mines. At Rosita, in the "Pocahontas-Humboldt" lode, the trachyte,
instead of being shattered and impregnated, has been rent asunder and a
true fissure formed in it, filled with gray copper, galena, zinc blende,
iron and copper pyrites and heavy spar--all carrying sulphide of silver.
These form a narrow pay streak from one to eighteen inches wide, and
the remainder is filled with a gangue rock, generally of a trachytic
formation. This vein extends for a long distance through the hills, and
is inclosed by walls that are as clearly defined as those of a room.
Other smaller veins of the same character have been found in the country
north of Rosita, and on some of them valuable mines have been located
and developed.
Still another class of mines in the same mineral belt remains to be
mentioned. Those are what Professor Newberry has called the
"mechanically filled" veins, and they include the "Bassick" and the
"Bull-Domingo." The former is supposed to be a true fissure vein in the
trachyte rock, the cavity of which, after the rocks were rent asunder,
was filled with well rounded pebbles and bowlders, generally similar in
constitution to the country rock. The interstices in this mass have been
filled with tellurides of gold and silver, free gold, zinc blende,
galena, and the pyrites of iron and copper carrying silver. These
materials surround the stones in thin shells, the pebbles and bowlders
forming nuclei about which the metallic substances crystallized. In the
"Bull-Domingo," situated in the granite tongue, the stones are generally
granite or syenite, and the cementing substance is argentiferous galena,
which not only surrounds the stones, but in many cases entirely fills up
the irregular spaces between them. In both of these cases it is supposed
that the metallic matter came up from below in the form of a hot
solution.
Silver Cliff has been a trifle disappointed, however. Not only were her
streets laid out broad and straight, upon a splendid town site, over a
considerably larger area than has yet been occupied, but two other
towns, Westcliffe, where the railway station is, and Clifton, between
the two towns, invite persons to buy town lots and build houses in
rivalry. At present, however, Clifton's population consists chiefly of
its town-agent, and there is one of the best opportunities to take your
choice of building sites there that I know of in the Centennial state.
Westcliffe has a big smelter, a hay-press, the water-works, and various
other reasons for being a future village of importance.
Yet Silver Cliff is a fine town, and its streets are busy with miners
and merchants and professional men, who know where their money is coming
from and going to. The immense interests of the Silver Cliff Mining
company, with its open, quarry-like mine, and its great mill, which has
the reputation of being the finest in Colorado, employ a large number of
men. Another mill, further down the creek, is running on the product of
its mines, and a great deal of development-work along the whole belt is
in progress, while prospects of rich strikes elsewhere keep things in a
bright, hopeful condition.
As for Rosita, it was a thriving mining camp, half a dozen years before
Silver Cliff and its chlorides were heard of. True fissure veins were
disclosed, and a permanent town resulted, which is yet mining quietly
but successfully, and making its people wealthy.
XIX
THE ROYAL GORGE.
High overarched, and echoing walls between.
--MILTON.
The Grand Cañon of the Arkansas, and its culminating chasm, the Royal
Gorge, lie between Salida and Cañon City, and form a sufficient theme
for a chapter by themselves. It was on our return from Silver Cliff that
we went there.
Situated only half a dozen miles west of Cañon City, the traveler going
either to Leadville or Gunnison, begins to watch for the cañon as soon
as he has passed the city limits, the penitentiary and the mineral
springs. If he looks ahead he sees the vertically tilted, whitish strata
of sandstone and limestone, which the upthrust of the interior mountains
has set on edge, broken at a narrow portal through which the graceful
river finds the first freedom of the plains,--becomes of age, so to
speak, and commences, however awkwardly, that manly progress that by and
by will enable it to take its important place in the commerce of the
world,--
"----The river,
Which through continents pushes its pathway forever,
To fling its fond heart in the sea."
Running the gauntlet of these scraggy warders of the castle of the
mountain gods within, the train boldly assaults the gates of the castle
itself. From the smoothness of the outer world, where the eye can range
in wide vision, taking in the profiles of countless noble chains and
lowlier but serviceable ridges; where the sun shines broadly, and its
light and heat are reflected in shimmering volumes from expanses of
whitened soil, the eager traveler now finds himself locked between
precipitous hillsides, strewn with jagged fragments, as though the
Titans had tossed in here the chips from their workshop of the world. He
strives for language large enough to picture the heights that with
ceaselessly growing altitude hasten to meet him. He searches his fancy
after images and similitudes that shall help him comprehend and recall
the swiftly crowding forms of Nature's massive architecture. He taxes
his eyes and mind and memory to see and preserve, until he can have
leisure to study this exhibition of the depth and breadth of the barrier
that so long has loomed before him in silent majesty, yet for which the
world has found no better name than the Rocky mountains. He has gone
past it,--gone over it, it may be; now he is going _through_ it. The
track, as he rushes ahead, seems bodily to sink deeper and deeper into
the earth, as though the apparent progress forward only resulted in
impotent struggles to keep from sinking deeper, like an exhausted
swimmer in swift waters. The roar of the yeasty, nebulous-green river at
his side, mingles with the crashing echoes of the train, reverberating
heavenward through rocks that rise perpendicularly to unmeasured
heights. The ear is stunned, and the mind refuses to sanction what the
senses report to it.
[Illustration: BROWN'S CAÑON.]
Then a new surprise and almost terror comes. The train rolls round a
long curve, close under a wall of black and banded granite, beside which
the ponderous locomotive shrinks to a mere dot, as if swinging on some
pivot in the heart of the mountain, or captured by a centripetal force
that would never resign its grasp. Almost a whole circle is
accomplished, and the grand amphitheatrical sweep of the wall shows no
break in its smooth and zenith-cutting façade. Will the journey end
here? Is it a mistake that this crevice goes _through_ the range? Does
not all this mad water gush from some powerful spring, or boil out of a
subterranean channel impenetrable to us?
No, it opens. Resisting centripetal, centrifugal force claims the train,
and it breaks away at a tangent past the edge or round the corner of the
great black wall which compelled its detour, and that of the river
before it. Now what glories of rock-piling confront the wide-distended
eye. How those sharp-edged cliffs, standing with upright heads that play
at hand-ball with the clouds, alternate with one another, so that first
the right, then the left, then the right one beyond strike on our view,
each one half obscured by its fellow in front, each showing itself
level-browed with its comrades as we come even with it, each a score of
hundreds of dizzy feet in height, rising perpendicular from the water
and the track, splintered atop into airy pinnacles, braced behind
against the almost continental mass through which the chasm has been
cleft.
This is the Royal Gorge!
But how faintly I tell it--how inexpressible are the wonders of plutonic
force it commemorates, how magnificent the pose and self-sustained
majesty of its walls, how stupendous the height as we look up, the depth
if we were to gaze timidly down, how splendid the massive shadows at the
base of the interlocking headlands,--the glint of sunlight on the upper
rim and the high polish of the crowning points! One must catch it all as
an impression on the retina of his mind's eye,--must memorize it
instantly and ponder it afterward. It is ineffable, but the thought of
it remains through years and years a legacy of vivid recollection and
delight, and you never cease to be proud that you have seen it.
There is more cañon after that--miles and miles of it--the Grand Cañon
of the Arkansas. In and out of all the bends and elbows, gingerly round
the promontories whose very feet the river laves, rapidly across the
small, sheltered nooks, where soil has been drifted and a few
adventurous trees have grown, noisily through the echoing cuttings, the
train rushes westward, letting you down gradually from the tense
excitement of the great chasm, to the cedar-strewn ledges that fade out
into the the gravel bars and the park-like spaces of the open valley
beyond Cotopaxi.
Thomas Paine tells us in his _Age of Reason_: "The sublime and the
ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class
them separately." It is good philosophy also, that the higher the strain
the longer the rebound; so no excuse is needed for asking you to enjoy
as heartily as we did, the story an old fellow told us at the supper
station, who dropped the hint that he had been one of the "boys" who had
helped push the railway through this cañon. Moreover, he helped us to a
new phase of human nature as exemplified in the mind of an "old timer."
The influence of the cañon on the ordinary tourist, perhaps, will be
comparatively transient, fading into a dream-like memory of amazing
mental impressions. Not so with the man who has dwelt, untutored, for
many years, amid these stupendous hills and abysmal gorges. His
imagination, once aroused and enlarged, continues to expand; his
fiction, once created, hardens into fact; his veracity, once elongated,
stretches on and on forever. Of all natural curiosities he is the most
curious,--more marvelous than even the Grand Cañon itself.
Strictly sane and truthful in the day-time, he speaks only of
commonplace things; but when the night comes, and the huge mountains
group themselves around his camp-fire like a circle of black Cyclopean
tents, he shades his face from the blaze and bids his imagination stalk
forth with Titanic strides. Then, if his hearers are in sympathy, with
self-repressed and nonchalant gravity, he pours forth in copious detail
his strange experiences with bears and bronchos, Indians and serpents,
footpads and gamblers, mines and mules, tornadoes and forest-fires. He
never for a moment weakens the effect of his story by giving way to gush
and enthusiasm; he makes his facts eloquent, and then relates them in
the careless monotone of one who is superior to emotion under any
circumstances.
We could not find our old-timer in these most favorable circumstances,
but ensconced behind
"Sublime tobacco! which from east to west,
Cheers the tar's labors, or the Turkman's rest,"
he seized his opportunity in our discussion of the heroic engineering by
which the _penetralia_ of the Royal Gorge was opened to the locomotive,
and began:
"Talk about blastin'! [B]The boy's yarn about blowin' up a mountain's
nothin' but a squib to what we did when we blasted the Ryo Grand
railroad through the Royal Gorge.
[B] If anybody doubts the full veracity of this tale, he is referred
to Colonel Nat. Babcock, of Gunnison City.
"One day the boss sez to me, sez he, 'Hyar, you, do you know how to
handle gunpowder?'
"Sez I, 'You bet!'
"Sez he, 'Do you see that ere ledge a thousand feet above us, stickin'
out like a hat-brim?' Sez I, 'You bet I do.'
"'Wall,' sez he, 'that'll smash a train into a grease-spot some day, ef
we don't blast it off.'
"'Jess so,' sez I.
"Wall, we went up a gulch, and clum the mountain an' come to the
prissipass, and got down on all fours, an' looked down straight three
thousand feet. The river down there looked like a lariat a' runnin'
after a broncho. I began to feel like a kite a' sailin' in the air like.
Forty church steeples in one war'n't nowhar to that ere pinnacle in the
clouds. An' after a while it begun rainin' an' snowin' an' hailin' an'
thundrin' an' doin' a reglar tornado biznis down thar, an' a reglar
summer day whar we wuz on top. Wall, there wuz a crevice from where we
wuz, an' we sorter slid down into it, to within fifty feet o' the ledge,
an' then they let me down on the ledge with a rope an' drill. When I got
down thar, I looked up an' sez to the boss, 'Boss, how are ye goin' to
get that 'cussion powder down?' Yer see, we used this ere powder as'll
burn like a pine-knot 'thout explodin', but if yer happen to drop it,
it'll blow yer into next week 'fore ye kin wink yer eye.
"'Wall,' sez the boss, sez he, 'hyar's fifty pound, an' yer must ketch
it.'
"'Ketch it,' sez I. 'Hain't ye gettin' a little keerless--s'pose I miss
it?' I sez.
"'But ye mustn't miss it,' sez he. ''T seems to me yer gettin' mighty
keerful of yourself all to wunst.'
"Sez I, 'Boss, haul me up. I'm a fool, but not an idgit. Haul me up. I'm
not so much afeared of the blowin' up ez of the comin' down. If I should
miss comin' onto this ledge, thar's nobody a thousan' feet below thar to
ketch me, an' I might get drownded in the Arkansaw, for I kain't swim.'
"So they hauled me up, an' let three other fellers down, an' the boss
discharged me, an' I sot down sorter behind a rock, an' tole 'em they'd
soon have a fust-class funeral, and might need me for pall-bearer.
"Wall, them fellers ketched the dynamite all right, and put 'er in, an'
lit their fuse, but afore they could haul 'em up she went off. Great
guns! 'T was wuss 'n forty thousan' Fourth o' Julys. A million coyotes
an' tin pans an' horns an' gongs ain't a sarcumstance. Th' hull gorge
fur ten mile bellered, an' bellered, an' kep' on bellerin' wuss 'n a
corral o' Texas bulls. I foun' myself on my back a lookin' up, an' th'
las' thing I seed wuz two o' them fellers a' whirlin' clean over the
mountain, two thousan' feet above. One of 'em had my jack-knife an'
tobacker, but 't was no use cryin'. 'T was a good jack-knife, though; I
do n't keer so much fur the tobacker. He slung suthin' at me as he went
over, but it didn't come nowhar near, 'n' I don't know yet what it was.
When we all kinder come to, the boss looked at his watch, 'n' tole us
all to witness that the fellers was blown up just at noon, an' was only
entitled to half a day's wages, an' quit 'thout notice. When we got
courage to peep over an' look down, we found that the hat-brim was n't
busted off at all; the hull thing was only a squib. But we noticed that
a rock ez big ez a good-sized cabin, hed loosened, an' hed rolled down
on top of it. While we sat lookin' at it, boss sez, sez he,
"'Did you fellers see mor'n two go up?'
"'No,' sez we, an' pretty soon we heern t' other feller a' hollerin',
'Come down 'n get me out!'
"Gents, you may have what's left of my old shoe, if the ledge had n't
split open a leetle, 'n' that chap fell into the crack, 'n' the big rock
rolled onto the ledge an' sorter gently held him thar. He war n't hurt a
har. We wer n't slow about gettin' down. We jist tied a rope to a pint
o' rock an' slid. But you may hang me for a chipmuck ef we could git any
whar near him, an' it was skeery business a foolin' roun' on that ere
verandy. 'T war n't much bigger 'n a hay-rack, an' a thousan' foot up.
We hed some crowbars, but boss got a leetle excited, an' perty soon
bent every one on 'em tryin' to prize off that bowlder that'd weigh a
hundred ton like. Then agin we wuz all on it, fer it kivered th' hull
ledge, 'n' whar'd we ben ef he'd prized it off? All the while the chap
kep' a hollerin', 'Hurry up; pass me some tobacker!' Oh, it was the
pitterfulest cry you ever heern, an' we didn't know what to do till he
yelled, 'I'm a losin' time; hain't you goin' to git me out?' Sez boss,
'I've bent all the crowbars, an' we can't git you out.'
"'Got any dynamite powder?' sez the feller.
"'Yes.'
"'Well, then, why 'n the name of the Denver 'n' Ryo Grand don't you
blast me out,' sez he.
"'We can't blast you out,' sez boss, 'fer dynamite busts down, an' it'll
blow you down the canyon.'
"'Well, then,' sez he, 'one o' ye swing down under the ledge, an' put a
shot in whar it's cracked below.'
"'You're wiser 'n a woman,' sez boss. 'I'd never thought o' that.'
"So the boss took a rope, 'n' we swung him down, 'n' he put in a shot,
'n' was goin' to light the fuse, when the feller inside smelt the match.
"'Heve ye tumbled to my racket?' sez he.
"'You bet we have, feller priz'ner!' sez the boss.
"'Touch 'er off!' sez the feller.
"'All right,' sez boss.
"'Hold on!' yells the feller as wuz inside.
"'What's the racket now?' sez the boss.
"'You hain't got the sense of a blind mule,' sez he. 'Do you s'pose I
want to drop down the canyon when the shot busts? Pass in a rope through
the crack, 'n' I'll tie it 'roun' me, 'n' then you can touch 'er off
kind o' easy like.'
"Wall, that struck us all as a pious idea. That feller knowed more 'n a
dozen blind mules--sed mules weren't fer off, neither. Wall, we passed
in the rope, 'n' when we pulled boss up, he guv me 'tother end 'n' tole
me to hole on tighter 'n' a puppy to a root. I tuck the rope, wrapped it
'round me 'n' climb up fifty feet to a pint o' rock right under 'nuther
pint 'bout a hundred feet higher, that kinder hung over the pint whar I
wuz. Boss 'n' t'other fellers skedaddled up the crevice 'n' hid.
"Purty soon suthin' happened. I can't describe it, gents. The hull
canyon wuz full o' blue blazes, flyin' rocks 'n' loose volcanoes. Both
sides o' the gorge, two thousan' feet straight up, seemed to touch tops
'n' then swing open. I wuz sort o' dazed 'n' blinded, 'n' felt ez if the
prisipasses 'n' the mountains wuz all on a tangle-foot drunk, staggerin'
like. The rope tightened 'round my stummick, 'n' I seized onto it tight,
'n' yelled:
"'Hole on, pard, I'll draw you up! Cheer up, my hearty,' sez I, 'cheer
up! Jes az soon'z I git my footin', I'll bring ye to terry firmy!'
[Illustration: TWIN LAKES.]
"Ye see, I wuz sort of confused 'n' blinded by the smoke 'n' dust, 'n'
hed a queer feelin', like a spider a swingin' an' a whirlin' on a har.
At last I got so'z I could see, 'n' looked down to see if the feller wuz
a swingin' clar of the rocks, but I could n't see him. The ledge wuz
blown clean off, 'n' the canyon seemed 'bout three thousan' feet deep.
My stummick began to hurt me dreadful, 'n' I squirmed 'round 'n' looked
up, 'n' durn my breeches, gents, ef I was n't within ten foot of the top
of the gorge, 'n' the feller ez wuz blasted out wuz a haulin' on me up.
"Sez I when he got me to the top, sez I, 'Which eend of this rope wuz
_you_ on, my friend?'
"'I dunno,' sez he. 'Which eend wuz _you_ on?'
"'I dunno,' sez I.
"An', gents, to this day we can't tell ef it was which or 'tother ez wuz
blasted out."
* * * * *
It was afternoon and we were weary--sated--with sublimity; so we ran
straight away to Leadville, and left until our return an examination of
the Arkansas Valley.
XX
THE ARKANSAS VALLEY.
And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of
corn or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only
one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more
essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians
put together.--JONATHAN SWIFT.
The interest of the Grand Cañon of the Arkansas, though it culminates
between the narrow walls of Royal Gorge, by no means ceases there. For
many miles after, immense piles of rocks are heaped on each side, great
crags frown down, and the river comes tumbling to meet you down a series
of green and white cataracts. The walls are highly colored, and the
whole scene exceedingly interesting. Toward the western end there is a
break in the gorge, through which fine pictures of the Sangre de Cristo
peaks present themselves close by, and then the rocks are heaped up
again into the grand defile of Brown's cañon, where one of our
illustrations was made.
Just before entering Brown's cañon, a branch road can be seen running
off to the northward. That is the short road up to Calumet, where the
Colorado Coal and Iron Company have iron mines of great value and in
constant operation, for the ore is suitable for the making of Bessemer
steel. These mines are open, quarry-like excavations, and the ore is
therefore more easily handled than is usual. The grade on this branch,
four hundred and six feet to the mile, is said to be the heaviest in the
world where no cog-wheels are used. Only a few empty cars can be hauled
up; and the difficulty is almost as great in descending, for it requires
at least four cars, dragging with hard-set brakes, to hold an engine
under control in going down. Marble and lumber in great quantities are
also shipped down this little branch from the neighborhood of Calumet.
Passing some hot mineral springs, where are bathing arrangements, near
the head of Brown's cañon, the train runs into the busy yard at Salida.
This town was formerly South Arkansas, and I surprise the Madame by
telling her that no longer ago than 1874, I pitched a tent where it now
stands upon ground which had no vestige of civilization near it. Salida
is a Spanish word, meaning a junction, and is applicable in two ways. It
is at the confluence of the Arkansas with its large branch from the
south, and it is the junction of the northern system of railway which
we are following to Leadville and beyond, with the main line going west
from here to Utah and California. It is therefore a lively railway
center,--the end of divisions, the headquarters of round-houses,
repairing shops, etc. Besides, it is rapidly growing, and increasing in
importance as a busy mercantile center.
[Illustration: THE OLD ROUTE TO LEADVILLE.]
The valley of the Arkansas north of Salida, we see as we go on again,
nourishes much agriculture, which continues to be seen--at least in the
shape of hay ranches--as far as Riverside, the first station above Buena
Vista. There Mr. Leonhardy has seven miles, more or less, under
cultivation, and carries on a highly profitable farm. His extensive
hay-barns are close to the track, and his horse-mowers show how
scientifically it is cut. All the cereals are grown there, or at any
rate have been grown; but wheat, though it becomes very plump and hard,
has so precariously brief a season in which to mature, that it is not
profitable, and hence no great amount is now planted. Of oats, rye and
barley, however, hundreds of acres are cut annually, yielding in each
case above the average number of bushels to the acre of eastern crops. I
have seen some very fine samples of all these grains, which, of course,
find abundant sale close at home, and hence are unheralded outside.
Then in the way of "roots," large plantations are made, and fine results
brought about. Potatoes are particularly successful, one hundred and
fifty bushels, or about fifteen thousand pounds weight, being the
ordinary crop expected to the acre; turnips, beets, onions, etc., doing
equally well in their way. The only things that can not be produced
here, in fact, are such tender plants as melons, squashes, cucumbers,
and the like. Even these may often be brought to maturity if their
beginnings are nurtured under glass, but as a matter of regular
gardening, they are not considered profitable.
Apart from this locality not much farming is visible, except close to
Salida, where the road runs over the top of a dry mesa,--one of the
terraces into which the former river has cut the glacial gravels of the
valley-margin. Down in the lower "bottoms," where irrigation is very
easy, one sees some miles of continuous fields cultivated in hay and
grain. The close clusters of ranch-buildings, the stacks of straw, the
yellow and green squares of stubble and the black threads of the
dividing fences, with the diminutive dots of men moving to and fro with
wagons, recall the prairie states. We also note the number of cattle
seen all along the lower part of the valley,--and the cheapness and
excellence of the beef we bought in all this part of Colorado.