more, and camped two miles beyond Unagua springs. There were about these
springs, which are at the base of the Ute mountain, the tallest summit
of the Sierra ù Late, formerly many large buildings, the relics of which
are very impressive. One of them is two hundred feet square, with a wall
twenty feet thick, and inclosed in the center a circular building one
hundred feet in circumference. Another, near by, was one hundred feet
square, with equally thick walls, and was divided north and south by a
very heavy partition. This building communicated with the great stone
reservoir about the springs. These heavy walls were constructed of outer
strong walls of cut sandstone, regularly laid in mortar, filled in with
firmly packed fragments of stone. Some portions of the wall still stand
twenty or thirty feet in height, but, judging from the amount of
material thrown down, the building must originally have been a very
lofty one. About these large edifices were traces of smaller ones,
covering half a square mile, and out in the plain another small village
indicated by a collection of knolls. Scarcely anything now but white
sage grows thereabouts, but there is reason to believe that in those old
times it was under careful cultivation. Evidently these thick walls were
the foundations of old terraced pueblos, an unusually large community
having grown up about these plentiful springs, just as at Taos, San
Juan, Zuñi, and the present Moqui villages in Arizona.
Our next day's march was westerly, leaving the mesa bluffs on our right
and gradually behind. The road was an interesting one, intellectually,
but not at all so physically--dry, hot, dusty, long and wearisome. We
passed a number of quite perfect houses, perched high up on rocky
bluffs, and many other remains. One occupied the whole apex of a great
conical bowlder, that ages ago had become detached from its mother
mountain and rolled out into the valley. Another, worth mention, was a
round tower, beautifully laid up, which surmounted an immense bowlder
that had somehow rolled to the very verge of a lofty cliff overlooking
the whole valley. This was a watch-tower, and we learned afterward that
almost all the high points were occupied by such sentinel boxes. From it
a deeply worn, devious trail led up over the edge of the mesa, by
following which we should, no doubt, have found a whole town. But this
was only a reconnoissance, and we could not now stop to follow out all
indications.
Not far away the odd appearance of a cliff attracted my attention, and
leaving the party I rode over the bare, white, rocky floors which capped
all the low, broad ridges, to find a long series of shallow grottos in
the escarpment filled with houses, some of which were roofed over, but
most consisting simply of walls carried to the ceiling of the light, dry
cavern in the sandstone, often only one or two houses occupying each of
the small caves, whose openings were in the same water-worn stratum, and
only a few feet or yards apart. Still more curious examples of these
cave-dwellings have been seen since in the same neighborhood, and lower
down. For example, on the San Juan, in 1875, Holmes and Jackson
discovered, half way between top and bottom of a bluff where a stratum
of shaly sandstone had been weathered and dug out to a depth of six
feet, leaving a firm floor and a projecting ledge overhead, a continuous
row of buildings, though none have their front walls now remaining.
Doorways through each of the dividing walls afforded access along the
whole line. A few rods up stream a little, niched cave-house, 14×5×6,
divided into two equal compartments; a small, square window, just large
enough for one to crawl through, was placed midway in the wall of each
half. "We well might ask whether these little 'cubby-holes' had ever
been used as residences, or, whether, as seems at first most likely,
they might not have been 'caches,' or merely temporary places of refuge.
While, no doubt, many of them were such, yet in the majority the
evidences of use and the presence of long-continued fires, indicated by
their smoke-blackened interiors, prove them to have been quite
constantly occupied. Among all dwellers in mud-plastered houses, it is
the practice to freshen up their habitations by repeated applications of
clay, moistened to the proper consistency, and spread with the hands,
the thickness of the coating depending upon its consistency. Every such
application makes a building perfectly new, and many of the best
sheltered cave-houses have just this appearance, as though they were but
just vacated."
The grandest of all these cave shelters, perhaps, was that in the
Montezuma cañon, the main building of which was forty-eight feet long,
and built of well smoothed stones. "In the rubbish of the large house,"
says the report, "some small stone implements, rough, indented pottery
in fragments, and a few arrow-points were found.... The whole appearance
of the place and its surroundings indicates that the family or the
little community who inhabited it were in good circumstances and the
lords of the surrounding country. Looking out from one of their houses,
with a great dome of solid rock overhead, that echoed and re-echoed
every word uttered with marvelous distinctness, and below them a steep
descent of one hundred feet, to the broad, fertile valley of the Rio San
Juan, covered with waving fields of maize and scattered groves of
majestic cottonwoods, these old people, whom even the imagination can
hardly clothe with reality, must have felt a sense of security that even
the incursions of their barbarous foes could hardly have disturbed."
[Illustration: SILVERTON AND SULTAN MOUNTAIN.]
But I cannot linger over these extremely interesting and instructive
ruins, nor stop to tell of the variety and skill shown in their
architecture, in their storage of water and food, in their means of
defense, in their manufacture of utensils, and the art with which their
life was adorned. Out of the hundreds of leveled pueblos, cave-houses,
towers, water-reservoirs and wasted fields which once bore bountiful
harvests, I have only culled one here and there. I may say that not only
every cañon which cuts down through the mesa to the Rio San Juan and
into all of its lower tributary valleys, but many of the plateaus
between, are occupied by the ruins which show an Indian occupation
previous to the present savages, and of a different rank, if not of
another race.
Particularly accessible to the ordinary tourist are the ruins to be seen
in the Animas valley, about twenty-five miles south of Durango. These
are said to consist of a pueblo three hundred and sixteen feet long by
nearly one hundred wide, which evidently rose to the height of many
stories. Some of the lower rooms in this great house are still standing,
and skeletons and relics of great interest have been taken from them. In
the center of the ruins is a subterranean, cistern-like chamber,
described as about sixty feet in diameter, and plastered everywhere
within with hard cement. This, probably, was the main _estufa_ of the
village. Other lesser ruins and remains of farming operations are
scattered about the vicinity, and are well worthy of exploration.
Just who and what were these aborigines (if so they were, which is very
doubtful), opinions differ; but that in the Village Indians of New
Mexico and Arizona we see to-day their lineal descendants, seems
indisputable.
Traditions are few, that have any value, but the partial and imperfect
researches which have already been made in the southwest enable us to
make out dimly some strangely tragical scheme of history for this race
of men whose sun set so long ago.
It is evident, for example, that the most ancient of these prehistoric
ruins are those found along the immediate banks of the water-courses in
the valleys. There the forerunners of the troublous times to come dwelt
in peace and prosperity among their fields, which seem to have stretched
over many times the area of land now possible to be cultivated. There is
no question, indeed, that in those days rains were more frequent and the
climate far more favorable to agriculture than at present. But how many
generations--how many centuries--ago was this? And how did the change of
climate, which turned the fertility of the land into desolation, come
about--by slow degrees, through sudden cataclysm, or with comparatively
rapid advance? Probably gradually.
But it does not seem to have been as the result of meteorological
disfavor that they abandoned their populous pueblos in the pleasant
valleys and began to build refuge homes in the niches of the cañon's
wall, or on the crest of inaccessible mesas. From the mountainous north
came enemies they were unable to resist, and which devastated their
fields and laid waste their towns, as we have seen at Ojo Caliente, and
as is written in the ruins of a hundred spring-side pueblos throughout
the San Juan valley. No doubt they still cultivated their fields as
well as they could between the times of attack, building temporary
summer-houses and spending the idle winter in their rocky fastnesses, or
retreating to them when warned of an attack. Their watch-towers on every
exposed point, tell how sharp and incessant was the lookout they kept
against the well-mounted and savage nomadic tribes, the prehistoric Utes
and Apaches and Navajos, who were to them as the Scythians and the
Vandals and Goths to the weakened empire of effeminate Rome.
But after a time a breathing space seems to have come to the harassed
people, and they felt themselves safe to return to their ancient valleys
and reinhabit and recultivate them. Certain houses, built upon the
substratum of older fallen structures, seem to show this new era of
reoccupation, which in some places lasted only a short time before
enemies and drought together compelled complete abandonment, while in
other more southern strongholds were founded the pueblos that still
exist, at Taos, Acoma, Zuñi, and on the Moqui mesas.
When, some day, you can ride down the Mancos in a railway car and get
flying glimpses of the ruined houses--if your eyes are sharp to see and
your mind quick to apprehend,--do not forget how populous was this dry
and garish valley during those bygone days, when the Crusaders were
waking up Europe, and all that was known of America was that the Basque
fishermen went to the fog-banks of an icy western coast to catch
codfish. I am more sure of your interest here, though, than in many
other far-paraded precincts of this marvelous realm, I am taking you so
swiftly through in my pilgrimage on wheels. And I cannot enforce my
point better,--leave an impression more lasting and graceful on your
minds of those gentle shepherds and husbandmen (but no less brave
warriors), who were here so long before us, than by giving you the poem
my clever-brained and genial friend has written in Swinburnian measure
about them:
"In the sad South-west, in the mystical Sunland,
Far from the toil, and the turmoil of gain;
Hid in the heart of the only--the one land
Beloved of the Sun, and bereft of the rain;
The one weird land where the wild winds blowing,
Sweep with a wail o'er the plains of the dead,
A ruin, ancient beyond all knowing,
Rears its head
"On the cañon's side, in the ample hollow,
That the keen winds carved in ages past,
The Castle walls, like the nest of a swallow
Have clung and have crumbled to this at last.
The ages since man's foot has rested
Within these walls, no man may know;
For here the fierce grey eagle nested
Long ago.
"Above those walls the crags lean over,
Below, they dip to the river's bed;
Between, fierce wingéd creatures hover,
Beyond, the plain's wild waste is spread.
No foot has climbed the pathway dizzy,
That crawls away from the blasted heath,
Since last it felt the ever busy
Foot of Death.
"In that haunted Castle--it must be haunted,
For men have lived here, and men have died,
And maidens loved, and lovers daunted,
Have hoped and feared, have laughed and sighed--
In that haunted Castle the dust has drifted,
But the eagles only may hope to see
What shattered Shrines and what Altars rifted,
There may be.
"The white, bright rays of the sunbeam sought it,
The cold, clear light of the moon fell here,
The west wind sighed, and the south wind brought it,
Songs of Summer year after year.
Runes of Summer, but mute and runeless,
The Castle stood; no voice was heard,
Save the harsh, discordant, wild and tuneless
Cry of bird.
"The spring rains poured, and the torrent rifted
A deeper way;--the foam-flakes fell,
Held for a moment poised and lifted,
Down to a fiercer whirlpool's hell.
On the Castle tower no guard, in wonder,
Paused in his marching to and fro,
For on the turret the mighty thunder
Found no foe.
"No voice of Spring,--no Summer glories
May wake the warders from their sleep,
Their graves are made by the sad Dolores,
And the barren headlands of Hoven-weep.
Their graves are nameless--Their race forgotten,
Their deeds, their words, their fate, are one
With the mist, long ages past begotten,
Of the Sun.
"Those castled cliffs they made their dwelling,
They lived and loved, they fought and fell,
No faint, far voice comes to us telling
More than those crumbling walls can tell.
They lived their life, their fate fulfilling,
Then drew their last faint, faltering breath,
Their hearts, congealed, clutched by the chilling
Hand of Death.
"Dismantled towers, and turrets broken,
Like grim and war-worn braves who keep
A silent guard, with grief unspoken,
Watch o'er the graves by the Hoven-weep.
The nameless graves of a race forgotten;
Whose deeds, whose words, whose fate are one
With the mist, long ages past begotten,
Of the Sun."
XVI
ON THE UPPER RIO GRANDE.
O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful, and yet again
wonderful and after that out of all whooping.
--MERCHANT OF VENICE iii, 2.
Off to Del Norte and Wagon Wheel Gap! That meant a long run. We might
have gone afoot across the Cunningham Pass and down the Alpine fastness
of the Rio Grande's birthplace almost as speedily as the train would
take us, back to Durango, over the heights and glories of Toltec, down
the mazy labyrinth of the Whiplash, and across the sheep pastures of San
Luis. But we were in no hurry, and by preparing had the jolliest time
you can imagine the whole way. At Alamosa we bid a reluctant farewell to
our three companions, the Artist, the Photographer and the Musician, who
can no longer spare to us their society. But our prospective loneliness
is mitigated by a new comer,--an old college friend. I shall introduce
him to the reader as _Chum_, because that was the ordinary way in which
we dispensed with his name.
"A merrier man
Within the limit of becoming mirth
I never spent an hour's talk withal."
Here, the good-bye and the welcome given in the same breath, we change
our cars to a new train headed westward toward the upper course of the
Rio Grande, with its farms and mines and medicinal springs.
The track is laid right across San Luis park, which is to become,
through irrigation, one of the richest agricultural regions in the
world. By and bye, the dull line under the horizon began to form itself
into trees, and among these we could distinguish the scattered log and
adobe dwellings and the half-cultivated little farms of Mexican
ranchmen. The bottoms of the Rio Grande now spread wide around us, with
bushes and trees, and tall, rich grass, and a few miles further on we
came to the town amid a group of picturesquely broken volcanic bluffs of
great size. This is a sort of postern-gate for the San Juan mining
region, and also for Lake City, Ouray and the San Miguel.
Only a postern-gate, for now the railway southward carries the passenger
to Durango and Silverton, and the Salt Lake line makes an easy entrance
to the northern slope of the Sierra Madre; but, a few years ago Del
Norte was the last outfitting point for those going into all that
region, and the first real civilization encountered on the return. Under
the "boom" of this patronage the old Mexican ranch-center became an
American town of some size and importance almost ten years ago, and its
people thought they were soon to be the metropolis of the southwest. But
such has not yet appeared to be their destiny, and a snug, stirring
little village of twelve or fifteen hundred people is all that the
settlement has developed into. It is charmingly placed, and there is so
much land along the river, both above and below, which is cultivated by
both Mexicans and Americans (chiefly in the line of hay), and so many
sheep, cattle and horses are owned and sold there, that this interest
alone will support the village and enable it to grow slowly.
But pleasant Del Norte has more than this to rely upon. Twenty-eight
miles back in the mountains of the Continental divide are the famous
Summit gold mines. The richness of these mines (as they appear at
present) is almost inconceivable--it equals the fabled _El Dorado_ so
many brave fellows have died in their effort to find. The railway
express company, in the three months following the advent of the road at
Del Norte, forwarded to the Denver mint $300,000 in gold bars. I have
seen and handled many pieces of this reddish, rusty, honeycombed quartz,
in which you could see the gold as thickly and plainly as the pepper on
sliced cucumbers. There were streaks of it, maybe half an inch wide,
where the material was more than half its weight, pure, visible gold.
Prospecting on South mountain in 1874 (or before that) men found these
ledges, and various claims were staked off, and, in 1875, stamp mills
were erected, which at once began grinding out thousands of dollars a
day and saving only about sixty per cent. of the gold, the remainder
running off in the tailings because it was too coarse and heavy to be
caught quickly by the mercurial batteries; this was enough to set fire
to the tinder of the gold-seeking population, which is always ready to
stampede to a new camp, and in 1876 a great rush to the Summit district
happened. The whole region was quickly put under claim-stakes and a
dozen respectable mining beginnings were made. Among these was a group
of claims, more or less worked, which became the property of a
corporation called the San Juan Consolidated Mining Company. Their
principal mine was the "Ida," and their most intelligent stockholder was
Judge, now United States Senator, Thomas Bowen. He came to this region
from Arkansas an exceedingly poor man, though in early life he had been
a wealthy planter. Elected a justice of his judicial district, he
plodded on foot from county to county, too poor to own a horse. For
seven long years, the story goes, he put all his money into prospecting,
and at last turned up here at the Summit. Watching the way in which the
"Consolidated" property was being handled, he concluded that its
managers were not on the right track and would speedily come to a halt;
furthermore, he had faith that he could right the mistake if he had the
power.
[Illustration: CLIFF DWELLINGS.]
As he anticipated, the stock of that company went down to nothing. No
further back than the winter of 1880-81, its shares were played at poker
in Del Norte, and passed over the bars of saloons at the rate of two
drinks for one share. Bowen quietly gathered them in, getting $300,000
worth, it is stated, for $75, or one-fourth of one mill on the dollar.
Two or three others saved up smaller amounts. When the Judge had secured
a controlling interest, he set on foot a scheme of new development, and
very shortly struck this fabulously rich vein. He persuaded friends in
Denver to erect a mill on terms which have resulted in the biggest
profits a stamp-mill ever paid its manufacturer, I fancy, and Bowen
suddenly found himself a Croesus. He had been heavily in debt, and
some of the scores against him had long been charged to loss by his
creditors, but he paid them all without noticing the drain upon his
uncounted coffers. Having fought the demon of poverty in its most
tenacious forms, for so many years, this sudden affluence did not spoil
him, but he glories in it like a boy, and is never more pleased than
when he can make it tell for the surprise and happiness of some old
companion still in the grip of misfortune.
But "Bowen's bonanza" is not the only one. There are others of perhaps
equal merit close by, and I have no doubt many more will be discovered.
For, in spite of all the bullion which has this year been produced,
these mines are as yet in their infancy. I suppose the measure of half
a mile would include the total length of underground workings in all of
them together. Who shall say what the future may not disclose?
Half a dozen miles across the mountain from the Summit is a flourishing
little settlement of prospectors who believe they have struck a
profitable lode of silver-galena; and still farther beyond, among the
springs of the Rio San Juan, lie the Cornwall silver mines, where much
work has been done. The principal properties are on the Perry lode,
which gives sulphuret of silver. Other ores there vary from this,
however, and are said to be best suited to the lixiviation process. A
smelter has been purchased for that locality. Judge Jones, so well known
all over southern Colorado for his steady allegiance to everything which
savors of "San Juan" and for his equal hatred of whisky, has large
visions of future wealth out of this district.
Now the whole of these mines and trials for a mine are so much grist to
Del Norte's mill. So long as they keep men digging, so long she will
thrive exceptionally and remain an important feeder to our railway.
The scenery along the Rio Grande, above Del Norte, is very fine, and has
always the zest of human interest in the quaint ranches of the Mexican
farmers, whose women and children flock out to see every train go by.
Terraced steeps bound the river-valley where the farms are, at a little
distance, on the right, while rounded pine-clad hills slope upward on
the left. We see this part of the river on our way to Wagon Wheel Gap, a
place for which, if I were writing a separate chapter, I should adopt as
a motto the words of Exodus: "And they came to Elim, where were twelve
wells of water and three score and ten palm trees, and they encamped
there by the waters."
"But what is Wagon Wheel Gap, and how did it get such a name?" asks the
Madame.
"The gap," it is thereupon explained, "is a noble gateway, thirty miles
west of Del Norte, through which the Rio Grande breaks out of the
confinement of its youth in the San Juan mountains; and I heard only
yesterday how it come by its name, from the great and good Judge Jones,
whose narratives most happily combine both facts and fancies.
"You will remember what we heard of the band of men who went into the
San Juan mines four and-twenty years ago, under Colonel Baker. Well,
there was a part of that story you have not heard yet. It seems that the
party was composed of Northern and of Southern men in nearly equal
numbers. When they heard that war had broken out between the Northern
States and the hoped for 'Confederacy,' there was added to the woe of
disappointment, diminished food, and the fear of Indians, the bitterness
of a little civil war among those who previously had been compatriots
and friends. It was a miserable little copy of the great struggle, but
it resulted in disproportionate sorrows, for a panic ensued, in which
the men of the party broke up and scattered out of the mountains by
every available passage, a prey to double the dangers which would have
menaced them had they stayed together. Some tried to take their wagons
out piecemeal over Cunningham Pass. Putting them together on the eastern
side, they worked their way down to Del Norte, Fort Garland, and so to
Santa Fe, or around to Denver. But they often broke down, and a relic of
this panic-stricken flight, in the shape of a large wagon wheel, found
by Judge Jones, served to give the place its peculiar name. To
distinguish it from other gaps in the range it was spoken of as 'the gap
where the wagon wheel was found,' which soon, by natural process of
curtailment, condensation and transposition, became 'Wagon Wheel Gap,'
and Wagon Wheel Gap it is, even unto this day."