_I_ have no almanack; the father is away for the day, and none of the
others can help me, and they look contemptuously upon my desire for
information on the subject. The monotony will come to an end
to-morrow, for Chalmers offers to be my guide over the mountains to
Estes Park, and has persuaded his wife "for once to go for a frolic";
and with much reluctance, many growls at the waste of time, and many
apprehensions of danger and loss, she has consented to accompany him.
My life has grown less dull from their having become more interesting
to me, and as I have "made myself agreeable," we are on fairly friendly
terms. My first move in the direction of fraternizing was, however,
snubbed. A few days ago, having finished my own work, I offered to
wash up the plates, but Mrs. C., with a look which conveyed more than
words, a curl of her nose, and a sneer in her twang, said "Guess you'll
make more work nor you'll do. Those hands of yours" (very brown and
coarse they were) "ain't no good; never done nothing, I guess." Then
to her awkward daughter: "This woman says she'll wash up! Ha! ha! look
at her arms and hands!" This was the nearest approach to a laugh I
have heard, and have never seen even a tendency towards a smile. Since
then I have risen in their estimation by improvizing a lamp--Hawaiian
fashion--by putting a wisp of rag into a tin of fat. They have
actually condescended to sit up till the stars come out since. Another
advance was made by means of the shell-pattern quilt I am knitting for
you. There has been a tendency towards approving of it, and a few days
since the girl snatched it out of my hand, saying, "I want this," and
apparently took it to the camp. This has resulted in my having a
knitting class, with the woman, her married daughter, and a woman from
the camp, as pupils. Then I have gained ground with the man by being
able to catch and saddle a horse. I am often reminded of my favorite
couplet,--
Beware of desperate steps; the darkest day,
Live till to-morrow, will have passed away.
But oh! what a hard, narrow life it is with which I am now in contact!
A narrow and unattractive religion, which I believe still to be
genuine, and an intense but narrow patriotism, are the only higher
influences. Chalmers came from Illinois nine years ago, pronounced by
the doctors to be far gone in consumption, and in two years he was
strong. They are a queer family; somewhere in the remote Highlands I
have seen such another. Its head is tall, gaunt, lean, and ragged, and
has lost one eye. On an English road one would think him a starving or
a dangerous beggar. He is slightly intelligent, very opinionated, and
wishes to be thought well informed, which he is not. He belongs to the
straitest sect of Reformed Presbyterians ("Psalm-singers"), but
exaggerates anything of bigotry and intolerance which may characterize
them, and rejoices in truly merciless fashion over the excision of the
philanthropic Mr. Stuart, of Philadelphia, for worshipping with
congregations which sing hymns. His great boast is that his ancestors
were Scottish Covenanters. He considers himself a profound theologian,
and by the pine logs at night discourses to me on the mysteries of the
eternal counsels and the divine decrees. Colorado, with its progress
and its future, is also a constant theme. He hates England with a
bitter, personal hatred, and regards any allusions which I make to the
progress of Victoria as a personal insult. He trusts to live to see
the downfall of the British monarchy and the disintegration of the
empire. He is very fond of talking, and asks me a great deal about my
travels, but if I speak favorably of the climate or resources of any
other country, he regards it as a slur on Colorado.
They have one hundred and sixty acres of land, a "Squatter's claim,"
and an invaluable water power. He is a lumberer, and has a saw-mill of
a very primitive kind. I notice that every day something goes wrong
with it, and this is the case throughout. If he wants to haul timber
down, one or other of the oxen cannot be found; or if the timber is
actually under way, a wheel or a part of the harness gives way, and the
whole affair is at a standstill for days. The cabin is hardly a
shelter, but is allowed to remain in ruins because the foundation of a
frame house was once dug. A horse is always sure to be lame for want
of a shoe nail, or a saddle to be useless from a broken buckle, and the
wagon and harness are a marvel of temporary shifts, patchings, and
insecure linkings with strands of rope. Nothing is ever ready or whole
when it is wanted. Yet Chalmers is a frugal, sober, hard-working man,
and he, his eldest son, and a "hired man" "Rise early," "going forth to
their work and labor till the evening"; and if they do not "late take
rest," they truly "eat the bread of carefulness." It is hardly
surprising that nine years of persevering shiftlessness should have
resulted in nothing but the ability to procure the bare necessaries of
life.
Of Mrs. C. I can say less. She looks like one of the English poor
women of our childhood--lean, clean, toothless, and speaks, like some
of them, in a piping, discontented voice, which seems to convey a
personal reproach. All her waking hours are spent in a large
sun-bonnet. She is never idle for one minute, is severe and hard, and
despises everything but work. I think she suffers from her husband's
shiftlessness. She always speaks of me as "This" or "that woman." The
family consists of a grown-up son, a shiftless, melancholy-looking
youth, who possibly pines for a wider life; a girl of sixteen, a sour,
repellent-looking creature, with as much manners as a pig; and three
hard, un-child-like younger children. By the whole family all courtesy
and gentleness of act or speech seem regarded as "works of the flesh,"
if not of "the devil." They knock over all one's things without
apologizing or picking them up, and when I thank them for anything they
look grimly amazed. I feel that they think it sinful that I do not
work as hard as they do. I wish I could show them "a more excellent
way." This hard greed, and the exclusive pursuit of gain, with the
indifference to all which does not aid in its acquisition, are eating
up family love and life throughout the West. I write this reluctantly,
and after a total experience of nearly two years in the United States.
They seem to have no "Sunday clothes," and few of any kind. The sewing
machine, like most other things, is out of order. One comb serves the
whole family. Mrs. C. is cleanly in her person and dress, and the
food, though poor, is clean. Work, work, work, is their day and their
life. They are thoroughly ungenial, and have that air of suspicion in
speaking of every one which is not unusual in the land of their
ancestors. Thomas Chalmers is the man's ecclesiastical hero, in spite
of his own severe Puritanism. Their live stock consists of two
wretched horses, a fairly good bronco mare, a mule, four badly-bred
cows, four gaunt and famished-looking oxen, some swine of singularly
active habits, and plenty of poultry. The old saddles are tied on with
twine; one side of the bridle is a worn-out strap and the other a rope.
They wear boots, but never two of one pair, and never blacked, of
course, but no stockings. They think it quite effeminate to sleep
under a roof, except during the severest months of the year. There is
a married daughter across the river, just the same hard, loveless,
moral, hard-working being as her mother. Each morning, soon after
seven, when I have swept the cabin, the family come in for "worship."
Chalmers "wales" a psalm, in every sense of the word wail, to the most
doleful of dismal tunes; they read a chapter round, and he prays. If
his prayer has something of the tone of the imprecatory psalms, he has
high authority in his favor; and if there be a tinge of the Pharisaic
thanksgiving, it is hardly surprising that he is grateful that he is
not as other men are when he contemplates the general godlessness of
the region.
Sunday was a dreadful day. The family kept the Commandment literally,
and did no work. Worship was conducted twice, and was rather longer
than usual. Chalmers does not allow of any books in his house but
theological works, and two or three volumes of dull travels, so the
mother and children slept nearly all day. The man attempted to read a
well-worn copy of Boston's Fourfold State, but shortly fell asleep, and
they only woke up for their meals. Friday and Saturday had been
passably cool, with frosty nights, but on Saturday night it changed,
and I have not felt anything like the heat of Sunday since I left New
Zealand, though the mercury was not higher than 91 degrees. It was
sickening, scorching, melting, unbearable, from the mere power of the
sun's rays. It was an awful day, and seemed as if it would never come
to an end. The cabin, with its mud roof under the shade of the trees,
gave a little shelter, but it was occupied by the family, and I longed
for solitude. I took the Imitation of Christ, and strolled up the
canyon among the withered, crackling leaves, in much dread of snakes,
and lay down on a rough table which some passing emigrant had left, and
soon fell asleep. When I awoke it was only noon. The sun looked
wicked as it blazed like a white magnesium light. A large tree-snake
(quite harmless) hung from the pine under which I had taken shelter,
and looked as if it were going to drop upon me. I was covered with
black flies. The air was full of a busy, noisy din of insects, and
snakes, locusts, wasps, flies, and grasshoppers were all rioting in the
torrid heat. Would the sublime philosophy of Thomas a Kempis, I
wondered, have given way under this? All day I seemed to hear in
mockery the clear laugh of the Hilo streams, and the drip of Kona
showers, and to see as in a mirage the perpetual Green of windward
Hawaii. I was driven back to the cabin in the late afternoon, and in
the evening listened for two hours to abuse of my own country, and to
sweeping condemnations of all religionists outside of the brotherhood
of "Psalm-singers." It is jarring and painful, yet I would say of
Chalmers, as Dr. Holland says of another:--
If ever I shall reach the home in heaven,
For whose dear rest I humbly hope and pray,
In the great company of the forgiven
I shall be sure to meet old Daniel Gray.
The night came without coolness, but at daylight on Monday morning a
fire was pleasant. You will now have some idea of my surroundings. It
is a moral, hard, unloving, unlovely, unrelieved, unbeautified,
grinding life. These people live in a discomfort and lack of ease and
refinement which seems only possible to people of British stock. A
"foreigner" fills his cabin with ingenuities and elegancies, and a
Hawaiian or South Sea Islander makes his grass house both pretty and
tasteful. Add to my surroundings a mighty canyon, impassable both
above and below, and walls of mountains with an opening some miles off
to the vast prairie sea.[9]
[9] I have not curtailed this description of the roughness of a
Colorado settler's life, for, with the exceptions of the disrepair and
the Puritanism, it is a type of the hard, unornamented existence with
which I came almost universally in contact during my subsequent
residence in the Territory.
An English physician is settled about half a mile from here over a
hill. He is spoken of as holding "very extreme opinions." Chalmers
rails at him for being "a thick-skulled Englishman," for being "fine,
polished," etc. To say a man is "polished" here is to give him a very
bad name. He accuses him also of holding views subversive of all
morality. In spite of all this, I thought he might possess a map, and
I induced Mrs. C. to walk over with me. She intended it as a formal
morning call, but she wore the inevitable sun-bonnet, and had her dress
tied up as when washing. It was not till I reached the gate that I
remembered that I was in my Hawaiian riding dress, and that I still
wore the spurs with which I had been trying a horse in the morning!
The house was in a grass valley which opened from the tremendous canyon
through which the river had cut its way. The Foot Hills, with their
terraces of flaming red rock, were glowing in the sunset, and a pure
green sky arched tenderly over a soft evening scene. Used to the
meanness and baldness of settlers' dwellings. I was delighted to see
that in this instance the usual log cabin was only the lower floor of a
small house, which bore a delightful resemblance to a Swiss chalet. It
stood in a vegetable garden fertilized by an irrigating ditch, outside
of which were a barn and cowshed. A young Swiss girl was bringing the
cows slowly home from the hill, an Englishwoman in a clean print dress
stood by the fence holding a baby, and a fine-looking Englishman in a
striped Garibaldi shirt, and trousers of the same tucked into high
boots, was shelling corn. As soon as Mrs. Hughes spoke I felt she was
truly a lady; and oh! how refreshing her refined, courteous, graceful
English manner was, as she invited us into the house! The entrance was
low, through a log porch festooned and almost concealed by a "wild
cucumber." Inside, though plain and poor, the room looked a home, not
like a squatter's cabin. An old tin was completely covered by a
graceful clematis mixed with streamers of Virginia creeper, and white
muslin curtains, and above all two shelves of admirably-chosen books,
gave the room almost an air of elegance. Why do I write almost? It
was an oasis. It was barely three weeks since I had left "the
communion of educated men," and the first tones of the voices of my
host and hostess made me feel as if I had been out of it for a year.
Mrs. C. stayed an hour and a half, and then went home to the cows, when
we launched upon a sea of congenial talk. They said they had not seen
an educated lady for two years, and pressed me to go and visit them. I
rode home on Dr. Hughes's horse after dark, to find neither fire nor
light in the cabin. Mrs. C. had gone back saying, "Those English
talked just like savages, I couldn't understand a word they said."
I made a fire, and extemporized a light with some fat and a wick of
rag, and Chalmers came in to discuss my visit and to ask me a question
concerning a matter which had roused the latent curiosity of the whole
family. I had told him, he said, that I knew no one hereabouts, but
"his woman" told him that Dr. H. and I spoke constantly of a Mrs.
Grundy, whom we both knew and disliked, and who was settled, as we
said, not far off! He had never heard of her, he said, and he was the
pioneer settler of the canyon, and there was a man up here from
Longmount who said he was sure there was not a Mrs. Grundy in the
district, unless it was a woman who went by two names! The wife and
family had then come in, and I felt completely nonplussed. I longed to
tell Chalmers that it was he and such as he, there or anywhere, with
narrow hearts, bitter tongues, and harsh judgments, who were the true
"Mrs. Grundys," dwarfing individuality, checking lawful freedom of
speech, and making men "offenders for a word," but I forebore. How I
extricated myself from the difficulty, deponent sayeth not. The rest
of the evening has been spent in preparing to cross the mountains.
Chalmers says he knows the way well, and that we shall sleep to-morrow
at the foot of Long's Peak. Mrs. Chalmers repents of having consented,
and conjures up doleful visions of what the family will come to when
left headless, and of disasters among the cows and hens. I could tell
her that the eldest son and the "hired man" have plotted to close the
saw-mill and go on a hunting and fishing expedition, that the cows will
stray, and that the individual spoken respectfully of as "Mr. Skunk"
will make havoc in the hen-house.
NAMELESS REGION, ROCKY MOUNTAINS, September.
This is indeed far removed. It seems farther away from you than any
place I have been to yet, except the frozen top of the volcano of Mauna
Loa. It is so little profaned by man that if one were compelled to
live here in solitude one might truly say of the bears, deer, and elk
which abound, "Their tameness is shocking to me." It is the world of
"big game." Just now a heavy-headed elk, with much-branched horns
fully three feet long, stood and looked at me, and then quietly trotted
away. He was so near that I heard the grass, crisp with hoar frost,
crackle under his feet. Bears stripped the cherry bushes within a few
yards of us last night. Now two lovely blue birds, with crests on
their heads, are picking about within a stone's-throw. This is "The
Great Lone Land," until lately the hunting ground of the Indians, and
not yet settled or traversed, or likely to be so, owing to the want of
water. A solitary hunter has built a log cabin up here, which he
occupies for a few weeks for the purpose of elk-hunting, but all the
region is unsurveyed, and mostly unexplored. It is 7 A.M. The sun has
not yet risen high enough to melt the hoar frost, and the air is clear,
bright, and cold. The stillness is profound. I hear nothing but the
far-off mysterious roaring of a river in a deep canyon, which we spent
two hours last night in trying to find. The horses are lost, and if I
were disposed to retort upon my companions the term they invariably
apply to me, I should now write, with bitter emphasis, "THAT man" and
"THAT woman" have gone in search of them.
The scenery up here is glorious, combining sublimity with beauty, and
in the elastic air fatigue has dropped off from me. This is no region
for tourists and women, only for a few elk and bear hunters at times,
and its unprofaned freshness gives me new life. I cannot by any words
give you an idea of scenery so different from any that you or I have
ever seen. This is an upland valley of grass and flowers, of glades
and sloping lawns, and cherry-fringed beds of dry streams, and clumps
of pines artistically placed, and mountain sides densely pine clad, the
pines breaking into fringes as they come down upon the "park," and the
mountains breaking into pinnacles of bold grey rock as they pierce the
blue of the sky. A single dell of bright green grass, on which dwarf
clumps of the scarlet poison oak look like beds of geraniums, slopes
towards the west, as if it must lead to the river which we seek. Deep,
vast canyons, all trending westwards, lie in purple gloom. Pine-clad
ranges, rising into the blasted top of Storm Peak, all run westwards
too, and all the beauty and glory are but the frame out of which
rises--heaven-piercing, pure in its pearly luster, as glorious a
mountain as the sun tinges red in either hemisphere--the splintered,
pinnacled, lonely, ghastly, imposing, double-peaked summit of Long's
Peak, the Mont Blanc of Northern Colorado.[10]
[10] Gray's Peak and Pike's Peak have their partisans, but after seeing
them all under favorable aspects, Long's Peak stands in my memory as it
does in that vast congeries of mountains, alone in imperial grandeur.
This is a view to which nothing needs to be added. This is truly the
"lodge in some vast wilderness" for which one often sighs when in the
midst of "a bustle at once sordid and trivial." In spite of Dr.
Johnson, these "monstrous protuberances" do "inflame the imagination
and elevate the understanding." This scenery satisfies my soul. Now,
the Rocky Mountains realize--nay, exceed--the dream of my childhood.
It is magnificent, and the air is life giving. I should like to spend
some time in these higher regions, but I know that this will turn out
an abortive expedition, owing to the stupidity and pigheadedness of
Chalmers.
There is a most romantic place called Estes Park, at a height of 7,500
feet, which can be reached by going down to the plains and then
striking up the St. Vrain Canyon, but this is a distance of fifty-five
miles, and as Chalmers was confident that he could take me over the
mountains, a distance, as he supposed, of about twenty miles, we left
at mid-day yesterday, with the fervent hope, on my part, that I might
not return. Mrs. C. was busy the whole of Tuesday in preparing what
she called "grub," which, together with "plenty of bedding," was to be
carried on a pack mule; but when we started I was disgusted to find
that Chalmers was on what should have been the pack animal, and that
two thickly-quilted cotton "spreads" had been disposed of under my
saddle, making it broad, high, and uncomfortable. Any human being must
have laughed to see an expedition start so grotesquely "ill found." I
had a very old iron-grey horse, whose lower lip hung down feebly,
showing his few teeth, while his fore-legs stuck out forwards, and
matter ran from both his nearly-blind eyes. It is kindness to bring
him up to abundant pasture. My saddle is an old McLellan cavalry
saddle, with a battered brass peak, and the bridle is a rotten leather
strap on one side and a strand of rope on the other. The cotton quilts
covered the Rosinante from mane to tail. Mrs. C. wore an old print
skirt, an old short-gown, a print apron, and a sun-bonnet, with a flap
coming down to her waist, and looked as careworn and clean as she
always does. The inside horn of her saddle was broken; to the outside
one hung a saucepan and a bundle of clothes. The one girth was nearly
at the breaking point when we started.
My pack, with my well-worn umbrella upon it, was behind my saddle. I
wore my Hawaiian riding dress, with a handkerchief tied over my face
and the sun-cover of my umbrella folded and tied over my hat, for the
sun was very fierce. The queerest figure of all was the would-be
guide. With his one eye, his gaunt, lean form, and his torn clothes,
he looked more like a strolling tinker than the honest worthy settler
that he is. He bestrode rather than rode a gaunt mule, whose tail had
all been shaven off, except a turf for a tassel at the end. Two flour
bags which leaked were tied on behind the saddle, two quilts were under
it, and my canvas bag, a battered canteen, a frying pan, and two
lariats hung from the horn. On one foot C. wore an old high boot, into
which his trouser was tucked, and on the other an old brogue, through
which his toes protruded.
We had an ascent of four hours through a ravine which gradually opened
out upon this beautiful "park," but we rode through it for some miles
before the view burst upon us. The vastness of this range, like
astronomical distances, can hardly be conceived of. At this place, I
suppose, it is not less than 250 miles wide, and with hardly a break in
its continuity, it stretches almost from the Arctic Circle to the
Straits of Magellan. From the top of Long's Peak, within a short
distance, twenty-two summits, each above 12,000 feet in height, are
visible, and the Snowy Range, the backbone or "divide" of the
continent, is seen snaking distinctly through the wilderness of ranges,
with its waters starting for either ocean. From the first ridge we
crossed after leaving Canyon we had a singular view of range beyond
range cleft by deep canyons, and abounding in elliptical valleys,
richly grassed. The slopes of all the hills, as far as one could see,
were waving with fine grass ready for the scythe, but the food of wild
animals only. All these ridges are heavily timbered with pitch pines,
and where they come down on the grassy slopes they look as if the trees
had been arranged by a landscape gardener. Far off, through an opening
in a canyon, we saw the prairie simulating the ocean. Far off, through
an opening in another direction, was the glistening outline of the
Snowy Range. But still, till we reached this place, it was monotonous,
though grand as a whole: a grey-green or buff-grey, with outbreaks of
brilliantly-colored rock, only varied by the black-green of pines,
which are not the stately pyramidal pines of the Sierra Nevada, but
much resemble the natural Scotch fir. Not many miles from us is North
Park, a great tract of land said to be rich in gold, but those who have
gone to "prospect" have seldom returned, the region being the home of
tribes of Indians who live in perpetual hostility to the whites and to
each other.