A Whirl across the Rockies.
A long time ago--nearly a quarter of a century--California could boast a
literary weekly capable of holding its own with any in the land. This
was before San Francisco had begun to lose her unique and delightful
individuality--now gone forever. Among the contributors to this once
famous weekly were Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Prentice Mulford, Joaquin
Miller, Dan de Quille, Orpheus C. Kerr, C. H. Webb, "John Paul," Ada
Clare, Ada Isaacs Menken, Ina Coolbrith, and hosts of others. Fitz Hugh
Ludlow wrote for it a series of brilliant descriptive letters recounting
his adventures during a recent overland journey; they were afterward
incorporated in a volume--long out of print--entitled "The Heart of the
Continent."
In one of these letters Ludlow wrote as follows of the probable future
of Manitou: "When Colorado becomes a populous State, the springs of the
Fontaine-qui-Bouille will constitute its Spa. In air and scenery no more
glorious summer residence could be imagined. The Coloradian of the
future, astonishing the echoes of the rocky foothills by a railroad from
Denver to the springs, and running down on Saturday to stop over Sunday
with his family, will have little cause to envy us Easterners our
Saratoga as he paces up and down the piazza of the Spa hotel, mingling
his full-flavored Havana with that lovely air, unbreathed before, which
is floating down upon him from the snow peaks of the range." His
prophecy has become true in every particular. But what would he have
thought had he threaded the tortuous path now marked by glistening
railway tracks? What would he have said of the Grand Canon of the
Arkansas, the Black Canon of the Gunnison, Castle Canon and Marshall
Pass over the crest of the continent?
I suppose a narrow-gauge road can go anywhere. It trails along the slope
of shelving hills like a wild vine; it slides through gopher-hole
tunnels as a thread slides through the eye of a needle; it utilizes
water-courses; it turns ridiculously sharp corners in a style calculated
to remind one of the days when he played "snap-the-whip" and happened
to be the snapper himself. This is especially the case if one is sitting
on the rear platform of the last car. We shot a canon by daylight, and
marvelled at the glazed surface of the red rock with never so much as a
scratch over it. On the one hand we nearly scraped the abrupt
perpendicular wall that towered hundreds of feet above us; on the other,
a swift, muddy torrent sprang at our stone-bedded sleepers as if to
snatch them away; while it flooded the canon to the opposite wall, that
did not seem more that a few yards distant. The stream was swollen, and
went howling down the ravine full of sound and fury--which in this case,
however, signified a good deal.
Once we stopped and took an observation, for the track was under water;
then we waded cautiously to the mainland, across the sunken section, and
thanked our stars that we were not boycotted by the elements at that
inhospitable point. Once we paused for a few minutes to contemplate the
total wreck of a palace car that had recently struck a projecting
bowlder--and spattered.
The camps along the track are just such as may be looked for in the
waste places of the earth--temporary shelter for wayfarers whose homes
are under their hats. The thin stream of civilization that trickles off
into the wilderness, following the iron track, makes puddles now and
again. Some of these dwindle away soon enough--or perhaps not quite soon
enough; some of them increase and become permanent and beautiful.
Night found us in the Black Canon of the Gunnison. Could any time be
more appropriate? Clouds rolled over us in dense masses, and at
intervals the moon flashed upon us like a dark lantern. Could anything
be more picturesque? We knew that much of the darkness, the blackness of
darkness, was adamantine rock; some of it an inky flood--a veritable
river of death--rolling close beneath us, but quite invisible most of
the time; and the night itself a profound mystery, through which we
burned an endless tunnel--like a firebrand hurled into space.
Now and again the heavens opened, and then we saw the moon soaring among
the monumental peaks; but the heights were so cloudlike and the cloud
masses so solid we could not for the life of us be certain of the nature
of either. There were canons like huge quarries, and canons like rocky
mazes, where we seemed to have rushed headlong into a _cul de sac_, and
were in danger of dashing our brains out against the mighty walls that
loomed before us. There was many a winding stream which we took at a
single bound, and occasionally an oasis, green and flowery; but, oh, so
few habitations and so few spots that one would really care to inhabit!
Marshall Pass does very well for once; it is an experience and a
novelty--what else is there in life to make it livable save a new
experience or the hope of one? Such a getting up hill as precedes the
rest at the summit! We stopped for breath while the locomotive puffed
and panted as if it would burst its brass-bound lungs; then we began to
climb again, and to wheeze, fret and fume; and it seemed as if we
actually went down on hands and knees and crept a bit when the grade
became steeper than usual. Only think of it a moment--an incline of two
hundred and twenty feet to the mile in some places, and the track
climbing over itself at frequent intervals. Far below us we saw the
terraces we had passed long before; far above us lay the great land we
were so slowly and so painfully approaching. At last we reached the
summit, ten thousand eight hundred and twenty feet above sea level--a
God-forsaken district, bristling with dead trees, and with hardly air
enough to go around.
We stopped in a long shed--built to keep off the sky, I suppose.
Gallants prospected for flowers and grass-blades, and received the
profuse thanks of the fair in exchange for them. Then we glided down
into the snow lands that lay beyond--filled with a delicious sense of
relief, for a fellow never feels so mean or so small a pigmy as when
perched on an Alpine height.
More canons followed, and no two alike; then came plain after plain,
with buttes outlined in the distance; more plains, with nothing but
their own excessive plainness to boast of. We soon grew vastly weary;
for most plains are, after all, mere platitudes. And then Salt Lake
City, the Mormon capital, with its lake shimmering like a mirage in the
great glow of the valley; and a run due north through the well-tilled
lands of the thrifty "saints," getting our best wayside meals at
stations where buxom Mormon women served us heartily; still north and
west, flying night and day out of the insufferable summer dust that
makes ovens of those midland valleys. There was a rich, bracing air far
north, and grand forests of spicy pine, and such a Columbia river-shore
to follow as is worth a week's travel merely to get one glimpse of; and
at last Portland, the prettiest of Pacific cities, and heaps of friends
to greet me there.
Bright days were to follow, as you shall soon see; for I was still bound
northward, with no will to rest until I had plowed the floating fields
of ice and dozed through the pale hours of an arctic summer under the
midnight sun.