A LADY'S LIFE
IN THE
ROCKY MOUNTAINS
Isabella L. Bird
Introduction by
Ann Ronald
University of Nevada, Reno
To My Sister,
to whom
these letters were originally written,
they are now
affectionately dedicated.
Contents
Introduction, by Ann Ronald
LETTER I
Lake Tahoe--Morning in San Francisco--Dust--A Pacific
mail-train--Digger Indians--Cape Horn--A mountain hotel--A pioneer--A
Truckee livery stable--A mountain stream--Finding a bear--Tahoe.
LETTER II
A lady's "get-up"--Grizzly bears--The "Gem of the Sierras"--A tragic
tale--A carnival of color.
LETTER III
A Temple of Morpheus--Utah--A "God-forgotten" town--A distressed
couple--Dog villages--A temperance colony--A Colorado inn--The bug
pest--Fort Collins.
LETTER IV
A plague of flies--A melancholy charioteer--The Foot Hills--A mountain
boarding-house--A dull life--"Being agreeable"--Climate of
Colorado--Soroche and snakes.
LETTER V
A dateless day--"Those hands of yours"--A Puritan--Persevering
shiftlessness--The house-mother--Family worship--A grim Sunday--A
"thick-skulled Englishman"--A morning call--Another atmosphere--The
Great Lone Land--"Ill found"--A log camp--Bad footing for
horses--Accidents--Disappointment.
LETTER VI
A bronco mare--An accident--Wonderland--A sad story--The children of
the Territories--Hard greed--Halcyon hours--Smartness--Old-fashioned
prejudices--The Chicago colony--Good luck--Three notes of admiration--A
good horse--The St. Vrain--The Rocky Mountains at last--"Mountain
Jim"--A death hug--Estes Park.
LETTER VII
Personality of Long's Peak--"Mountain Jim"--Lake of the Lilies--A
silent forest--The camping ground--"Ring"--A lady's bower--Dawn and
sunrise--A glorious view--Links of diamonds--The ascent of the
Peak--The "Dog's Lift"--Suffering from thirst--The descent--The bivouac.
LETTER VIII
Estes Park--Big game--"Parks" in Colorado--Magnificent scenery--Flowers
and pines--An awful road--Our log cabin--Griffith Evans--A miniature
world--Our topics--A night alarm--A skunk--Morning glories--Daily
routine--The panic--"Wait for the wagon"--A musical evening.
LETTER IX
"Please Ma'ams"--A desperado--A cattle hunt--The muster--A mad cow--A
snowstorm--Snowed up--Birdie--The Plains--A prairie schooner--Denver--A
find--Plum Creek--"Being agreeable"--Snowbound--The grey mare.
LETTER X
A white world--Bad traveling--A millionaire's home--Pleasant
Park--Perry's Park--Stock-raising--A cattle king--The Arkansas
Divide--Birdie's sagacity--Luxury--Monument Park--Deference to
prejudice--A death scene--The Manitou--A loose shoe--The Ute
Pass--Bergens Park--A settler's home--Hayden's Divide--Sharp
criticism--Speaking the truth.
LETTER XI
Tarryall Creek--The Red Range--Excelsior--Importunate pedlars--Snow and
heat--A bison calf--Deep drifts--South Park--The Great Divide--Comanche
Bill--Difficulties--Hall's Gulch--A Lord Dundreary--Ridiculous fears.
LETTER XII
Deer Valley--Lynch law--Vigilance committees--The silver spruce--Taste
and abstinence--The whisky fiend--Smartness--Turkey Creek Canyon--The
Indian problem--Public rascality--Friendly meetings--The way to the
Golden City--A rising settlement--Clear Creek
Canyon--Staging--Swearing--A mountain town.
LETTER XIII
The blight of mining--Green Lake--Golden
City--Benighted--Vertigo--Boulder Canyon--Financial straits--A hard
ride--The last cent--A bachelor's home--"Mountain Jim"--A surprise--A
night arrival--Making the best of it--Scanty fare.
LETTER XIV
A dismal ride--A desperado's tale--"Lost! Lost! Lost!"--Winter
glories--Solitude--Hard times--Intense cold--A pack of wolves--The
beaver dams--Ghastly scenes--Venison steaks--Our evenings.
LETTER XV
A whisky slave--The pleasures of monotony--The mountain lion--"Another
mouth to feed"--A tiresome boy--An outcast--Thanksgiving Day--The
newcomer--A literary humbug--Milking a dry cow--Trout-fishing--A
snow-storm--A desperado's den.
LETTER XVI
A harmonious home--Intense cold--A purple sun--A grim jest--A perilous
ride--Frozen eyelids--Longmount--The pathless prairie--Hardships of
emigrant life--A trapper's advice--The Little Thompson--Evans and "Jim."
LETTER XVII
Woman's mission--The last morning--Crossing the St. Vrain--Miller--The
St. Vrain again--Crossing the prairie--"Jim's" dream--"Keeping
strangers"--The inn kitchen--A reputed child-eater--Notoriety--A quiet
dance--"Jim's" resolve--The frost-fall--An unfortunate introduction.
Letter I
Lake Tahoe--Morning in San Francisco--Dust--A Pacific
mail-train--Digger Indians--Cape Horn--A mountain hotel--A pioneer--A
Truckee livery stable--A mountain stream--Finding a bear--Tahoe.
LAKE TAHOE, September 2.
I have found a dream of beauty at which one might look all one's life
and sigh. Not lovable, like the Sandwich Islands, but beautiful in its
own way! A strictly North American beauty--snow-splotched mountains,
huge pines, red-woods, sugar pines, silver spruce; a crystalline
atmosphere, waves of the richest color; and a pine-hung lake which
mirrors all beauty on its surface. Lake Tahoe is before me, a sheet of
water twenty-two miles long by ten broad, and in some places 1,700 feet
deep. It lies at a height of 6,000 feet, and the snow-crowned summits
which wall it in are from 8,000 to 11,000 feet in altitude. The air is
keen and elastic. There is no sound but the distant and slightly
musical ring of the lumberer's axe.
It is a weariness to go back, even in thought, to the clang of San
Francisco, which I left in its cold morning fog early yesterday,
driving to the Oakland ferry through streets with side-walks heaped
with thousands of cantaloupe and water-melons, tomatoes, cucumbers,
squashes, pears, grapes, peaches, apricots--all of startling size as
compared with any I ever saw before. Other streets were piled with
sacks of flour, left out all night, owing to the security from rain at
this season. I pass hastily over the early part of the journey, the
crossing the bay in a fog as chill as November, the number of "lunch
baskets," which gave the car the look of conveying a great picnic
party, the last view of the Pacific, on which I had looked for nearly a
year, the fierce sunshine and brilliant sky inland, the look of long
RAINLESSNESS, which one may not call drought, the valleys with sides
crimson with the poison oak, the dusty vineyards, with great purple
clusters thick among the leaves, and between the vines great dusty
melons lying on the dusty earth. From off the boundless harvest fields
the grain was carried in June, and it is now stacked in sacks along the
track, awaiting freightage. California is a "land flowing with milk
and honey." The barns are bursting with fullness. In the dusty
orchards the apple and pear branches are supported, that they may not
break down under the weight of fruit; melons, tomatoes, and squashes of
gigantic size lie almost unheeded on the ground; fat cattle, gorged
almost to repletion, shade themselves under the oaks; superb "red"
horses shine, not with grooming, but with condition; and thriving farms
everywhere show on what a solid basis the prosperity of the "Golden
State" is founded. Very uninviting, however rich, was the blazing
Sacramento Valley, and very repulsive the city of Sacramento, which, at
a distance of 125 miles from the Pacific, has an elevation of only
thirty feet. The mercury stood at 103 degrees in the shade, and the
fine white dust was stifling.
In the late afternoon we began the ascent of the Sierras, whose sawlike
points had been in sight for many miles. The dusty fertility was all
left behind, the country became rocky and gravelly, and deeply scored
by streams bearing the muddy wash of the mountain gold mines down to
the muddier Sacramento. There were long broken ridges and deep
ravines, the ridges becoming longer, the ravines deeper, the pines
thicker and larger, as we ascended into a cool atmosphere of exquisite
purity, and before 6 P.M. the last traces of cultivation and the last
hardwood trees were left behind.[1]
[1] In consequence of the unobserved omission of a date to my letters
having been pointed out to me, I take this opportunity of stating that
I traveled in Colorado in the autumn and early winter of 1873, on my
way to England from the Sandwich Islands. The letters are a faithful
picture of the country and state of society as it then was; but friends
who have returned from the West within the last six months tell me that
things are rapidly changing, that the frame house is replacing the log
cabin, and that the footprints of elk and bighorn may be sought for in
vain on the dewy slopes of Estes Park.
I. L. B.
(Author's note to the third edition, January 16, 1880.)
At Colfax, a station at a height of 2,400 feet, I got out and walked
the length of the train. First came two great gaudy engines, the
Grizzly Bear and the White Fox, with their respective tenders loaded
with logs of wood, the engines with great, solitary, reflecting lamps
in front above the cow guards, a quantity of polished brass-work,
comfortable glass houses, and well-stuffed seats for the
engine-drivers. The engines and tenders were succeeded by a baggage
car, the latter loaded with bullion and valuable parcels, and in charge
of two "express agents." Each of these cars is forty-five feet long.
Then came two cars loaded with peaches and grapes; then two "silver
palace" cars, each sixty feet long; then a smoking car, at that time
occupied mainly by Chinamen; and then five ordinary passenger cars,
with platforms like all the others, making altogether a train about 700
feet in length.
The platforms of the four front cars were clustered over with Digger
Indians, with their squaws, children, and gear. They are perfect
savages, without any aptitude for even aboriginal civilization, and are
altogether the most degraded of the ill-fated tribes which are dying
out before the white races. They were all very diminutive, five feet
one inch being, I should think, about the average height, with flat
noses, wide mouths, and black hair, cut straight above the eyes and
hanging lank and long at the back and sides. The squaws wore their
hair thickly plastered with pitch, and a broad band of the same across
their noses and cheeks. They carried their infants on their backs,
strapped to boards. The clothing of both sexes was a ragged, dirty
combination of coarse woolen cloth and hide, the moccasins being
unornamented. They were all hideous and filthy, and swarming with
vermin. The men carried short bows and arrows, one of them, who
appeared to be the chief, having a lynx's skin for a quiver. A few had
fishing tackle, but the bystanders said that they lived almost entirely
upon grasshoppers. They were a most impressive incongruity in the
midst of the tokens of an omnipotent civilization.
The light of the sinking sun from that time glorified the Sierras, and
as the dew fell, aromatic odors made the still air sweet. On a single
track, sometimes carried on a narrow ledge excavated from the mountain
side by men lowered from the top in baskets, overhanging ravines from
2,000 to 3,000 feet deep, the monster train SNAKED its way upwards,
stopping sometimes in front of a few frame houses, at others where
nothing was to be seen but a log cabin with a few Chinamen hanging
about it, but where trails on the sides of the ravines pointed to a
gold country above and below. So sharp and frequent are the curves on
some parts of the ascent, that on looking out of the window one could
seldom see more than a part of the train at once. At Cape Horn, where
the track curves round the ledge of a precipice 2,500 feet in depth, it
is correct to be frightened, and a fashion of holding the breath and
shutting the eyes prevails, but my fears were reserved for the crossing
of a trestle bridge over a very deep chasm, which is itself approached
by a sharp curve. This bridge appeared to be overlapped by the cars so
as to produce the effect of looking down directly into a wild gulch,
with a torrent raging along it at an immense depth below.
Shivering in the keen, frosty air near the summit pass of the Sierras,
we entered the "snow-sheds," wooden galleries, which for about fifty
miles shut out all the splendid views of the region, as given in
dioramas, not even allowing a glimpse of "the Gem of the Sierras," the
lovely Donner Lake. One of these sheds is twenty-seven miles long. In
a few hours the mercury had fallen from 103 degrees to 29 degrees, and
we had ascended 6,987 feet in 105 miles! After passing through the
sheds, we had several grand views of a pine forest on fire before
reaching Truckee at 11 P.M. having traveled 258 miles. Truckee, the
center of the "lumbering region" of the Sierras, is usually spoken of
as "a rough mountain town," and Mr. W. had told me that all the roughs
of the district congregated there, that there were nightly pistol
affrays in bar-rooms, etc., but as he admitted that a lady was sure of
respect, and Mr. G. strongly advised me to stay and see the lakes, I
got out, much dazed, and very stupid with sleep, envying the people in
the sleeping car, who were already unconscious on their luxurious
couches. The cars drew up in a street--if street that could be called
which was only a wide, cleared space, intersected by rails, with here
and there a stump, and great piles of sawn logs bulking big in the
moonlight, and a number of irregular clap-board, steep-roofed houses,
many of them with open fronts, glaring with light and crowded with men.
We had pulled up at the door of a rough Western hotel, with a partially
open front, being a bar-room crowded with men drinking and smoking, and
the space between it and the cars was a moving mass of loafers and
passengers. On the tracks, engines, tolling heavy bells, were mightily
moving, the glare from their cyclopean eyes dulling the light of a
forest which was burning fitfully on a mountain side; and on open
spaces great fires of pine logs were burning cheerily, with groups of
men round them. A band was playing noisily, and the unholy sound of
tom-toms was not far off. Mountains--the Sierras of many a fireside
dream--seemed to wall in the town, and great pines stood out, sharp and
clear cut, against a sky in which a moon and stars were shining
frostily.
It was a sharp frost at that great height, and when an "irrepressible
nigger," who seemed to represent the hotel establishment, deposited me
and my carpetbag in a room which answered for "the parlor," I was glad
to find some remains of pine knots still alight in the stove. A man
came in and said that when the cars were gone he would try to get me a
room, but they were so full that it would be a very poor one. The
crowd was solely masculine. It was then 11:30 P.M., and I had not had
a meal since 6 A.M.; but when I asked hopefully for a hot supper, with
tea, I was told that no supper could be got at that hour; but in half
an hour the same man returned with a small cup of cold, weak tea, and a
small slice of bread, which looked as if it had been much handled.
I asked the Negro factotum about the hire of horses, and presently a
man came in from the bar who, he said, could supply my needs. This
man, the very type of a Western pioneer, bowed, threw himself into a
rocking-chair, drew a spittoon beside him, cut a fresh quid of tobacco,
began to chew energetically, and put his feet, cased in miry high
boots, into which his trousers were tucked, on the top of the stove.
He said he had horses which would both "lope" and trot, that some
ladies preferred the Mexican saddle, that I could ride alone in perfect
safety; and after a route had been devised, I hired a horse for two
days. This man wore a pioneer's badge as one of the earliest settlers
of California, but he had moved on as one place after another had
become too civilized for him, "but nothing," he added, "was likely to
change much in Truckee." I was afterwards told that the usual regular
hours of sleep are not observed there. The accommodation is too
limited for the population of 2,000,[2] which is masculine mainly, and
is liable to frequent temporary additions, and beds are occupied
continuously, though by different occupants, throughout the greater
part of the twenty-four hours. Consequently I found the bed and room
allotted to me quite tumbled looking. Men's coats and sticks were
hanging up, miry boots were littered about, and a rifle was in one
corner. There was no window to the outer air, but I slept soundly,
being only once awoke by an increase of the same din in which I had
fallen asleep, varied by three pistol shots fired in rapid succession.
[2] Nelson's Guide to the Central Pacific Railroad.
This morning Truckee wore a totally different aspect. The crowds of
the night before had disappeared. There were heaps of ashes where the
fires had been. A sleepy German waiter seemed the only person about
the premises, the open drinking saloons were nearly empty, and only a
few sleepy-looking loafers hung about in what is called the street. It
might have been Sunday; but they say that it brings a great accession
of throng and jollity. Public worship has died out at present; work is
discontinued on Sunday, but the day is given up to pleasure. Putting a
minimum of indispensables into a bag, and slipping on my Hawaiian
riding dress[3] over a silk skirt, and a dust cloak over all, I
stealthily crossed the plaza to the livery stable, the largest building
in Truckee, where twelve fine horses were stabled in stalls on each
side of a broad drive. My friend of the evening before showed me his
"rig," three velvet-covered side-saddles almost without horns. Some
ladies, he said, used the horn of the Mexican saddle, but none "in the
part" rode cavalier fashion. I felt abashed. I could not ride any
distance in the conventional mode, and was just going to give up this
splendid "ravage," when the man said, "Ride your own fashion; here, at
Truckee, if anywhere in the world, people can do as they like."
Blissful Truckee! In no time a large grey horse was "rigged out" in a
handsome silver-bossed Mexican saddle, with ornamental leather tassels
hanging from the stirrup guards, and a housing of black bear's-skin. I
strapped my silk skirt on the saddle, deposited my cloak in the
corn-bin, and was safely on the horse's back before his owner had time
to devise any way of mounting me. Neither he nor any of the loafers
who had assembled showed the slightest sign of astonishment, but all
were as respectful as possible.
[3] For the benefit of other lady travelers, I wish to explain that my
"Hawaiian riding dress" is the "American Lady's Mountain Dress," a
half-fitting jacket, a skirt reaching to the ankles, and full Turkish
trousers gathered into frills falling over the boots,--a thoroughly
serviceable and feminine costume for mountaineering and other rough
traveling, as in the Alps or any other part of the world.
I. L. B.
(Author's note to the second edition, November 27, 1879.)
Once on horseback my embarrassment disappeared, and I rode through
Truckee, whose irregular, steep-roofed houses and shanties, set down in
a clearing and surrounded closely by mountain and forest, looked like a
temporary encampment; passed under the Pacific Railroad; and then for
twelve miles followed the windings of the Truckee River, a clear,
rushing, mountain stream, in which immense pine logs had gone aground
not to be floated off till the next freshet, a loud-tongued, rollicking
stream of ice-cold water, on whose banks no ferns or trailers hang, and
which leaves no greenness along its turbulent progress.
All was bright with that brilliancy of sky and atmosphere, that blaze
of sunshine and universal glitter, which I never saw till I came to
California, combined with an elasticity in the air which removed all
lassitude, and gives one spirit enough for anything. On either side of
the Truckee great sierras rose like walls, castellated, embattled,
rifted, skirted and crowned with pines of enormous size, the walls now
and then breaking apart to show some snow-slashed peak rising into a
heaven of intense, unclouded, sunny blue. At this altitude of 6,000
feet one must learn to be content with varieties of Coniferae, for,
except for aspens, which spring up in some places where the pines have
been cleared away, and for cotton-woods, which at a lower level fringe
the streams, there is nothing but the bear cherry, the raspberry, the
gooseberry, the wild grape, and the wild currant. None of these grew
near the Truckee, but I feasted my eyes on pines[4] which, though not
so large as the Wellingtonia of the Yosemite, are really gigantic,
attaining a height of 250 feet, their huge stems, the warm red of cedar
wood, rising straight and branchless for a third of their height, their
diameter from seven to fifteen feet, their shape that of a larch, but
with the needles long and dark, and cones a foot long. Pines cleft the
sky; they were massed wherever level ground occurred; they stood over
the Truckee at right angles, or lay across it in prostrate grandeur.
Their stumps and carcasses were everywhere; and smooth "shoots" on the
sierras marked where they were shot down as "felled timber," to be
floated off by the river. To them this wild region owes its scattered
population, and the sharp ring of the lumberer's axe mingles with the
cries of wild beasts and the roar of mountain torrents.
[4] Pinus Lambertina.
The track is a soft, natural, wagon road, very pleasant to ride on.
The horse was much too big for me, and had plans of his own; but now
and then, where the ground admitted to it, I tried his heavy "lope"
with much amusement. I met nobody, and passed nothing on the road but
a freight wagon, drawn by twenty-two oxen, guided by three fine-looking
men, who had some difficulty in making room for me to pass their
awkward convoy. After I had ridden about ten miles the road went up a
steep hill in the forest, turned abruptly, and through the blue gloom
of the great pines which rose from the ravine in which the river was
then hid, came glimpses of two mountains, about 11,000 feet in height,
whose bald grey summits were crowned with pure snow. It was one of
those glorious surprises in scenery which make one feel as if one must
bow down and worship. The forest was thick, and had an undergrowth of
dwarf spruce and brambles, but as the horse had become fidgety and
"scary" on the track, I turned off in the idea of taking a short cut,
and was sitting carelessly, shortening my stirrup, when a great, dark,
hairy beast rose, crashing and snorting, out of the tangle just in
front of me. I had only a glimpse of him, and thought that my
imagination had magnified a wild boar, but it was a bear. The horse
snorted and plunged violently, as if he would go down to the river, and
then turned, still plunging, up a steep bank, when, finding that I must
come off, I threw myself off on the right side, where the ground rose
considerably, so that I had not far to fall. I got up covered with
dust, but neither shaken nor bruised. It was truly grotesque and
humiliating. The bear ran in one direction, and the horse in another.
I hurried after the latter, and twice he stopped till I was close to
him, then turned round and cantered away. After walking about a mile
in deep dust, I picked up first the saddle-blanket and next my bag, and
soon came upon the horse, standing facing me, and shaking all over. I
thought I should catch him then, but when I went up to him he turned
round, threw up his heels several times, rushed off the track, galloped
in circles, bucking, kicking, and plunging for some time, and then
throwing up his heels as an act of final defiance, went off at full
speed in the direction of Truckee, with the saddle over his shoulders
and the great wooden stirrups thumping his sides, while I trudged
ignominiously along in the dust, laboriously carrying the bag and
saddle-blanket.
I walked for nearly an hour, heated and hungry, when to my joy I saw
the ox-team halted across the top of a gorge, and one of the teamsters
leading the horse towards me. The young man said that, seeing the
horse coming, they had drawn the team across the road to stop him, and
remembering that he had passed them with a lady on him, they feared
that there had been an accident, and had just saddled one of their own
horses to go in search of me. He brought me some water to wash the
dust from my face, and re-saddled the horse, but the animal snorted and
plunged for some time before he would let me mount, and then sidled
along in such a nervous and scared way, that the teamster walked for
some distance by me to see that I was "all right." He said that the
woods in the neighborhood of Tahoe had been full of brown and grizzly
bears for some days, but that no one was in any danger from them. I
took a long gallop beyond the scene of my tumble to quiet the horse,
who was most restless and troublesome.
Then the scenery became truly magnificent and bright with life.
Crested blue-jays darted through the dark pines, squirrels in hundreds
scampered through the forest, red dragon-flies flashed like "living
light," exquisite chipmunks ran across the track, but only a dusty blue
lupin here and there reminded me of earth's fairer children. Then the
river became broad and still, and mirrored in its transparent depths
regal pines, straight as an arrow, with rich yellow and green lichen
clinging to their stems, and firs and balsam pines filling up the
spaces between them, the gorge opened, and this mountain-girdled lake
lay before me, with its margin broken up into bays and promontories,
most picturesquely clothed by huge sugar pines. It lay dimpling and
scintillating beneath the noonday sun, as entirely unspoilt as fifteen
years ago, when its pure loveliness was known only to trappers and
Indians. One man lives on it the whole year round; otherwise early
October strips its shores of their few inhabitants, and thereafter, for
seven months, it is rarely accessible except on snowshoes. It never
freezes. In the dense forests which bound it, and drape two-thirds of
its gaunt sierras, are hordes of grizzlies, brown bears, wolves, elk,
deer, chipmunks, martens, minks, skunks, foxes, squirrels, and snakes.
On its margin I found an irregular wooden inn, with a lumber-wagon at
the door, on which was the carcass of a large grizzly bear, shot behind
the house this morning. I had intended to ride ten miles farther, but,
finding that the trail in some places was a "blind" one, and being
bewitched by the beauty and serenity of Tahoe, I have remained here
sketching, reveling in the view from the veranda, and strolling in the
forest. At this height there is frost every night of the year, and my
fingers are benumbed.
The beauty is entrancing. The sinking sun is out of sight behind the
western Sierras, and all the pine-hung promontories on this side of the
water are rich indigo, just reddened with lake, deepening here and
there into Tyrian purple. The peaks above, which still catch the sun,
are bright rose-red, and all the mountains on the other side are pink;
and pink, too, are the far-off summits on which the snow-drifts rest.
Indigo, red, and orange tints stain the still water, which lies solemn
and dark against the shore, under the shadow of stately pines. An hour
later, and a moon nearly full--not a pale, flat disc, but a radiant
sphere--has wheeled up into the flushed sky. The sunset has passed
through every stage of beauty, through every glory of color, through
riot and triumph, through pathos and tenderness, into a long, dreamy,
painless rest, succeeded by the profound solemnity of the moonlight,
and a stillness broken only by the night cries of beasts in the
aromatic forests.
I. L. B.
Letter II
A lady's "get-up"--Grizzly bears--The "Gems of the Sierras"--A tragic
tale--A carnival of color.
CHEYENNE, WYOMING, September 7.
As night came on the cold intensified, and the stove in the parlor
attracted every one. A San Francisco lady, much "got up" in paint,
emerald green velvet, Brussels lace, and diamonds, rattled continuously
for the amusement of the company, giving descriptions of persons and
scenes in a racy Western twang, without the slightest scruple as to
what she said. In a few years Tahoe will be inundated in summer with
similar vulgarity, owing to its easiness of access. I sustained the
reputation which our country-women bear in America by looking a
"perfect guy"; and feeling that I was a salient point for the speaker's
next sally, I was relieved when the landlady, a ladylike Englishwoman,
asked me to join herself and her family in the bar-room, where we had
much talk about the neighborhood and its wild beasts, especially bears.
The forest is full of them, but they seem never to attack people unless
when wounded, or much aggravated by dogs, or a shebear thinks you are
going to molest her young.
I dreamt of bears so vividly that I woke with a furry death hug at my
throat, but feeling quite refreshed. When I mounted my horse after
breakfast the sun was high and the air so keen and intoxicating that,
giving the animal his head, I galloped up and down hill, feeling
completely tireless. Truly, that air is the elixir of life. I had a
glorious ride back to Truckee. The road was not as solitary as the day
before. In a deep part of the forest the horse snorted and reared, and
I saw a cinnamon-colored bear with two cubs cross the track ahead of
me. I tried to keep the horse quiet that the mother might acquit me of
any designs upon her lolloping children, but I was glad when the
ungainly, long-haired party crossed the river. Then I met a team, the
driver of which stopped and said he was glad that I had not gone to
Cornelian Bay, it was such a bad trail, and hoped I had enjoyed Tahoe.
The driver of another team stopped and asked if I had seen any bears.
Then a man heavily armed, a hunter probably, asked me if I were the
English tourist who had "happened on" a "Grizzly" yesterday. Then I
saw a lumberer taking his dinner on a rock in the river, who "touched
his hat" and brought me a draught of ice-cold water, which I could
hardly drink owing to the fractiousness of the horse, and gathered me
some mountain pinks, which I admired. I mention these little incidents
to indicate the habit of respectful courtesy to women which prevails in
that region. These men might have been excused for speaking in a
somewhat free-and-easy tone to a lady riding alone, and in an unwonted
fashion. Womanly dignity and manly respect for women are the salt of
society in this wild West.
My horse was so excitable that I avoided the center of Truckee, and
skulked through a collection of Chinamen's shanties to the stable,
where a prodigious roan horse, standing seventeen hands high, was
produced for my ride to the Donner Lake. I asked the owner, who was as
interested in my enjoying myself as a West Highlander might have been,
if there were not ruffians about who might make an evening ride
dangerous. A story was current of a man having ridden through Truckee
two evenings before with a chopped-up human body in a sack behind the
saddle, and hosts of stories of ruffianism are located there, rightly
or wrongly. This man said, "There's a bad breed of ruffians, but the
ugliest among them all won't touch you. There's nothing Western folk
admire so much as pluck in a woman." I had to get on a barrel before I
could reach the stirrup, and when I was mounted my feet only came
half-way down the horse's sides. I felt like a fly on him. The road
at first lay through a valley without a river, but some swampishness
nourished some rank swamp grass, the first GREEN grass I have seen in
America; and the pines, with their red stems, looked beautiful rising
out of it. I hurried along, and came upon the Donner Lake quite
suddenly, to be completely smitten by its beauty. It is only about
three miles long by one and a half broad, and lies hidden away among
mountains, with no dwellings on its shores but some deserted lumberers'
cabins.[5] Its loneliness pleased me well. I did not see man, beast,
or bird from the time I left Truckee till I returned. The mountains,
which rise abruptly from the margin, are covered with dense pine
forests, through which, here and there, strange forms of bare grey
rock, castellated, or needle-like, protrude themselves. On the
opposite side, at a height of about 6,000 feet, a grey, ascending line,
from which rumbling, incoherent sounds occasionally proceeded, is seen
through the pines. This is one of the snow-sheds of the Pacific
Railroad, which shuts out from travelers all that I was seeing. The
lake is called after Mr. Donner, who, with his family, arrived at the
Truckee River in the fall of the year, in company with a party of
emigrants bound for California. Being encumbered with many cattle, he
let the company pass on, and, with his own party of sixteen souls,
which included his wife and four children, encamped by the lake. In
the morning they found themselves surrounded by an expanse of snow, and
after some consultation it was agreed that the whole party except Mr.
Donner who was unwell, his wife, and a German friend, should take the
horses and attempt to cross the mountain, which, after much peril, they
succeeded in doing; but, as the storm continued for several weeks, it
was impossible for any rescue party to succor the three who had been
left behind. In the early spring, when the snow was hard enough for
traveling, a party started in quest, expecting to find the snow-bound
alive and well, as they had cattle enough for their support, and, after
weeks of toil and exposure, they scaled the Sierras and reached the
Donner Lake. On arriving at the camp they opened the rude door, and
there, sitting before the fire, they found the German, holding a
roasted human arm and hand, which he was greedily eating. The rescue
party overpowered him, and with difficulty tore the arm from him. A
short search discovered the body of the lady, minus the arm, frozen in
the snow, round, plump, and fair, showing that she was in perfect
health when she met her fate. The rescuers returned to California,
taking the German with them, whose story was that Mr. Donner died in
the fall, and that the cattle escaped, leaving them but little food,
and that when this was exhausted Mrs. Donner died. The story never
gained any credence, and the truth oozed out that the German had
murdered the husband, then brutally murdered the wife, and had seized
upon Donner's money. There were, however, no witnesses, and the
murderer escaped with the enforced surrender of the money to the Donner
orphans.
[5] Visitors can now be accommodated at a tolerable mountain hotel.
This tragic story filled my mind as I rode towards the head of the
lake, which became every moment grander and more unutterably lovely.
The sun was setting fast, and against his golden light green
promontories, wooded with stately pines, stood out one beyond another
in a medium of dark rich blue, while grey bleached summits, peaked,
turreted, and snow slashed, were piled above them, gleaming with amber
light. Darker grew the blue gloom, the dew fell heavily, aromatic
odors floated on the air, and still the lofty peaks glowed with living
light, till in one second it died off from them, leaving them with the
ashy paleness of a dead face. It was dark and cold under the mountain
shadows, the frosty chill of the high altitude wrapped me round, the
solitude was overwhelming, and I reluctantly turned my horse's head
towards Truckee, often looking back to the ashy summits in their
unearthly fascination. Eastwards the look of the scenery was changing
every moment, while the lake for long remained "one burnished sheet of
living gold," and Truckee lay utterly out of sight in a hollow filled
with lake and cobalt. Before long a carnival of color began which I
can only describe as delirious, intoxicating, a hardly bearable joy, a
tender anguish, an indescribable yearning, an unearthly music, rich in
love and worship. It lasted considerably more than an hour, and though
the road was growing very dark, and the train which was to take me
thence was fast climbing the Sierras, I could not ride faster than a
walk.
The eastward mountains, which had been grey, blushed pale pink, the
pink deepened into rose, and the rose into crimson, and then all
solidity etherealized away and became clear and pure as an amethyst,
while all the waving ranges and the broken pine-clothed ridges below
etherealized too, but into a dark rich blue, and a strange effect of
atmosphere blended the whole into one perfect picture. It changed,
deepened, reddened, melted, growing more and more wonderful, while
under the pines it was night, till, having displayed itself for an
hour, the jewelled peaks suddenly became like those of the Sierras, wan
as the face of death. Far later the cold golden light lingered in the
west, with pines in relief against its purity, and where the rose light
had glowed in the east, a huge moon upheaved itself, and the red
flicker of forest fires luridly streaked the mountain sides near and
far off. I realized that night had come with its EERINESS, and putting
my great horse into a gallop I clung on to him till I pulled him up in
Truckee, which was at the height of its evening revelries--fires
blazing out of doors, bar-rooms and saloons crammed, lights glaring,
gaming tables thronged, fiddle and banjo in frightful discord, and the
air ringing with ribaldry and profanity.
I. L. B.
Letter III
A Temple of Morpheus--Utah--A "God-forgotten" town--A distressed
couple--Dog villages--A temperance colony--A Colorado inn--The bug
pest--Fort Collins.
CHEYENNE, WYOMING, September 8.
Precisely at 11 P.M. the huge Pacific train, with its heavy bell
tolling, thundered up to the door of the Truckee House, and on
presenting my ticket at the double door of a "Silver Palace" car, the
slippered steward, whispering low, conducted me to my berth--a
luxurious bed three and a half feet wide, with a hair mattress on
springs, fine linen sheets, and costly California blankets. The
twenty-four inmates of the car were all invisible, asleep behind rich
curtains. It was a true Temple of Morpheus. Profound sleep was the
object to which everything was dedicated. Four silver lamps hanging
from the roof, and burning low, gave a dreamy light. On each side of
the center passage, rich rep curtains, green and crimson, striped with
gold, hung from silver bars running near the roof, and trailed on the
soft Axminster carpet. The temperature was carefully kept at 70
degrees. It was 29 degrees outside. Silence and freedom from jolting
were secured by double doors and windows, costly and ingenious
arrangements of springs and cushions, and a speed limited to eighteen
miles an hour.
As I lay down, the gallop under the dark pines, the frosty moon, the
forest fires, the flaring lights and roaring din of Truckee faded as
dreams fade, and eight hours later a pure, pink dawn divulged a level
blasted region, with grey sage brush growing out of a soil encrusted
with alkali, and bounded on either side by low glaring ridges. All
through that day we traveled under a cloudless sky over solitary
glaring plains, and stopped twice at solitary, glaring frame houses,
where coarse, greasy meals, infested by lazy flies, were provided at a
dollar per head. By evening we were running across the continent on a
bee line, and I sat for an hour on the rear platform of the rear car to
enjoy the wonderful beauty of the sunset and the atmosphere. Far as
one could see in the crystalline air there was nothing but desert. The
jagged Humboldt ranges flaming in the sunset, with snow in their
clefts, though forty-five miles off, looked within an easy canter. The
bright metal track, purpling like all else in the cool distance, was
all that linked one with Eastern or Western civilization.
The next morning, when the steward unceremoniously turned us out of our
berths soon after sunrise, we were running down upon the Great Salt
Lake, bounded by the white Wahsatch ranges. Along its shores, by means
of irrigation, Mormon industry has compelled the ground to yield fine
crops of hay and barley; and we passed several cabins, from which, even
at that early hour, Mormons, each with two or three wives, were going
forth to their day's work. The women were ugly, and their shapeless
blue dresses hideous. At the Mormon town of Ogden we changed cars, and
again traversed dusty plains, white and glaring, varied by muddy
streams and rough, arid valleys, now and then narrowing into canyons.
By common consent the windows were kept closed to exclude the fine
white alkaline dust, which is very irritating to the nostrils. The
journey became more and more wearisome as we ascended rapidly over
immense plains and wastes of gravel destitute of mountain boundaries,
and with only here and there a "knob" or "butte" [6] to break the
monotony. The wheel-marks of the trail to Utah often ran parallel with
the track, and bones of oxen were bleaching in the sun, the remains of
those "whose carcasses fell in the wilderness" on the long and drouthy
journey. The daybreak of to-day (Sunday) found us shivering at Fort
Laramie, a frontier post dismally situated at a height of 7,000 feet.
Another 1,000 feet over gravelly levels brought us to Sherman, the
highest level reached by this railroad. From this point eastward the
streams fall into the Atlantic. The ascent of these apparently level
plateaus is called "crossing the Rocky Mountains," but I have seen
nothing of the range, except two peaks like teeth lying low on the
distant horizon. It became mercilessly cold; some people thought it
snowed, but I only saw rolling billows of fog. Lads passed through the
cars the whole morning, selling newspapers, novels, cacti, lollypops,
pop corn, pea nuts, and ivory ornaments, so that, having lost all
reckoning of the days, I never knew that it was Sunday till the cars
pulled up at the door of the hotel in this detestable place.
[6] The mountains which bound the "valley of the Babbling Waters,"
Utah, afford striking examples of these "knobs" or "buttes."
The surrounding plains were endless and verdureless. The scanty
grasses were long ago turned into sun-cured hay by the fierce summer
heats. There is neither tree nor bush, the sky is grey, the earth
buff, the air blae and windy, and clouds of coarse granitic dust sweep
across the prairie and smother the settlement. Cheyenne is described
as "a God-forsaken, God-forgotten place." That it forgets God is
written on its face. It owes its existence to the railroad, and has
diminished in population, but is a depot for a large amount of the
necessaries of life which are distributed through the scantily settled
districts within distances of 300 miles by "freight wagons," each drawn
by four or six horses or mules, or double that number of oxen. At
times over 100 wagons, with double that number of teamsters, are in
Cheyenne at once. A short time ago it was a perfect pandemonium,
mainly inhabited by rowdies and desperadoes, the scum of advancing
civilization; and murders, stabbings, shooting, and pistol affrays were
at times events of almost hourly occurrence in its drinking dens. But
in the West, when things reach their worst, a sharp and sure remedy is
provided. Those settlers who find the state of matters intolerable,
organize themselves into a Vigilance Committee. "Judge Lynch," with a
few feet of rope, appears on the scene, the majority crystallizes round
the supporters of order, warnings are issued to obnoxious people,
simply bearing a scrawl of a tree with a man dangling from it, with
such words as "Clear out of this by 6 A.M., or----." A number of the
worst desperadoes are tried by a yet more summary process than a
drumhead court martial, "strung up," and buried ignominiously. I have
been told that 120 ruffians were disposed of in this way here in a
single fortnight. Cheyenne is now as safe as Hilo, and the interval
between the most desperate lawlessness and the time when United States
law, with its corruption and feebleness, comes upon the scene is one of
comparative security and good order. Piety is not the forte of
Cheyenne. The roads resound with atrocious profanity, and the rowdyism
of the saloons and bar-rooms is repressed, not extirpated.
The population, once 6,000, is now about 4,000. It is an ill-arranged
set of frame houses and shanties [7] and rubbish heaps, and offal of
deer and antelope, produce the foulest smells I have smelt for a long
time. Some of the houses are painted a blinding white; others are
unpainted; there is not a bush, or garden, or green thing; it just
straggles out promiscuously on the boundless brown plains, on the
extreme verge of which three toothy peaks are seen. It is utterly
slovenly-looking, and unornamental, abounds in slouching
bar-room-looking characters, and looks a place of low, mean lives.
Below the hotel window freight cars are being perpetually shunted, but
beyond the railroad tracks are nothing but the brown plains, with their
lonely sights--now a solitary horseman at a traveling amble, then a
party of Indians in paint and feathers, but civilized up to the point
of carrying firearms, mounted on sorry ponies, the bundled-up squaws
riding astride on the baggage ponies; then a drove of ridgy-spined,
long-horned cattle, which have been several months eating their way
from Texas, with their escort of four or five much-spurred horsemen, in
peaked hats, blue-hooded coats, and high boots, heavily armed with
revolvers and repeating rifles, and riding small wiry horses. A
solitary wagon, with a white tilt, drawn by eight oxen, is probably
bearing an emigrant and his fortunes to Colorado. On one of the dreary
spaces of the settlement six white-tilted wagons, each with twelve
oxen, are standing on their way to a distant part. Everything suggests
a beyond.
[7] The discovery of gold in the Black Hills has lately given it a
great impetus, and as it is the chief point of departure for the
diggings it is increasing in population and importance. (July, 1879)
September 9.
I have found at the post office here a circular letter of
recommendation from ex-Governor Hunt, procured by Miss Kingsley's
kindness, and another equally valuable one of "authentication" and
recommendation from Mr. Bowles, of the Springfield Republican, whose
name is a household word in all the West. Armed with these, I shall
plunge boldly into Colorado. I am suffering from giddiness and nausea
produced by the bad smells. A "help" here says that there have been
fifty-six deaths from cholera during the last twenty days. Is common
humanity lacking, I wonder, in this region of hard greed? Can it not
be bought by dollars here, like every other commodity, votes included?
Last night I made the acquaintance of a shadowy gentleman from
Wisconsin, far gone in consumption, with a spirited wife and young
baby. He had been ordered to the Plains as a last resource, but was
much worse. Early this morning he crawled to my door, scarcely able to
speak from debility and bleeding from the lungs, begging me to go to
his wife, who, the doctor said was ill of cholera. The child had been
ill all night, and not for love or money could he get any one to do
anything for them, not even to go for the medicine. The lady was blue,
and in great pain from cramp, and the poor unweaned infant was roaring
for the nourishment which had failed. I vainly tried to get hot water
and mustard for a poultice, and though I offered a Negro a dollar to go
for the medicine, he looked at it superciliously, hummed a tune, and
said he must wait for the Pacific train, which was not due for an hour.
Equally in vain I hunted through Cheyenne for a feeding bottle. Not a
maternal heart softened to the helpless mother and starving child, and
my last resource was to dip a piece of sponge in some milk and water,
and try to pacify the creature. I applied Rigollot's leaves, went for
the medicine, saw the popular host--a bachelor--who mentioned a girl
who, after much difficulty, consented to take charge of the baby for
two dollars a day and attend to the mother, and having remained till
she began to amend, I took the cars for Greeley, a settlement on the
Plains, which I had been recommended to make my starting point for the
mountains.
FORT COLLINS, September 10.