mails, and one knows nothing beyond one's little world, a very little
one in this case. We find each other true, and have learnt to esteem
and trust each other. I should, for instance, go out of this room
leaving this book open on the table, knowing that the men would not
read my letter. They are discreet, reticent, observant, and on many
subjects well informed, but they are of a type which has no antitype at
home. All women work in this region, so there is no fuss about my
working, or saying, "Oh, you mustn't do that," or "Oh, let me do that."
November 30.
We sat up till eleven last night, so confident were we that Edwards
would leave Denver the day after Thanksgiving and get up here. This
morning we came to the resolution that we must break up. Tea, coffee,
and sugar are done, the venison is turning sour, and the men have only
one month left for the hunting on which their winter living depends. I
cannot leave the Territory till I get money, but I can go to Longmount
for the mail and hear whether the panic is abating. Yesterday I was
alone all day, and after riding to the base of Long's Peak, made two
roly-poly puddings for supper, having nothing else. The men, however,
came back perfectly loaded with trout, and we had a feast. Epicures at
home would have envied us. Mr. Kavan kept the frying pan with boiling
butter on the stove, butter enough thoroughly to cover the trout,
rolled them in coarse corn meal, plunged them into the butter, turned
them once, and took them out, thoroughly done, fizzing, and lemon
colored. For once young Lyman was satisfied, for the dish was
replenished as often as it was emptied. They caught 40 lbs., and have
packed them in ice until they can be sent to Denver for sale. The
winter fishing is very rich. In the hardest frost, men who fish not
for sport, but gain, take their axes and camping blankets, and go up to
the hard-frozen waters which lie in fifty places round the park, and
choosing a likely spot, a little sheltered from the wind, hack a hole
in the ice, and fastening a foot-link to a cotton-wood tree, bait the
hook with maggots or bits of easily-gotten fresh meat. Often the trout
are caught as fast as the hook can be baited, and looking through the
ice hole in the track of a sunbeam, you see a mass of tails, silver
fins, bright eyes, and crimson spots, a perfect shoal of fish, and
truly beautiful the crimson-spotted creatures look, lying still and
dead on the blue ice under the sunshine. Sometimes two men bring home
60 lbs. of trout as the result of one day's winter fishing. It is a
cold and silent sport, however.
How a cook at home would despise our scanty appliances, with which we
turn out luxuries. We have only a cooking-stove, which requires
incessant feeding with wood, a kettle, a frying pan, a six-gallon brass
pan, and a bottle for a rolling pin. The cold has been very severe,
but I do not suffer from it even in my insufficient clothing. I take a
piece of granite made very hot to bed, draw the blankets over my head
and sleep eight hours, though the snow often covers me. One day of
snow, mist, and darkness was rather depressing, and yesterday a
hurricane began about five in the morning, and the whole park was one
swirl of drifting snow, like stinging wood smoke. My bed and room were
white, and the frost was so intense that water brought in a kettle hot
from the fire froze as I poured it into the basin. Then the snow
ceased, and a fierce wind blew most of it out of the park, lifting it
from the mountains in such clouds as to make Long's Peak look like a
smoking volcano. To-day the sky has resumed its delicious blue, and
the park its unrivalled beauty. I have cleaned all the windows, which,
ever since I have been here, I supposed were of discolored glass, so
opaque and dirty they were; and when the men came home from fishing
they found a cheerful new world. We had a great deal of sacred music
and singing on Sunday. Mr. Buchan asked me if I knew a tune called
"America," and began the grand roll of our National Anthem to the words:
My country, 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty, etc.
December 1.
I was to have started for Canyon to-day, but was awoke by snow as
stinging as pinpoints beating on my hand. We all got up early, but it
did not improve until nearly noon. In the afternoon Lyman and I rode
to Mr. Nugent's cabin. I wanted him to read and correct my letter to
you, giving the account of our ascent of Long's Peak, but he said he
could not, and insisted on our going in for which young Lyman was more
anxious than I was, as Mr. Kavan had seen "Jim" in the morning, and
departed from his usual reticence so far as to say, "There's something
wrong with that man; he'll either shoot himself or somebody else."
However, the "ugly fit" had passed off, and he was so very pleasant and
courteous that we remained the whole afternoon. Lyman's one thought
was that he could make capital out of the interview, and write an
account of the celebrated desperado for a Western paper.
The interior of the den was frightful, yet among his black and hideous
surroundings the grace of his manner and the genius of his conversation
were only more apparent. I read my letter aloud--or rather "The Ascent
of Long's Peak," which I have written for Out West--and was sincerely
interested with the taste and acumen of his criticisms on the style.
He is a true child of nature; his eye brightened and his whole face
became radiant, and at last tears rolled down his cheek when I read the
account of the glory of the sunrise. Then he read us a very able paper
on Spiritualism which he was writing. The den was dense with smoke,
and very dark, littered with hay, old blankets, skins, bones, tins,
logs, powder flasks, magazines, old books, old moccasins, horseshoes,
and relics of all kinds. He had no better seat to offer me than a log,
but offered it with a graceful unconsciousness that it was anything
less luxurious than an easy chair. Two valuable rifles and a Sharp's
revolver hung on the wall, and the sash and badge of a scout. I could
not help looking at "Jim" as he stood talking to me. He goes mad with
drink at times, swears fearfully, has an ungovernable temper. He has
formerly led a desperate life, and is at times even now undoubtedly a
ruffian. There is hardly a fireside in Colorado where fearful stories
of him as an Indian fighter are not told; mothers frighten their
naughty children by telling them that "Mountain Jim" will get them, and
doubtless his faults are glaring, but he is undoubtedly fascinating,
and enjoys a popularity or notoriety which no other person has. He
offered to be my guide to the Plains when I go away. Lyman asked me if
I should not be afraid of being murdered, but one could not be safer
than with him I have often been told.
The cold was truly awful. I had caught a chill in the morning from
putting on my clothes before they were dry, and the warmth of the smoky
den was most agreeable; but we had a fearful ride back in the dusk, a
gale nearly blowing us off our horses, drifting snow nearly blinding
us, and the mercury below zero. I felt as if I were going to be laid
up with a severe cold, but the men suggested a trapper's remedy--a
tumbler of hot water, with a pinch of cayenne pepper in it--which
proved a very rapid cure. They kindly say that if the snow detains me
here they also will remain. They tell me that they were horrified when
I arrived, as they thought that they could not make me comfortable, and
that I had never been used to do anything for myself, and then we
complimented each other all round. To-morrow, weather permitting, I
set off for a ride of 100 miles, and my next letter will be my last
from the Rocky Mountains.
I. L. B.
Letter XVI
A harmonious home--Intense cold--A purple sun--A grim jest--A perilous
ride--Frozen eyelids--Longmount--The pathless prairie--Hardships of
emigrant life--A trapper's advice--The Little Thompson--Evans and "Jim."
DR. HUGHES'S, LOWER CANYON, COLORADO, December 4.
Once again here, in refined and cultured society, with harmonious
voices about me, and dear, sweet, loving children whose winning ways
make this cabin a true English home. "England, with all thy faults, I
love thee still!" I can truly say,
Where'er I roam, whatever realms I see.
My heart, untraveled, fondly turns to thee.
If it swerved a little in the Sandwich Islands, it is true to the Pole
now! Surely one advantage of traveling is that, while it removes much
prejudice against foreigners and their customs, it intensifies tenfold
one's appreciation of the good at home, and, above all, of the
quietness and purity of English domestic life. These reflections are
forced upon me by the sweet child-voices about me, and by the exquisite
consideration and tenderness which are the atmosphere (some would call
it the hothouse atmosphere) of this house. But with the bare, hard
life, and the bare, bleak mountains around, who could find fault with
even a hothouse atmosphere, if it can nourish such a flower of Paradise
as sacred human love?
The mercury is eleven degrees below zero, and I have to keep my ink on
the stove to prevent it from freezing. The cold is intense--a clear,
brilliant, stimulating cold, so dry that even in my threadbare flannel
riding dress I do not suffer from it. I must now take up my narrative
of the nothings which have all the interest of SOMETHINGS to me. We
all got up before daybreak on Tuesday, and breakfasted at seven. I
have not seen the dawn for some time, with its amber fires deepening
into red, and the snow peaks flushing one by one, and it seemed a new
miracle. It was a west wind, and we all thought it promised well. I
took only two pounds of luggage, some raisins, the mailbag, and an
additional blanket under my saddle. I had not been up from the park at
sunrise before, and it was quite glorious, the purple depths of
M'Ginn's Gulch, from which at a height of 9,000 feet you look down on
the sunlit park 1,500 feet below, lying in a red haze, with its pearly
needle-shaped peaks, framed by mountain sides dark with pines--my
glorious, solitary, unique mountain home! The purple sun rose in
front. Had I known what made it purple I should certainly have gone no
farther. Then clouds, the morning mist as I supposed, lifted
themselves up rose lighted, showing the sun's disc as purple as one of
the jars in a chemist's window, and having permitted this glimpse of
their king, came down again as a dense mist, the wind chopped round,
and the mist began to freeze hard. Soon Birdie and myself were a mass
of acicular crystals; it was a true easterly fog. I galloped on,
hoping to get through it, unable to see a yard before me; but it
thickened, and I was obliged to subside into a jog-trot.
As I rode on, about four miles from the cabin, a human figure, looking
gigantic like the spectre of the Brocken, with long hair white as snow,
appeared close to me, and at the same moment there was the flash of a
pistol close to my ear, and I recognized "Mountain Jim" frozen from
head to foot, looking a century old with his snowy hair. It was "ugly"
altogether certainly, a "desperado's" grim jest, and it was best to
accept it as such, though I had just cause for displeasure. He stormed
and scolded, dragged me off the pony--for my hands and feet were numb
with cold--took the bridle, and went off at a rapid stride, so that I
had to run to keep them in sight in the darkness, for we were off the
road in a thicket of scrub, looking like white branch coral, I knew not
where. Then we came suddenly on his cabin, and dear old "Ring," white
like all else; and the "ruffian" insisted on my going in, and he made a
good fire, and heated some coffee, raging all the time. He said
everything against my going forward, except that it was dangerous; all
he said came true, and here I am safe! Your letters, however,
outweighed everything but danger, and I decided on going on, when he
said, "I've seen many foolish people, but never one so foolish as
you--you haven't a grain of sense. Why, I, an old mountaineer,
wouldn't go down to the Plains to-day." I told him he could not,
though he would like it very much, for that he had turned his horses
loose; on which he laughed heartily, and more heartily still at the
stories I told him of young Lyman, so that I have still a doubt how
much of the dark moods I have lately seen was assumed.
He took me back to the track; and the interview which began with a
pistol shot, ended quite pleasantly. It was an eerie ride, one not to
be forgotten, though there was no danger. I could not recognize any
localities. Every tree was silvered, and the fir-tree tufts of needles
looked like white chrysanthemums. The snow lay a foot deep in the
gulches, with its hard, smooth surface marked by the feet of
innumerable birds and beasts. Ice bridges had formed across all the
streams, and I crossed them without knowing when. Gulches looked
fathomless abysses, with clouds boiling up out of them, and shaggy
mountain summits, half seen for a moment through the eddies, as quickly
vanished. Everything looked vast and indefinite. Then a huge
creation, like one of Dore's phantom illustrations, with much breathing
of wings, came sailing towards me in a temporary opening in the mist.
As with a strange rustle it passed close over my head, I saw, for the
first time, the great mountain eagle, carrying a good-sized beast in
his talons. It was a noble vision. Then there were ten miles of
metamorphosed gulches--silent, awful--many ice bridges, then a frozen
drizzle, and then the winds changed from east to north-east. Birdie
was covered with exquisite crystals, and her long mane and the long
beard which covers her throat were pure white. I saw that I must give
up crossing the mountains to this place by an unknown trail; and I
struck the old trail to the St. Vrain, which I had never traveled
before, but which I knew to be more legible than the new one. The fog
grew darker and thicker, the day colder and windier, the drifts deeper;
but Birdie, whose four cunning feet had carried me 600 miles, and who
in all difficulties proves her value, never flinched or made a false
step, or gave me reason to be sorry that I had come on.
I got down to the St. Vrain Canyon in good time, and stopped at a house
thirteen miles from Longmount to get oats. I was white from head to
foot, and my clothes were frozen stiff. The women gave me the usual
invitation, "Put your feet in the oven"; and I got my clothes thawed
and dried, and a delicious meal consisting of a basin of cream and
bread. They said it would be worse on the plains, for it was an
easterly storm; but as I was so used to riding, I could get on, so we
started at 2:30. Not far off I met Edwards going up at last to Estes
Park, and soon after the snow-storm began in earnest--or rather I
entered the storm, which had been going on there for several hours. By
that time I had reached the prairie, only eight miles from Longmount,
and pushed on. It was simply fearful. It was twilight from the thick
snow, and I faced a furious east wind loaded with fine, hard-frozen
crystals, which literally made my face bleed. I could only see a very
short distance anywhere; the drifts were often two feet deep, and only
now and then, through the blinding whirl, I caught a glimpse of snow
through which withered sunflowers did not protrude, and then I knew
that I was on the track. But reaching a wild place, I lost it, and
still cantered on, trusting to the pony's sagacity. It failed for
once, for she took me on a lake and we fell through the ice into the
water, 100 yards from land, and had a hard fight back again. It grew
worse and worse. I had wrapped up my face, but the sharp, hard snow
beat on my eyes--the only exposed part--bringing tears into them, which
froze and closed up my eye-lids at once. You cannot imagine what that
was.
I had to take off one glove to pick one eye open, for as to the other,
the storm beat so savagely against it that I left it frozen, and drew
over it the double piece of flannel which protected my face. I could
hardly keep the other open by picking the ice from it constantly with
my numb fingers, in doing which I got the back of my hand slightly
frostbitten. It was truly awful at the time. I often thought,
"Suppose I am going south instead of east? Suppose Birdie should fail?
Suppose it should grow quite dark?" I was mountaineer enough to shake
these fears off and keep up my spirits, but I knew how many had
perished on the prairie in similar storms. I calculated that if I did
not reach Longmount in half an hour it would be quite dark, and that I
should be so frozen or paralyzed with cold that I should fall off.
Not a quarter of an hour after I had wondered how long I could hold on
I saw, to my surprise, close to me, half-smothered in snow, the
scattered houses and blessed lights of Longmount, and welcome, indeed,
its wide, dreary, lifeless, soundless road looked! When I reached the
hotel I was so benumbed that I could not get off, and the worthy host
lifted me off and carried me in.
Not expecting any travelers, they had no fire except in the bar-room,
so they took me to the stove in their own room, gave me a hot drink and
plenty of blankets and in half an hour I was all right and ready for a
ferocious meal. "If there's a traveler on the prairie to-night, God
help him!" the host had said to his wife just before I came in.
I found Evans there, storm stayed, and that--to his great credit at the
time--my money matters were all right. After the sound and refreshing
sleep which one gets in this splendid climate, I was ready for an early
start, but, warned by yesterday's experience, waited till twelve to be
sure of the weather. The air was intensely clear, and the mercury
SEVENTEEN DEGREES BELOW ZERO! The snow sparkled and snapped under
one's feet. It was gloriously beautiful! In this climate, if you only
go out for a short time you do not feel cold even without a hat, or any
additional wrappings. I bought a cardigan for myself, however, and
some thick socks, got some stout snow-shoes for Birdie's hind feet, had
a pleasant talk with some English friends, did some commissions for the
men in the park, and hung about waiting for a freight train to break
the track, but eventually, inspirited by the good news from you, left
Longmount alone, and for the last time. I little thought that
miserable, broiling day on which I arrived at it with Dr. and Mrs.
Hughes, of the glories of which it was the gate, and of the "good
times" I should have. Now I am at home in it; every one in it and
along the St. Vrain Canyon addresses me in a friendly way by name; and
the newspapers, with their intolerable personality, have made me and my
riding exploits so notorious, that travelers speak courteously to me
when they meet me on the prairie, doubtless wishing to see what sort of
monster I am! I have met nothing but civility, both of manner and
speech, except that distraught pistol shot. It looked icily beautiful,
the snow so pure and the sky such a bright, sharp blue! The snow was
so deep and level that after a few miles I left the track, and steering
for Storm Peak, rode sixteen miles over the pathless prairie without
seeing man, bird, or beast--a solitude awful even in the bright
sunshine. The cold, always great, became piteous. I increased the
frostbite of yesterday by exposing my hand in mending the stirrup; and
when the sun sank in indescribable beauty behind the mountains, and
color rioted in the sky, I got off and walked the last four miles, and
stole in here in the colored twilight without any one seeing me.
The life of which I wrote before is scarcely less severe, though
lightened by a hope of change, and this weather brings out some special
severities. The stove has to be in the living-room, the children
cannot go out, and, good and delightful as they are, it is hard for
them to be shut up all day with four adults. It is more of a trouble
than you would think for a lady in precarious health that before each
meal, eggs, butter, milk, preserves, and pickles have to be unfrozen.
Unless they are kept on the stove, there is no part of the room in
which they do not freeze. It is uninteresting down here in the Foot
Hills. I long for the rushing winds, the piled-up peaks, the great
pines, the wild night noises, the poetry and the prose of the free,
jolly life of my unrivalled eyrie. I can hardly realize that the river
which lies ice bound outside this house is the same which flashes
through Estes Park, and which I saw snow born on Long's Peak.
Yesterday morning the mercury had disappeared, so it was 20 degrees
below zero at least. I lay awake from cold all night, but such is the
wonderful effect of the climate, that when I got up at half-past five
to waken the household for my early start, I felt quite refreshed. We
breakfasted on buffalo beef, and I left at eight to ride forty-five
miles before night, Dr. Hughes and a gentleman who was staying there
convoying me the first fifteen miles. I did like that ride, racing
with the other riders, careering through the intoxicating air in that
indescribable sunshine, the powdery snow spurned from the horses' feet
like dust! I was soon warm. We stopped at a trapper's ranch to feed,
and the old trapper amused me by seeming to think Estes Park almost
inaccessible in winter. The distance was greater than I had been told,
and he said that I could not get there before eleven at night, and not
at all if there was much drift. I wanted the gentlemen to go on with
me as far as the Devil's Gate, but they could not because their horses
were tired; and when the trapper heard that he exclaimed, indignantly,
"What! that woman going into the mountains alone? She'll lose the
track or be froze to death!" But when I told him I had ridden the
trail in the storm of Tuesday, and had ridden over 600 miles alone in
the mountains, he treated me with great respect as a fellow
mountaineer, and gave me some matches, saying, "You'll have to camp out
anyhow; you'd better make a fire than be froze to death." The idea of
my spending the night in the forest alone, by a fire, struck me as most
grotesque.
We did not start again till one, and the two gentlemen rode the first
two miles with me. On that track, the Little Thompson, there a full
stream, has to be crossed eighteen times, and they had been hauling
wood across it, breaking it, and it had broken and refrozen several
times, making thick and thin places--indeed, there were crossings which
even I thought bad, where the ice let us through, and it was hard for
the horses to struggle upon it again; and one of the gentlemen who,
though a most accomplished man, was not a horseman, was once or twice
in the ludicrous position of hesitating on the bank with an anxious
face, not daring to spur his horse upon the ice. After they left me I
had eight more crossings, and then a ride of six miles, before I
reached the old trail; but though there were several drifts up to the
saddle, and no one had broken a track, Birdie showed such a pluck, that
instead of spending the night by a camp-fire, or not getting in till
midnight, I reached Mr. Nugent's cabin, four miles from Estes Park,
only an hour after dark, very cold, and with the pony so tired that she
could hardly put one foot before another. Indeed, I walked the last
three miles. I saw light through the chinks but, hearing an earnest
conversation within, was just about to withdraw, when "Ring" barked,
and on his master coming to the door I found that the solitary man was
talking to his dog. He was looking out for me, and had some coffee
ready, and a large fire, which were very pleasant; and I was very glad
to get the latest news from the park. He said that Evans told him that
it would be most difficult for any one of them to take me down to the
Plains, but that he would go, which is a great relief. According to
the Scotch proverb, "Better a finger off than aye wagging," and as I
cannot live here (for you would not like the life or climate), the
sooner I leave the better.