claims of the steel works and the smelter to their great and beneficent
influence upon the destiny of the new town, puts forward its own claim
to the credit of commencing the progressive movement. When, by the
extensions of the railway into the back country of Colorado, merchants
began to perceive that at Pueblo they could buy goods of precisely such
grades as they desired a trifle more cheaply, and get them home a trifle
more expeditiously, than by going to Denver or Kansas City, Pueblo began
to feel the impulse of new commercial vigor. When it came to reckoning
upon a whole year's purchases, the slight advantage gained in freight
over Denver, to all southern and middle interior points, amounted to a
very considerable sum. Here, far more than in the Eastern States, the
freight charges must be taken into account by the country merchant;
particularly in the provision business, where the staples are the
heaviest articles, as a rule, and, at the same time, those on which the
least profit accrues. This consideration, impressing itself more and
more upon the good judgment of the mountain dealers, is bringing a
larger and larger trade to Pueblo, until now she is beginning to boast
herself mistress of all southern and middle Colorado and of northern New
Mexico. She can not hope to compete with Denver for the northern half of
the State, but she does not intend to lose her grip upon the great,
rapidly-developing, money-producing San Juan, Gunnison and Rio Grande
regions. And as the visitor sees the railway yards crowded with loaded
freight trains destined for every point of the compass; notes the throng
of laden carts in the furrowed streets; observes how every warehouse is
plethoric with constantly changing merchandise, often stacked on the
curbstone under the cover of a canvas sheet because room within doors
can not be found; witnesses the temporary nature of so many scores of
buildings for business and for domiciles, and learns how most of their
owners are putting up permanent houses, multitudes of which are rising
substantially on every side;--when he has caught the meaning of all
this, he finds that Pueblo has an idea that her opportunities are great,
and that she does not propose to neglect them in the least particular.
There is much wealth there now, and more is being introduced by Eastern
investors, or accumulated on the spot, not only in trade, but in the
very extensive herds of cattle and sheep that center there. Yet this
seems to be but the incipience of her prosperity,--a prosperity which
rests on solid foundations, existing not alone in the industries I have
catalogued and the trade which has centered there, but in the fact that
values are not inflated and that the real property of the city is
mortgaged to a remarkably small degree.
Pueblo, though I have treated it as a unit, really consists of two
cities, having the rushing flood of the Arkansas between them. Each has
water-works, and civic institutions separately, but I have no doubt this
cumbersome duality will be done away with in time. It is on the South
Pueblo side that the railways center at the Union Depot. The Atchison,
Topeka and Santa Fe sends hither daily its trains from Kansas City, and
hence the Denver and Rio Grande forwards its passengers northward to
Denver, westward to Silver Cliff, Leadville, Salt Lake City and Ogden,
and southward to El Moro, Alamosa, Del Norte, Durango, Silverton and
Santa Fe. It is on this side, also, that the factories are, and that
others will stand. Here, too, are being placed the great wholesale
depots.
There is too much rush and dust and building and general chaos in the
lowlands, where the business part of the town is to make a residence
there as pleasant as it will be a few years later; but upon the high
mesa, Whose rounded bluffs of gravel form the first break upon the shore
of the great plains that extend thence in uninterrupted level to the
Missouri River, a young city has grown up, which is admirable as a place
for a home. Here are long, straight, well-shaded streets of elegant
houses; here are churches and school buildings and all the pleasant
appurtenances of a fine town, overlooking the city, the wooded valley of
the Arkansas, the busy railway junctions, and the measureless plateaus
beyond. One gets a new idea of the possibilities of a delightful home in
Pueblo after he has walked upon these surprising highlands.
Nowhere, either, will you get a more inspiring mountain landscape--the
far scintillations of the Sangre de Cristo; the twin breasts of
Wahatoya; the glittering, notched line and clustering foothills of the
Sierra Mojada; the great gates that admit to the upper Arkansas; and
Pike's "shining mountain," surrounded by its ermined courtiers, only a
little less in majesty than their prince.
V
OVER THE SANGRE DE CRISTO.
RALEIGH: Fain would I climb.
But that I fear to fall,
ELIZABETH: If thy heart fail thee,
Why, then, climb at all?
Toward the middle of one bright afternoon we were pulled out of Pueblo,
our three cars having been attached to the regular south-bound express.
We had fully discussed the matter, and determined to go on to the end of
the track, or, more literally, to _one_ end--for there are many termini
to this wide-branching system--on to the warm old plazitas and dreamily
pleasant pueblos of New Mexico. Why not?
But so inconsequential and careless an "outfit" was this, that no sooner
had our minds been fairly settled to the plan (while the shadow of the
Greenhorn came creeping out toward Cuchara and we were heading straight
into its gloom) than somebody proposed our spending the night quietly in
Veta Pass.
This mountain pass and its "Muleshoe," dwarfing in interest the
celebrated "Horseshoe curve" in Pennsylvania, because occupying far
less space, just as the foot of a mule may be set within a horse's
track--these have been famous ever since railroading in southern
Colorado began, and naturally we did not like to go past them in the
darkness. We wanted to see how the track was laid away around the head
of the long ravine, whether it doubled upon itself in as close a loop as
they said it did; and whether the train really climbed through the
clouds about the brow of Dump Mountain, as the pictures represented. So
we told the conductor to drop us.
It was dark by the time we had been left in good shape on the
terrace-like siding in Veta Pass, and, weary with our swift run, we were
quite ready to shut out the gathering shades and be merry over our
dinner; but first, all eyes must watch the departing express begin its
climb up Dump Mountain. Think of swinging a train round a curve of only
thirty degrees, on a very stiff grade, and with a bridge directly in the
center of the turn! That is what this audacious railway does every few
hours in the "toe" of the Muleshoe. From our lonely night-gripped dot
of a house on the wild hill side, we could see squarely facing us both
the Cyclopean blaze of the fierce headlight, and the two watchful red
eyes glaring scornfully from the rear platform; by that we knew that the
train had doubled on its own length of only six cars. Then, with hoarse
panting and grinding of tortured wheels and rails, the two powerful
locomotives began to force their way up the hill side right opposite us,
the slanting line of bright windows showing how amazingly steep a grade
of two hundred and seventeen feet to the mile really is. The beam of the
headlight thrust itself forward, not level, as is its wont, but aimed at
a planet that glimmered just above a distant ghostly peak.
"Do you remember," murmurs the Madame in a low voice, as she stands with
bated breath beside me; "do you remember how Thoreau advises one of his
friends to 'hitch his chariot to a star'? Doesn't this scene come near
his splendid ambition? Will that train stop short of the sky, do you
think?"
Surely it seemed that it would not, for only when the stokers opened the
doors of the laboring furnaces, and volumes of red light suddenly
illumined the overhanging masses of smoke, touching into strange
prominence for an instant the rocks and trees beside the engines, could
we see that the train stood upon anything solid, or was moving otherwise
than as a slow meteor passes athwart the midnight sky. It was easy to
imagine that long line of uncanny lights a fiery motto emblazoned upon
the side of the dark mountain, and to read in it, _Per aspera ad astra_.
Yet the scene was far from fanciful. It was very real, and a fine sight
for a man interested in mechanical progress, to watch those great
machines walk up that hill, spouting two geysers of smoke and sparks,
and dragging the ponderous train slowly but steadily along its upward
course. Now and again they would be lost behind the fringe of woods
through which the track passed, and then we would see the cone-like,
rugged spruces sharply outlined against the luminous volumes of smoke. A
moment later and the train disappeared around Dump Mountain, with a
sardonic wink of the red guard-lights at the last; but presently we had
knowledge of it again, for a fountain of sparks and black smoke from the
engines blotted out the scintillating sky just above the highest crest
of the ridge.
"Suppose it had broken in two on that hill-side," remarks the Artist, as
I am carving the roast, five minutes later.
"It wouldn't have mattered," is the reply. "I once saw a heavier train
than that break on this very mountain, the three rear coaches parting
company with the forward portion of the train."
"But wasn't that criminal carelessness?" cries the Madame, who is death
on inattention to railway duties. I should hate to be a neglectful
brakeman before her gray eyes as judge!
"Not at all," she is informed. "The cars were properly coupled with
what, for all any one could see, was a sufficiently strong link, but the
strain proved too great for the tenacity of the iron."
"Well, I suppose they went down the track a-flying, or else over the
precipice."
"Not a bit of it. The two parts of the train stopped not more than
twenty feet apart. When the accident occurred the engineer knew it
instantly by the jerking of the bell-rope, and stopped short. As for the
rear cars, they were brought to a standstill at once by means of the
automatic brakes. I tell you they are a great institution, and
indispensable to success on any road which has heavy grades to
overcome."
"How do they operate?"
"Well, it is the Westinghouse patent and rather complicated. Better go
out to-morrow and see the apparatus on the engine. It works somewhat in
this manner: When the valve on the retort under each car is set in a
particular way, the letting off of the 'straight' or ordinary air-brakes
causes the compression of an exceedingly powerful spring on each set of
brakes. If, however, you destroy the equilibrium by forcibly parting the
air connection between that car and the locomotive, as of course occurs
when a train breaks in two, the great springs are released and jam the
brake-shoes hard against the wheels, gripping them with tremendous
force. That's what happened instantly in this case, and those heavy
cars, which otherwise would have carried their cargoes to almost certain
destruction, halted in a single second."
[Illustration: ALABASTER HALL.]
"But--what if--" began our lady member in an alarmed tone; whereupon
she was speedily interrupted by the learned gentleman who was dividing
his time between dinner and lecture:
"My dear Madame, our cars, like all the rest on this admirably-guarded
railway, are provided with the automatic apparatus I have described.
Since it is useless to pretend to one's-self, or anybody else, that an
accident will never happen, it is well to understand that every
precaution known to intelligent management has been provided against any
serious harm resulting when things do go wrong. In consideration of all
which profound explanations I think we deserve a second glass of claret.
My toast is: The Automatic Brake!"
And we all responded, "May it never be broken!"
* * * * *
Sleep that night was deep and refreshing. The next morning broke cool
and clear, and the Photographer proposed, with nearly his first words,
that we all go to the top of Veta Mountain. Only the crest of one of the
spurs could be seen, and this did not appear very far away, so that
those who had never climbed mountains afoot were enthusiastic on the
subject. Now in the humble, but dearly experienced opinion of the
present author, the old saw,--
"Where ignorance is bliss
'T were the height of folly to be otherwise,"
fits no situation better than mountain climbing. I have said in the
bitterness of my soul, on some cloud-splitting peak, as I tried to gulp
enough air to fill a small corner of my lungs, that the man who belonged
to an Alpine Club was _prima facie_ a fool. Scaling mountains for some
definitely profitable purpose, like finding or working a silver mine, or
getting a wide view so as properly to map out the region, or for a
knowledge of its fauna and flora, is disagreeable but endurable, because
you are sustained by the advantages to accrue; but to toil up there for
fun--bah! Yet people will go on doing it, and those who know better will
follow after, and the heart of the grumbler will grow sick as he sees of
how little avail are his words and the testimony of his sufferings.
It was so this time. Admonitions that upright distances were the most
deceiving of all aspects of nature; that the higher you went the steeper
the slope and the more insecure and toilsome the foothold; these, with
other remonstrances, were totally unheeded, and three misguided mortals
decided to go. Then the growler yielded--what else could he do? He had
survived many a previous ascent, and could not afford to assume a
cowardice that really didn't belong to him. So he chose that horn of the
dilemma, and left the reader to the conclusion that in telling this
tale, after the previous paragraph, he "writ himself down an ass."
All went but the Musician. Among the gentlemen were divided the
photographic camera and materials, and the whisky, while the Madame set
off sturdily with field-glasses over her shoulder, and a revolver
strapped around her shapely waist. Dinner was ordered for two o'clock,
and up we started. The Madame wrote to her friend about it as follows
(the letter, I declare, smelled of camphor):
"I assure you, my dear Mrs. McAngle, that not more than a hundred feet
had been gone over before the inexperienced of our party began to feel
the effects of rarefied air, although thus far it was easy enough
walking. There was no path, of course, and we simply tramped over a
grassy slope sprinkled with flowers and covered by trees that shaded
us from the sun. Gorges which were hardly perceptible as such from the
valley, now proved to be uncomfortably deep gashes in the broad
mountain-side, and tiny streams came down each one of them, to water
dense thickets along their banks. In one place, about a thousand feet
above our starting point, we came across the remains of a camp made by
some man who thought he had found precious metal. Dreary enough it
looked now, with its dismantled roof and wet and moldy bed of leaves.
"By this time breathing has become a conscious difficulty. I speak in
the present tense, my dear, because the recollection is very vivid,
and it seems almost as though I am again trudging over those
sharp-edged rocks. Every ten minutes further progress becomes an utter
impossibility for me, and rest absolutely necessary; but one
recuperates in even less time than it takes to become exhausted, and
starts on again. Nevertheless I can not go as fast as the gentlemen,
who have no skirts to drag along.
"Now the comparatively easy climbing is over. Flowers and grass have
grown scarce, and almost all the trees have disappeared. Nausea is
beginning to annoy me, and I was never more glad in my life than now,
when I discover some raspberry bushes and eagerly gather the ripe
fruit, whose pleasant acid brings moisture to my parched mouth and
comforts my sad stomach, for there is no water or snow here, and I
know it would not be best to drink if there were.
"Even the berries are gone now. Far above and on all sides I see
nothing but fragments of rocks. For centuries, wind, frost, rain and
snow have been hard at work leveling the mountains. They have broken
up the hard masses of yellowish white trachyte, and the dikes of black
basalt into small pieces--some as minute as walnuts, but most of them
much larger, with sharp-pointed edges that cut my feet. Across these
vast fields the wild sheep, thinking nothing of jumping and gamboling
over such steep slopes of broken stones, have made trails that cross
and criss-cross everywhere. Availing ourselves of these is some help,
as we all settle down to persistent, never-ending climbing.
"Up, up, up. You have forgotten how to breathe; your back and head are
aching; you have found a stick, and lean more and more upon it; you
look down on the back of a hawk far below you with sullen envy; you
devoutly wish you had never come, but will not give up. At length a
stupor creeps over you. You never expect to reach the top, but you do
not care; old long-forgotten songs go through your brain and seem to
try to lull you to sleep. You see in the distance one of the strong
ones reach the summit and wave his hat; you are beyond sensation, and
it is all a dream. Finally you stagger over the last ledge and throw
yourself down on the top and feebly call for--whisky. Mrs. McAngle, I
am a teetotaller; I hate whisky! But just then I would have given half
my fortune had it been necessary for the one swallow which did me so
much good."
Well, her companions having more strength, didn't feel _quite_ so bad,
though near enough so, to make their sympathies strong. The crest having
been gained, the Madame lay down on a rubber coat under the cap rock to
rest, while the remainder of us dispersed in search of water. But let me
quote that long letter again:
"The rocks, when I had recovered strength to look about me, I saw were
crumbling lavas of two colors, light drab and dark brown. Covered, as
they were, with lichens of brown, green and red, they were very
pretty. At last one of the gentlemen came back, carefully carrying his
hat in both hands, which he had made into a sort of bowl by pressing
in the soft crown. This I soon saw contained water, but such
water--foul and bad tasting, for it had been squeezed from moss. But
we drank it through a 'straw,' made by rolling up a business card, and
were thankful.
"Refreshed, and becoming interested in life again, the old hymn
occurred to me,--
'Lo, on a narrow neck of land
'Twixt two unbounded seas I stand.'
Only the seas, in this case, were broad green valleys, and were
bounded in the distance by lofty mountains, best of all Sierra Blanca,
across whose peaks the clouds were winding their long garments as if
to hide somewhat the sterility and ruggedness of their friends. Above
them how intensely blue was the sky, and how the soft green foothills
leaning against them satisfied your eyes with their graceful curves.
Trailing among them, as though a long white string had been carelessly
tossed down, ran the serpentine track of the railway, and the famous
Dump Mountain sank into the merest foot-ridge at our feet. On the
other side of the ledge we gazed out on the misty and limitless
plains, past the rough jumble of the Sierra Mojada, and could trace
where we had come across the valley of the Cuchara. Nearer by lay
dozens of snug and verdant vales, in one of which glistened a little
lake tantalizing to our still thirsty throats.
"We all had our photographs taken, with this magnificent scenery for
a background--better even than the cockney-loved Niagara, we
thought--and strolled about. Not far away we hit upon a prospect-hole.
The miner was absent, but had left pick and shovel behind as tokens of
possession. How intense must be the love of money that would induce a
man to undertake such a terrible climb, and live in this utter
loneliness and exposure! Yet they say that many of the best silver
mines in Colorado are on the very tops of such bald peaks as this.
"At last, on asking my husband if he did not think he appeared like an
Alpine tourist, I found him recovered sufficiently to say that we
should all pine if we didn't have dinner soon, so we turned our faces
homeward. Now I hope I haven't wasted all my adjectives, for I need
the strongest of them to tell of that descent. It was frightful. Feet
and knees became so sore that every movement was torture. The sun
blinded and scorched me, and the fields of barren, sharp and cruel
stones stretched down ahead in endless succession. Mrs. McAngle,
however foolish I may be in the future in climbing _up_ another
mountain, I never, never will come _down_, but will cheerfully die on
the summit, and leave my bones a warning to the next absurdly
ambitious sight-seer. When I was on the crest, I thought what an idiot
the youth in 'Excelsior' was, but now I hold him in high respect, for
he had the great good sense, having reached the top, to stay there!"
Returning to Veta Pass, the promontory where the track winds cautiously
around the brow of Dump Mountain--the name is given because of a
resemblance in shape to the dump at the entrance of a mine tunnel--has
been called Inspiration Point. I don't know who christened it; perhaps
some would-be hero of a novel by G. P. R. James. If, to be in character,
he "paused at this point in involuntary admiration," there was plenty of
excuse, for one of the loveliest panoramas in Colorado unrolls itself at
the observer's feet.
Coming up is fine enough, if you see it on such a day as the gods gave
us. The Spanish Peaks, as we approached from Cuchara, were as blue as
blue could be, with half-transparent, vaporous masses hovering tenderly
about them; but these mists stopped short of Veta, which stood out
distinct against its cloud-flecked background, majestic in full round
outlines beyond the majority of mountains,--in hue purple and sunny
white, with the mingling of forests and vast sterile slopes. North of it
the landscape was almost hidden under rain-veils, into which the sun
shot a great sheaf-full of slanting arrows of light, and beyond, range
behind range were marked with phantom-like faintness of outline. A broad
canopy of leaden clouds hung overhead, down from the further eaves of
which was shed a wide halo radiating from the invisible sun above; and
this snowy shower had stood long unchanged before our entranced eyes,
making us believe that the brown cliffs, toward which we were running so
swiftly, were the gates of an enchanted land.
[Illustration: VETA PASS.]
Now, from within and far surmounting those portals, we stand gazing
abroad, as in olden days they looked out of some castle tower through
and beyond the great fortress arch. The typically mountain-like mass of
Veta, satisfying all our ideals of how that style of elevation should
look which does not abound in rugged cliff and sky-piercing pinnacles,
but is smoothly and roundly huge, cuts off all northward outlook.
Southward the crowded foothills of the divide between the Rio Grande and
the Arkansas hide from view the central points in which they
culminate,--even lofty Trinchera, whose sharp summit was so plain a
landmark at the southern end of the Sangre de Cristo yesterday. Beyond
these swelling domes and gables, and ridges of green and gray, were
lifted the noble pyramids of the Spanish Peaks, their angles well
defined in varying tints of purplish blue, and their grand old heads
sustained in generous rivalry. (Illustration.) Behind us was only a
piney slope, close at hand: but ahead--the world! I think no one has
ever said enough of the beauty of this picture in Veta Pass. From the
precipitous, wooded mountain-side where you stand, the eye follows the
little creek as it glides with less and less disquietude down through
the protruding bases of the diminishing foothills, into the slowly
broadening valley where the willows are more dense, and the heather and
small bushes have taken on brilliant colors to vie with the splendor of
aspen-patches higher up; on to the hay-meadows fenced with the
many-elbowed and scraggy faggots of red cedar; on past the little park
where the low brown adobe houses of the Mexican rancheros look like mere
pieces of flat rock fallen from the mountains; on into the midst of
minute cornfields; on out, beyond the surf-like ridges breaking against
the base of the range, to the blue and boundless sea of the plains.
The western side of the Pass is a tortuous descent through continuous
woods and lessening hills, until you emerge upon a plain where the
ragged heights of the Saguache Mountains fill the northern horizon; and
as you turn southward the glorious serrated summits of the Sangre de
Cristo range come into view behind and beside you, on the east. This
plain is the San Luis Park, the largest of those four great interior
plateaus--North Park, Middle Park, South Park and San Luis--which lie
between the "Front" and the "Main" ranges of the Rockies.