other luxuries. The snow began to fall in good earnest at six in the
evening, and fell all night, accompanied by intense frost, so that in
the morning there were eight inches of it glittering in the sun. Miss
P. gave me a pair of men's socks to draw on over my boots, and I set
out tolerably early, and broke my own way for two miles. Then a single
wagon had passed, making a legible track for thirty miles, otherwise
the snow was pathless. The sky was absolutely cloudless, and as I made
the long ascent of the Arkansas Divide, the mountains, gashed by deep
canyons, came sweeping down to the valley on my right, and on my left
the Foot Hills were crowned with colored fantastic rocks like castles.
Everything was buried under a glittering shroud of snow. The babble of
the streams was bound by fetters of ice. No branches creaked in the
still air. No birds sang. No one passed or met me. There were no
cabins near or far. The only sound was the crunch of the snow under
Birdie's feet. We came to a river over which some logs were laid with
some young trees across them. Birdie put one foot on this, then drew
it back and put another on, then smelt the bridge noisily. Persuasions
were useless; she only smelt, snorted, held back, and turned her
cunning head and looked at me. It was useless to argue the point with
so sagacious a beast. To the right of the bridge the ice was much
broken, and we forded the river there; but as it was deep enough to
come up to her body, and was icy cold to my feet, I wondered at her
preference. Afterwards I heard that the bridge was dangerous. She is
the queen of ponies, and is very gentle, though she has not only wild
horse blood, but is herself the wild horse. She is always cheerful and
hungry, never tired, looks intelligently at everything, and her legs
are like rocks. Her one trick is that when the saddle is put on she
swells herself to a very large size, so that if any one not accustomed
to her saddles her I soon find the girth three or four inches too
large. When I saddle her a gentle slap on her side, or any slight
start which makes her cease to hold her breath, puts it all right. She
is quite a companion, and bathing her back, sponging her nostrils, and
seeing her fed after my day's ride, is always my first care.
At last I reached a log cabin where I got a feed for us both and
further directions. The rest of the day's ride was awful enough. The
snow was thirteen inches deep, and grew deeper as I ascended in silence
and loneliness, but just as the sun sank behind a snowy peak I reached
the top of the Divide, 7,975 feet above the sea level. There, in
unspeakable solitude, lay a frozen lake. Owls hooted among the pines,
the trail was obscure, the country was not settled, the mercury was 9
degrees below zero, my feet had lost all sensation, and one of them was
frozen to the wooden stirrup. I found that owing to the depth of the
snow I had only ridden fifteen miles in eight and a half hours, and
must look about for a place to sleep in. The eastern sky was unlike
anything I ever saw before. It had been chrysoprase, then it turned to
aquamarine, and that to the bright full green of an emerald. Unless I
am color-blind, this is true. Then suddenly the whole changed, and
flushed with the pure, bright, rose color of the afterglow. Birdie was
sliding at every step, and I was nearly paralyzed with the cold when I
reached a cabin which had been mentioned to me, but they said that
seventeen snow-bound men were lying on the floor, and they advised me
to ride half a mile farther, which I did, and reached the house of a
German from Eisenau, with a sweet young wife and a venerable
mother-in-law. Though the house was very poor, it was made attractive
by ornaments, and the simple, loving, German ways gave it a sweet home
atmosphere. My room was reached by a ladder, but I had it to myself
and had the luxury of a basin to wash in. Under the kindly treatment
of the two women my feet came to themselves, but with an amount of pain
that almost deserved the name of torture.
The next morning was gray and sour, but brightened and warmed as the
day went on. After riding twelve miles I got bread and milk for myself
and a feed for Birdie at a large house where there were eight boarders,
each one looking nearer the grave than the other, and on remounting was
directed to leave the main road and diverge through Monument Park, a
ride of twelve miles among fantastic rocks, but I lost my way, and came
to an end of all tracks in a wild canyon. Returning about six miles, I
took another track, and rode about eight miles without seeing a
creature. I then came to strange gorges with wonderful upright rocks
of all shapes and colors, and turning through a gate of rock, came upon
what I knew must be Glen Eyrie, as wild and romantic a glen as
imagination ever pictured. The track then passed down a valley close
under some ghastly peaks, wild, cold, awe-inspiring scenery. After
fording a creek several times, I came upon a decayed-looking cluster of
houses bearing the arrogant name of Colorado City, and two miles
farther on, from the top of one of the Foot Hill ridges, I saw the
bleak-looking scattered houses of the ambitious watering place of
Colorado Springs, the goal of my journey of 150 miles. I got off, put
on a long skirt, and rode sidewise, though the settlement scarcely
looked like a place where any deference to prejudices was necessary. A
queer embryo-looking place it is, out on the bare Plains, yet it is
rising and likely to rise, and has some big hotels much resorted to.
It has a fine view of the mountains, specially of Pike's Peak, but the
celebrated springs are at Manitou, three miles off, in really fine
scenery. To me no place could be more unattractive than Colorado
Springs, from its utter treelessness.
I found the -----s living in a small room which served for parlor,
bedroom, and kitchen, and combined the comforts of all. It is
inhabited also by two prairie dogs, a kitten, and a deerhound. It was
truly homelike. Mrs. ----- walked with me to the boarding-house where
I slept, and we sat some time in the parlor talking with the landlady.
Opposite to me there was a door wide open into a bed room, and on a bed
opposite to the door a very sick-looking young man was half-lying,
half-sitting, fully dressed, supported by another, and a very
sick-looking young man much resembling him passed in and out
occasionally, or leaned on the chimney piece in an attitude of extreme
dejection. Soon the door was half-closed, and some one came to it,
saying rapidly, "Shields, quick, a candle!" and then there were movings
about in the room. All this time the seven or eight people in the room
in which I was were talking, laughing, and playing backgammon, and none
laughed louder than the landlady, who was sitting where she saw that
mysterious door as plainly as I did. All this time, and during the
movings in the room, I saw two large white feet sticking up at the end
of the bed. I watched and watched, hoping those feet would move, but
they did not; and somehow, to my thinking, they grew stiffer and
whiter, and then my horrible suspicion deepened, and while we were
sitting there a human spirit untended and desolate had passed forth
into the night. Then a man came out with a bundle of clothes, and then
the sick young man, groaning and sobbing, and then a third, who said to
me, with some feeling, that the man who had just died was the sick
young man's only brother. And still the landlady laughed and talked,
and afterwards said to me, "It turns the house upside down when they
just come here and die; we shall be half the night laying him out." I
could not sleep for the bitter cold and the sound of the sobs and
groans of the bereaved brother. The next day the landlady, in a
fashionably-made black dress, was bustling about, proud of the
prospective arrival of a handsome coffin. I went into the parlor to
get a needle, and the door of THAT room was open, and children were
running in and out, and the landlady, who was sweeping there, called
cheerily to me to come in for the needle, and there, to my horror, not
even covered with a face cloth, and with the sun blazing in through the
unblinded window, lay that thing of terror, a corpse, on some chairs
which were not even placed straight. It was buried in the afternoon,
and from the looks of the brother, who continued to sob and moan, his
end cannot be far off.
The -----s say that many go to the Springs in the last stage of
consumption, thinking that the Colorado climate will cure them, without
money enough to pay for even the coarsest board. We talked most of
that day, and I equipped myself with arctics and warm gloves for the
mountain tour which has been planned for me, and I gave Birdie the
Sabbath she was entitled to on Tuesday, for I found, on arriving at the
Springs, that the day I crossed the Arkansas Divide was Sunday, though
I did not know it. Several friends of Miss Kingsley called on me; she
is much remembered and beloved. This is not an expensive tour; we cost
about ten shillings a day, and the five days which I have spent en
route from Denver have cost something less than the fare for the few
hours' journey by the cars. There are no real difficulties. It is a
splendid life for health and enjoyment. All my luggage being in a
pack, and my conveyance being a horse, we can go anywhere where we can
get food and shelter.
GREAT GORGE OF THE MANITOU, October 29.
This is a highly picturesque place, with several springs, still and
effervescing, the virtues of which were well known to the Indians.
Near it are places, the names of which are familiar to every one--the
Garden of the Gods, Glen Eyrie, Pike's Peak, Monument Park, and the Ute
Pass. It has two or three immense hotels, and a few houses
picturesquely situated. It is thronged by thousands of people in the
summer who come to drink the waters, try the camp cure, and make
mountain excursions; but it is all quiet now, and there are only a few
lingerers in this immense hotel. There is a rushing torrent in a
valley, with mountains, covered with snow and rising to a height of
nearly 15,000 feet, overhanging it. It is grand and awful, and has a
strange, solemn beauty like death. And the Snowy Mountains are pierced
by the torrent which has excavated the Ute Pass, by which, to-morrow, I
hope to go into the higher regions. But all may be "lost for want of a
horseshoe nail." One of Birdie's shoes is loose, and not a nail is to
be got here, or can be got till I have ridden for ten miles up the
Pass. Birdie amuses every one with her funny ways. She always follows
me closely, and to-day got quite into a house and pushed the parlor
door open. She walks after me with her head laid on my shoulder,
licking my face and teasing me for sugar, and sometimes, when any one
else takes hold of her, she rears and kicks, and the vicious bronco
soul comes into her eyes. Her face is cunning and pretty, and she
makes a funny, blarneying noise when I go up to her. The men at all
the stables make a fuss with her, and call her "Pet." She gallops up
and down hill, and never stumbles even on the roughest ground, or
requires even a touch with a whip.
The weather is again perfect, with a cloudless sky and a hot sun, and
the snow is all off the plains and lower valleys. After lunch, the
-----s in a buggy, and I on Birdie, left Colorado Springs, crossing the
Mesa, a high hill with a table top, with a view of extraordinary
laminated rocks, LEAVES of rock a bright vermilion color, against a
background of snowy mountains, surmounted by Pike's Peak. Then we
plunged into cavernous Glen Eyrie, with its fantastic needles of
colored rock, and were entertained at General Palmer's "baronial
mansion," a perfect eyrie, the fine hall filled with buffalo, elk, and
deer heads, skins of wild animals, stuffed birds, bear robes, and
numerous Indian and other weapons and trophies. Then through a gate of
huge red rocks, we passed into the valley, called fantastically, Garden
of the Gods, in which, were I a divinity, I certainly would not choose
to dwell. Many places in this neighborhood are also vulgarized by
grotesque names. From this we passed into a ravine, down which the
Fountain River rushed, and there I left my friends with regret, and
rode into this chill and solemn gorge, from which the mountains,
reddening in the sunset, are only seen afar off. I put Birdie up at a
stable, and as there was no place to put myself up but this huge hotel,
I came here to have a last taste of luxury. They charge six dollars a
day in the season, but it is now half-price; and instead of four
hundred fashionable guests there are only fifteen, most of whom are
speaking in the weak, rapid accents of consumption, and are coughing
their hearts out. There are seven medicinal springs. It is strange to
have the luxuries of life in my room. It will be only the fourth night
in Colorado that I have slept on anything better than hay or straw. I
am glad that there are so few inns. As it is, I get a good deal of
insight into the homes and modes of living of the settlers.
BERGENS PARK, October 31.
This cabin was so dark, and I so sleepy last night, that I could not
write; but the frost during the night has been very severe, and I am
detained until the bright, hot sun melts the ice and renders traveling
safe. I left the great Manitou at ten yesterday. Birdie, who was
loose in the stable, came trotting down the middle of it when she saw
me for her sugar and biscuits. No nails could be got, and her shoe was
hanging by two, which doomed me to a foot's pace and the dismal clink
of a loose shoe for three hours. There was not a cloud on the bright
blue sky the whole day, and though it froze hard in the shade, it was
summer heat in the sun. The mineral fountains were sparkling in their
basins and sending up their full perennial jets but the snow-clad,
pine-skirted mountains frowned and darkened over the Ute Pass as I
entered it to ascend it for twenty miles. A narrow pass it is, with
barely room for the torrent and the wagon road which has been blasted
out of its steep sides. All the time I was in sight of the Fountain
River, brighter than any stream, because it tumbles over rose-red
granite, rocky or disintegrated, a truly fair stream, cutting and
forcing its way through hard rocks, under arches of alabaster ice,
through fringes of crystalline ice, thumping with a hollow sound in
cavernous recesses cold and dark, or leaping in foam from heights with
rush and swish; always bright and riotous, never pausing in still pools
to rest, dashing through gates of rock, pine hung, pine bridged, pine
buried; twinkling and laughing in the sunshine, or frowning in "dowie
dens" in the blue pine gloom. And there, for a mile or two in a
sheltered spot, owing to the more southern latitude, the everlasting
northern pine met the trees of other climates. There were dwarf oaks,
willows, hazel, and spruce; the white cedar and the trailing juniper
jostled each other for a precarious foothold; the majestic redwood tree
of the Pacific met the exquisite balsam pine of the Atlantic slopes,
and among them all the pale gold foliage of the large aspen trembled
(as the legend goes) in endless remorse. And above them towered the
toothy peaks of the glittering mountains, rising in pure white against
the sunny blue. Grand! glorious! sublime! but not lovable. I would
give all for the luxurious redundance of one Hilo gulch, or for one day
of those soft dreamy "skies whose very tears are balm."
Bergens Park
Up ever! the road being blasted out of the red rock which often
overhung it, the canyon only from fifteen to twenty feet wide, the
thunder of the Fountain, which is crossed eight times, nearly
deafening. Sometimes the sun struck the road, and then it was
absolutely hot; then one entered unsunned gorges where the snow lay
deep, and the crowded pines made dark twilight, and the river roared
under ice bridges fringed by icicles. At last the Pass opened out upon
a sunlit upland park, where there was a forge, and with Birdie's shoe
put on, and some shoe nails in my purse, I rode on cheerfully, getting
food for us both at a ranch belonging to some very pleasant people,
who, like all Western folk, when they are not taciturn, asked a legion
of questions. There I met a Colonel Kittridge, who said that he
believed his valley, twelve miles off the track, to be the loveliest
valley in Colorado, and invited me to his house. Leaving the road, I
went up a long ascent deep in snow, but as it did not seem to be the
way, I tied up the pony, and walked on to a cabin at some distance,
which I had hardly reached when I found her trotting like a dog by my
side, pulling my sleeve and laying her soft gray nose on my shoulder.
Does it all mean sugar? We had eight miles farther to go--most of the
way through a forest, which I always dislike when alone, from the fear
of being frightened by something which may appear from behind a tree.
I saw a beautiful white fox, several skunks, some chipmunks and gray
squirrels, owls, crows, and crested blue-jays. As the sun was getting
low I reached Bergens Park, which was to put me out of conceit with
Estes Park. Never! It is long and featureless, and its immediate
surroundings are mean. It reminded me in itself of some dismal
Highland strath--Glenshee, possibly. I looked at it with special
interest, as it was the place at which Miss Kingsley had suggested that
I might remain. The evening was glorious, and the distant views were
very fine. A stream fringed with cotton-wood runs through the park;
low ranges come down upon it. The south end is completely closed up,
but at a considerable distance, by the great mass of Pike's Peak, while
far beyond the other end are peaks and towers, wonderful in blue and
violet in the lovely evening, and beyond these, sharply defined against
the clear green sky, was the serrated ridge of the Snowy Range, said to
be 200 miles away. Bergens Park had been bought by Dr. Bell, of
London, but its present occupant is Mr. Thornton, an English gentleman,
who has a worthy married Englishman as his manager. Mr. Thornton is
building a good house, and purposes to build other cabins, with the
intention of making the park a resort for strangers. I thought of the
blue hollow lying solitary at the foot of Long's Peak, and rejoiced
that I had "happened into it."
The cabin is long, low, mud roofed, and very dark. The middle place is
full of raw meat, fowls, and gear. One end, almost dark, contains the
cooking-stove, milk, crockery, a long deal table, two benches, and some
wooden stools; the other end houses the English manager or partner, his
wife, and three children, another cooking-stove, gear of all kinds, and
sacks of beans and flour. They put up a sheet for a partition, and
made me a shake-down on the gravel floor of this room. Ten hired men
sat down to meals with us. It was all very rough, dark, and
comfortless, but Mr. T., who is not only a gentleman by birth, but an
M.A. of Cambridge, seems to like it. Much in this way (a little
smoother if a lady is in the case) every man must begin life here.
Seven large dogs--three of them with cats upon their backs--are usually
warming themselves at the fire.
TWIN ROCK, SOUTH FORK OF THE PLATTE, November 1.
I did not leave Mr. Thornton's till ten, because of the slipperiness.
I rode four miles along a back trail, and then was so tired that I
stayed for two hours at a ranch, where I heard, to my dismay, that I
must ride twenty-four miles farther before I could find any place to
sleep at. I did not enjoy yesterday's ride. I was both tired and
rheumatic, and Birdie was not so sprightly as usual. After starting
again I came on a hideous place, of which I had not heard before,
Hayden's Divide, one of the great back-bones of the region, a weary
expanse of deep snow eleven miles across, and fearfully lonely. I saw
nothing the whole way but a mule lately dead lying by the road. I was
very nervous somehow, and towards evening believed that I had lost the
road, for I came upon wild pine forests, with huge masses of rock from
100 to 700 feet high, cast here and there among them; beyond these
pine-sprinkled grass hills; these, in their turn, were bounded by
interminable ranges, ghastly in the lurid evening, with the Spanish
Peaks quite clear, and the colossal summit of Mount Lincoln, the King
of the Rocky Mountains, distinctly visible, though seventy miles away.
It seemed awful to be alone on that ghastly ridge, surrounded by
interminable mountains, in the deep snow, knowing that a party of
thirty had been lost here a month ago. Just at nightfall the descent
of a steep hill took me out of the forest and upon a clean log cabin,
where, finding that the proper halting place was two miles farther on,
I remained. A truly pleasing, superior-looking woman placed me in a
rocking chair; would not let me help her otherwise than by rocking the
cradle, and made me "feel at home." The room, though it serves them
and their two children for kitchen, parlor, and bed room, is the
pattern of brightness, cleanliness, and comfort. At supper there were
canned raspberries, rolls, butter, tea, venison, and fried rabbit, and
at seven I went to bed in a carpeted log room, with a thick feather bed
on a mattress, sheets, ruffled pillow slips, and a pile of warm white
blankets! I slept for eleven hours. They discourage me much about the
route which Governor Hunt has projected for me. They think that it is
impassable, owing to snow, and that another storm is brewing.
HALL'S GULCH, November 6.
I have ridden 150 miles since I wrote last. On leaving Twin Rock on
Saturday I had a short day's ride to Colonel Kittridge's cabin at Oil
Creek, where I spent a quiet Sunday with agreeable people. The ride
was all through parks and gorges, and among pine-clothed hills, about
9,000 feet high, with Pike's Peak always in sight. I have developed
much sagacity in finding a trail, or I should not be able to make use
of such directions as these: "Keep along a gulch four or five miles
till you get Pike's Peak on your left, then follow some wheel-marks
till you get to some timber, and keep to the north till you come to a
creek, where you'll find a great many elk tracks; then go to your right
and cross the creek three times, then you'll see a red rock to your
left," etc., etc. The K's cabin was very small and lonely, and the
life seemed a hard grind for an educated and refined woman. There were
snow flurries after I arrived, but the first Sunday of November was as
bright and warm as June, and the atmosphere had resumed its exquisite
purity. Three peaks of Pike's Peak are seen from Oil Creek, above the
nearer hills, and by them they tell the time. We had been in the
evening shadows for half an hour before those peaks ceased to be
transparent gold.