Park?" Among the striking peculiarities of these mountains are
hundreds of high-lying valleys, large and small, at heights varying
from 6,000 to 11,000 feet. The most important are North Park, held by
hostile Indians; Middle Park, famous for hot springs and trout; South
Park is 10,000 feet high, a great rolling prairie seventy miles long,
well grassed and watered, but nearly closed by snow in winter. But
parks innumerable are scattered throughout the mountains, most of them
unnamed, and others nicknamed by the hunters or trappers who have made
them their temporary resorts. They always lie far within the flaming
Foot Hills, their exquisite stretches of flowery pastures dotted
artistically with clumps of trees sloping lawnlike to bright swift
streams full of red-waist-coated trout, or running up in soft glades
into the dark forest, above which the snow peaks rise in their infinite
majesty. Some are bits of meadow a mile long and very narrow, with a
small stream, a beaver dam, and a pond made by beaver industry.
Hundreds of these can only be reached by riding in the bed of a stream,
or by scrambling up some narrow canyon till it debouches on the
fairy-like stretch above. These parks are the feeding grounds of
innumerable wild animals, and some, like one three miles off, seem
chosen for the process of antler-casting, the grass being covered for
at least a square mile with the magnificent branching horns of the elk.
[15] Nor should I at this time, had not Henry Kingsley, Lord Dunraven,
and "The Field," divulged the charms and whereabouts of these "happy
hunting grounds," with the certain result of directing a stream of
tourists into the solitary, beast-haunted paradise.
Estes Park combines the beauties of all. Dismiss all thoughts of the
Midland Counties. For park palings there are mountains, forest
skirted, 9,000, 11,000, 14,000 feet high; for a lodge, two sentinel
peaks of granite guarding the only feasible entrance; and for a Queen
Anne mansion an unchinked log cabin with a vault of sunny blue
overhead. The park is most irregularly shaped, and contains hardly any
level grass. It is an aggregate of lawns, slopes, and glades, about
eighteen miles in length, but never more than two miles in width. The
Big Thompson, a bright, rapid trout stream, snow born on Long's Peak a
few miles higher, takes all sorts of magical twists, vanishing and
reappearing unexpectedly, glancing among lawns, rushing through
romantic ravines, everywhere making music through the still, long
nights. Here and there the lawns are so smooth, the trees so
artistically grouped, a lake makes such an artistic foreground, or a
waterfall comes tumbling down with such an apparent feeling for the
picturesque, that I am almost angry with Nature for her close imitation
of art. But in another hundred yards Nature, glorious, unapproachable,
inimitable, is herself again, raising one's thoughts reverently upwards
to her Creator and ours. Grandeur and sublimity, not softness, are the
features of Estes Park. The glades which begin so softly are soon lost
in the dark primaeval forests, with their peaks of rosy granite, and
their stretches of granite blocks piled and poised by nature in some
mood of fury. The streams are lost in canyons nearly or quite
inaccessible, awful in their blackness and darkness; every valley ends
in mystery; seven mountain ranges raise their frowning barriers between
us and the Plains, and at the south end of the park Long's Peak rises
to a height of 14,700 feet, with his bare, scathed head slashed with
eternal snow. The lowest part of the Park is 7,500 feet high; and
though the sun is hot during the day, the mercury hovers near the
freezing point every night of the summer. An immense quantity of snow
falls, but partly owing to the tremendous winds which drift it into the
deep valleys, and partly to the bright warm sun of the winter months,
the park is never snowed up, and a number of cattle and horses are
wintered out of doors on its sun-cured saccharine grasses, of which the
gramma grass is the most valuable.
The soil here, as elsewhere in the neighborhood, is nearly everywhere
coarse, grey, granitic dust, produced probably by the disintegration of
the surrounding mountains. It does not hold water, and is never wet in
any weather. There are no thaws here. The snow mysteriously disappears
by rapid evaporation. Oats grow, but do not ripen, and, when well
advanced, are cut and stacked for winter fodder. Potatoes yield
abundantly, and, though not very large, are of the best quality, mealy
throughout. Evans has not attempted anything else, and probably the
more succulent vegetables would require irrigation. The wild flowers
are gorgeous and innumerable, though their beauty, which culminates in
July and August, was over before I arrived, and the recent snow
flurries have finished them. The time between winter and winter is
very short, and the flowery growth and blossom of a whole year are
compressed into two months. Here are dandelions, buttercups,
larkspurs, harebells, violets, roses, blue gentian, columbine,
painter's brush, and fifty others, blue and yellow predominating; and
though their blossoms are stiffened by the cold every morning, they are
starring the grass and drooping over the brook long before noon, making
the most of their brief lives in the sunshine. Of ferns, after many a
long hunt, I have only found the Cystopteris fragilis and the Blechnum
spicant, but I hear that the Pteris aquilina is also found. Snakes and
mosquitoes do not appear to be known here. Coming almost direct from
the tropics, one is dissatisfied with the uniformity of the foliage;
indeed, foliage can hardly be written of, as the trees properly so
called at this height are exclusively Coniferae, and bear needles
instead of leaves. In places there are patches of spindly aspens,
which have turned a lemon yellow, and along the streams bear cherries,
vines, and roses lighten the gulches with their variegated crimson
leaves. The pines are not imposing, either from their girth or height.
Their coloring is blackish green, and though they are effective singly
or in groups, they are somber and almost funereal when densely massed,
as here, along the mountain sides. The timber line is at a height of
about 11,000 feet, and is singularly well defined. The most attractive
tree I have seen is the silver spruce, Abies Englemanii, near of kin to
what is often called the balsam fir. Its shape and color are both
beautiful. My heart warms towards it, and I frequent all the places
where I can find it. It looks as if a soft, blue, silver powder had
fallen on its deep-green needles, or as if a bluish hoar-frost, which
must melt at noon, were resting upon it. Anyhow, one can hardly
believe that the beauty is permanent, and survives the summer heat and
the winter cold. The universal tree here is the Pinus ponderosa, but
it never attains any very considerable size, and there is nothing to
compare with the red-woods of the Sierra Nevada, far less with the
sequoias of California.
As I have written before, Estes Park is thirty miles from Longmount,
the nearest settlement, and it can be reached on horseback only by the
steep and devious track by which I came, passing through a narrow rift
in the top of a precipitous ridge, 9,000 feet high, called the Devil's
Gate. Evans takes a lumber wagon with four horses over the mountains,
and a Colorado engineer would have no difficulty in making a wagon
road. In several of the gulches over which the track hangs there are
the remains of wagons which have come to grief in the attempt to
emulate Evans's feat, which without evidence, I should have supposed to
be impossible. It is an awful road. The only settlers in the park are
Griffith Evans, and a married man a mile higher up. "Mountain Jim's"
cabin is in the entrance gulch, four miles off, and there is not
another cabin for eighteen miles toward the Plains. The park is
unsurveyed, and the huge tract of mountainous country beyond is almost
altogether unexplored. Elk hunters occasionally come up and camp out
here; but the two settlers, who, however, are only squatters, for
various reasons are not disposed to encourage such visitors. When
Evans, who is a very successful hunter, came here, he came on foot, and
for some time after settling here he carried the flour and necessaries
required by his family on his back over the mountains.
As I intend to make Estes Park my headquarters until the winter sets
in, I must make you acquainted with my surroundings and mode of living.
The "Queen Anne mansion" is represented by a log cabin made of big hewn
logs. The chinks should be filled with mud and lime, but these are
wanting. The roof is formed of barked young spruce, then a layer of
hay, and an outer coating of mud, all nearly flat. The floors are
roughly boarded. The "living room" is about sixteen feet square, and
has a rough stone chimney in which pine logs are always burning. At
one end there is a door into a small bedroom, and at the other a door
into a small eating room, at the table of which we feed in relays.
This opens into a very small kitchen with a great American
cooking-stove, and there are two "bed closets" besides. Although rude,
it is comfortable, except for the draughts. The fine snow drives in
through the chinks and covers the floors, but sweeping it out at
intervals is both fun and exercise. There are no heaps or rubbish
places outside. Near it, on the slope under the pines, is a pretty
two-roomed cabin, and beyond that, near the lake, is my cabin, a very
rough one. My door opens into a little room with a stone chimney, and
that again into a small room with a hay bed, a chair with a tin basin
on it, a shelf and some pegs. A small window looks on the lake, and
the glories of the sunrises which I see from it are indescribable.
Neither of my doors has a lock, and, to say the truth, neither will
shut, as the wood has swelled. Below the house, on the stream which
issues from the lake, there is a beautiful log dairy, with a water
wheel outside, used for churning. Besides this, there are a corral, a
shed for the wagon, a room for the hired man, and shelters for horses
and weakly calves. All these things are necessaries at this height.
The ranchmen are two Welshmen, Evans and Edwards, each with a wife and
family. The men are as diverse as they can be. "Griff," as Evans is
called, is short and small, and is hospitable, careless, reckless,
jolly, social, convivial, peppery, good natured, "nobody's enemy but
his own." He had the wit and taste to find out Estes Park, where
people have found him out, and have induced him to give them food and
lodging, and add cabin to cabin to take them in. He is a splendid
shot, an expert and successful hunter, a bold mountaineer, a good
rider, a capital cook, and a generally "jolly fellow." His cheery
laugh rings through the cabin from the early morning, and is
contagious, and when the rafters ring at night with such songs as "D'ye
ken John Peel?" "Auld Lang Syne," and "John Brown," what would the
chorus be without poor "Griff's" voice? What would Estes Park be
without him, indeed? When he went to Denver lately we missed him as we
should have missed the sunshine, and perhaps more. In the early
morning, when Long's Peak is red, and the grass crackles with the
hoar-frost, he arouses me with a cheery thump on my door. "We're going
cattle-hunting, will you come?" or, "Will you help to drive in the
cattle? You can take your pick of the horses. I want another hand."
Free-hearted, lavish, popular, poor "Griff" loves liquor too well for
his prosperity, and is always tormented by debt. He makes lots of
money, but puts it into "a bag with holes." He has fifty horses and
1,000 head of cattle, many of which are his own, wintering up here, and
makes no end of money by taking in people at eight dollars a week, yet
it all goes somehow. He has a most industrious wife, a girl of
seventeen, and four younger children, all musical, but the wife has to
work like a slave; and though he is a kind husband, her lot, as
compared with her lord's, is like that of a squaw. Edwards, his
partner, is his exact opposite, tall, thin, and condemnatory looking,
keen, industrious, saving, grave, a teetotaler, grieved for all reasons
at Evans's follies, and rather grudging; as naturally unpopular as
Evans is popular; a "decent man," who, with his industrious wife, will
certainly make money as fast as Evans loses it.
I pay eight dollars a week, which includes the unlimited use of a
horse, when one can be found and caught. We breakfast at seven on
beef, potatoes, tea, coffee, new bread, and butter. Two pitchers of
cream and two of milk are replenished as fast as they are exhausted.
Dinner at twelve is a repetition of the breakfast, but with the coffee
omitted and a gigantic pudding added. Tea at six is a repetition of
breakfast. "Eat whenever you are hungry, you can always get milk and
bread in the kitchen," Evans says--"eat as much as you can, it'll do
you good"--and we all eat like hunters. There is no change of food.
The steer which was being killed on my arrival is now being eaten
through from head to tail, the meat being hacked off quite
promiscuously, without any regard to joints. In this dry, rarefied
air, the outside of the flesh blackens and hardens, and though the
weather may be hot, the carcass keeps sweet for two or three months.
The bread is super excellent, but the poor wives seem to be making and
baking it all day.
The regular household living and eating together at this time consists
of a very intelligent and high-minded American couple, Mr. and Mrs.
Dewy, people whose character, culture, and society I should value
anywhere; a young Englishman, brother of a celebrated African traveler,
who, because he rides on an English saddle, and clings to some other
insular peculiarities, is called "The Earl"; a miner prospecting for
silver; a young man, the type of intelligent, practical "Young
America," whose health showed consumptive tendencies when he was in
business, and who is living a hunter's life here; a grown-up niece of
Evans; and a melancholy-looking hired man. A mile off there is an
industrious married settler, and four miles off, in the gulch leading
to the park, "Mountain Jim," otherwise Mr. Nugent, is posted. His
business as a trapper takes him daily up to the beaver dams in Black
Canyon to look after his traps, and he generally spends some time in or
about our cabin, not, I can see, to Evans's satisfaction. For, in
truth, this blue hollow, lying solitary at the foot of Long's Peak, is
a miniature world of great interest, in which love, jealousy, hatred,
envy, pride, unselfishness, greed, selfishness, and self-sacrifice can
be studied hourly, and there is always the unpleasantly exciting risk
of an open quarrel with the neighboring desperado, whose "I'll shoot
you!" has more than once been heard in the cabin.
The party, however, has often been increased by "campers," either elk
hunters or "prospectors" for silver or locations, who feed with us and
join us in the evening. They get little help from Evans, either as to
elk or locations, and go away disgusted and unsuccessful. Two
Englishmen of refinement and culture camped out here prospecting a few
weeks ago, and then, contrary to advice, crossed the mountains into
North Park, where gold is said to abound, and it is believed that they
have fallen victims to the bloodthirsty Indians of the region. Of
course, we never get letters or newspapers unless some one rides to
Longmount for them. Two or three novels and a copy of Our New West are
our literature. Our latest newspaper is seventeen days old. Somehow
the park seems to become the natural limit of our interests so far as
they appear in conversation at table. The last grand aurora, the
prospect of a snow-storm, track and sign of elk and grizzly, rumors of
a bighorn herd near the lake, the canyons in which the Texan cattle
were last seen, the merits of different rifles, the progress of two
obvious love affairs, the probability of some one coming up from the
Plains with letters, "Mountain Jim's" latest mood or escapade, and the
merits of his dog "Ring" as compared with those of Evans's dog "Plunk,"
are among the topics which are never abandoned as exhausted.
On Sunday work is nominally laid aside, but most of the men go out
hunting or fishing till the evening, when we have the harmonium and
much sacred music and singing in parts. To be alone in the park from
the afternoon till the last glory of the afterglow has faded, with no
books but a Bible and Prayer-book, is truly delightful. No worthier
temple for a "Te Deum" or "Gloria in Excelsis" could be found than this
"temple not made with hands," in which one may worship without being
distracted by the sight of bonnets of endless form, and curiously
intricate "back hair," and countless oddities of changing fashion.
I shall not soon forget my first night here.
Somewhat dazed by the rarefied air, entranced by the glorious beauty,
slightly puzzled by the motley company, whose faces loomed not always
quite distinctly through the cloud of smoke produced by eleven pipes, I
went to my solitary cabin at nine, attended by Evans. It was very
dark, and it seemed a long way off. Something howled--Evans said it
was a wolf--and owls apparently innumerable hooted incessantly. The
pole-star, exactly opposite my cabin door, burned like a lamp. The
frost was sharp. Evans opened the door, lighted a candle, and left me,
and I was soon in my hay bed. I was frightened--that is, afraid of
being frightened, it was so eerie--but sleep soon got the better of my
fears. I was awoke by a heavy breathing, a noise something like sawing
under the floor, and a pushing and upheaving, all very loud. My candle
was all burned, and, in truth, I dared not stir. The noise went on for
an hour fully, when, just as I thought the floor had been made
sufficiently thin for all purposes of ingress, the sounds abruptly
ceased, and I fell asleep again. My hair was not, as it ought to have
been, white in the morning!
I was dressed by seven, our breakfast hour, and when I reached the
great cabin and told my story, Evans laughed hilariously, and Edwards
contorted his face dismally. They told me that there was a skunk's
lair under my cabin, and that they dare not make any attempt to
dislodge him for fear of rendering the cabin untenable. They have
tried to trap him since, but without success, and each night the noisy
performance is repeated. I think he is sharpening his claws on the
under side of my floor, as the grizzlies sharpen theirs upon the trees.
The odor with which this creature, truly named Mephitis, can overpower
its assailants is truly AWFUL. We were driven out of the cabin for
some hours merely by the passage of one across the corral. The bravest
man is a coward in its neighborhood. Dogs rub their noses on the
ground till they bleed when they have touched the fluid, and even die
of the vomiting produced by the effluvia. The odor can be smelt a mile
off. If clothes are touched by the fluid they must be destroyed. At
present its fur is very valuable. Several have been killed since I
came. A shot well aimed at the spine secures one safely, and an
experienced dog can kill one by leaping upon it suddenly without being
exposed to danger. It is a beautiful beast, about the size and length
of a fox, with long thick black or dark-brown fur, and two white
streaks from the head to the long bushy tail. The claws of its
fore-feet are long and polished. Yesterday one was seen rushing from
the dairy and was shot. "Plunk," the big dog, touched it and has to be
driven into exile. The body was valiantly removed by a man with a long
fork, and carried to a running stream, but we are nearly choked with
the odor from the spot where it fell. I hope that my skunk will enjoy
a quiet spirit so long as we are near neighbors.
October 3.
This is surely one of the most entrancing spots on earth. Oh, that I
could paint with pen or brush! From my bed I look on Mirror Lake, and
with the very earliest dawn, when objects are not discernible, it lies
there absolutely still, a purplish lead color. Then suddenly into its
mirror flash inverted peaks, at first a dawn darker all round. This is
a new sight, each morning new. Then the peaks fade, and when morning
is no longer "spread upon the mountains," the pines are mirrored in my
lake almost as solid objects, and the glory steals downwards, and a red
flush warms the clear atmosphere of the park, and the hoar-frost
sparkles and the crested blue-jays step forth daintily on the jewelled
grass. The majesty and beauty grow on me daily. As I crossed from my
cabin just now, and the long mountain shadows lay on the grass, and
form and color gained new meanings, I was almost false to Hawaii; I
couldn't go on writing for the glory of the sunset, but went out and
sat on a rock to see the deepening blue in the dark canyons, and the
peaks becoming rose color one by one, then fading into sudden
ghastliness, the awe-inspiring heights of Long's Peak fading last.
Then came the glories of the afterglow, when the orange and lemon of
the east faded into gray, and then gradually the gray for some distance
above the horizon brightened into a cold blue, and above the blue into
a broad band of rich, warm red, with an upper band of rose color; above
it hung a big cold moon. This is the "daily miracle" of evening, as
the blazing peaks in the darkness of Mirror Lake are the miracle of
morning. Perhaps this scenery is not lovable, but, as if it were a
strong stormy character, it has an intense fascination.
The routine of my day is breakfast at seven, then I go back and "do" my
cabin and draw water from the lake, read a little, loaf a little,
return to the big cabin and sweep it alternately with Mrs. Dewy, after
which she reads aloud till dinner at twelve. Then I ride with Mr.
Dewy, or by myself, or with Mrs. Dewy, who is learning to ride cavalier
fashion in order to accompany her invalid husband, or go after cattle
till supper at six. After that we all sit in the living room, and I
settle down to write to you, or mend my clothes, which are dropping to
pieces. Some sit round the table playing at eucre, the strange hunters
and prospectors lie on the floor smoking, and rifles are cleaned,
bullets cast, fishing flies made, fishing tackle repaired, boots are
waterproofed, part-songs are sung, and about half-past eight I cross
the crisp grass to my cabin, always expecting to find something in it.
We all wash our own clothes, and as my stock is so small, some part of
every day has to be spent at the wash tub. Politeness and propriety
always prevail in our mixed company, and though various grades of
society are represented, true democratic equality prevails, not its
counterfeit, and there is neither forwardness on one side nor
condescension on the other.
Evans left for Denver ten days ago, taking his wife and family to the
Plains for the winter, and the mirth of our party departed with him.
Edwards is somber, except when he lies on the floor in the evening, and
tells stories of his march through Georgia with Sherman. I gave Evans
a 100-dollar note to change, and asked him to buy me a horse for my
tour, and for three days we have expected him. The mail depends on
him. I have had no letters from you for five weeks, and can hardly
curb my impatience. I ride or walk three or four miles out on the
Longmount trail two or three times a day to look for him. Others, for
different reasons, are nearly equally anxious. After dark we start at
every sound, and every time the dogs bark all the able-bodied of us
turn out en masse. "Wait for the wagon" has become a nearly maddening
joke.
October 9.