THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS—GOLDEN CITY—GOLDEN GATES—MINING TOWNS—NEIGHBOURING
MOUNTAINS STRIPPED OF EVERY TREE—WHAT GROWS ON THE MOUNTAINS—AMERICAN
HORSES—ROADS AND BRIDGES THEY HAVE TO PASS—HOW, SIX-IN-HAND, WE WENT
DOWN A HILL SIDE IN THE MOUNTAINS—A NICE DISTINCTION AS TO ACCIDENTS
ON THIS HILL—CLIMATE-WIND-STORMS—BIRDS—DOGS.
[Sidenote: _The Rocky Mountains._]
I entered the Rocky Mountains at a place called Golden City. It lies in
a gap of the first range. Till lately it was the capital of Colorado,
which honour has now been transferred to Denver. It is chiefly of
brick—the proof, in this part of the world, of mature age in a town.
I counted three churches in the place; the best of the three belongs,
as I was told, to the Episcopalians. The population appeared to be
about three thousand. A thick seam of good coal is exposed just at the
foot of the hill close to the town. I had heard that I should find a
place of this name, but I was not at all prepared for the brick, and
the churches, and the population. There is a good hotel here, kept by
an Englishman; but, judging from those I fell in with, the well-to-do
people of the place were mostly New Englanders.
Just beyond Golden City the road passes through a grand defile, between
precipitous mountains of dark rock; this, as it leads to the auriferous
regions up in the mountains, is called the Golden Gates.
Up in the mountains I visited the three mining towns of Black Hawk,
Central City, and Nevada. The district to which these towns belong had
a population of fifteen thousand persons engaged in mining, but I found
several of the mills not at work, and was told that the population
had lately fallen off considerably. In the neighbourhood of these
towns all the timber has been cut down for building and mining; and
as everything that would burn has also been cleared off for fuel,
every accessible mountain has been made as bare as a ploughed field.
Their sides are covered with what appear to be gigantic mole-hills,
but which in reality are the heaps of earth the miners have thrown up
in prospecting—that is, examining the ground for auriferous veins,
which is done by digging holes ten or twelve feet deep. It will be a
long time before the forest appears again, for at this altitude it was
composed entirely of pine, and I could nowhere, on exposed places,
find any young trees: I could find plenty of little seedlings, but
they all were dead or dying, I supposed from their inability to bear
without protection the wind, or the cold, or the drought. I saw some
magnificent trees of, I believe, a kind of spruce, and a kind of
silver fir, on the hills, from which it would have been difficult to
have removed them if cut down. They were of great height, and very
straight, though of course nothing like what we hear of as growing on
the western slopes, and down to the Pacific coast. On the lower hills I
saw abundance of a white-barked poplar, of a kind of alder, of birch,
and of willow. Gooseberry bushes in places covered the ground. I heard
that currants, raspberries, blueberries, and some other small edible
fruit were to be found in equal plenty. I saw large spaces on the hill
sides, where the undergrowth was chiefly Berberis aquifolium. In the
valleys of the outer ranges there was a great deal of the small cactus
I had seen in the plains, clothing the surface for miles together. This
species must be capable of bearing very severe cold, for 20° below zero
is a point that is occasionally reached here.
[Sidenote: _American Horses._]
American horses are, speaking generally, better than ours. Their
average character is higher. Though we probably in most classes have
some animals that are more showy, and even better adapted to their
work, yet certainly they have fewer poor brutes. With us everything
that is in the form of a horse fetches money, from the stylish pair
which everybody notices in the Park, down to the costermonger’s pony.
Manifestly inferior animals do not appear to be bred at all in America.
There is a point they do not fall below, and that point admits of bone
and blood enough to be noticed.
Their horses have another merit also. As a general rule, they do just
what is required of them, and nothing more. It is rare to see one
that jibs, or shies, or stumbles, or misbehaves himself in any way. I
cannot say whether it is that, being sounder in body, they are sounder
also in mind; or whether it is to be attributed to some superiority in
the American method of breaking in their horses; or whether the moral
effects of maize are superior to those of oats; though indeed I see
from the returns that in some parts of the country a large quantity of
the latter kind of grain is raised.
As American drivers have more confidence in themselves and their
fortune than any drivers in the world, and are ready at any moment
to run any risks, this rationality and docility of their horses is a
valuable quality. One frequently does not know which to admire most,
the skill and nerve of the driver, or the intelligence and training of
the horses. In passing over the plains you find that only some of the
streams are bridged. The bridges, however, appear to one who is new to
the country to be very inadequate to what is required of them. They
generally consist of two long pine trees laid from bank to bank, or, if
the stream is wide, from pier to pier, and then covered with a corduroy
of cross pieces, sometimes a little dressed; the interstices are filled
up with prairie hay, which is strewed over the whole structure. To save
material and cartage, these bridges are made just wide enough for the
wheels of the coach. I do not think there could have been a foot to
spare on either side. There is no side railing of any kind. The driver,
with four or six horses as it may happen, generally takes them at his
best pace. Any hesitation, or a false step, or any kind of misconduct
in any of the horses, would lead to a mishap. But then, mishaps never
occur, or only so seldom as just to show that such things are not
impossible. This, however, is a momentary affair, and by the time
that one has noticed that the cross pieces are not fastened, but are
starting and dancing under the feet of the horses and the wheels of the
coach, the other side is reached.
[Sidenote: _Six-in-hand through the Mountains._]
In the mountains I saw a specimen of American driving that would have
astonished our old stagers of the Exeter, or the north road. We were
crossing one of the inner ranges, and had been slowly toiling up a
long hill, at a rate I suppose of not more than four miles an hour.
At last we reached the summit of almost naked rock. The descent on
the opposite side was very rapid—seven hundred feet in little more
than half a mile. This has been accomplished by a series of zigzags
constructed on the face of the hill, in the rudest possible way. The
trunks of pine trees were laid longitudinally on what was to be the
outside of the road. On the inner side some of the rock was picked down
and blasted, and laid on the pine trees; and thus a road was made, as
in the case of the bridges I have mentioned, to a very little greater
width than that of the coach. The zigzags were short, and consequently
the angles were close together. In the middle of the roadway the rock
everywhere obtruded to a height sometimes of five or six inches. Any
other people would have made the road more carefully, and of more
durable materials, in the worst places would have put some kind of
parapet to it, and would probably have used mules for the coach,
making those sure-footed animals walk down the hill. But an American
would consider it insufferable that the safety of the public should
be ensured at a loss of a few minutes’ time daily, and that a dollar
more than was absolutely necessary should be spent on a road which
might in a year or two be superseded by something better, or not wanted
at all. And so the way they manage it is to construct a road of the
narrow scantling and in the rude fashion I have mentioned, and then to
drive down it, with six fine horses, at a rate of not less than eleven
miles an hour. As soon as we got to the top of the hill, the horses
were put under the whip, and away we went. As we turned the corners at
full speed the team appeared to be coming back on the coach; and as we
rattled down the inclines the sides of the hill looked like precipices.
If one horse had stumbled on the pieces of rock projecting through the
road, or got frightened, or become unruly in any way, or if a piece of
harness had broken, or the brake had given way, a capsize would have
been inevitable, and we should have rolled over to the valley beneath.
There was an hotel at the bottom of the hill, and while we sat down to
dinner (I think people must sometimes arrive at the hotel without much
appetite), another team was put in for another stage, through ravines
and along the edges of precipices, which would require American horses
and American driving.
The hill we had just come down is called the Guy Hill. At Central City,
where I was staying the next day, I asked the landlord of the hotel if
anyone had been killed lately on the Guy Hill. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘no
one had been killed, he was glad to say, for two or three years, but
every year several persons had died of accidents on the hill.’ These
accidents happen when snow is on the ground, and the horses cannot
see their way, or when it is covered with ice, and they cannot get a
foothold. I afterwards walked up this road, and a closer acquaintance
with it only increased the respect the way in which I had been brought
down it had made me feel for American horses, drivers, and coaches. I
also went over the old road that had preceded it, and which was nothing
but a gully of smooth rock down the side of the hill. I was unable to
conceive how any vehicle could ever have been got up it or down it.
[Sidenote: _Climate in the Mountains._]
The fame of these American whips is not confined to their own country;
for I am told by an Australian friend, that in that part of the world
it is the custom to engage the services of one of them where the roads
are unusually difficult.
Though it was February when I was in the mountains, the climate was so
bright and warm, that it did not appear strange to see the gold-washers
at work in slush and water. And yet there had been so severe a frost in
the previous month, that the gulch was still thickly frozen over, and
these hardy men had to break through the ice to get water for washing
the dirt in which the gold is found. But though there is here a great
deal of open fine weather in winter, yet at this season very severe
frost, though generally of short duration, may be expected, and also
extremely violent storms of wind, often accompanied with snow. A storm
of this kind drove me out of the mountains, as I was afraid, which
actually did happen, that it would bring enough snow to block the roads
for some days. I made a run for the plains, and when I reached them, I
found the storm still raging, and saw the dust it raised looking like
a dark haze several yards high. As the wind blew from the mountains,
I did not suffer much inconvenience in running before it for twelve
miles, till I reached shelter. But the next day, when it was over, I
saw teamsters who told me that they had found it impossible to move on
across it, and that they had been obliged to anchor their waggons to
moorings driven firmly into the ground, sheltering their cattle and
themselves on the lee-side. These wind storms on the plains are not so
bad for man as for beast, for the nostrils, mouths, and eyes of the
horses and bullocks suffer much from the sharp sand.
Three species of the crow tribe are, I found, common by the road side
in the mountains in winter: the blue jay, which is seen frequently
in flocks; the magpie, which is marked very similarly to our own—it
appears, however, to be a somewhat larger bird, and to have a larger
tail; and the raven. In the summer, as there is then an inexhaustible
supply of small fruit of different kinds in the valleys, and on the
hill sides, I should expect to see a great variety of birds.
Almost in every house I entered in the mountains and in the contiguous
plains I found an enormous dog. Some were pure mastiffs; others of
mixed breed, in which the Newfoundland blood predominated. The mastiffs
were larger and more powerful animals than I ever saw at dog-shows in
London or elsewhere. Their size, however, imparted no air of nobility
to their appearance and bearing, but much of savage brutality. The
motive, I suppose, for keeping these Cerberuses is protection from
wolves, and from the two-legged assailants of life and property.