About this time Virginia City was visited one day by a heavy rain storm
accompanied with thunder. But as the sun was disappearing behind Mount
Davidson, the clouds broke and rolled away from the west, while at the
same time a faint rainbow appeared in the East, making one of those
beautiful spectacles common to mountainous regions.
At the same time the flag on Mount Davidson caught the beams from the
setting sun and stood out a banner of fire. This, too, is not an
unfrequent spectacle in Virginia City, and long ago inspired a most
gifted lady to write a very beautiful poem, "The Flag on Fire."
The storm and the sunset turned the minds of the Club to other beautiful
displays of nature which they had seen. Said Miller, "I never saw
anything finer than a sunset which I witnessed once at sea down off the
Mexican coast.
"We were in a tub of a steamship, the old "Jonathan." We had been in a
storm for four days, three of which the steamer had been thrown up into
the wind, the machinery working slowly, just sufficient to keep
steerageway on the ship.
"There were 600 passengers on board, with an unusual number of women and
children, and we had been miserable past expression. But at last, with
the coming of the dawn, the wind ceased; as soon as the waves ran down
so that it was safe to swing the ship, she was turned about and put upon
her course.
"In a few hours the sea grew comparatively smooth, and the passengers by
hundreds sought the deck.
"All the afternoon the Mexican coast was in full view, blue and
rock-bound and not many miles away.
"Just before the sun set its bended rays struck those blue head-lands
and transfigured them. They took on the forms of walls and battlements
and shone like a city of gold rising out of the sea in the crimson East,
and looked as perhaps the swinging gardens of Semiramis did from within
the walls of Babylon. In the West the disc of the sun, unnaturally
large, blazed in insufferable splendor, while in glory this seeming city
shone in the East. Between the two pictures the ship was plunging on her
course and we could feel the pulses of the deep sea as they throbbed
beneath us. The multitude upon the deck hardly made a sound; all that
broke the stillness was the heavy respirations of the engines and the
beating of the paddles upon the water. The spell lasted but a few
minutes, for when the sun plunged beneath the sea, the darkness all at
once began as is common in those latitudes, but while it lasted it was
sublime.
"Speaking of Nature's pictures, in my judgment about the most impressive
sight that is made in this world, is a storm at sea. I mean a real storm
in which a three thousand ton ship is tossed about like a cork, when the
roar of the storm makes human voices of no avail, and when the billows
give notice that 'deep is answering unto deep.'
"When a boy I often went down under the overhanging rock over which the
current of Niagara pours. As I listened to the roar and tried to compute
the energy which had kept those thunders booming for, heaven only knows
how many thousands of years, it used to make me feel small enough; but
it never influenced me as does an ocean storm. When all the world that
is in sight goes into the business of making Niagaras, and turns out a
hundred of them every minute, I tell you about all an ordinary landsman
can do is to sit still and watch the display.
"A real ocean storm--a shore shaker--is about the biggest free show that
this world has yet invented."
Corrigan spoke next; said he: "Spakin' of storms, did you iver watch the
phenomenon of a ragin' snow storm high up in the Sierras? When it is
approaching there is a roar in the forest such as comes up a headland
when the sea is bating upon its base. This will last for hours, the
pines rocking like auld women at a wake, and thin comes the snow. Its no
quiet, respectable snow such as you see in civilized countries, but it
just piles down as though a new glacial period had descinded upon the
worreld. As it falls all the voices of the smaller streams grow still
and the wind itself grows muffled as though it had a could in the head.
The trees up there are no shrubs you know. They grow three hundred feet
high and have branches in proportion, and whin they git to roarin' and
rockin', it is as though all the armies of the mountains were presentin'
arms.
"When the storm dies away, thin it is you see a picture, if the weather
is not too cold. The snow masses itself upon the branches, and thin you
stand in a temple miles in extent, the floor of which is white like
alabaster while the columns that support it are wrought in a lace-work
of emerald and of frost more lofty and dilicate than iver was traced out
by the patient hand of mortal in grand cathadrals."
Here Carlin interrupted.
"Say, Barney, is there not a great deal of frieze to one of those Sierra
temples?"
"It might same so, lookin' from the standpoint of the nave," was
Barney's quick reply.
Groans followed this outbreak, from various members of the Club. They
were the first puns that had been fired into that peaceful company and
they were hailed as omens of approaching trouble.
The gentle voice of Brewster next broke the silence.
"I saw," he said, "in Salt Lake City, three years ago on a summer
evening, a sunset scene which I thought was very beautiful. The electric
conditions had been strangely disturbed for several days; there had been
clouds and a good deal of thunder and lightning. You know Salt Lake City
lies at the western base of the Wasatch range. On this day toward
evening the sky to the west had grown of a sapphire clearness, but in
the east beyond the first high hills of the range a great electric storm
was raging. The clouds of inky blackness which shrouded the more distant
heights, and through which the lightnings were incessantly zigzaging,
were in full view from the city, though the thunders were caught and
tied in the deep caverns of the intervening hills. To the southeast the
range with its imposing peaks was snow-crowned and under a clear sky. In
the southwest the Oquirrh range was blue and beautiful. Just then from
beyond the great lake the setting sun threw out his shafts of fire, and
the whole firmament turned to glory. The sun blazed from beyond the
waters in the west, the lightnings blazed beyond the nearer hills in the
east, the snowy heights in the southeast were turned to purple, while in
the city every spire, every pane of glass which faced the west, every
speck of metal on house and temple in a moment grew radiant as burnished
gold, and there was a shimmer of splendor in all the air. Then suddenly
over the great range to the east and apparently against the black clouds
in which the lightnings were blazing the glorious arch of a magnificent
rainbow was upreared. All the colors were deep-dyed and perfectly
distinct. There was neither break nor dimness in all the mighty arch.
There it stood, poised in indescribable splendor for quite five minutes.
So wonderful was the display that houses were deserted: men and women
came out into the open air and watched the spectacle in silence and with
uncovered heads.
"No one stopped to think that the glory which shone on high was made
merely by sunlight shining through falling water; the cold explanation
made by science was forgotten, and hundreds of eyes furtively watched,
half expecting to catch glimpses of a divine hand and brush, for the
pictures were rare enough to be the perfect work of celestial beings
sent to sketch for mortals a splendor which should kindle within them
dim conceptions of the glories which fill the spheres where light is
born.
"Salt Lake City is famous for its sunsets, but to this one was added new
and unusual enchantments by the storm which was wheeling its sable
squadrons in the adjacent mountains.
"As I watched that display I realized for the first time how it was that
before books were made men learned to be devout and to pray; for the
picture was as I fancy Sinai must have appeared, when all the elements
combined to make a spectacle to awe the multitude before the mountain;
and when they were told that the terrible cloud on the mountain's crest
was the robe which the infinite God had drawn around Himself in mercy,
lest at a glimpse of His unapproachable brightness they should perish,
it was not strange if they believed it."
It was not often that Brewster talked, but when he did there was about
him a grave and earnest manner which impressed all who heard him with
the perfect sincerity of the man.
After he ceased speaking the room was still for several seconds. At
length the Colonel broke the silence:
"Brewster, you spoke of Sinai. What think you of that story; of the Red
Sea affair; of the Sinai incident, and the golden calf business?"
"Believed literally," Brewster continued, "it is the most impressive of
earthly literature; looked upon allegorically, still it is sublime. Its
lesson is, that when in bondage to sorrow and to care, if we but bravely
and patiently struggle on, the sea of trouble around us will at length
roll back its waves into walls and leave for us a path. Unless we keep
straining onward and upward, no voice of Hope, which is the voice of
God, will descend to comfort us. If we are thirsty we must smite the
rock for water; that is, for what we have we must work, and if we cease
our struggle and go into camp, we not only will not hold our own, but in
a little while we will be bestowing our jewels upon some idol of our own
creation. If we toil and never falter, before we die we shall climb
Pisgah and behold the Promised Land; that is, we shall be disciplined
until we can look every fate calmly in the face and turn a smiling brow
to the inevitable.
"I found a man once, living upon almost nothing, in a hut that had not
one comfort. He had graded out a sharp hillside, set some rude poles up
against the bank, covered them with brush, and in that den on a bleak
mountain's crest he had lived through a rough winter. I asked him how he
managed to exist without becoming an idiot or a lunatic. His answer was
worthy of an old Roman. 'Because,' said he, 'I at last am superior to
distress.'
"He had reached the point that Moses reached when he gained the last
mountain crest. After that the Promised Land was forever in sight."
"Suppose," asked Savage, "you buy stocks when they are high and sell
them, or have them sold for you, when they are low, where does the
Promised Land come in?"
"What becomes of the 'superior to distress' theory," asked Carlin, "when
a man in his fight against fate gets along just as the men do in the
Bullion shaft, finding nothing but barren rock, and all the time the air
grows hotter and there is more and more hot water?"
"Oh, bother the stocks and the hot water," said Strong. "Professor, we
have heard about the Wasatch Range and Mount Sinai, shake up your memory
and tell us about old Mount Shasta! I heard you describe it once. It is
a grand mountain, is it not?"
"The grandest in America, so far as I have seen," was the reply. "It is
said that Whitney is higher, but Whitney has for its base the Sierras,
and the peaks around it dwarf its own tremendous height. But Shasta
rises from the plain a single mountain, and while all the year around
the lambs gambol at its base, its crown is eternal snow. Men of the
North tell me that it is rivaled by Tacoma, but I never saw Tacoma. In
the hot summer days as the farmers at Shasta's base gather their
harvests, they can see where the wild wind is heaping the snow drifts
about his crest. The mountain is one of Winter's stations, and from his
forts of snow upon its top he never withdraws his garrison. There are
the bastions of ice, the frosty battlements; there his old bugler, the
wind, is daily sounding the advance and the retreat of the storm. The
mountain holds all latitudes and all seasons at the same time in its
grasp. Flowers bloom at its base, further up the forest trees wave their
ample arms; further still the brown of autumn is upon the slopes and
over all hangs the white mantle of eternal winter.
"Standing close to its base, the human mind fails to grasp the immensity
of the butte. But as one from a distance looks back upon it, or from
some height twenty miles away views it, he discovers how magnificent are
its proportions.
"For days will the mountain fold the mist about its crest like a vail
and remain hidden from mortal sight, and then suddenly as if in
deference to a rising or setting sun, the vapors will be rolled back and
the watcher in the valley below will behold gems of topaz and of ruby
made of sunbeams, set in the diadem of white, and towards the sentinel
mountain, from a hundred miles around, men will turn their eyes in
admiration. In its presence one feels the near presence of God, and as
before Babel the tongues of the people became confused, so before this
infinitely more august tower man's littleness oppresses him, and he can
no more give fitting expression to his thoughts.
"It frowns and smiles alternately through the years; it hails the
outgoing and the incoming centuries, changeless amid the mutations of
ages, forever austere, forever cold and pure. The mountain eagle strains
hopelessly toward its crest; the storms and the sunbeams beat upon it in
vain; the rolling years cannot inscribe their numbers on its naked
breast.
"Of all the mountains that I have seen it has the most sovereign look;
it leans on no other height; it associates with no other mountain; it
builds its own pedestal in the valley and never doffs its icy crown.
"The savage in the long ago, with awe and trembling, strained his eyes
to the height and his clouded imagination pictured it as the throne of a
Deity who issued the snow, the hoar frost and the wild winds from their
brewing place on the mountain's top.
"The white man, with equal awe, strains his eye upward to where the
sunlight points with ruby silver and gold the mimic glaciers of the
butte, and is not much wiser than the unlettered savage in trying to
comprehend how and why the mighty mass was upreared.
"It is a blessing as well as a splendor. With its cold it seizes the
clouds and compresses them until their contents are rained upon the
thirsty fields beneath; from its base the Sacramento starts, babbling on
its way to the sea; despite its frowns it is a merciful agent to
mankind, and on the minds of those who see it in all its splendor and
power a picture is painted, the sheen and the enchantment of which will
linger while memory and the gift to admire magnificence is left."
"That is good, Professor," said Corrigan; "but to me there is
insupportable loneliness about an isolated mountain. It sames always to
me like a gravestone set up above the grave of a dead worreld. But
spakin' of beautiful things, did yees iver sae Lake Tahoe in her glory?
"I was up there last fall, and one day, in anticipation of the winter, I
suppose, she wint to her wardrobe, took out all her winter white caps
and tied them on; and she was a daisy.
"Her natural face is bluer than that of a stock sharp in a falling
market; but whin the wind 'comes a wooin' and she dons her foamy lace,
powders her face with spray and fastens upon her swellin' breast a
thousand diamonds of sunlight, O, but she is a winsome looking beauty,
to be sure. Thin, too, she sings her old sintimintal song to her shores,
and the great overhanging pines sway their mighty arms as though keeping
time, joining with hers their deep murmurs to make a refrain; and thus
the lake sings to the shore and the shore answers back to the song all
the day long. Tahoe, in her frame of blue and grane, is a fairer picture
than iver glittered on cathadral wall; older, fairer and fresher than
ancient master iver painted tints immortal upon. There in the strong
arms of the mountains it is rocked, and whin the winds ruffle the azure
plumage of the beautiful wathers, upon wather and upon shore a splendor
rists such as might come were an angel to descend to earth and sketch
for mortals a sane from Summer Land."
"You are right, Corrigan," said Ashley. "If the thirst for money does
not denude the shores of their trees, and thus spoil the frame of your
wonderful picture, Lake Tahoe will be a growing object of interest until
its fame will be as wide as the world.
"But while on grand themes, have you ever seen the Columbia River? To me
it is the glory of the earth. It is a great river fourteen hundred miles
above its mouth, and from thence on it rolls to the sea with increasing
grandeur all the way. Where it hews its way through the Cascades a new
and gorgeous picture is every moment painted, and when the mountain
walls are pierced, with perfect purity and with mighty volume it sweeps
on toward the ocean. It is, through its last one hundred and fifty
miles, watched over by great forests and magnificent mountains. There
are Hood and St. Helens and the rest, and where, upon the furious bar,
the river joins the sea, there is an everlasting war of waters as
beautiful as it is terrible.
"It makes a man a better American to go up the Columbia to the Cascades
and look about him. He is not only impressed with the majesty of the
scene, but thoughts of empire, of dominion and of the glory of the land
over which his country's flag bears sovereignty, take possession of him.
He looks down upon the rolling river and up at Mount Hood, and to both
he whispers, 'We are in accord; I have an interest in you,' and the
great pines nod approvingly, and the waterfalls babble more loud.
"The Mississippi has greater volume than the Oregon, the Hudson makes
rival pictures which perhaps are as beautiful as any painted in the
Cascades; but there is a power, a beauty, a purity and a wildness about
the river of the West which is all its own and which is unapproachable
in its charms.
"More than that. To me the river is the emblem of a perfect life.
Through all the morning of its career it fights its way, blazing an
azure trail through the desert. There is no green upon its banks, hardly
does a bird sing as it struggles on. But it bears right on, and so
austere is its face that the desert is impotent to soil it. Then it
meets a rocky wall and breaks through it, roaring on its way. Then it
takes the Willamette to its own ample breast, and it bears it on until
it meets the inevitable, and then undaunted goes down to its grave.
"It fights its way, it bears its burdens, it remains pure and brave to
the last. That is all the best man that ever lived could do."
As Ashley concluded Strong said: "Why, Ashley! that is good. Why do you
not give up mining and devote yourself to writing?"
Ashley laughed low, and said: "Because I have had what repentant sinners
are said to have had, my experience. Let me tell you about it.
"It was in Belmont in Eastern Nevada, during that winter when the small
pox was bad. It took an epidemic form in Belmont, and a good many died.
"Among the victims was Harlow Reed. Harlow was a young and handsome
fellow, a generous, happy-hearted fellow, too, and when he was stricken
down, a 'soiled dove,' hearing of his illness, went and watched over him
until he died.
"The morning after his death, Billy S. came to me, and handing me a slip
of paper on which was Reed's name, age, etc., asked me to prepare a
notice for publication. I fixed it as nearly as I could, as I had seen
such things in newspapers. It read:
DIED--In Belmont, Dec. 17, Harlow Reed, a native of New Jersey
aged twenty-three years.
"Billie glanced at the paper and then said: 'Harlow was a good fellow
and a good friend of ours, can you not add something to this notice?'
"In response I sat down and wrote a brief eulogy of the boy, and closed
the article in these words:
And for her, the poor woman, who braving the dangers of the
pestilence, went and sat at the feet of the man she loved,
until he died; for her, though before her garments were soiled,
we know that this morning, in the Recording Angel's book it is
written "her robes are white as snow."
"Billie took the paper to the publisher, and as he went away, I had a
secret thought that, all things being considered, the notice was not
bad.
"Next morning I went into a restaurant for breakfast and took a seat at
a small table on one side of the narrow room. Directly opposite me were
two short-card sharps. One was eating his breakfast, while the other,
leaning back to catch the light, was reading the morning paper. Suddenly
he stopped, and peering over his paper, though with chair still tilted
back, said to his companion: 'Did you see this notice about that woman
who took care of Harlow Reed while he was sick?'
"'No,' was the reply. 'What is it?' asked the companion.
"'It's away up,' said the first speaker. 'But what is it?' asked the
other.
"The first speaker then threw down the paper, leaned forward, and,
seizing his knife and fork, said shortly:
"'Oh, it's no great shakes after all. It says the woman while taking
care of Harlow got her clothes dirty, but after he died she changed her
clothes and she's all right now.'
"Since then I have never thought that I had better undertake a literary
career so long as I could get four honest dollars a day for swinging a
hammer in a mine; but I have always been about half sorry that I did not
kill that fellow, notwithstanding the lesson that he taught me."
There was a hearty laugh at Ashley's expense, and then Strong roused
himself and said:
"The Columbia is very grand, but you must follow it up to its chief
tributary if you would find perfect glory--follow it into the very
desert. You have heard of the lava beds of Idaho. They were once a river
of molten fire from 300 feet to 900 feet in depth, which burned its way
through the desert for hundreds of miles. To the east of the source of
this lava flow, the Snake River bursts out of the hills, becoming almost
at once a sovereign river, and flowing at first south-westerly, and then
bending westerly, cuts its way through this lava bed, and, continuing
its way with many bends, finally, far to the north merges with the
Columbia. On this river are several falls. First, the American Falls,
are very beautiful. Sixty miles below are the Twin Falls, where the
river, divided into two nearly equal parts, falls one hundred and eighty
feet. They are magnificent. Three miles below are the Shoshone Falls,
and a few miles lower down the Salmon Falls. It was of the Shoshone
Falls that I began to speak.
"They are real rivals of Niagara. Never anywhere else was there such a
scene; never anywhere else was so beautiful a picture hung in so rude a
frame; never anywhere else on a background so forbidding and weird were
so many glories clustered.
"Around and beyond there is nothing but the desert, sere, silent,
lifeless, as though Desolation had builded there everlasting thrones to
Sorrow and Despair.
"Away back in remote ages, over the withered breast of the desert, a
river of fire one hundred miles wide and four hundred miles long, was
turned. As the fiery mass cooled, its red waves became transfixed and
turned black, giving to the double desert an indescribably blasted and
forbidding face.
"But while this river of fire was in flow, a river of water was fighting
its way across it, or has since made the war and forged out for itself a
channel through the mass. This channel looks like the grave of a volcano
that has been robbed of its dead.
"But right between its crumbling and repellant walls a transfiguration
appears. And such a picture! A river as lordly as the Hudson or the
Ohio, springing from the distant snow-crested Tetons, with waters
transparent as glass, but green as emerald, with majestic flow and
ever-increasing volume, sweeps on until it reaches this point where the
august display begins.
"Suddenly, in different places in the river bed, jagged, rocky reefs are
upraised, dividing the current into four rivers, and these, in a mighty
plunge of eighty feet downward, dash on their way. Of course, the waters
are churned into foam and roll over the precipice white as are the
garments of the morning when no cloud obscures the sun. The loveliest of
these falls is called "The Bridal Veil," because it is made of the lace
which is woven with a warp of falling waters and a woof of sunlight.
Above this and near the right bank is a long trail of foam, and this is
called "The Bridal Train." The other channels are not so fair as the one
called "The Bridal Veil," but they are more fierce and wild, and carry
in their furious sweep more power.
"One of the reefs which divides the river in mid-channel runs up to a
peak, and on this a family of eagles have, through the years, may be
through the centuries, made their home and reared their young, on the
very verge of the abyss and amid the full echoes of the resounding boom
of the falls. Surely the eagle is a fitting symbol of perfect
fearlessness and of that exultation which comes with battle clamors.
"But these first falls are but a beginning. The greater splendor
succeeds. With swifter flow the startled waters dash on and within a few
feet take their second plunge in a solid crescent, over a sheer
precipice, two hundred and ten feet to the abyss below. On the brink
there is a rolling crest of white, dotted here and there, in sharp
contrast, with shining eddies of green, as might a necklace of emerald
shimmer on a throat of snow, and then the leap and fall.
"Here more than foam is made. Here the waters are shivered into fleecy
spray, whiter and finer than any miracle that ever fell from India loom,
while from the depths below an everlasting vapor rises--the incense of
the waters to the water's God. Finally, through the long, unclouded
days, the sun sends down his beams, and to give the startling scene its
crowning splendor, wreaths the terror and the glory in a rainbow halo.
On either sullen bank the extremities of its arc are anchored, and there
in its many-colored robes of light it stands outstretched above the
abyss like wreaths of flowers above a sepulcher. Up through the glory
and the terror an everlasting roar ascends, deep-toned as is the voice
of Fate, a diapason like that the rolling ocean chants when his eager
surges come rushing in to greet and fiercely woo an irresponsive
promontory.
"But to feel all the awe and to mark all the splendor and power that
comes of the mighty display, one must climb down the steep descent to
the river's brink below, and, pressing up as nearly as possible to the
falls, contemplate the tremendous picture. There something of the energy
that creates that endless panorama is comprehended; all the deep
throbbings of the mighty river's pulses are felt; all the magnificence
is seen.
"In the reverberations that come of the war of waters one hears
something like God's voice; something like the splendor of God is before
his eyes; something akin to God's power is manifesting itself before
him, and his soul shrinks within itself, conscious as never before of
its own littleness and helplessness in the presence of the workings of
Nature's immeasurable forces.
"Not quite so massive is the picture as is Niagara, but it has more
lights and shades and loveliness, as though a hand more divinely skilled
had mixed the tints, and with more delicate art had transfixed them upon
that picture suspended there in its rugged and sombre frame.
"As one watches it is not difficult to fancy that away back in the
immemorial and unrecorded past, the Angel of Love bewailed the fact that
mortals were to be given existence in a spot so forbidding, a spot that
apparently was never to be warmed with God's smile, which was never to
make a sign through which God's mercy was to be discerned; that then
Omnipotence was touched, that with His hand He smote the hills and
started the great river in its flow; that with His finger He traced out
the channel across the corpse of that other river that had been fire,
mingled the sunbeams with the raging waters and made it possible in that
fire-blasted frame of scoria to swing a picture which should be, first
to the red man and later to the pale races, a certain sign of the
existence, the power and the unapproachable splendor of the Great First
Cause.
"And as the red man through the centuries watched the spectacle,
comprehending nothing except that an infinite voice was smiting his
ears, and insufferable glories were blazing before his eyes; so through
the centuries to come the pale races will stand upon the shuddering
shore and watch, experiencing a mighty impulse to put off the sandals
from their feet, under an overmastering consciousness that the spot on
which they are standing is holy ground.
"There is nothing elsewhere like it; nothing half so weird, so wild, so
beautiful, so clothed in majesty, so draped with terror; nothing else
that awakens impressions at once so startling, so winsome, so profound.
While journeying through the desert to come suddenly upon it, the
spectacle gives one something of the emotions that would be experienced
to behold a resurrection from the dead. In the midst of what seems like
a dead world, suddenly there springs into irrepressible life something
so marvelous, so grand, so caparisoned with loveliness and irresistible
might, that the head is bowed, the strained heart throbs tumultuously
and the awed soul sinks to its knees."
The whistles had sounded while Strong was speaking, and as he finished
the good nights were spoken and the lights put out.