rude log camp tenanted in winter by an elk hunter, but now deserted.
Chalmers without any scruple picked the padlock; we lighted a fire,
made some tea, and fried some bacon, and after a good meal mounted
again and started for Estes Park. For four weary hours we searched
hither and thither along every indentation of the ground which might be
supposed to slope towards the Big Thompson River, which we knew had to
be forded. Still, as the quest grew more tedious, Long's Peak stood
before us as a landmark in purple glory; and still at his feet lay a
hollow filled with deep blue atmosphere, where I knew that Estes Park
must lie, and still between us and it lay never-lessening miles of
inaccessibility, and the sun was ever weltering, and the shadows ever
lengthening, and Chalmers, who had started confident, bumptious,
blatant, was ever becoming more bewildered, and his wife's thin voice
more piping and discontented, and my stumbling horse more insecure, and
I more determined (as I am at this moment) that somehow or other I
would reach that blue hollow, and even stand on Long's Peak where the
snow was glittering. Affairs were becoming serious, and Chalmers's
incompetence a source of real peril, when, after an exploring
expedition, he returned more bumptious than ever, saying he knew it
would be all right, he had found a trail, and we could get across the
river by dark, and camp out for the night. So he led us into a steep,
deep, rough ravine, where we had to dismount, for trees were lying
across it everywhere, and there was almost no footing on the great
slabs of shelving rock. Yet there was a trail, tolerably well worn,
and the branches and twigs near the ground were well broken back. Ah!
it was a wild place. My horse fell first, rolling over twice, and
breaking off a part of the saddle, in his second roll knocking me over
a shelf of three feet of descent. Then Mrs. C.'s horse and the mule
fell on the top of each other, and on recovering themselves bit each
other savagely. The ravine became a wild gulch, the dry bed of some
awful torrent; there were huge shelves of rock, great overhanging walls
of rock, great prostrate trees, cedar spikes and cacti to wound the
feet, and then a precipice fully 500 feet deep! The trail was a trail
made by bears in search of bear cherries, which abounded!
It was getting dusk as we had to struggle up the rough gulch we had so
fatuously descended. The horses fell several times; I could hardly get
mine up at all, though I helped him as much as I could; I was cut and
bruised, scratched and torn. A spine of a cactus penetrated my foot,
and some vicious thing cut the back of my neck. Poor Mrs. C. was much
bruised, and I pitied her, for she got no fun out of it as I did. It
was an awful climb. When we got out of the gulch, C. was so confused
that he took the wrong direction, and after an hour of vague wandering
was only recalled to the right one by my pertinacious assertions acting
on his weak brain. I was inclined to be angry with the incompetent
braggart, who had boasted that he could take us to Estes Park
"blindfold"; but I was sorry for him too, so said nothing, even though
I had to walk during these meanderings to save my tired horse. When at
last, at dark, we reached the open, there was a snow flurry, with
violent gusts of wind, and the shelter of the camp, dark and cold as it
was, was desirable. We had no food, but made a fire. I lay down on
some dry grass, with my inverted saddle for a pillow, and slept
soundly, till I was awoke by the cold of an intense frost and the pain
of my many cuts and bruises. Chalmers promised that we should make a
fresh start at six, so I woke him up at five, and here I am alone at
half-past eight! I said to him many times that unless he hobbled or
picketed the horses, we should lose them. "Oh," he said "they'll be
all right." In truth he had no picketing pins. Now, the animals are
merrily trotting homewards. I saw them two miles off an hour ago with
him after them. His wife, who is also after them, goaded to
desperation, said, "He's the most ignorant, careless, good-for-nothing
man I ever saw," upon which I dwelt upon his being well meaning. There
is a sort of well here, but our "afternoon tea" and watering the horses
drained it, so we have had nothing to drink since yesterday, for the
canteen, which started without a cork, lost all its contents when the
mule fell. I have made a monstrous fire, but thirst and impatience are
hard to bear, and preventible misfortunes are always irksome. I have
found the stomach of a bear with fully a pint of cherrystones in it,
and have spent an hour in getting the kernels; and lo! now, at
half-past nine, I see the culprit and his wife coming back with the
animals.
I. L. B.
LOWER CANYON, September 21.
We never reached Estes Park. There is no trail, and horses have never
been across. We started from camp at ten, and spent four hours in
searching for the trail. Chalmers tried gulch after gulch again, his
self-assertion giving way a little after each failure; sometimes going
east when we should have gone west, always being brought up by a
precipice or other impossibility. At last he went off by himself, and
returned rejoicing, saying he had found the trail; and soon, sure
enough, we were on a well-defined old trail, evidently made by
carcasses which have been dragged along it by hunters. Vainly I
pointed out to him that we were going north-east when we should have
gone south-west, and that we were ascending instead of descending.
"Oh, it's all right, and we shall soon come to water," he always
replied. For two hours we ascended slowly through a thicket of aspen,
the cold continually intensifying; but the trail, which had been
growing fainter, died out, and an opening showed the top of Storm Peak
not far off and not much above us, though it is 11,000 feet high. I
could not help laughing. He had deliberately turned his back on Estes
Park. He then confessed that he was lost, and that he could not find
the way back. His wife sat down on the ground and cried bitterly. We
ate some dry bread, and then I said I had had much experience in
traveling, and would take the control of the party, which was agreed
to, and we began the long descent. Soon after his wife was thrown from
her horse, and cried bitterly again from fright and mortification.
Soon after that the girth of the mule's saddle broke, and having no
crupper, saddle and addenda went over his head, and the flour was
dispersed. Next the girth of the woman's saddle broke, and she went
over her horse's head. Then he began to fumble helplessly at it,
railing against England the whole time, while I secured the saddle, and
guided the route back to an outlet of the park. There a fire was
built, and we had some bread and bacon; and then a search for water
occupied nearly two hours, and resulted in the finding of a mudhole,
trodden and defiled by hundreds of feet of elk, bears, cats, deer, and
other beasts, and containing only a few gallons of water as thick as
pea soup, with which we watered our animals and made some strong tea.
The sun was setting in glory as we started for the four hours' ride
home, and the frost was intense, and made our bruised, grazed limbs
ache painfully. I was sorry for Mrs. Chalmers, who had had several
falls, and bore her aches patiently, and had said several times to her
husband, with a kind meaning, "I am real sorry for this woman." I was
so tired with the perpetual stumbling of my horse, as well as stiffened
with the bitter cold, that I walked for the last hour or two; and
Chalmers, as if to cover his failure, indulged in loud, incessant talk,
abusing all other religionists, and railing against England in the
coarsest American fashion. Yet, after all, they were not bad souls;
and though he failed so grotesquely, he did his incompetent best. The
log fire in the ruinous cabin was cheery, and I kept it up all night,
and watched the stars through the holes in the roof, and thought of
Long's Peak in its glorious solitude, and resolved that, come what
might, I would reach Estes Park.
I. L. B.
Letter VI
A bronco mare--An accident--Wonderland--A sad story--The children of
the Territories--Hard greed--Halcyon hours--Smartness--Old-fashioned
prejudices--The Chicago colony--Good luck--Three notes of admiration--A
good horse--The St. Vrain--The Rocky Mountains at last--"Mountain
Jim"--A death hug--Estes Park.
LOWER CANYON, September 25.
This is another world. My entrance upon it was signalized in this
fashion. Chalmers offered me a bronco mare for a reasonable sum, and
though she was a shifty, half-broken young thing, I came over here on
her to try her, when, just as I was going away, she took into her head
to "scare" and "buck," and when I touched her with my foot she leaped
over a heap of timber, and the girth gave way, and the onlookers tell
me that while she jumped I fell over her tail from a good height upon
the hard gravel, receiving a parting kick on my knee. They could
hardly believe that no bones were broken. The flesh of my left arm
looks crushed into a jelly, but cold-water dressings will soon bring it
right; and a cut on my back bled profusely; and the bleeding, with many
bruises and the general shake, have made me feel weak, but
circumstances do not admit of "making a fuss," and I really think that
the rents in my riding dress will prove the most important part of the
accident.
The surroundings here are pleasing. The log cabin, on the top of which
a room with a steep, ornamental Swiss roof has been built, is in a
valley close to a clear, rushing river, which emerges a little higher
up from an inaccessible chasm of great sublimity. One side of the
valley is formed by cliffs and terraces of porphyry as red as the
reddest new brick, and at sunset blazing into vermilion. Through
rifts in the nearer ranges there are glimpses of pine-clothed peaks,
which, towards twilight, pass through every shade of purple and
violet. The sky and the earth combine to form a Wonderland every
evening--such rich, velvety coloring in crimson and violet; such an
orange, green, and vermilion sky; such scarlet and emerald clouds;
such an extraordinary dryness and purity of atmosphere, and then the
glorious afterglow which seems to blend earth and heaven! For color,
the Rocky Mountains beat all I have seen. The air has been cold, but
the sun bright and hot during the last few days.
The story of my host is a story of misfortune. It indicates who should
NOT come to Colorado.[11] He and his wife are under thirty-five. The
son of a London physician in large practice, with a liberal education
in the largest sense of the word, unusual culture and accomplishments,
and the partner of a physician in good practice in the second city in
England, he showed symptoms which threatened pulmonary disease. In an
evil hour he heard of Colorado with its "unrivalled climate, boundless
resources," etc., and, fascinated not only by these material
advantages, but by the notion of being able to found or reform society
on advanced social theories of his own, he became an emigrant. Mrs.
Hughes is one of the most charming, and lovable women I have ever seen,
and their marriage is an ideal one. Both are fitted to shine in any
society, but neither had the slightest knowledge of domestic and
farming details. Dr. H. did not know how to saddle or harness a horse.
Mrs. H. did not know whether you should put an egg into cold or hot
water when you meant to boil it! They arrived at Longmount, bought up
this claim, rather for the beauty of the scenery than for any
substantial advantages, were cheated in land, goods, oxen, everything,
and, to the discredit of the settlers, seemed to be regarded as fair
game. Everything has failed with them, and though they "rise early,
and late take rest, and eat the bread of carefulness," they hardly keep
their heads above water. A young Swiss girl, devoted to them both,
works as hard as they do. They have one horse, no wagon, some poultry,
and a few cows, but no "hired man." It is the hardest and least ideal
struggle that I have ever seen made by educated people. They had all
their experience to learn, and they have bought it by losses and
hardships. That they have learnt so much surprises me. Dr. H. and
these two ladies built the upper room and the addition to the house
without help. He has cropped the land himself, and has learned the
difficult art of milking cows. Mrs. H. makes all the clothes required
for a family of six, and her evenings, when the hard day's work is done
and she is ready to drop from fatigue, are spent in mending and
patching. The day is one long GRIND, without rest or enjoyment, or the
pleasure of chance intercourse with cultivated people. The few
visitors who have "happened in" are the thrifty wives of prosperous
settlers, full of housewifely pride, whose one object seems to be to
make Mrs. H. feel her inferiority to themselves. I wish she did take a
more genuine interest in the "coming-on" of the last calf, the
prospects of the squash crop, and the yield and price of butter; but
though she has learned to make excellent butter and bread, it is all
against the grain. The children are delightful. The little boys are
refined, courteous, childish gentlemen, with love and tenderness to
their parents in all their words and actions. Never a rough or harsh
word is heard within the house. But the atmosphere of struggles and
difficulties has already told on these infants. They consider their
mother in all things, going without butter when they think the stock is
low, bringing in wood and water too heavy for them to carry, anxiously
speculating on the winter prospect and the crops, yet withal the most
childlike and innocent of children.
[11] The story is ended now. A few months after my visit Mrs. H. died
a few days after her confinement, and was buried on the bleak hill
side, leaving her husband with five children under six years old, and
Dr. H. is a prosperous man on one of the sunniest islands of the
Pacific, with the devoted Swiss friend as his second wife.
One of the most painful things in the Western States and Territories is
the extinction of childhood. I have never seen any children, only
debased imitations of men and women, cankered by greed and selfishness,
and asserting and gaining complete independence of their parents at ten
years old. The atmosphere in which they are brought up is one of
greed, godlessness, and frequently of profanity. Consequently these
sweet things seem like flowers in a desert.
Except for love, which here as everywhere raises life into the ideal,
this is a wretched existence. The poor crops have been destroyed by
grasshoppers over and over again, and that talent deified here under
the name of "smartness" has taken advantage of Dr. H. in all bargains,
leaving him with little except food for his children. Experience has
been dearly bought in all ways, and this instance of failure might be a
useful warning to professional men without agricultural experience not
to come and try to make a living by farming in Colorado.
My time here has passed very delightfully in spite of my regret and
anxiety for this interesting family. I should like to stay longer,
were it not that they have given up to me their straw bed, and Mrs. H.
and her baby, a wizened, fretful child, sleep on the floor in my room,
and Dr. H. on the floor downstairs, and the nights are frosty and
chill. Work is the order of their day, and of mine, and at night, when
the children are in bed, we three ladies patch the clothes and make
shirts, and Dr. H. reads Tennyson's poems, or we speak tenderly of that
world of culture and noble deeds which seems here "the land very far
off," or Mrs. H. lays aside her work for a few minutes and reads some
favorite passage of prose or poetry, as I have seldom heard either read
before, with a voice of large compass and exquisite tone, quick to
interpret every shade of the author's meaning, and soft, speaking eyes,
moist with feeling and sympathy. These are our halcyon hours, when we
forget the needs of the morrow, and that men still buy, sell, cheat,
and strive for gold, and that we are in the Rocky Mountains, and that
it is near midnight. But morning comes hot and tiresome, and the
never-ending work is oppressive, and Dr. H. comes in from the field two
or three times in the day, dizzy and faint, and they condole with each
other, and I feel that the Colorado settler needs to be made of sterner
stuff and to possess more adaptability.
To-day has been a very pleasant day for me, though I have only once sat
down since 9 A.M., and it is now 5 P.M. I plotted that the devoted
Swiss girl should go to the nearest settlement with two of the children
for the day in a neighbor's wagon, and that Dr. and Mrs. H. should get
an afternoon of rest and sleep upstairs, while I undertook to do the
work and make something of a cleaning. I had a large "wash" of my own,
having been hindered last week by my bad arm, but a clothes wringer
which screws on to the side of the tub is a great assistance, and by
folding the clothes before passing them through it, I make it serve
instead of mangle and iron. After baking the bread and thoroughly
cleaning the churn and pails, I began upon the tins and pans, the
cleaning of which had fallen into arrears, and was hard at work, very
greasy and grimy, when a man came in to know where to ford the river
with his ox team, and as I was showing him he looked pityingly at me,
saying, "Be you the new hired girl? Bless me, you're awful small!"
Yesterday we saved three cwt. of tomatoes for winter use, and about two
tons of squash and pumpkin for the cattle, two of the former weighing
140 lbs. I pulled nearly a quarter of an acre of maize, but it was a
scanty crop, and the husks were poorly filled. I much prefer field
work to the scouring of greasy pans and to the wash tub, and both to
either sewing or writing.
This is not Arcadia. "Smartness," which consists in over-reaching your
neighbor in every fashion which is not illegal, is the quality which is
held in the greatest repute, and Mammon is the divinity. From a
generation brought up to worship the one and admire the other little
can be hoped. In districts distant as this is from "Church
Ordinances," there are three ways in which Sunday is spent: one, to
make it a day for visiting, hunting, and fishing; another, to spend it
in sleeping and abstinence from work; and the third, to continue all
the usual occupations, consequently harvesting and felling and hauling
timber are to be seen in progress.
Last Sunday a man came here and put up a door, and said he didn't
believe in the Bible or in a God, and he wasn't going to sacrifice his
children's bread to old-fashioned prejudices. There is a manifest
indifference to the higher obligations of the law, "judgment, mercy and
faith"; but in the main the settlers are steady, there are few flagrant
breaches of morals, industry is the rule, life and property are far
safer than in England or Scotland, and the law of universal respect to
women is still in full force.
The days are now brilliant and the nights sharply frosty. People are
preparing for the winter. The tourists from the East are trooping into
Denver, and the surveying parties are coming down from the mountains.
Snow has fallen on the higher ranges, and my hopes of getting to Estes
Park are down at zero.
LONGMOUNT, September 25.
Yesterday was perfect. The sun was brilliant and the air cool and
bracing. I felt better, and after a hard day's work and an evening
stroll with my friends in the glorious afterglow, I went to bed
cheerful and hopeful as to the climate and its effect on my health.
This morning I awoke with a sensation of extreme lassitude, and on
going out, instead of the delicious atmosphere of yesterday, I found
intolerable suffocating heat, a BLAZING (not BRILLIANT) sun, and a
sirocco like a Victorian hot wind. Neuralgia, inflamed eyes, and a
sense of extreme prostration followed, and my acclimatized hosts were
somewhat similarly affected. The sparkle, the crystalline atmosphere,
and the glory of color of yesterday, had all vanished. We had borrowed
a wagon, but Dr. H.'s strong but lazy horse and a feeble hired one made
a poor span; and though the distance here is only twenty-two miles over
level prairie, our tired animal, and losing the way three times, have
kept us eight and a half hours in the broiling sun. All notions of
locality fail me on the prairie, and Dr. H. was not much better. We
took wrong tracks, got entangled among fences, plunged through the deep
mud of irrigation ditches, and were despondent. It was a miserable
drive, sitting on a heap of fodder under the angry sun. Half-way here
we camped at a river, now only a series of mud holes, and I fell asleep
under the imperfect shade of a cotton-wood tree, dreading the thought
of waking and jolting painfully along over the dusty prairie in the
dust-laden, fierce sirocco, under the ferocious sun. We never saw man
or beast the whole day.
This is the "Chicago Colony," and it is said to be prospering, after
some preliminary land swindles. It is as uninviting as Fort Collins.
We first came upon dust-colored frame houses set down at intervals on
the dusty buff plain, each with its dusty wheat or barley field
adjacent, the crop, not the product of the rains of heaven, but of the
muddy overflow of "Irrigating Ditch No.2." Then comes a road made up
of many converging wagon tracks, which stiffen into a wide straggling
street, in which glaring frame houses and a few shops stand opposite to
each other. A two-storey house, one of the whitest and most glaring,
and without a veranda like all the others, is the "St. Vrain Hotel,"
called after the St. Vrain River, out of which the ditch is taken which
enables Longmount to exist. Everything was broiling in the heat of the
slanting sun, which all day long had been beating on the unshaded
wooden rooms. The heat within was more sickening than outside, and
black flies covered everything, one's face included. We all sat
fighting the flies in my bedroom, which was cooler than elsewhere, till
a glorious sunset over the Rocky Range, some ten miles off, compelled
us to go out and enjoy it. Then followed supper, Western fashion,
without table-cloths, and all the "unattached" men of Longmount came in
and fed silently and rapidly. It was a great treat to have tea to
drink, as I had not tasted any for a fortnight. The landlord is a
jovial, kindly man. I told him how my plans had faded, and how I was
reluctantly going on to-morrow to Denver and New York, being unable to
get to Estes Park, and he said there might yet be a chance of some one
coming in to-night who would be going up. He soon came to my room and
asked definitely what I could do--if I feared cold, if I could "rough
it," if I could "ride horseback and lope." Estes Park and its
surroundings are, he says, "the most beautiful scenery in Colorado,"
and "it's a real shame," he added, "for you not to see it." We had
hardly sat down to tea when he came, saying "You're in luck this time;
two young men have just come in and are going up to-morrow morning." I
am rather pleased, and have hired a horse for three days; but I am not
very hopeful, for I am almost ill of the smothering heat, and still
suffer from my fall, and not having been on horseback since, thirty
miles will be a long ride. Then I fear that the accommodation is as
rough as Chalmers's, and that solitude will be impossible. We have
been strolling in the street every since it grew dark to get the little
air which is moving.
ESTES PARK!!! September 28.
I wish I could let those three notes of admiration go to you instead of
a letter. They mean everything that is rapturous and
delightful--grandeur, cheerfulness, health, enjoyment, novelty,
freedom, etc., etc. I have just dropped into the very place I have
been seeking, but in everything it exceeds all my dreams. There is
health in every breath of air; I am much better already, and get up to
a seven o'clock breakfast without difficulty. It is quite
comfortable--in the fashion that I like. I have a log cabin, raised on
six posts, all to myself, with a skunk's lair underneath it, and a
small lake close to it. There is a frost every night, and all day it
is cool enough for a roaring fire. The ranchman, who is half-hunter,
half-stockman, and his wife are jovial, hearty Welsh people from
Llanberis, who laugh with loud, cheery British laughs, sing in parts
down to the youngest child, are free hearted and hospitable, and pile
the pitch-pine logs half-way up the great rude chimney. There has been
fresh meat each day since I came, delicious bread baked daily,
excellent potatoes, tea and coffee, and an abundant supply of milk like
cream. I have a clean hay bed with six blankets, and there are neither
bugs nor fleas. The scenery is the most glorious I have ever seen, and
is above us, around us, at the very door. Most people have advized me
to go to Colorado Springs, and only one mentioned this place, and till
I reached Longmount I never saw any one who had been here, but I saw
from the lie of the country that it must be most superbly situated.
People said, however, that it was most difficult of access, and that
the season for it was over. In traveling there is nothing like
dissecting people's statements, which are usually colored by their
estimate of the powers or likings of the person spoken to, making all
reasonable inquiries, and then pertinaciously but quietly carrying out
one's own plans. This is perfection, and all the requisites for health
are present, including plenty of horses and grass to ride on.