myself from its freedom and enchantments? I see Long's snowy peak
rising into the night sky, and know and long after the magnificence of
the blue hollow at its base. We were to have left at 8 but the horses
were lost, so it was 9:30 before we started, the WE being the musical
young French Canadian and myself. I have a bay Indian pony, "Birdie,"
a little beauty, with legs of iron, fast, enduring, gentle, and wise;
and with luggage for some weeks, including a black silk dress, behind
my saddle, I am tolerably independent. It was a most glorious ride.
We passed through the gates of rock, through gorges where the unsunned
snow lay deep under the lemon-colored aspens; caught glimpses of
far-off, snow-clad giants rising into a sky of deep sad blue; lunched
above the Foot Hills at a cabin where two brothers and a "hired man"
were "keeping bach," where everything was so trim, clean, and
ornamental that one did not miss a woman; crossed a deep backwater on a
narrow beaver dam, because the log bridge was broken down, and emerged
from the brilliantly-colored canyon of the St. Vrain just at dusk upon
the featureless prairies, when we had some trouble in finding Longmount
in the dark. A hospitable welcome awaited me at this inn, and an
English friend came in and spent the evening with me.
GREAT PLATTE CANYON, October 23.
My letters on this tour will, I fear, be very dull, for after riding
all day, looking after my pony, getting supper, hearing about various
routes, and the pastoral, agricultural, mining, and hunting gossip of
the neighborhood, I am so sleepy and wholesomely tired that I can
hardly write. I left Longmount pretty early on Tuesday morning, the
day being sad, with the blink of an impending snow-storm in the air.
The evening before I was introduced to a man who had been a colonel in
the rebel army, who made a most unfavorable impression upon me, and it
was a great annoyance to me when he presented himself on horse-back to
guide me "over the most intricate part of the journey." Solitude is
infinitely preferable to uncongeniality, and is bliss when compared
with repulsiveness, so I was thoroughly glad when I got rid of my
escort and set out upon the prairie alone. It is a dreary ride of
thirty miles over the low brown plains to Denver, very little settled,
and with trails going in all directions. My sailing orders were "steer
south, and keep to the best beaten track," and it seemed like embarking
on the ocean without a compass. The rolling brown waves on which you
see a horse a mile and a half off impress one strangely, and at noon
the sky darkened up for another storm, the mountains swept down in
blackness to the Plains, and the higher peaks took on a ghastly
grimness horrid to behold. It was first very cold, then very hot, and
finally settled down to a fierce east-windy cold, difficult to endure.
It was free and breezy, however, and my horse was companionable.
Sometimes herds of cattle were browsing on the sun-cured grass, then
herds of horses. Occasionally I met a horseman with a rifle lying
across his saddle, or a wagon of the ordinary sort, but oftener I saw a
wagon with a white tilt, of the kind known as a "Prairie Schooner,"
laboring across the grass, or a train of them, accompanied by herds,
mules, and horsemen, bearing emigrants and their household goods in
dreary exodus from the Western States to the much-vaunted prairies of
Colorado.
The host and hostess of one of these wagons invited me to join their
mid-day meal, I providing tea (which they had not tasted for four
weeks) and they hominy. They had been three months on the journey from
Illinois, and their oxen were so lean and weak that they expected to be
another month in reaching Wet Mountain Valley. They had buried a child
en route, had lost several oxen, and were rather out of heart. Owing
to their long isolation and the monotony of the march they had lost
count of events, and seemed like people of another planet. They wanted
me to join them, but their rate of travel was too slow, so we parted
with mutual expressions of good will, and as their white tilt went
"hull down" in the distance on the lonely prairie sea, I felt sadder
than I often feel on taking leave of old acquaintances. That night
they must have been nearly frozen, camping out in the deep snow in the
fierce wind. I met afterwards 2,000 lean Texan cattle, herded by three
wild-looking men on horseback, followed by two wagons containing women,
children, and rifles. They had traveled 1,000 miles. Then I saw two
prairie wolves, like jackals, with gray fur, cowardly creatures, which
fled from me with long leaps.
The windy cold became intense, and for the next eleven miles I rode a
race with the coming storm. At the top of every prairie roll I
expected to see Denver, but it was not till nearly five that from a
considerable height I looked down upon the great "City of the Plains,"
the metropolis of the Territories. There the great braggart city lay
spread out, brown and treeless, upon the brown and treeless plain,
which seemed to nourish nothing but wormwood and the Spanish bayonet.
The shallow Platte, shriveled into a narrow stream with a shingly bed
six times too large for it, and fringed by shriveled cotton-wood, wound
along by Denver, and two miles up its course I saw a great sandstorm,
which in a few minutes covered the city, blotting it out with a dense
brown cloud. Then with gusts of wind the snowstorm began, and I had to
trust entirely to Birdie's sagacity for finding Evans's shanty. She
had been there once before only, but carried me direct to it over rough
ground and trenches. Gleefully Mrs. Evans and the children ran out to
welcome the pet pony, and I was received most hospitably, and made warm
and comfortable, though the house consists only of a kitchen and two
bed closets. My budget of news from "the park" had to be brought out
constantly, and I wondered how much I had to tell. It was past eleven
when we breakfasted the next morning. It was cloudless with an intense
frost, and six inches of snow on the ground, and everybody thought it
too cold to get up and light the fire. I had intended to leave Birdie
at Denver, but Governor Hunt and Mr. Byers of the Rocky Mountain News
both advised me to travel on horseback rather than by train and stage
telling me that I should be quite safe, and Governor Hunt drew out a
route for me and gave me a circular letter to the settlers along it.
Denver is no longer the Denver of Hepworth Dixon. A shooting affray in
the street is as rare as in Liverpool, and one no longer sees men
dangling to the lamp-posts when one looks out in the morning! It is a
busy place, the entrepot and distributing point for an immense
district, with good shops, some factories, fair hotels, and the usual
deformities and refinements of civilization. Peltry shops abound, and
sportsman, hunter, miner, teamster, emigrant, can be completely rigged
out at fifty different stores. At Denver, people who come from the
East to try the "camp cure" now so fashionable, get their outfit of
wagon, driver, horses, tent, bedding, and stove, and start for the
mountains. Asthmatic people are there in such numbers as to warrant
the holding of an "asthmatic convention" of patients cured and
benefited. Numbers of invalids who cannot bear the rough life of the
mountains fill its hotels and boarding-houses, and others who have been
partially restored by a summer of camping out, go into the city in the
winter to complete the cure. It stands at a height of 5,000 feet, on
an enormous plain, and has a most glorious view of the Rocky Range. I
should hate even to spend a week there. The sight of those glories so
near and yet out of reach would make me nearly crazy. Denver is at
present the terminus of the Kansas Pacific Railroad. It has a line
connecting it with the Union Pacific Railroad at Cheyenne, and by means
of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, open for about 200 miles, it is
expecting to reach into Mexico. It has also had the enterprise, by
means of another narrow-gauge railroad, to push its way right up into
the mining districts near Gray's Peak. The number of "saloons" in the
streets impresses one, and everywhere one meets the characteristic
loafers of a frontier town, who find it hard even for a few days or
hours to submit to the restraints of civilization, as hard as I did to
ride sidewise to Governor Hunt's office. To Denver men go to spend the
savings of months of hard work in the maddest dissipation, and there
such characters as "Comanche Bill," "Buffalo Bill," "Wild Bill," and
"Mountain Jim," go on the spree, and find the kind of notoriety they
seek.
A large number of Indians added to the harlequin appearance of the
Denver streets the day I was there. They belonged to the Ute tribe,
through which I had to pass, and Governor Hunt introduced me to a
fine-looking young chief, very well dressed in beaded hide, and bespoke
his courtesy for me if I needed it. The Indian stores and fur stores
and fur depots interested me most. The crowds in the streets, perhaps
owing to the snow on the ground, were almost solely masculine. I only
saw five women the whole day. There were men in every rig: hunters and
trappers in buckskin clothing; men of the Plains with belts and
revolvers, in great blue cloaks, relics of the war; teamsters in
leathern suits; horsemen in fur coats and caps and buffalo-hide boots
with the hair outside, and camping blankets behind their huge Mexican
saddles; Broadway dandies in light kid gloves; rich English sporting
tourists, clean, comely, and supercilious looking; and hundreds of
Indians on their small ponies, the men wearing buckskin suits sewn with
beads, and red blankets, with faces painted vermilion and hair hanging
lank and straight, and squaws much bundled up, riding astride with furs
over their saddles.
Town tired and confused me, and in spite of Mrs. Evans's kind
hospitality, I was glad when a man brought Birdie at nine yesterday
morning. He said she was a little demon, she had done nothing but
buck, and had bucked him off on the bridge! I found that he had put a
curb on her, and whenever she dislikes anything she resents it by
bucking. I rode sidewise till I was well through the town, long enough
to produce a severe pain in my spine, which was not relieved for some
time even after I had changed my position. It was a lovely Indian
summer day, so warm that the snow on the ground looked an incongruity.
I rode over the Plains for some time, then gradually reached the
rolling country along the base of the mountains, and a stream with
cottonwoods along it, and settlers' houses about every halfmile. I
passed and met wagons frequently, and picked up a muff containing a
purse with 500 dollars in it, which I afterwards had the great pleasure
of restoring to the owner. Several times I crossed the narrow track of
the quaint little Rio Grande Railroad, so that it was a very cheerful
ride.
RANCH, PLUM CREEK, October 24.
You must understand that in Colorado travel, unless on the main road
and in the larger settlements, there are neither hotels nor taverns,
and that it is the custom for the settlers to receive travelers,
charging them at the usual hotel rate for accommodation. It is a very
satisfactory arrangement. However, at Ranch, my first halting place,
the host was unwilling to receive people in this way, I afterwards
found, or I certainly should not have presented my credentials at the
door of a large frame house, with large barns and a generally
prosperous look. The host, who opened the door, looked repellent, but
his wife, a very agreeable, lady-like-looking woman, said they could
give me a bed on a sofa. The house was the most pretentious I have yet
seen, being papered and carpeted, and there were two "hired girls."
There was a lady there from Laramie, who kindly offered to receive me
into her room, a very tall, elegant person, remarkable as being the
first woman who had settled in the Rocky Mountains. She had been
trying the "camp cure" for three months, and was then on her way home.
She had a wagon with beds, tent, tent floor, cooking-stove, and every
camp luxury, a light buggy, a man to manage everything, and a most
superior "hired girl." She was consumptive and frail in strength, but a
very attractive person, and her stories of the perils and limitation of
her early life at Fort Laramie were very interesting. Still I
"wearied," as I had arrived early in the afternoon, and could not out
of politeness retire and write to you. At meals the three "hired men"
and two "hired girls" eat with the family. I soon found that there was
a screw loose in the house, and was glad to leave early the next
morning, although it was obvious that a storm was coming on.
I saw the toy car of the Rio Grande Railroad whirl past, all cushioned
and warm, and rather wished I were in it, and not out among the snow on
the bleak hill side. I only got on four miles when the storm came on
so badly that I got into a kitchen where eleven wretched travelers were
taking shelter, with the snow melting on them and dripping on the
floor. I had learned the art of "being agreeable" so well at the
Chalmers's, and practiced it so successfully during the two hours I was
there, by paring potatoes and making scones, that when I left, though
the hosts kept "an accommodation house for travelers," they would take
nothing for my entertainment, because they said I was such "good
company"! The storm moderated a little, and at one I saddled Birdie,
and rode four more miles, crossing a frozen creek, the ice of which
broke and let the pony through, to her great alarm. I cannot describe
my feelings on this ride, produced by the utter loneliness, the silence
and dumbness of all things, the snow falling quietly without wind, the
obliterated mountains, the darkness, the intense cold, and the unusual
and appalling aspect of nature. All life was in a shroud, all work and
travel suspended. There was not a foot-mark or wheel-mark. There was
nothing to be afraid of; and though I can't exactly say that I enjoyed
the ride, yet there was the pleasant feeling of gaining health every
hour.
When the snow darkness began to deepen towards evening, the track
became quite illegible, and when I found myself at this romantically
situated cabin, I was thankful to find that they could give me shelter.
The scene was a solemn one, and reminded me of a description in
Whittier's Snow-Bound. All the stock came round the cabin with mute
appeals for shelter. Sheep dogs got in, and would not be kicked out.
Men went out muffled up, and came back shivering and shaking the snow
from their feet. The churn was put by the stove. Later on, a most
pleasant settler, on his way to Denver, came in his wagon having been
snow blocked two miles off, where he had been obliged to leave it and
bring his horses on here. The "Grey Mare" had a stentorian voice,
smoked a clay pipe which she passed to her children, raged at English
people, derided the courtesy of English manners, and considered that
"Please," "Thank you," and the like, were "all bosh" when life was so
short and busy. And still the snow fell softly, and the air and earth
were silent.
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.
COLORADO SPRINGS, October 28.
It is difficult to make this anything of a letter. I have been riding
for a whole week, seeing wonders and greatly enjoying the singular
adventurousness and novelty of my tour, but ten hours or more daily
spent in the saddle in this rarefied, intoxicating air, disposes one to
sleep rather than to write in the evening, and is far from conducive to
mental brilliancy. The observing faculties are developed, and the
reflective lie dormant.
That night on which I last wrote was the coldest I have yet felt. I
pulled the rag carpet from the floor and covered myself with it, but
could not get warm. The sun rose gloriously on a shrouded earth.
Barns, road, shrubs, fences, river, lake, all lay under the glittering
snow. It was light and powdery, and sparkled like diamonds. Not a
breath of wind stirred, there was not a sound. I had to wait till a
passing horseman had broken the track, but soon after I set off into
the new, shining world. I soon lost the horseman's foot-marks, but
kept on near the road by means of the innumerable foot-prints of birds
and ground squirrels, which all went in one direction. After riding
for an hour I was obliged to get off and walk for another, for the snow
balled in Birdie's feet to such an extent that she could hardly keep up
even without my weight on her, and my pick was not strong enough to
remove it. Turning off the road to ask for a chisel, I came upon the
cabin of the people whose muff I had picked up a few days before, and
they received me very warmly, gave me a tumbler of cream, and made some
strong coffee. They were "old Country folk," and I stayed too long
with them. After leaving them I rode twelve miles, but it was "bad
traveling," from the balling of the snow and the difficulty of finding
the track. There was a fearful loneliness about it. The track was
untrodden, and I saw neither man nor beast. The sky became densely
clouded, and the outlook was awful. The great Divide of the Arkansas
was in front, looming vaguely through a heavy snow cloud, and snow
began to fall, not in powder, but in heavy flakes. Finding that there
would be risk in trying to ride till nightfall, in the early afternoon
I left the road and went two miles into the hills by an untrodden path,
where there were gates to open, and a rapid steep-sided creek to cross;
and at the entrance to a most fantastic gorge I came upon an elegant
frame house belonging to Mr. Perry, a millionaire, to whom I had an
introduction which I did not hesitate to present, as it was weather in
which a traveler might almost ask for shelter without one.
Mr. Perry was away, but his daughter, a very bright-looking,
elegantly-dressed girl, invited me to dine and remain. They had stewed
venison and various luxuries on the table, which was tasteful and
refined, and an adroit, colored table-maid waited, one of five attached
Negro servants who had been their slaves before the war. After dinner,
though snow was slowly falling, a gentleman cousin took me a ride to
show me the beauties of Pleasant Park, which takes rank among the
finest scenery of Colorado, and in good weather is very easy of access.
It did look very grand as we entered it by a narrow pass guarded by two
buttes, or isolated upright masses of rock, bright red, and about 300
feet in height. The pines were very large, and the narrow canyons
which came down on the park gloomily magnificent. It is remarkable
also from a quantity of "monumental" rocks, from 50 to 300 feet in
height, bright vermilion, green, buff, orange, and sometimes all
combined, their gay tinting a contrast to the disastrous-looking snow
and the somber pines. Bear Canyon, a gorge of singular majesty, comes
down on the park, and we crossed the Bear Creek at the foot of this on
the ice, which gave way, and both our horses broke through into pretty
deep and very cold water, and shortly afterwards Birdie put her foot
into a prairie dog's hole which was concealed by the snow, and on
recovering herself fell three times on her nose. I thought of Bishop
Wilberforce's fatal accident from a smaller stumble, and felt sure that
he would have kept his seat had he been mounted, as I was, on a Mexican
saddle. It was too threatening for a long ride, and on returning I
passed into a region of vivacious descriptions of Egypt, Palestine,
Asia Minor, Turkey, Russia, and other countries, in which Miss Perry
had traveled with her family for three years.
Perry's Park is one of the great cattle-raising ranches in Colorado.
This, the youngest State in the Union, a Territory until quite
recently, has an area of about 68,000,000 acres, a great portion of
which, though rich in mineral wealth, is worthless either for stock or
arable farming, and the other or eastern part is so dry that crops can
only be grown profitably where irrigation is possible. This region is
watered by the South Fork of the Platte and its affluents, and, though
subject to the grasshopper pest, it produces wheat of the finest
quality, the yield varying according to the mode of cultivation from
eighteen to thirty bushels per acre. The necessity for irrigation,
however, will always bar the way to an indefinite extension of the area
of arable farms. The prospects of cattle-raising seem at present
practically unlimited. In 1876 Colorado had 390,728, valued at L2:13s.
per head, about half of which were imported as young beasts from Texas.
The climate is so fine and the pasturage so ample that shelter and
hand-feeding are never resorted to except in the case of imported
breeding stock from the Eastern States, which sometimes in severe
winters need to be fed in sheds for a short time. Mr. Perry devotes
himself mainly to the breeding of graded shorthorn bulls, which he
sells when young for L6 per head.
The cattle run at large upon the prairies; each animal being branded,
they need no herding, and are usually only mustered, counted, and the
increase branded in the summer. In the fall, when three or four years
old, they are sold lean or in tolerable condition to dealers who take
them by rail to Chicago, or elsewhere, where the fattest lots are
slaughtered for tinning or for consumption in the Eastern cities, while
the leaner are sold to farmers for feeding up during the winter. Some
of the wealthier stockmen take their best lots to Chicago themselves.
The Colorado cattle are either pure Texan or Spanish, or crosses
between the Texan and graded shorthorns. They are nearly all very
inferior animals, being bony and ragged. The herds mix on the vast
plains at will; along the Arkansas valley 80,000 roam about with the
freedom of buffaloes, and of this number about 16,000 are exported
every fall. Where cattle are killed for use in the mining districts
their average price is three cents per lb. In the summer thousands of
yearlings are driven up from Texas, branded, and turned loose on the
prairies, and are not molested again till they are sent east at three
or four years old. These pure Texans, the old Spanish breed, weigh
from 900 to 1,000 pounds, and the crossed Colorado cattle from 1,000 to
1,200 pounds.
The "Cattle King" of the State is Mr. Iliff, of South Platte, who owns
nine ranches, with runs of 15,000 acres, and 35,000 cattle. He is
improving his stock; and, indeed, the opening of the dead-meat trade
with this country is giving a great impetus to the improvement of the
breed of cattle among all the larger and richer stock-owners. For this
enormous herd 40 men are employed in summer, about 12 in winter, and
200 horses. In the rare case of a severe and protracted snowstorm the
cattle get a little hay. Owners of 6,000, 8,000 and 10,000 head of
cattle are quite common in Colorado. Sheep are now raised in the State
to the extent of half a million, and a chronic feud prevails between
the "sheep men" and the "cattle men." Sheep-raising is said to be a
very profitable business, but its risks and losses are greater, owing
to storms, while the outlay for labor, dipping materials, etc., is
considerably larger, and owing to the comparative inability of sheep to
scratch away the snow from the grass, hay has to be provided to meet
the emergency of very severe snow-storms. The flocks are made up
mostly of pure and graded Mexicans; but though some flocks which have
been graded carefully for some years show considerable merit, the
average sheep is a leggy, ragged beast. Wether mutton, four and five
years old, is sold when there is any demand for it; but except at
Charpiot's, in Denver, I never saw mutton on any table, public or
private, and wool is the great source of profit, the old ewes being
allowed to die off. The best flocks yield an average of seven pounds.
The shearing season, which begins in early June, lasts about six weeks.
Shearers get six and a half cents a head for inferior sheep, and seven
and a half cents for the better quality, and a good hand shears from
sixty to eighty in a day. It is not likely that sheep-raising will
attain anything of the prominence which cattle-raising is likely to
assume. The potato beetle "scare" is not of much account in the
country of the potato beetle. The farmers seem much depressed by the
magnitude and persistency of the grasshopper pest which finds their
fields in the morning "as the garden of Eden," and leaves them at night
"a desolate wilderness."