only were the broad bottoms of the Kaw everywhere dotted with farms, but even the high rolling prairies beyond were fast settling up. Of course, settlements grew more scattering the farther we progressed westward; but they were always in sight and everywhere rapidly increasing. Herds of horses and cattle grazed along the bottoms, and grouse and sage-hens whirred up by the roadside as we sped along. At one point, a brace of oxen, yoked together, got upon the track, and our engine mangled the poor beasts dreadfully before they escaped. The road, as yet, was poorly ditched, and without fences on either side, so that horses and cattle strayed across it quite at will. The wheat-crop had everywhere been fair, and Indian corn was promising to be magnificent. Corn had looked well, all through Ohio and Indiana, Illinois and Missouri; but in the Kansas bottoms it was superb in its "embattled glory," and seemed to be a great favorite with the farmers. Indeed, Kansas, both in soil and climate, is a rare state, and well worth to freedom all the blood and treasure she cost us. True she lacks timber; but so far she had got along, and the weight of testimony seemed everywhere to be that her growth of timber improved with the reclamation and settlement of the country. The Indian was everywhere retiring before the pale faces, and the autumnal fires ceasing with his departure, bushes and trees soon appeared, and we heard repeated instances of springs even breaking out, where none had been known before. As an offset to her want of timber, coal had been discovered in many places, and all through the valley of the Kaw, she has a cream-colored limestone in the bluffs, that works up beautifully for building purposes. When first quarried, it is so soft that a common hand-saw or chisel can dress it into any shape desired; but exposure to the atmosphere soon hardens it, and then it continues so. In appearance it resembles the Milwaukee free-stone, that used to make Michigan Avenue, Chicago, so handsome and stately, and as a building material will prove immensely valuable through all Southern Kansas. At Junction City it was being got out by machinery, and fashioned into blocks by horsepower. A company controlled the business, and as they could furnish this elegant stone at a much less cost than lumber or brick, they were anticipating very handsome profits.

The scenery of Kansas possesses many points of interest, but as a whole lacks grandeur and sublimity. The view from Prospect Ridge, back of Leavenworth, up and down the Missouri, is good; but the landscape from Indian Point, near Junction City, up the Smoky Hill, has more scope and variety, and was the finest we saw. Here, and at other points, are some superb specimens of river terraces. We counted four and five separate "benches," as they call them there, or terraces, in many places, and the ancient water-marks of past geologic ages seemed very evident. The rounded appearance of the country generally, cropping out here and there into rough and misshapen ridges, indicated pretty clearly the former water-line, and we often interested ourselves in tracing it for miles.

Kansas, of course, abounds in enterprise and thrift. Saved to freedom by Sharpe's rifles and the Bible, she invested largely in the school-house and the church, and already reaps her fit reward. Her Yankees whittle away just as cutely as they used to in New England, and her Western men spread themselves hugely as elsewhere. Since the war, she had received quite a large accession of population from our ex-officers and soldiers. We found specimens of the Boys in Blue scattered almost everywhere, and usually they were doing well. A fine esprit du corps animated them, and will keep them knit together for the future. At various points we found them just "squatted" on a quarter-section, and with the very rudest surroundings, but ever plucky and hopeful. At Junction we met a late Paymaster, U. S. Vol's., who was half-owner of the chief grocery and liquor-store, as well as partner in a stone-quarry, and was about establishing a National Bank. He was a man of spirit and enterprise, and seemed to have enough surplus energy left for several more employments.

At Leavenworth, up at the old Fort, we saw our first Indians—a party of Delawares. They consisted of Fall-Leaf, war-chief of the Delawares, his nephew General Jackson, and a handful of other braves. They were dressed in the usual rough costume of the border, but with an eagle-feather or two in their broad-brimmed sombreros trailing in the wind. Fall-Leaf was a noble specimen of the Indian in a half-civilized state. He was a brawny, athletic, powerful fellow, five feet eleven inches high, weighed one hundred and ninety-six pounds, and was fifty-five years old. A perfect mass of bone and muscle, without an ounce of superfluous flesh, his frame was a sight to look upon—especially the massive splendor of his neck and chest. A Hercules of the Plains, we could well believe the stories told of his great strength and powers of endurance. General Jackson was a lithe, light-built man, about thirty-six years of age, and in physique almost the opposite of his brawny uncle. Three of them had just been engaged as guides to a military expedition about leaving for the Indian country, and a fourth was going along as interpreter. Fall-Leaf had long served the government, with marked fidelity, as guide on the Plains and in the far Indian country, and received one hundred and fifty dollars per month and rations when absent on such duty. He was familiar with the whole country west, as far as the Rocky Mountains, and southward to New Mexico, and was reputed as invaluable in his way. He told me the Delawares numbered about a thousand souls yet, and had stood at those figures for several years. They occupy a Reservation of several thousand acres on the Missouri just below Leavenworth, and are engaged generally in farming and stock-raising. They have a church, pretty generally attended, and a good school, well-patronized. He said his people were fully impressed with the importance of education and religion, and generally there was an earnest desire among them to have their children learn all "Pale-Face ways." He said he took a drink of "fire-water" himself occasionally, on cold or wet days, and rather liked it; but that, as a rule, drunkenness was on the decrease among the Delawares, and he was glad of it. He had a wife and eight children, and said they allowed "only one wife at a time in his tribe." He said he was born far away toward the rising sun, on a river among the mountains; and when I showed him a map, he immediately pointed out the head-waters of the Delaware. When I told him I had just come from there, and that my "wigwam" stood upon its banks, he seemed greatly interested. The first steamboat he ever saw, was many years before at St. Louis, and he thought it "Very good," because "It went itself! Puff! Puff! No paddle!" His first locomotive, was quite recently at Leavenworth, and he thought it "Much good! Went whiz! Beat buffalo or pony!" Of the telegraph, he said, "I no understand; but very much good! Heap swift! Like arrow or bullet between wide places; only heap better!"

He said, the Delawares believed in the Great Manitou, who made earth, and sky, and everything; but many did not believe in the Evil Manitou. He himself seemed to be a pretty good Universalist. He thought God "very much good," and couldn't imagine how any lesser being could interfere with Him. "Perhaps, Evil Manitou somewhere; but Fall-Leaf know only Good Manitou." He admitted some of his people believed in spirits; but he himself had never seen any, and was skeptical on the whole subject. Some medicine-men, he said, claimed to have seen them, and to be able to control them; but he thought the whole thing "a heap humbug."

Fall-Leaf, as I have said, was then War Chief of the Delawares. In his time he had been quite a noted warrior, and was proud of his reputation for bravery and prowess. His last fight against the Plains Indians had been about two years before, when he covered the retreat of a squad of infantry, from a body of mounted Cheyennes and Arrapahoes, and brought them all safely off. His last fight at the head of the Delawares had been some ten years before, when with less than fifty warriors he encountered and fought over two hundred Pawnees, and whipped them well. Altogether, he supposed, he had killed and scalped two or three hundred Indians, in his time; but never a pale-face. He was a dignified and quiet enough looking Red Skin to talk to through an interpreter, and occasionally would grunt out a little broken English himself; but when roused, and with the fury of battle upon him, no doubt he would be an ugly customer to deal with. His face was full of smothered force and fire, of latent power and fierceness, like a tamed tiger's; and notwithstanding his peaceful demeanor, he all the while suggested that a single war-whoop, or a scalping-knife flashing through the air, would speedily transform the gentle Fall-Leaf into a hideous savage again.

Beyond Topeka we passed St. Mary's, a Catholic Mission among the Pottawotamies. These Indians had a Reservation there then thirty miles square, of as fine land as there was in Kansas. Stock-raising seemed to be their chief occupation, though they had some fields well fenced, and their corn crops were looking well. They lived in one-story log-cabins, and by dint of years of hard work the missionaries had succeeded in reducing them to a sort of semi-civilization; but the aborigine survived still, and cropped out fearfully everywhere. It was an anomaly and an anachronism to see them driving teams and threshing grain; and they themselves seemed to confess it by their awkwardness. Beyond Manhattanville we met en route a large party of them—braves, squaws and papooses—returning from a Buffalo hunt on the Plains. Some were in wagons with their spoils of buffalo meat and robes; but the majority went careering along on horseback. Most of them were in semi-civilized costume, not much rougher than an average borderer, though their head-gear usually ran much to feather. A few of their young squaws were decidedly pretty and piquant, and, as they ambled by on their gaily-caparisoned ponies, created quite a sensation among us; but the older ones were hideous looking hags.

In all this part of Kansas, the Indian had already had his day, and everywhere was being fast eliminated. The valleys of the Kaw and its two chief tributaries, the Republican and Smoky Hill, had already heard the whistle of the white man's locomotive, and the whole region there was beginning to shake with the tread of the onward march of civilization. As "Bleeding Kansas," she had had her dark days; but these, happily, were past, and the tide wave of eastern immigration was now surging and swelling all up and down her borders. We met cheery voices and friendly hands at every stage of progress; and could not but bid Kansas a hearty God-speed as we journeyed on.

[CHAPTER II.]

FROM THE KANSAS TO THE PLATTE.

It was the middle of August, before I was ready to leave Fort Riley; and now a word about my compagnons du voyage. These were two, Mr. J. D. L. of Boston, my well-tried clerk and friend; and Dr. B. E. M. of New York, then recently Ass't. Editor —— Magazine. Mr. L. had been with me for several years in the field and at post; was active, intelligent, alert; and was as capital a shot, as he was rare a penman. Dr. M. I knew but slightly; but he came well-recommended, as a literateur and gentleman, and I was glad to have his company. He had been considerable of a traveller in Europe, and was now desirous of crossing the Continent to San Francisco, whence he might go over to Japan and China. Another gentleman had also talked much of joining us; but his heart failed him at the last hour, and he preceded us to California, via the Isthmus.

My inspections at Leavenworth and Riley being completed, we left Fort Riley just after sunrise Aug. 16th, and soon were fairly afloat on the Plains, and off for the Pacific. Hitherto the railroad had still served to connect us with the East. But now we bade good-bye to cars and locomotives, and did not see them again until we heard their tramp and whistle two thousand miles away, in the cañon of the Columbia. "Afloat," I think, is the only right word for the Plains; because the first impression they give you is that of the sea, so vast is their extent, and even the wagons that cross them—huge, lumbering, fore-and-aft vehicles, with from eight to ten yoke of oxen each—in border parlance are called "Prairie-Schooners."

My orders were to proceed from Fort Riley on the Kaw or Kansas, to Fort Kearney on the Platte; and, as the shortest and most direct route, we were now off, across the country, in execution of them. Our route lay northwest across the high "divide" between the Kansas and the Platte, through central Kansas; and as there was no stage-line here, we had to go by ambulance. Neither was there any well-defined road; but we were told that at Marysville, some sixty miles north, we could strike the great Overland Route, from Atchison, Mo. and afterwards travel westward by that. Our "outfit" consisted of one ambulance for ourselves, one army-wagon for our escort of five infantry-men, and another for baggage, forage, and rations. Our friends at Riley knew little about the intervening country, except that Indians were reported there; and as their cavalry was all out scouting, could furnish only the infantry escort, as above. Even this seemed small; but we were all well-armed ourselves; and what with our repeating rifles and revolvers, few as we were, felt good for fifty red skins or more, come as they would.

For the first seventy-five miles or so, we were seldom out of sight of scattered ranches; but long before reaching Fort Kearney—some two hundred and thirty miles from Riley—they had dwindled away to only the occasional stage-stations, every ten or twelve miles or so apart. Along the creeks and streams, we found farms rapidly springing up; but the "divides" between these were generally barren and withered up. Oftentimes we could find no water for ten or twelve miles, and wood was even rarer. Of course, we "camped-out" during the whole trip, and frequently had to carry our necessary fire-wood fifteen and twenty miles. In the spring, all these "divides," as well as the bottoms, are clothed with luxuriant verdure; but in summer, the rainless atmosphere there sweeps over them, like a sirocco, and everything soon perishes. At night, we found the air grew rapidly cold, and we shivered under our blankets; but in the middle of the day, the sun fairly blazed from a cloudless sky, and I have seldom felt its effects more severely. When we struck the Overland Route, we found its roadway a mass of impalpable dust, black and stifling. With the breeze dead-ahead, or athwart our course, we got along very well; but when it chopped around behind us, the black prairie soil rose in clouds, and our poor mules suffered terribly. Two of them, indeed, died outright, from heat and dust, before reaching the Platte, though we drove very carefully, seldom averaging over thirty-five miles per day. Evidently this part of Kansas must grow more trees, and thus secure more rain and moisture, before these high "divides" or ridges between the Kansas and the Platte will amount to much for farming purposes.

After a week of travelling like this, our first sight of the Platte, with its broad and luxuriant bottoms waving with verdure, was refreshing to the eye. Our jaded animals snuffed the water and grass afar off, and of their own accord broke into a trot as we neared them. We struck the river at Valley Ranche, a collection of a dozen or so sod-houses, some seven or eight miles below Fort Kearney. The Platte here is a mile or more wide, and looks like a noble stream; but it is shallow and treacherous with shoals and quicksands, as well as tainted with alkali, and altogether is about as thorough a swindle as a river can well be. Its northern bank was still fringed with cottonwoods, but its southern had scarcely a bush to break the monotony. Ascending it to Fort Kearney, we found its broad bottoms literally swarming with countless millions of Plains grasshoppers. They really covered the ground, a moving army; they filled the air, coming in all directions, their white wings twinkling like a snow-squall. Egypt's plague of locusts could scarcely have been worse, for they swept a broad tract of country clean of everything, as they moved eastward. We found the settlers complaining of them bitterly, as the greatest pests of the region, destroying all vegetation and forbidding all attempts at farming, some seasons. Said a butternut Missourian, in speaking of them: "The pesky varmints! They eat up all my corn, and tobacco. And then when I cussed 'em for it, they coolly sat on the Shanghai-fence thar, and squirted tobacco juice at me!" But they have been almost as bad in other new states, at first, and it was thought the advance of our line of settlements would soon subdue or extirpate them.

On leaving Riley, we had anticipated some good shooting en route; but game generally proved rare, or else quite shy. Prairie-chickens or grouse abounded until we got beyond the settlements, when they disappeared almost entirely. They are a timid bird, and hard to approach on foot; but on horseback or in a wagon you may get close upon them very easily. Feeding in the grass or reeds, in small flocks, at the first sound they pop their heads up erect, as if inviting the sportsman to crack away at them. This we did continually from an ambulance or behind it, and seldom went into camp the first few days without prairie-chickens enough for all. We expected to see deer and buffalo, but were unable to catch sight of even one, being too far east yet. As we approached the Platte, we saw a solitary antelope, gazing at us from a distant bluff; but when we drew nearer he wheeled about and dashed quickly out of sight among its sand-hills. Doves and cow-birds appeared in quite considerable numbers when we struck the Overland Route, and, of course, the crow or buzzard also—the omnipresent scavenger of the Plains. Our first prairie-dogs turned up on the Little Blue, just beyond Thompson's. Here was quite a village of the little fellows, with their sentinels duly out; but as we came nearer, the alarm was sounded, and soon "whisk" went a hundred tails, as they plunged head downwards into their holes. A few noses peeped cautiously out as we drove by; but the most of their dogships continued perdu. Just above one hole a diminutive owl still stood guard in the deepening twilight, and the settlers insisted that the old yarn about the prairie-dog, the owl, and the rattlesnake being tenants in common—all keeping house in one and the same hole—is really true. We overheard our teamsters (all old Plainsmen) disputing about this one night, around their camp-fire, as we lay awake; but their final conclusion, and the weight of frontier testimony, seemed to be in favor of this Happy Family.

Of Indians we heard a great deal, but saw none. Rumors of them increased as we moved north and west; but, if about, they gave us a wide berth. At Virginia Station, about half way, the station-keeper reported the Pawnees in force on the Little Blue; and at Big Sandy the last stage-driver through from Fort Kearny reported Fort Reno taken, Fort Laramie besieged and Kearny itself in danger. He said, one settler had already been lanced and killed on the Little Blue; that the Pawnees there—six hundred lodges strong—were moody and hostile; and, as our party was too small for effective resistance advised our return. Further on we found ranches here and there abandoned, with the crops left growing; and one day we descried a solitary horseman in the distance galloping rapidly towards us, that we were sure must be a red skin. But as he came nearer he proved to be a settler's half-grown boy, who had been up the road several miles helping a neighbor move. He, too, had heard "Big Injun" stories, but said his people did not mind them much. These reports, at first, I confess, were rather startling, as we had no idea of losing our scalps; but as our safe advance day by day exploded one after another of them, we soon became quite skeptical on the Indian question. The chief effect was to increase our prudence and vigilance. We looked well to our arms morning and evening, and seldom halted, even briefly, without posting a guard. In due time we reached and passed the valley of the Little Blue without seeing a Pawnee—they had all gone off a fortnight before to the Republican and Smoky Hill to hunt buffalo—and finally arrived at Fort Kearny in safety. There they laughed at the idea of Indians south or east of them, but confessed to ugly reports about Reno and Laramie. Ultimately, as we got farther west, these also proved false; and our conclusion as to Big Injun stories in general, was not very favorable.

The few settlers along the route consisted chiefly of New Englanders, with a goodly sprinkling of Germans. They generally had milk and eggs to sell, but seldom butter or vegetables. We camped one night on Fancy Creek, near a Mr. Segrist's, where we got tomatoes and onions, as well as eggs and milk; and as we had shot several prairie-chickens during the day, we supped luxuriously. Our mess-kit was rather a primitive affair, not much to speak of, and our cook quite a worthless fellow, as it turned out; but L. developed a talent that way very surprising, and so we got along comfortably. This Segrist himself was quite a character in his way. A Pennsylvania Dutchman by birth, he was bred in Indiana, but emigrated to Fancy Creek during the Kansas troubles, to help save the territory to freedom. Squatting on a quarter-section there, he first built himself a log-cabin, and then subsequently enlarged and improved this by a "lean-to;" now he had just completed a good two-story stone house, of magnesian limestone, and aspired to luxury. He had flocks and herds well about him; he was a hearty, cheery man, not afraid of hard work, nor a spice of danger; and, it was plain to be seen, would soon be a rich man, if he kept on. Of course, he was a Republican in politics, and took the St. Louis Westliche Post.

On Wild-Cat Creek, the first day out from Fort Riley, we struck a Mr. Silvers, who proved to be a minister of the United Brethren. He had a half-section of land there, and his son-in-law as much more just adjoining. They were both living in rude shanties put up by themselves, but seemed happy and contented. During the war, he had sent one son to the army, and when Price invaded Kansas he himself shouldered his Plains rifle, and marched to the defence of Lawrence and Topeka. When at home, he worked upon his farm; but he had a frontier circuit, with preaching places a hundred miles in every direction, which took him away most of the time. He seemed to be a veritable missionary, looking up the lost sheep scattered along the Border, and we bade him God-speed. His "gude wife" gave us a bowl of buttermilk fresh from the churn, and we paid her in the latest eastern newspapers.

[CHAPTER III.]

UP THE PLATTE TO DENVER.

The Union Pacific Railroad had then just reached Fort Kearney from Omaha, and was the sensation of the hour. With a large force of men, it was being pushed rapidly up the north bank of the Platte; but as our road lay up the south bank, we did not cross to see it. There was little to prevent its rapid progress of a mile and even two miles per day, as the Platte valley ascends gradually, and for railroad purposes is almost everywhere practically a level. We now dismissed our ambulance and escort, with instructions to return to Fort Riley, and transferred ourselves, bag and baggage, to Holliday's Overland Stages, which here connected with the railroad.

This stage-line was long one of the first enterprises of America, and, as the forerunner of the railroad did its part well in carrying civilization across the continent. It was then owned and controlled by Mr. Ben Holliday, an enterprising Missourian, but then living in New York. It had originally fallen into his hands for debt, but he had since greatly enlarged and extended it. It then ran from Fort Kearney to Denver, with branches to the mining regions; thence across the Rocky Mountains to Salt Lake;[2] thence through Idaho to the Columbia, with branches through Montana; extending in all, nearly three thousand miles, employing six thousand horses and mules, and more than three hundred coaches. He paid his general superintendent ten thousand dollars per year; his division superintendents, half that; and lesser employees proportionately. His hay, and grain, and provisions, he had to haul hundreds of miles, distributing them along the route, and his fuel frequently one hundred and fifty. To offset all this, he carried the U. S. Mail, daily each way, and for this service alone received over half a million of dollars per year from the government. In addition, his passenger fares from Fort Kearney to Denver were one hundred and fifty dollars; to Salt Lake, three hundred; to Nevada, four hundred and fifty; to California, five hundred; and to Idaho and Montana, about the same.

We found his stages to be our well-known Concord coaches, and they quite surpassed our expectations, both as to comfort and to speed. They were intended for nine inside—three seats full—and as many more outside, as could be induced to get on. Their teams were either four or six horses, depending on the roads, and the distance between stations. The animals themselves were our standing wonder; no broken-down nags, or half-starved Rosinantes, like our typical stage-horses east; but, as a rule, they were fat and fiery, and would have done credit to a horseman anywhere. Wiry, gamey, as if feeling their oats thoroughly, they often went off from the stations at a full gallop; at the end of a mile or so would settle down to a square steady trot; and this they would usually keep up right along until they reached the next station. These "stations" varied from ten to twelve miles apart, depending on water and grass, and consisted of the rudest kind of a shanty or sod-house ordinarily. Here we would find another team, ready harnessed, prancing to be gone, and in fifteen minutes or so would be off on the road again. Halts were made twice a day for meals, forty minutes each, and with this exception we kept bowling ahead night and day. Our meals were fair for the region; generally coffee, beef-steak or bacon, potatoes, and saleratus-biscuit hot; but the prices—one dollar and one dollar and a half per meal—seemed extortionate. In this way, we often made ten and twelve miles per hour, while on the road; and seldom drove less than one hundred, and one hundred and twenty-five miles, per day and night.

We talked a good deal, or essayed to, with the drivers; but as a rule, they were a taciturn species. Off the box they were loquacious enough; but when mounted, with four or six in hand, they either thought it unprofessional to talk, or else were absorbed too much in their business. I remarked this to a Division Superintendent, when he replied, "You bet! A talking driver is like a whistling girl or crowing hen, always of no account!" They each had their drive of fifty or sixty miles, up one day, and back the next, and to the people along the route were important personages. Many we found were from New Hampshire, and Western New York. Usually they were a roving class; but when they once settled down to stage-driving, they seldom left it permanently. There seemed to be a fascination about the life, hard as it was, and we found many of these Jehus who had been driving for years, and never expected to quit it. They were fond of tobacco and whiskey, and rolled out ponderous oaths, when things did not go to suit them; but as a rule, they were hearty and generous fellows, and were doing the world good service. As bearers of the U. S. Mail, they felt themselves kings of the road, and were seldom loth to show it. "Clar the road! Git out of the way thar with your bull-teams!" was a frequent salutation, when overtaking or meeting wagon-trains; and if this was not complied with quickly, they made little hesitation in running into the oxen, and swearing till all was blue. I have a vivid recollection of one instance of the kind, when we ran into an ox-team, and the justly exasperated teamster sent us his compliments, in the shape of a bullet whizzing through the air, as we whirled away again.

In fellow-passengers we were remarkably lucky. Col. B. was a good specimen of the ups and downs of an average Westerner. He was a graduate of West Point, or at least had been a cadet there, and afterwards served some years in the Regular Army. Retiring to civil life, he subsequently was elected Lieut.-Governor of a western state, and afterwards became Governor—the incumbent dying. When the war broke out, he turned up as Colonel of a volunteer regiment; and now, like the Irishman, having been "promoted backward," was vegetating as sutler at a post on the Plains. He was a man of rare wit and intelligence, of infinite jest and humor (his own worst enemy), and we were sorry to part when he reached his post. Then we had a Swiss artist, M. Buchser, sent over by his government to make a grand painting illustrative of our late war, embracing our most famous statesmen and generals, for the Capitol at Berne. Having a month or two of leisure, he was spending it wisely in making a run to the Plains and the Rocky Mountains. Now he was hurrying on to join Gen. Sherman at Julesburg, whence he was to accompany him and his brother, the Ohio Senator, on a tour of inspection to Fort Laramie, Buford, Denver, and then east again via the Arkansas. He was a close observer, had travelled much on both continents, and was very chatty and companionable, speaking English like a native. He sketched constantly en route, making "studies" of the Platte valley from the top of the stage-coach, and when we parted at Fort McPherson, it was with the mutual hope of meeting again at Denver. Next we had a Doctor of Divinity from Illinois, of the Methodist persuasion, en route to Golden City and the Mountains, in search of health, and to look after certain mining interests of some company in the east. Then we had a banker from New York, of copperhead tendencies, bound for Idaho City, also in quest of mines; but his wife was a staunch Republican, and more than offset his political heresies. We had others besides, merchants, miners, telegraph-men, etc., and really not one disagreeable person.

As to the weather, we found that intensely hot in the middle of the day (it being the last of August and first of September), but the mornings and evenings were delightful, and the nights always superb. Most of the passengers preferred the inside; but Dr. M. and I chose the outside, which with some inconveniences had its advantages after all. By day it gave us a wider view of the country; and at night we used to give our blankets a "shake down" on the flat top (first borrowing an armful of hay from some station), and then go luxuriously to sleep. At first when we tried this, not understanding the philosophy of the situation, we came near rolling off when the coach would pitch into a chuck-hole, or give a lurch from heel to port; but we soon learned to boom ourselves on, with a rope or strap from railing to railing, and thus managed to secure not a little of "tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep," while our fellow-passengers down below (nine inside), packed like sardines in a box, got seldom a wink. The most of the time, the moon was at the full or about that, and superb in her unveiled glory. The sky was packed with a myriad of stars, far beyond what we ever see east. The air, pure and dry, free from both dew and frost, was a perpetual tonic to lungs and brain. Every hundred miles or so we stopped over a day or two to inspect some Military Post, and so got rested. The scenery from day to day was ever fresh and changing, abounding in new sensations. And, in short, in all my experiences of life, I have few pleasanter recollections than in thus staging it outside, across the Plains, and up the Platte to Denver. One night, however, a wind-storm from the summit of the Rocky Mountains struck us, and for hours raged furiously—raw and gusty, piercing to the bone. But at midnight we rolled into Fort Morgan, and halting in its hospitable quarters, waited until the wind blew itself out.

The sunsets now and then were magnificent, and one particularly beyond Fort Sedgwick or Julesburg deserves further mention. We were rolling rapidly along, when the sun went down behind a cloud, that formed the huge segment of a circle on the horizon, and from around and behind this his rays came flashing forth with a beauty—a glory and a gorgeousness—that we had never seen equalled. Heavy, sombre clouds hung about the west, while over head and off to the east they thinned out into fleecy mottled masses almost invisible, until his reflected rays illuminated them. Up among these, across the whole dome of the heavens, the colors flamed and went, as tremulous as a maiden's blushes—now crimson and gold, then purple and violet, and now again a dreamy, hazy, half-pink, half rosy light, that baffles description. I had seen gorgeous sunsets elsewhere—on the Hudson, among the Alleghanies, by the sea—but never any so full of glory and majesty, and sublimity as this. The fleecy masses overhead seemed to hang in curtains, one behind the other, like the top scenes at a theatre, and the shifting light playing about among them added to the illusion. Nature seemed here to enrobe the heavens in her most magnificent and gorgeous tapestry, as if trying to show what glorious fabrics her noiseless looms could weave; and over all brooded that mysterious silence of the Plains, that seems like the hush of eternity. It must have been some such scene, that flamed through the poet's brain when he wrote:

"All the west was washed with fire;
Great clouds were standing round the setting sun,
Like gaping caves, fantastic pinnacles,
Citadels throbbing in their own fierce light,
Tall spires that came and went like spires of flame,
Cliffs quivering with fire-snow, and peaks
Of piléd gorgeousness, and rocks of fire
A-tilt and poised, bare beaches, crimson seas."

A singular part of it all was, that passengers in the next stage-coach, a hundred miles east, were struck with the same magnificent sunset, and followed us into Denver with similar accounts of its grandeur and sublimity, at the point where they had been.

[CHAPTER IV.]

UP THE PLATTE TO DENVER (Concluded).

The Platte Valley itself is a great furrow or groove in the heart of the Plains proper, extending substantially due west from the Missouri to the Rocky Mountains. On the line of our tier of northern cities, and so in the track of northern ideas across the continent, it is as if nature intended it for a great natural highway, and already it had come to its fulfilment. Its early selection by our army of emigrants to Colorado, Utah, California, etc., was because of its supplying the three great desiderata of wood, water and grass, better than any other route; and its easy grades, as well as accumulating trade and travel, made it the predestined pathway of the Pacific Railroad. It varies in breadth from five to ten miles, and is bounded on either side by abrupt bluffs two or three hundred feet high, whence outstretch the Plains proper. Extending from the foot of these bluffs, for a mile or more usually, is a level plateau or "bench" (in Plains parlance), composed of sand and gravel, and worthless for agricultural purposes from want of moisture. To be sure, during the spring a meagre herbage is sustained here, but long before summer ends everything green parches and withers up. Then come the bottoms proper, on either side of the river, of rich loam and clay, which produce grass in goodly quantities all summer, and we saw no reason why they should not also grow most cereals and vegetables. Perhaps it is too far north for Indian corn; but wheat, barley, oats and rye ought to flourish there, except in localities where the soil may be too strongly impregnated with alkali or soda. Their natural adaptation, however, is for grass, and I apprehend we shall soon have our flocks and herds, by the acre, feeding all up and down by the Platte. When you reach the North Platte the valley of course subdivides, and you continue on up the valley of the South Platte to Denver. The fertile and cultivable bottoms, of course, narrow as you advance; nevertheless, they maintain a considerable breadth nearly everywhere, despite encroaching bluffs, and around and beyond Denver are made highly productive by occasional irrigation as needed. Utilize the unfailing waters of the Platte by windmills or otherwise, as they do their streams in Italy, Egypt and China, and the Platte valley throughout its length will yet become a garden.

The Platte itself to the eye is a broad and lusty stream, and in places, as near Fort McPherson, expands into a sea of islands, most refreshing to behold after days of dusty travel. But while in volume sufficient for a first-class river, its banks are so shifting and its sand-bars so numerous and variable, that it has always proved practically unnavigable, notwithstanding our western rivers swarm with stern-wheelers, many of which it is said only require a respectable ditch or half decent dew. Unbridged and without ferries, we found it crossed only at a few well-defined fords, and even these were so cursed by quicksands, that trains in crossing stood in great danger of bringing up at Jeddo or Pekin. Its waters were considered healthy and sweet, notwithstanding a trace of alkali, and with all its shortcomings, it seemed nevertheless a perfect God-send to that particular region. Its banks and islands were usually fringed with cottonwoods and poplars, and furnished almost the only supply of fuel to passing emigrants and travellers. The settled residents there, however, the station-keepers and ranchmen, depended more on the stunted cedars, that abounded generally in all the ravines and cañons, with which the side-bluffs of the valley are more or less seamed. Here also they procured the most of their lumber, and from here supplied thousands of ties for the Union Pacific Railroad. We were surprised to find these cedars so abundant in the cañons, where nothing tree-like was visible until you entered. Then we found the whole bottom and sides frequently lined with them to the top; but there they abruptly ceased, as if close shaven by the winds, which in certain months sweep over the Plains mercilessly.

In both wood and lumber, however, we found the Platte valley sadly lacking, and the whole Plains country generally. Good peat had been found at Julesburg, and bituminous coal was reported near Fort Morgan; but our posts were depending for both fuel and lumber mainly on the Platte and its side cañons. At Fort Sedgwick, near Julesburg, they had been hauling wood nearly a hundred miles, at a cost to the government of over a hundred dollars per cord, there being none nearer or cheaper. Lumber cost one hundred and seventeen dollars per thousand, and shingles fifteen dollars per thousand, and were held cheap at that. The year before, lumber had cost two hundred and five dollars per thousand, and shingles in proportion. Grain (corn and oats) was wagoned from the Missouri, and cost the government, put down at Sedgwick, about seven dollars per bushel. Hay was cut in the vicinity, and cost thirty-four dollars per ton. Recently they had made a contract with shrewd operators in Denver, for lumber at ninety dollars per thousand, and wood at forty-six dollars per cord, both to come from the Rocky Mountains, over two hundred miles away; but the contractors availed themselves of cheap freights by eastward-bound wagon-trains, otherwise returning empty. At Julesburg, we were told, there was not a tree even for fifty miles; formerly there had been a scrubby cottonwood, on the south bank of the Platte there—a lone star in solitary splendor—which was regularly shown to tourists as one of its lions. But this had recently fallen down and floated away, and now Julesburg mourned its loss as "the last of the Mohicans." There was some talk of erecting a monument to its memory; but even this would have to be of "adobe," as stone was equally a rarity there.

Down in the valley proper, the field of vision is limited by the side bluffs, and you see but comparatively little of the country generally. But ascend the bluffs on either side, and the vast ocean of the Plains stretches boundlessly before you—not flat, but billowy with swells and ridges, an illimitable plateau, with only here and there a solitary "butte," sharply defined against the clear sky. In spring this whole vast extent is a wilderness of verdure and flowers; but the summer skies, untempered by rain, as elsewhere said, scorch and burn the ground to cinders, and long before autumn comes all vegetation there practically perishes. Even the hardy buffalo-grass becomes brown and tinder-like, and the only grazing there is in the cañons and valleys. Nevertheless our Plains have hitherto sustained buffalo by the million, and do it still, although these shaggy monsters have of late mostly disappeared from the Platte region. We did not see one in our entire trip to Denver; but a friend, who came through a month or so later, over the Smoky Hill route, where there was less travel, reported buffalo there yet by the horizon full—the whole country being substantially black with them. The short and sweet buffalo-grass is indigenous through all this region, and is said to be nutritious, even when dried up, the year round. What a magnificent range for stock these great Plains will yet afford, when the country becomes more thickly settled up! Much of this region is marked on the old maps as the "Great American Desert;" but from all we saw and heard I doubt not, as a whole, it will yet become the great stock-raising and dairy region of the Republic, whence we shall export beef and mutton, leather and wool, in exchange for cloth and steel.[3]

We had several fine rides with brother-officers among the cañons and bluffs while stopping over to inspect our military posts en route, and a grand gallop one bright September morning over the Plains and far away after antelope. In the cañons and along the bluffs we started plenty of jack-rabbits; but the antelope were shy and apparently always on the run, so much so we could never get within shot of them. We formed a long line across the country, and as we swept forward started two or three small herds; but they were all too fleet for Uncle Sam's coursers. Subsequently we halted, and lying down tried the old hunter's trick of enticing them with a handkerchief on a ramrod, with our rifles ready to blaze away as they drew near; but they were too cunning to be caught by any such rascally flag-of-truce arrangement, and it seemed a shame to attempt it. The ride itself, however, was a great satisfaction, full of excitement, exhilaration, enjoyment. The sky was a perfect sapphire, without cloud or haze. The clear atmosphere braced one's nerves like wine, and revealed distant objects with a pre-Raphaelite distinctness. A pyramid-like "butte," off to the southwest, seemed near at hand, though more than twenty miles away. The ground was baked hard, with a thin covering of dry-grass, except in the occasional buffalo-wallows; and altogether our horses seemed to enjoy the gallop quite as much as we did ourselves. There was just a spice of danger in the ride, too, as Indians were reported prowling about, but none appeared. We left the Platte with its bluffs and cañons behind us, and out into the boundless Plains we rode, on and on, and only drew rein when we discovered that we had lost our reckoning, and were without a compass. The person charged with providing this had forgotten it, and suddenly we found ourselves at sea, without guide or headland. Fortunately we had the well-worn buffalo-trails, that there run almost due north and south—the old paths over which they formerly went to and from the Platte for water—and following up one of these, after an hour or two, we found ourselves in sight of the river again. These "trails" are no wider than ordinary cow-paths, but they are worn deep into the soil, and show by their great number and depth what countless herds of buffalo must have roamed here in other days. They are a sure guide up and down the bluffs, many of which are so precipitous that safe ascent or descent elsewhere seems impossible. But the buffalo, by a wise instinct, seems to have hit just the right point, and deserves credit for such skillful engineering.

The population of the Platte Valley was yet mostly in futuro. The little in esse was grouped sparsely around the several Military posts—Forts Kearney, McPherson, Sedgwick and Morgan—the intervening stage-stations, and at Julesburg. The largest hamlet, perhaps five hundred inhabitants or so, was near Fort Kearney, having grown up on the outskirts of that post, and bearing the same name. Julesburg consisted of a blacksmith-shop, a grocery, a billiard-saloon, and a half-dozen houses all of adobe. It was on the South Platte, at the point of crossing for the Utah and Montana travel, which here bore away northwest for Bridger's Pass, and so did a considerable business already in canned-fruits and tangle-foot whiskey. A year afterwards, it was the terminus for awhile of the Union Pacific Railroad, went up speedily to two or three thousand inhabitants, and figured largely in eastern journals. But, presently, with the ongoing of the railroad, its importance ceased, and its inhabitants,

"Folded their tents like the Arabs,
And silently stole away."

The stage-stations usually had a ranch or two adjoining, though these grew more infrequent, as we got farther west. These were only rude huts of sod or adobe, with dirt-roofs, divided into two apartments—one for sleeping purposes, and the other for a cross-roads grocery. The stock on hand usually consisted largely of tobacco, canned-fruits and vegetables, and the worst varieties of "needle-gun" whiskey, warranted to kill a mile away. Hay and wood were also kept on hand, for sale to passing trains, and many ranchmen managed thus to pick up considerable money in the course of the year. Generally two men occupied a ranch thus together, though sometimes squaws were found serving as "brevet"-wives. Much of their time was spent, especially at night, in playing "poker," "old-sledge," "seven-up," etc. for the want of something else to do; and a newspaper, a Congressional speech, or even a Pub. Doc., was always welcome. Farther west, the stage-stations and ranch-huts were built more substantially, and often were regularly bastioned and loop-holed for a siege. One of the most notable of these was Fort Wicked, about half-way between Julesburg and Denver. It was built of sods and adobe, with a thick wall of the same on three sides, and was really an arrow and bullet-proof block-house. A year or so before, it had been attacked by a party of Cheyennes and Arrapahoes; but the owner and his men showed fight—killed several of the red-skins, and put the rest to flight—whereupon some one christened the place "Fort Wicked," and the name stuck.

PLAINS INDIANS.

Wagon-trains going west or returning east, we met frequently, but not to the extent we anticipated. They usually consisted of from ten to twenty wagons each, with from eight to twelve pairs of mules or yokes of oxen to each wagon. Going up from the "River," as the Missouri was always called, these trains being loaded all had their full complement of wagon-masters, teamsters, cooks, etc. But, returning empty, several wagons were often coupled together—the surplus employees stopping over in the mines. By day, these trains stretched their huge length along, the great white-sheeted wagons or "prairie-schooners" carrying each from ten to twelve thousand pounds; but, at night, their wagons were formed into a "corral," with the animals inside to prevent the Indians stampeding them, and the picturesque effect of such encampments was always pleasing. Even here on the Plains, about the last place we would suppose, the inherent aristocracy of human nature cropped out distinctly. The lords of the lash par excellence were the stage-drivers. The next most important, the horse or mule teamsters; and the lowest, the "bull-drivers." The horse or mule teams made from twelve to fifteen miles per day; the ox-trains eight to ten. For real vagabondage, pure and simple, life with one of these trains seemed hard to beat. An Arab of the desert, or a Gaucho of the pampas, could ask for nothing more nomadic. And if anybody is sick of Sybaris, and anxious to get away from all trace of civilization, here is the place for him. It seemed to be going down to the bed-rock in the social scale, and afforded a splendid opportunity to study first principles. A school-friend of mine, a man of fine culture, tried it formerly, and his experiences were racy and rare. Subsequently, as miner, land agent, speculator, and lawyer, at Pike's Peak and Denver, he made two or three fortunes and lost them; then emigrated to San Francisco, where he made another as army contractor; and then wisely forsook the fickle goddess, and settled in New York.

Rumors of impending troubles with the Indians thickened as we advanced. The settlers and stage-people said the Indians appeared but little on the road, which was a sure sign that a storm was brewing. Further they said the tribes had had a grand pow-wow recently on the Smoky Hill and the Republican, in which they had agreed to bury the hatchet and make common cause against the pale-faces. Subsequently, later in the autumn, they did attack some stations on the Smoky Hill route, and a stage or two on the Platte route; but we reached Denver unmolested. East of Julesburg, at Baker's ranch, we passed an encampment of Sioux, perhaps two or three hundred, papooses and all, in cone-shaped wigwams, evidently the original of our army "Sibley." While changing horses, we strolled into several of their wigwams, and found them full of braves, squat upon their hams, intently engaged in playing cards. In Indian pantomime, they warmly invited us to participate, but we were obliged to decline the distinguished honor. The squaws were mostly at work on moccasins or blankets, and their tawny little papooses (stark naked, except a breech-cloth) were either practising with bows and arrows, or "lying around loose." The entire party seemed utterly poverty-stricken, even to their ponies and dogs, and, generally, about as wretched as human beings could well be. Their main provisions seemed to be rusty army-rations, which had recently been issued to them at one of our neighboring posts, and without these they would have been practically destitute. Dirty, squalid, indecent, and half-starving, they seemed but little removed above the brute creation, and gave a terrible shock to all preconceived ideas about the "Noble Red Man," if we had any. They were the first real savages—pure and simple—we had met, and our poetry and romance, born of Cooper and Longfellow, shivered at the spectacle. Some miles farther on, we encountered two young "bucks," gaily attired in blankets, beads, feathers, etc., jogging along on their ponies to the camp at Baker's. They had given a big scare to a poor German we overtook—a blacksmith, travelling alone from station to station, in a light two-mule buggy, to shoe the Company's horses. The appearance of our coach, however, made him feel his scalp more secure, and falling in behind he followed us up for miles, singing at the top of his voice "Annie, dear Annie of the vale!" Our stage was full inside and out, and we were all well-armed—in fact, fairly bristled with repeating-rifles and revolvers—and had we been attacked no doubt would have given a good account of ourselves. Our experiences up to Denver, however, inclined us to be somewhat skeptical on the Indian question, and our subsequent observations did not greatly change this. The whole region, indeed, seemed to be over-sensitive on the subject. The air was everywhere thick with rumors, that one by one disappeared as we advanced, and we hardly knew which to wonder at the more—the veracity or credulity of the Plains. In fact, that prince of romancers, Baron Munchausen, seemed to preside over the country, or the people to be his lineal descendants, almost everywhere.

[CHAPTER V.]

DENVER AND THE MINES.

We reached Denver Sept. 5th, and remained there several days. Approaching by the South Platte, you catch sight of the town a mile or two away, when crossing a "divide," and are surprised at its size and importance. Ten years before, there was not an inhabitant there; but now she claimed seven thousand or more, and boasted with reason, of two hundred and fifty houses erected that year. Moreover, the new buildings were chiefly of brick or stone, while the old ones were log or frame. At the junction of the South Platte and Cherry Creek her streets are well-laid out, mostly at right-angles, and for suburbs she has the boundless Plains. Apparently on a plateau, she is nevertheless really a mountain city; for at St. Louis you are only three hundred feet above the sea, at Omaha nine hundred feet, while at Denver you have got up imperceptibly to four thousand feet above the sea, or higher than our average Alleghanies. Her climate is pure and dry, without rain or frost for many months in the year—the paradise of consumptives—and for scenery, she has the ever-glorious Rocky Mountains. Already she had six churches, two seminaries, two daily papers, a banking-house with a business of twelve millions a year, a U. S. Mint, a theatre, and hotels and saloons unnumbered, though these last it was thought were diminishing. Until recently, gambling-hells had also flourished openly on her streets, with their usual concomitants of drunkenness and affrays. But some months before, a Judge Gale—backed by a strong public opinion—had taken hold of the gamblers, and squelched them effectually. Like other "peculiar institutions," they died hard, raising large sums of money to prolong their evil life—threatening some men and bribing, or trying to bribe, others; but Judge Lynch came to the support of Judge Gale, with the counter-threat of "a cottonwood limb and a rope," and so gamblers ceased to rule in Denver. The happy change was freely commented on, and now that it had come, people wondered why they had endured the blacklegs so long. Denver was now evidently aspiring to better things—to "sweeter manners, purer laws." Her merchants and bankers were building themselves homes, sending east for their families, and settling down, as if to stay. Though not so law-abiding and Sabbath-loving, as our eastern cities, yet her churches were well-attended; and her Episcopal Bishop (Randall), we found scouring the country with all the earnestness and zeal of an old-time missionary, or Methodist itinerant. Band and gown, stole and chasuble, and other ritualistic millenary, he affected but little; but he preached Christ and Him crucified with a tenderness and power, that touched all hearts, and Colorado already had come to love and honor him. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you," was his text for as sound and appropriate a discourse the Sabbath we were in Denver, as we had heard in a long while. Every sentence struck home, like a rapier or a bullet, at some sin most prevalent in Colorado, and Denver might well "make a note of it." Subsequently we heard of him in the mines and among the mountains, preaching in quartz-mills and by the roadside—wherever he could gather a handful of hearers—always engaged in the Master's work, and always leaving a deep impression behind him.

Denver, with water and coal both near, yet had neither water nor gas works then, and scarcely a tree or shrub growing anywhere. Numerous trees had been planted, and much shrubbery; but the long and rainless summers had proven too much for them. The winter before, a company had been chartered to bring water from the mountains, for irrigating and other purposes, and they already had one ditch completed—three or four feet wide, by one or two deep—and were projecting others. This one irrigated several farms, turned a grist-mill or two, and then, with a branch to the fair-grounds, emptied into the Platte. But Denver must have such ditches, all around and through her, if she wants trees and shrubbery and then she may have streets and suburbs unsurpassed anywhere. Salt Lake, we afterwards found, had done this; and Denver will, when she has once been well scourged by fire. Then she was powerless against the fire-fiend, and a large conflagration well under way would have swept the town.[4]

Though the largest town in Colorado, and of commanding influence there, yet Denver we found was not the capital, but Golden City instead—a hamlet of five hundred inhabitants or so, fifteen miles farther west, at the base of the mountains. The Territorial Legislature convened there every winter, as required by law; but immediately adjourned to Denver, where all business was really transacted, and where the governor and other territorial officers resided, when not absent in the states, as some often were. In location, Denver itself was, no doubt a geographical blunder, as the business of the country was really among the mines and mountains; but as gold had been first discovered here, it got the start, and bade fair to maintain its supremacy. The sharpest and shrewdest men in Colorado, we found were all settled here. All enterprises, of much pith and moment, began and ended here. All capital centred here. And Denver brains and Denver capital, it was plain to see, ruled and controlled our whole Rocky Mountain region, north to Dacotah and south to New Mexico.

Denver had two real "sensations," while we were there—one, the alleged usurpation of Gov. Cumming, the other the arrival of Gen. Sherman. It seemed there had been a territorial election, for delegate to Congress, and the returns not being clear, Gov. Cumming assumed to give the certificate of election to Hunt, an Andrew Johnson man, rather than to Chilcott, a radical Republican—notwithstanding the Board of Canvassers decided otherwise. The governor claimed that the law and facts were with him, but the Board of Canvassers protested to the contrary, and popular opinion seemed to sustain them. There was a breezy time in Denver for awhile. The papers savagely denounced the governor's conduct, as an outrage and usurpation, and fell into a vein of coarse vituperation they seemed incapable of before. The saloons were filled with excited crowds at night; knots gathered on the streets by day; and presently, one morning out came the papers with the old-time suggestion of "a cottonwood limb and a rope," if His Excellency did not yield. An explosion was now hourly expected, but it did not come. Denver evidently had grown in grace. The mob-spirit of her early days could not be revived, and all good citizens rejoiced to see it. No doubt she liked Judge Lynch still; but she liked Eastern immigration and English capital better, and would do nothing to startle either. The governor wisely appeared in public but little, and for several nights found it convenient to sleep elsewhere than at home. Finally, it was given out, that the military were on his side, as in duty bound, and the storm presently blew over. Subsequently it appeared, that said military consisted of only two officers, without a single soldier; but His Excellency attributed his safety to them, all the same. General Sherman's arrival immediately after was just in the nick of time. It followed on the heels of the election imbroglio, and was a good salve to the public sore. All Denver turned out to welcome him and his distinguished brother (the Ohio Senator), and a cavalcade of horsemen and carriages met them miles away. Next night there was a reception, banquet, speeches, ball, etc. and hundreds assembled to do them honor. There was a lamentable lack of ladies; but brighter, keener men, you could find nowhere. What there were of ladies, were intelligent and sprightly, and all were richly attired and adorned; but Denver needed more of them. Everybody vied in doing Sherman honor, as a great soldier who had fought nobly for the country. They did not know his views yet on the Indian question, which a few months afterwards they denounced so severely. By an ambulance tour of two thousand miles, from post to post, through the heart of the Indian country, he was trying to study the Indian question for himself, as the great question of his Military Division; and yet Denver, fond of contracts, claimed to understand that questio vexata better than he!

We left Denver one bright September morning for Central City and the Mines. A stage ran daily, but wanting to travel more leisurely we went by ambulance. Across the Platte, and over the Plains again for fifteen miles, brought us to the mountains and Golden City, just within the foothills. Clear Creek dashes through the "city," a broad swift stream, furnishing fine water-power for several mills already, with plenty to spare for more. Coal, iron, lead, copper and kaolin were said to exist in the mountains adjacent, and this water-power was therefore justly esteemed very valuable. Four or five miles farther on, the mountains seem to close up—a solid rampart—before you; but suddenly the road shifts and at Gate City, through a narrow rocky cañon you again pass on. The road here follows up a diminutive mountain stream, crossing and re-crossing its bed every few yards, and by a very sinuous course slowly makes its way forward between abrupt masses of red and purple rock, that everywhere seemed to block its progress. Farther on, the hills open out, and wild currant and gooseberry-bushes appear, with pines and firs here and there—many charred by former fires. The road gets wilder the farther you proceed, and the mountain views become more and more superb. You catch glimpses of the great Snowy Range from time to time; but after awhile you cross the first range, and then you have the great white-capped Sierra almost always before you. Three peaks there are especially superb—Old Chief, Squaw and Papoose—their white and glittering summits flashing gloriously in the sunshine. Sometimes we got long views of the Snowy Range, for miles on miles; and then again, deep down in some wild gorge, its rocky sides would suddenly expand, and there would stand these three grand peaks projected against the clear sky, framed in like a picture. A right "kingly spirit throned among the hills," Old Chief seemed to be keeping watch and ward over these Rocky Mountain fastnesses in solemn and solitary grandeur; but the Yankee and the miner had been too much for him.

We dined en route, getting a good meal for seventy-five cents, and reached the Conner House at Central City, about 6 p. m., forty miles from Denver. What a strange place was this, and how surprising it all seemed! A busy, active, bustling town, with all the appliances of eastern civilization, in the very heart of the Rocky Mountains—our ultima thule but a few years ago! Or, rather, four towns—Black Hawk, Gregory Gulch, Mountain City, and Central City—all now grown into one. It never was any place for a town; but there had to be one there, and so American genius and pluck went to work and created it. Imagine a narrow, winding mountain-gorge, with Clear Creek flashing through it, with scarcely standing-room on either side for an antelope even, and you have about all Nature has done for a town-site there. Yet our miners had stuck mills, and stores, and saloons, and dwelling-houses, and churches here, almost everywhere, in the most delightful and picturesque confusion. Some were astride of Clear Creek, as if wading up stream. Others were propped up on its edges, as if about to topple in. Others again were mounted on lofty stilts, all along the mountain side, as if just ready to start and walk away. About and through them all, following the general course of Clear Creek, wound one long and narrow street—too narrow for side-walks—and here in this bizarre place, walled in on all sides by the Rocky Mountains, lived and flourished six thousand souls, all apparently busy and well-to-do—with banks, schools, churches, newspapers, telegraphs, theatres, and pretty much all the institutions and destitutions of modern society. There only remained one need, a railroad, and that was already in contemplation, down Clear Creek to Golden City, and so away to Denver. This would bring the ores and coal together at Golden City, for fuel was becoming scarce among the mines; would save much of the cost of travel and transportation by the wild mountain roads; and be a great blessing to the mining regions every way.[5] After tea, we strolled through the town for a mile or more, and found the streets full to overflowing. The theatres were crowded, and the drinking and gambling-saloons in full blast; yet the streets were comparatively orderly. The population seemed of a better class than one would suppose, all things considered. There were scarcely any women, it is true, and what there were had better been elsewhere, as a rule; but the men carried keen, clear-cut, energetic faces, that well explained the enterprise and elan of this audacious town. Of foreigners, there were far fewer than one ordinarily meets east, and the Americans as a rule were athletic and live men—fit to be the pioneers of empire. The inevitable African, of course, cropped out here and there; but usually he had risen from the dignity of a barber or a bootblack, to be a merchant or a miner. Everybody talked of "feet," and "claims," and "dust;" and bets were made, and drinks paid for, in "ounces" and parts of an ounce, as determined by the universal scales and weights. Greenbacks were still taken, but they were regarded as a depreciated currency, unworthy of the Mines and Mountains.

Indications of mining operations appeared first at Denver, where gold was first discovered at the junction of the South Platte and Cherry Creek. But the "diggings," or placer mines, here were soon worked out, and then the miners naturally ascended Cherry Creek to Clear Creek, and so into the heart of the mountains. All along North Clear Creek, you see where the stream has been turned aside, and its bed "panned" over, and as we approached Black Hawk we found a few miners still humbly at work this way. But placer-mining in Colorado had mostly been abandoned as no longer profitable, and now the chief labor and capital were applied to the quartz mines—the parents of the "diggings." These seemed to occur, more or less, all through the Rocky Mountains, wherever quartz cropped out; but the richest of them thus far had been found in the narrow defile about Central City. The sides of the ranges there had been "prospected" all over, until they seemed honey-combed or like pepper-boxes, so ragged and torn were they with the process. Here and there they were divided up into infinitesimal lots, rudely enclosed, embracing a few hundred feet or so, denoting mining "claims." Many of these had shafts sunk some distance, with a board up, proclaiming name of mine and the ownership thereof, but others were without these. The favorite mine in Colorado just then seemed to be the Gregory Consolidated, near Central City. We went down into this some three hundred feet, exploring its various galleries, and it seemed to be all that was represented. The gold here was so much diffused through the quartz as to be imperceptible to the eye, and was further mingled badly with silver, copper, and sulphur. The company had erected no mill as yet, but were contenting themselves with developing the lode, and getting out "pay-ore." Their plan was to sink the main shaft straight down on the lode, and every twenty feet or so follow up the indications by lateral galleries, to see whether the vein held out or not. So far it was doing well, and the ore continued of an excellent quality. But it was so difficult to reduce, there was no mill in Colorado that could save a fair proportion of the gold; so that what ore they cared to work was shipped east, or to Swansea, Wales, even, for reduction. The superintendent of the mine was a sturdy young Englishman, once a humble miner with his pick and candle, but afterwards sub-superintendent of a great silver mine in Mexico, and now for two or three years here—a man of rare energy and intelligence. No wonder the stock of the Gregory Consolidated was steadily rising, with such a policy and such a superintendent. Too many of the companies organized in the east were pursuing just the contrary course. They were putting up mills at once at great expense, with steam engines and stamps complete, and then when they came to sink down upon their veins, lo! they had no "pay-ore" there, or at least none worth working. A signal instance of this had occurred a year or two before. A New York Wall street Company had been organized, on a broad basis, and with great expectations. With a West Point ex-army officer superintendent and plenty of capital, their stock soon went soaring up like a rocket; but presently it came down again like a stick—a la their superintendent during the war. He erected a splendid mill of dressed stone at a cost of thousands of dollars, and went in wildly for all the latest and most improved machinery; but when afterwards he came to test their lode thoroughly, alas! he discovered they had only a poor sickly trace of ore, that soon "petered out," and so that fine company of gold and silver miners incontinently collapsed—or, as Mr. Mantilini would have said, "went to the demnition bow-wows!" Machinery that cost the company thirty-three thousand dollars in New York, was afterwards sold by the Colorado sheriff for thirteen hundred dollars, to pay freight bills; and other property in proportion. Other instances were reported to us, but none quite so bad as this. But from the large number of mills and mines standing idle—fully fifty per cent., it seemed—we could well believe that mining machinery could be bought cheaper in Colorado than New York, and that steam-engines and boilers were a drug. A foundry-man beyond Golden City, we were told, found it more profitable to buy up old machinery and recast it, than to work a rich iron mine, though the former was scattered through the mountains and the latter was just at his door.

The trouble with the Colorado ores was, they were refractory sulphurets, which we had not yet learned how to reduce at a profit. They assayed very readily two hundred and even three hundred dollars per ton, or more; but when you came to mill them out in large quantities, you were lucky if you got twenty-five or thirty dollars per ton. The problem Colorado then wanted solved was how to desulphurize these rich ores of hers at a profit. Various "processes" were continually being tried at great expense, but none of them seemed yet to be the "success" she desired. Stamp-mills, with copper-plate and quicksilver amalgamators, seemed to be the process in use generally, though not saving over twenty-five per cent. of the precious metals usually. Many companies were using these and saving their "talings," or refuse, with the expectation of yet realizing goodly sums from working the "talings" over by some new process by-and-bye. A "process" just introduced was saving from twenty-five to fifty per cent. more from these "talings:" but it was too costly for general use, or, perhaps, to pay. Individual mine-owners and the lighter companies seemed mostly to have suspended, or like Mr. Micawber to be waiting for "something to turn up"—for the strong companies to go on and find the much coveted "new process," when they would resume operations. Another trouble evidently was the great number of companies organized to sell stock east, rather than to mine successfully. Companies, with a property worth a hundred thousand dollars, had frequently issued stock for a million, and of course could not expect to make regular dividends on such an overplus. On a basis of a hundred thousand dollars, or real value, with an experienced honest superintendent, they might have got along well, if content to creep at first and walk afterwards. But as a rule they had preferred to "water" their stock, after the most approved Sangrado method; and the result, after a year or two's operations, was disappointed stockholders and the old, old cry of "bogus" and "wild-cat." Many of the companies, too, were heavily in debt, and what was called in Colorado parlance "freezing out" was taking place largely. That is to say, a company gives a mortgage for say twenty thousand dollars on property worth perhaps a hundred thousand, or at least represented by that amount of stock. When due it is not met, the treasury being empty, and the stockholders discouraged from want of dividends, or by "bear" reports about the mine; whereupon the mortgage is foreclosed, and the "bear" directors buy the property in for a song, thus "freezing out" the feebler and more timid brethren. This operation may lack the essential feature of old-fashioned honesty, but is no doubt a paying one—pecuniarily—for the new owners, who can now well afford to go bravely on. "Others may sink; but what's the odds, so we apples swim!"

No doubt Colorado is rich, immensely rich, in mineral resources—gold, silver, copper, iron, coal, etc.,—but she was scarcely making much decided headway as a mining community, so far as could be seen, in 1866. Considerable of her population, indeed, had gone off to Montana and Idaho, to the reputed rich gold-fields there, and many of the rest were waiting patiently for the Pacific Railroad and a market. Great results were anticipated from the oncoming of the railroad, and it is to be hoped she has realized them. Her yield of the precious metals in 1862, it was estimated by good authority, amounted to ten millions of dollars; but in 1863 it fell to eight millions, in 1864 to five millions, and in 1865 to four millions. Ross Browne, in 1866, in his report of Mineral Resources of the United States, with characteristic exaggeration, estimated her yield for that year at seventeen millions; but more accurate observers regarded this as a California joke, and pronounced his estimate at least four or five times too high. The large yield in 1862 represented the maximum from gulch or placer mining, and the soft outcroppings of the quartz veins. But in 1866 placer mining, as I have said, had mostly ceased, and our quartz-miners had to go down so deep, and then got only the hardest and most refractory sulphurets, that the business greatly languished. Yet, it was plain to be seen, the gold and the silver were all there, in inexhaustible quantities, practically speaking; or as Mr. Lincoln once remarked, in speaking of our western mines, "We there hold the Treasury of the world!" All Colorado wanted, as elsewhere said, was the right "process" to subdue these rebellious sulphurets and compel them to release their imprisoned deities. Science surely holds the key somewhere, and waits only the coming man to hand it over to him. Millions of our countrymen are watching and praying for him. A half a continent calls for him. And when this coming man does come, who shall estimate the untold treasures he will here unlock and outpour upon the world! He will but have to strike the naked rocks, and abundant streams of wealth will gush forth. He will but have to touch the rugged mountain sides, and gold and silver by the million will obey his bidding—enough not only to pay our own National Debt, but the National Debts of the world. Let Colorado, then, be of good courage. The Pacific Railroad will cheapen supplies, and swell the volume of her immigration. The Yankee hand and brain are busily at work, conning over her knotty problem; and we may be sure, that the right hour will bring the necessary man.

From Central City we crossed the range at an altitude of nine thousand feet above the sea, and thence descended to Idaho, on South Clear Creek. A fine hotel here, in good view of the Snowy range, boasted itself the best in Colorado, and we found none better. Here also were several fine mineral springs, that bubble up quite near to each other, and yet are all of different temperatures. A bath-house had been erected, where you might take a plunge in hot or cold water, as you chose; the walks were romantic, with a possibility of deer or bear; the sights, what with ravine, and ridge, and peak, were magnificent; and Idaho, already something of a summer resort, expected yet to become the Saratoga of Colorado. Up South Clear Creek, above Idaho, were the new mining districts of Georgetown and Mill City, then but recently discovered and reputed quite rich; but we had not time to visit them. Down South Clear Creek, and thence to Denver, is a wild and surprising ride of forty-five miles, that well repays you. Much of the way Clear Creek roars and tumbles by the roadside, with the rocky walls of its cañon towering far above you; and when at length you cross the last range and prepare to descend, you catch a distant view of Denver and the Plains, that has few if any equals in all that region. The sun was fast declining, as we rounded the last crag or shoulder of the range, and the Plains—outstretched, illimitable, everlasting—were all before us, flooded with light as far as the eye could reach, while the mountains already in shade were everywhere projecting their lengthening shadows across the foot-hills, like grim phantoms of the night. A cloudless sky overarched the whole. Denver gleamed and sparkled in the midst twenty miles away, the brightest jewel of the Plains; and beyond, the Platte flashed onward to the east a thread of silver. It was a superb and glorious scene, and for an hour afterward, as we descended the range, we caught here and there exquisite views of it, through the opening pine and fir trees, that transferred to canvas would surely have made the fortune of any painter. With our Pacific Railroad completed, our artists must take time to study up the Rocky Mountains, with all their fine effects of light and shade—of wide extent and far perspective, of clear atmosphere, blue sky, and purple haze—and then their landscapes may well delight and charm the world.

Mining is, of course, the chief business of all that region, from the Missouri to the Mountains, and the habits and customs of the miner prevail everywhere. He digs and tunnels pretty much as he wills—under roads, beneath houses, below towns—and all things, more or less, are made subservient to his will. His free-and-easy ways mark social and political life, and his slang—half Mexican, half miner—is everywhere the language of the masses. A "square" meal is his usual phrase for a full or first-rate one. A "shebang" means any structure, from a hotel to a shanty. An "outfit" is a very general term, meaning anything you may happen to have, from a stamp-mill complete to a tooth-pick—a suit of clothes or a revolver—a twelve-ox team or a velocipede. A "divide" means a ridge or water-shed between two valleys or depressions. A "cañon" is Mexican or Spanish for a deep defile or gorge in the mountains. A "ranch," ditto, means a farm, or a sort of half-tavern and half-farm, as the country needs there. To "vamose the ranch" means to clear out, to depart, to cut stick, to absquatulate. A "corral," ditto, means an enclosed horse or cattle-yard. To "corral" a man or stock, therefore, means to corner him or it. To go down to "bed-rock," means the very bottom of things. "Panned-out" means exhausted, used-up, bankrupt. "Pay-streak" means a vein of gold or silver quartz, that it will pay to work. When it ceases to pay, it is said to "peter out." Said a miner one day at dinner, at a hotel in Central City, to a traveller from the east, "I say, stranger," pointing to a piece of meat by his side, "is there a pay-streak in that beef thar?" He wanted to know if there was a piece of it worth eating or not. The short phrase "You bet!" is pure Californice, and has followed our miners thence eastward across the continent. We struck it first on the Missouri, and thence found it used everywhere and among all classes, to express by different intonations a great variety of meanings. For example, meeting a man you remark:

"It is a fine day, my friend!"

He answers promptly and decidedly, "You bet!"

You continue, "It is a great country you have out here!"

He responds, "You bet ye!" sharp and quick.

"A good many mills standing idle, though!"

"Wa'll, yes, too many of them! You bet!" with a knowing shake of the head.

"Miners making much now-a-days?"

"Oh, yes! Some of us, a heap! You bet!" rather timid.

"Going back to the states one of these days?"

"When I make my pile! You bet!" firm and decided.

"Get married then, I suppose?"

"Won't I? Just that! You bet ye!" with his hat up, his eyes wide open, and his face all aglow with honest pride and warm memory of "The girl I left behind me!"

In Central City they told us a story of a miner, who was awakened one night by a noise at his window, and found it to be a burglar trying to get in. Slipping quietly out of bed, he waited patiently by the window until the sash was well up, and the burglar tolerably in, when he placed his revolver against the fellow's head, and sententiously remarked, "Now you git!" The story ran, the burglar looking quietly up surveyed the situation, with the cold steel against his brow, and as sententiously replied, as he backed out and dropped to the ground, "You bet!"

[CHAPTER VI.]

AMONG THE MOUNTAINS.

The Plains after awhile became somewhat of a bore, they are so vast and outstretched, and you long for a change, something to break the monotony. To us this came one evening, just beyond Fort Morgan, when a hundred and fifty miles away, just peeping above the horizon, we descried the cone-like summit of Long's Peak, all pink and rosy in the sunset. "Driver, isn't that the Mountains?" said some one. "You bet!" was his answer, of course. "'Tisn't often you can see the Peak this fur; but it is mighty clar to-day!" The night soon afterwards shut down upon us, during which we bowled rapidly along from station to station, and the next morning were early awake. Soon the sun rose bright and clear; but the air was keen, with a stiff breeze eastward in our teeth. We were down in a wide depression of the Plains; but presently we rose up out of it, and as we struck the summit of the "divide," lo, the Rocky Mountains were before us in all their grandeur and sublimity. To the north rose Long's Peak, fourteen thousand feet above the sea, heaven-kissing, but with his night-cap still on; to the south, was Pike's Peak, eleven thousand feet above the sea, snow-crowned; while between, a hundred miles or more, swelled and towered the Mountains—at the base mere foot-hills, then ridge mounting on ridge and peak on peak, until over and above all the Snowy Range cropped out sublime. Patches of pines dotted their surface here and there, but the general effect was that of nakedness and barrenness. Clouds hung about their summits, or lingered along their sides; but the uprising sun soon dissipated these, or sent them careering aloft, as if bound for heaven. In the course of the morning we whirled into Denver, and there for a week or more—by sunlight, by moonlight—the Mountains were ever before us, in all their thousand varieties of tint and shadow. They never seemed precisely the same. Some new point was ever looming up, or flashing out—and yet they always realized one's best conceptions of beauty, grandeur, vastness, and sublimity.

Subsequently, accepting an invitation to accompany Gen. Sherman and Gov. Cumming to Southern Colorado and an Indian treaty there, we spent nearly a month among the Rocky Mountains, following down their eastern base and crossing them to Fort Garland, some two hundred and fifty miles, and thence returning to Denver again through the heart of them, via San Luis Park, Homan's Park, and South Park. This trip we made by ambulance, camping out at night, and rationing ourselves, as there were no stages on the route and very few settlements. Our little party, by the addition of officers and others at Denver, had swelled to seven, exclusive of cook and teamsters. Our "outfit" consisted of two four-horse ambulances and an army-wagon, with spare animals for saddle or other purposes, as occasion required. We took a tent along, but seldom had occasion to use it. We had blankets and buffalo robes for the night; some stray books and magazines for the day, when weary of the scenery; pipes and tobacco for all; and other supplies, it seemed, ad infinitum. In the matter of arms, what with our repeating-rifles and revolvers for Indians, and a brace of fowling-pieces for game, our ambulances were travelling arsenals. And from reports on leaving Denver, (Sept. 13th) we did not know but we should want all, and more. With the usual exaggeration of the border, the story current there was, that a Mexican belonging to one of the settlements down below had quarrelled with a Ute about a squaw, and wound up by killing him; that the Utes were consequently up in arms, stealing stock and murdering the inhabitants; that Fort Garland was already practically besieged; and that the United States was of "no account, no how," because we did not send more troops to Colorado. However, we started for Garland, well-armed as above; we did not meet a hostile Indian on the way; and when we arrived there, we found there hadn't been a settler molested, or mule stolen; and the whole yarn had come from a Ute found dead, supposed killed by lightning. When first discovered, near one of the settlements, the Utes were considerably ruffled; but when the post-surgeon at Garland and their medicine-man had examined him and found no marks of violence, the chiefs laid their heads together and sagely concluded the Great Spirit had called him.

Our course from Denver was about due South, following the trend of the mountains, and always near them. For several days our road was substantially over Fremont's old trail of 1843, across the high "divide" between the Platte and Arkansas, and so down the dashing Fontaine qui Boulli to the Arkansas. This "divide" bears an unenviable reputation, as a storm-region. Coloradoans aver, that it rains, hails, snows, or blows there, when it is fair weather all around it, and we were warned of it accordingly. It is a high rolling region, running well up into the mountains, with Pike's Peak frowning over it, and I suppose the configuration of the country is such as to attract and concentrate storms there. We made haste to get across it, but sure enough encountered both rain and hail, though we found the country both north and south of it basking in a dreamy, autumnal atmosphere, that seemed like the very wine of life. That night we camped near "Dirty Woman's Ranch," close into the mountains, and slept delightfully in a hay-yard. The sun went down in a cloudless sky, transfiguring the snow-clad summit of Pike's Peak with a glory all its own, whose pink and crimson faded into purple, and this again to blue, as the day died out. So, too, the rest of the range, from purple and blue, came out sharp and black against the star-thick sky, and night shut down upon the Plains with scarcely a sound to break the silence.

During the day, the blank monotony of the Plains was broken by numerous "buttes," some of which were very surprising. The chief one, "Castle-Rock," was an abrupt precipitous mass, well bastioned and castellated, that rose sheer into the air several hundred feet, as if the work of hammer and trowel. At a distance, it seemed almost squarely perpendicular, but two of our party, who had galloped on ahead, found an accessible path to the summit on its southeast side. As we drove up abreast of it, we descried them on its dizzy edge, but took them to be eagles or buzzards, until they out with their handkerchiefs and fired off their pistols. The smoke curled away on the breezy air, but the sound was inaudible down by the roadside as we drove by. These "buttes" dot the country over there for miles, standing solitary and alone—wholly disconnected from each other—and are a strange feature of the Rocky Mountain region.

The next day we struck Monument Creek and followed this down to the Fontaine qui Bouilli. Here the country for miles is marked by great masses of sandstone and limestone, chiseled by wind and rain into the most fantastic shapes and forms. Some are slender columns of gray or red rock, a hundred feet or more in height, worn and smooth; while others are cut and carved so curiously, that it seems they must be the deft handiwork of man. Right under the shadow of Pike's Peak, they seem to culminate, and here is Colorado's famous Garden of the Gods. Entering from the roadside we passed through a little ravine, that rapidly widened into a bijou of a valley, and there near its centre uprose two tremendous rocks, red dashed with gray, six hundred feet long by two hundred high, tapering to a knife-like edge. They were both inaccessible to man, but the elements had bored a hole through the summit of one, that looked for all the world as if a round shot or shell had knocked its way through there. A score of swallows were twittering about this, as we passed by, and their nests were visible all up and down the rocks. A little distance off stood three red sandstones, ten or twelve feet in diameter, by a hundred or more high, like the surviving columns of some ruined temple—one somewhat splintered and shattered, but the others still uplifting their capitals sublime against the sky. Farther on the whole country here is studded for miles, with these wedge-shaped and columnar masses of red and gray rock, some even on a grander scale, as though it were a cemetery of Titans, marked by Cyclopean tombstones. It is a vast meadow, rich with herbage, with Monument Creek meandering through it, vocal with the song of birds, the whole lying close up under the overshadowing Mountains; while over all, breaking sharp and clear against the faultless sky, stands Pike's Peak, imperial in his majesty, dark below with pines and firs, but his bald head crowned with eternal snows, looking calmly down, as if God's sentinel keeping watch and ward over all below. Altogether the grouping of the landscape there is very fine, as if the gods had done their best; and on the glorious morning when we saw it, beneath a perfect September sky, we thought Colorado had indeed here much to be supremely proud of.

Some three miles farther on, near the banks of the Fontaine qui Bouilli, which here comes boiling down from the foot of Pike's Peak, there are several fine natural soda-springs. They come bubbling up on either side of the stream from the far depths below, and their overflow during the long ages has deposited large rocks of calcareous tufa or carbonate of soda all about them. We tried this soda-water, and found it as cool, and as sharp and titillating as that from a city-fountain; and when treated with an acid, it effervesced and vanished quite as freely. H—— and B—— tried it with lemons and whiskey and reported their cocktails quite unequalled since leaving New York. Col. Chivington, of Sand Creek memory, had recently purchased these springs and the land adjacent for three thousand dollars; but he was now asking ten thousand, though there had not been a dollar expended for improvements yet. Combined with Pike's Peak, the Garden of the Gods, and all the unique and romantic scenery from there to Denver, as well as the general Plains and Mountains, the investment did not seem to be a bad one, and no doubt will pay handsomely some day. But it was then waiting the completion of the Pacific Railroad, and the in-pouring of population, that all Coloradoans then devoutly hoped and prayed for.[6]

Just beyond the Soda Springs, stood or rather slept Colorado City. We had been so unfortunate as to break our ambulance-tongue in pulling out of a mud-hole, and halted there to have a new one made. In the days of 1857-60, when mining centred at Pike's Peak, Colorado City was the Denver of southwestern Colorado, and must have been a place of considerable importance. But the "diggings" there long since gave out, and C. C. was now in a bad way. Corner-lots were for sale, dirt-cheap. It had plenty of empty shanties, but scarcely any population; and what it had, were the sleepiest-looking Coloradoans we had yet seen anywhere. The "hotel" or tavern, was forlorn and dirty; the people, idle and listless; and the "City," as a whole, was evidently hastening fast to the status of Goldsmith's Deserted Village. Cañon City, farther up in the mountains, they told us, was even worse off—having no inhabitants at all. It had good buildings, some even of brick and stone, equal indeed to any in Colorado; but all stood empty, like "some banquet-hall deserted," and the once busy "City" was now as silent as Thebes or Petræ. Such is life in our mining regions. Population comes and goes, as restless as the sea, according as the "diggings" promise good "pay-dirt" or bad. And what are prosperous and busy centres this year, next year may become empty and deserted.[7] At sunset we went into camp on the banks of the Fontaine qui Bouilli, while a snow-squall was careering around Pike's Peak. Several of these had been prancing about his summit during the afternoon, and about five p. m., one of them swept down over the foothills and valley, with far out-stretched wings, giving us a taste of its icy breath as we journeyed by. At sunset the hues along the mountains and among the snow-peaks were magnificent and glorious; but the air became keen and nipping as night fell, and all the evening we hugged the fire closely. Just before dark, while supper was cooking, two or three of us tried the Fontaine qui Bouilli for trout, and caught—not a nibble even!

Soon after leaving Colorado City the mountains trend away to the southwest, while the road to Fort Garland continues on down the Fontaine qui Bouilli to the Arkansas. Fording this at Pueblo, and subsequently its two affluents, the Greenhorn and the Huerfano, you again strike the mountains, a hundred miles farther south, at the foot of Sangre del Christo Pass. The high ridges or "divides" between all of these streams are barren and sterile, to an extent little imagined in the east; but the streams themselves are bordered by broad valleys, rich and fertile, that as a rule need only irrigation to produce luxuriantly. In some seasons they do not require even this, as their proximity to the mountains affords them rains enough. Still, no farmer is safe there without his system of acequias or water-ditches, to irrigate if necessary; and we found these everywhere constructed, if not in use, where settlements had been made. In all of these valleys we already had scattered ranches—some of them very large—and raised wheat, barley, corn, oats, etc. in considerable quantities. Colorado had formerly imported all her grain and flour from the Missouri, at an enormous cost; but latterly she had drawn large supplies from these fertile valleys, and in '66 considered herself about self-sustaining. Not more than one-tenth, or less, of her arable land here, however, seemed to be under cultivation, and agriculture even then was of the rudest and simplest. The ranchmen were mainly Americans or Germans, but the labor was all performed by Mexican peons, subjected for generations to but one remove from slavery. It was the threshing season, and in many places we saw them treading out their wheat and barley by mules, with a Greaser on the back of each, lazily whiffing his cigarrito, while his donkey dozed around. Elsewhere, their threshing done, we saw them winnowing their grain by hand, as the breeze chanced along. We did not see or hear of a threshing-machine or a fanning-mill in the whole region there, and doubt if there was one. The Mexicans do not comprehend these nineteenth century new-fangled notions, and will have none of them. They prefer by far their old-time dolce far niente. Festina lente is their national maxim, and your thorough-bred peon would choose a broncho rather than a locomotive any day. And naturally enough, the American settlers here, we found, were mostly from the south, and during the war had been none too ardent for the Union.

Most of the farms here were large in size, and in crossing the Greenhorn we passed through a noble ranch, twelve miles wide by eighteen long, owned by a Mr. Zan Hincklin. In '65 he sold his crop of grain for eighty thousand dollars, and in '66 expected to do even better. He had on hand a thousand horses, three thousand head of cattle, and six thousand sheep, all of which he grazed the year round. He lived very plainly, in a rude adobe hut, that we should think hardly fit for a canal-laborer east; but was as hospitable and generous as a prince. We had scarcely gone into camp, on the banks of the rippling Greenhorn, before he sent us over butter, eggs, and vegetables, and bade us welcome to his heart and home. He acquired his great estate by marrying one of the half-breed daughters of the celebrated John Brent, who used to hunt and trap all through this region, and who lived so long among the Indians that he became himself half Red-Skin. He died possessed of vast tracts of land here, acquired chiefly through trading with the Indians, but his children it appeared, as a rule, had turned out poorly. One of his sons had returned to Indian life, joining a wandering tribe, and others still hung about the settlements, of small account to anybody.

From the Arkansas, the country gradually but constantly ascends, until you strike the mountains again at the foot of Sangre del Christo Pass. Here you follow up a dashing rivulet, that courses away to the Huerfano, and advantage is taken of a depression in the main ridge to cross into San Luis Park. We camped the night before in a sheltered nook among the foot-hills, surrounded on three sides by gnarled piñon trees, while the fourth opened on a little plateau sloping down to a noisy brook, that afforded water and grass in abundance. The next morning we breakfasted early, and were off up the Pass soon after sunrise. The morning air was nipping, and as we advanced we found the mists rolling down the mountains, and so off over the Plains eastward. The teams being a little slow that morning in packing up and getting off, some of us concluded to walk on; but we had not proceeded far, before some one suggested this might be dangerous, as Indians were reported about, and our arms were all behind in the ambulances. Halting, therefore, for the rest to come up, two of us then secured our Spencers and six-shooters, and mounting one a horse and the other a mule pushed on ahead again. The ascent, though gentle, we found nevertheless very constant, and gradually the ambulances dropped much behind. The road led over a shelving plateau, and up a pretty sharp hill, and then plunged by a rapid descent into a little valley again. Here we met several men, with a drove of indifferent cattle and sheep, en route from Culebra to Denver and a market. Climbing out of this valley, we struck a sharp ascent, that led southward along and up the ridge, and then turning west by south struck straight across the summit. As we raised the summit, a keen, fierce wind met us from the west, and soon set our teeth to chattering in unison with it. On the tip-top we found a contractor's train, en route to Fort Garland with supplies, doubling up ox-teams and doing its "level best" to forge slowly ahead. The summit or ridge, the tip-top of the Rocky Mountains—the very backbone of America here—we found only a few hundred yards across; and then we came out on the western slope, with all the glories of the San Luis Park nestling at our feet, or uprising gorgeously before us. Below, the Park lay wrapped in a dreamy haze, with the Sangre del Christo creek flashing onward through it; above, peak on peak—huge, snow-white, and sublime—rimmed it round, as with a crown. Over all, hung one of those blue and faultless skies, for which the Rocky Mountains are so world-famous, with the sun sweeping majestically through it, while God himself seemed ready to speak on every side. This was to the west. Turning to the east, the view there seemed, if possible, even more grand and sublime. Peak and ridge, plateau and foot-hill, stretched away beneath us; in the distance the brace of Spanish Peaks, two bold "buttes" passed the day before, shot up abruptly six thousand feet into the sky, from the dead level of the Plains around them; while beyond and around to the dim horizon, east, north, and south, for hundreds of miles, outstretched the illimitable Plains. The elevation of the Pass is given, as about ten thousand feet above the sea. At our feet, the fog was breaking up and rolling off eastward in sullen masses, which the morning sun gilded with glory, or here and there pierced through and through down to the earth beneath. Soon it passed away into airy clouds, careering along the sky, and presently vanished altogether. And then the Plains! The Plains! How their immense outstretch absorbed and overwhelmed the eye! It was not the ocean, but something much grander and vaster, than even the ocean seems. If you could view the sea from the same altitude, doubtless the impression would be much the same. But what is the loftiest mast-head, compared with the summit of Sangre del Christo? The grandeur and sublimity of the scene awed one into silence, as if in the presence of Deity himself, and the great and holy thoughts of that hour well repaid us for all our toil and fatigue. Say what we may, there is something gracious and ennobling in such mountain scenery, which men can illy dispense with. How it deepens and widens one's feelings! How it broadens and uplifts one's thoughts! How it strengthens—emboldens—one's manhood! What Switzerland is to Europe, and New England to the Atlantic States, this and more, the whole Rocky Mountain region will yet become to America.

Descending the mountains westward, a ride of a mile or two brought us to a spring, where a Mexican was taking his noon-day meal of tortillas, while his inevitable mule was cropping the grass near by. H. dismounted and scooped up a drink with his hands, Indian fashion, but I was not yet thirsty enough for that. A mile or two farther, still descending, brought us to the head of Sangre del Christo creek, a dashing rivulet fed by snow streams, that runs thence to the Rio Grande. A winding defile or cañon, of steady though not very rapid descent, affords a bed-way down the Pass and out into the San Luis Park, and down this the wild little creek shoots very serpentinely. It crosses the road no less than twenty-six times in ten miles, and constantly reminds you of the famous Yankee fence, which was made up of such crooked rails, that when the pigs crept through it they never exactly knew whether they were inside or out! We jogged leisurely down the creek, until we judged we were some six or seven miles from the summit, and perhaps half way down the mountain, when we halted for the teams to come up. The wind blew sharply up the Pass still, though it was now much after noon, and we found the shelter of a neighboring ravine very welcome. Here we unsaddled our animals, and turned them loose to graze. They fed up and down the ravine, cropping the rich herbage there, but would never stray over a hundred yards or so away, when they would turn and graze back to us again. On such mountain trips saddle-animals become attached to their riders, and will seldom leave of their own accord. So, also, they are unerring sentinels, and always announce the approach of Indians or others with a neigh or bray. Building a royal fire with the dry fir-trees there, we next spread our saddle-blankets on the ground, and then with our saddles under our heads, and our feet Indian-fashion to the fire, smoked and talked until the rest arrived. About two p. m. I noticed Kate (my mule) stop grazing and snuff the air, very inquiringly; presently, with a whisk of her tail and a salutatory bray, she darted down the ravine, as if thoroughly satisfied; and in a minute or two along came the ambulances, with our friends chilled through, despite their robes and blankets. All tumbled out to stretch their benumbed limbs, and we ate lunch around our impromptu fire grouped very picturesquely.

Meanwhile about everybody nearly had got "trout on the brain." We had caught frequent glimpses of the speckled beauties, as we crossed Sangre del Christo creek or rode along its banks, and concluded to go into camp early, so as to try our luck with a fly or two. A good camping place was found a mile or two farther on, near the foot of the Pass, and here while supper was preparing, several of us rigged up our lines and started off. H. and I were most unfortunate; we whipped the stream up and down quite a distance, but came back fishless. H. caught a bite, and I several nibbles, but neither of us landed a trout. We could see plenty of them, young dandies, darting about in the black pools, or, old fogies, floating along by the banks; but they were Arcadian in their tastes, and disdained the fancy flies we threw them. Dr. M. and L., however, had better luck. The spirit of good Isaak Walton seemed to rest upon and abide with them. They caught a dozen or more, of handsome mountain trout, weighing from two to three pounds each, and the next morning when brought on our rude table for breakfast, hot and smoking from the fire, nothing could have been more savory and delicious. Gen. B. and L. turned cooks for the occasion, and judged by the result Delmonico might have envied them. Their broiled trout, fresh from the brook and now piping hot, buttered and steaming, assailed both eye and palate at once, and we awarded them the palm, nem. con.

The weather that day, from noon on, had grown steadily colder, though the sun shone unclouded most of the time, and before we got our camp well pitched a snow-squall struck us. The flakes came thick and fast for awhile, but presently passed away, though more or less continued sifting downward until nightfall. Farther up the Pass, around the crest of the mountains, snow-squalls marched and countermarched most of the afternoon, and at sunset the air grew nippingly cold, even down where we were. We soon pitched our tent, and built a glorious fire in front of it; but that not sufficing, supper once over, we carried our sheet-iron cooking-stove inside, and all huddled about that. When bed-time came, blankets, buffalo-robes and great-coats were all in demand; yet in spite of all, we passed a sorry night of it, and morning dawned at last greatly to our relief.

We reached Fort Garland next day (Sept. 20) about one, p. m., without meeting a single Indian, either hostile or friendly. Denver, as before said, had warned us to be on our guard, and we tried to be; but all reported dangers vanished as we advanced—Munchausen after Munchausen exploding in turn. From the Huerfano across the mountains to Garland, some fifty miles or more, there was but a single ranch, and scarcely anybody on the road. A Mexican on foot and another on a donkey were emigrating to the Huerfano, and at one point we encountered a whole family similarly engaged. Paterfamilias, whiffing his cigarito, led a diminutive broncho (Mexican for jackass) about the size of a spring calf, on which sat his household gods, to wit, his Señora also smoking, with a child before and another behind her—all of them astride. Another broncho of about the same size followed on behind, loaded down with clothing, bedding, and various domestic utensils until there was but little to be seen of him except his legs. What the locomotive is to the Yankee, and the horse to the borderer, that the broncho is to the Mexican, and the two seem alike fitted for each other and inseparable. His patient little beast costs but little, and when stopping browses by the wayside the best it may, while Don Quixote himself sits basking in the sunshine. The serene and infinite content of a Mexican peon, as he sits thus wrapped in his poncho or serape, sucking his everlasting cigarrito, no American can imagine. His dignity is as perfect as that of a Castilian; but the stolidity of his brain, who shall describe?

Some fifteen miles or so from Fort Garland, in the heart of the San Luis Park, lies San Luis de Culebra, a hamlet of five or six hundred people, and I believe, the most considerable "city," there. You strike the Park proper some distance east of Fort Garland, and from there to Culebra the country is substantially a dead-level. Culebra was then a genuine Mexican town without an atom of the Yankee in or about it, and seemed a thousand years old, it was so sleepy, though comparatively a new settlement. Its houses were all one-story adobes, with chimneys in the corner, in the true Mexican style, and were all grouped about a central "plaza," of course, or the town would not be Mexican. All Southern Colorado, it will be remembered, formerly belonged to New Mexico, and hence these Mexican settlements here and beyond. The people raised wheat, barley, and oats to some extent; but depended on their flocks and herds chiefly for support. We entered Culebra at dark, amidst a multitudinous chorus of dogs, and halted at the house of Capt. D. a bright German, formerly an officer of New Mexican Volunteers, but who had recently married a Culebra señorita and settled there. He gave us an excellent supper, after which we all adjourned to a "baille," or Mexican Ball, gotten up especially in honor of Gen. Sherman and Gov. Cumming, but which Sherman was unable to attend. Several of his staff-officers, however, and the governor were present, and these with the rest of us made up quite a party. These bailles are great institutions among the New Mexicans, who retain all the old Spanish fondness for music and dancing, and are ready for a "baille," any time. The Culebrans had already had two or three that week, but got up the Sherman-Cumming one on short notice and in grand style. The only thing necessary was to engage a room and music, and send a runner through the village, to announce a baille was on the tapis, and the whole population—men, women, children, dogs, and fleas—were sure to be there. At the primitive hour of eight p. m. the people began to assemble, and by nine p. m. the baille was in full blast. The ball-room itself was an adobe building, one-story high, perhaps fifty feet long by thirty wide, with a dirt floor, and seats all around. At the farther end was a rude bar, with a transparency over it, bearing the motto, "Limonade and Egg-nog," at which each cavalier was expected to treat his lady from time to time. Near this was a rough platform for the musicians, who consisted of three or four violinists, led by an irrepressible guitarist—blind and quite a character in his way. As the evening progressed, he worked himself up into an ecstacy of enthusiasm, and then, with his eyes "in fine phrensy rolling," improvised words to every piece they played. He appeared perfectly absorbed and carried away with playing and singing, and when a dance ended seemed quite exhausted. No bone-ist, or tambourine-ist, in a troupe of minstrels east, ever performed with more thorough and reckless abandon. His head was thrown back; his eye-balls rolled wildly: his coarse, matted, coal-black hair swept his shoulders: his long and bony fingers fairly flew up and down his quivering guitar: while his shrill, piping, tenor voice rose and fell above the music, in thorough unison with the general scene. Later in the evening, after frequent potations of egg-nog, Don Jesus, (for that was his name) became immensely funny, and his gyrations amused us greatly.

With the first sound of the violins, the couples took the floor, and kept it up vigorously to the "wee sma' hours." The older people participated less, but young and old were all there, apparently the whole population, in their best "bib and tucker." Women came carrying their infants, and others held the babies while their mothers danced. The younger people, down to mere boys and girls, of course, all danced. First came some slow, stately Spanish dances; but presently they slid into schottisches and polkas, and performed these with a vigor worthy of New York or Paris. Many present were dressed humbly, and but few comparatively were well dressed; but ornaments abounded, and the baille or fandango seemed to put all on an equality. Most of our party selected partners, and soon were lost in the maze and whirl. True, they could not speak a word of Spanish, nor their señoritas any English; but that did not matter, as the Mexicans regard it as a mark of ill-breeding to converse while dancing. Their manner of saluting each other, when first they met, was unique and original, to wit: the sexes poked their heads over each other's shoulders, and took a good old fashioned hug. Throughout the evening, of course, there was a total absence of indecorum. As a whole, they seemed to be honest, simple folk, who took life as it came, without fret or worriment, and enjoyed themselves greatly. There was less beauty among the women, but more intelligence among the men, than we expected; their hospitality was hearty and generous—they did their best to give us a pleasant evening; and altogether the baille at Culebra was an event long to be remembered. I left Gov. C. at 11 p. m., looking on and enjoying it, and went to sleep on a good wool bed—the only kind used there—in a comfortable room, for the first time since leaving Denver.

[CHAPTER VII.]

AMONG THE MOUNTAINS (Continued).

Returning next day from Culebra to Fort Garland, we proceeded thence subsequently up the Park to the Indian treaty on the Rio Grande; and from there via Homan's Park and Poncho Pass north to Fair Play in South Park. These "parks," so called, are a peculiar feature of the Rocky Mountains and play an important part in the scenery. There are five of them—North, Middle, South, Homan's, and San Luis—of which we passed through the last three. They constitute in reality a great system of plateaus or valleys, morticed as it were into the very heart of the mountains, from twenty-five to fifty miles long by half as many wide, disconnected by intervening ranges, yet all alike in their general features. One of the main ranges of the Rocky Mountains bounds them on the east; but the main range, the real Sierra Nevada or Mother Range—the great Snowy Range or real water-shed of the continent, dividing the waters of the Pacific from those of the Atlantic—runs along the west. True, this is disputed by enthusiastic Coloradoans; but the facts seem nevertheless, as above. The North Platte, South Platte, Arkansas, and Rio Grande, all take their rise there, and piercing the eastern range flow thence to the Atlantic or the Gulf, while no considerable stream flows thence to the Pacific. Kit Carson, whom we met at Fort Garland, the best geographer of that region, took this view of the subject, and I humbly concur.

The largest of these Parks, by far, is the San Luis, and we found it fairly gridironed with trout streams, and rimmed around with mountains. Its general elevation is from six to seven thousand feet above the sea, with its surrounding peaks and ridges about as much more, which is too cold for Indian corn, though the other cereals—such as wheat, barley, oats, etc.—may readily be grown there. Volcanic agencies have had much to do with its formation, as its wide-spread igneous rocks and pebbles still plainly show. Along the Rio Grande and its numerous affluents wide bottoms have been formed, that are very rich—the very washings of the mountains; but elsewhere you have only rocks and gravel, sage-brush and grease-wood. It contains no timber, except a fringe of cottonwoods and poplars along most of the larger streams; but cedar, pine, and fir are found in the neighboring cañons and mountains. Cattle and other live-stock find good grazing in summer along the streams, and in winter they were said to thrive well on the coarse bunch-grass, with which the surrounding cañons all abound. The broad bottoms of the Rio Grande, waving with tall grass and fatter than the prairies of Illinois, ought to make magnificent meadows, and will some day when more of our Anglo-Saxon population overflows there. The population of the Park was grouped mainly in two or three Mexican hamlets, and was computed by Kit Carson (then Colonel of New Mexico Volunteers and Post Commandant at Fort Garland) at about five or six thousand only. A noted citizen of Denver, who owned a large part of the Park, had reported it to us as about twenty thousand. Not that he intended to be inexact; but his imagination was naturally very vivid, and his language apt to be poetic. In purchasing property there, under an old Spanish grant, he certainly acquired any quantity of magnificent mountain, and a wide stretch of plain; but we suspected, he would wait some time before he saw his money back again.

Our general ride up the San Luis Park, and so through Homan's to Poncho Pass, was unique and perfect in its way. Our route on leaving Fort Garland was first across several mountain brooks, where the trout were so abundant, that the soldiers at the fort caught them with blankets and feasted on them at will, and then directly up the Park, with the Sierra Blanca or Snowy Range towering on our right. Striking the Rio Grande, we found it alive with geese and ducks, and when we went into camp, L.—our champion sportsman—caught several noble trout, weighing from five to six pounds each. Singularly enough, the streams flowing to the Rio Grande all abound in trout, while those going to the Mississippi, we were told, all lack them. We halted two days here, attending the Indian Treaty before alluded to, and then proceeded on. At Fort Garland, we were advised to return to Denver by the same route we had come, as the season was already advancing and nobody had come through by Poncho Pass since the previous spring. Moreover, the trail was reported impracticable for ambulances, and even Kit Carson shook his head, unless we went by pack-mules. But as the pack-mules were not to be had, and we were all averse to returning over the old route, we resolved to push ahead by Poncho Pass, and get through the mountains that way, if possible. From the Treaty-Ground, our route lay nearly due north, with the snowy crest and peaks of the Sierra Blanca on our right and about parallel. Bidding our friends good-bye, we set out early (Sept. 24), with the wind dead-ahead and bitter cold. Toward noon, the weather moderated somewhat; but snow-squalls chased each other along the mountains all day, and once we counted nine in view—one careering along behind the other—at the same time. Now and then one would expand its wings, and sweep across the Park; and several times in the course of the day we were thus in the midst of real winter. The range to the west was more or less broken into foot-hills and ridges; but the Sierra Blanca to the right seemed a solid rampart, rugged, inaccessible, sublime. Its serrated crest, white with perpetual snow, rose five or six thousand feet above the level of the Park; its tree-line was distinctly marked, as with a rule; and the whole seemed so near and so gorgeous, when the sunset swallowed up the snow-squalls, that we could scarcely realize it was yet miles away. As we got farther up the Park, the soil grew thinner, and more volcanic in its origin; but we crossed several handsome streams, that might be made to irrigate considerable land there.

We found only one ranch, however, north of Fort Garland—a Mr. Russell's, at the extreme north-eastern end of the Park. We camped there one night, and found the proprietor to be a good specimen of the average Coloradoan. Born in Illinois and bred a blacksmith, the gold-fever had taken him to California, where he worked partly in the mines and partly at his trade. When he failed in the mines, as he usually did, he again resorted to his trade; and had he stuck to his anvil, he verily believed, he would have been well-off long before. But as soon as he had hammered out a little money, his evil genius led him back to the "diggings;" and so he had wandered all up and down our mining regions—California, Nevada, Colorado, etc.,—until 1861, when he found himself in Denver, without a cent in his pockets. Mining happened to be dull there, a regiment of volunteers was then forming for service against the Indians, and so he turned soldier. Before his three years were up, he had saved a moderate "pile," and when he was finally mustered out and discharged, he came here and "squatted" on a quarter-section. The money saved while thus soldiering started him in farming, and he now thought his future secure. This was his first year there, but he had got along very well so far. The Indians had not disturbed him, though frequently there, and his Mexican peons had proved faithful laborers, though a little slow. He had raised fine crops of oats, barley, and potatoes, which he would sell to the garrison at Garland at good prices; but his wheat was a failure—he feared, for want of sufficient warmth. He had a good adobe house, which he meant to enlarge and improve, and a fine flock of sheep, besides considerable cattle. The worst feature of his ranch was, that he had to irrigate; but he said he had plenty of water for this, and the cost was small. His nearest neighbor was eighteen miles off, and that was too near; his post-office, sixty miles; and church, two hundred. It is strange, that men can be content to bury themselves thus, in the heart of a wilderness, when God and nature are so bountiful elsewhere. It is the everlasting itching, I suppose, that we Americans have for change, which comes to little good after all. No doubt plenty of Coloradoans would emigrate to the moon, or even to Le Verrier, if there were a practicable "trail" there.

The next day crossing a low ridge, through a forest of gnarled cedars, we entered Homan's Park, and found it to be nearly a duplicate of the San Luis, on a smaller scale. It is about thirty miles long, by perhaps half as many wide, and its essential features are about the same as those of the San Luis, though its soil seemed deeper and more generous. About half way up, a lusty mountain-stream crosses from west to east, lined with cottonwoods, and here four Germans had each "pre-empted" a quarter-section, all lying together. They had all been officers of Colorado Volunteers, and when mustered out came and "squatted" here together, in this picturesque little valley. The last year of their service, being stationed at Fort Garland, they had been up that way on a scout after Indians; and, falling in love with the Park, selected it for their future homes. One of them was married, and his wife—a tidy young German woman—kept house for all. They began operations the previous year, and already had accomplished large results. They put in seven thousand dollars as joint-capital, and with this purchased all the necessary animals, implements, provisions, seeds etc., to start well with. Among the rest, they bought a hundred and forty cows, which the following spring brought them in nearly as many calves, all of which they were now raising. Pasturage was abundant in summer, and in the winter the adjoining cañons supplied bunch-grass, etc. They milked all their cows, and converted the milk into butter and cheese, which two items alone had paid their current expenses so far, with a small margin over. A sluice-way from the brook carried the water into their milk-house, where instead of tin or earthen pans, they had long milk-troughs hollowed out of logs, around which the water flowed, and then passed back into the stream again. A bowl of buttermilk, that they tendered us, fresh from the churn, was an unlooked-for luxury in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, that none of us could refuse. The ensuing winter they proposed to build a water-churn, and so make their friendly brook serve them still further. They had had tolerable crops of barley, oats, and potatoes, all of which that could be spared they were husbanding for seed the coming year. They had tried some corn and wheat, but neither had matured well, and they would hardly venture them again. Their butter and cheese they sold to the miners over in South Park, and some they sent even to Denver and a market. They called their place Kerber's Ranch, after their leading partner, who seemed to be a live Dutchman all over. Of course, we had to stop to dinner, though it was not yet noon; and when that meal was announced, they conducted us to a table Denver might have envied. Trout, venison, grouse, krout, with all the vegetables of the season, and lager-beer home-brewed, made up a meal not to be despised anywhere, least of all in the fastnesses of the Rocky Mountains. They had seen no officers and hardly any body else, for months, and would take no pay for anything; but gratefully accepted an armful of "literature," as we bade them good-bye—the last of our newspapers, magazines, and books still left from our supply on leaving Denver. Their nearest neighbor was eighteen miles off, and nearest post-office seventy-five. To Denver was a hundred and fifty miles, and it took a team a month or more to go there and return via Poncho Pass. They pronounced the Pass, in response to our eager inquiries, entirely practicable, with careful driving, if we crossed by daylight; and with their kindest wishes, we went on our way rejoicing.

Some miles after leaving Kerber's, we began to ascend the mountain, but the ascent was so gradual you scarcely noticed it. There was no well-defined road any where—only an old Indian trail for saddle and pack animals, along which only a few wagons had ever passed before. We continued to ascend until dusk, hoping to reach and cross the summit before going into camp; but after sunset, the trail became so faint and our animals so leg-weary, we were compelled to halt at the first wood and water we came to. This we did on the bank of a beautiful stream, that washed the base of a high bluff or rather "butte," and rushed thence via Homan's Park to the Rio Grande. Several of us had rode on ahead on horseback, but the teams did not get up until after dark. Meanwhile, we had gathered wood, and built a roaring fire; and when the rest arrived, we soon had camp pitched, and the coffee boiling. We had shot some ducks on the Rio Grande, and brought along some excellent beef-steaks; and these H. and L. now broiled before the fire, on sharpened sticks, in a style the Parker House could hardly have beaten. We found excellent grass here, although so far up the Pass, and our poor tired animals cropped it eagerly. The moon was at the full that night, and the sky cloudless; but before morning the air grew bitter cold. We shivered through the night, in spite of our blankets and buffalo-robes; and the next morning at breakfast, the ice formed in our tin-cups between the intervals of eating and drinking. We were camped, in fact, on the summit of the Rocky Mountains, at a height of nine or ten thousand feet above the sea, with snow-peaks all about us, and the only wonder is that we got through the night so well. For the first time since leaving Denver, we felt a sense of loneliness and danger; and the occasional yelping of the wolves around us, in the still midnight air, did little to allay this. Our animals, also, seemed fretful and uneasy, and we suspected Indians about, but nothing came of it. We looked well to our arms before retiring, and talked much of the night away—it was so cold; and the next morning broke camp early, and were off up the Pass again.

A half an hour's ride or so brought us to the summit, which surprised us, as the ascent had been so gentle all the way up from Kerber's—far less than that of Sangre del Christo from Fort Garland. The view from the summit we found limited, compared with that from Sangre del Christo; and soon after we descended into a sheltered nook knee deep in grass, with wood and water both just at hand, where we had been advised to camp the night before, if able to reach it. Following the banks of a diminutive brook, we descended gradually to Poncho Creek; and here our really bad road began. So far, the Pass had been excellent, all things considered, and we were astonished at its bad reputation; but after we crossed Poncho Creek, and got started down its wild cañon, we soon found ample cause for it all. A narrow defile, with precipitous banks on either side from five hundred to a thousand feet high, furnished the only road-way, which here found room first on one side of the creek and then on the other, the best it could, and in many places it had to take to the bed of the creek itself, in order to round the rocky bluffs. The trouble with the Pass was, it had had no work done on it, and needed grading badly at several points. A few hundred dollars judiciously expended would have made it much superior to Sangre del Christo, we all thought. It is not so high by a thousand feet or more, nor nearly so steep, and we judged it would yet become one of the favorite routes to and from San Luis Park.

While the teams were working through, L. and I passed on ahead, with our rifles at our saddle-bows, hoping to start a bear or shoot a buck-tail deer, but saw no game of any kind. Our experience among the mountains on this trip, indeed, was unfavorable to the stirring accounts we had heard and read of great game there. The lack of trees there, except in the cañons, and especially of nut-bearing trees, and likewise of fruit-bearing bushes, must be unfavorable to animal life, as a rule, and I doubt if there ever was much there, except an occasional deer or bear, eagle or buzzard. We were surprised to find so few birds, and scarcely any squirrels, except a little red species no bigger than our ground-squirrels east. We met two of Kerber's teams toiling wearily up the Pass, as we descended it, and gave them the first news they had had from the ranch in weeks. We got several miles ahead, before we knew it, and did not halt until we reached the foot of the Pass, where it debouches into the valley of the Little Arkansas. It was an hour or more before the ambulances overtook us, and then we received a rough account of their experiences. In several places, they had had to lash ropes around them and edge them along the hillsides the best they could. In others, they would have upset repeatedly, but managed by walking and pushing to keep them on their wheels, and finally got through safe and sound. The wagon, however, being heavier and clumsier, had capsized badly, and they had driven ahead and left it, with instructions to follow on as soon as possible. Crossing the valley of the little Arkansas and a high range beyond, late in the afternoon we descended into the valley of the Arkansas proper, and at sunset went into camp on its banks, near Schwander's ranch. The Arkansas, we found, was here already a very considerable stream, but we forded it without difficulty. Our unfortunate wagon, perhaps it should be added, got along after dark, much the worse for wear; and jaded and weary with the day's journey, we were glad to pass a quiet night of it.

The next morning we crossed another lofty range, the ascent of which was wild and picturesque, and thence descended into South Park. Less in size than the San Luis, and more broken in surface, the South Park nevertheless has the same general characteristics, though more nearly circular. Its enclosing mountains are abrupt and bold, and the views from many points are very striking and charming. Passing out of it to Denver, we ascended the range from which Leutze is said to have conceived his well-known painting in the Capitol at Washington, "Westward the star of Empire takes its way." The facts are little like the painting aforesaid, because no emigrant train would ever attempt to pass over such an impossible road, as Leutze has painted: but the landscape from the point referred to is nevertheless noble and grand. The range there, I believe, is about eight thousand feet above the sea. South Park, at your feet, extends say, thirty miles north and south, by twenty east and west; down in its bosom nestles a necklace of exquisite little lakes, with streams flashing onward from the mountains to them; while beyond—all along the west, in fact—runs the perpetual Snowy Range, notched and peaked, clear cut and beautiful against the sky, though not so grand and stately as we had seen it farther south. To the north of the road the range shoots up nearly a thousand feet higher, but the view from there did not compensate us for our toil in ascending it. The whole view here, though fine in its way, lacks breadth and sublimity, as a specimen of Rocky Mountain scenery, and Leutze would have done better (in my judgment) had he gone to Sangre del Christo or perhaps Poncho Pass. The sky and general coloring of his painting are good; but how inadequately, how feebly they express the exquisite serenity and unapproachable glory of the Mountains! Bierstadt's skies, though thought impossible east, are nearer to the truth, as our critics will yet learn, when they come to know more of Colorado.

TWIN LAKES (South Park).

In South Park, we had struck a new civilization, the evidences of which grew constantly more apparent. The Mexican and the herder had given way to the Yankee and the miner, and the contrast was most striking. Ranches and settlements were more numerous, and the spirit of enterprise was everywhere observable. First we struck some saline springs, where extensive salt-works had already been erected, and they were reported to be paying well. They were said to furnish a superior article of salt, at a less price than it could be imported from the east, and the company expected thus to monopolize the salt-market of Colorado and the adjoining regions. Beyond these, ranches thickened up all the way to Fair Play, and we found some splendid duck-shooting in the marshes, that now and then skirted the road. Some of the flocks, however, carried off an immense amount of lead, or else H. and L. were indifferent shots—we were never quite able to decide which. They were our champion sportsmen, and though they bagged a number of fine ducks en route, they never were entirely satisfied. They both fired simultaneously at a great flock that rose up as we drove by, and when none dropped H. protested, "I know I hit a dozen that time, but these confounded Rocky Mountain ducks don't know what shot is. They fly away with enough honest lead in them to kill an ordinary eastern duck twice over." L. of course, confirmed this, and adduced the abundant feathers as proof of their joint achievement. B. suggested that the Indians had charmed their fowling-pieces, and meekly inquired of H., "Didn't the ducks carry off your shot-pouch also?" At Fair Play, in the northwest corner of the Park, we found a mining town of four or five hundred inhabitants, apparently busy and prosperous. Timber grew plentifully in the neighboring cañons, and now adobe huts gave place to frame and log shanties. The South Platte skirts the town, and is already a considerable stream here, although it cannot be far away from its source. At Fair Play it heads north up into the great Snowy Range, or water shed of the continent, which feeds it perpetually, and runs thence east to join the North Platte near Fort McPherson, where we had struck it by stage-coach a month before. Good "gold diggings" had been found here long before, and its entire banks about Fair Play have been dug over, "panned out," and ransacked generally. They presented a torn and ragged appearance, as if a young earthquake or two had recently broken out there, and this was not materially improved by the long and high flumes then going up. When these were completed, they expected to turn the Platte considerably aside, and to find rich "placer mines" in its sand-bars and bed again. The principal mining then in South Park, however, was farther up the Platte, at Empire, Buckskin Joe, and other euphoniously named places, none of which had we time to visit. The business generally seemed to be settling down to quartz-mining, as at Black-Hawk and Central City, and to be passing more and more into the hands of Companies. We met several huge boilers on the road, en route to various mills, and it seemed marvellous how they could ever wagon them so far across the Plains, and up into the very heart of the Mountains. Progress with them must have been slow and tedious anywhere; but when they struck a slough, or reached the mountain ranges, then came the whacks and oaths.

Judge Costello, of the Fair Play House, entertained us while there, and gave us excellent accommodations. There had been several inches of snow at Fair Play a few days before, and arriving just at nightfall after a long day's drive, we felt the cold very keenly. But the Judge soon had a roaring fire blazing on his hearth, and welcomed us to Fair Play right royally. In due time he gave us a substantial dinner, piping hot—roast-beef, chicken-fricasee, potatoes with their jackets on, dried-apple-pie and coffee—a meal that seemed supremely Sybaritic, after "roughing it" by the roadside for over a fortnight. We did ample justice to it, having breakfasted nearly twelve hours before, and then adjourned to a common bed-room, where we smoked and read the papers until midnight. We had seen none since leaving Denver, nearly a month before; but Judge C. happened to have just received a large supply, which we devoured eagerly. The elections in California and Oregon had just been held, and the North was again rocking with enthusiasm. Andrew Johnson's apostacy, it was clear, promised to be a losing game after all. The spirit of a few people at last was aroused, as after the firing on Sumter, and evidently the nation meant again neither to be bribed nor scared. True, the November elections were yet to come; but we took increased faith in the virtue and intelligence of the masses, and rejoiced that Congress was still true to Liberty. Absence from "the states" is a great purifier of one's political ideas. We see things at home clearer, and reverence the Union more, the farther we get away from New York and Washington. We forgot all the wretched hair-splitting east, by one side or the other; and came to love only the old flag, in its highest and best significance, as the symbol of freedom and justice, for each and for all men, the broad continent across and the wide world over.

The next morning, a young miner invited us out to take a look at a fine specimen of the American black-eagle, which he had caught a few days before, while "prospecting" along the Snowy Range. He was comparatively a young bird still, yet measured some six feet from tip to tip of wings, and was as brave and fierce as a tiger. He was kept chained by the leg in a dark stable; but he was as wide awake as he could be, and screamed and flew savagely at every one who came near him. It was intended to forward him to the great Fair soon to be held at St. Louis, as a specimen of the feathered tribe from Colorado, where no doubt he created a sensation. His eyes were bright and keen as a falchion, and his talons ugly looking grappling-irons. So, too, his legs were massive, compact columns, that seemed made for strength and endurance. And altogether he was not a bad representative of the Rocky Mountains, where his species have their birth-place and home.

From Fair Play we descended the South Platte direct to Denver, following the course of the river wherever practicable. In some places, its narrow and precipitous cañons prevented this, but we always returned to its banks again as soon as possible. Some miles from Fair Play, we passed several gems of lakes, which H. declared to be "the natural home of the wild-duck;" but though the ducks were there, he failed to bag any, greatly to his disgust. L. more fortunate, got one, and killed several others, but failed to reach them because of the marshes. Our road led over several ranges, some of them quite precipitous, but in the main followed the windings of the Platte, as before said. Here and there the wild cañons, through which the Platte sped like an arrow, became picturesque in the extreme. Frequently our course ahead seemed barred by impenetrable fastnesses, yet somehow we always got through. High and rocky cliffs towered all about us, and all up and down these, wherever they could secure a foothold, the fir, pine, maple, ash, etc. grew densely. As we neared Denver, ranches became more frequent, and saw-mills multiplied, the lumber from which was shipped far and near, among the mines and across the Plains, even to Julesburg and Fort Riley. The road in the main was a natural way; but here and there it had been blasted out of the bluff, or built up on the edge of the Platte, at large expense, and I believe is a chartered turnpike from Fair Play down. The Platte alone makes such a road practicable, and South Park and all its dependencies would be virtually inaccessible, were it not for this great natural highway into the very heart of the Mountains. Altogether, it is a remarkably good road, all things considered, and so are the majority of the roads there. As a rule, they follow the streams that seem to lead almost everywhere among the ranges, as if purposely chiseled out from the beginning, as future pathways of civilization. Our miners, taking the hint, carry their roads over heights, and through depths, and among peaks, that would appal most eastern engineers, and thus enable us to conquer nature in her mightiest strongholds.

The last day out from Denver, we ascended Bradford's Hill—our last serious climb—about noon. This is in reality the first range of the mountains, and gets itself up to some 8,000 feet above the sea; but is yet termed a "Hill," in Colorado parlance. We all got out or dismounted and walked up, to relieve our worn animals, and became well blown ourselves before reaching the summit—the atmosphere grew so rare. As we rounded its western shoulder, we caught a grand view of the Snowy Range again, solemn and sublime over and above all intervening peaks and ridges; but with one accord, all hastened forward to behold once more the Plains, the Plains! Yes, there they were, in all their immeasurable extent! We were out of the Mountains—our long jaunt almost over. No more cañons. No more forests. No more snow-squalls. No more rides, hour by hour, through narrow valleys and defiles, where the whole man feels "cabined, cribbed, confined." No. There were the Plains, illimitable, grand, in all their immensity and sublimity. We thought the view from Sangre del Christo fine, and so it is; but as a view of the Plains proper, without the Mountains thrown in, this view from Bradford's Hill, I think, perhaps surpasses it. There is no end to the vast outstretch and outlook, and in the serene atmosphere of that region the eye ranges over it all with an ease and freedom, only equalled by the eagle himself when poised in mid air. To say that the Plains are visible for miles on miles—north, south, east—is but a feeble description of the wonderful panorama, that there unfolds before you. To the south appeared Castle Rock and its sister buttes, that we had passed three weeks before, looking now like mole-hills beneath us. Issuing from the Mountains at our feet, we could trace the South Platte and Cherry Creek to where they unite near Denver, and then follow the Platte on and on to the east, till lost in the far horizon. Denver lay like a toy-city, seemingly at the base of the Mountains, though really twenty miles away. Over all, was one of those perfect days,

"So cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky."

as old George Herbert wrote, which no Bostonian or Gothamite ever truly witnesses—with not a cloud or haze even visible, the air so pure it was joy to breathe it and ecstacy to gaze abroad through it. Verily, here in Colorado, if anywhere.

"The sky is a drinking cup,
That was overturned of old,
And it pours into the eyes of men
Its wine of airy gold;
We drink that wine all day
Till the last drop is drained up,
And are lighted off to bed,
By the jewels in the cup."

Off to the southwest, just shouldering over the range, presently a white cloud loomed up, no bigger than a man's hand; but the dry atmosphere east was too much for it, and it faded away as fast as it toppled over. As we stood gazing at the immensity before us, some one incidentally said, "I think I now understand how Bilboa felt, when from the summit of the Andes he beheld the Pacific;" and it is a good illustration of the identity of thought under like circumstances, that half-a-dozen others quickly responded, "You bet! Just thinking of the same thing!"

We reached Denver the same evening, jaded and travel-stained, but full of enthusiasm over our trip among the mountains. We had traversed nine counties, some as large as a moderate state east, and been absent nearly a month in all. We had been reported captured and slain by the Indians, as much as two or three times, but from first to last did not see a hostile aborigine. We drove the same animals down and back, over five hundred miles continuously, without the loss of a mule, and seldom made less than thirty or forty miles a day, when on the road. Our ambulances proved very convenient and serviceable, but in crossing the ranges or in bad cañons I always preferred a mule. My favorite was Kate, a noble jenny, as large as a horse and a splendid walker, that carried me over many a mile delightfully. She was as gentle as a kitten, and as faithful as a dog—it sometimes seemed almost as knowing as a man—obeying every whim of her rider, and following him everywhere. If any mule ever attains immortality and a sort of heaven hereafter, surely Kate deserves to. In crossing the ranges or threading the cañons thus, on horse or mule back, several of us would often get miles ahead, and the time thus gained afforded ample leisure for observation and reflection. We were seldom at a loss for conversation, there was so much to investigate and discuss; but when all else failed, we amused ourselves by organizing (on paper) two monster Mining Companies, with fabulous capitals, in which we divided off and took stock. I believe I belonged to the Grand Sangre del Christo Rocky Mountain Mutual Benefit Gold and Silver Mining Association; capital, $20,000,000! H. and C. and others constituted a rival company, with like assets and name equally pretentious. We set up these financial fictions early in the trip, when somebody fell to talking about "feet;" and what with selling "short," operating for a "rise," "corralling the market," "declaring dividends," and abusing each others' "Company," they served to while away many an idle interval. The last afternoon out, we "consolidated," shook hands over the "union," elected a full "Board of Officers," and adjourned to receive our "joint dividends," at New York; but hitherto have never been so fortunate as to get a "quorum" together there, and doubt now if we ever will.

[CHAPTER VIII.]

THE INDIANS—GEN. SHERMAN—KIT CARSON, ETC.

At Fort Garland, in San Louis Park, Sept 21st, Gov. Cumming, Gen. Sherman, and the famous Kit Carson (then Bv't. Brig. Gen. U. S. Vols.), met in council, concerning the Utes and the Indian question generally. Sherman, as elsewhere intimated, was then in the midst of a long tour by ambulance, through the heart of the Indian country embraced in his then Military Division, and as he had already travelled about 1200 miles, with no escort except a couple of staff-officers and the necessary teamsters, without seeing a hostile Red Skin, he was getting to be somewhat skeptical on the whole Indian subject. The grand Treaty with the Utes was to come off Sept. 22d and 23d on the banks of the Rio Grande, some thirty miles northwest from Fort Garland; but as Sherman had decided to leave Garland on the 22d for his return east via the Arkansas, a preliminary council was called at Fort Garland on the 21st. Runners had been sent out a day or two before, and the Big Chiefs of the Utes kept arriving all that day. The council was held late in the afternoon, in a large room back of the commandant's quarters. The chiefs were grouped on one side of the room, squat upon their haunches, grave and dignified; while on the other sat Sherman in loose uniform, puffing a cigar, with Gov. Cumming on one side and Kit Carson on the other. Carson served as interpreter, speaking Mexican well, which the chiefs mostly understood. After some preliminary skirmishing, Sherman said he had called them together to ascertain whether the Utes were willing to quit their nomadic life and settle down on a Reservation. He urged this upon them, as their true interest, if they wished to maintain their tribal existence, and said he had only come among them to promote their happiness and welfare. He added, he had recently been visiting many other tribes with the same object and purposes, and as a friend to their race was convinced their only hope for the future lay in going on a Reservation. The chiefs debated the matter among themselves for awhile, and presently made answer, that they thanked the Big Warrior for his suggestions and approved them; but that their young men were opposed to such a policy, and they feared it would be difficult to persuade the Utes of its wisdom, until the Cheyennes and Comanches—their hereditary foes—had first adopted it. The council lasted an hour or more, with much skillful fencing and adroit diplomacy on the part of Ooray and Ancantash, the head-chiefs; but this was the substance of all that Sherman could worm out of them. He tried to explain and reason with them in various ways, but at last broke up the council in disgust, and blurted out in his peculiar way, as he strode back to his quarters, "They will have to freeze and starve a little more, I reckon, before they will listen to common sense!" Subsequently he told us of a council that he had held about a fortnight or so before, at Fort Laramie or somewhere up there, with the Arrapahoes or the Sioux. He had urged upon the chiefs, that their white brothers were opposed to war and desired peace, and he hoped there would be no more bloodshed in that region between the Red Man and the Pale Face. The chiefs presently replied, with a wariness worthy of Talleyrand, that they reciprocated his Quaker sentiments, and would do all in their power to enforce them; but that their young men were rash and fiery sometimes, and it might be difficult to hold them in. "Well, then," said Sherman to the interpreter, firing up, "Tell the rascals so are mine; and if another white man is scalped in all this region, it will be impossible to hold mine in." The chiefs saw the point, and no doubt sagely concluded they would have trouble, if ever they got Tecumseh Sherman fairly after them.

The grand Treaty with the Utes came off, as I have said, on Sept. 22d and 23d, on the banks of the Rio Grande, some thirty miles or so northwest from Fort Garland. We left Garland early in the morning by ambulance, and reached the treaty ground soon after noon. Gov. Cumming and Indian Agent Hunt had preceded us, and on arriving we found them just sitting down to discuss a Rio Grande trout, nearly as large as an eastern shad. The Utes had pitched their lodges a mile or so away, in a bend of the river, but they were constantly passing to and fro on horseback and afoot. Apparently none of them ever walked, if he could afford the luxury of a pony, and often one puny pony was made to carry two or three lubberly fellows at a time. Evidently the Plains Indians are as averse to walking, as the traditional Texan, who is said never to leave his door-sill without mounting a mustang. These Ute ponies are hardy, sagacious little fellows, some of them very handsome, and are of course, the lineal descendants of the wild horses of the Plains. Ooray, their head chief, rode a bright little bay, that would have taken a first-class premium almost anywhere. Of course, they get no grain, but subsist exclusively on grass. They constitute their owners' chief wealth, and a Ute will part with almost anything sooner than his pony. Braves, squaws, papooses, all ride astride, and generally at a gallop. They seldom use the spur, but rarely mount without a whip, and this they keep going pretty steadily while on the road. Their saddles are rude affairs of wood, with very short stirrups; but their bridles are better made, and usually have some kind of an iron bit, if at all obtainable.

In the course of the afternoon, hundreds of the Indians thronged our little camp, in all varieties of costume, though chiefly in breech-cloth and blanket or buffalo-robe. Both sexes dress much alike, and at first it was difficult to distinguish one from the other, though you soon came to know the squaws from their smaller stature. The paraphernalia of some of them was ludicrous in the extreme. One young buck had managed to secure an old-style artillery hat, with long scarlet horsehair plume, and a dilapidated white shirt; and as he strutted about in these (only these and nothing more!) considered himself wholly en regle. Another, the princess and beauty of the tribe, a dirty belle of seventeen, resplendent in paint and feathers, was arrayed in much gorgeousness of beads and buckskin, and whiffed her cigarritos by the hour together. During the morning she had ridden her thirty miles, man-fashion, with the chiefs from Fort Garland, and in the afternoon she lolled about camp in magnificent indolence. Her laugh was rich and musical, and she seemed indeed quite a pet with the tribe.

The afternoon was passed in preliminary arrangements for the Treaty, and towards evening a number of us walked over to the Indian village to return our calls. We found it to consist of perhaps three hundred wigwams, arranged pretty regularly in streets, and containing in all some twelve hundred souls. The wigwams or lodges were made of skins and hides, stretched over circularly inclined poles—rude originals evidently of our army Sibley tents—with an opening at the top for the smoke to escape through. At the door were planted their spears or lances, and shields; inside, on skins or blankets, the braves were fast asleep or playing cards; without, the youngsters were playing ball or practicing with the bow and arrows. We wandered through the streets until nightfall, striking up a talk or barter in our broken Ute the best we could, and had some interesting experiences. Just then the village was all agog with excitement and joy. The day before, their Agent had given them several beeves, which they had at once slaughtered and partly eaten; the surplus was now hanging all about on lariats and poles, curing in the dry atmosphere. "Jerked-beef," I suppose, our Plains-men would call it. A flock of sheep had also been given them, and the squaws were now busy "corraling" these, as we happened along. A few refractory ewes refused to enter the corral—a slight enclosure of brush—and these were being hotly pursued by the boy-braves and dogs. The dogs headed them off on all sides, while the boys lassoed them one after another, until the squaws came up and caught them. It was fine practice for the lasso, and the youngsters seemed to enjoy it greatly. Dogs abounded everywhere. Each wigwam seemed to have a goodly supply, and the village at large a brigade besides. They were small wolfish-looking curs, as a rule, and the most vociferous and incessant yelpers I ever listened to. They had no regular bark—only a wild yelp, like their savage ancestors, the cayotes of the Plains. It is only the civilized dog, that "bays deep-mouthed welcome"—that has a full, open "bark"—and this he loses when he relapses to savagery again. There was no moving anywhere about the village, without having a score or more of them yelping at your heels; but this seemed to be the extent of their hostile intentions. When they became rather noisier than usual, some passing squaw would dash at them with a stick and a shower of "God dams," and that would scatter them for the time. Most of our Indians have all learned to swear the rough oaths of the Border, and always swear in English, as they have no corresponding words in their own language. In describing cavalry, they put the thumb and forefinger of one hand on the palm of the other, and then move them along in imitation of a gallop. In speaking of ox-trains, they stretch out their arms, and say, "Whoa-Haw! Git!" But when they come to mule-teams, they invariably speak of them as "God dams! Go 'long!" because of the copious oaths our teamsters hurl at them. Indeed, the average Indian always speaks of the donkey, as a "God dam," and thinks that the correct name. These Utes in general, I must say, seemed to be much more thrifty and comfortable than we had anticipated, though doubtless some of this was due to the recent generous issue of supplies by the Agent.

Our party scattered pretty well through the village, one after another halting to palaver with acquaintances we had picked up; but as it grew dark, we gradually drifted together and prepared to return. Dr. M. was still bargaining with a chief for a fancy shield he wanted as a souvenir, when the rest began moving off, and begged me to wait a minute until he was through. Several minutes passed by, and then his bargaining ended in failure—the Big Chief refusing to "swop"—their universal word for selling or trading. Then we started to overtake the rest, but they had passed out of view in the deepening twilight, and though we hallooed to them could get no answer—the hubbub of the village evidently drowning our voices. Emerging from the wigwams, we soon discovered, that neither of us had taken any proper notes of the landmarks, as we came over, being busy talking with the rest, and consequently neither knew the way back. Here was a pretty predicament, surely, for two ambitious young men—cast away in a village of a thousand savages, unable to speak a sentence of their language intelligibly or they ours, night already come, and no hint of how to extricate ourselves. To make it doubly absurd, we presently discovered, that our only belligerent weapons, whether for offence or defence, consisted of a Rogers' penknife apiece. We had been so remiss, as to leave camp without our revolvers—a precaution that no Mountain or Plains-man ever neglects. While pondering the "situation," we luckily caught sight of the Sierra Blanca glistening in the moonlight, and as we knew this to be southeast of our camp we concluded our route lay toward it. We set off accordingly, and had made perhaps a quarter of a mile, across sloughs now dry and through the rank grass, when one of us suggested, that we could not be going right, or our camp-fires would appear. This seemed reasonable, the country was so level; so a halt was ordered, while we scanned the horizon for fires elsewhere. Presently far away to the left, we descried a fire blazing loftily up, and concluded this must be ours, and that our comrades had put on extra fuel to guide us the better home. The direction seemed wrong, judging by the position of the Sierra Blanca; but as it was the only fire visible, except those at the Indian village, we concluded it must be ours, and changing our course struck for it accordingly. A trudge of a mile or more, with an occasional tumble into a dry slough, at length brought us to the fire, when to our disappointment we found it to be only the camp-fire of two rough-looking customers, who said they were out "prospecting" for mines. They said they had reached there just at nightfall, from a long trip through the Mountains, and as yet had seen nothing of our camp, and of course knew nothing of its whereabouts. Two Utes were squatted before the fire, who they said had just rode over from the village, and we asked one of the men, who had been talking with them in Mexican, to inquire the way to "Kit Carson's Camp" for us. He did so, and the Indians jumping up responded, they would conduct us there. We thought now we were in luck, surely, and thanking the miners for their kindness prepared to follow our copper-colored friends. Unloosing a little pony, that was picketed near by, they both clambered upon him, and then with grunts and mutterings to each other, of which we only understood an occasional "God dam," they rode along ahead for perhaps a quarter of a mile, when suddenly they turned round on the pony without stopping, chattered and gibbered away at us for a minute or two like monkeys, and then with a wild whoop, that for a moment quite dazed us, galloped wildly off toward the Indian village.

We were now worse off than ever, and our affairs were evidently coming to a crisis. Of course, we halted again, and called another "council of war." M. advised going back to the miners' camp-fire, and trusting our fortunes for the night with them. I objected that we knew nothing about them; that they were suspicious looking customers anyhow—hadn't the air of genuine miners; and suggested that we camp down where we were, on the banks of a bayou, as there was plenty of dry wood there for a fire, and when morning came we would hunt up the Rio Grande, and follow it down to our lost camp. He assented to this, but on reflection I further suggested, whether it wouldn't be better, after all, to go boldly into the Indian village, and govern ourselves by circumstances. We knew Ooray and Ancantash, the head chiefs, and why not ask for them? If we could find them, our troubles would be over. If we couldn't, at the worst, we could claim the hospitality of some other chieftain, and quarter for the night in a Ute wigwam. I urged that the Indians already knew where we were anyhow, and also knew that we were unarmed and lost; that it would be disagreeable to hear their arrows whizzing around us there, or perhaps be scalped and tossed into the bayou before morning; and that, in short, I would risk the Utes, if he would. M. approved the plan, as the best we could do under such dismal circumstances; so off we trudged again for the Indian village, which by that time we were beginning to wish we had never seen. We tried to keep our courage up by discussing Mark Tapley, and his philosophy of the "jolly;" but the result could hardly be called a success. Perhaps the two braves who had so suddenly deserted us, with such unearthly whoops, were lying in wait for us somewhere ahead! Perhaps the next step we would hear an arrow whiz by, or over us—perchance through us! Nevertheless, I remember also a ludicrous feeling at the idea—after escaping unscathed from the rebellion—of falling ignominiously there, on the banks of the Del Norte, by the hand of a Ute, with only a pocket-knife to defend myself with!

However, we proceeded cautiously forward, with many a halt and "hist," and presently without molestation reached the village again. The dogs, of course, challenged our approach with a multitudinous yelping, as before: but some friendly squaws appeared, and soon dispersed them with a copious shower of "God dams." Approaching a lodge in which we saw a number of Indians reclining around a fire, we tried to make them understand, that we were lost and wanted to find the way to "Kit Carson's Camp;" but met with the same poor success as before. Then we inquired for Ooray and Ancantash, but they either did not comprehend, or else were unwilling to bother with us, as their only answer was a grunt—"Ugh"—or a stare. Evidently, on reflection, they concluded we were bores, for they soon resumed their pipes, and the low drawling song they were crooning when we entered. We tried two or three more lodges, with the same result, and had about made up our minds to camp down for the night, where we were, when M. suggested that we try one more wigwam, and if we failed there to give it up. This seemed almost providential; for as we entered the lodge-door, up sprang a lithe young chief, whom we had met during the day, and came smiling toward us with the greeting, "How, Gen-e-ral! How, Doc-tor! Know me? Me, Wellington!" (How is all the Indian has learned yet of How do you do? or How are you?) Greasy and dirty as the fellow was, we could have hugged him with delight; for now we knew our troubles were all over. We answered him, "O yes! Know Wellington, of course! In our wigwam to-day! But lost now! No find wigwam! Kit Carson's Camp?" He comprehended our lingo, and "the situation," in a moment, and quickly replied, "Yes! Wellington go!" and then, with an eye to the main chance, shrewdly added, "How much?" We answered, "Two paint, and some tobacco." He held up three fingers, and bargainingly responded, "Three paint, and 'baccy a heap?" By "paint" he meant little packages of Indian paint—blue, vermillion, yellow—such as some in camp had brought along for barter, and we readily acceded to his terms. As it was growing late, he asked another young buck to go along, who demanded the same terms, which of course we cheerfully granted. Then they took up their bows and arrows, drew their blankets around their shoulders, and bidding the rest "bueno noche" we moved off.

We soon observed, that they were conducting us toward the Sierra Blanca, in the same direction that we took originally. We questioned Wellington about this, but he persisted it was right; and so we pushed on, though not without some misgivings. A half hour or so, however, brought us safely to camp, where we found our friends discussing our absence, and wondering what had become of us. We cautioned each other to say nothing about our adventure; but the joke was too good to keep, and the facts all came out in the course of the evening, as we sat around the camp-fire and smoked our fatigue away. However tame it may read now, it was exciting and romantic enough at the time, and I record it here for the moral involved, to wit: 1. Mind your topography, on leaving camp; 2. Never quit camp, without your rifle or revolver!

Of course, we paid Wellington and his friend their paint and tobacco, and dismissed them with hearty thanks. We won their hearts by inviting them both to lunch next day, and continued fast friends during the rest of our stay there.

The next day (Sept. 23d) having been set apart for the Treaty, Indians of both sexes and all ages at an early hour began to swarm through our encampment. All, of course, were naturally on hand, to hear the Big Talk and share the many presents. The chiefs and braves were there first, gorgeous in paint and feathers; but long before the Council assembled, the poor squaws also arrived, freighted with their papooses. The spot selected was a sloping sward on the banks of the Rio Grande, and but a short distance therefrom. Blankets were spread on the grass for the Commissioners and head chiefs: the young chiefs and braves formed a rude circle around these; and beyond these still were the women and children. The four leading men seemed to be Ooray, Arrow, Sha-wa-she-wit, Blue Flower, Ancantash, and Chi-chis-na-sau-no, also abbreviated into Shauno. The head chief of the tribe, and the finest looking Indian we had yet seen, was Ooray. He was a medium sized, athletic looking man, of about forty, with as fine an eye and head, as you will see anywhere. Moreover, he was very neat and clean in his person, as if he believed in the saving virtues of soap and water—something wonderful for a Red Skin. Two or three years before, he had made the tour of Washington and the East, and to-day wore the handsome silver medal, that President Lincoln then gave him. Kit Carson said he had made good use of this eastern trip, and being already a rising man, the knowledge and experience then acquired had since raised him to the king-ship, notwithstanding his want of age—several of the chiefs being older, but none so shrewd as he. The head-warrior, however, was Ancantash, and he was certainly one of the coolest and bravest looking men I ever met. He was a reticent, reflective, but very observant man, with many of the calm characteristics of our own Grant, and no doubt is quite as desperate and obstinate a fighter in his small way. Kit Carson cited instances of his prowess, that showed supreme manhood and courage; but there is not room for them here. Shauno, taller and more dignified, had a face and form much like Tecumseh's, and altogether was about as fine a looking specimen of the savage as history makes mention of.

The Council opened, as usual, with a general smoke, the pipe being passed for a whiff or two from one to another all around, and then Gov. Cumming proceeded to address his copper-colored friends. He said the Great Father at Washington had made him Big Agent for Colorado[8], and as such he had come down from Denver, to bring them their annual presents, hear their grievances, if any, and have a general talk about their future welfare. This was interpreted by Kit Carson into Mexican, with profuse pantomime, after the Indian fashion, and then reinterpreted by Ooray into Ute for the benefit of his red brethren. It was received with a general grunt of satisfaction all round, and then Ooray replied:

"Good! Let the Big Chief speak on!"

"Our Father at Washington has many children, both white and red, and the Great Spirit bids him regard all alike. He has watched his red children, the Utes, a long time, and generally found them peaceable and friendly. Therefore, he loves them very much, and is pained to see them diminishing in numbers from year to year. He thinks this is because of their wars with other tribes, and increasing scarcity of game, and believes if they would settle down in one place, like his pale-face children, they would be much better off. Then they could raise cattle, and sheep, and barley, and have comfort and plenty always."

To which, Ooray:

"True! So; a heap! Utes got plenty now. Hunt give. But soon all gone, and then Utes starve a heap. Long time ago, Utes always had plenty. On the prairie, antelope and buffalo, so many Ooray can't count. In the mountains, deer and bear, everywhere. In the streams, trout, duck, beaver, everything. Good Manitou gave all to red man; Utes happy all the year. White man came, and now Utes go hungry a heap. Game much go every year—hard to shoot now. Old man often weak for want of food. Squaw and papoose cry. Only strong brave live. White man grow a heap; Red man no grow—soon die all."

To which, Gov. C.:

"Our Great Father knows all this, and it grieves him very much. But he can think of no way to remedy it, except by the Utes quitting their wandering life, and settling down on a Reservation. If they will do this, and will stop fighting the Cheyennes and Comanches, he will have a good Reservation set apart for them, with water, wood, and grass in abundance. He will give them cattle, sheep, seeds, and implements. And he will send good white men among them, to teach them farming, etc. By this means, the Utes will soon have houses and fields, flocks and herds, the same as white men, and all will be better off and happier."

To which, Ooray:

"Yes! So! Much true! Ooray and Big-Chief understand, and know Utes must go on Reservation some day—raise beef, pony, and barley—or perish. But young braves no understand; hard to make 'em. Some, too, say, if Utes go on Reservation, Cheyennes and Comanches—enemies of Utes always—will know where to find. Then some night, when Utes all asleep, will come like a squaw and kill a heap. Utes hate Cheyenne—Comanche—God dam!"

"But our Great Father will prevent that. He will build forts, and station his blue coats near you, and they will keep off the Cheyennes and Comanches."

When this was interpreted to Ooray, for the first time he lost his savage dignity, and laughed outright. When he reinterpreted it to the Utes, there was a general chorus of laughter, which lasted several minutes. Evidently, they had little respect for the average soldier of the Plains, whether infantry or cavalry. Presently, however, Ooray recovering his dignity replied:

"Why don't our Great Father's blue-coats keep off the Cheyennes and Comanches some now? Last snow the Comanches came right by the forts, found the Utes in one place, and killed many. Utes killed Comanches back a heap. Now Utes move about much—hunt buffalo on the prairie—build wigwam in the mountains—fish in Del Norte. Utes stop not in one place, and Comanches no find. But Utes settle down; then Comanches come and kill. Tell Great Father, Cheyennes and Comanches go on Reservation first; then Utes will. But Comanches first."

This was about the same answer substantially, that they had given Gen. Sherman down at Fort Garland; and with all his diplomacy, Gov. C. could not extract more from them. There was a deal of good common sense in it, too—the instinct of self-preservation—and the governor could not help admitting this, much as he desired to enforce the views of the Government. He rehashed his arguments, and presented them anew in various ways; but to all of them, Ooray steadily made answer:

"Ooray has spoken!" And there the matter ended.

Subsequently, after some considerable talk with his brother chiefs, Ooray resumed:

"Suppose Utes go on Reservation, and bad pale-face come and shoot Indian; what will our Great Father do then?"

"Why," answered Gov. C., "Our Great Father will have him arrested and tried in his courts; and, if found guilty, will hang him. If the Great Father's own brother, he would hang him all the same."

Ooray had great difficulty in understanding this. Gen. Carson had to repeat and explain it a number of times, before he could comprehend what a court and jury were, and even then he seemed somewhat dazed. Doubtless he found it hard to believe, that we would hang any white man for killing an Indian, let alone our Great Father's brother, after what he had seen and heard of law and justice on the border. But after much questioning back and forth, he appeared to catch some glimpse of the idea, and after pondering it awhile, sorrowfully answered:

"Yes! So! Ooray comprehend! Much good! But my people no comprehend. No make them now."

He seemed to think there was no use, in even trying to get such an idea into their heads, and communicated to them some short answer, which apparently satisfied them.

Again, after much deliberation, he warily asked:

"Suppose pale-face steal pony from red-man, what will Great Father do?"

To which Gov. C.:

"He will compel the pale-face to restore the pony. And if the thief can't be found, and his red children prove their loss, the Great Father will pay for it in goods or money."

This seemed to give great satisfaction, when he first interpreted it; but presently the chiefs became excited, and a hot discussion spread among them. Kit Carson said, as well as he could make out, they were canvassing among themselves, whether on the same principle the government would not compel them to restore or pay for what they stole from the whites; and as their thefts were evidently much the larger, they speedily directed Ooray to dodge this question, without further talk.

There was some other desultory conversation, and much repetition necessarily; but the above is about the substance of it all. The council lasted two or three hours, and finally wound up with a dignified expression of thanks by Ooray, for the interest the Great Father and Gov. C. took in them. This was followed by a general expression of "Bueno! Bueno!"[9] by the rest of the Indians, and so the pow-wow ended. The governor managed his side of the affair with much shrewdness and ability, but failed to secure the positive pledges the government so much desired. On the other hand, Ooray certainly conducted himself with great dignity and good sense, for an "untutored savage," and fully realized our old-time notions of an Indian chieftain. Should he live, he will yet make a figure among the Indians, and go down to history as a Logan or a Red-Jacket. His trip to Washington, he told me, convinced him, it was idle for his people to contend with the pale-faces, and his counsels were always for peace and civilization. Subsequently, some months afterwards, when the Utes rose in hostilities against his advice, he deliberately repaired to Fort Garland and gave himself up, refusing to have anything to do with the tribe, until they laid down their arms again. All honor and praise to this dusky son of the Plains and Mountains!

After the council broke up, there came a grand distribution of presents, the most sensible of which were a flock of sheep and a small herd of cattle. The balance amounted to but little in a practical point of view, though the Utes of course were delighted with their beads, paint, scarlet blankets, gilt trinkets, etc. The Agents seemed to deal fairly and honestly by their savage wards, and I doubt not Mr. Hunt (since Gov. of Colorado) did his duty in the premises very faithfully.

During the day, and indeed most of the time we were there, there was considerable bartering going on between some of us and the Indians, though in a petty way. We were eager for Indian relics and trophies, to send East as souvenirs, and they were equally eager for some articles we possessed; so that barter was not difficult. Neither party knew much, if any, of the language of the other, but the bargaining went steadily on for all that. The Utes came into camp, with such articles as they wished to dispose of. If we desired them and had anything to exchange, we laid it on the ground, and then—pointing to the Indian articles—uttered the classic word "Swop?" If they assented, the bargain ended, and the exchange took place immediately. But if they refused, or wanted more, they shook their heads and answered "No swop!" These words, "Swop" and "No swop," are about the only English necessary in trading with them, and we found them current everywhere among our Indians, from the Missouri to the Pacific. In this way, our party succeeded in securing a few lances and shields, bows and arrows, grizzly-bear skins, buffalo-robes, etc., though their stock of skins had been mostly disposed of to the regular traders some time before. We found them, as a rule, fond of trading, and keen at a bargain, but averse to parting with their ponies or their bows and arrows. Their ponies they held in special regard, and asked extravagant prices for them. Their bows and arrows were made of tough, elastic wood, very scarce in that region, and they were loth to sell them, except for a pistol or a "carabina." In this matter of trading, however, a young chief named Jack Cox seemed to be a marked exception. He had a handsome wolf-skin quiver, beautifully finished and embroidered—the finest we saw there—and I was desirous of securing it, if he cared to part with it. Various offers were tendered him, but all were refused. He had set his heart on one of our repeating-rifles, and his constant answer was, as he patted the barrel, "Me take carabina! Nothing else!" Subsequently, others pressed him with various offers; but they could not shake his resolution. At last he rose up, as if vexed and irritated, and pointing to a group of Utes, who were crowding around all eager for barter, indignantly exclaimed, "Mean Indian swop—pony, bow, quiver, robe, any thing! Jack Cox no swop!" Instinctively I handed him a pipe, and begged him to join in a smoke. Accepting the courtesy, he sat down again, and as he spoke a little broken English we managed to talk some on several subjects. But, all the while, he watched the "swopping," that was going on about him, and when he saw any one about to make what he considered a foolish or bad bargain, he would sneer at his want of judgment, and set all the rest of the Indians to laughing at him—a trick which usually broke up the bargain. Subsequently, he went off to the village for a fancy buffalo robe, which he said he would "swop" me for something that pleased him, and kept his promise by returning with it an hour or so afterwards. This Jack Cox was a bright, shrewd young fellow—lithe, sinewy and straight as an arrow—about seventeen or eighteen years of age; and, if he live, will doubtless yet distinguish himself among the Utes. He was already much deferred to among those of his age, and was decidedly the keenest one among them. He had heard of Washington and the east, and asked many curious questions concerning them. I inquired if he would not like to make a trip east, as Ooray and others had done. He answered, after reflecting a little:

"How long be gone?"

I replied at hap-hazard:

"Perhaps five snows," meaning five years.

He rejoined,

"O, no! No! Not five snows! One snow! Then Jack Cox go!"

He interested us very much at the time, and we all augured well of his future.

The same evening Wellington and Jack Cox sent word, that they were going to have a Big Dance over at the village, and invited us all over. Accordingly soon after dark their tom-toms began to beat, and at about 8 p. m., several of us walked thither. The dance had already commenced, on a natural lawn that sloped down from the village to the Rio Grande. Here were perhaps a hundred or so young braves, with hand locked in hand and shoulder pressed to shoulder, moving slowly round in a circle facing inward, while back of them were gathered the whole village gazing on. Two or three of them beat time on rude drums or tom-toms, while all joined in a wild chant or song. The music was barbarous, and their movements not much of a dance; but they went through it all with much gravity and earnestness, whatever they meant by it. Jack Cox left the crowd as we approached, and invited us to participate, which several did. One was allowed to beat the tom-tom, as a special favor; but his performance proved to be not a "success," as he failed to keep time. We spent an hour with them, and no doubt the Utes will long remember the occasion, when their pale-face friends from the east danced with them by moonlight on the banks of the Rio Grande. Altogether, it was rather a unique experience, and we wondered what would come next. As we strolled back to camp, the moon had mounted above the Sierra Blanca, and was flooding the whole Park with a sea of light. The notched and jagged peaks of the Mountains all about us, tipped with snow, glittered in her beams. And the hour and the place seemed, for all the world, more like a chapter from fairy land, than sober reality.

As already intimated, we found some striking characters among the Utes—Ooray, Ancantash, Jack Cox, etc.—but they were few and far between. The great mass of the tribe were small, undersized men, with coarse, animal faces, that looked as if they went hungry half the time, if not more. Their dress in general consisted of the usual breech-cloth, a blanket or buffalo-robe, and deer-skin leggings and moccasins. The nights and mornings were already sharp and chilly; but they had a knack of twisting a robe or blanket about them, even when on horseback at a gallop, that I have never seen equalled, and they declared they were not uncomfortable. In winter, however, especially their winter, we would suppose they must suffer from the weather severely. They seemed to treat their poor squaws about as shabbily as all other Indians—that is to say, about as bad as bad can be. They compelled them to wait upon and serve them on every possible occasion, no matter how degrading. In coming to and going from our encampment, the braves always galloped or trotted along on horseback, while the squaws as a rule trudged wearily by on foot, with their papooses at their backs. It was the squaws, who made their bows and arrows, spears and shields—dressed their skins—pitched and struck camp—saddled and unsaddled their ponies—and, in short, performed all other menial or laborious offices, that Indian life is heir to. They carried their papooses strapped to a board, with a wicker-work at the top to protect the child's head—the whole swung over the shoulders or across the forehead by a rude thong. This board was made round at the lower end, to rock backward and forward when necessary, and thus serve as a sort of cradle. In camp it is hung up on a tree, which places the child out of danger, while at the same time the wind sways it to and fro. On the march, the whole dangles from the mother's shoulder. Some of these Ute cradles were quite neatly adorned with paint and bead-work, and made as soft and cosy as buck-skin and buffalo-robe or beaver-fur could make them. The papooses occupying them, with their jet-black eyes and copper-colored cheeks, seemed to be model babies; for they never even whimpered. The wretched and degraded condition of their women, however, is everywhere the reproach of savage life. There was a forlorn and hopeless look in the faces of these Ute squaws, as if all their womanhood was crushed out, that would have touched a heart of stone. A father, we are told, may chastise any of his children, but a mother only her daughters. She must not lay a finger on a boy-brave, on pain of death; and this is only a specimen of her disabilities. On the whole, I must say, we were not favorably impressed with Ute life, as a rule. It had its romantic features, but their universal "shiftlessness," their long matted hair sweeping loosely about their faces or hanging in heavy plaits around their shoulders, their general squalor, raggedness and dirt, and above all, their neglect and abuse of their poor squaws—all made a bad impression and dispelled many of the poetic ideas about the "Noble Red Man," "Lo, the poor Indian, etc." that we cherish in the east. In spite of our preconceived notions, we could not help regarding the great majority of them, as but little above the wild animals, that roam over the Plains and through the Mountains with them; and as a whole—for all practical purposes of citizenship—infinitely below the colored race, even of the cotton states. Of course, there were some noble exceptions, such as Ooray and Ancantash, but then they only proved the rule. In point of intellect and character, and promise of improvement, the African will certainly beat the Red Man all to pieces, as the future will show. Nevertheless, I must say, we found the Utes truthful and honest in their way, and Kit Carson—a good judge—credited them with being the bravest and best Red Skins he had ever met, in all his wide wanderings.

I have spoken several times of Kit Carson, and as he is a real historical character, perhaps can not conclude this chapter better, than with a word or two more in regard to him. We met him first at Fort Garland, where we found him in command of a battalion of New Mexico Volunteers, and Brevet Brigadier-General. When the war broke out, and most of our troops were withdrawn from the Plains and Mountains, he applied to Mr. Lincoln for permission to raise a Regiment of Volunteers in New Mexico, to protect our settlements there, and the "good President" very properly granted it. At the head of these, Kit did excellent service during the war, on one occasion taking 9,000 Navajoes prisoners with less than 600 men, and at its close was ordered to Fort Garland and given command of a wide region there. We found him in log quarters, rough but comfortable, with his Mexican wife and half-breed children around him. We had expected to see a small and wiry man, weather-beaten and reticent; but met a medium sized, rather stoutish, florid, and quite talkative person instead. He certainly bore the marks of exposure, but none of that extreme "roughing it," that we had anticipated. In age, he seemed to be about forty-five. His head was a remarkably good one, with the bumps of benevolence and reflection well developed. His eye was mild and blue, the very type of good nature, while his voice was as soft and sympathetic as a woman's. He impressed you at once as a man of rare kindliness and charity, such as a truly brave man ought always to be. As simple as a child, but brave as a lion, he soon took our hearts by storm, and grew upon our regard all the while we were with him. He talked and smoked far into the night each evening we spent together, and we have no room here for a tithe of what he told us. Born in Kentucky, he emigrated to the Plains and Mountains when a child, and attached himself to a party of trappers and hunters, when he was so small that he couldn't set a trap. When he became older, he turned trapper himself, and as such wandered all over our possessions, from the Missouri to the Pacific, and from British America to Mexico. Next he became a government scout and guide, and as such piloted Fremont and others all over the Plains and through the Mountains. He confirmed the accounts, we had heard, that Fremont, as an explorer, was somewhat of a charlatan, and said the worst time the Pathfinder ever had was, when on one of his expeditions, he disregarded his (Kit's) advice, and endeavored to force the Mountains northwest of where Fort Garland now stands. Kit told him he could not get through or over them at that period of the year, and, when Fremont nevertheless insisted on proceeding, he resigned as guide. The Pathfinder, however, went sternly forward, but got caught in terrible snow-storms, and presently returned, with half of his men and animals perished outright, from cold and hunger. Subsequently, Kit became a U.S. Indian Agent, and one of the best we ever had. Familiar with their language and customs, he frequently spent months together among them, without seeing a white man, and indeed became sort of half Indian himself. In talking, I observed, that he frequently hesitated for the right English word; but when speaking bastard Spanish (Mexican) or Indian, he was as fluent as a native. Both Mexican and Indian, however, are largely pantomime, which may have helped him along somewhat. The Utes seemed to have the greatest possible confidence in him, and invariably called him simply "Kit." Said Sherman, while at Garland, "These Red Skins think Kit twice as big a man as me. Why his integrity is simply perfect. They know it, and they would believe him and trust him any day before me." And Kit returned this confidence, by being their most steadfast and unswerving friend. He declared all our Indian troubles were caused originally by bad white men, and was terribly severe on the barbarities of the Border. He said he was once among the Indians for two or three years exclusively, and had seen an Indian kill his brother even, for insulting a white man in the old times. He protested, that in all the peculiar and ingenious outrages for which the Indians had been so much abused of late years, they were only imitating or improving on the bad example of wicked white men. His anathemas of Col. Chivington, and the Sand Creek massacre of 1864, were something fearful to listen to. He pleaded for the Indians, as "pore ignorant creatures," whom we were daily despoiling of their hunting grounds and homes, and his denunciations of the outrages and wrongs we had heaped upon them were sometimes really eloquent.

Said he, "To think of that dog Chivington, and his hounds, up thar at Sand Creek! Whoever heerd of sich doings among Christians! The pore Injuns had our flag flyin over 'em, that same old stars and stripes thar we all love and honor, and they'd bin told down to Denver, that so long as they kept that flyin they'd be safe. Well, then, here come along that durned Chivington and his cusses. They'd bin out several days huntin hostile Injuns, and couldn't find none no whar, and if they had, they'd run from them, you bet! So they just pitched into these friendlies, and massa-creed them—yes, sir, literally massa-creed them—in cold blood, in spite of our flag thar—women and little children even! Why, Senator Foster told me with his own lips, (and him and his committee investigated this, you know), that that thar d——d miscreant and his men shot down squaws, and blew the brains out of little innocent children—even pistoled little babies in the arms of their dead mothers, and worse than this! And ye call these civilized men—Christians; and the Injuns savages, du ye?

"I tell ye what; I don't like a hostile Red Skin any better, than you du. And when they are hostile, I've fit 'em—fout 'em—as hard as any man. But I never yit drew a bead on a squaw or papoose, and I loathe and hate the man who would. 'Tain't nateral for brave men to kill women and little children, and no one but a coward or a dog would do it. Of course, when we white men du sich awful things, why these pore ignorant critters don't know no better, than to follow suit. Poor things! I've seen as much of 'em as any white man livin, and I can't help but pity 'em! They'll all soon be gone anyhow."

Poor Kit! He has already "gone" himself to his long home. But the Indians had no truer friend, and he would wish no prouder epitaph, than this. He and Sherman were great friends, and evidently had a genuine regard for each other. They had known each other in California in '49, when Sherman was a banker there, and Kit only an Indian guide. In '65, when Kit was at Leavenworth on a visit, Sherman sent for him to come down to St. Louis, and they spent some time together very pleasantly. Now Sherman returned his visit, by coming to Fort Garland, in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. It will be betraying no secret to say, that Sherman had but a poor opinion of the Plains country, especially of New Mexico and Arizona; for he did not hesitate to say so anywhere. While at Garland, he told the following good story one night, as we all sat smoking around the fire, and he will pardon me for repeating it here. He said the Quartermaster General during the summer had written him several letters, calling his attention to the enormous cost of our posts on the Plains, in New Mexico, etc., and begging him if possible to suggest some plan, that would reduce expenses, etc. "At first," said Sherman, "I paid no attention to these letters, because I could not help the matter. The Posts were there—established by order of the Hon. Secretary of War—and he knew it. Moreover, the people would have them there, and I could not help it, if they did cost a 'heap.' Above all, I was ordered to keep them up, and I always obey orders; so what could I do? So, at first, I did not answer his letters, but let him write away! But finally they got to coming so thick and long, that one day I sat down and replied, that the Posts were all there, and ordered there, as he knew, and we were bound to supply them, no matter what it cost. But that, in my judgment, of the whole vast region there, the greater portion was not worth a Confederate note to us, and never would be; and if he wished my opinion as to the best way of reducing expenses, I would respectfully recommend, that the United States sell New Mexico, and all the region round about, to Maximilian for $15,000,000, and lend him the greenbacks to pay with!

"I must say, the government don't seem to have considered my recommendation favorably yet. But neither have I received any more letters from the Q. M. Gen'l. So, I suppose, he is satisfied!"

He told this with infinite gusto, as if he enjoyed the joke hugely, and presently added:

"The idea, however, wasn't wholly my own, but was suggested by an old story we used to hear about Gen. Sumner. You knew Sumner, I suppose, in the East? We used to call him Bull Sumner, in old times, because he was so obstinate, and so thoroughly a soldier. Well, some years ago, he was sent out to command in New Mexico, and he certainly entered upon his duties with great alacrity and enthusiasm. He was going to explore the country, he said, make known its vast resources, pacify the Red Skins, induce immigration, settle up the country, and thus do away with our costly Posts, and all that. Of course, he was sincere in the matter—always was sincere—one of the honestest men I ever knew. So, he went to work, and for two or three years worked hard, summer and winter—did a vast amount of work. But, finally, he came to the same conclusion I have—viz. that the whole region was worthless—and reported to the Secretary of War, that in his judgment, the wisest thing we could do, would be to buy out the New Mexicans and pay them to emigrate—to old Mexico, if possible—and then throw the whole country open (and keep it open) to the buffalo and the Indians!

"Sumner, they say, recommended this seriously, and thought it a good thing. But I have never heard that the government agreed with him, any more than it will with me!"

These were the stories substantially; but it is impossible to give the twinkle of his eye, the jocular toss of his head, and the serio-comic twitch of his many-wrinkled features, as he got them off. Meanwhile he smoked furiously, and kept up that everlasting long stride of his up and down the floor, with his hands deep in his trowsers' pockets, as if he would never weary. Sherman is a great talker and smoker, and beyond doubt a great man and original thinker in many ways. At the Denver banquet, he made a better speech than his distinguished brother (the Senator from Ohio); and it is no wonder he outwitted Joe Johnston, and smashed Hood as he pleased, when "marching through Georgia." Neither is it any wonder, when you come to scan him closely, that he should sometimes err a little, as he did at Raleigh. Evidently, with all his great talents, now and then he needs a "governor" to steady him, as much as any other steam-engine does. Then, he is a hundred horsepower or more; and as General of the Army, long may he live!

The Treaty over, we returned to Denver through the heart of the Mountains, as related in the preceding chapter; and now for Salt Lake and beyond.

[CHAPTER IX.]

DENVER TO SALT LAKE.

From Denver, we shipped eastward by express the various Indian trophies, we had secured—shields, lances, bows and arrows, grizzly bear-skins, etc.—and rested for a day or two. We found the weather there hot and oppressive, compared with what we had experienced in the Mountains, and the change to the dry atmosphere of the one, from the moist air of the other, affected us very sensibly. Here they were still wearing summer clothing, though in the Mountains we needed our great-coats, and Denver mocked at winter as weeks yet to come. From Denver the Mountains as a whole seemed grander than ever; and the view of them at sunset from our hotel windows could scarcely be finer, as the snowy range and the heaven-kissing peaks one by one faded away, through orange, crimson and purple into night. The majesty and grandeur of the general range impress one more there at Denver, I think, than elsewhere; and then, there is always something new about these mighty Mountains—they never seem the same for an hour together. A difference of clouds, or of atmosphere, or of your own point of vision, makes all the difference in the world; and to me, I confess, the Rocky Mountains from Denver were always a constant joy and perpetual delight. So calm, so grand, so superb, such stately rest, such profound peace. As if they upheld the sky, and steadied the earth, and did it easily. If there be no God, no being of infinite wisdom and goodness, there ought to be one, to account for the might and majesty, the beauty and sublimity, with which the universe is filled, when it might so easily have been monotonous and commonplace.

Finally, Oct. 4th, we closed up our duties at Denver, and started for Salt Lake. The stage left at 8 p. m., and after much hearty hand-shaking and kindly good-byes, we were at last off for the Pacific. For the first time we fully realized, that we had definitely cut loose from the Atlantic States, and had a long and toilsome trip now before us. I remember a feeling of sadness, as this conviction came sharply upon me; but we were soon whirling across the Platte, and off for Laporte. The fare through to Salt Lake, some 600 miles, with 25 pounds of baggage, was $150, currency; meals extra, at $1,00 and $1,50 each. Our coach, "Red Rupert," was a mountain mud-wagon, with a low canvas top, so as to be less liable to capsize in crossing the range, than a regular Concord Coach, and was intended for ten passengers—nine inside and one outside. As we had only half that number of passengers, however, we thought we would get along very comfortably. We had gamey, spirited horses, that carried us along quite rapidly, until near midnight, when we stuck fast in a mudhole, and all hands were ordered up to help shift baggage and lift the coach out. Next morning early we rolled into Laporte, having made seventy-five miles since leaving Denver. It was a bright clear morning, with a crisp bracing air, and we sat down to an excellent breakfast of fried elk, potatoes, eggs, etc., as hungry as wolves. In the corner of the room, at a rude table, sat a little bearded man, eyeing us occasionally as he bent over his maps and papers, whose face seemed familiar; and presently I recognized him as Gen. Dodge, an old acquaintance of war times in Tennessee in 1864. Now he was Chief Engineer of the Union Pacific Railroad, and was here comparing maps and surveys, to see whether they couldn't find a shorter route to Salt Lake, than the somewhat circuitous one by Bridger's Pass. He recognized me about the same moment, and we had a hearty hand-shake and chat over old times.

Past Laporte, our road speedily entered the foot-hills, or "hog-backs" as the Coloradoans call them; and all day long we were bowling ahead, either between or across these. These abrupt ridges hid our view of the Plains and Mountains usually, so that the day's ride as a whole proved dull and monotonous. We were well armed, but saw no Indians, nor any game worth mentioning. It was plain, that the road was gradually ascending, but there were no sharp ascents, and but little to indicate, that we were actually crossing the Rocky Mountains. The country, as a whole, was rocky and barren in the extreme. Here and there the old red sandstone cropped out, and had been fashioned by the elements into all sorts of curious forms, which travellers had named Castle Rock, Steamboat Rock, Indian Chief, etc. The day's ride ended at Virginia Dale, where we got a tolerable dinner, and found an exquisite little valley, as if nature was trying just there quite to outdo herself. Abrupt mountains tower all around and shut it in like a picture, while the entrance to and exit from the vale are bold and precipitous. With its limpid stream, green sward, and bristling pines, it seemed like an oasis in the desert of the foot-hills there; and a party of miners encamped there for the night, en route from Montana to the States, appeared to enjoy its freshness and beauty to the full. We met several such parties of miners between Denver and Salt Lake, all bound east to winter, expecting to return in the spring. They said the difference in the cost of living would more than pay them for the trip, while at the same time they would be with their families and friends. They moved in parties of a dozen or so, and said they considered themselves safe against all hostile comers, whether Road Agents or Indians. They were all well-mounted, and literally bristling with rifles, revolvers, and bowie-knives. Their baggage and "traps" generally were usually piled high on pack-horses or mules, that they drove along ahead of them. They all carried their own provisions, and when night came camped down by the nearest stream, where there was wood, water, and grass. Such a life has its hardships and risks, but is not without its enjoyments also; and many an eastern cockney might well envy the big-bearded, bronzed, weather-beaten, but apparently thoroughly happy fellows, that we met en route.

We left Virginia Dale about 6 p. m. and the same night about 10 p. m. reached Willow Springs, one of the most desolate stage-stations on the road. It was a raw chilly night, and while the stage-men were changing horses, all of the passengers except myself got out and strolled off to the station-house—a hundred yards or so away—to get warm. Weary with the stage ride of two days and nights continuously, I remained half-dozing in the coach, wrapped in my buffalo-robe, when suddenly I was aroused by a distant noise, that grew rapidly louder and nearer, and presently came thundering down the road directly toward the station. While pondering what it could be, half-sleepy still, all at once the station-keeper, who was helping with the horses, broke out with:

"I say, Tom (our driver), hark! Do you hear that?"

"Yes, Billy! What the deuce is it?"

"Why, good heavens, it must be the infernal Injuns, shure as you live! The d—d Red Skins, I reckon, hev jest stampeded that Government-train down the road thar; and they'll all be yer, licketty split, quicker than lightnin', you bet!"

I was wide awake in a second, now. They pushed the horses quickly back into the stable, and shouted to me to seize all the arms and hurry to the station-house. I was not certain, that it was not better to stand by the coach, and "fight it out on that line," come what might; but concluded the stage-men knew more about such encounters than I did, and so followed their directions. Out I tumbled, gathered up all the rifles and revolvers I could lay my hands on, and rushed to the station-house, shouting "Indians! Indians!" Soon the driver and stock-tenders came running in from the stable, as fast as their legs could carry them; and for a few minutes we thought we had the Indians upon us at last, sure enough. The pluck of the party, I must say, was admirable. L. and M. stood to their guns. Nobody thought of flight or surrender. But all quickly resolved, as we grasped our rifles and revolvers, to make the best stand we could, and to fight it out in that shanty, if it took all summer. But presently, as the mules thundered up the road and past us, just as we were about to fire on one of their pursuers, we saw him tumble from his horse all sprawling, as it stumbled across a chuck-hole, and as he gathered himself up heard him break out swearing in good vigorous English, that stamped him as a Pale Face beyond a question. The swearing probably saved his life, however objectionable otherwise, and we were soon at his side. We found him more stunned, than hurt, and presently his comrades succeeded in stopping the herd. They were unable to say what had caused the stampede; but as no Indians appeared, we were soon off on the road again.

These "stampedes" of animals are not uncommon on the Plains, and sometimes prove very embarrassing. A herd of mules, well stampeded, will run for miles, over every thing that opposes them, until they tire themselves thoroughly out. Had we been on the road, they would probably have stampeded our stage-horses—thundering up so behind us—and then there would have been a break-neck race by night, among the Rocky Mountains, that would have been rather exciting, not to say more. It is a favorite trick of the Indians, when they want to steal stock, to stampede them thus at night, and then run off the scattered animals. A large freight-train, that we subsequently heard of, had lost all its mules a few nights before by such a stampede, and been compelled to send back to the nearest settlement for others.

Thence on to the North Platte, our route wound over and between foot-hills and ridges, where the general ascent was indeed perceptible, but never difficult. One by one we flanked the main ranges, and at old Fort Halleck, 8,000 feet above the sea, found a natural depression or cañon through the Mountains, in the absence of which a wagon-road there would be seemingly impossible. It really appeared, as if nature had cleft the range there expressly to accommodate the oncoming future; and we swung through it, and so down to the North Platte, at a steady trot. Here and there, in crossing the ridges, we caught exquisite glimpses of snowy peaks off to the west, and of the far-stretching Laramie Plains off to the east; but the country, as a whole, was barren and desolate. We reached the North Platte just at dusk, having made 104 miles in the last 24 hours. This seemed a good day's drive, considering we were crossing the Rocky Mountains; but it was not quite up to the regular schedule. We had hoped to get down into the Platte valley before dark, but daylight left us before we reached the station. We had caught long stretches of the valley, as we came over the ridges and down the bluffs; but darkness fell so suddenly, we saw little of it close at hand. Parts of it, we were told, are well adapted to farming, and nearly all of it could be made cultivable by proper irrigation; but it seemed too cold for anything but grass, and the more hardy cereals. No doubt it could be made available for grazing purposes, and the cañons of the neighboring Mountains would afford shelter and grass for winter. Antelope and elk were reported quite abundant still in the valley. We saw a herd of antelope feeding quietly, a mile away, soon after we struck the valley, and at the station they gave us elk-steaks for dinner—"fried," of course, as usual. Gold was reported in the Mountains beyond, but little had been done there yet in the way of mining. No doubt the Rocky Mountains are penetrated nearly everywhere by gold-bearing veins, and where these crop out, and water runs, "placer mines"—more or less lucrative—will be found. We found the North Platte a very considerable stream, though readily fordable then and there. It had already come a long distance through and out of the Mountains, and now struck eastward by Fort Laramie, for its long journey through the Plains to the Missouri. What a delightfully lazy, dreamy, lotus-eating voyage it would be, to embark upon its waters in an Indian canoe, far up among the Mountains, and float thence day by day, and week after week, adown the Missouri, via the Mississippi, to the sea!

At North Platte, we changed our mountain mud-wagon, for a coach lighter and less top-heavy still, and pushed on continuing to ascend. We left Colorado near Fort Halleck, and were now in Wyoming. At Bridger's Pass, we were at last fairly across the Rocky Mountains—had left the east and the Atlantic slope behind us—and turned our faces fully Pacificwards. The North Platte was the last stream flowing east, and about 3 a. m., after leaving it we struck the headwaters of Bitter Creek, a tributary of Green River, that flows thence via the great Rio Colorado and the Gulf of California two thousand miles away to the Pacific. The Rocky Mountains, the great water-shed of the continent, were thus over and past; but we had crossed the summit so easily we were not aware of it, until our driver informed us. Our first introduction to the Pacific slope was hardly an agreeable one. At our great elevation the night was bitterly cold, and we had shivered through its long hours, in spite of our blankets and buffalo-robes. Routed out at 3 a. m., for breakfast, we straggled into the stage-station at Sulphur Springs, cold and cross, to find only dirty alkali water to wash in, and the roughest breakfast on the table we had seen yet, since leaving the States. Coffee plain, saleratus-biscuit hot, and salt pork fried—only this and nothing more—made up the charming variety, and we bolted it all, I fear, as surlily as bears. A confused recollection of cold, and discomfort, and misery, is all that remains in my memory now of that wretched station at Sulphur Springs, and may I never see the like again!

Long before daylight we were off on the road again, and now had fairly entered the Desert of the Mountains, the famous or infamous "Bitter Creek Country," accursed of all who cross the continent. Here, when the sun got fairly up, the sharp keen winds of the night hours changed to hot sirocco breezes, that laden with the alkali dust there became absolutely stifling. Alkali or soda—the basis of common soap—abounds throughout all this region for two or three hundred miles, and literally curses all nature everywhere. It destroys all vegetation, except sage-brush and grease-wood, and exterminates all animals, except cayotes and Indians. The Indians even mostly desert the country, and how the cayotes manage to "get on" is a wonder and astonishment. The wheels of our coach whirled the alkali into our faces by day and by night, in a fine impalpable dust, that penetrated everywhere—eyes, ears, nose, mouth—and made all efforts at personal cleanliness a dismal failure. The only results of our frequent ablutions were chapped hands and tender faces—our noses, indeed, quite peeling off. In many places the alkali effloresced from the soil, and at a little distance looked like hoar-frost. It polluted the streams, giving the water a dirty milky hue and disgusting taste, and in very dry seasons makes such streams rank poison to man and beast. The plains of Sodom and Gomorrah, after the vengeance of Jehovah smote them, could not have been much worse than this Desert of the Mountains; and good John Pierpont must certainly have had some such region in his mind's eye, when he wrote so felicitously:

"There the gaunt wolf sits on his rock and howls,
And there in painted pomp the savage Indian prowls."

One wretched day, while traversing this region, one of our passengers, from whom we expected better things, unable to "stand the pressure" longer, indulged too freely in Colorado whiskey; and that night we had to fight the delirium tremens, as well. He tried several times to jump out of the coach, and made the night hideous with his screams; but we succeeded finally in getting him down under one of the seats, and thus carried him safely along. As if to add to our misfortunes, soon after midnight one of our thorough-braces broke, and then we had to go humping along on the axle-tree for ten or twelve miles, until we reached the next station. This no doubt was a good antidote to John Barleycorn; but it scarcely improved our impressions of "Bitter Creek."

At Laclede, in the heart of the Bitter Creek Country, we halted one day for dinner, and were agreeably surprised by getting a very good one. This station had once been famed for the poorness of its fare, and so great were the complaints of passengers, that Mr. Holliday resolved to take charge of this and several others himself. He imported flour and vegetables from Denver or Salt Lake, and employed hunters on the Platte to shoot antelope and elk, and deliver them along at these stations as required. The groceries, of course, had all to come from the Missouri or the Pacific. We found a tidy, middle-aged, Danish woman in charge at Laclede—a Mormon imported from Salt Lake—and she gave us the best meal we had eaten since leaving Laporte or Denver. We complimented her on the table, and on the general cleanliness and neatness of the station; and she seemed much gratified, as she had a right to be.

Our ride through the Bitter Creek region, as a whole, however, was thoroughly detestable, and how the slow-moving emigrant and freight trains ever managed to traverse it was surprising. The bleaching bones of horses, mules, and oxen whitened every mile of it, and the very genius of desolation seemed to brood over the landscape. Nevertheless, the station-keepers averred, there were cañons back of the bluffs, where grass grew freely; and they pointed to their winter's supply of hay in stack, as proof of this. So, too, at Black Buttes station, we found good bituminous coal burning in a rude grate, and were shown a bluff a hundred yards away where it was mined. Elsewhere we heard of petroleum "showing" well, and one day I suggested to our driver, that as the Creator never made anything uselessly, there must be some compensation here after all.

"Bother, stranger!" he rejoined; "The Almighty'd nothin to du with this yer region. 'Tother fellar (pointing downward) made Bitter Creek, ef it ever war made at all; tho, I reckin, it war just left!"

"But what about the coal?" I said.

"Dunno ef there's enny thar! But ef thar be, Providence only 'lowed it, jist to help in the last conflaggerration—you bet! He didn't mean enny human critter to live yer, and mine it—not by a long shot—you bet!"

At several points, however, we observed the bluffs abounded in slate shales, and other coal-bearing earths; and as we suspected then, the Union Pacific Railroad has already developed a vast deposit of coal there. Bitter Creek itself flowed sluggishly by us for a day or so, and was a little miserable stream, that just managed to crawl—usually at the bottom of a deep gulch or abrupt cañon—its chalky color proclaiming its alkali taint even before you tasted it. We must have followed it for a hundred miles or more, and yet it continued very nearly the same in size throughout. What water it drained in one locality was largely evaporated in another, and its wretched, villanous character made it everywhere an eye-sore, instead of a pleasing feature in the landscape as it should have been. But enough of Bitter Creek, and its God-forsaken region.

Past Green river, here a considerable stream, we entered the Butte region, and one evening just before sunset approached Church Butte, the most famous of them all. It was too late in the day to explore it, but we had a grand view of it in the shifting sunlight, as we drove slowly by. On the box with the driver, a portion of it was pointed out, that resembled a colossal Dutchman, about lifting to his mouth a foaming beaker. Further on, as we rolled westward, the Teuton faded out, and the church-like character of the Butte more fully appeared. Seen from the west, it presents a very wonderful likeness to an old-time cathedral, of the Gothic type, and at a distance might well be taken for the crumbling ruins of some such edifice, though of cyclopean proportions. Porch, nave, dome, caryatides, fluted columns, bas-reliefs, broken roof and capitals—all are there in shapes more or less perfect, and the illusion was very striking in the shadowy twilight. The Butte itself, like most others there, is a vast mass of sandstone, covered with tenacious blue clay, both of which are being constantly chiseled down by wind and rain. These buttes all seemed either to have been upheaved from the dead level around them, or else to be the surviving portions of great mountain chains, from which the earth has been washed or blown away, leaving their skeletons—so to speak—behind in solitary grandeur. The latter theory seemed more probable, judging by the general direction of the buttes themselves. Much of the scenery about here for a hundred miles or so, was enlivened by sandstone bluffs, cut and chiseled by the elements into castles, fortresses, etc., that frowned majestically at us in the distance; but we were only too glad to quit their grandeur and sublimity, that turned only to barren rocks as we approached, and to hail some signs of cultivation again as we neared Fort Bridger. No doubt the wind has been an important agency in fashioning all these, though scarcely to the extent that is claimed by some travellers. In Bowles' "Across the Continent," he tells a story about a wind-storm down in Colorado, that dashed the sand against a window so furiously, that a common pane of glass was converted into "the most perfect of ground glass," in a single night! We met a good many Coloradoans, who were laughing at this "yarn," and were told to set it down among other good "Rocky Mountain" stories. The fact is, people who live out there on those vast Plains, or among those great Mountains, become demoralized with the amplitude of everything; and when they attempt to narrate, unconsciously—I suppose—get to exaggerating. Not intentionally; of course not. But bigness "rules the hour," and we early learned to distrust—and discount largely—most of the extraordinary stories we heard.

We reached Fort Bridger late at night (Oct. 8th), and found ourselves pretty well jaded, both in body and mind. We had been four days and nights continuously on the road since leaving Denver, and in that time had made four hundred and eighty miles. This was the hardest ride by stage-coach we had had yet, and altogether was a pretty fair test of one's power of endurance. We became so accustomed to the coach, that we could fall asleep almost any time; but slumber in a stage-coach, or rather "mountain mud-wagon," is only a poor apology for "tired nature's sweet restorer," after all. The first night out, there being but five of us, four each "pre-empted" a corner, while the fifth man "camped down" on the middle seat. Along about 11 p. m. we struck a piece of extra good road, the conversation gradually wound up, each settled back into his great-coat and robe, and presently we were all fairly off into dreamland. A half hour or so rolls by, when bump goes the coach against an obstinate rock, or chuck into a malicious mud-hole; your neighbor's head comes bucking against you, or you go bucking wildly against him; the man on the middle seat rolls off and wakes up, with a growl or objurgation, that seems half excusable; your friends on the front seat get their legs tangled and twisted up with yours, or you get yours twisted and tangled up with theirs—you don't exactly know which; and, in short, everybody wakes up chaotic and confused, not to say dismal and cross. Of course you try it again after a while, you wrap your robes still better about you, you adjust your legs more carefully than before, and settling down again into your corner, think now you will surely get a good sleep. However, you hardly get to nodding fairly, before there comes a repetition of your former dismal experiences, and so the night wears on like a hideous dream. A series of unusual jolts and bumps disgusts every one with even the attempt to sleep, and presently all hands drift into a general talk or smoke. The history of one night is the wretched history of all—only each successive one, as you advance, becomes "a little more so." Long before reaching Fort Bridger, we were in a sort of a half-comatose condition, with every bone aching, and every inch of flesh sore, and with the romance of stage-coaching gone from us forever. Now, if a man's body were made of india-rubber, or his arms and legs were telescopic, so as to lengthen out and shorten up, perhaps such continuous travelling would not be so bad. But, as it is, I confess, it was a great weariness to the flesh, and looking back on it now, with the Pacific Railroad completed—its express trains and palace-cars in motion—I don't really see how poor human nature managed to endure it. Conversation is a good thing per se, but most men converse themselves out in a day or two. So, a good joke or a popular song helps to fill the hiatus somewhat, and accordingly we buried "John Brown," and "Rallied round the flag," and "Marched through Georgia," day after day, until they got to be a "bore," even to the most severely patriotic among us. Our only constant and unfailing friends were our briar-wood pipes, and what a corps de reserve they were! Possibly smoking has its evils—I don't deny it—but no man has thoroughly tested the heights and depths of life, or shall I say its altitudes and profundities, its joys and its sorrows, its mysteries and miseries—especially stage-coaching—who has not bowed at the shrine of Killykinnick, and puffed and whiffed as it pleased him. There is such comfort, and solace, and philosophy in it, when sojourning on the Plains, or camped down among the Mountains, or cast away in a stage-coach, that all the King Jameses and Dr. Trasks in the universe, I suspect, will never be able to overcome or abolish it.

Our horses were usually steady-going enough, the splendid teams of the Plains; but one night, just before reaching Fort Bridger, we had a team of fiery California mustangs, never geared up but once before, and, of course, they ran away. The road was slightly descending, but pretty smooth, and for the time our heavy, lumbering mountain mud-wagon went booming along, like a ship under full sail. Presently, too, the lead-bars broke, and as they came rattling down on the heels of the leaders, we had every prospect for awhile of a general over-turn and smash-up. But our driver, a courageous skillful Jehu, "put down the brakes," and at length succeeded in halting his runaways, just as we approached a rocky precipice, over which to have gone would have been an ugly piece of business. We expected an upset every minute, with all its attending infelicities; but luckily escaped.

We halted at Fort Bridger two or three days, to inspect this post and consider its bearings, and so became pretty well rested up again. Some miles below the Fort, Green River subdivides into Black's and Smith's Forks, and the valleys of both of these we found contained much excellent land. Judge Carter, the sutler and postmaster at Bridger, and a striking character in many ways, already had several large tracts under cultivation, by way of experiment, and the next year he expected to try more. His grass was magnificent; his oats, barley, and potatoes, very fair; but his wheat and Indian corn wanted more sunshine. The post itself is 7,000 feet above the sea, and the Wahsatch Mountains just beyond were reported snow-capped the year round. Black's Fork runs directly through the parade-ground, in front of the officers' quarters, and was said to furnish superb trout-fishing in season. In summer, it seemed to us, Bridger must be a delightful place; but in winter, rather wild and desolate. Apart from the garrison, the only white people there, or near there, were Judge Carter and his employees. A few lodges of Shoshones, the famous Jim Bridger with them, were encamped below the Fort; but they were quiet and peaceable. The Government Reservation there embraced all the best lands for many miles, and practically excluded settlements; otherwise no doubt quite a population would soon spring up. Sage-hens abounded in the neighboring "divides," and we bagged several of them during a day's ride by ambulance over to Smith's Fork and return. We found them larger and darker, than the Kansas grouse or prairie-chicken; but no less rich and gamey in taste. Maj. Burt, in command at Bridger, was an enthusiastic sportsman; but our ambulance broke down seven miles out, and we had to foot it back after dark.

We were now in Utah proper, and Judge Carter was Probate Judge of the young county there. A Virginian by birth, from near Fairfax Court-House, he enlisted in the army at an early age, and served as a private for awhile in Florida. It was a romantic freak, and his friends soon had him discharged; but he still continued with the army, as purveyor or sutler. Subsequently, he accompanied our troops to California; but afterwards returned east, and followed Albert Sidney Johnston to Utah in 1858. When in that year Fort Bridger was established, he was appointed sutler, and had continued there ever since. Gradually his sutler-store had grown to be a trade-store with the Indians, and passing emigrants; and in 1866 he reported his sales at $100,000 per year, and increasing. He was a shrewd, intelligent man, with a fine library and the best eastern newspapers, who had seen a vast deal of life in many phases on both sides of the continent, and his hospitality was open-handed and generous even for a Virginian.

We left Fort Bridger October 12th, at 10 p. m., in the midst of gusty winds that soon turned to rain, and reached Salt Lake City the next night about midnight; distance 120 miles. We halted for breakfast at the head of Echo Cañon, and were at a loss to account for the air of neatness and refinement, that pervaded the rude station, until we noticed Scott's Marmion and the Bible lying on a side shelf. Two nice looking ladies waited on the table, and it is safe to conclude a taste for literature and religion will keep people civilized and refined almost anywhere. Echo Cañon itself proved to be a narrow rocky defile, some thirty miles long through the heart of the mountains there, with a little brawling creek flowing through it. Its red sandstone walls mostly tower above you for several hundred feet, and in places quite overhang the road. Here in 1857-8, Brigham Young made his famous stand against the United States, and flooded the cañon by damming the creek at various points. The remains of his dam, and of various rude fortifications, were still perceptible; but Judge Carter reported them all of small account, as Johnston's engineers knew of at least two other passes, by either of which they could have flanked the Mormon position, and so entered the valley. He said, our troops should have marched at once on Salt Lake, without halting at Bridger as they did; but the Mormons showed fight, and our commanding officer—not liking the looks of things—called a council of war, after which, of course, we did nothing. Councils of war, it is well-nigh settled, never do. Clive, that brave soldier of his time, never held a council of war but once, and then made his fortune by disregarding its decision. When Sidney Johnston assumed command, late in the fall of 1857, he had no orders to advance; and, therefore, inferred he was wanted merely to maintain the status quo! Accordingly he made haste to do nothing, and soon after went into winter-quarters. Meanwhile, Brigham—unmolested by our show of force—waxed fat and kicked. The next spring a compromise was effected, which like most other "compromises" decided nothing, and left the "saints" as saucy as ever. Judge C. knew all the men of that troubled period well, especially Army people; and said he had long thought, that the reason why the troops were not ordered forward was, because Davis, Floyd, & Co., were already looking ahead to secession in the near future, and did not care to establish coercion as a precedent. They feared such a precedent might be quoted against their own "sovereign" States, in such a contingency, and so managed to have the Army instructed How not to do it, until Brigham found a convenient loop-hole, and crept out of the scrape himself. Verily, the ways of politicians are "past finding out!"

Past Echo Cañon, we struck Weber Valley, and here found ourselves at last thoroughly among the Mormons. Fine little farms dotted the valley everywhere, and the settlements indeed were so numerous, that much of the valley resembled rather a scattered village. The little Weber River passes down the valley, on its way to Great Salt Lake, and its waters had everywhere been diverted, and made to irrigate nearly every possible acre of ground. Fine crops of barley, oats, wheat, potatoes, etc., appeared to have been gathered, and cattle and sheep were grazing on all sides. The people looked like a hardy, industrious, thrifty race, well fitted for their stern struggle with the wilderness. Everybody was apparently well-fed and well-clad, though the women had a worn and tired look, as if they led a dull life and lacked sympathy. Children of all ages and sizes flocked about the gates and crowded the doorway, and to all appearances they were about the same frolicking youngsters that we have east, though they seemed less watched and cared for. Near the head of the valley, we saw several coal-drifts that had already been worked considerably, and were told that these mines supplied all the coal then used in Utah, though it was thought coal would soon be found elsewhere. It was of a soft bituminous character, far from first-class, but nevertheless invaluable in the absence of something better.

Just at dark, we found ourselves at the head of Parley's Cañon, and still several miles distant from Salt Lake City. Snow-flakes had sifted lazily downward all day, but at night-fall they changed to sleet, which thickened presently into a regular snow-storm, and soon the roads usually so good became heavy and slushy. In many places the track was merely a roadway, quarried out of the rocky bluffs, with a swollen and angry rivulet below; and as we wound cautiously along this, both the coach and horses were constantly slipping and sliding. Only a week before, in a similar snow-storm, the stage-horses lost their foot-hold here, and a crowded coach—team and all—went crashing down into the creek below. I had no fancy for this sort of an experience; but when, soon after dark, we saw the driver light up his side-lamps for the first time since leaving the Missouri, I concluded that our chances for an "upset" at last were perhaps improving. L. got nervous, and being somewhat mathematical in his turn of mind, fell to calculating how far it was down to the water and rocks, and what would be the probable results of plunging down there quite miscellaneously. But I was half sick and thoroughly tired out—in that worn and jaded condition, where a man becomes fairly indifferent as to what may happen—and at length, as L. averred, went soundly to sleep, though I had no recollection afterwards of anything but dozing. I only know that when the horses again struck a trot, as we began to descend the cañon westward, I roused up shivering with cold; and was only too glad, when far away in the distance our driver pointed out the lights of Salt Lake City, twinkling through the darkness. It seemed then, as if the coach never would get there. But at last the farms thickened into suburbs, and the houses into streets, and a little before midnight we drew up and halted at the Salt-Lake House. A smart-looking colored man, acting both as porter and night-clerk, showed us to a comfortable room, and I need scarcely say we retired at once. What a luxury it was, to get between clean sheets once more, and stretch our cramped up limbs wholly out again, ad libitum! No one but an Overland stage-passenger can fully appreciate the downy comfort of a bed, or truly sleep almost the sleep that knows no waking. How we did sleep and stretch ourselves, and stretch ourselves and sleep that night! It seemed almost as if to sleep was the chief end of life, and we made the most of our pillows accordingly.

[CHAPTER X.]

AT SALT LAKE CITY.

Our first day in Salt Lake city (Oct. 14) was Sunday, and of course we rose late—I to find myself stiff and ill. A package of letters from the east, and a bath near noon, set me up somewhat, and when the gong sounded at 1, p. m. we went down to dinner. Here everything was profuse and excellent, the vegetables and fruits especially. But apart from the table, the Salt Lake House proved indifferent, though the only hotel in the city. Its rooms were small and dingy, and its appointments of the plainest, though its rates for every thing were all-sufficient. The policy of the saints had been opposed to Gentile travel, and hence no hotels at all were allowed at first. But subsequently Brigham Young built the Salt Lake House, and leased it to a Mr. Little—our three-wived landlord—and that paid so well, he was about erecting a new and enlarged one, commensurate with the wants and business of the city.

After dinner, as the sun was out brilliantly and the air bracing, we concluded to take a short stroll. Our snow-storm of the day before in the mountains had been only an affair of an inch or two here, and what had fallen was already fast disappearing. A walk of a square or two soon revealed the unique and wonderful beauty of this far-famed town. Its streets, eight rods wide with broad foot-walks, cross each other at right angles, and down each side course clear and rippling streams, fresh from the neighboring mountains. These spacious streets divide the city into squares or blocks of ten acres each, which are in turn subdivided into homestead lots of an acre and a quarter each, except in the heart of the city, where of course it is built up pretty solidly for several blocks. Standing back from the street in these goodly lots are their houses, built of frame or adobe, usually only one story high but sometimes two, and with as many doors ordinarily as the owner has wives. These were literally embowered in shrubbery and fruit trees, the grounds having been made wondrously fertile by irrigation, and as we walked along we could see the apple, peach, plum, pear, and apricot trees loaded down with their ripening fruit. The snow of the day before did not seem to have injured any of them materially, it was so unseasonable and soon gone. So, too, roses and flowers in rich profusion crowned the door-yards, while the gardens beyond seemed heaped with vegetables exquisite in their perfection and development. Lofty mountains, their snow-capped summits glittering in the sun-light, rimmed the valley in, whichever way you turned; while in the distance, tranquil as a sapphire, flashed the expanse of Great Salt Lake. To the traveller worn with stage-coaching, or weary from Bitter Creek, no wonder Salt Lake seems like Rasselas's Happy Valley, or Paradise Regained. Imagine to yourself a valley say fifty miles north and south, by thirty east and west, crowned above with snow-clad peaks, thick below with clustering farms, its interlacing streams flashing in the sun-light, with a fair city of fifteen or twenty thousand people gleaming in the midst, embowered in fruit and shade-trees, and you may form some conception of the prospect that greets you, as you rattle down the Wahsatch range, and out into the valley of Great Salt Lake. I doubt if there is a more picturesque or charming scene anywhere, not excepting the descent from the Alps into Italy. You involuntarily thank heaven, that "Bitter Creek" is over and past, and congratulate yourself on having struck civilization once more, Mormon though it be.

We took in much of this scene, as we strolled along, with senses keenly alive to its beauties and felicities. Flowers never seemed more fragrant; fruits never so luscious. In the clear atmosphere how the mountains glowed and towered! How crisp and elastic was the air! How the blood went coursing through one's veins! The streets seemed alive with people, and as they were moving mainly in one direction we followed on, and presently found ourselves at the Mormon Tabernacle. This was an odd-looking, oblong structure, built of adobe, and with no pretence evidently to any of the known orders of architecture. Its side-walls were low, and between these sprang the roof in a great semi-circle, with narrow prison-like windows near the line where the walls and roof came together. Outside, the walls were of the usual dun adobe color; inside, plain white—the whole utterly devoid of ornamentation whatever. The organ and choir occupied the end near the street; opposite was a raised platform, extending entirely across the audience-room, and on this sat fifty or more plain-looking men—the priests and chief dignitaries of "the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints." The audience consisted of perhaps two thousand people—men, women, and children—all dressed respectably, and though the average of intelligence was not high, yet as a whole they were a better appearing people than we had been led to expect. This edifice was their old tabernacle; the new tabernacle, an enormous structure on much the same plan, but with a capacity of ten or twelve thousand souls, was not yet completed, though well under way. Their great Temple had not yet progressed beyond the foundation stones, and there seemed to be much doubt whether it ever would. Its plan, however, is on a magnificent scale, and if ever completed, it will doubtless be one of the greatest edifices on the continent.

Religious services had already begun, and we found a Mr. Nicholson, a returned missionary from England, expatiating at the desk with much fervor. We were too late for his text, but found him discussing at length the evidences and undeniability of their peculiar doctrines. He was a fluent, but vapid speaker, and, with all our curiosity to hear him, soon became very tiresome. The gist of his argument was, that the saints knew for themselves, in their own hearts, that Mormonism was true, and, therefore, that no Gentile (or outside unbeliever) could possibly disprove it. He said, "My brethren, we know our doctrines to be true, yea and amen, forever. They have come to us by express revelation from heaven, and we have tested them in our own experience; and, therefore, to argue against them is the same as to argue against the multiplication-table, or to doubt logic itself. Yes, our priesthood, from Brother Brigham down, is God's own appointed succession, and whoever rejects its teachings will be damned for time and eternity." He iterated and reiterated these crude and common-place ideas for an hour or more ad nauseam, until finally Brigham Young (who presided) stopped him, and ordered the sacrament administered. This consisted only of bread and water, passed through the audience, everybody partaking of the elements. This over, singing followed, in which all participated, the chief functionaries leading. Now came another "returned missionary," whose name we missed. He talked for twenty minutes or more, in a very loose and rambling way, about the work in England and Wales, and evidently was regarded as a rather "weak brother," to say the least of him. The next speaker was George Q. Cannon, a leading dignitary of the church, and a man of decided parts in many ways. He is an Englishman by birth, and for awhile after arriving here served Brigham Young as secretary. Now he was a stout, hearty looking man, in his prime, with good frontal developments, and impressed us as the smartest Mormon on the platform—Brigham, perhaps, excepted. He spoke for nearly an hour, delivering a calm, connected, methodical address, and evidently moved his audience deeply. The substance of his discourse was, that they as a church were blessed beyond and above all other churches, because they had a genuine priesthood, appointed by God himself, and in constant communication with Him. "Other churches," he said, "in their decadence had dropped this doctrine, and accordingly had lost their spirituality and power. But Joseph Smith, in the fulness of time, found the Book of Mormon, where God had concealed it, and so became His vice-gerent on earth. Brother Joseph selected Brigham Young, Heber Kimball, and Orson Pratt, as his co-workers, and through these and others Jehovah now communicates his unchanging will to the children of men. These great and good men speak not themselves, but the Holy Ghost in and through them. What we shall speak, we know not, nor how we shall speak it; but God inspires our hearts and tongues. Ofttimes we are moved to declare things, that are seemingly incredible. If left to ourselves, we would prefer not to declare them. But Jehovah speaks through us—we are but his mouth-pieces—and what are we to do? We must proclaim His solemn revelations, and to-day I tell you, brothers, what Brother Brigham has often said before, that the time is not distant—nay, is near at hand—when the North and South will both call upon Brigham Young and his holy priesthood to come and help them re-establish free constitutional government there. We, here in Utah, have the only free and Christian government upon the earth, and God has revealed it to us, that His holy church shall yet occupy and possess the continent. Some of you may doubt this, and Gentiles especially may mock at and deride it. But Jehovah has so spoken it, to Brother Brigham and others, and many now here will yet live to see this fulfilled. Heaven and earth may pass away, but my words shall not fail, saith the Lord!" All this, and much more of the same purport, he uttered with the greatest solemnity, as if devoutly believing it, and his audience received it with a hearty chorus of "amens." There was more singing, and then Brigham, who had presided over the meeting as a sort of moderator, dismissed the congregation with the usual benediction. We had hoped to hear him speak also, as their great chief and leader; but he was ailing that day, and so disappointed us.

The speaking, as a whole, scarcely rose above mediocrity, except perhaps Mr. Cannon's. It was noisy and common-place, without logic or symmetry, and would have provoked most eastern audiences to ridicule, rather than led to conviction. Mr. Cannon evinced much natural ability; but all seemed quite illiterate, their rhetoric limping badly, and their pronouns and verbs marrying very miscellaneously. But little was said about their "peculiar institution" of polygamy, though it was alluded to once or twice, and its sacredness assumed. The singing was strong and emotional, and swept through the tabernacle a mighty wave of praise. Of course, it lacked culture; but then there were passionate and glowing hearts back of it, for all sang "with the spirit," if not "with the understanding also." Their fine organ we missed hearing, as it was then out of order. A new and much larger one was building for the new tabernacle, by workmen from abroad, and this it was claimed was going to be bigger, if not better, than the great one at Boston. Let the Hub look to her laurels!

The next morning I found myself down, with what is termed out there the Mountain Fever. And so this was the explanation of what had troubled me occasionally, even before leaving Denver. I had struggled desperately against it for a fortnight, but now surrendered at discretion, and was taken to Camp Douglas—the military post north of the city—where I found sympathizing comrades and a hearty welcome. This Mountain Fever seems to be an ugly combination of the bilious and typhoid, with the ague thrown in, and often pays its respects to overland travellers, unless they are very careful. In my own case it yielded readily to calomel and quinine, but only after liberal and repeated doses of each. For over a fortnight I wrestled with it there, sometimes hardly knowing which would conquer; but a resolute determination not "to shuffle off this mortal coil" in Utah, if I could help it, and a kind providence at last brought me safely through. At first, this loss of time was greatly regretted, as I was eager to complete my duties at Salt Lake, and push on; but ultimately, I was not sorry, as it afforded an opportunity to observe and study the Utah problem, much more fully than I should otherwise have done.

My first day out again, a beautiful October day and perfect of its kind, the Post-Surgeon advised a ride in the open air. Accordingly Major Grimes, the Post-Quartermaster, brought round his buggy, and together we drove down to the city, and thence out to the hot Sulphur Springs. These are on the Bear River road, some two or three miles north of the city. The water here bursts out of the ground at the foot of a bluff or mountain, as thick as a man's leg, and runs thence in a considerable stream to Great Salt Lake. It has a strong sulphur color and taste, and a temperature sufficient for a warm bath. Some miles farther north there are other Springs—we were told—hot enough to boil an egg. In the bath-house adjoining, we found a number of men and boys enjoying the luxury of a sulphur plunge, and the place appeared to be a considerable resort already, especially on Sundays. Most passing travellers and miners endeavor here to get rid of the accumulated dirt of their journey hitherward, and to depart cleaner if not better men. A refreshment-saloon near by furnished superb apples and peaches fresh from the trees, and most other American edibles, including our inevitable "pies;" but no drinkables, except tea and coffee. The patrons of the springs, it was said, complained bitterly of Brigham's stern, prohibitory liquor laws, but with little result. Even in Salt Lake City itself, a town of fifteen or twenty thousand souls, (1866), there were but two or three drinking-saloons, and these, we were told, were either owned or strictly regulated by the church i. e. Brigham Young. Whatever else the saints may be, Brigham intends that they shall at least not be drunkards, if he can help it.

Returning we drove by the ruins of the old city-wall, erected by the Mormons soon after they settled here, of concrete and adobe, as a defence against the Indians. The growth of the town and the disappearance of the Indians, rendered it useless years ago, and it was now fast falling to pieces, though no doubt of service in its day. It was one of Mr. Buchanan's Salt Lake scarecrows in 1857, but would not have stood a half-dozen shots from an ordinary field-piece, or even mountain-howitzer. The labor of erecting it, however, must have been prodigious, as it enclosed originally several square miles, and its remains even now speak well for the industry and enterprise of the saints in those early times.

Thursday, Nov. 1st, was a great gala-day at Salt Lake, and we were fortunate to be there still. It was the chief day of their annual militia muster, and the whole country-side apparently turned out. The place selected was a plateau west of the Jordan, some three miles from Salt Lake city. Proceeding thither, we found a rather heterogenous encampment, with not much of the military about it, except in name. The officers were mainly in uniform, but the men generally in civilian dress, and many without either arms or accoutrements. As we passed through the encampment, they were all out at company drill. Of course, there were many awkward squads, but the so-called officers were the awkwardest of all. In many instances, they were unable to drill their men in the simplest evolutions; but stood stupidly by, in brand-new coats, resplendent with brass-buttons, while some corporal or private, in civilian dress, "put the company through!"

Soon after noon, a cloud of dust and a large accompanying concourse of people heralded the approach of the chief Mormon dignitaries—in carriages. The flag of the "State of Deseret" floated in the advance; then came the standard of the old Nauvoo Legion; and as the procession neared the parade-ground, the "Lieutenant-General Commanding the Militia of Utah" and a brilliant staff (chiefly of Brigadier-Generals) moved out to meet and escort the hierarchs in. In the carriages, were most of the leading Mormons then at Salt Lake. Brigham himself was reported absent sick, but he sent his state-carriage instead, with Bishops Kimball and Cannon in it. The Lieutenant-General and staff, with the carriages following, now rode by in review, after which the troops formed column and marched by in review. They moved by company front, and being near the reviewing station, we made a rough count as they straggled by, and estimated the total force at about a thousand infantry, five hundred cavalry, and a battery of artillery. The cavalry was tolerably mounted; but the artillery was "horsed" with mules, and consisted of mere howitzers, no two of like calibre. The personnel of the force was certainly good; but everything betrayed an utter lack of discipline and drill. Nevertheless the Mormon officials seemed greatly elated by the martial array, and much disposed to exaggerate its numbers. Having been introduced to his excellency the Commander-in-chief, "Lieutenant-General etc.," I took occasion incidentally to ask him how many troops were on the field. He replied, he could not exactly tell, but he "reckoned" about three thousand! Afterwards, in reply to a similar question, his Adjutant-General—a son-in-law of Brigham Young's, and, of course, a Brigadier-General—answered, he guessed about four thousand! Other Mormon dignitaries computed them at from five to six thousand, even. I said nothing, of course, about my own passing "count;" but on returning to Camp Douglas, found it substantially confirmed by a very accurate count, made by another U. S. officer present, who had a better opportunity.

The true status of this Salt Lake militia appears pretty clearly, I judge, from the following conversation with the said Lieutenant-General. We were still "on the field," and I had casually asked him, whether this was the militia of the Church or of the Territory?

"O, of the Territory, of course!" he replied, with a smile that was child-like and bland.

"But its officers are all Mormons, and its men mostly so, I believe?"

"Why, yes, sir!" sobering down.